Hot Siberian (36 page)

He got out of the taxi. There were no street signs, but the driver assured him this was Potlaska. It was in a manufacturing area. All along there were brick and stucco structures two and three stories high. No signs on any of them, and only a few displayed a street number. About halfway down the block Nikolai made out the faded numerals 32 painted on a front and surmised that the next had to be 34. It was one of the taller buildings, unattractively sheathed in corrugated siding. Nikolai thought it best not to stand there and possibly be seen taking special notice of the place. He casually looked it over and proceeded down and around the block. How forbidding this area would be at night, he thought. It was ugly and grim enough in the daytime. The only living green things were the weeds that had straggled up from cracks and pressed so dependently against steel-mesh fences. No sidewalks here, just the raw, crumbling edge of blacktop bordered by a strip of powdery dirt. Metallic litter everywhere, fragments of tin and steel, parts of parts, broken pieces, a predominance of rusting. The narrow space between two buildings on the next street over gave access to a back alley from which Nikolai got a good look at the rear of number 34. He also reconnoitered the alley before returning to the street. He continued on around the block at a faster pace.

He entered number 34.

And found himself in a combination reception area and showroom. Rather makeshift. There was one tubular chrome chair upholstered in a poor imitation of black leather. A similar tubular-legged table was against the wall beneath a series of black-felt-covered shelves. Crystal goblets, bowls, vases, and various other items were displayed on the shelves. They were harshly illuminated from above by a rack of lights, which unfortunately also emphasized dust and finger smudges. On the left wall was a closed door and a rectangular opening for the head of a receptionist, a young woman with coarse features and a mass of incorrigible black hair.

Nikolai thought fast. He affected a British accent and a suitable elevated manner. “I'm Jeremy Mason-Hodge,” he said, “here for my appointment.”

That meant nothing to her, of course.

Perhaps she didn't speak English, Nikolai thought. It would seem odd now if he started spouting Czech. He kept on with it.

“I presume you received my letter stating I would be here on the third. I posted it over a month back.”

“Letter?” she uttered blankly.

“Oh dear.” Nikolai sighed. “I rather thought things might not be right when I didn't get a confirming reply from you. I hope my trip hasn't been a total waste.”

“This is the Zuzana Bohemian Glass Works,” she informed him, as though Nikolai had lost his way.

He nodded. “
I
am the buyer of glass and crystal for Selfridge's in London. You do know of Selfridge's, don't you? The department store.”

A smile improved her. “You want to buy crystal?”

“I
may
place an order, yes.”

She handed out a catalogue along with an order form.

Nikolai sat in the chair and began filling out the form. He had no idea or the complete, correct address of Selfridge's, so he just put down Oxford Street, London W2. He paged through the catalogue and from the photographs in it purposely chose items he believed the Zuzana Bohemian Glass Works had little call for and therefore was overstocked with. Things they'd be happiest to sell, such as humidors, bath-salts jars, calling-card plates, cruet sets, and ink stands. He bought, so to speak, two dozen of each. He thought the receptionist thought more of him when she saw the order. “What was that total?” he asked.

She read it to him.

“As soon as I arrive back at the hotel I'll phone London and have a bank draft for the full amount sent off by post.”

“That would be appreciated,” the receptionist said, now noticeably dismayed.

“I wonder,” Nikolai said, “would it be asking too much if I had a look around the works? I don't want to put anyone out, but you see, we'll want to print a little folder calling attention to the painstaking way Zuzana crystal is made. Naturally, we'd want that information to be as authentic as possible.”

“I'll see,” the receptionist said and left her cubicle, taking Nikolai's order form with her. Shortly she returned, accompanied by a tall, rawboned man with a thick mustache and hard eyes. The receptionist presented him quite formally as Mr. Kaplicka, the foreman.

“You want to see the works?” Kaplicka asked amiably, with a thick accent.

“Yes.”

“Come. I myself will show you around.”

During the next hour Nikolai was given a tour of the main area of the plant and at the same time an abbreviated course in glassmaking. Kaplicka, the foreman, seemed to welcome this opportunity to display some of his knowledge. To start he took Nikolai by the metal bins in which the raw materials for making crystal were kept—the silica, lime, soda ash, and oxide of lead. He explained that these were mixed in certain quantities; he was vague about how much of each was used. Zuzana, he said, had a special formula all its own, a secret that had been handed down for three centuries.

Nikolai thought to himself that the only way a secret could be kept three hundred years was for someone along the chain of generations to have forgotten it.

Kaplicka next led him to the furnaces. There were seven, identical, spaced well apart in a row. They were about chin height and not much different in appearance from the ordinary coal or wood cellar furnace. Only one was in operation at this time—and Nikolai took that as a favorable indication. Perhaps Zuzana did not really have to depend on being in the crystal business, he reasoned. It could be just a front. He stood well back to observe the glassblowing crew at its job. Kaplicka provided a nonstop commentary and interpreted special terms as he went along.

Nikolai watched one of the men thrust the end of a six-foot blowpipe into the oval opening of the oven, saw him dip the blowpipe into the intense glowing orange and withdraw a blob of molten crystal. Kaplicka said such a blob was called a gather. At once the man rolled the viscous stuff back and forth across the flat surface of an iron slab, roughly shaping the gather. He then passed it on to a second man, who held the other end of the blowpipe to his mouth, took in a deep breath through his nostrils, and gently blew the molten crystal into a more definite form. That second man, Kaplicka said, was the server. After doing his part the server passed the blowpipe to a third man, the gaffer, for him to do the final blowing and shaping. The gaffer was the master of the group. He used a paddle and a two-pronged fork of cherrywood to alter the contours of the crystal. He measured often with calipers. Quite a few times he stuck the crystal back into the furnace to keep it hot and workable.

Nikolai thought the gaffer a prima donna, the way he waited aside with a removed attitude while most of the steps of the process were done for him. As though he were above all but the precise finishing blows and touches, the final results, and, no doubt, the credit. Also what put off Nikolai was the way the gaffer performed. As he blew and spun the blowpipe he darted about, at times practically pranced, gave the impression that he was nervously creative, high-strung. Many of his movements reminded Nikolai of those a fencer would go through while practicing, his footwork especially. He was, Nikolai had to admit, amazingly light-footed and quick for a heavyset man. Was this how gaffers usually acted? Nikolai wanted to know. Kaplicka told him it was traditional.

Kaplicka guided him on to where the various crystal objects were cut and polished. Three women were hard at it, seated at a workbench that was equipped to accommodate ten. The women had on circular, tight-fitting goggles to protect their eyes from the fragments of glass flung at them by the high-speed spin of the cutting wheels. Hunched over, so round-shouldered they seemed deformed, they looked obsessed, weird. Also what added to that impression was the painful screech of the glass being cut. On a tiered movable table at the far end of the bench was the work that had been finished: tall, fat vases, lavishly faceted. Even in this poor light they were throwing glints and spectrums.

Had Nikolai been truly paying attention he would have learned more about the intricacies of crystal making. He appeared to be attentive, hmmmed and grunted and uhhuhed frequently, but more than half the time he was so intent on looking about for anything that might connect the Zuzana Bohemian Glass Works with Aikhal diamonds that he was hardly aware of Kaplicka's voice. Nevertheless, he saw nothing suspicious; this fellow Kaplicka seemed open and honest, and glass was about as opposite from diamond as anything could be. When the tour was over the only things Nikolai took away were a hunch and a mental picture of the layout of the place.

He chose to walk back to the hotel. The mile and a half would be good for his head, give it time to argue with itself. Part of his reasoning still contended that that fellow Kislov had been suffering Siberian delusions, that these Prague and Paris addresses he'd given Nikolai were pointless, that Kislov himself had nothing to do with the fact that diamonds were being skimmed from Aikhal and sold in the West. Kislov had dreamed it up and just happened to be right.

Kislov also just happened to be dead, countered the other part of Nikolai's reasoning. Don't take the next available flight to London, it urged, not while there remains even a mote of possibility. Listen to your hunch. Remember what Grandfather Maksim used to say?
The stone unturned most often hides the treasure
.

Stop grasping, the first part demanded.

Shut up, said the other part.

On Hastaska Street, a few blocks from the hotel, Nikolai went into a store that looked as though it offered for sale just about everything. He wanted a hundred-foot length of ordinary clothesline. It came only in fifty-foot lengths, so he bought two. He also bought a carpenter's hammer. Several doors down from that everything store was a restaurant, a small but serious one, the brightly lighted sort. A waitress with pink clean hands, strong-looking forearms, and a way that said she knew and sympathized with loneliness served him
svícková na smetane
, roast loin of beef with cream sauce, and a bottle of Budvar. On her own the waitress brought him a large slice of
jablkový koláe
, apple cake, and although he would rather have used what space remained in his stomach for another bottle of the excellent beer he had to respond to her generosity. He thanked her with his almost best smile and didn't leave her a huge tip because she might have taken that as indication of his lack of understanding.

He felt better after having eaten, stronger, more optimistic, and when he was back in his hotel room he immediately undressed and sat at the desk and used a sheet of hotel stationery to write down step by step how he thought it should go. He diagrammed what he could recall and approximated those measurements that would be vital. For an hour he lay in the dark and allowed himself to think of Vivian as intensely as he wanted. He didn't even have to touch himself to be hard.

At ten o'clock he put on a pair of jeans, a dark sweatshirt, and canvas deck sneakers. He pocketed two hundred korunas and some change and decided against taking along any identification, because he knew that as a rule these people disliked Russians, and he might stand a chance of passing as a foolhardy American or something and bluff his way out of trouble if it came to that. He also pocketed the versatile Swiss army knife Lev had given him on a birthday ten or so years ago, and the little Mag-Lite flashlight that he usually used to shine at the bedside clock in the middle of the night so he wouldn't disturb Vivian.

He took a taxi from the stand just outside the hotel entrance and had it leave him off at the intersection of Sokolovská Boulevard and Saldova Street. He remembered the way, would walk the rest of it, in the direction of the river and on into the Karlin District. He hadn't taken ten paces before it began to rain. No here-and-there warning drops, it came pouring right down. Nikolai decided not to try to get in out of it. For one thing, it looked like the sort of rain that would last. For another, he was fatalistic about it, thought perhaps rain was supposed to be a part of it. Within a couple of blocks his sweatshirt and jeans were soaked through, his sneakers squishing. Under other circumstances he might have been chilled; however, the rain had a cooling, calming effect. It offset the feverish excitement of his body, at least superficially. It didn't slow his bloodstream.

He'd been right about this district being spooky at night. The rain made it even more so, darker, everything more obscure. The blocky structures could easily be imagined into geometric beasts that with the slightest provocation would roll over and crush him. Nikolai kept to the middle of the streets. There were no cars, no people. It was as though some invisible devastating force had made the area prohibited, the very atmosphere dangerous. He was relieved to reach Potlaska Street and number 34. At least
it
felt familiar.

He reviewed the corrugated exterior of the Zuzana building. The front was sheer, not even a window. The only possibility would be in the rear. He went around to it. The building to the right was independent, separated by a wide alley. The two-story building on the left was butted right up against the Zuzana building. It had a flat roof and a loading platform that was roofed over. Exactly as Nikolai had remembered. He walked down the alley that ran between the backs of these buildings to where he'd seen some empty wooden crates stacked. He pulled out one that was about ten feet long and three feet wide. He guessed it had once contained some kind of machinery. Using the hammer, he pried off the top. He turned the top over and hammered every third board from it. What he had then was a ladder of sorts. He carried it back to the loading platform of the building that adjoined Zuzana. He propped it up and used it to climb onto the roof above the loading platform. At once he hauled up the makeshift ladder. He propped it against the wall and climbed to the second-story roof.