The Domino Game (31 page)

The blond man staggered to his feet, kicking the chair aside, brushing down his jacket, his face livid with controlled rage. Vari smiled to himself and spun his interest back to his drink, swiveling it around between his fingers. Didn’t bother looking up.

“Now I have a message for you to take back to your boss, little boy.” He kept his voice soft and low, limiting its reach. “You tell your Mr Ivankov that his tapes are quite safe for now, and they will stay quite safe unless anything should happen to me, in which case arrangements have been made for them to be released to the media.” Now he looked up. “And I don’t mean the
Russian
media, you understand?” His eyes slid back to his glass. “And you tell him that when he wants to discuss this matter sensibly he can call me and make an appointment and then he and I can talk personally, face to face. Man to man. With respect.” He lifted the glass, rolled it back and drained it, throwing the messenger a final dismissive glance. “I don’t deal with lapdogs. Only their masters. Now get the fuck out of here and don’t come back.”

“It took a while.”

Vari rose from the couch and walked to the window, staring out across the river. “I thought it would. You get to know how they think, Niko. Ivankov wanted to let me know it didn’t worry him. That he wasn’t in any hurry. That there was no urgency.

“Then one day about a week later I answer my cell phone and it’s him. Ivankov. Pleasant as can be. I don’t know how he got the number but there was a message in that as well. He asked me to meet him at the Tretyakov Gallery, Room 42 that afternoon at three and I agreed. He was there already when I arrived, standing in front of that picture with the man and woman flying through the sky.”

“Lovers Over the City” it was called, Nikolai remembered. One of Natalia’s favorites. The artist, Chagall, and his wife soaring together above the landscape. Love and freedom.

Vari swung back from the window to face him.

“I told him the price for his precious tapes, Niko. I told him the price was to let you go and he just looked at me and laughed.”

Vari’s jaw set in a grim smile. “Like I said, it was afternoon and the room was full of schoolkids and Ivankov nodded his head towards the painting and asked me what I thought of it and when I didn’t answer he just smiled and told me that was the problem: that I couldn’t see far enough; didn’t understand what it was all about. How could he be certain that if you were set free you wouldn’t start after him again and then he would have to have you killed, and even with his connections that wasn’t a risk he was happy to take because then others might start asking questions. Not that he was worried about having you killed, just about others asking questions. Like why you had been arrested in the first place and who had given the orders. And then things could get very difficult. Uncomfortable, he said. If I wanted money for the tapes, sure he’d give me money, that was no problem. Money for me; for your wife: that was just business. All I had to do was say how much. But if I was expecting him to let you go, that was a different matter. He just smiled at me and gave a little shake of his head. You were his insurance, he said. That I should put myself in his position. Would I give you up? Would I want you flying free over the city?”

Nikolai rebuilt the scene in his mind then tried to play it out. “You could have threatened him.” He looked up. “You could have told him you would let the tapes go anyway. To the media. The Americans.”

Vari snared a breath. “I did, Niko. And you know what his answer was to that:
‘Think of the wife, Vlasenko.’
Then one of the schoolkids stopped in front of him and I remember he reached down and stroked her head and turned to me and smiled… I’ll never forget that smile, little brother…
‘think of the little girl, Vlasenko.’”
Vari turned slightly, leaning in closer. “So, are you starting to understand now, Niko? Are you starting to get the picture?”

Issues of state security. I regret that we are unable to discuss this matter with you, Mrs. Aven, since it involves issues of state
security.

Was she going insane? Why wouldn’t anyone tell her what was happening? Tell her anything?

For Natalia the first days had been a nightmare without end and without Vari she wondered how she would have even survived.

It was Vari who had arranged for the doctor to call each day, and for Raisa to move in with them until Natalia started to pull herself together. Then when she did he had managed to organize a meeting for her with Tsekhanov at the Bureau and gone along with her to support her and back her up. But Nikolai’s boss had been as oblique and guarded as everyone else and it occurred to Natalia that was in part, at least, due to his discomposure. His embarrassment that the whole matter had been judged by someone above him to be of such consequence that even he had been left in the dark.

The doctor, Aleshkin, was a kind old man and he had done everything he could to help, but then after two weeks even he had told her there was nothing more he could do and that the rest was up to her. That he would stay in touch and look in on her and Larisa from time to time, and that Natalia could call him whenever she wanted, but that she had to deal with things herself now, for her own sake as well as her daughter’s. Then soon after that Raisa had to move out and return to her own life and that left them alone. Waiting. For what?

Each night when Larisa finally fell to sleep Natalia would sit by herself in the silent apartment, enveloped in the desolation of her fear, wondering where Nikolai was and what was happening to him, crying until there were no more tears left within her. Then each morning when Larisa woke and looked at her with her huge, questioning dark eyes and asked when her daddy would be coming home she would force a smile and always give the same answer.

“Soon darling. Soon, I promise.”

Vari would know what to do, Nikolai had promised her, so she waited.

After the first couple of weeks he stopped coming around but every few days he would call to see how she was and they would talk and that helped. She had promised Nikolai that she would say nothing of what she knew and she didn’t, but there was always a subtext to the conversations that passed between them. Things were happening, Vari promised her, but she must be patient. So she was. As patient as it was possible to be and for a time she even thought there may have been a trace of optimism in Vari’s words, but then that faded as well and the space between his calls became longer and their conversations shorter and she could feel her life slipping away from her like a silk cord running through her fingers, and it was then that she found the lawyer.

He was smart and urbane and confident and he promised he could help, so she transferred money from the account in Estonia, whatever he asked for and then more, until one day he simply stopped returning her calls.

After that there was a second lawyer and a third. More money. More promises. A hint of progress now and then. Reports of meetings arranged and discussions held and procedures to be followed and then… And then nothing.

She was alone the day Vari came to tell her he was leaving.

Raisa had taken Larisa down to the park and she was standing at the window, watching them play together in the snow when she heard the knock on the door and her heart froze, as it always did now, at that sound. He came inside and took off his coat. Threw it over a chair and looked at her and took her hands.

“It’s over, Natalia. There’s nothing more I can do. Nothing more either of us can do.”

She refused to accept the defeat she heard in his voice. Shook her head and pulled her hands away from his but he took them back and came closer, holding her eyes as he spoke.

“Listen to me Natalia! They won’t deal. They won’t give him up.” His fingers closed on hers, pressing tighter.” I mean it, Natalia.” She began to speak but he cut across her, shaking his head. “They don’t care about the tapes, I’ve tried. I’ve tried to trade them for Nikolai but they won’t do it. Won’t let him go. They believe Niko is their insurance… and not just Niko.” His eyes traced sideways, stopping at the framed photograph of Larisa that stood on the sideboard. Her gaze followed slowly and she felt a new terror settling over her like a veil as she began to understand. Somewhere beyond herself she heard Vari speaking again, his voice soft and insistent.

“It’s not safe here any longer, Natalia.”

She felt his hands squeezing hers again, drawing her back. “Listen to me! We have to get out. We have to get away from here. Go somewhere else where they can’t reach us. Think, Natalia.” She stared at him, trying to. Trying to think. Trying to steer her mind through the chasm of confusion. “It’s what Nikolai would want. We have to get out of Moscow. Out of Russia. You have money Natalia, I know. Not a lot, but enough. You have to think of yourself now.” His eyes traced back to the photograph. “And her, Natalia. You have to think of Larisa.”

A minute crawled by, then another. Vari stood with his back to the room staring down at the flow of traffic running along the embankment. The sky was lightening now. Streaks of dirty gray clutching upwards from the horizon.

“I tried, Niko,” he breathed. “I tried to get her to leave but she wouldn’t, so in the end,” he lifted a hand to his face, pinching his eyes, “… in the end I went without her.” He turned abruptly, throwing both hands in the air.

“I had to, Niko! You tell me? What else was I supposed to do?

“I still had the tapes. But Ivankov knew I wouldn’t release them because, if I did, he would have Natalia and Larisa killed. And he would have done it, Niko. At that point he would have had nothing to lose. So work it out for yourself, how safe did that make me? How long would it have been before someone came up behind me in a car park somewhere and slit my throat? The way I worked it out, as long as I did nothing Natalia and Larisa were safe, so the only smart thing to do was get the hell out myself. Hope they thought they’d scared me enough that I’d shut up and mind my own business. And believe me, they had, Niko.” His voice dropped to a shiver. “They fucking terrified me.” His eyes fell to the floor. “There are some hands you can’t win, Niko. You have to know when to fold. Some games you shouldn’t even try to play.”

Nikolai’s memory wound back to Samara. To Zalisko’s wife and her report… The telephone disconnected. Vari Vlasenko no longer worked for the FSB.

“Where?” he asked, finally. As if it mattered.

Vari looked at him. The answer was blunt. Defensive.

“Bulgaria.” He stopped. Turned to the kitchen. “I’m making coffee, you want some?”

Nikolai shook his head.

“Please yourself.” Vari shrugged. He walked past the sofa and around the granite bench while Nikolai’s eyes travelled around the apartment again.

“And Bulgaria was kind to you, I see.”

Vari glanced up sharply. “It was hard work, Niko.” His tone was curt. He looked down, busying himself; breaking the foil seal on a pouch of grounds, pulling a filter from a box, pushing the box aside. “I had a friend down there from the old days. Ex KGB. A Moscow guy who had been based in Sofia, made some local contacts and married a Bulgarian girl. He saw what was coming, just like Ivankov did. Got out in 1990 and set up a club in the best hotel in town. He gave me a job working security to begin with then after a year he cut me in for a piece of the action.” He slid the filter into the cassette, flicked the switch, folded his arms, waiting.