Hot Siberian (47 page)

“We wouldn't have to stay in Deauville,” Nikolai suggested. “We could drive right through to Le Touquet and catch the air ferry to Lydd.”

“No,” Vivian decided, careful not to sound disappointed. “Let's go to the tulips.” A while back she'd read a travel-magazine article on Holland and had mentally put the tulip fields of Alsmeer and Lisse into her “perhaps someday” file. Now, if Nikolai had asked, she would have sworn that the travel angels had guided her to that article, because what side trip could have been more convenient—and less expensive? Less than a day's drive away, and, no doubt, bucolic accommodations. Seeing all those tulips was exactly the sort of parenthetical distraction they needed to recount their blessings, she reasoned. She took a road map from the door pocket. Earlier she'd folded the map to make it more manageable and marked the best route with a blue eyeliner pencil. “We go north when we come to Sixty,” she said.

It was at that moment Nikolai first noticed the Saab, a maroon late-model sedan. He merely saw it in his rear-view mirror about a hundred yards behind, and thought nothing special of it. Within a few miles there was Route 60. Nikolai turned off. So did the maroon Saab. And only minutes later at the border, while getting passed through Dutch customs, Nikolai looked back and saw the same Saab pull over to the side of the road, which seemed a bit strange. It occurred to him that perhaps the reason it had pulled over was so it could keep its distance, thus preventing him from a closer look. Then again, the reason could be as mundane as taking a moment to make sure papers, passports, car registration, and so on were in order. Nikolai believed he accepted that explanation, but as he drove away from customs he couldn't refrain from glancing back. The Saab had just then driven up to the customs station, right on cue.

Over the seventeen miles of minor road from the border to Perkpolder the maroon Saab made Nikolai increasingly uneasy. He pressed the BMW up to ninety. The Saab did the same. He slowed abruptly to thirty. So did the Saab, all the while keeping its distance.

“What the hell are you doing?” Vivian asked.

“Just fooling around,” Nikolai fibbed.

“You've sloshed wine on me.” Her white shorts were stained at the crotch, and there were red splatters on her white cotton knit cardigan. “Maybe I should drive.”

He apologized.

“Okay,” she said. “But no more of that.”

By the time they arrived at the ferry landing in Perkpolder, Nikolai was convinced they were being followed, but he still kept it to himself. It was the System, he thought, some of Pulver's snoops. Keeping him under surveillance for a while, being routinely diligent after Thursday's contretemps. Well, he'd let them know he was aware of them, if they hadn't already gathered as much from his driving. The ferry was probably something they hadn't counted on. It presented them with an impasse. They could either come aboard and let him have a closer look or wait for the next ferry an hour from now and lose him.

Nikolai paid the required fare and drove across the treaded steel ramp and on into the belly of the ferry. He was directed to steer the BMW into a barely adequate space and pull it up until it came in touch with the bumper of the car ahead. Vehicles were being packed in all around. A scarred-up van got in directly behind the BMW, so when Nikolai looked in the rear-view mirror all he could see was some of its grill and windshield. The side-view mirror presented him only a raking perspective of various wet metals and glass. It was claustrophobic. He opened the car door. The car next over was so close it was a squeeze for him to get out. “I'm for some air,” he told Vivian and assumed from her facial expression that she preferred to remain where she was.

Standing, he had a much better view of the cars jammed in behind. He scanned them, fought the reflections coming off them, and finally made out the roof of the maroon Saab eight cars back in the same line as the BMW. He went aft, sidling along the narrow space between cars. When he reached the Saab he glanced deliberately down and in. Its driver was a woman, an attractive blond in her twenties, a fair-complexioned Polish or Estonian sort. That was so unexpected Nikolai failed to get as good a look as he wanted at the others in the car. He only got the impression there
were
others, didn't even know how many, guessed two. He continued going aft until he was outside on the deck. The ferry was already under way, about a hundred yards out of its slip. The drizzle had stopped. The leaden clouds were breaking up here and there, allowing blue. The surface of the Westerschelde was scuffy. Nikolai stood at the thick chain that was strung across the edge of the ferry's on-and-off ramp, serving in place of a rail. He looked down into the roil of the wake and experienced a moment of hypnotic fascination. It seemed to be asking to be thrown someone it could drown.

That brought to mind the Lake Geneva incident Pulver had made a point of that day in Churcher's office—the errant dealer who hadn't known how to swim. Pulver was too well informed about the way the man had died. In fact, now that Nikolai recalled it seemed obvious Pulver had insinuated by his insensitive tone and choice of words that he himself was responsible for the man's death. It had been a macabre subject then, but now Nikolai realized it had also been meant as a warning. Perhaps these people of Pulver's were not merely following, he thought. It wasn't unimaginable that they might have more ominous intentions.

He stepped back from the edge and looked to his right. Standing at the chain about twelve feet away was the driver of the Citroën. She was in profile to him and the wind was whipping her hair forward, pressing it tight against the back of her skull, giving the illusion of a blond helmet. She was tall, with a strong, well-conditioned body. Just as Nikolai was thinking she didn't strike him as a Pulver type, she turned only her head his way and looked him in the eye. He met her stare. She smiled slightly. Not a friendly smile, but one he felt communicated with calm confidence that he would inevitably be killed.

Nikolai returned to the BMW. Vivian wasn't in it. She'd left the door on her side ajar. He reached to his carryon bag in the rear seat, and from it took out his holster harness. He put on the harness and, to conceal it, the cotton windbreaker he'd brought along. After adjusting the holster he got the Sig automatic from his carryon. Normally it wouldn't have been important to him whether it was loaded or not, but now he released the magazine, checked it, and shoved it back into position. He pulled back the slide to determine there was a round ready in the chamber. He holstered the pistol and zipped up his jacket. It disturbed him that he really didn't feel any safer.

Within a few minutes Vivian squeezed in. “I went to the loo and ran cold water through my shorts,” she said. “I thought I'd gotten out most of the stain, but now I see there's still a bit of pink. There's even wine on my knickers.”

He apologized again for having caused that.

“
Pas grave
,” she said. “I just wanted to give you something kinky to think about. Are you seasick?”

“No, why?”

“You look a bit peaked. That air you got must have been terribly polluted. I must say this tub has a very small loo. While I was in there rinsing my shorts an amply upholstered butchy creature came in and stood there practically panting down my back. Quite obviously what she had in mind was a Dutch treat. Have you got that pictured?”

Nikolai nodded.

“Shall I invent some details?”

Nikolai shook his head no.

“Perhaps all you need is an undemanding Vivian kiss and a bit of a hug.” She leaned over and gave him a very light but long one on the mouth. Her hug felt the Sig. She studied him for a long moment before asking: “Why do you have that on?”

It suddenly occurred to Nikolai that he'd wanted her to discover he was wearing the pistol. So he'd have to reveal and share the threat he was feeling. Perhaps she'd convince him he was overreacting. He'd already explained to her who Pulver was and vaguely how the System took all sorts of measures to preserve its control over the diamond market. He'd intentionally not mentioned the drowning of that dealer in Switzerland, but he told her about it now, really opened up and told her how the System had a reputation for meting out its own justice to those who opposed it or violated its rules. He gave her some secondhand examples. That, he said, was the reason they were being followed.

“Swell people you're in business with,” she remarked.

“
Used
to be in business with.”

“Whatever.” She thought a bit. “You know, it seems dreadfully melodramatic. Are you sure your remarkable Russian imagination isn't just getting a little too vivid?”

“I wish you'd stop attributing all these things to my nationality.”

“It wasn't meant as a criticism.”

“It's always my Russian this or my Russian that. You sound like a misinformed American.”

“My, aren't we the touchy one!”

“I have an average, undistinctive imagination,” he claimed.

Vivian disagreed with an almost inaudible scoff. “Are you really pissed?” she asked.

“Do I appear to be?”

“Not entirely. Maybe about forty percent.”

“It feels like about ten.”

“That's not enough to prohibit a smile.”

He smiled for her, but his heart wasn't in it.

“So, you're certain we're being followed,” she said.

“Definitely.”

“And there's the possibility that they intend to do us harm.”

“Not us, just me.”

“As far as I'm concerned there's no such entity as just me.”

“I think what we should do is drive up to Rotterdam. I'll put you on a flight there—”

“Like a piece of baggage.”

“—then after I've dealt with this matter, settled it somehow, I'll come on to London. In a day or two.”

His words seemed to go right past her. “How many of these blokes are there?” she asked out of one side of her mouth, suddenly a tough.

Nikolai sensed that Vivian had slipped into her obstinate phase and now it would be futile to try to reason with her. He hoped these people of Pulver's were only supposed to intimidate him. If it would get rid of them he'd act severely frightened. That would be easy. All he'd have to do was turn up what he was feeling half a notch. He told Vivian: “I don't know exactly how many there are, but they're not all blokes. At least one is a woman.”

“You didn't see the others because you were so intensely noticing her, is that it?”

“Not quite.”

“So, what did she look like?”

He told her but chose his words carefully. Instead of saying the woman was blond he said “fair-haired,” instead of tight-bodied he said “solidly built.” “I saw her face only for a minute.”

“But you'd probably recognize her in nice low light. Did she say anything to you?”

“No,” he replied, thinking how much the woman had wordlessly expressed.

Vivian dug into her carryall for her Beretta automatic. She attached the stubby silencer to it and put it on under her sweater. “Do you have your silencer on?”

“No.”

“Better. That piece of yours sounds like a cannon without it. No need to flush all the birds.”

Twenty minutes from then the ferry pulled into its slip on the north shore of the Westerschelde. The vehicles it carried were directed quickly off in double file. As soon as the wheels of the BMW had roadway under them it began showing its impatience, went around the cars and trucks ahead, maneuvered sharply in and out until it was relatively in the clear. Vivian was driving now. She'd convinced Nikolai that it would be a better arrangement if he “rode shotgun.” He'd never used the term but understood it from the American westerns he happened to have seen on British television.

The highway they were now on was designated A58. It was four lanes, divided. Nikolai peered back through the rear window. “I don't see them,” he said.

“That woman was probably some cheesemaker's wife and her lover on their way to the seashore,” Vivian remarked with a tinge of disappointment.

Nikolai continued to look back. He sighted a mere black speck on the beige ribbon of highway. It turned into something that had color, which became maroon, which became the Saab coming on fast. “There they are!” he told Vivian.

“I'll bet I can lose the bastards,” she said as she made the speedometer indicator climb. She remained in the left lane. Nikolai kept looking back. The Saab had steadied its speed, was now just following along about seventy-five yards behind. It must have been delayed by a traffic snarl at the ferry landing, he thought. He could see the silhouetted shapes that were the heads of its occupants. He counted three, including the driver, although a fourth was possible.

A green-and-white overhead sign said the turnoff to Route N18 and the city of Goes was a quarter mile ahead. Vivian was still keeping to the left lane, apparently intending to pass the turnoff. At the last second, however, she swerved across the right lane and took it. The Saab managed the right lane but was unable to make the turn. It went up onto the shoulder, slid to a stop on the grass. Immediately it backed to the turnoff.

“Lost them,” Vivian said.

“No you didn't,” Nikolai told her, sighting the Saab again.

“
Merde
.”

“Just drive at a normal speed and see what they do.”

“What would be normal in these parts?”

“I don't know. Try sixty.”

Vivian let up to sixty. It felt like slow motion. It was particularly irritating to Vivian because the sun was striking her face from the left and she hadn't thought to bring sunglasses. Even with the visor down and swung over the glare got to her. To make it even more excruciating, when she looked in the rear-view mirror she noticed the two identical dark ovals that were sunglasses being worn by the woman driving the Saab. And several much older cars, including a couple of four-cylinder weaklings, passed easily. Vivian endured it for a mile or two, then sighed a moan. “Maybe they'll give up on us out of boredom,” she said.