Hot Siberian (55 page)

What sort of man, she wondered, would this one be who was going by the name George Mitchell? She hoped to God he was brighter than those last two she'd been teamed with. What idiots they'd been! How badly they'd botched it! She'd had to clean things up. She'd driven back to the tulip field, dragged out what remained of them, and dropped them into the mouth of a canal miles away, so the tide would take them out to sea. This Mitchell, she thought, would probably also fuck it up somehow. If he did it would cost her dearly. There'd be no compensation, only expenses, no million Swiss francs for her and therefore no Baroness Carolina von Scherrer. She'd tried to convince the dispatcher to let her handle Borodin alone, but he wouldn't hear of it. He'd only have it as a recourse, if for some reason Mitchell didn't show up. Her instructions were to meet Mitchell at this hotel. He was to arrive Friday. She was to wait until noon Saturday before proceeding on her own.

“
Foutre!
” she spat resentfully. Fuck!

She got out of the tub. While still wet she lay on the bathroom floor and without hooking her feet under anything did a hundred sit-ups at a fast cadence. She got back into the tub. Her resentment had grown. She went to bed but the resentment was on the pillow with her. Around three she masturbated to pacify her mind. She tongued and licked the palm of one hand while fingers of the other performed the exact friction. Her orgasm was no shorter or less intense than usual. The enzymes and neurotransmitters that had come with her pleasure helped her to sleep.

She awoke at ten, ordered breakfast, and inquired after Mitchell. He hadn't arrived. She was relieved, admitted that she was waiting for someone she hoped wouldn't come.

At eleven she did her new makeup and got dressed in her new outfit, white flannel jacket, oxfords, and all. She checked to see that her backup Mauser and her compact Japanese binoculars were in her carryall and went out and down. As she passed through the lobby she didn't inquire after Mitchell, fearing he might have just arrived.

Before getting under way she lowered the top of the 560SL, so when she was southbound on the M5 and keeping within the speed limit the wind made it seem she was going faster. She took turnoff 27 to Tiverton and continued on over a secondary road to an even lesser road which brought her to Pennymoor. It was such a small village she had no difficulty locating the house. She understood it was the woman's house. She drove by it several times to get glimpses of it set back at the end of its drive. She would drive in and be the wealthy Annette Detange seeking some land in the area that she might purchase. They, the man Borodin and his woman, would offer information. She would ask to use a bathroom. They would be hospitable. She would accept their offer of tea. How much closer in could one get? Mitchell's presence would have made it impossible. Especially after the encounter in Holland they would be suspicious of anyone such as Mitchell. This was right, Georgine thought. She would simply place her cup of tea aside and take out her Mauser. Two practically point-blank shots would put them down. Other shots to their heads would definitely finish them. But first, to be prudent she should have a better knowledge of the house and its surroundings.

She explored several side roads in the vicinity before she found the winding one that took her up a nearby high hill. At the crest she pulled over and turned off the engine. From that vantage she had a perfect overview of the house and the lands around it. Through her binoculars she saw a gray Bentley parked in the circle of the drive, and another car, a black Ford. There was no one about. Only a cat moving along the side of the house, stalking and pouncing. The house couldn't have been better situated for such a killing, Georgine thought. The nearest house was a half mile off.

She continued to study the house, commending herself for being thorough. She had another reason for wanting to take it all in. So she'd be able to recall more of it in the future. This was such a crucial day, a turning point. Each year she would celebrate it and her good friends would wonder why.

Suddenly there was movement below. A man came from the far end of the house. It wasn't Borodin, but an older man in a dark, unstylish suit. A caretaker sort. He got into the Ford and drove away. She hadn't counted on there being a caretaker. Perhaps the caretaker had a wife and children. That would complicate. She would wait, see what else showed.

For a half hour there was no further movement around the house except for that cat. To pass the time she observed the cat. It seemed to be practicing various sorts of pounces. She was about to put away her binoculars when she saw Borodin emerge. And the woman. They were carrying fishing rods. The woman had on a complete trout-fishing outfit, waders and all. Borodin was barefoot, wearing shorts. Georgine followed them with her binoculars as they went across the field adjacent to the rear of the house and over a wall and into another more expansive field. All the way to where they climbed down a rather steep bank and waded out into a stream. What a perfect opportunity, Georgine thought. They were setting themselves up for her. They wouldn't have a chance.

She drove down to the house, parked the Mercedes in the drive, and went around to the rear. She could make out the subtle trail Borodin and the woman had made crossing the field, the grass not yet recovered from their trampling. She followed it exactly to the wall. She was careful not to scuff her new oxfords on the stones as she climbed over, but then she thought that soon, within minutes now, she'd be able to afford a hundred pair even better than these. She strode across the second, wider field. No need for stealth. She knew where they were. She could see up ahead where the field dropped off abruptly from having been incessantly eaten into by the stream. There was the sound of water on the run. She was approaching the end of their lives and the beginning of her own, Georgine thought. The dispatcher was going to be extremely pleased with her. He'd mentioned a fat bonus.

Now she saw fast water being played on by the sun. She proceeded slowly, believing that as she got nearer the shoulder of the stream would reveal them to her. She expected to see their heads first.

They weren't there. They'd entered the stream at this point, she could see their bootprints and footprints in the mud, but where were they now? She spotted them about two hundred feet downstream. Standing in the water, their backs to her. She kept them in view as she advanced along the edge of the high, grassy shoulder. She paused when she was about seventy-five feet from them. Not close enough, she decided. Although she was an expert markswoman and nine out of ten times she could make a kill at that distance she didn't want to chance it. This kill was too important. She went on another twenty-five feet. That put her practically even with them. They were still unaware of her. The downward angle would make the shots somewhat more difficult. Shouldn't she go down the bank to the edge of the water for a point-blank vantage?

While she was debating that, Borodin made a backcast. The tiny hook of the fly on the end of his tapered leader snagged upon a blackberry cane upstream. He turned and saw Georgine.

At that exact same moment Georgine peripherally sensed the presence of someone with her there on the bank. She glanced around. It was a man. A strongly built man with thick, light brown hair and features that looked as though they'd been beat up and healed numerous times. He fit the description she'd been given. “Mitchell?” she asked.

Lev nodded.

She told him: “You do her, I'll do the man.”

“Yes, I'll do her,” Lev said coldly.

Nikolai, when he saw Lev up on the bank with the woman, thought what a wonderful surprise it was—Lev and his latest come to visit. Lev was just what he needed. The sound of the running stream prevented Nikolai from hearing what they were saying. Shouldn't Lev be smiling? And then he saw the woman draw a pistol from beneath her jacket. And Lev, as well, had a pistol in his hand.

Lev had planned to kill her at the hotel in Bristol. He'd thought he would use his knife on her, about the same as he'd used it for the last kill he'd made, the French homosexual in Prague. But she'd left the hotel shortly before he arrived. That she'd left in her car led him to suspect where she had gone. Had she waited for him at the hotel as she was supposed to, everything would have been so much better. He wouldn't have had to expose himself like this to Nikolai. Such a loss wouldn't have been necessary. He would have merely been done with that phase of his life and gone somewhere other than back to Russia.

He judged from the back where her heart would be. Pressed the muzzle of his pistol against the cloth of her blazer. And fired. The bullet tore through two chambers of her heart, stopped it immediately. However, the oxygen in the blood in her vessels kept her alive just long enough for her to realize that it was she who would die.

Nikolai and Vivian didn't know what had happened. It was all so swift. They just saw the woman all of a sudden pitch forward as if she'd been shoved hard from behind, saw Lev reach around and catch her to keep her from plunging down the bank. There was the red, increasing splotch on the front of the woman's white jacket where the bullet had made its exit. They saw Lev put his pistol away and hoist the woman like a sack onto his shoulder. Lev didn't look at them. Just before he turned and walked away, he looked up at the sky.

As though asking it to explain.

CHAPTER

31

WHAT HAD GOTTEN INTO DO KIEN AND MAI LON? SAVICH
wondered. Normally, his Vietnamese couple were conscientious and orderly to the extreme. When he'd informed Do Kien that he'd be leaving tomorrow for a week in London, he'd assumed his packing would be done. On past travels, whenever he got to his destination and opened his luggage there would be everything he needed, not only his personal toiletries and prescription medicines but clothing both appropriate and in keeping with his tastes. Shirts and ties would have tissue paper layered between their folds to prevent crush. Jackets and trousers would be so meticulously smoothed and folded they could be unpacked and immediately worn. Savich had come to take such care for granted.

That morning when he came down for breakfast, there as he expected in the reception area was his black Morabito luggage, five graduated pieces. He'd brought down with him from his dressing room two favorite neckties that he wanted to add to what he was taking. He opened the thirty-six-inch case and could hardly believe his eyes. His things had been just crammed in haphazardly. His silk neckties were balled up and shoved down into the corners; his five freshly ironed shirts had been treated like so much dirty laundry. He opened the other pieces of luggage and found the same mess. Do Kien and Mai Lon always both did the packing. Both were to blame. Why would they do this? Why would they do this
now
, unless—unless they didn't expect him to return? Was it possible they'd overheard or come across something to that effect? Savich doubted it. He'd been especially careful never to mention anything related to his defection, and most certainly had never put anything about it in writing. Could it be that Do Kien and Mai Lon were merely intuiting his intentions? Was it within their oriental ways to put such strong stock in their senses? Not likely. Both Do Kien and Mai Lon, especially Mai Lon, had always struck Savich as being thoroughly Communist-pragmatic. It was most puzzling.

He summoned them to the foyer. Confronted them with the opened pieces of luggage. They offered no excuse or explanation. Their faces remained absolutely expressionless, not even a flicker of contrition. No matter how forcefully Savich demanded to know what had brought this about, they wouldn't reply. He finally gave up. They carried the luggage and its contents upstairs, evidently to make amends by packing correctly.

Savich dismissed the matter as a coincidentally timed show of rebellion. After all, Do Kien and Mai Lon had for so long catered to his whims and looked after his comfort diligently without ever a complaint. He didn't see how they'd put up with him all that while without letting out some rebelliousness.

After breakfast Savich wandered around the apartment saying goodbye to things. The elegant furnishings that he'd lived with and grown to think of as his weren't really his, he thought sardonically, not even those pieces that he'd personally purchased in Paris and elsewhere. He couldn't take them along. Even were he leaving with the state's blessings he wouldn't be allowed to take them. How unfair, he thought, as he imagined things of his taste being gone over and appropriated. That eighteenth-century Régence bureau in his study, for instance. Discovered and bought dearly years ago at a shop on Avenue Victor Hugo. What he was experiencing now, Savich realized, was a little of what Czar Nicholas II must have felt in 1916. He went down the hall to his study and sat at the desk. The inset brown leather top of it was very familiar. He felt he knew every inch of its gilt tooled and stamped border, all the different little scars on its buffed surface. He leaned far forward upon it so the near edge pressed across his lower chest and much of his upper weight was on his lateral forearms. He gazed past the miniature nude bronze of Herakles to the framed photographs of women on the table across the way. A final homage to them. He assured them all they'd be going along in his memory. Only one, however, would literally go with him. The one there in the center, more preciously framed by silver and rubies. Practically every intelligent woman who'd ever been in this room had asked about that photograph. They usually gave each of the many a brief look and made clever lacerating remarks, but without fail, that photograph in the center evoked lengthy, respectful regard. It was as though they knew this was the woman they would have to surpass. They usually wanted to know her name. And he would tell them, would say it as though its three syllables were an entire song.

“Irina.”

That photograph wasn't the only one he had of Irina, but it was his favorite. He'd treasured it. She had been twenty when it was taken. And earnestly in love with him. He always thought he'd been saved from early matrimony by the circumstance that when he met Irina she was already married. Only six months married, but those were still Stalin times; annulment was unheard of and divorce was far more a man's prerogative. In those days a woman who sought divorce nearly always came away ridiculed and still married. Irina knew that, so, she never once mentioned divorce to Pyotr Borodin. She just accepted the irony that her marriage had been a badly timed compromise and was resigned to living with it. Only now and then, Savich recalled, a frown would cloud Irina's lovely face and she'd say aloud that something had told her she ought not to marry for a year. She chided herself for not having heeded that wise inner voice, that incorporeal being or whatever it was that could evidently see quite a way ahead in her life.