The Domino Game (23 page)

“Are you worried? You know… about quitting and everything?”

Her father tossed his head dismissively. “No. Not about that. Not for a moment.” He paused a beat. Continued on in a less certain tone. “It’s other stuff I’m concerned about. Other people.”

She turned towards him. Cautious. “Me?”

He raised his eyebrows. “Honest?”

“Honest,” she insisted.

He smiled. “A little. But only a little. You’re big enough and mean enough to look after yourself.”

She punched his arm and held him tighter. “Who then?” she said after a while.

He drew a breath. “Just a guy I met,” he answered obliquely. “A guy with a wife and a little girl.”

Kelly studied her father. Noticed the way his jaw had set firm. “Something that happened in Russia?”

He turned back to the night and nodded slowly. “Yep. Something that happened in Russia.”

She followed his gaze. ‘So…” She shrugged. “What is it about them that’s worrying you?”

He spent a while considering his answer then finally turned to her.

“I let him down. He trusted me and I let him down, and now for all I know, because of that…”

He didn’t have to finish. She understood. She let a moment pass before speaking again. “And that’s what this is all about? Quitting the Company? The book?”

He nodded. “Too little and too late, but yes, that’s what it’s all about.” He snared another breath and drew himself upright, snapping out of his thoughts. “But that’s my problem and tonight’s about you, not me. He turned towards Kelly, took a step back, folded her hands in his and studied her with silent admiration. “You’re beautiful, Kel.” He shook his head. “Not just beautiful. Exquisite. I’m so proud of you.”

Kelly bit her lip to try and hold back the tears but her eyes were already clouded. Music drifted through the mullioned windows out to the patio. Slow now. The band on its last bracket. She recognized the tune. “The Green Leaves of Summer”. The haunting strains of the muted trumpet. She glanced inside. People were getting ready to leave. She caught sight of David, standing at the edge of the dance floor, looking around. Searching for her. She turned away, back to her father, concentrating on him.

“I think it’s time.”

He glanced inside.

‘So,” she breathed, and forced a smile. “Any last minute father to daughter advice?”

He smiled. “Just be happy, sweetheart. That’s all.”

She watched him, her gaze suddenly serious. Almost troubled.

“But how?” Her voice seemed faint. Small. She squeezed his hands. “How do I do that?”

He glanced away, considering the question, then turned back again, his eyes settling softly on hers. “Take chances, but always be true to yourself. Live. Love.” He hesitated for just a moment. “Always keep your promises.”

Always keep your promises. That was what reminded her. Damn! She’d promised to call him back.

She set down the cleanser, tossed the cotton wool into the waste bin and picked up her watch from the edge of the vanity. Past eleven but still early enough. Knowing her father he’d still be awake. Poring through the press cuttings and reports that littered his study, reading the oblique emails and anonymous letters that now found their way to him every day. Analyzing them, disentangling fiction from fact, then taking the facts and piecing them together. Connecting them like a line of dominos until what started as an unreadable puzzle finally made sense.

She left the light on and made her way into the living room. Picked up her briefcase from the desk, pulled out the manila folder and carried it back with her to the bedroom. Planted herself on the edge of the bed, plucked the phone from its stand and hit the fast-dial number. Jack Hartman picked up on the third ring.

“Hi Dad.”

“Hi sweetheart.” She could see him smiling at the sound of her voice the way she had at his. “I got your message on the machine. Sorry I was out. So, how was your evening?”

She hesitated just a beat too long. “Great!”

He picked it up instantly. “That bad, huh?”

She slumped. Cancelled the fake enthusiasm. “Worse.”

“Right.” No further comment. Change of subject. “So, you said you’ve got something I might be interested in.” Kelly bounced back onto the bed, crossed her legs and propped herself against the headboard. Set the folder down beside her. “And what would that be?”

Her eyes fell to the name on the label. “Something I came across at work. Tomorrow’s Friday. Got any plans for the weekend? If you haven’t I was thinking about maybe coming up to visit.”

“What have you got, Kel?” A monotone. “Don’t tease.”

Kelly Hartman grinned to herself. Rocked side to side as she flicked through the pages. “The senate hearing. The one where you’re the star attraction. Russian crime infiltrating US business.” It was a subject on which her father had become an acknowledged expert. His specialty. Or maybe
obsession
was a better word. “When did you say that was due to start?”

“Monday two weeks. What have you got, Kel?”

She lifted a single sheet from the pile of loose pages and dangled it by its corner.

‘The Friday afternoon traffic is the pits. I think I’ll take the train. Pick me up?”

She heard the smile return to her father’s voice.” Okay. What time?”

‘Six?”

‘Six is fine. I’ll book somewhere nice for dinner. How about Tappan Hill? It’s a long time since we’ve been there.”

That caught her. She pursed her lips and let the page fall from her fingers. Her turn for the monotone. “Not long enough. I’ll cook. You’ll be busy reading.”

18

MOSCOW

It was the
sound most of all that Nikolai found difficult to adjust to. The constant mind-numbing drone of traffic that never seemed to stop. It had been bad enough nine years ago but now it was even worse. Cars flying everywhere in a mad, crazed rush as if everyone was late for everything. Either that or gridlocked in massive clenches pumping exhaust fumes relentlessly into the stifling air. Making it feel as though the whole city was encased in a massive bubble of carbon monoxide.

It was so bad – so impossible to breathe – that he sought refuge in the underground. Riding the trains and allowing himself to ebb and flow with the sea of humanity, trying to get used to it all again. Watching the way people moved and spoke and acted and trying to be like them. Trying to remember how to be normal.

The metro served other purposes as well. It was the best way of moving swiftly and cheaply between the places he needed to go to and he felt safer there, lost in the tight swelling crowds where no one was exceptional and no one stood out. And it was familiar. Beneath the streets, at least, little had changed. There were more peddlers now, with more to sell, and perhaps the reforms were starting to work, since there were more people buying what they had to offer, but the beggars were still just as evident. Almost as many as before. Elderly women, mainly. Weathered and stooped and downcast, any pride they may once have possessed stripped away by a government that had failed them. He passed one of them in the underpass beneath Revolution Square. She was tiny and frail, wearing a scarf wrapped around her head like a bonnet and a faded print dress and a cardigan, despite the heat. She stood quietly to one side of the tunnel, her bowl cupped in her hand, rocking back and forth slowly from the waist, lost in her own world, expecting nothing. Perhaps that was what made him stop. He dug a hand into the pocket of the black jeans he had bought from the market stall at Novosibirsk, came up with a few coins and slipped them into her dish. Went to move on again but the touch of her fingers on his bare arm held him back.

A shiver coursed through him. Not cold, but curiously warm. The strange, unfamiliar feeling of a human touch.

He glanced down at the frail hand then up to meet the old woman’s eyes. They were black as ebony. Gypsy eyes. Buried in a shriveled face the color of old walnut. Small and tired but somewhere deep within them there was a glow of surprising power. They flickered as they read his own. Faded with trouble for a moment and then the cloud passed and the light returned, more intense than before. Her fingers squeezed his arm with unexpected strength and he read the words as her lips moved silently.

God will protect
you.

Not “
God protect
you”
. For a moment he thought he had misunderstood her meaning but then he looked into her eyes again and there was no doubt.
Will
protect you
. Her eyes held his, resolute and gleaming, and then – as if she had read his mind – her head dipped with just the slightest nod. Then Nikolai felt the crowd pressing against him and their touch was broken and he was being carried forward again, towards whatever lay ahead.

It was nearly three days since he had escaped Novokuznetsk. There had been no way of measuring time to begin with. The watch Natalia had given him had gone years ago and in the foul darkness of Florinskiy’s coffin it would have been of no use anyway, so he had concentrated on counting. The minutes first, then the hours, from the first lurching movement as the train pulled out of the station, until he was unable to bear the claustrophobia and the suffocating stench any longer. By then, certain that he was alone in the freight compartment, he had begun wrestling the heavy pine lid from its fixings, forcing it upward until the last of the nails finally surrendered and the plank top broke free of its fixings. After that he had clambered and stumbled from the hideous dark cavern that might have become his own tomb and sunk to the floor, dragging the mercifully fresh air into his lungs, willing the dizziness and the piercing headache to pass. Then when finally they did – when it dawned on him that he had almost made it, that he was almost free – a surge of excitement approaching delirium began to overtake him, a flow of energy that seemed to make almost anything possible.

There was a light, thank goodness. A single weak bulb contained within a cracked glass housing mounted to the box beam that braced the ceiling of the car. Its dim glow ebbed and flowed with the speed of the engine and the roll of the carriage as he worked.

There was no way for him to know how long he had: how soon it would be before the train might reach its next stop or when the freight car might be opened. So he had worked feverishly, straightening the bent nails as best he could with his fingers until they bled, then hammering them back into place, using the heel of his fist to begin with and, when that wasn’t enough, searching around frantically until he found an old wooden mallet that had been discarded in a corner. Only after that, after the lid was back in place and Florinskiy was alone again in the world of death, did he start thinking about what to do next.

The freight car was half full, its contents of crates and pallets stacked around the perimeter, save for the wide space set aside for the sliding door. It was locked of course. Otherwise, Nikolai presumed, with the possible exception of Florinskiy’s coffin, nothing within the carriage’s four walls would be likely to ever reach its final destination.

Nikolai moved quickly amongst the piles of cargo, reading their markings in the flickering light. It was a transit train. Florinskiy had researched the details. Its journey would end at Novosibirsk, the Siberian capital, and, if the information he had gleaned was correct, it would make only brief stops to set down and pick up passengers along the way. Any cargo not bound for Novosibirsk would be off-loaded there for trans-shipment. Most of it, by the destination labels, onto the next train travelling on the West Siberian fine, through Omsk, Yekaterinburg, Kirov and on to Moscow. The same route Nikolai himself would take.

They had left Novokuznetsk at eight. By his calculations that would give him close to twelve hours before his disappearance was likely to be discovered. As for ensuring that his means of escape remained a mystery, he would have to depend on Borisov for that, and Borisov would do it, he was sure. Out of self-interest if nothing else.

He found a space between two pallets of aluminum ingots destined for Novosibirsk and a crate of machine parts bound for Tyumen and settled down into it, wedging his back against the plank walls. He was crossing over now. Crossing the bridge that had separated him from himself. From both his past and his future.

Two hours… three. He wasn’t sure how long, but despite his determination to stay awake he must have dozed off, sleeping through the stops on the way. He wasn’t even aware that they had reached Novosibirsk until the carriage came to the final lurching stop that threw him sideways and slammed his head into the skin of the crate beside him.

He shook himself awake. Blinked and blinked again, trying to clear his brain. The headache was back. A massive throbbing pain that dulled his thinking. The result of the tension, he assumed, and the tide of poisonous chemical fumes his system had absorbed in the hours he had been confined in the coffin.

He began to clamber to his feet but then a heavy grating sound filled the carriage and he felt the floor and walls begin to shudder as the massive door began to slide open, spilling a widening shard of dazzling sunlight across the inside of the carriage. Panic gripped his stomach and he shrank back again, burying himself in the small cavern, shielding his eyes from the unaccustomed light.

He sat motionless, listening. Hearing the sound of his own tight, shallow breathing and listening for something more. For the voices and movement that he knew would be certain to follow and then the cries of consternation as the railway workers clambered inside and discovered him, but nothing happened. Nothing at all.

A minute, maybe two, and he rose uncertainly to his feet, faltering at the stabbing cramps in his limbs as his joints unwound, then slowly, cautiously, he stepped away from his hiding place, around the pallets of ingots to the open door.

He stood at its side for a moment, blinking against the light, peering tentatively along the platform. Outside an old man in overalls was working his way along the wagons, undoing padlocks, throwing bolts, hauling the massive panel doors back along their tracks. Apart from him, no one. Could it be this simple?

He didn’t pause to ask himself the question a second time. Just sprang down from the opening onto the concrete siding and began walking, head lowered and limping at first, until the oxygen started flowing through his bloodstream and the muscles of his legs began to work then, as they did, quickening his pace and striding faster, lifting his head to the seamless pale blue dawn sky and tasting the breath of freedom.

He found a covered overpass that seemed to connect the freight platforms with the main terminal. Took the stairs two at a time and started across the bridge towards the massive building at the other side.

The station hall was a curiously romantic confection. Not what he expected of Siberia. The massive walls above its blue stone base had been freshly painted: a vivid aqua that contrasted with the dazzling white of the decorative columns and lintels and the huge central archway that wrapped the entry. It reminded Nikolai of something: a building he had seen somewhere… St Petersburg?

A shiver ran through him as he came closer. No. Not St Petersburg. Moscow. The house in Ulitsa Prechistenka. The one with the black and gold gates and the brass plaque beside them with the single inscription:
ZAVOSET
.

And then it all came back to him.

The footfalls on the stone lobby floor. The clouded glass panel. The chill air rushing into the foyer. The sound of gunfire. Blood and splintered bone. Natalia’s scream and Larisa’s tiny, pale face filled with terror looking down at him from the window above.

He closed his eyes and swallowed, forcing the images away. Clenching his fists by his side and moving forward, faster. Taking each step as it came. Closing the distance.

The station had all he needed.

In the market that crowded the footpath outside he found a stall selling men’s clothes. He stank, he knew it. Of diesel and sweat and formaldehyde, probably death and fear as well. He saw it in the eyes and expression of the stall keeper as she took an involuntary step backwards while he rifled through the piles of goods laid out on her plank table. He didn’t bother trying to bargain. Just passed over a thousand of Florinskiy’s rubles in exchange for a pair of black jeans, a belt, socks, undershorts and a cheap T-shirt and moved on. Found another stall a little further along selling footwear and paid five hundred – twice what they were worth, he supposed – for a pair of sneakers, then wound between the tables picking up the other things. Sunglasses first. Then a cheap digital watch, a throwaway razor, some soap and, last of all, a liter of water. When he had everything he needed he paused to count how much remained of Florinskiy’s money.

A little over seven thousand rubles. It might last a week if he was careful but eventually it would run out and then what?

Natalia had a saying. What was it? He strained to remember, then it came to him.
Tomorrow’s worry will come soon enough, Nikolai.

He smiled as he remembered the way she would say it… the lecturing tone, the stern expression. His mind wandered for half a minute then he pulled himself back. Folded the notes, slipped them into his pocket and made his way back inside the station hall, searching for the washrooms.

He found them on the ground floor in the corner closest to the street. The attendant sitting in the anteroom took ten rubles for the use of a towel and locker and ten more for the shower and toilet. Nikolai counted out the coins, nodded without speaking and moved on, pushing through the door to the right, registering the strangely incongruous silhouette painted on the dimpled glass: the profile of a bearded man in a top hat, a thick cigar set between his lips.

The washroom itself was surprisingly clean. There were toilets one side, open shower stalls the other, separated by gray steel lockers and benches between. The hiss of spraying water and a cloud of steam rose together from the cubicle at the far end indicating another presence, but otherwise the cavernous tiled hall was empty.

Nikolai scanned the numbers on the cabinets until he found the match for the tag the attendant had given him then slipped his money, papers and purchases inside, locked the door and snapped the rubber key band onto his wrist. That done he cracked the seal on the bottled water and drank it in one go – gulped it down without stopping – then stripped off the clothes Borisov had given him, wound them tightly around the empty bottle, carried the bundle across to the waste bin and stuffed it deep inside. He was returning naked across the tiled floor when the sound of the shower spray from the end stall died and a dripping figure stepped out of the cubicle and into the hall.