The Case of the General's Thumb (21 page)

“Do you know what for?”

“No, but we'll know when we find it.”

“Fetch down those books,” he ordered Pierre, “and you,” he turned to Viktor, “give each one a shake.”

“That's not where to look.”

“How do you know?”

“Experience.”

“As what?”

“CID.”

“Which, for God's sake?”

“The Kiev.”

“So where would you look?”

“Not here.”

Motioning them to lead the way, Tsensky followed Viktor and Pierre to the first floor, where there were two bedrooms, a study, a bathroom with jacuzzi, and a storeroom.

“Where shall we start?”

“The study.”

Tsensky got Pierre to pull the desk drawers out and pass them to Viktor to examine. Concealed under the last they found an envelope of old Aeroflot cheque stubs for sums ranging from five hundred to a million francs with no indication as to payee.

“Who was this paid to?” Tsensky demanded, and when Pierre gave no answer, struck him again in the face, but to no effect.

“Let me look, Nik, you've had enough,” Viktor said gently, and Nik, for whom “enough” did not extend to sustenance, retired with Pierre to the kitchen.

And there, smiling broadly and holding a fat test-tube containing something preserved in liquid, Viktor joined them.

“What is it?”

Viktor laid the corked and sealed test-tube on the table. The waxen, yellow something preserved in liquid was a human thumb.

“Bronitsky's,” said Viktor.

“Who's he?” Nik asked Pierre.

Pierre said nothing.

“The man you killed in Kiev,” Viktor prompted.

“I killed no one in Kiev,” Nik said quietly.

Viktor was inclined to believe him. He didn't look capable of killing anyone.

“Where did this come from?” Viktor asked Pierre.

“It was delivered.”

“Where from?”

“Moscow. It should have been collected last week. I thought they'd come while I was away.”

“They being?”

Pierre shrugged.

Viktor's mobile rang and he went into the corridor before answering.

“Well?” asked Georgiy.

“We've found Bronitsky's thumb.”

“Splendid! Where?”

“At Pierre's, the Aeroflot man. Tsensky's here with me. What now?”

“Still alive, this Pierre? Well, put that to rights, then clear out. Check in somewhere new. With the thumb, of course. Ring you in three hours.”

Retrieving his Beretta from beside the dead biker, Viktor returned to the kitchen and shot Pierre dead.

“Now let's get the hell out of here!”

He grabbed the test-tube, and extracting keys from the biker's pocket, ran with Nik from the house.

Physically and emotionally drained, relieved no longer to be taking decisions, Nik climbed pillion behind Viktor.

“Which way's the city?”

“The way we're going.”

He had, it occurred to Nik, left his automatic on the kitchen
table. No matter, back at the hotel was the one he'd received from Sakhno.

Where he was going, and with whom, he'd no idea.

But there, for a fleeting moment, was the little Chinese restaurant.

Abandoning the motorcycle outside a striptease bar on the other side of Paris, they went to a café, where Nik ordered beer.

“After this I'm off,” he said.

“Where to?”

“Never you mind.”

“I saw your wife,” Viktor said. “At Valentin's, when she came to collect the money.”

“She's dead. So's my son.”

“She wasn't, this time last week.”

“Both died in a fire last autumn.”

“Who said?”

“Ivan Lvovich.”

“She's alive, your Tanya! I met her at the station. I had a card saying ‘Tsensky', but she told me she was Kravchenko.”

Nik stared incredulously.

Viktor's mobile rang.

“You're where?”

“Some café the other side of Paris.”

“With the thumb? Good. Lose that, and your head rolls! Any thoughts re Tsensky? Now he's served his purpose.”

“But has he? How about Bronitsky?”

“Bugger Bronitsky! Get rid of Tsensky.”

“No!”

“Only joking. He could still have his uses. Find a hotel. Brief you in an hour.”

For half Georgiy's hour they sat on over their beer, Nik asking about his wife and her visit to Kiev, as if still unconvinced.

“Here for the night?” asked one of two scantily-dressed girls standing by the hotel reception desk.

Viktor turned uncomprehendingly to Nik, who nodded.

“Shop!” shouted the girl.

A fat man appeared, entered their names in the register, and demanded payment in advance.

No sooner had they shut the door of their double room behind them, than Georgiy rang.

“Fixed up? Right. Now take a shower, rumple the bed, get yourselves to the Gare de Lyon, and catch the express to Lyon. At Lyons airport, collect tickets ready in your names for the 0700 hours flight to Northern Cyprus via Istanbul. Don't, on arrival, have your passports stamped, go for the option of stamp on a separate sheet.”

“Then what?”

“You'll be met. Spell of relaxation near Kyrenia. Further details when you're there. Keep close to that thumb!”

“Off we go again,” said Viktor, pocketing his mobile.

“Off where?”

“Lyon. Then Cyprus.”

“To collect?”

The question came as a surprise. Nik was more in the picture than he thought.

“To relax.”

Nik nodded. Not a word so far on the score of Nina's pass number or Weinberg. So the odds were that they, whoever they were, knew nothing about either. Whereas he, having the pass number and knowing which bank, was in the running for ten per cent of four billion!

“I need to phone.”

“Do, but don't say where we are or where we're going.”

Nik was beginning to warm towards Viktor. He liked his down-to-earthness.

He had to leave Paris for a day or two, he told Tatiana, and would phone the moment he got back. He was minded to mention the cheque book and credit card in the post from the bank, but decided not to in Viktor's hearing.

“My wife, how tall was she?” he asked suddenly.

“Half a head shorter than me – though she may have had high heels.”

“Doesn't wear them,” said Nik thoughtfully.

On the flight from Istanbul, Viktor looked out at distant snowcapped mountains, feeling sadly in need of instructions from Georgiy.

Nik, convinced at last that Tanya and Volodya were alive, struggled to fathom the illogicality of Ivan Lvovich's reporting them dead. In their work, as in the army, illogicality served to camouflage either idiocy or cool calculation, and of the two, the latter seemed the more likely.

As the plane came in over azure, boat-dotted sea to land, Viktor was wondering how to account for the test-tube and contents to customs.

But apart from “Stamp in passport, or separate?” they went through unquestioned.

A young Turk ushered them out to a waiting limousine.

They drove by way of a pleasant mountain road affording glimpses of sparkling sea to the Altinaya Holiday Village. Here they were shown to a chalet.

Viktor went straight upstairs and flopped down on a bed.

Nik investigated the fridge, and was disappointed to find it empty, as would be his future when this affair was over, as it soon would be. Then what? Back to where? Saratov? Kiev? Paris, and naive, wide-eyed Tatiana, to whom he'd grown attached and was missing? A normal life was what he craved, such as, at the moment, was beyond imagining.

A creak from the wooden floor overhead brought his thoughts back to Viktor, whose timely intervention at Pierre's had been not unlike his own “contrived deliverance” of Sakhno. In both cases it had been the result that mattered.

Feeling a sudden urge to talk, he made his way slowly upstairs.

“I'd just like to thank you, Viktor,” he said simply.

“Whatever for?”

“Turning up when needed.”

“Pure luck. Officially, I was there to protect Pierre from you, but unofficially, to do what I did.”

Nik looked uneasy.

“How's dear Ivan Lvovich?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Wasn't it him who sent you?”

“No, someone I only know as Georgiy.”

“What happens to me when you've collected the cash?”

“No idea. But something I'd like to ask you is, who was behind the death of Bronitsky?”

“Behind whose death?”

“General Bronitsky, Adviser on Defence to the President. The one whose dead body got sent up on a Coca-Cola balloon.”

“And landed on the roof of Security HQ? I heard about that from Ivan Lvovich the day I arrived in Kiev.”

“So you were still on the train when Bronitsky died.”

“I've still got the ticket somewhere. No, I certainly didn't kill him.”

“So you're free to go back to Ukraine or Russia,” Viktor said, feeling he was the last person to offer such an assurance.

“Shall we take a walk?”

Half an hour later they came to Kyrenia, a compact little town of pastel-coloured buildings, with few people or cars, and a castle extending into the sea.

“Got a wife?” Nik asked.

“And a daughter. Both at a safe house. There've been attempts to kill us.”

“Some would kill a whole city for the sake of four billion.”

Viktor looked at him in astonishment.

“Where did you get that figure from?”

“A chap called Weinberg.”

They walked on in silence, Viktor grappling with the thought that Nik, like Georgiy, knew more than he, and that Georgiy, in describing Nik's part as played, must know more than Nik.

That evening Georgiy rang.

“Thumb in fridge, I take it.”

“Actually, no.”

“Put it there. It'll keep better. Enjoying your relaxation? You've a first-class sea-food restaurant on the doorstep, how about a slap-up supper? You both deserve one.”

In the pleasant, candlelit restaurant, they were shown to a table by the Village Manager himself.

Prawn soufflé, squid in batter, and a medium-dry pleasantly tangy wine, rounded off with Turkish coffee and honey-nut-balls, made an enjoyable and satisfying meal. Once, as they ate, Viktor had the impression that they were being watched by a man sitting alone at a distant table, but put it down to overwrought nerves. The bill, when Nik called for it, was not forthcoming. It had been
attended to, the manager informed them, glancing in the direction of the now vacated distant table.

The sky was studded with stars. A warm, gentle breeze rustled the leaves.

“God, what a lovely place!” exclaimed Viktor, but with a note of sadness.

“Why so mournful?” asked a familiar voice, and a grey-suited figure stepped from the shadow of some trees. “Life, for all its difficulties, is good.”

“Georgiy!” exclaimed Viktor.

Having shaken hands with Nik, Georgiy suggested that they walk down to the sea.

They made their way in silence, and reaching the beach, sat on a fallen tree. The moon formed a ripply path on the water. Tiny waves lapped the shingle.

“This is where Bronitsky was this time last year,” said Georgiy. “Holidaying with some newly made friends.”

He paused dramatically.

“The sum withdrawable by Bronitsky alone, as opposed to in concert with two old friends of his, blissfully unaware what he was up to, struck these new friends as inadequate. So back he goes to Kiev to persuade the other two to join in the withdrawal, the intention being then to disembarrass himself of them. All, perhaps, against the promise of the premiership, though not much of a return against the billions involved. Bronitsky bit off more than he could chew.”

“And so you killed him?” Viktor challenged.

Staring impassively out to sea, Georgiy hurled a pebble.

“Bronitsky died of cognac and tablets he ought not to have taken with alcohol, thereby leading us a dance. What happened between his leaving the restaurant and becoming airborne, I don't know, nor does it matter. For a day or so, while we complete his business for him, he'll still be with us in a sense.”

Nik's thoughts were elsewhere. He was trying to imagine becoming reunited with Tanya, and finding it impossible. It was as if the very possibility had been blocked by his acceptance of her death.

“Thinking of her, Nik?” Georgiy inquired out of the blue, passing him a snapshot. It showed Tanya about to board a train, and as could be seen even by moonlight, plainly unhappy.

“Taken at Kiev.”

“Who by?” asked Viktor.

“Those charged with your safety.”

He heaved himself to his feet.

“Come, let's hit the road for Altinaya. I'll relieve you of the thumb, you can relax, and the day after tomorrow it's back to work.”

Nik showed surprise. Viktor concealed his.

High over the mountains a meteorite shot into nothingness.

“That thumb,” said Viktor, as the three of them sat next morning in Kyrenia over a glass of beer on the sea promenade, “what are you going to do with it?”

“Tomorrow you'll see,” said Georgiy.

Disinclined to think that far ahead, Nik found himself envying Sakhno in hiding with Uli, but almost certainly enjoying life.

They lunched at Georgiy's expense and largely in silence, in a little fish restaurant, and by 5.00 were back in Altinaya sitting over wine and coffee.

“Take it easy for the rest of today,” was Georgiy's fatherly parting advice. “Have an early night. Big day tomorrow. I'll call for you at 8.00.”

Nik lay on his back contemplating a ceiling dappled with light from the narrow window. This abrupt removal to Cyprus left him unmoved. After Tanya and Volodya's return from the dead nothing could surprise him. But having lived their deaths, it was not easy to rejoin their lives. Having been buried with them, it was as if he had ceased to exist for them.