False Impression (43 page)

When they opened
on the ground floor thirty seconds later, he jogged past reception, out of the
building, down the steps, and headed in the direction of his car.

Jack jumped in
and started the engine, just as a cop came running round the corner. He swung
the car in a circle, mounted the sidewalk, drove back onto the road, and headed
for St Vincent’s Hospital.

‘Good afternoon,
Sotheby’s.’

‘Lord Poltimore,
please.’

Who shall I say
is calling, madam?’

‘Lady
Wentworth.’ Arabella didn’t have to wait long before Mark came on the line.

‘How nice to
hear from you, Arabella,’ said
Mark.
‘Dare I ask,’ he
teased, ‘are you a buyer or a seller?’

‘A seeker after
advice,’ replied Arabella. ‘But if I were to be a seller Mark began to make
notes as he listened to a series of questions that Arabella had obviously
prepared carefully.

‘In the days
when I was a dealer,’ Mark replied, ‘before I joined Sotheby’s, the standard
commission was 10 per cent up to the first million. If the painting was likely
to fetch more than a million I used to negotiate a fee with the seller.’

‘And what fee
would you
have
negotiated, had I asked you to sell the
Wentworth Van Gogh?’

Mark was glad
Arabella couldn’t see the expression on his face.

Once he’d
recovered, he took his time before suggesting a figure, but quickly added, ‘If
you were to allow Sotheby’s to put the picture up for auction, we would charge
you nothing, Arabella, guaranteeing you the full hammer price.’

‘So how do you
make a profit?’ asked
Arabella.

We charge a
buyer’s premium,’ explained Mark.

‘I already have
a buyer,’ said Arabella, ‘but thank you for the advice.’

K
rantz turned the
comer of the street, relieved to find the pavement so crowded. She walked for
about another hundred yards before stopping outside a small hotel. She glanced
up and down the road, confident that she was not being followed.

She pulled open
the swing doors that led into the hotel and, looking straight ahead, walked
past reception, ignoring the concierge, who was talking to a tourist who
sounded as if he might come from New York. Her gaze remained focused on a wall
of deposit boxes to the left of the reception desk. Krantz waited until all
three receptionists were fully occupied before she moved.

She glanced
behind her to make sure no one had the same purpose in mind. Satisfied, she
moved quickly, extracting a key from her hip pocket as she reached box 19. She
turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Everything was exactly as she
had left it. Krantz removed all the notes and two passports, and stuffed them
in a pocket. She then locked the door, walked out of the hotel and was back on
Herzen Street, without having spoken to anyone.

She hailed a taxi,
something she couldn’t have done in the days when the communists were teaching
her her trade. She gave the driver the name of a bank in Cheryomushki, sat in
the back and thought about Colonel Sergei Slatinaru – but only for a moment.

Her
one regret
was that she hadn’t succeeded in cutting off his left ear. Krantz would like to
have sent Petrescu a little memento of her visit to Romania. Still, what she
had in mind for Petrescu would more than make up for the disappointment.

But first she
had to concentrate on getting out of Russia. It might have been easy to escape
from those amateurs in Bucharest, but it was going to be far more difficult
finding a safe route into England. Islands always cause a problem; mountains
are so much easier to cross than water. She’d arrived in the Russian capital
earlier that morning exhausted, having been constantly on the move since
discharging herself from the hospital.

Kxantz had
reached the highway by the time the siren went off.

She turned to
see the hospital grounds bathed in light. A truck driver who made love to her
twice, and didn’t deserve to die, smuggled her across the border. It took a
train, a plane, another three hundred dollars and seventeen hours before she
eventually made it to Moscow. She immediately headed for the Isla Hotel, with
no intention of staying overnight. Her only interest was in a safety deposit
box that contained two passports and a few hundred roubles.

While she was
marooned in Moscow, Krantz had planned to earn a little cash, moonlighting while
she waited until it was safe to return to America. The cost of living was so
much cheaper in the Russian capital than New York, and that included the cost
of death.

$5,000
for a wife, $10,000 for a husband.
The Russians hadn’t yet come to terms
with equal rights. A KGB colonel could fetch as much as $50,000, while Krantz
could charge $100,000 for a mafia boss. But if Fenston had transferred the
promised two million dollars, tiresome wives and husbands would have to wait
for her return. In fact, now that Russia had embraced free enterprise, she
might even attach herself to one of the new oligarchs and offer him a
comprehensive service.

She felt sure
one of them could make use of the three million dollars stashed away in a
safety deposit box in Queens, in which case she would never need to return to
the States.

The taxi drew up
outside the discreet entrance of a bank that prided itself on having few
customers. The letters G and Z were chiselled in the white marble cornice.
Krantz stepped out of the cab, paid the fare and waited until the taxi was out
of sight before she entered the building.

The Geneva and
Zurich Bank was an establishment that specialized in catering to the needs of a
new breed of Russians, who had reinvented themselves following the demise of
communism. Politicians, mafia bosses (businessmen), footballers and pop stars
were all small change compared to the latest superstars, the oligarchs.
Although everybody knew their names, they were a breed that could afford the
anonymity of a number when it came to finding out the details of what they were
worth.

Krantz walked up
to an old-fashioned wooden counter, no lines, no grilles, where a row of
smartly dressed men in grey suits, white shirts and plain silk ties waited to
serve. They wouldn’t have looked out of place in either Geneva or Zurich.

‘How may I
assist you?’ asked the clerk Krantz had selected. He wondered which category
she fell into – the wife of a mafia boss, or the daughter of an oligarch. She
didn’t look like a pop star.

‘One zero seven two
zero nine five nine,’ she said.

He tapped the
code into his computer, and when the figures flashed up on the screen he showed
a little more interest.

‘May I see your
passport?’ was his next question.

Krantz handed
over one of the passports she had collected from the Isla Hotel.

‘How much is
there in my account?’ she asked.

‘How much do you
think there should be?’ he replied.

‘Just over two
million dollars,’ she said.

‘And what amount
do you wish to withdraw?’ he asked.

‘Ten thousand in
dollars,
and ten thousand in roubles.’

He pulled out a
tray from under the counter and began to count out the notes slowly. “We
haven’t dealt in this account for some time,’ he ventured, looking up at his
screen.

‘No,’ she
agreed, ‘but you will be seeing a lot more activity now that I’m back in
Moscow,’ she added without explanation.

‘Then I look
forward to being of service, madam,’ the clerk said, before passing across two
bundles of notes neatly sealed in plastic wallets, with no hint of where they
had come from, and certainly no paperwork to suggest a transaction had even
taken place.

Krantz picked up
the two wallets, placed them in an inside pocket and walked slowly out of the
bank. She hailed the third available taxi.

‘The Kalstern,’
she said, and climbed into the back of the cab in preparation for the second
part of her plan.

Fenston had kept
his part of the bargain. Now she would have to keep hers if she hoped to
collect the second two million. She had given a moment’s thought to keeping the
two million and not bothering to travel to England. But only a moment’s thought
because she knew that Fenston had kept up his contacts with the KGB, and they
would have been only too happy to dispose of her for a far smaller amount.

When the taxi
came to a halt ten minutes later, Krantz handed over four hundred roubles and
didn’t wait for any change. She stepped out of the cab and joined a group of
tourists who were peering in at a window, hoping to find some memento to prove
to the folks back home that they had visited the wicked communists.

In the centre of
the window was displayed their most popular item: a four-star general’s uniform
with all the accessories – cap, belt, holster and three rows of campaign medals.
No price tag attached, but Krantz knew the going rate was $20. Next to the
general stood an admiral, $15, and behind him a KGB colonel, $10. Although
Krantz had no interest in proving to the folks back home that she had visited
Moscow, the kind of person who could lay their hands on the uniforms of
generals, admirals and KGB colonels could undoubtedly acquire the outfit she
required.

Krantz entered
the shop and was greeted by a young assistant.

‘Can I help
you?’ she asked.

‘I need to speak
to your boss on a private matter,’ said Krantz.

The young girl
looked uncertain, but Krantz just stared at her until she finally said, ‘Follow
me/ and led her customer to the back of the shop, where she tentatively knocked
before opening the door to a small office.

Sitting behind a
large wooden desk, littered with papers, empty cigarette cartons and a
half-eaten salami sandwich, sat an overweight man in a baggy brown suit. He was
wearing an open-necked red shirt that looked as if it hadn’t been washed for
several days.

His bald head
and thick moustache made it difficult for Krantz to guess his age, although he
was clearly the proprietor.

He placed both
hands on the desk and looked wearily up at her.

34O

He offered a
weak smile, but all Krantz noticed was the double chinned neck.
Always tricky to negotiate.

‘How can I
help?’ he asked, not sounding as if he was convinced she was worth the effort.

Krantz told him
exactly what she required. The proprietor listened in astonished silence and
then burst out laughing.

‘That wouldn’t
come cheap,’ he eventually said, ‘and could take some considerable time.’

‘I need the
uniform by this afternoon,’ said Krantz.

‘That’s not
possible,’ he said with a shrug of his heavy shoulders.

Krantz removed a
wad of cash from her pocket, peeled off a hundred-dollar bill and placed it on
the desk in front of him. ‘This afternoon,’ she repeated.

The proprietor
raised his eyebrows, although his eyes never left Benjamin Franklin.

T may just have
a possible contact.’

Krantz placed
another hundred on the desk.

‘Yes, I think I
know the ideal person.’

‘And I also need
her passport,’ said Krantz.

‘Impossible.’

Another two
hundred dollars joined the Franklin twins.

‘Possible,’ he
said, ‘but not easy.’

Krantz placed a
further two hundred on the table, making sextuplets.

‘But I feel sure
some arrangement could be made,’ he paused,

‘
at
the right price.’ He looked up at his customer while
resting his hands on his stomach.

‘A thousand if
everything I require is available by this afternoon.’

‘I’ll do my best,’
said the proprietor.

‘I feel sure you
will,’ said Krantz. ‘Because I’m going to knock off a hundred dollars for every
fifteen minutes after -’ she looked at her watch – ‘two o’clock.’

The proprietor
was about to protest, but thought better of it.

W
hen Anna’s taxi
drove through the gates of Wentworth Hall, she was surprised to see Arabella
waiting on the top step, a shotgun under her right arm and Brunswick and Picton
by her side. The butler opened the taxi door as his mistress and the two
Labradors walked down the steps to greet her.

‘How nice to see
you,’ said Arabella, kissing her on both
cheeks.

‘You’ve arrived
just in time for tea.’

Anna stroked the
dogs as she accompanied Arabella up the steps and into the house, while an
under butler removed her suitcase from the front of the taxi. When Anna stepped
into the hall, she paused to allow her eyes to move slowly round the room, from
picture to picture.

‘Yes, it is nice
to still have one’s family around one,’ said Arabella, ‘even if this might be
their last weekend in the country.’