Tea Leafing: A Novel (34 page)

“No, we agreed we’d wait ‘til we’re all together.” Birdie dried her eyes
with the back of her hand. “There is one thing though. Just one little bitty
thing.”

The girls tensed, bracing themselves for whatever Birdie might see as a
minor detail.

“I bumped into Joe. Gave ‘im the memory stick with all Fedya’s books on
it.”

Silence.

“Are we screwed?” Mary Jane finally asked.

“Don’t think so. He let me go without checkin’ the bags, didn’t he?”

“Guess that means Bob’s our uncle, huh?” Sam smiled.

A waitress, as wide as she was tall, appeared. “Can I take your orders?”

CHAPTER 88

Sunday, the four, weary
and apprehensive, returned to work. It seemed important for them to project an
air of normalcy. As Mary Jane said, “These are not the droids you are looking
for. Move along. Move along.”

    
Still, they were understandably nervous
about the reception they would get and what rumors might be flying.
They weren’t disappointed. The dressing room was
filled with chatter. Some were talking about what they thought transpired with
Pietra and the two silver-clad strangers in VIP 5. Others speculated about Gio,
who was clearly going to pieces. His steely, cool façade cracked under the
pressure of Saturday night’s events. A majority of the employees compared notes
about what might have been the cause of the full bag search and questioning
every employee had to endure after the club closed on Saturday night. Everyone
was pissed that they hadn’t been allowed to exchange their Pink Pussycat funny money
for cash that night. Gio told them they would have to wait until Monday to
change out their money. There were no shortage of theories and none of them
were even close to the truth.

The four decided to
take Monday night off and watch movies at Sam’s. The beer and junk food flowed.
Sleeping on the couches under Sam’s homemade blankets, the four felt warm and
safe for the first time in a long while.

CHAPTER 89

Outside the window, a
chilly pre-dawn gust blew dirt, dried leaves and fast-food wrappers through the
empty parking lot. Seated in their regular booth at Denny’s — sans
listening device −− the four passed the Pablo Escobar phone from one
to another. Each girl stared at the text message Tanya had sent just before
going into surgery.

The tiny screen
displayed “1.8 bil.”

“That can’t be right.”
Sam murmured.

“I didn’t think she was
goin’ undah the knife until tomorrow,” Birdie said.

Grace laughed, “Of all
people to not understand time zones, Birdie! It
is
tomorrow there! She’s twelve hours ahead.”

“Roight. Time
difference. I always forget ‘bout that. Guess that’s why me mum always sounds
so cranky when I call.”

“Do you think she means
million? That’s still a pretty handsome take, especially with the money from
the club. We’re all millionaires?” Turning the subject back to the business at
hand, Grace scratched her face and squinted like she was staring into a
blinding light.

“When we checked the
stolen books it looked like there were hundreds of millions funneling through
those accounts. It’s possible there was over a billion . . . but holy shit!
Could we be so lucky?” Mary Jane said.

“Fedya’s gonna come
looking for that money. I can tell you that for sure.” Sam took the phone and
stared at the LCD screen again. “We may have just signed our own death
warrants.”

“How?” Mary Jane asked,
“The person who made the transfers just disappeared off the face of the earth.
“Tanya is no longer Tommy, or Fedya, or anyone else.”

The four fell silent.
Could they really get away with this? Would they be caught? Killed? Worse? What
would they do with all that money?

The energy at the table
was humming. If the text message wasn’t a typo, they were far richer than they
had ever imagined.

Tears rolled down Mary
Jane’s face, “I feel a little guilty,” she choked. “This is all about Lena and
the revenge we wanted. I’m so grateful for the money . . . but I also feel guilty
for feeling good about this. I mean, is it bad to be excited that we’re rich?”

Sam nodded, “I know. I
feel the same way. I can’t believe this is real and I’m trying not to jump out
of this booth and scream with delight. I can’t believe that money is all ours.”
She grinned ear to ear, “It’s pretty amazing, even if it was a typo,
it’s
an exciting one!”

Birdie was scribbling
notes onto her paper placemat and talking to herself.

“What are you doin’
Bird?”

“Making a list of
everything I ever wanted, cuz I’m gonna buy it all.” She looked up with her
cockeyed grin.

Grace smiled, “We did
it girls.”

CHAPTER 90

“Why me?” Dmitry thought as his ancient Lada
wheezed up the winding hill, heading away from the lights of Yekaterinburg. The
scent of pierogis wafted into his nostrils from the insulated bag in the
passenger seat. The frost of the Russian winter might penetrate every cubic
centimeter of the old car, but could not reach the delicate dumplings sent from
the infamous Dacha by the Lake Restaurant. Dmitry was lucky to land the busboy
job, but hated that he was also the occasional delivery boy.

“Why should he send me so often? Those giant thugs
at the gatehouse don’t tip. They just grunt and hand back the bag from last
night. You would think they would be swimming in rubles, working for such a
rich guy.
Such a huge estate.
You can barely see the
roofline of the big house from the road.” Dmitry nursed his resentment. “Why
doesn’t he send Arkady or Nina more often? He just hates me.”

Rounding a blind bend in the road, Dmitry stood
on the brake and brought the weary Lada to a stop. Crosswise in the road ahead,
a dark Toyota Land Cruiser blocked the path. Suddenly the light bar on the top
of the Toyota sprang to life. A woman wearing the uniform of the DOBDD exited the
driver’s door and strode toward him. “Shit” Dmitry said to nobody in
particular. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” He rolled down his window, but made no attempt
to exit the car.

“Identification please.” Her tone was even and
her words precise.
Standard Russian with no trace of an
accent.
Educated?
St. Petersburg perhaps?

“Identity card, please” she repeated.

Dmitry fished for his wallet. He fumbled with
the card and then dropped it. He bent down, grabbed the lost card, and
straightened up. As he swung his gaze back toward her, a muffled “thud” was
heard. The 9-mm hollow-point slug entered Dmitry’s skull just above his left
eye. And he knew no more.

CHAPTER 91

Yuliya had little difficulty dragging Dmitry’s
lifeless body into the small stand of spruce and Siberian larches next to the
road. She possessed extraordinary upper body strength for a woman her size.

She dumped the light bar and easily navigated
the Land Cruiser into an alcove in the trees. Then she shed the uniform
revealing nondescript jeans and a sweatshirt. Finishing the look, she added a
heavy jacket and a ball cap, both emblazoned with the words Dacha by the Lake.
She removed the pierogi bag from the Lada and placed it next to an identical
insulated bag in the cargo area of the Toyota. Donning goggles and heavy
gloves, she worked for a handful of minutes, transferring things between the
bags. Hastening back to the Lada she slid behind the wheel. Carefully placing
the new parcel on the passenger seat, she turned the ignition. The Lada choked
back to life.

Yuliya Petrovna Larin had been a golden girl as
far back as she could remember. Growing up in Vladivostok she had been first in
her class at every step. Her father, Pytor Larin, had been early to recognize
the value of computer technology. Largely self-taught, and after service in the
Soviet Navy, he stayed on at the huge Pacific Fleet base as a pivotal civilian
technical expert. He provided his family with a comfortable living.
A more-than-comfortable living.

 
Yuliya
breezed through Far Eastern Federal University, spending as much time as
possible with the professors at the Japan Center. But her real love, she
thought, was the shadowy world of espionage. She was fascinated by the stories
that eddied about the periphery of the great naval base, some of which were
actually true. Stories of the Great Patriotic War were still plentiful then
from the men and women who had actually lived through the conflict. Physically
fit, sharp, and fluent in Japanese she was quickly recruited by the SVR and
ultimately Directory S. The language training came easy as did all the subjects
in the SVR academy, even the “wet work”.

The life of a spy sounded exciting and at first
it was. But after being posted as an attaché in the Tokyo embassy, she found
the bureaucracy confining. Independent thinking was unwelcome. Casting about, a
friend of an acquaintance of an acquaintance led her to Keiko Genda, a personal
assistant to an important executive, in an office located in a grimy industrial
area of the city. Resigning from the SVR, she had returned to Russia, to
Yekaterinburg. That was a year and a half ago. Or was it two? Ms. Genda’s
employer, it seems, was interested in her skills to keep an eye on one Mr.
Patrushev, with whom he did business. A great deal of business. And Ms. Genda’s
patron did not trust anyone.
Certainly not a gaijin.

Yuliya’s life now was more spy-like than when
she actually was a spy. While she could not flaunt her newfound prosperity, Ms.
Genda’s remittances, contacts and assignments kept life interesting and happy.
And she was barely twenty-five.

Never had Yuliya set foot on the Patrushev
compound. And only one person there even knew that she existed. That would be
Sandor Szoke, Fedya’s Hungarian secretary and assistant. Yuliya smiled to think
how easy it had been to compromise Sandor. A classic “honey-pot” maneuver out
of espionage 101. Sandor was a hairy, sweaty little man, peering out from
behind his wire-rims like a middle-aged owl. Yuliya, on the other hand was
strikingly beautiful, with eyes so gray they were almost invisible and a
dancer’s body with muscles made of spring steel.

To initiate contact, Yuliya had positioned her
automobile in a grocer’s parking lot near Sandor’s car. When he started to back
out, so did she. After the minor accident, she apologized, then apologized
again,
then
cried. Crying always worked. He comforted
her. Then met her again because she needed yet more comforting.

The first time Sandor left her bed, he realized
almost immediately that the rules had changed. Yuliya told him that his
cooperation in just some tiny, tiny matters would be needed. It would be just
so unfortunate if his potato-shaped wife should ever find out. “Nobody wants
that” didn’t even need to be uttered. Thus it began.

It started with a few simple details about the
routine at Chez Patrushev. Security arrangements.
Security
detail assignments.
Names and addresses.
A few items from the Rolodex.
Simple things. And oh by the
way, does Nestor, the security guard, wear glasses?

CHAPTER 92

Today Yuliya was all business. This was to be
the culmination of all things.
 
Earlier in the day there had been a hotel rendezvous with Roman
Georgovich, the third member of Fedya’s security detail for the 3 to 11 shift.
Like all of Fedya’s soldiers, Roman was a giant of a man. Post-coital torpor
and several glasses of spiked vodka later, however, Roman was appropriately
docile. And Yuliya had no trouble in opening his mouth, lifting his tongue, and
injecting beneath it (where no autopsy would reveal the injection site) a large
dose of succinylcholine. After that, no matter how loudly Roman’s brain
screamed at his lungs to inhale, the laggards would not respond. And Roman went
on to whatever is next. The police, bless their souls, would be left to search
for the sunglasses-wearing lady who had registered and paid in cash for the
room, a Mrs. Cohen of 666 Banana Avenue, Miami, Florida, USA.

Yuliya reviewed the plan in her mind. Ms. Genda,
or someone associated with her, had been the author. And so far the drill was
working with military precision. Yesterday, two overnight express packages had
arrived. One was from Medellin, Columbia. The other was from Manila. She had
placed the boxes in her bathtub and piled bags of cracked ice around them.
Then, using an assumed name, she called in a large carryout order to Dacha by
the Lake. Back in her apartment, the food was discarded. Two sheets of
cardboard, reinforced by a sheet of heavy plastic were placed front-to-back to
partition the box in halves. Ready for show time.

Later, in the copse of trees, gloved and
goggled, at the back of the Land Cruiser, Yuliya carefully emptied the contents
of the Express Delivery packages into separate compartments in the erstwhile pierogi
box.

She stared down into the container holding her
two new
charges,
she’d affectionately named Bevis and
Butthead. Bevis was a juvenile female Buthrops asper, commonly known as a
fer-de-lance. Butthead was a similarly immature Philippines spitting cobra.
Two of the deadliest snakes on earth.
The Russian Winter had
rendered the pair as docile as Roman had been.