City of War (56 page)

The three of us walked while the colonel pointed out the finer points of Yugoslav interior design and commented on his paintings. As we progressed, my initial impression of his collection changed. Comparing it to the Hermitage implied differences. In Serbin’s case, some of what used to hang in St. Petersburg now hung in Belgravia. As Bert Rixon would be the first to tell you, I’m no one’s art muse, so if I recognized them, a slug could have.

Half an hour later, we found ourselves on a stairway leading to the third floor. At the top, a pair of thickly built Mongolian security men in too-tight suits parted to let us pass. We turned right and walked to the end of the hallway, where an ornately carved black ironwood door added an impression of security and menace to the already heavy décor. Serbin took out a skeleton key and inserted it into the old lock. The click of the dead bolt was loud, and the door creaked open, very Vincent Price-like. I felt Archer’s hand go into mine.

The colonel entered and was swallowed by the dark. Seconds later, the soft radiance of museum-quality lighting revealed a thick-carpeted, mahogany-paneled gallery. “I believe,” said Serbin, “this is what you came to see.”

I knew it was going to be the Tretiakov Collection, but there was nothing familiar about how being physically in its presence affected me. Often, when someone’s death touches
us, we try to imagine his last moments. Though I had never known any of these men, as I came face-to-face with their paintings, I could suddenly see each one seated before his canvas, feel his final rush of creativity. I watched his hand execute his last stroke and put down his brush. Saw him look over his shoulder one last time as he was led away to have his unique light extinguished forever.

And then I understood. Kim was in that room with me, and she was revealing what I would never have been able to see for myself. I can’t explain how I knew, but I knew.

Not all of the paintings were masterpieces. As talented as these painters had been, they had become dissidents first and artists second. But each, even the lesser works, radiated an unmistakable energy and life.

I felt Archer let go of my hand. She followed the paintings around the room. I glanced at Serbin. He stifled a yawn. He’d already grown indifferent. It was a familiar affliction. People who acquire simply because they can, or to keep others from having something, lack a basic building block of humanity. A core. The colonel appreciated nothing. A priceless diamond or a rusty car had the same meaning. If someone else wanted it, all that mattered was that he had it, and they didn’t.

Archer stood in front of
Offering of the Babushkas
. At four feet square, it was larger than the others, and now exquisitely framed and perfectly lighted, its detail came fully to life, colors surging off the canvas. Most haunting was the stricken look on the face of Illya’s mother. It had been present in the photograph, of course, but now if you looked closely, her lip even seemed to tremble.

As Archer stared at the painting, Serbin said to her, “Pavlova Mikhailovna Orlov. Royally born, then married a Jew. Who can understand the foolishness of women who bring dishonor to themselves and suffering to their children?”

I braced myself for what was coming, but Archer surprised me. “Have you ever loved anyone, Colonel? Besides yourself, that is?”

Serbin seemed amused. “I love as all Russian men do, with passion…and frequently.”

“That is not what I meant.”

He looked at her with a cold smile. “It is exactly what
I
meant, Ms. Cayne. The difference is that I am never given over to things I do not control.”

A faint chime rang somewhere in the hall, and the colonel clapped his hands once as if placing a final punctuation on the exchange. “If we’re finished here, let us join my other guests.”

As we returned downstairs, Konstantin Serbin was enveloped by people vying for his attention. Before he was swept away, he instructed one of his security people to escort us to dinner.

“Thank you, but we’re leaving,” I said.

Archer interrupted, “No, we’re not.”

“Excellent,” said Serbin. “We’ll chat again later. I’ll be most interested to hear what you think of the entertainment. It’s something particularly fascinating.”

When he was gone, Archer looked at me. “Can you feel the evil in this place? It’s like decay, clinging to everything. I can even taste it.”

I put my hands on either side of her face. She tried to pull away, but I wouldn’t let her. “I know what you’re thinking, but this is out of your league.”

“Killing a president was supposed to be out of Oswald’s league.”

“Yes, but he had an unsuspecting target. This one bites, and usually first. I’d stop you before he had to.” I reached down and took her clutch purse. She held on at first, then let go. I opened the bag and found what I expected—the small, beat-up handgun Guinevere keeps in a drawer next to the stove. I shook my head. “I’ve seen her breaking walnuts with this. I’m not even sure it fires.”

“It does,” she said. “A little to the left and not very far, but that won’t matter if it’s jammed in his gut.”

I shook my head, slipped the gun in my jacket pocket, then handed her back her purse. “So what’s it going to be?”

“Well, I didn’t get all trussed up for some maitre d’ with a bad hairpiece. And I haven’t met the queen yet.” We started walking, and she added, “Besides, you didn’t check me for poison.”

The grand hall had been set with long tables heaped with seafood delicacies from around the world. Every conceivable shellfish, sushi, salmon and roe was represented, accented by trays of layered accoutrements more sculpture than cuisine. Along the four walls, wide carving stations offered mountainous cuts of meat and game, and wandering among the crowd were servers in full Cossack regalia wielding swords of Russian shish kabob.

To keep Givenchy, Dior and Rudolfo free of splashing sauces and purees, each guest had been assigned a white-coated attendant to walk ahead and heap designated food onto oversized white china plates emblazoned with Serbin’s Cyrillic monogram, KC. After a few moments of watching the milling horde Belushi themselves through the buffet, Archer remarked none too quietly, “Pearls before swine.”

We passed on the attendants and handled our own plates. Sufficiently loaded down with gourmet excess and glasses of Chateau Margaux 2000, we gravitated to the library and seated ourselves with a pair of vacuous Czech sisters displaying multiple facial piercings and no discernable English skills. Accompanying them were a former nuclear missile commander from Vladivostok and a biological weapons scientist once employed by the KGB’s Research Institute. I knew the institute because it had been a Delta target in the event of U.S. land operations against the Soviets. Small talk was not this group’s forte, so Archer and I listened as the Russians debated the merits of blowing up cities versus depopulating them. It didn’t take a scorecard to realize neither was retired.

When we excused ourselves for coffee, Archer looked at me with the kind of horror you sometimes see in rookie cops
after their first gruesome homicide. “Did I miss something? Maybe a late Halloween?”

“Your stomach’s full now, so why don’t we make a quiet exit.”

“Jesus Christ, I can’t get away from this place fast enough. Promise me we’ll take a shower as soon as we get home.”

Suddenly, without warning, the lights went out. There were some nervous whispers, and I thought there had been a power failure. I remembered the direction of the front door and took Archer’s arm. Frankly, it was a fitting end to the evening.

I was stopped by the sound of distant drums. Faint, then louder as they seemed to be approaching from all directions. Then, almost directly over me, a dark figure dropped on a wire from the ceiling. There was a burst of fire, and four flaming sabers appeared in his hands. The crowd gasped…then started applauding as the man began juggling the swords, throwing them higher with each catch.

From the illumination of the flames, I could see he was dressed head to foot in a black body stocking. Only his eyes and hands remained uncovered, and though he was slenderly built, his forearms and biceps rippled through the fabric.

The audience was mesmerized, Archer included. I scanned the entrances to the room and saw more body-stockinged figures coming from all directions, the ones in the lead pounding on some kind of tribal drums strapped over their shoulders. Behind them came bearers, carrying long coffin-shaped boxes high over their heads. Abruptly, half a dozen of the shapes—women, from their movement—raced forward and lit torches from the juggler’s fire, then ran back to their processions.

The room danced in light, and the boxes became more visible. They were bronze with two long poles attached at the top for transport. The drums got louder, and the room began to reverberate. The crowd parted to let the columns through, then closed in tight around them.

Now able to see the front door, I noticed that the Mongolian
security men who had been on duty when we arrived were gone. In their place were more body-stocking-clad figures.

I reached forward and grabbed Archer’s arm. She let out a sharp cry. “That hurts.”

I didn’t have time for explanations. I wrenched her backward, and she came stumbling toward me. “Take off your shoes,” I said.

“What? What for?”

I put my arm around her waist and picked her up, knocking her shoes off with my foot. Then I dropped her, grabbed her hand and ran toward the grand staircase.

“Goddamn, Rail, those fucking shoes cost more than I made on my last job.”

“They made your feet look big. Now shut up and run.”

An adrenaline rage kicked in, and she would have passed me on the landing if I hadn’t had hold of her.

The security we had seen on the third floor earlier was also now gone, and we continued up one more floor to what had been my grandfather’s private living space. The access gates I remembered from the photographs in my father’s office had been taken down, replaced by a bust of Lenin opposite one of Yeltsin. But which way was the master bedroom? I gambled and plunged down the hallway to my left.

Just then, I heard automatic gunfire slamming into the ceiling and walls downstairs. Screams erupted and running feet hit the stairway. There were more gunshots, and bodies fell.

Archer stopped. “My God, what’s happening?”

“What part of ‘shut up and run’ don’t you understand?”

Then a chandelier fell somewhere…a woman’s scream began and ended…and Archer got back with the program. I got lucky. The room I was looking for had been turned into an overdone study, but I recognized the walk-in marble fireplace from the twin carved elephants holding up the mantel. Apparently, someone had decided my grandfather’s Indian proclivities went well with Louis XIV. I pulled Archer inside and locked the door.

She was on the edge of hysteria, only a few seconds from losing it. I needed her lucid and mobile, and I had no time to talk her down, so I pulled her close and covered her mouth with my palm while I clasped her nose with my thumb and forefinger. In her hyperventilated state, she went into oxygen deficit almost immediately, and her eyes began to bulge. Fear of suffocation gets the brain’s attention over everything else, and she locked eyes with me and began pounding on my chest and kicking me with her bare feet. But I held my hand in place until I felt her starting to go out.

As soon as I let her breathe again, she started coughing and swearing and took a wild swing at me. “Welcome back,” I said as I grabbed her fist. “Now pay attention, we’ve only got a few minutes before they begin sweeping the place.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” Her voice was trembling, but she was focused on the right question.

I walked to the large bay window along the back wall. “When my grandfather was a kid, he had to jump three stories to escape a boarding school fire. He lived the rest of his life in mortal fear of burning to death.” I pointed outside. “The first private residence fire escape in Belgravia.”

The window was painted shut, so I grabbed a $100,000 chair and threw it through the glass. My adrenaline must have been pumping as well, because it went far enough to hit the next building. I went out first and was reaching up to help Archer when she suddenly froze, a look of stark terror on her face. I turned. Standing on the first steel landing below us were two body-stocking figures aiming Kalashnikovs directly at our faces.

One motioned me to join him, and as I complied, his partner retreated down a few steps out of range. These were pros, so I complied slowly and without comment.

As soon as we were both on the landing, the man with the rifle quickly climbed past me and was in the house in seconds. The remaining gunman indicated I was to do the same.

Archer and I walked down the grand staircase ahead of the gunmen. As we made the last turn, I put my arm around her. I had a pretty good idea what we were going to see, and I didn’t know how she’d react.

The lights were back on, and there were two men’s bodies on the stairs, badly mangled after being shot from behind with 7.62 rounds. I couldn’t be sure, but one looked like the bookmaker. The fallen chandelier had spread glass in a wide circle across the inlaid marble floor, and Archer sucked in her breath and leaned into me when she saw the pair of shapely legs sticking out from under it, one foot still wearing a high heel.

Other corpses weren’t immediately apparent, but the scene in front of us was its own spectacle. The hundred or so partiers had been made to lie facedown and were spread across the wide foyer and into the grand hall. Dozens of black body-stockinged men with assault rifles walked among them, kicking anyone who moved. Some of the women were crying, a few of the men too.

Four men stood over Konstantin Serbin. He turned his head slightly, and we made eye contact. Then one of the intruders hit him with a rifle, and he looked away.

It was then that I smelled gasoline and saw figures taking ten-liter cans out of one of the coffin-shaped boxes and lining them against a wall. That made my decision easy. I’d rather be shot.

I was about to whisper to Archer that we were going to run for it when a man in a white dinner jacket bolted to his feet and rushed one of the intruders. He managed to wrestle the man’s rifle away before he was cut down in a hail of bullets. A second burst then cut down the guard who had allowed his weapon to be taken.