Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery (10 page)

Instead what I saw as I walked around the little fountain were the profiles of two silhouetted figures in an emotional conversation, a man and woman who had clearly met long before that encounter a few minutes ago in the Rotunda. They were standing too close, their body language too intimate, and they were completely engrossed in each other, oblivious of me as I watched what looked like an argument, maybe even a lover’s quarrel.

I moved near one of the pillars, raised my camera, and fired off a couple of shots. Without a flash and at this distance, I’d be lucky to get anything, but through the lens of my telephoto I watched Scott Hathaway vehemently shake his head as Katya Gordon grasped his arm, insisting on something he didn’t want to hear.

Then Katya spoke, her words clear and distinct. “You have no choice, Scott. You know that.”

I lowered my camera. Their discussion—or argument—was finished. Besides not wanting to be caught eavesdropping, I knew neither of them would be interested in smiling for a photo together after that exchange. I had taken about half a dozen steps when Katya Gordon said in a loud voice, “You! The photographer. What are you doing here?”

I stopped and turned around. “I was hoping to get a couple of pictures of you and Senator Hathaway after you finished touring the Fabergé exhibit, Dr. Gordon.”

She looked stunned, but then her eyes narrowed as though she was trying to figure out how long I’d been here and whether I’d overheard her conversation with Hathaway.

Finally she said, with icy finality, “That will not be possible. Leave here at once. I thought it was made clear to you and your colleague that any photography of the exhibit is strictly forbidden. Did you not understand?”

“Of course,” I said. “That’s why I was waiting out here.”

The museum guard, who’d conveniently disappeared behind another column on the far side of the courtyard, now stepped out from the shadows and joined us. Katya turned her ire on him.

“Where have you been? You’re supposed to be watching that door.” She pointed to the exhibit entrance like a furious parent confronting a teenager who just wrecked the family car. “Did you see her take any pictures?”

The guard folded his hands together and shook his head, placid and unruffled by her tirade. “No, ma’am. She must have just walked in a second ago. I been here the whole time, just wanting to give you and the senator a little privacy, so I scooted out of the way.”

Katya’s gaze shifted from the guard to me as though she was trying to decide if she’d just been fed a pack of lies. “I could confiscate your memory card, you know,” she said to me.

I couldn’t tell if she was bluffing.

“You could, but you don’t need to,” I said. “You’re going to have all our pictures anyway once Luke and I download and process them.”

Except the ones we didn’t show her.

After a moment she pursed her lips and said, “Make sure I do.”

She left the East Garden Court, head high, still bristling with anger. The guard and I exchanged glances.

“Thank you,” I said. “I owe you.”

“She been acting like that the whole time, bossing everybody around, talking to us like she owns this place.” He snorted. “A couple of the old-timers who been here their whole life got so fed up, I swear, if she was on fire they wouldn’t spit on her. It’s not her museum and it don’t belong to Mr. Vasiliev, neither. I don’t care how much money he spent tonight. It belongs to the American people. That’s you and me, sweetheart.”

I blew him a kiss. “It is you and me, isn’t it?”

He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. “And don’t you forget it.”

*

By the time I got back to the Rotunda, I decided to swap my memory card for a new one on the off chance Katya Gordon reconsidered and got the bright idea that I should hand it over to her anyway. I found Luke by the Firebird ice sculpture and asked him for the key to Seth’s closet.

“What for?” he said.

“My memory card’s full. I need to get a new one.”

He gave me a quizzical look. Fifteen minutes ago I’d told him I was all set when he asked if he could get me anything from the supply closet.

He handed me the key, but all he said was, “Did you get pictures of Hathaway and Katya Gordon?”

“No. I think he slipped out the back way while she held me off at the pass.”

“Pardon?”

“There’s a staircase off the East Garden Court,” I said. “I think he took it, probably tried to leave the building through the lower level, after all that drama with Yuri Orlov.”

“That’s strange. You’d think Katya could have persuaded him to stick around for a photo op,” he said. “Good publicity for the exhibit.”

“Maybe she tried.” I palmed the key. “Anybody lurking in the conference room while you were back there getting your battery?”

“Nope. I took a look around, too. Doesn’t look like the room has been used all evening. Nobody’s eaten or drunk a thing. What a shame if it goes to waste. All that caviar and expensive hooch.”

I put on my poker face. “Yeah, a real shame.”

“Maybe they’ll give out doggie bags.”

“In your dreams.”

He grinned and hooked a thumb at the Firebird ice sculpture. “You got pictures of this and the Constellation sculpture at the beginning of the evening, right?”

“Of course. Why?”

“Take a look,” he said. “The Firebird’s starting to look like a rooster on a bad day. The clock for the Constellation egg is a big blue lump. The electrician had to turn the lights down before they ended up with two giant ice cubes to dump in the big fountain. Wouldn’t that have been something?”

He chuckled as I surveyed the sculpture. He was right. The Firebird’s magical tail feathers drooped like he’d been caught in a downpour.

I smiled. “Well, at least they lasted for most of the evening. Plus it’s nighttime now so it’s darker in here. Maybe no one noticed.”

In the past half hour the daylight streaming through the skylights had faded, becoming as flat and black as obsidian. In the soft, pale light and crisscrossing shadows, the gallery seemed enchanted, like something out of a dream. A stray beam from a spotlight burnished Luke’s profile like one of the bronzes in the West Sculpture Hall.

He seemed to be in high spirits just now, an adrenaline rush of elation and relief that the evening had gone so well for us. I liked him this way; the last few days he’d been as serious and intense as if we were planning a military campaign. Once or twice I’d wanted to say or do something irreverent that would make him laugh and lighten up. But he wasn’t Perry and I didn’t know him that well, so I’d held my tongue.

“Find me after you get your memory card, okay?” he said. I nodded. Back to business. “I’m going to ask around, see if Hathaway really did manage to leave since everything’s locked up downstairs. Maybe I can still get him to pose with Vasiliev or Katya Gordon,” he added.

I wouldn’t try to get Katya Gordon and Scott Hathaway together if I were you.
I almost said it, but I didn’t want to do anything to ruin his perfect evening, a success for Focus and for him.

“Sure,” I said. “Good luck.”

When I walked into the cloakroom a few minutes later, a different guard in a navy jacket with the gold eagle emblem tried to stop me from using the door to the private corridor.

“It’s restricted, miss. The restrooms are on the other side of the Rotunda.”

I held up Seth’s key. “I’m one of the photographers. My equipment is in Dr. MacDonald’s office.”

“In that case,” he said, “go right ahead.”

The hallway was cool and silent. I let myself into Seth’s office, unlocked the closet door, and got a new memory card out of a pouch in my backpack, swapping it with the full one. As I closed the compartment on my camera, the metal door at the end of the corridor opened and closed. I heard footsteps—more than one person—stopping outside the conference room.

I flipped off the light switch as whoever it was—presumably Vasiliev and a companion—walked in next door. Maybe I could just wait until they were finished, as Ali had done, because I had no interest in meeting Arkady Vasiliev again, especially not here. Apparently neither Seth nor Moses had let him know he didn’t have the total privacy and exclusive access to this suite that he’d demanded. If he found out now, there would be hell to pay.

But it wasn’t Vasiliev in the next room after all. I heard two male voices and finally identified them as a Russian and an American. The Russian talked like he was running the show; the American sounded nervous and ill at ease.

“Stop walking around and sit down,” the Russian said in a flat, toneless voice.

“I want a drink,” the American said and blew his nose.

“No drink. This is business. Hey, don’t touch that. I told you, leave everything alone.”

“Why do we have to do this tonight?” A chair scraped like the American was sitting down.

“Here. Take this. You’ll get a text message on the day to confirm it’s still on. Afterward get rid of it. A Dumpster or the river. In the meantime, don’t do anything stupid like using it for personal calls. Understand?” the Russian said.

“I don’t want it, you keep it. I changed my mind. I’m not going through with this anymore.” It sounded like the American slid the phone across the table. “It’s too risky and it’s a crazy idea, anyway. What if I get caught?”

The Russian slid the phone back like they were playing shuffleboard. “Too late, my friend. He’ll be here in three days and we’re only going to get one chance while he’s in the country. You can’t change your mind because you know too much. And you weren’t sorry to take the money . . . why do you think we chose you? You needed it.”

“I’ll give it back—”

The Russian cut him off. “Do what you’re told and everything will be fine. Changing your mind would be very bad for your health. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

I gripped my camera until my fingers cramped and bit down on my lip.

“You can’t threaten me. This isn’t Russia, where you can get away with stuff like this; we got laws here.”

The Russian laughed. “For a smart guy you’re being very stupid.”

“I’m not stupid enough to be an accessory to murder.” The American’s voice rose and he sniffled again like a dripping faucet. Allergies? A cold? A user?

“Shut up,” the Russian said. “You’re not
doing
anything. All you have to do is keep your mouth shut. You see nothing, you know nothing. Turn your back, that’s it. Everything will be okay, no problem.”

My heart was hammering like war drums, and for a wild moment I wanted to just get the hell out of here, run as far away as I could. Then I thought,
Calm down and breathe. They don’t know you’re here, just like you and Vasiliev didn’t know Ali was here. Just be quiet and you’ll be fine.

I heard a noise like a cat being strangled; it was the American’s high-pitched hysterical laugh. “You expect me to believe Hathaway is going to go along with this crackpot idea? He’s going to turn his back, too, let you just pull this off? No way, man. Why don’t you kill the guy in Russia? It’d be a lot easier if you did it there.”

“Shut up,” the Russian said again, “and listen to me. You talk to anybody—
anybody
—about this and they’ll have to look through every Dumpster for a hundred miles to find what’s left of you, if the body parts are even recognizable. Do you understand?”

In the pocket of my silk evening pants, my phone made the distinct sound of an incoming text message. I stopped breathing, closed my hand over the phone, and flipped the switch to silent mode.

“Christ, what was that?” the American asked. “You got someone on the other side of that door listening? Checking me out?”

The door to the storage closet was still open. I stepped inside, closed the door, and prayed. The connecting door creaked open.

An eternity passed before the Russian said, “It’s empty. There’s no one here. Someone left a phone on the desk. That’s what you heard.” He must have picked it up. “Yeah, there’s a bunch of text messages on it.”

The door closed and the next time the Russian spoke he was back in the other room, his voice now too muffled for me to understand what he was saying.

I hung on to the closet doorknob, weak-kneed with relief. Thank God for small blessings. I hadn’t seen that phone—probably Seth’s—among all the items on his desk, but I was grateful it had been there.

I waited in the suffocating blackness until I was sure they were gone. When I opened the door, a ghost current of air brushed my arm, nearly sending me back into the closet. My phone vibrated in my pocket again. I pulled it out. Two text messages from Luke.

Where are you?

Hathaway just left.

I shut off the phone and threw it in my equipment bag with shaking hands. If I heard what I thought I did, someone—probably working for Arkady Vasiliev—had just finalized plans for the assassination of another Russian, someone who was arriving in the country in three days. When did Moses say Taras Attar was coming to the States? A couple of days . . . three days?

More incredibly, whoever the target was—Attar or someone else—the assassin was going to have help pulling it off from two Americans. The scared guy I’d heard in the next room.

And Senate Majority Leader Scott Hathaway.

7

I ran down the corridor toward the buzz of voices audible through the door that led to the cloakroom. That conversation couldn’t have happened, or I misheard what they said.

Except I didn’t.

I felt a sharp little twitch of nerves between my shoulder blades. What now? Tell someone? Seth? Luke? Keep it to myself and say nothing?

I reached for the doorknob as the door sprang open from the other side.

“Sophie!” Seth grabbed my arm to catch me as I stumbled back, shielding my cameras to keep them from whacking the wall. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect you there. Are you all right?”

The cloakroom had been nearly empty a short while ago. Now it was filled with guests who crowded around us as they waited to retrieve briefcases, backpacks, evening jackets, and other items that hadn’t been permitted in the museum. Seth stepped into the hallway with me and shut the door as I checked my cameras to make sure nothing had gotten banged up.