The Final Fabergé (46 page)

“Will you be able to show the photographs to Mike's salespeople tomorrow?” Oxby asked.

“If I don't, someone will. And I want Mike Carson to see them,” Tobias said.

“That's even more important. How soon can you arrange a meeting?”

“I've got his private phone number, and he insisted that I call when something urgent came along.”

Oxby twirled the spoon in his coffee. “Do we dare call him Sunday morning?”

Tobias rose. “Worst that can happen is we talk to a machine.”

Tobias went into his house and returned with a phone. He dialed, expecting to hear a recorded message, but was surprised. “Hello Mike, it's Alex Tobias. This a bad time?”

Mike was just leaving his apartment. He was meeting bigwigs from General Motors for brunch. They were taking him to a Yankee game, the pleasure part of new contract negotiations. But he could meet later, at seven, in his apartment.

“Suppose, Alex, that Mike and the uniform people are able to match Galina's photographs with the woman each one saw a few weeks ago. What could you do with that information?”

“I suppose I could get a warrant. But we couldn't keep her long.”

“Even if they saw Galina in a lineup and made a positive identification?”

“Mike said the woman who shot Akimov had dark hair. In these photographs, Galina has blond hair. Beyond that we don't have the weapon, we don't have a corroborating witness, and I doubt if we've got a motive. Besides, I don't know who has the energy to prosecute. There's even a jurisdictional snag because Akimov was wounded in Nassau County, New York, and, technically, was killed in Bergen County, New Jersey. Lenny Sulzberger would give his left testicle to find the woman who shot him, but I doubt if he can make a positive identification.”

Oxby was rubbing his chin, absorbing the unique reality of the quandary Tobias faced.

Tobias said, “I answered your question, now you answer mine. What will you do if Mike identifies Galina?”

“First off, it won't matter if he can or cannot identify her. As far as I'm concerned, Galina shot Akimov, administered the needle to finish him, then shot Sulzberger. But I don't have to arrest her and bring charges against her. In keeping with the adage that it is wise to know thine enemy, I shall proceed on the basis that Galina Lysenko is as dangerous as she is young and beautiful.”

“But you still want to see Mike Carson?”

“Bloody damn right! I've looked forward to meeting him ever since that terrible hour I spent with his father in Tashkent.”

“You'll get your chance this evening.”

“Another question, Alex. Where's the knife that was used on the football player?”

“Tagged and bagged and in a locked file.”

“Any prints?”

Tobias shook his head. “The handle was gnarled and rough. Not good for prints, but great for grip.”

“Describe it.”

Tobias did, in detail. “I know something about knives, and this one was handmade for a single purpose. If Dennis LeGrande had been carrying less fat, he'd have been killed.”

“Dennis LeGrande?

“Ex–football player. Works for Mike.”

“Have you talked to him?”

Tobias nodded. “Poor witness. He remembered the yelling and screaming, then he was stabbed and he says everything went blank until he woke up in the ambulance.”

“An identical knife was used to kill Mike Carson's father,” Oxby said. He got up and went to the railing that surrounded the deck. He leaned against it, his arms crossed over his chest. “Alex, I sometimes think I'm living in a crazy, foolish dream.”

“I'll tell you straight out, you're not dreaming.”

“Then help me understand a few facts that need to be dealt with. I'll start with Oleg Deryabin. Deryabin ordered the death of three men for fear one of them would spill the beans to Mike and explain how Deryabin cheated his father out of an extremely valuable Fabergé Imperial egg. And far more tragic, how his father paid a horrible price for a crime that Deryabin committed.”

“That's a good start,” Tobias said helpfully.

“Then, incredibly, Deryabin comes to New York to enter into a partnership with the very son of the man he destroyed.”

“I've seen a lot of slime in this business, but that's as repulsive as it gets,” Tobias said.

“That single, defiant action explains the man. You might define him either by the absence of a single redeeming virtue, or the presence of a hundred heinous character defects. I prefer to list his evil defects, it reminds me who I'm dealing with.”

“Which leads me to ask where you figure in the equation.”

“Obviously, where I chose to fit, not where Oleg Deryabin wishes. He didn't plan on my entering into his world, but chance put me there, and now both of us are dealing with the consequences.”

“You have the advantage. He doesn't know where to find you. Are you going to call him?”

“I have some thoughts about a meeting with Deryabin and I'd like Mike to arrange it.”

“And the Fabergé egg?”

“It's very strange about the egg, I know he has it with him because I got an alleged anonymous phone call just hours before leaving Petersburg. Deryabin, or his sidekick, Trivimi Laar, got someone who spoke flawless English to tell me Deryabin would take the egg to New York with him. I suppose Deryabin figured it would be a good time to test the market and see what price it might bring. And he knows I might have a buyer for it.”

Oxby gave Tobias one of his knowing glances. “If there was the tiniest suggestion that he possessed a redeeming quality, I might guess that he's brought it along as a peace offering to Mike Carson.”

I
t was noon. Deryabin's expectation of a call from Oxby had not materialized. Each phone—the one in the bedroom, the one in the sitting room, and a third in the bathroom—had remained silent, though the Russian had glared menacingly at each one as if commanding it to ring. At twenty-minute intervals he had called the hotel switchboard demanding to know why a call of “overwhelming importance” had not been put through to him.

“I know he's calling me!” he shouted at the bewildered operators, “why do you lie?”

“There have been no calls, Oleshka,” Trivimi said in an attempt to mollify him. “No conspiracy. Galina was correct to say that Oxby had been able to put a plan together with his friends. Be patient, I promise the phone will ring.”

Deryabin redirected his glare from the phone to Trivimi, reluctantly accepting the Estonian's assessment. He lit another cigarette and crushed out the one that still burned in the ashtray.

“Fucking Sundays in this country are like funerals,” Deryabin fumed. “Nothing happens.”

“No different from Petersburg,” the Estonian said. “Watch the television. They have fifty channels. Something will pass the time.”

“Where's Galina?”

“You wouldn't let anyone touch a phone. I told her to use the one in my room.”

“What does she want a damned phone for?”

“She didn't tell me.”

“Ideas get into her head, then nothing stops her.” He glared at Trivimi. “Find her.”

Galina made one phone call from the Estonian's room, then called for her rental car and went to the lobby. She bought a road map that covered a radius of fifty miles from Columbus Circle in Manhattan at dead center. It included nearby portions of New York state on both sides of the Hudson River. At 12:30 the sun was directly overhead and it was as stifling hot as only New York can become on the first day of summer. She opened the top buttons on her shirt but she was still too warm in clothes meant to be worn in the cool air that blew across the Gulf of Finland.

The parking attendant told her to drive west to the Hudson River, then north on Route 9, beyond the George Washington Bridge to the Tappan Zee Bridge.

She found her way onto the bridge, crossed it, and took the exit to the town of Nyack, a residential community with antique shops and colonies of artists and writers. There was another colony; one comprised of the descendants of Russian émigrés who had fled Russia in the 1910s and 1920s. Though most were second- or third-generation, a few still came from the new Russia, searching after, they would say, the American dream.

She stopped at a motel in the center of town for directions, referring to the notes she had made during her earlier phone call. She was told how to get on the road north from Nyack. She followed it over the low hills that sprang up from the big river below, continuing for three miles until a sign directed her onto a road leading to the village of Valley Cottage. There, on her right, she would find a campuslike setting with rows of white frame houses and small cottages. She had been told to look for a small, white church topped by a gold onion dome and a cross rising above it.

There it was. Near the road, a small building, unmistakably a Russian Orthodox church. It was a reminder of home that, for an instant, sent a touch of excitement through Galina. But to have any feelings surprised her. In her entire twenty-nine years she had been in two churches; a Lutheran church in Petersburg where as a teenager she went swimming in a pool installed in the sanctuary by the Soviets when it proclaimed the church as State property. And once when she and Viktor were completing their training and had been sent to follow a doddering old doctor who went each day to his church for prayers. She turned into the parking area and stopped beside a sign. It read: TOLSTOY FOUNDATION.

She knew that Tolstoy was a famous Russian author, yet knew little about his books. What was this place? The little cottages and the houses had been converted to tiny apartments. Beyond the church was a large house, and beyond that, more buildings. Weaving among the trees were paths that crisscrossed the campus and on the paths were men and women. She noticed they were elderly, every one. They walked slowly, many carrying a cane.

The passenger door opened and Pavel Rakov slipped in beside her. They had seen each other less than three weeks before, but in that time Galina's life had been tortuously twisted and forever changed. Pavel wore sunglasses that resembled two green, luminescent reflectors. His shirt was a bright blue and red plaid, his dark hair was graying and cut short. He took off the glasses and they eyed each other familiarly.

He said, “Hello, Galina, you are as pretty as ever.”

Galina acknowledged the compliment with a nod.

“You found your way all right?”

She continued to stare at him. Not answering.

“How is your friend Oleg Vladimirovich?” he said icily.

“He is not my friend,” she snapped. “He pays me for what I do.”

“How much did he pay you for Viktor?”

Her gaze hardened. “What do you know about Viktor?”

“We learn quickly over here. The news comes to us from all over, including Tashkent. When a stranger dies in that city and no one pays to send him home, there is only a box for the body and a hole in the ground to put it in. But someone paid all the people who had their hands out, and for a zinc box and space on the airplane to take it to Petersburg. My friends learned Viktor Lysenko was in the zinc box. It was Oleg Deryabin who paid.”

“If I had been with Viktor, he would not be dead.”

“I am sorry.” He tried to smile. He opened the door. “It's hot. Let's walk. I want to show you something,” he said, and took her arm. He guided her onto a path and toward the church.

“No, Pavel. Not there.”

“It's all right,” he said gently. “Nothing will bite you,” he smiled. “I promise not to tell anyone you went inside.”

“I feel odd about it.”

“Come.” He urged her ahead and they entered the church.

Somehow it seemed larger inside. One room, square, its ornately painted ceiling thirty feet above, and directly in front of them an icon
wall with a fresco of Christ and his disciples painted in bright colors. A man with a full beard was at work on a side wall, working his brushes over a mural that had been water-damaged in the spring.

Galina was subdued, her head bent forward as she turned to face each wall. She tugged on Pavel's arm. “Can we go?”

Pavel nodded, and they went back out into the sun. They walked on the path and to a bench that was in the shade of a cluster of birch trees. They sat. Neither speaking.

Pavel broke the silence. “How long will you be here this time?”

Her head shook. “When I've done my job. Maybe two or three days.”

“What kind of job?” he asked.

“Moy zadanie?”
she repeated. “The same as before.”