Hot Siberian (43 page)

“When would you say we might finalize the deal?” Nagel asked.

“How about tomorrow?”

“No problem. Shall we make it here at two o'clock?”

“Fine with me.”

Nagel explained how the deal would go: “You bring your thousand carats. As soon as I have looked at them and found them to be of investment quality, I will notify my client so that he can instruct his bank to transfer the seventeen million to your Geneva account. We will wait here for the short while required to complete the transfer, no more than a half hour. You will phone your bank and verify the funds have been received. Everything will be done more or less simultaneously. Does that suit you?”

“I assume you will see that Jacob gets his cut.”

“He'll get his,” Nagel said ambiguously.

“How much? I want to know.” Nikolai made it sound as though the deal depended on it.

“One-half of one percent.”

Nikolai mentally moved decimal points and divided by two and realized Jacob's end would come to eighty-five thousand. Certainly adequate compensation for a walk around the block.

Jacob smiled gratefully at Nikolai.

Nikolai tried to think of any loose ends. The deal seemed simple and clean. He conveyed his satisfaction with it by standing and extending his hand to Nagel. Nagel's hand felt narrow and bony, like something that all the juice had been squeezed from.

“Where are you staying?” Nagel asked casually.

“At the Excelsior.”

“Good sensible hotel. Perhaps you'd enjoy some amusing company this evening.”

“No, thanks. I brought my own.”

That night an early dinner.

Both Nikolai and Vivian thought they were hungry, but they just nibbled at their main courses and visually appreciated the sweets.

They were staying at the Rivierenhof, not at the Excelsior as Nikolai had told Nagel. Nikolai wondered about that fib. It hadn't been premeditated. In fact, it had surprised him when it came out, and after the meeting when he was on Shupstraat he decided the reason for it had been instinctive caution. That made him wonder all the more.

Except for the fib, Nikolai reported his afternoon to Vivian. She wouldn't settle for mere highlights, wanted to know word for word what had been said. Throughout dinner she pumped him for details and impressions. Nikolai realized it was her way of making up for not having been there, so for good measure he invented a few things that he believed might color it more for her. Such as his having detected a bugging device incorporated in the Klimt lithograph.

“For what reason would he have a bug?”

“Who knows? Perhaps he uses it to review what was said, inflections and all, giving himself that much of an edge.”

“Or maybe it's his protection against renegers.”

“People in the diamond business never renege. A word is as good as a written contract.”

“You believe that?”

“It saves on legal fees.”

“This Nagel, did you get a good look at his eyes?”

“If you mean his irises, no.”

“I'll bet if you'd noticed you would have seen his irises change color every now and then. What shade were they, anyway?”

“Pale blue.”

“With silver striations bunched up at six o'clock to nine o'clock, right?”

“Hell, I was never that close to him.”

“His irises probably went from pale blue to gray-green whenever he lied to you.”

“Irises do that?”

“Especially when they're telling giant, crucial lies. With just fibs it's hardly discernible.”

Nikolai was relieved to hear that. He locked eyes with her. “I love you, Viv,” he said, and after an adequate beat: “Did my irises just change color?”

“I should hope not. Anyway, I couldn't really tell. Your eyes are so dark and deceitful-looking to begin with.” She smirked playfully. “Are you certain you saw Nagel's bug?”

Nikolai nodded. He wished she'd drop it. His fibs were infecting his truths.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose being Russian you should know a bug when you see one.”

Nikolai exaggerated a Russian glower and scratched his head in several places as though bothered by lice. He enjoyed his own sense of humor. Vivian did a stony-faced stare. The waiter came and asked if they would have coffee.

“Demitasse,” Vivian ordered, affecting her longest possible
a
. In practically the same breath she told Nikolai: “Am I ever proud of you!”

“Why?” He wanted to hear it from her.

“The way you handled yourself doing business today. You amaze me.”

“Are you being serious?”

“I've never been more so. Think of it, darling, and try to suppress your modesty. You come here to Antwerp, a strange city, knowing absolutely no one, without even a twice-removed reference to go on, and within mere hours you've swung a deal that's enormous. Didn't you know you weren't supposed to be such a slick capitalist?”

Nikolai was saved from having to reply by the arrival of the demitasse. The waiter showed off with his pouring of it, flourished the silver server so the brown-black stream that came from its spout was more than a foot long and stopped abruptly without a drop spilled. Nikolai imagined how many customers the waiter had scalded perfecting such technique, how many lawsuits he had caused. There was risk in just about everything.

Vivian used silver tongs to pinch two cubes of sugar into her cup. “Not to muffle any of your thunder, Nickie darling, but your success today proves something I've always believed: there's no big trick to getting filthy rich. Of course, it helps to be a bit filthy to begin with, but really all that's required is a headful of smarts.”

“Or a bowlful of diamonds.”

“Seventeen million dollars,” Vivian mused. “And you've hardly made a dent in your hoard.” She brought her tiny gold-rimmed cup to her lips and wriggled her extended pinkie at him. Between sips she asked: “Would you mind terribly if I married you for your money? Among other more important reasons, of course.” Before Nikolai could reply that he was agreeable to marrying her and remaining married to her under any conditions, she was off on another sideroad, relating how that afternoon she'd found her way to a delicatessen there on Pelikaanstraat, a kosher place called Moskowitz's, where she'd sat at a counter and had potato pancakes with sour cream and cherry jelly, which were delicious. However, occupying the seat next to her had been an American woman who volunteered loudly that she was from Larchmont, New York, and was disappointed with Antwerp because she'd searched in vain all over the city for a little lizard to add to her collection. The woman had what must have been close to a dozen gold and platinum pins in the form of lizards on the lapels of her suit as well as a couple at the neckline of her blouse. She was veritably crawling with them: lizards studded with green garnets from head to tip of tail and with tiny diamonds or rubies for eyes. “Repulsive little monsters,” Vivian said, and, after hardly enough time for a synapse: “You know, probably the most tragic thing is to have tons of money and not an ounce of taste. Thank the angels that shall never be our problem. We'll never have linens on our terrace tables dyed precisely to match the shade of our nearby hibiscus blossoms. It will never occur to us to have a swimming pool constructed in the shape of a heart or with mosaic mermaids on the bottom.” A final sip of her demitasse. She set her cup down and held her hand over it to prevent the waiter from doing an encore of his audacious pour. “Damn, I wish you'd thought to get a close look at Nagel's irises,” she said while Nikolai signed the bill.

As soon as they were up in their suite, Vivian undressed, swiped the back of her knees with Tabu, toed into a pair of high-heeled mules, and put on a full-length, pale green silk charmeuse robe. She tied its sash firmly. “Why don't you go shave again?” she suggested offhandedly.

Nikolai went into the bathroom, stripped down to nothing, and softened his twelve-hour beard with a steaming facecloth. He heard the slick friction of Vivian moving about in the sitting-room. He considered the power she held over him. Hadn't she intentionally let him stand there watching her get out of her clothes? Hadn't she purposely put on those high heels before anything else? Surely her suggestion that he shave hadn't been an afterthought. He, her man, was like an electric something that she could turn on and off. He lathered his jaws, gazed in the mirror at himself smiling at himself, and knew he wouldn't have it any other way.

When he was done and went out to her he found her seated at the desk. She'd removed the shade from the desk lamp for stronger, more direct light. Before her on the surface of the desk lay two automatic pistols, with silencers, holsters, and other accessories. Nikolai had known she'd brought them along, had tried to reason her out of it and had thought he might have until he saw her unpack them and put them in her dresser drawer beneath a layer of lingerie.

The lighter pistol was hers. A .380 Beretta. Archer had brought it for her a while back because she'd mentioned that she'd feel a bit easier having a firearm of some sort in the flat. She'd quickly learned it and come to feel possessive toward it, and on edgy occasions before sleep she'd check to make sure it was in its place, sharing the shallow drawer of her nightstand with a jar of handcream, satin eyeshades, the telly remote control, and a few pieces of chewy butterscotch toffee that had gone hard and stale. What she particularly liked about the Beretta was its grip, which felt perfect for her hand. Plus the fact that it took a thirteen-round staggered magazine. At various times she took her pistol down to Devon to get in practice; Nikolai had watched her, dead serious, plug away at tin cans set in a row on a fence. He had also come across some paper targets that she'd shot up and kept as a record of her improved accuracy. Scribbled in the upper right corners of the targets were notations such as “30 yards rapid fire Sept. 30.” Several recent targets showed all her shots had torn through near the center in practically the same spot. There was no doubt in Nikolai's mind that she knew how to shoot. His only question was when, if ever, she would put that ability to use.

The other pistol was Nikolai's. He'd received it as a stocking stuffer from Vivian last Christmas. A Sig Saur P-226. The sales clerk at Purdy's, where Vivian had bought it, had first suggested a Browning .45, but Vivian had fired that type of pistol a few times with Archer and found it unmanageable. It was enough to make a mercenary soldier flinch, and its recoil was so excessive that half the time it got fired at the sky. No, she didn't deny the Browning .45 had stopping power, she told the clerk, but wasn't hitting bloody essential to stopping? The Sig P-226, however, seemed just right for Nikolai. A 9mm Parabellum, it held fifteen rounds in its magazine, had good heft to it.

The first time Nikolai fired the Sig was in the snow down in Devon. A bright afternoon with the sun glaring off everything, so that Nikolai had difficulty just seeing the quarter-pound-size caviar tin Vivian placed on a fence post for a target. About the size of a human heart, she'd remarked. He'd never mentioned how he'd won trophies back in his Komsomol days. As he took his stance and aim he could sense her doubt that he'd come within a yard of hitting the tin. He'd show her. He was also motivated by wanting to get this shooting stuff over with. It wasn't compatible with love. Besides, his feet were cold and he hadn't yet had lunch. The first shot he squeezed off sent the tin flying. To prove that hadn't been luck his second shot made it leap and skitter across the snow. Vivian had tried not to appear impressed, praised only the merits of the pistol. He'd handed her the Sig and hurried into the house.

Now there she was with both weapons and a carton of Belgian chocolate.

“Why do that now?” Nikolai asked.

“I've been putting it off,” she replied absently, with a huge hunk of extra-bitter chocolate in her mouth, making her cheek appear swollen.

Nikolai stood behind her and watched her break down and clean the Beretta. His love with a lethal thing in her hands, he thought, those same hands that …

Some primitive source within him sent a shiver from his tailbone to the base of his skull. It drove him to the refuge of the nearby chair. He sat across its soft lap, his legs angled over its fat stuffed arm. He shouldn't resent Vivian's concern with the pistols, he told himself. What harm in her wanting to feel more a part of what was going on? Observing her from that mental vantage was more comfortable for him. She was so engrossed in her task that she wouldn't take a moment to retie the sash of the robe. The robe slid off her left shoulder. She retrieved it. But the second time it slid off she just let it have its way.

Other parts of her had at various moments amazed Nikolai. This time it was her left shoulder. The raw light was starkly defining it. He was, of course, familiar with its external conformation, thought of it as one of a pair of perfect shoulders, and he knew well from having traveled it so often the fine texture of her skin there. However, it seemed to him unfair and frustrating to be so limited. Would that he were able to feel and know her all the way to her bones. What of the fibers and sinews, the special tissues of her, the bouquets of nerve ends and capillaries? He would, if it were possible, race about inside her with her blood. At certain times more than others it was easier for him to imagine that he was experiencing her experiences. When he was quietly within her, not moving in and out but remaining in, held in, he could sometimes transcend his self and his separateness and feel he was as much being filled as filling. But it was such a transitory sensation, usually lasting no longer than a few breaths.

“I'll bet you've never broken down your Sig,” she said, returning him to a wider angle of thought. “You really should, you know. Never know when you might need to depend on such a friend. Do you want me to clean it for you?”