Mitch Silver - The Bookworm

Lara knew she was too picky, looking for a Russian guy who could take as well as he could give. One who was not just interested, but interesting. Ilya Kolkov, he’d been interesting. There was a moment back then… before Viktor had shown up with his medals and his war stories and seemed the more interesting one… before she understood how many other women found Viktor interesting, too… when it might have been Ilya.

The emcee announced, “Okay, smeshivatsya !”

His call of “Mingle!” set off the final cattle call, when people who’d been sizing each other up all night exchanged mobile numbers. Or simply decided to go off together. Over near the bar, Vera was mobbed. Guys competed to get her a drink, to light her cigarette. Was it all about how you looked; were Russian guys that shallow? Or was it something Vera instinctively knew to say, some magical combination of syllables in those quick moments sitting across from each other, when the guy was cute and the moment was right… something Lara would never master.

Three nondescript men came up and pressed slips of paper with their table numbers into her hand, one of them Mr. Men Without Hats. Then someone tapped her from behind and said, “I think I can help you. Forget Table 9; guy’s a washout.”

Lara saw it was one of her fellow competitors. The tall, well-dressed woman wore a nametag that said, “Tati.” Her face was vaguely familiar.

“Do I know you?”

“Possibly. I used to be the weekend weather person on Channel One… Tatiana Ivanova.” She held out her hand.

Lara shook it. “Yes, I remember now. You were good with the maps.”

“ Spasibo , Dr. Klimt.”

Dr. Klimt? How did this woman know her—

“Larashka!”

It was Vera, waving, leaving with the hot guy. Lara waved back, but in the meantime Vera’s date whispered something funny in her ear and Vera was turning to him, laughing, the swan forgetting all about the duckling she’d taken under her wing.

In a low voice, the stranger at her elbow said, “I… we… know about the book.”

Lara turned back. “We? Which book? One of mine?”

Tatiana Ivanova snorted. “Don’t be coy, Dr. Klimt, it doesn’t suit you. We’ll double what anyone else will pay.”

The place was quickly emptying out. The emcee switched the lights on and off, his signal that they were closing up.

“Pay for what? Who are you?”

“I told you… I’m a helper, a friend.”

“A friend?”

“All right then, call me a secret admirer. You have many such admirers in The Other Russia.”

“You’re working for the opposition?”

“The democrats, the people who want a more open government, a free press. Garry asked me to—”

“Garry Kasparov? You know him?”

The two women were standing by a table where some guy had left behind his cheat sheet, a crumpled list of crossed-out girls’ names. Lara’s was one of them. Tatiana Ivanova picked it up. “Look, the people you’re dealing with… they aren’t very nice. Afterward, they’ll cross you off like a name on a list.”

“What—what are you talking about? You must have the wrong girl.”

“No, Professor, you’re the right girl. We’ll double any offer… think it over.”

Before Lara could respond, the emcee doused the lights, longer this time. In the dark he said, “Show’s over, ladies. Nighty night.”

When the lights came on again, Tatiana Ivanova was gone.

The nighttime laser lights beaming from the top of St. Basil’s cathedral were trying to find a way through the closed blinds of the suite when the call came in on the cell phone with the American eagle on it. The President, still up reading policy papers, pushed the blue “privacy” button and was wide-awake in a hurry.

“You did what?”

The voice on the other end back in Alaska repeated what he’d said. For a moment the commander-in-chief took the receiver from his ear and looked at it in disbelief before replying. “When I said ‘do what it takes,’ I meant pay him anything he wants. Not… eliminate him.”

“We tried that. We couldn’t buy him off. Said he wouldn’t… ”

“Wouldn’t what?”

“Wouldn’t be ‘a party to what we’re doing.’ Exact words.”

“Christ, Carl.”

“I know, sir. The good news is, the buyer’s rep and him, they never filed a report. And now that things are running smooth again, there’s no proof anything happened. No proof, no paper trail. Plus, we made the thing look like a suicide.”

“That’s your idea of good news?”

“Well… I mean… you’re in the clear.”

“Except there’s you, isn’t there, Carl?”

Without waiting for an answer, he carefully placed the portable phone back in its leather carrying case with the embossed Presidential seal. Then he threw the case against the hotel room wall.

His wife, used to it all by now, didn’t even look up from the book she was reading. “Problem, Hon?”

Friday and the plane home could not come soon enough.

The weak Alaskan sun was dropping in the west when Lev drew up to the testing station. Craig wasn’t there yet. Five o’clock came and went, but the American didn’t show. Lev left three voicemails while he waited. Nothing.

By a quarter to six, the Russian decided to run the test on the petroleum, unofficially, by himself. He opened the large gate-valve, unlatched the galvanized “thief hatch,” and then the stopcock. When a liter of the goo had filled the Pyrex beaker, he stepped forward and, bravely, took a deep breath. No rotten eggs, no sulfur, just unrefined petroleum.

He dropped his hydrometer in. After a moment he squinted at the result: 31.9 API. North Slope Crude was acting like North Slope Crude again.

“Len” Klimt cleaned everything up, locked the station and, more than a little confused, drove away. A pair of eyes followed him down the road.

In the morning, Lara arrived at the Arkhiv with her rolling suitcase packed full of Vera’s “on-camera” wardrobe options to go over with Gerasimov later in the day. She had come to terms with not being able to lecture on Friday; instead, she’d settle for interviewing the president of the United States.

Leonid the guard opened the bag and went through her clothes, handling, feeling her lingerie. Afterward, he put a sticker on the suitcase. No hello, no nod, nothing to acknowledge he’d been touching her intimate things; all in the name of state security.

Leaving the suitcase in her study carrel—she’d call Gerasimov later and tell him when to pick her up from the Arkhiv—Lara carried the bag of recordings that supposedly led to a million-ruble jackpot (or more, if Tatiana Ivanova was to be believed) and headed back down the corridor to the Listening Room and Mr. Coward.

We now begin cylinder number four. I’ve given instructions I’m not to be interrupted for anything but a true emergency. Now, where were we? Ah yes, the Courtauld.

In the end we brought two books upstairs with us. One was a Bible, in Latin, with a thick cowhide leather binding and pages of vellum, probably printed in Germany, though not by Gutenberg. The other, thinner, also on vellum, had a cracked spine. “Our sacrificial lamb,” Anthony called it.