“There will be cabs outside. Take the first one that pulls up. I wish we could have met under happier circumstances. Rube Hayward was right. He said you’d be coolheaded and not afraid of anything.”
“I appreciate Rube’s compliment, but he’s wrong,” he said. “These people have found what I’m most afraid of on the first try.”
Sam went out the front door of the consulate and saw a line of cabs. He stepped to the curb and the first one pulled up. Sam said, “Hilton Leningradskaya Hotel?”
The driver said,
Sam got in and the man pulled out into traffic. Sam had to keep himself from looking behind him out the rear window to try to spot the tail the kidnappers would have on him and the American surveillance team trying to identify the tail. He had been awake all night and all of the following day. Now the exhaustion was beginning to slow his brain and made it hard for him to focus on the challenges he needed to see coming.
As he rode through the city streets, the evening sunshine seared his eyes and reminded him that Moscow was much farther north than the major cities of the United States and the sun would stay out longer. He might be able to use the time.
The driver pulled up in front of the tall-towered hotel. “Six hundred rubles.” Sam knew that was about twenty dollars. He shuffled through the rubles he’d bought at the airport and handed him seven hundred as he took the carry-on luggage he and Remi had brought and got out. The cabdriver accepted his money and handed him a small wrapped package.
“What’s this?”
“Take it,” the driver said.
Sam accepted it, then turned to look behind them up the road. If any car was following, he couldn’t spot it, and he knew that knowing wouldn’t help anyway. He heard the cabdriver hit the accelerator and he turned again to get the license number. He stared at the rear plate, but it was caked with dirt. After a second, he realized the dirt was probably spray paint or a mixture of rubber cement and dust applied an hour ago.
He checked in at the hotel and went up to his room and sat on the bed. He set the package on the bed beside him and looked at it. He dialed his home number in La Jolla.
“Hello, Sam,” said Selma. “Any word yet?”
“I think I’m about to get word. I’m going to leave this cell on while I open the package I just got. I’d appreciate it if you could listen to what happens, but don’t speak until I tell you it’s clear.”
“All right.”
Sam unwrapped the paper around the box, looking closely around the sides for anything that might be a wire attached to an initiator. As he raised the top, he scrutinized it from the side, but there wasn’t anything that didn’t belong. “It’s a cardboard box, plain, like a candy box. There are no trip wires, no explosives. The cabdriver gave it to me a few minutes ago. There is a cell phone. There is also a picture of Remi holding a Russian newspaper. The numbers for the date indicate it’s today. She’s wearing the same clothes as last night and she seems unharmed. There’s nothing else.”
The cell phone in the box rang. Sam picked it up and said, “Hello.”
“Hello, Mr. Fargo. Since you received this telephone, then you also must have the picture and know we have your wife. She’s very beautiful, and seems to be very intelligent too. You must miss her terribly.”
“What is it that
“Right to the point. All right. You have recovered three hidden portions of the loot that Attila the Hun stole from European cities when he conquered them in the fifth century. You have one found in Italy near Mantua, one from Chalons-en-Champagne, France, and one from the shore of the Danube in Hungary.”
“I don’t—”
“Don’t interrupt and don’t argue. I know that you have taken them, and now you will give them to me. I want those finds.”
“All three have been turned over to the national archives of those countries,” Sam said. “There are treaties and laws that prevent people from—”
“I told you not to argue with me. Do I sound to you like someone who cares about treaties between foreign politicians? Getting the ransom is your problem. As soon as you have the three hoards in your possession, call me by pressing the programmed number on your new phone that says Remi.”
“What happens if I can’t get the three treasures?”
“Why make yourself afraid and unhappy? I hope I don’t need to think of something terrible to do. I don’t want to promise you some horrible last videotape of your wife if you fail. Succeed. I would rather have you confident and strong, thinking only about collecting my gold and delivering it.”
“Even if I can do this, it will take some time.”
“Time is not weighing on me. If you don’t want her back for a week, take a week. A month? Take a month. Take six months.”
“Where can I—” and Sam realized that he had prolonged the conversation as long as he cold. The kidnapper had hung up. He turned off the new cell phone, took it to the bathroom and wrapped it in a towel, closed the door, and went back to his own telephone. “Selma?”
“I’m here,” she said. “I recorded that. But I didn’t learn anything except that he’s Russian, speaks English well, and isn’t afraid.”
Sam said, “How about you, Consulate? Do you have anything?”
The voice was calm, quiet, and American-accented—not Hagar, but someone who was a lot like him. “We have determined that a Russian trading partner of Arpad Bako is a man named Sergei Poliakoff. The Russian police are putting together a file for us.”
“Where does he live?”
“Nizhny Novgorod. He has an import-export business, and an estate west of the city. The Russians haven’t tipped us on what they know ahead of their report, but the officer who passed me the information implied that he’s a pretty unsavory character. He has people in a lot of places, possibly even the U.S.”
“Thanks. I’ll have to get started on this right away. I’m going to leave both cell phones in my room. If you can, please get somebody to move the kidnapper’s phone around a bit—drive it around, ship it to friends in Italy or France. He’ll be tracking the GPS to find out where I am.”
“But where will you be? You can’t go off alone in this country. You don’t even speak the language. You can’t operate without the Russian police and that means dealing through us. I want you to promise me that you won’t try to do anything like that.” The man, whose name was Owens, stopped talking and listened. There was nobody on the line.
He switched to an internal line. “We’re about to lose track of Fargo. He’s left the hotel. He’ll probably turn up near Nizhny Novgorod in a week or two. He left our cell phone and the kidnapper’s cell in his room. Send somebody to pick up both. Then send the kidnapper’s phone on a vacation to Rome, Paris, and Budapest. It’ll keep the poor guy’s wife alive for a while.”
Remi lay in bed even though she suspected it was late morning. She had read somewhere that experimenters living in caves without sunlight or clocks would gradually lengthen their sleep cycles to a twenty-six hour day. She heard the quiet knock of the girl who would be bringing her breakfast. She was sensitive to Remi’s feelings. She knocked even though Remi was locked in and she had the key.
The girl’s name was Sasha—a boy’s name, usually, but maybe it was a nickname, or even a name that she’d assumed because she worked for a criminal and didn’t want to be identified. She was about eighteen, slim and blond, with pale green eyes. She had come in about five times now. Each time she entered, Remi would make sure to talk to her.
