The Talbot Odyssey (43 page)

“That is against regulations.”

Kalin closed his attaché case and stood. “There is nothing further to discuss or see.”

Tanner said uneasily, “I guess we’ve got enough—”

Styler interrupted and addressed Androv. “We’ve gone to some trouble to get here, and we’d like to see for ourselves the exact nature of Van Dorn’s harassment.”

Abrams suppressed a smile. Styler had balls. Abrams glanced at his watch. Van Dorn would not begin for at least fifteen more minutes.

Androv began speaking in a voice that was not only frosty but had, Abrams thought, an edge of frenzy about it. “Gentlemen, let’s be frank. This is a high-security area as you know, and I don’t have the personnel to assign to keep you company this evening.” He made a sweeping motion toward the door. “Good night.”

Kalin began leading the way. Styler, Tanner, and Abrams began to follow, then Abrams turned back to Androv. “I’d like to use the rest room.”

Androv seemed to have calmed down. “Yes, of course.” He pointed to a doorway at the far end of the gallery. “Through there. You will see a door marked Powder Room.” He added, “Do not get lost, please.”

Kalin seemed to be on the point of accompanying Abrams, but Styler engaged him in conversation. Abrams left his briefcase on the chair and walked to the door Androv had indicated.

He passed through into a large passageway, dimly lit by wall sconces, and quickly checked his watch. He had, at best, five minutes before they sent someone to find him. He looked up at the cornices and spotted a television camera over the door through which he had just passed. He walked a few feet to the right toward the powder room door, then turned back, but the camera was not following him.

Abrams opened the powder room door, turned on the light, and looked around the small windowless enclosure, which held a single toilet, a washbasin, a vanity and chair. There seemed to be no air vent, and the place could stand a cleaning. He backed out, pulled the door closed behind him, and stood silently in the passageway.

Evans had not wanted him to take the risk of carrying the floor plans, but he remembered enough of them to know where he was. Across from the powder room was a narrow staircase, labeled on the plans
Private stairs,
which led up to the bedrooms. Beneath the staircase was a small door that led down to the basement.

Farther down the passage were two sets of double doors, directly across from each other. They were glass-paned doors, covered with sheer curtains. The doors to the right opened into the south end of the living room. The doors to the left were another entrance to the music room. At the far end of the passageway was a large set of French doors that opened onto the south terrace.

Abrams walked quickly to the French doors, unbolted them, and pushed them open. He heard no alarms, but that did not mean that a silent alarm had not gone off in the security office. Still, he hadn’t committed a capital offense yet. He walked out into the clear, moonlit night. The stepped terrace dropped off to the pool below, and to the left was the stone-walled service court, used now as a parking yard. Abrams could not see over the wall even from his vantage point, but he could see the court was brightly lit, and he suspected the Lincoln had gotten a careful search there.

Abrams turned and looked up at the massive house. All the windows on the upper stories were dark, but on closer examination he could see that blackout curtains had been drawn over them. He walked back to the French doors and stared down the long, dimly lit hall. The television camera was not clearly visible, but even if it was focused on him, he hadn’t committed that capital offense yet. But he was about to.

Abrams knelt and examined the weather stripping on the French doors, then drew his penknife. He scraped the metal stripping under the bottom edge of the door, letting the scrapings of bright metal plating fall into a handkerchief. He folded the handkerchief carefully and put it in his trouser pocket, then stood and closed the French doors, rebolting them. He waited, his heart beating heavily in his chest, but nothing happened. Actually, he knew that, even if they were listening or watching, they’d let him finish—let him, as Androv would say, cut his capers. And in the process, cut his own throat.

Abrams looked at his watch. Two minutes had passed. He walked to the music room doors and stood to the side. He listened for a few seconds and heard the sound of a television. He peered through the sheer curtains into the room and saw the young security woman sitting with her back to him, smoking a cigarette and having a drink. She was watching some moronic game show on a large seven-foot screen that looked like a late-model Sony. At least, thought Abrams, she wasn’t watching
him
on the screen. He began to believe he was going to pull this off.

This commons room was painted in a high-gloss enamel of avocado green, which Abrams thought would look better on a refrigerator or electric can opener. The furniture was red vinyl, split in all the right places, and the room had that special ill-used look that Abrams associated with police squad rooms and government waiting rooms. To the left he could see the door that led back to the gallery. He couldn’t imagine why Androv had circumvented this rather dreary commons room, unless it was to protect his American guests’ aesthetic sensibilities from severe shock. Then Abrams spotted, in the corner opposite the Sony, another television set. It was an old design with a highly polished mahogany cabinet, but Abrams instinctively recognized that it was not an old American model but what passed for a contemporary style in Russia.

His eyes began to take in the whole room through the spaces in the gauzy curtains. The wall receptacles appeared to be of the new ground-fault type. Next to the fireplace on the near right wall stood an old Philco radio console, the size of a jukebox.

Well, he thought, there’s the radio and television in question. Though why there should be a primitive Russian television set in the same room as a seven-foot Sony was a bit of a mystery. And why anyone but a nostalgia buff or antiques collector would keep a monstrous vacuum-tube Philco radio was stranger still.

Abrams focused on the young woman again. As he watched, she stood, carrying her drink, walked to the television, and switched it to videotape. Presently the screen lightened to a taped version of the Bolshoi, about midway through
Giselle.
The woman turned to go back to her chair and Abrams could see she was a little unsteady on her feet. As she came toward the chair and closer to him, he began to edge away from the door, but then he noticed her face. She had, he thought, one of the saddest expressions he could imagine, and tears rolled down her face. She gulped down her drink, wiped her eyes, and sank back into the chair, covering her face with her hands. Odd, he thought.

Abrams turned, crossed the passageway, and approached the glass-paneled living room doors. He listened again but heard nothing, and the room appeared to be dark. He edged closer to the doors and looked through the glass pane and sheer curtains, shielding his eyes against the glare of the passageway’s wall sconces. As he moved his other hand down to the brass doorknob, Abrams suddenly froze and held his breath. Slowly, he turned toward the narrow staircase as his right hand went into his pocket and found his penknife.

The figure coming down the dimly lit stairs stopped and stared at him.

Abrams stared back, then stepped to the foot of the stairs and looked up. He said softly,
“Zdravstvoui.
”

The girl, about five or six years old, clutched at a rag doll and replied in a frightened tone, “Please, don’t tell anyone.”

Abrams put on a reassuring smile. “Tell anyone what?”

“That I came upstairs,” she whispered.

“No, I won’t tell anyone.”

The girl smiled tentatively, then said, “You talk funny.”

Abrams replied, “I am not from the same part of Russia as you.” He looked at the doll. “How pretty. May I see it?”

The girl hesitated, then a bit nervously took another step down the stairs.

Abrams extended his arm slowly and the girl handed him the doll. Abrams examined it appreciatively. “What is your doll’s name?”

“Katya.”

“And what is your name?”

“Katerina.” She giggled.

Abrams smiled, and still holding the doll, said, “Where are you going, Katerina?”

“Down to the basement.”

“To the basement? Do you play down there?”

“No.
Everyone
is down there.”

Abrams began another question, then stopped. He stayed silent for some seconds, then said in a quiet voice, “What do you mean, everyone is down there?”

“I went upstairs to get Katya. But everyone is supposed to stay in the basement.”

“Why is everyone supposed to stay in the basement?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are your parents down there?”

“I
told
you—everyone is there.”

“Are you going back to your apartment in New York tonight?”

“No. We must all sleep here tonight.” She smiled. “There is no school tomorrow.”

Abrams passed the doll back to the girl. “I won’t tell anyone I saw you. Hurry back downstairs.”

The girl pressed the doll to her chest and scurried down the remaining steps past him. She opened the small basement door and disappeared, leaving the door open.

Abrams stared down the dimly lit stone stairway, then quietly closed the door. He stood motionless for a while and thought.
Something is wrong here. Very wrong.

Abrams hesitated, glanced at his watch, then walked quickly back to the living room door. Slowly, he pushed the door open.

The large living room sat hushed in pale moonlight, and the bulky furniture cast moon shadows over the flowered rug, somehow reminding Abrams of prehistoric animals grazing in a primeval clearing.

He took a step into the room and stopped short. Not ten feet from him was the profile of a man sitting in an upholstered chair.

The man was very still, his hands resting in his lap, and at first Abrams thought he was asleep, then he noticed the glint of an open eye. A cigarette burned in an ashtray, a wispy stream of smoke rising silhouetted against the moonlit bay window across the room.

Abrams remained motionless and drew a silent breath through his nose, smelling now the foul acrid smoke of the Russian cigarette. It did not seem possible that the man hadn’t heard him enter, but then as Abrams’ eyes adjusted to the light, he noticed the earphones over the man’s head. The man was listening to something, jotting notes, and Abrams intuitively knew he was monitoring the conversation in the gallery.

The man finally seemed to sense the presence of an intruder and turned his face toward Abrams, removing the earphones as he did. The two men stared silently at each other, and Abrams saw now that the man was very old. The man spoke in a peculiarly accented Russian. “Who are you?”

Abrams replied in English, “I have lost my way. Excuse me.”

“Who are you looking for?”

“I have taken a wrong turn. Good night.”

The man did not reply but snapped on a green-shaded reading lamp.

Abrams found that he could not turn away, but continued to stare. Even after forty years the American’s Russian was not good, and that struck him, irrelevantly, as odd. Even after forty years, the face was recognizable as the one he had seen on her office wall. But even if he had never seen that photograph, he would know those large, liquid blue eyes, because they were her eyes.

Abrams understood and accepted the fact that he was looking at the face of the warrior who had returned from the dead, at the face of Henry Kimberly, at the face of Talbot.

BATTLE LINES

Marc Pembroke stood at the window, dressed only in his tan trousers. He focused his binoculars on the Russian mansion, nearly half a mile across the hollow. “This may seem a primitive way to gather intelligence, but one can learn things peeking from windows.”

Joan Grenville stretched and yawned on the bed. “I’d better get downstairs before I’m missed.”

“Yes,” Pembroke replied. “An hour is rather a long time to be gone to the loo.” He knelt in front of the open screenless window and steadied his elbows on the sill, adjusting the focus. “There’s a chap in a third-floor gable. He’s got a tripod-mounted telescope and he’s staring back at me.”

“Can I turn on the lights to get dressed?”

“Certainly not.” Pembroke scanned with the binoculars. “I can see the forecourt clearly, but I don’t see the Lincoln’s headlight beams yet. They won’t be leaving for a while, I expect.”

Joan Grenville sat on the edge of the bed. “Who won’t be leaving where?”

“Abrams is leaving the Russian estate. At least, I hope he is. If there’s trouble, they’re to flash their high beams.”

Joan Grenville stood and came beside him. “What sort of trouble? What’s Tony Abrams doing there?”

“It’s a legal matter.”

“Oh, bullshit. How many times have I heard
that
from Tom and his idiot friends?”

“You’re refreshingly without depth, Mrs. Grenville. One gets tired of all these still waters that run deep. You’re a frothy, fast-moving, and shallow stream. I can touch bottom with you.”

She giggled. “You did. Twice.”

Pembroke smiled as he refocused on his Russian counterpart. “Ivan does not believe his good luck in spying a beautiful naked woman bathed in moonlight. He’s rubbing his eyes and drooling.”

Joan Grenville glanced out the window. “Can he really see me?”

“Of course. Here, hold these and watch for a flash of high beams.”

She took the binoculars and stood in front of the window.

Pembroke finished dressing and walked to the door.

She giggled again. “The Russian is waving at me.”

“Watch for the damned headlights or I’ll throw you out the window.”

She nodded quickly. There was something in his voice that suggested he meant that literally. Without turning, she asked, “Where are you going?”

“As the Duke of Wellington said when asked to impart a piece of enduring military wisdom, ‘Piss when you can.’” He left.