The Domino Game (51 page)

Nikolai nodded. “I know.”

Vari shrugged. “We screwed him, Nikolai. We screwed Ivankov. You should be pleased.”

Nikolai blinked slowly. “Who exactly is
‘we’
, old friend?”

Vari regarded him a moment then tossed his head. “Just people. You wouldn’t know them. People I met down south.” He changed the subject. “I heard what happened. You know you’d be dead if it wasn’t for me.”

“You sent Bukovsky.” Nikolai smiled. “I assumed that. I’m just not absolutely sure why.”

“Bukovsky?” Vari drew on the cigar again. “Is that what he called himself?” He drained his glass; turned to refill it. “Why? I didn’t want you dead, that’s why.”

Nikolai pondered the answer. “You didn’t want me dead? Or you didn’t want Hartman dead?”

Vari shrugged. “What do you think?”

Nikolai swirled his vodka. Took another sip. “I think you didn’t want Hartman dead. I think you wanted him to have a chance to expose Ivankov because you were hoping that would finish him off and then you would never have to make your final payment.” Vari smiled. “So you know about that? You’re well informed. And smart, little brother. But then you always have been. And you know what? It worked. Not quite as well as I planned but well enough. In the end he needed money so he settled on a third of the original price.”

Nikolai nodded slowly. “And so now, you run everything.”

Vari shrugged. “Pretty much. You should be grateful, little brother. Think about it. I got rid of Kolbasov. I brought Ivankov to his knees. I got you and Larisa safely out to America. What more could you ask?”

“When?” Nikolai asked quietly.

“When what?” Vari’s eyebrows arched in question.

Nikolai blinked. “When did you get the disease, Vari? When did you decide to sell me out?”

The older man looked aside, chewing on the cigar. “The exact moment?” He thought about it, drawing back on the past.

“I suppose the first I thought about it was at the bar that day after I picked you up from the meeting with Hartman. I was sitting there listening to everything you told me they’d promised you. The new identity. The house. Money. And all the time there was this voice inside me saying,
‘And what do you get, Vari? You get nothing. You get to stay here in Moscow with your crappy job and your lousy pay, making ends meet by moonlighting for the CIA. This is
crazy!’”

He grimaced a second at the reflection.

“But then I’m being too honest. Even you would realize, Niko, that was just a natural reaction in the circumstances. Anyone would have those thoughts. So, I packed them all away in the little dark box you carry those things around in and I took you home and left you at your apartment and that’s where it would all have ended, except a couple of hours later I get this panic call from Hartman telling me all his plans have turned to shit, and now he needs my help to pull you out of the fire.

“So I go and meet him like he asks and then – I can’t believe it – he tells me he’s quitting the CIA. Just walking out! And all he’s concerned about is you, because he’s made you a promise; given you his word.” A flare of anger lit the older man’s eyes. “So what about the promises he’d made to me? No sooner is he back in Moscow than he looks me up and gives me his offer. It’s going to be just like old times, he tells me. The two of us working together like we did when he was here ten years before. He needs people, he tells me, people like me he can trust. He’ll put me on the payroll and I’ll pick up two, maybe three thousand a month, and we’ll be working together like the old days, except now he’s got the power, so this time we’ll really be able to make a difference. And he guarantees he’ll be there to cover my back. Anything ever goes wrong, he’ll look after me.” Vari’s face creased in a cynical smile. “And you know what, Niko? I went for it. I bought the whole bullshit package because I needed to believe in
something
. Because everything else I’d ever believed in had turned to crap!”

He tossed his hands apart, a shower of ash from his cigar tracing through the air. Nikolai watched the gleaming embers turn to gray dust as they fell.

“So what happens?… There I am, screwed again. I’ve gone out on a limb for him, climbed out even further for you, and now I’m left there swinging in the breeze and no one gives a rat’s. Not even a second thought.”

The older man paused, his voice falling softer.

“That was when it really happened, Niko. I think up until then I would have let it go, but now he expects me to risk everything to get you out and what about me? Fuck me. I’m on my own!” He shrugged. “So he begs me to help him.” A tight smile pulled at the older man’s lips. “And I think about it. I consider all the options and I decide it’s time to change my life. Time to look after myself because I’m the only one who cares a fuck what happens to me!”

Nikolai regarded him through a long moment. “The shooter in the park? You were behind that?”

Vari’s face soured in a frown of distaste. “Once I’d made the decision I had to, Niko. I didn’t have any other choice. I’d crossed over. Only you and I knew where the tapes were.” He let out a heavy sigh. “Once I’d made up my mind, that was the only option. While I was organizing things for Hartman I set up the contract. Hartman had given me the details of the pick-up so it was easy. All I had to do was let my guy know so he could wait until Hartman arrived and you came downstairs to let him in.”

Nikolai drew a breath. “And Hartman would have thought it was Ivankov who was behind it.”

Vari winked. “I told you you’re smart.” His grin faded to a frown. “But then, of course, it didn’t work exactly as I’d planned, did it? Ivankov’s American connections must have passed on the details of Hartman’s plan to pull you out so he was already ahead of the game. He must have brought in Stephasin and then Stephasin must have called in the MVD, but still…” he shrugged the allowance, “it wasn’t a complete disaster.”

“You mean you were still able to get the tapes.”

Vari had had enough of the cigar. He stubbed it out but it didn’t die. A thick curl of smoke continued to trail from the quartz ashtray. “You may not believe me but the rest of it, Niko, is pretty much as I told you before. I raced around to your place as soon as Natalia called. I hadn’t heard anything from the guy who was supposed to look after you. I tried to call him but his phone was off. To tell you the truth I was expecting to find you dead, but when I got there the place was wall to fucking wall MVD.” He blew out a breath. “I admit, that was a shock.”

Nikolai regarded him impassively. “But you managed to get the tapes anyway?”

Vari cast his hands apart. “Using the doctor. Just like I told you. That was all true. Exactly the way it happened.”

“And then what? Were you going to try and cut your own deal with the Americans?”

“You think I’m crazy?” Vari stared at him in dismay. “I go to all that trouble to make them think it’s Ivankov who’s killed you, then I do that?” He let out a hollow laugh. “Besides, you forget, they weren’t buying and I had no one to sell to. Hartman had gone. Anyway,” he shrugged. “Even if they’d changed their minds, I knew any offer they might have come up with would have been chickenshit compared to Ivankov.”

Nikolai blinked. “So that was always your plan? To blackmail Ivankov?”

The older man grinned. “That was the plan and it worked. Like I said, most of the rest of what I told you was the truth. The guy he sent to the bar. His meeting with me at the Tretyakov Gallery. It all happened just like I told you, Niko. The only thing I didn’t explain to you was that Ivankov knew exactly where I stood. He hadn’t tried to take you out. Hartman wouldn’t have, so who else could it have been? He knew it was me.”

Nikolai nodded slowly. “So you cut a deal. He set you up in Bulgaria and you kept the tapes as insurance.”

‘See?” Vari grinned with delight. “You really are smart.”

Nikolai blinked. “And Natalia?”

Vari’s eyes flickered an instant. “I tried to get her to come with me just like I told you, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t let go. She was pushing and probing everywhere.”

“So she was disposed of. Overdosed on heroin.”

The older man studied the floor. “It could have been much worse for her, little brother. You saw what they did to Gilmanov.”

Nikolai’s hands closed to fists at his side. He fought to keep his voice steady. “And after that? Larisa?”

Vari drained his glass. “I tried to take her back with me to Sofia but they wouldn’t allow it. You have to remember, Niko, I still had the tapes. They still didn’t trust me. Handing her over to Vitaly to look after was Ivankov’s idea. A precaution. A card in his hand. That was always his style, Niko. Take the cards when you can. You never know when you might need them. So…” he drew a breath, ‘there was nothing more I could do. I went back to Sofia and made a lot of money. Then, after a few years when everything had settled down, I moved back here to Moscow again.”

Nikolai’s lips set in a grim smile. “And when they decided they had to get rid of Hartman, they arranged for me to escape.”

Vari’s face rose in a wry smile. “It was clever, you have to admit that. It would have been a lot more difficult to manage if you and the old man hadn’t already come up with your plan, but as it happened everything worked out perfectly. The rest of it, I think you pretty much know.”

Nikolai set down his glass and thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his coat. A trace of caution fell across Vari’s eyes. Nikolai held his gaze as he spoke. “They wanted Hartman dead and they intended to make it look as if I’d killed him. They assumed I would come to you since I had nowhere else to go. Your job was to reunite me with my daughter then deliver us to Kolbasov’s people in New York. After that they knew they could do whatever they wanted with me. If I didn’t go along with it, all they would have to do was take Larisa. They knew I would do anything rather than risk losing her again.”

Vari’s silence was an adequate response.

“One thing I’m curious about,” Nikolai’s eyes narrowed. “Trading the tapes for Larisa. I realize that was important for credibility, but what did they pay you in the end?”

Vari ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. “Over time I got a lot, Niko. I milked Ivankov for all I could and I turned it into more. A lot more. One thing I have to say for him is that he always treated our arrangement as business. In the end? Maybe you won’t believe me but in the end I didn’t ask for anything more. I didn’t need anything more.” His eyes flicked up to Nikolai’s. “It was over as far as I was concerned. I’d kept my word. I’d never released the tapes. I had my fortune and you had paid for it. The least I owed you was to help you get your daughter back again. Think about it, Niko. There was no way that could ever have happened if we hadn’t played their game.” Behind them the floodlight on the dome of the Redeemer Cathedral turned on suddenly, scattering the room with a golden glow.

Nikolai rocked slowly on his heels, considering. “But you assumed I would have them copied, didn’t you? That’s why you left them with me.”

“I knew what they were planning, Niko. I knew they were afraid of Hartman.” Vari smiled. “Vitaly had organized everything so all I had to do was persuade him to give my people the details. That wasn’t hard. After that I became your guardian angel.”

“And then,” Nikolai nodded, “and then you assumed that Hartman and I would end up comparing notes and that I would give him the copies of the tapes and he would use them to finish off Ivankov.”

Vari shrugged. “You know how it goes, Niko. You make your plans. Maybe they work; maybe they don’t. If they don’t, you think of something else. If something had gone wrong I would have found another way around the problem. But I didn’t think it would, because you were always predictable, Niko. Tenacious but predictable, that was your great weakness. Although,” he grimaced slightly, ‘tonight I’m not so sure. Maybe you’ve changed. Maybe you’re more complex now.” He paused. Lifted his brows in speculation. ‘The urgent message to meet Ivankov here… I presume he won’t be joining us?”

“You’re wrong.” Nikolai watched the flicker of doubt cloud Vari’s face. He smiled. Walked slowly across the room, took the leather chair by its back and spun it around. “He’s here already.”

Vari stared at the seated figure. Marat Ivankov was dressed immaculately in a dinner suit, propped upright, his head tipped slightly to one side, his eyes closed, hands resting calmly in his lap. A dark, crusted halo of blood encircled the single hole at the center of his brow.

Nikolai stood behind him, his fingers clasping the leather above Ivankov’s shoulders, regarding Vari across the distance that separated them. “You know… All these years and this is the first time I have ever seen him in the flesh.”

Vari’s startled eyes swung up to Nikolai’s. “How…?” His mouth fell open.

Nikolai smiled. “Nine years in Russian prisons, Vari. That sort of experience provides all sorts of useful contacts.” His smile folded. Vari was recovering from his surprise, his right hand moving towards the edge of his jacket. Nikolai shook his head. “too late, old friend.” His eyes lifted to a point beyond the other man’s shoulder. Vari started to swing aside then froze as the barrel of a pistol came to rest against his left temple. Zalisko’s gloved hand swept around his chest, dragging his own weapon from the holster beneath his arm.

Nikolai was walking back across the room now, taking his time. His right hand dropped to the pocket of his overcoat and withdrew again, his fingers clasping a plastic syringe. He stopped, examining the uncertainty and the fear in Vari’s eyes as Zalisko wrapped his hands behind his back, locking them together in a set of black steel cuffs.

“It was you who killed her, wasn’t it, Vari? You killed Natalia.”

Nikolai’s head twisted aside, his eyes following the older man down as Zalisko forced him to his knees. “You know how I know that?”

He set the syringe down on the sideboard and reached towards Vari’s throat. Zalisko’s hand closed around the crown of Vari’s head, blocking his attempt to draw back. Vari’s eyes fell to Nikolai’s fingers, following their path as they edged towards his neck. They slid beneath the gold crucifix and pulled hard away, bursting the chain. “This is how I know.” He held the Russian cross before the other man’s eyes.