The Case of the General's Thumb (18 page)

The Miller Ltd minivan parked below prompted thoughts of cracked and flaking ceilings, and reaching for his mobile, he dialled District.

“Duty Officer.”

“How's Zanozin?”

“He's better, Comrade Lieutenant. Telling the Major to bring beer. A good sign.”

With Uli driving, they negotiated the narrow streets of the Old Town of Luxembourg, crossed a deep river gorge by way of a long, red-painted bridge, and at the end of an unlit cul-de-sac, stopped.

“Uli's got a point,” said Sakhno, following a sign-language exchange. “We've got to ditch this hearse. So you and Uli wait here. If our Belgian youth surfaces, thump him.”

In less than an hour he returned, driving a Volkswagen Passat.

“We'll truss this lad up, stick him in the boot, and off we go. You with Uli in the VW, me following.”

Uli drove, clearly familiar with the area and its byways. After a while, she slowed, turned down a narrow farm track, and pulled up at wooden gates bearing a
FOR SALE
notice. Helped by Uli, Nik lifted the gates off their hinges, opening the way to a yard. Sakhno shut the hearse away in an empty barn, then got behind the wheel of the Passat. Uli sat in the back, nursing Nina in her box.

Twenty minutes later they were back in Germany. This time they drove up to the gates of Weinberg's villa, and then two hundred metres or so along the wall to the right of them, where Sakhno climbed into the now familiar oak.

“No targets. Three windows lighted,” he reported returning to earth. “Could be Weinberg's hopped it. We must go and see.”

“We've work for you, my beauty,” Sakhno said, hauling the unfortunate Belgian out of the boot, freeing his feet but leaving his hands tied. He prodded the youth towards the villa gates, and when they got there, lifted and dropped him over like a roll of carpet. He waited, and when neither dog nor man responded, helped Nik over and nimbly followed.

Crouching, they made towards the house, pushing their prisoner ahead of them. Parked beside the house was the crimson Jaguar, and beside the Jaguar lay the body of a nattily dressed young man, which Sakhno relieved of a still holstered automatic. They then came upon two further corpses with weapons undrawn. Sakhno gave Nik one of the automatics, and pocketed the other.

“Someone's done a good job. Didn't know what hit them.”

“Saving us a job.”

“We're none of us indispensable!”

Pushing the Belgian through the unlocked door into an unlit
hall, they went up carpeted stairs to a passage, lit by light from a frosted glass door, beyond which a phone rang. Stopping, they listened.

Answerphone sounds followed, then, in good clear Russian, “Ring you in an hour. If no answer, that's it!”

“That was Überkraft,” Nik whispered.

Sakhno nodded.

Bursting through the frosted glass door on the heels of the Belgian, automatics at the ready, they found Weinberg slumped in a chair, face as grey as his track suit, a bottle of Johnny Walker spilt on the carpet, where his dropped cigarette was burning a hole.

Stamping out the burn, Sakhno slapped Weinberg in the face.

“You alone?”

Weinberg nodded

“Find the bath, Nik. Fill it with cold water. We must sober him up.”

Icy immersion and rough handling by Sakhno helped to loosen Weinberg's tongue.

“What's the money to you, you can't get at it,” he said, dabbing his bleeding mouth. “Only the account holders, all three acting together, can do that. If Pierre supplies the password. As Pogodinsky wouldn't. The maximum drawable by any one account holder acting alone is ten per cent.”

“Of what?”

“Four billion.”

“Bloody hell! A damned sight more than I need! And your pile, where do you keep that?”

“In the bank.”

“Where's your cheque book?”

“Desk drawer upstairs.”

While Sakhno went to fetch it, Nik raised the unfortunate Belgian to a sitting position from face down on the carpet, where he'd lain since being thrust through the door, and gave him a drink.

Sakhno's apparent lack of interest in the billions came as a surprise. These, surely, were the very funds Ivan Lvovich had sent him, Nik, in search of. Him! It seemed idiotic, ridiculous. But they existed, those funds. And some Pierre had the password for the three – whoever they were – to access them, presumably at a bank. Though how would one draw, how carry away such a sum?

“This four billion, where is it?” he asked Weinberg.

“Cyprus. But it can't be got at.”

“Which bank?”

“North Mediterranean.”

“Where do I find this Pierre?”

“Aeroflot office, Paris.”

As Sakhno came in with the chequebook, Weinberg got to his feet and dragged himself painfully to the table.

“Three hundred thousand DM will do. Endorse it ‘Pay cash'.”

“Who to?”

“Niklas Zenn.”

Sakhno prepared a meal of tagliatelle, which Weinberg ate with difficulty, and Nik fed to the Belgian by spoon, Sakhno being unwilling to free his hands.

“What a picture we make!” observed Sakhno. “All we need is an artist!”

A piercing shriek from somewhere overhead intruded on the idyll, prompting Sakhno to reach for the automatic beside his plate.

“Who's that?”

“Nobody. It's my parrot.”

“What sort?”

“Collared.”

“Does he talk?”

“No.”

“Good for him! Why should he talk! He's not a Chinese toy. What's his name?”

“Boris.”

“I've got a tortoise called Nina,” Sakhno said, as one child might to another.

Again a shriek.

“Go and fetch him, Nik.”

Boris was a handsome bird, even the wretched Belgian, who understood not a word, gazed in awe.

“Maybe he's hungry,” suggested Sakhno.

Weinberg heaved himself to his feet, crossed to a cupboard, and came back with a tin. The lid had a picture of a white cockatoo.

“You're a better man than I took you for,” Sakhno said. “I'm sorry I hurt you. Why not come with us? We could drop you off in Luxembourg.”

Weinberg shook his head.

“They'd still hunt me down. They're coming, and I'm not afraid of death. Too damned weary. We're all just pawns.”

“You and Nik here, perhaps. Not me. You can stuff your billions. I play a different game,” said Sakhno.

Leaving Weinberg and the Belgian to their fate, Sakhno and Nik made their way back to the VW.

Uli was asleep, curled up on the back seat, and as the car moved off, she slept on.

Presenting Weinberg's cheque at the Trier branch of the Deutsche Bank, Nik was surprised and not a little relieved at being paid the sum in notes and finding his pockets able to receive them.

SORRY FRIEND'S WIFE TANYA ARRIVING KIEV TODAY 29TH TRAIN 54 MEET ASSIST RE KONCHA
=
REFAT
, said a telegram from Moscow, saving Viktor a fruitless journey to Saratov.

He breakfasted, did his leg exercises, then passed the news of
Tanya's imminent arrival to Georgiy.

“Where've you got this from?”

“We have our sources.”

“Wonders never cease! You'd better go and meet her.”

Halfan hour later Georgiy rang with an address on Khreshchatik Street, where Tanya could stay, and instructions to keep constantly in touch.

In felt tip on the lid of an old shoe-box Viktor wrote TANYA TSENSKY in large capitals.

“Meeting her at the station,” he explained to a puzzled Ira.

The duty Zhiguli was waiting in the snow. So, too, the Miller Ltd minivan.

As Viktor stood holding his card up for the stream of passengers to see, a voice at his elbow said, “Kravchenko, not Tsensky, I kept my maiden name,” and there she was, petite, in trenchcoat and downy headscarf, pulling a shopping bag strapped to a trolley.

“I've got a car waiting,” said Viktor, taking the handle of the trolley.

“They said I'd be met, but I never thought I would be. All I've got is an address, somewhere outside Kiev. I didn't want to come, and they said I shouldn't. But I must find him. We've nowhere to live. It's time our son went to university.”

“Who was it told you not to come?” Viktor asked, as they made their way down into the underpass.

“Vasily Gavrilovich and the man with him. Very polite. They helped with money.”

Good for Refat, thought Viktor.

“Though whether it will run to a hotel –”

“Don't worry, we've found you a flat. There'll be no charge.”

“Thank you! Such kindness!”

Viktor dismissed the driver and himself drove to the address Georgiy had given: Bessarabian Square, Orbit cinema block, second floor. The door was opened by an old lady.

“In you come, tea's ready,” she said. “You must be exhausted after two days' travelling.”

Parking the trolley in the corridor, Viktor told a now happier Tanya that he would be back in two hours, and that she mustn't leave the flat.

He phoned Georgiy from the car.

“Give her a meal somewhere, then go on to Koncha-on-the-Lakes,” instructed Georgiy. “Be there when she talks to the author – maybe he'll remember more than he's said. Make clear, when you bring her back, that she's not to leave the flat.”

“I have already.”

After a quick snack at McDonald's, Viktor visited Zanozin in hospital.

“What's it like out there?” Zanozin asked.

“Snowy.”

“And how's it going?”

“Fast. You could miss the showdown.”

“It's two more weeks here, then off to a military sanatorium in Odessa.”

“And a high old time with the pensioners!”

“Some hopes! The Major's actually promised me a flat.”

“Only to cheer you up, or thinking you unconscious.”

“Like an orange?”

“No thanks.”

Viktor squeezed Zanozin's hand which was still too weak to be shaken.

“Got the apples, did you?” Valentin asked Viktor, as they sat with Tanya and Svetlana over coffee at the long kitchen table.

“What apples?”

“The ones I gave the fellow you sent with another photo of Nik. Nice chap. Little gold star earring. Strange what you can get away with, now we're a democracy.”

“I'll check. But for the benefit of his wife here, could you kindly repeat what you remember about Nik.”

“Nothing about the container, then?” she asked at the end of a brief but crystal clear account.

“What container?” Viktor asked in surprise.

“With our furniture and stuff. Left Dushanbe the day before we did.”

“No, nothing,” said Valentin.

“What size container?” Viktor asked.

“A half, with our piano, sofa, sideboard, ten boxes of books …”

“You've got the documentation?”

“In the flat in Kiev.”

“We'll check,” said Viktor.

“And will you know, by the day after tomorrow, will you know anything by then?”

“I'll see what I can do.”

After another round of coffee, Valentin brought up Nik's dollars from their hiding place in the cellar, and with the look of a man glad to shed the responsibility, handed them to Tanya.

In Trier they checked in at the Hotel Sheraton, Sakhno announcing it grandly as “his treat”.

One uniformed bellboy requested the key to garage the car, another, by gracious sanction of the management, bore Nina up to Sakhno and Uli's bedroom in her cardboard box.

The excellence and luxury of their new surroundings moved Uli to make better provision for Nina. Obtaining a fine wooden box that had contained a dozen of choice French wine, she replaced the rolled-up balls of newspapers, designed to insulate against warmth or excessive cold, with screwed-up tissue paper. It was not until she
lifted Nina from her old box to settle her in her new one, that she noticed, lightly scratched into the underside of her shell, V32453H75G.

“Could be the password Pogodinsky was murdered for!” Nik exclaimed. “We're in with a chance! How about giving it a try?”

“And die young? It's an illusion, that sort of money. Think of the effort it cost to get three hundred thousand!”

Sakhno poured vodka. They clinked glasses.

“We're off tomorrow, Uli and I.”

“Where to?”

“Where we're not known and shan't be found. Peace and quiet's what's needed for happiness. I'll make a living plying my trade.”

“And what's that?” Nik asked, aghast.

But Sakhno, looking singularly acute and sober, empty vodka bottle notwithstanding, ignored the question.

Next morning Sakhno handed Nik seventy-five thousand DM, together with another of the automatics picked up at Weinberg's. The two of them embraced.

“Best of luck, Nik!” Sakhno clapped him on the shoulder. “I expect we'll meet again.”

Bag on shoulder, in brilliant sun and cheek-nipping frost, Nik went from the Sheraton to a café for coffee and pastry.

He had nowhere to go, except on in quest of Pierre, and the billions. He smiled at the madness of it. But it was there, somewhere, that money. He knew at least one who was after it, and why – or rather, what it was needed for in Ukraine. Madness, yes, but he was well on the way along a road that had cost Pogodinsky his life, and by now, Weinberg his.

Ordering another coffee, he asked the way to the station.

Tanya left on the 08.50 for Saratov, disappointed and depressed at having achieved so little.

Georgiy, rung by Viktor, said that Kiev seemed to have more container depots than chemists, but that he was working on it. And Viktor, hitherto indifferent to how many chemists there were, counted five, driving back to District from the station.

Heavy snow-charged clouds brought darkness earlier than usual. The warm glow of the solitary street lamp below his window, and an unearthly silence broken only occasionally by a car, made New Year, just three weeks off, seem here already.