The Final Fabergé (20 page)

“Midnight?” Oxby said, disbelieving. “When does that get us into Tashkent?”

“Six-fifteen Sunday morning. But there is a two-hour time difference.”

By noon, Oxby had canvassed half a dozen bookstores hoping to find an English language guidebook that might give him a glimpse of the city where he would soon find himself, though he would settle for one in Russian or French. For all his effort, he was only able to find a ten-year-old gazetteer with missing pages, one that had been published by Intourist. While Oxby canvassed the booksellers, Yakov searched his district library for references to Uzbekistan. He came up with a German guidebook with a few pages on Tashkent, and half a dozen magazine articles covering subjects that ranged from irrigation and fertilization, to gold mining technology, to the paucity of locally produced television programming.

During the four-hour flight to Tashkent, Oxby made a determined attempt to extract at least some useful information from the meager references he and Yakov had gathered. He pestered Yakov for definitions, and separated hard facts from the dry pap that the Soviets fed to foreign reporters and tourists who ventured into Tashkent before that city regained its status as the capital of an independent country.

Oxby learned that five of the former Soviet republics that had been spun off from the old Soviet Union in 1991 were now known collectively as Central Asia, or Turkestan. Uzbekistan was the third largest of the five, yet had the largest population. He also learned that one didn't travel two thousand miles to the hills of the Chatkal Mountains in search of gourmet food or luxurious hotel accommodations. But Tashkent was where they hoped to find Vasily Karsalov and move a giant step closer to uncovering the secret to the Rasputin egg.

0632. Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

A rush of hot air swept over the passengers even before the aircraft was on the ground. Then it thumped down, came to a halt, and slowly taxied to a position about one hundred yards from the terminal. There it stopped, with no further activity for endless minutes as the temperature inside the plane rose ominously. Finally, gloriously, the doors opened and the passengers filed out and down the steps of a ramp that had been wheeled against the plane. Oxby gazed up warily at an early morning sky filled with a dusty haze and felt the intense heat rising up from the cement. He took Yakov's arm and they fell in line behind
others waiting to board a yellow box on wheels hitched to a small tractor that would pull it to the terminal.

Once inside they faced the ordeal of passport and visa inspection by a young man with an expressionless face and wearing a black tie pulled loose from a soiled white shirt. The officer had no difficulty with Oxby's passport, but turned his visa over and over, mumbling so indecipherably that even Yakov could not make out what he was saying. The standoff seemed headed for a stalemate until Oxby remembered the all-purpose curative power of a crisp twenty-dollar bill. Promptly a rubber stamp crashed against the visa and it was handed to a very relieved Oxby.

“
Spahseebah
,” Oxby said, aware that saying thanks might be taken as an excessive show of civility.

“
Nyehzahshtah
,” came the surprising response, accompanied by a wave of the hand inviting Oxby and Yakov to continue on to a room where luggage was passing by on a conveyer belt. They picked up their bags and were sped through customs and on to the stark, poorly lighted central hall of the terminal. Ahead were doors leading to the street, a neon red taxi sign above one of them.

Yakov evaluated his choice of taxis and chose the one with the oldest driver on the assumption the man spoke Russian as well as Uzbek and would be amenable to accepting an offer to serve as both guide and driver. The driver's name was Hoja and he would have to consider a price for his services. He was perhaps fifty-five, with toughened skin and a pair of glinting eyes. He wore dark pants and a sleeveless shirt opened at the collar. Atop his head was a frayed, embroidered skullcap, a sign the driver was probably Uzbek and a Muslim.

Hoja's taxi, an old Lada with bicycle-thin tires, was not airconditioned, nor, Oxby immediately surmised, was any taxi in all of Tashkent. London cabs aren't air-conditioned, he reasoned, but even a hot June day in London could never compare to the oppressive Tashkent heat. Hoja pondered the matter of price and asked for payment in dollars, adding that he could convert dollars to sum, the national currency, that his brother was in the exchange business. A city map might be a problem, his was in shreds and a new and accurate map would be difficult to find, but he would try. He claimed to be familiar with the old Soviet military installations.

“After the Independence,” he said in a blend of Russian and Uzbek that Yakov was able to understand, “and the Russian soldiers were gone, we found we had the same president as before and the KGB was called
National Security Committee.” He turned and smiled, exposing a mouthful of gold-covered teeth. “You hear that we do not like Russia—but we are just like them.”

Yakov showed Hoja the address of the apartment he had miraculously been able to rent as a result of calls to his friends at the University of St. Petersburg. He remembered how each spring there would be listings made up from teachers throughout new and old Russia who made their homes available for rent while the owners took a holiday or found summer work to supplement their low wages. A married couple, Russian expatriates who taught at the university, occupied an apartment in the Frunzensky Torgoviy center—primarily a residential district. Yakov had been instructed to stop in the owner's apartment for a key and drop off an envelope with the rent money.

It was now nine in the morning and the sun's aureole was a hot amber, the sun itself a golden circle of intense heat that had raised the temperature to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and would inevitably send it higher still. It was an arid heat that Oxby found to be tolerable, more so than a rare 85 degrees in humid London. Now they entered a densely populated section of the city, and were on a wide avenue with plane trees, their thick, white-painted trunks emerging out of the cement and bricks. Hoja leaned forward so that he could identify the street, often marked by a sign in Russian on a building at the end of a street. He made a hard right turn onto a narrow street and followed it for several blocks before turning again into an alley only wide enough for one car. The car stopped and Hoja pointed to an opening in an apartment building. Near the door was the rusted front end of a small truck that had been chopped in two.

Oxby got out of the car and inspected the neighborhood. Yakov came beside him. “Remember Jack, don't judge the inside by what you see on the outside.”

Apartment 2 was smaller than Yakov's little home in Petersburg. The teaching couple had, with their meager professor's wages, furnished it with imagination and good taste. A Bukhara rug covered nearly all of one wall, and against another stood a glass-fronted cabinet in which were treasures of porcelain and decorative arts from Kazakhstan and Afghanistan. There were photographs and paintings on the walls of mosques and other religious buildings that were stunning in their color and design. The telephone was in working condition, except the call Oxby made to the English consulate was interrupted by other voices
before he succeeded in registering his presence. An affiliation with New Scotland Yard helped smooth the process.

“I believe it will be more successful to go directly to the military base,” Yakov said. “To telephone and ask for a meeting will give someone reason to start a flow of paperwork that will only block our way.”

Hoja helped with the luggage and volunteered to get food from the kiosks and little shops on the street. The heat had chased any thought of food from Oxby, and while early in the day, there were exotic odors in the air that most likely came from the food cooking on braziers outside the neighboring apartment buildings. In a corner of one room—there were four tiny rooms in all—was a range, a miniature refrigerator, and a sink. Ample for breakfast, Oxby contemplated. He was not prepared to set up housekeeping and cook meals in a land where lamb might turn out to be from a young goat, or more likely, an old one.

Hoja returned with two plastic bags filled with fruit, bread, and a few eggs. He also had a victorious glint in his eyes because he had found a map, used by appearances, but of recent printing and listing many of the recently renamed streets.

“It is here, you see, what is called Uzbekistan Pentagon.” He smiled, as if making a small joke. “I know these buildings.”

Soviet architecture is notoriously uninspired and dull. But in Tashkent, following a devastating earthquake in 1966, new structures were added to the old military complex. Ignored, unfortunately, was the influence of the uniquely beautiful Islamic mosques and seminaries found in Central Asia. Less than three hundred miles distant in Samarkand were the great works inspired by the ruler Tamerlane in the fourteenth century. But not a breath of the freshness of those edifices could be found in the dark, forbidding administration building Jack Oxby was about to enter.

Soldiers in fatigues, rifles held casually at their sides, had moved from the hot afternoon sun into the shade a dozen paces from the entrance. None was of a mind to challenge, and watched, sullenly, as Oxby and Yakov opened the heavy doors. Inside, they spotted a woman officer posting notices on a bulletin board.

Yakov greeted her with a broad smile, one that was not returned. “We
have come from Petersburg to find someone who was sent here many years ago.”

The officer was young, likely a lieutenant, Oxby judged. “Call her captain,” he whispered.

Yakov repeated the purpose of the visit, and when he called her captain she turned quickly to face him, protesting the sudden promotion, but unable to conceal the pride it brought her.

“I am not a captain,” she said, pulling at the emblem on her collar. “If you have questions about where our people are assigned, and you have credentials to ask such questions, then you must go to the offices on the third floor.” She pointed. “The elevator is at the end of this corridor.”

Oxby nodded and said
spahseebah
. Yakov also thanked her, profusely it seemed. They went ahead, leaving behind a new friend. They exited off the elevator into a dimly lit hall. Ahead, through a wide opening, was a large room with windows along each side. Rows of desks faced a wall at the front of the room on which was a large clock and a magnificently framed painting of Islam Karimov, once First Secretary of Uzbekistan's Communist Party and then its first elected executive president. The painting, in the style of old Soviet poster art, captured Karimov wearing some kind of quasi-military uniform.

A stocky man hurried to them, eyes wide with curiosity, sweat trickling down his neck onto a wet shirt collar that was still uncomfortably buttoned. His upper body was that of a weightlifter and he was an officer of middle rank with the demeanor of someone who was, and would probably remain, second in command.

“What is it you want? Do you have authorization? Why was I not informed ?”

There were many more questions he would ask but Yakov interrupted and applied his charm. He said that he had been told by someone whose name had suddenly slipped his memory . . . “a general whose name you would know . . . and excuse my impatience, but what is your name?”

“I am deputy assistant of our personnel section and my name is not important.” With that he took both Yakov and Oxby by the arm, and with surprising force, began to usher them toward the elevator.

Oxby pulled away and began to speak in Russian, his words coming slowly. “We must find someone. There is money,” and he held up his hand and rubbed his thumb over his first two fingers.

“Money for what?” the officer demanded.

“Explain it to him,” Oxby said.

Yakov and the officer exchanged words for half a minute when, suddenly, the subaltern released Yakov's arm and invited his surprised guests, as he now called them, to come into his office. Framed awards on the wall said the deputy's name was Y. Sergeev. A small fan tried vainly to move the hot air in the tiny office. “Our air conditioning is broken again. Tomorrow, they always say.”