Stuart Kaminsky - Blood and Rubles

“I need a cup of coffee,” Hamilton said.

Kuzen looked at the FBI agent in panic and reached for his sleeve. “No, please.”

“I’m just going to get a cup of coffee,” said Hamilton calmly, a smile on his face.

“They have no warheads, no weapons, yet,” said Kuzen.

“Nuclear material?” asked Hamilton.

Kuzen shrugged.

“We have carefully examined your background, Kuzen,” Hamilton said. “It is our conclusion that you do not have the requisite skills to assemble a functional nuclear weapon. How long will it be before the Beasts discover this?”

“You don’t understand,” said Kuzen. “They already know. I am only a decoy. I know enough to talk the language of nuclear weaponry with people sent by the North Koreans or the Iranians.”

“So the Beasts have no plans to deliver real weapons?” asked Hamilton.

“Not yet,” said Kuzen. “The German they killed in the café, Kirst. He figured out I was a fraud. He was going to tell the buyer and …” He shrugged.

“Why are you confessing so readily?” asked Hamilton.

“Because,” said Kuzen, “if you leave without taking me with you, they will come and question me. I am not a man of great courage. They will assume that I have talked or might soon talk.”

“We will have the names of all members of the mafia for whom you are working,” said Karpo.

Kuzen laughed nervously.

“And,” added Hamilton, “we will have your testimony and all information you possess about illegal activity.”

Kuzen stopped laughing, tried to catch his breath, and said, “I will be a dead man. There is no place you could put me that would be safe. They would get to me in any prison.”

“What about the United States?” asked Hamilton.

“I don’t know,” said Kuzen. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that you will testify against this mafia and I will arrange for you to have immediate political asylum in the United States. I can also arrange for you to find employment in our nuclear-disposal efforts.”

“America?” Kuzen said. “My wife? Daughters? If they stay …”

“Your wife and daughters too,” said Hamilton.

“This is all so fast,” said Kuzen. “I need time to … You just walk into my home …” He pointed around the room at his possessions. “You take everything away.”

“There will come a time,” said Hamilton, “when your mafia will find your information too old and limited. Then they will buy themselves another expert and eliminate you. How can someone as intelligent as you are be so stupid as to not see this?”

“I …” Kuzen began, but he never finished.

The front door burst open. The bald man from the lobby came limping in with a gun in his right hand. Karpo and Hamilton drew their weapons as the limping man, his teeth clenched in either pain or a grin, began firing.

The bullet from Hamilton’s weapon crumpled the man forward on his knees as the shot from Karpo’s gun hit the man in the forehead, jerking his head back.

“Are you hit?” asked Hamilton, moving cautiously toward the fallen killer without looking back at Karpo.

“No,” said Karpo.

“How could he miss?” said Hamilton, kicking the weapon away from the dead man.

“He didn’t,” Karpo answered, looking down at Kuzen, whose beautiful silk robe and pajamas were drenched with blood. “He came to kill him first.”

Hamilton looked at Kuzen’s body and the delicate coffee cup and saucer, which were untouched. Then he felt himself beginning to tremble. He fought against it. He had never shot anyone before, had never had reason even to draw his weapon, and now he had almost been killed. If the dead man on the floor had chosen to, he could have killed Hamilton or Karpo or both of them.

Hamilton had assumed the dead man had been there to protect Kuzen. It was clear now that the dead man had been there to be sure that Kuzen did not talk to the police.

“There’s a phone in the corner, near the window,” said Hamilton. “Our assassin may have called for backup, or the doorman may be doing that right now. I suggest we do the same.”

The FBI man was sure that he was not trembling. He was also still clutching his weapon in both hands, keeping his eyes toward the front of the apartment through which the killer had come. Karpo placed his weapon back in the holster under his jacket. He ignored Hamilton’s suggestion.

“I suggest you call the police number,” said Karpo. “They will attempt to tell you what district we are in. Armed officers will begin showing up within ten minutes of your call. Someone at the district will, by that time, have also placed a call to a member of the mafia responsible for this, if the doorman has not already done so. I am the ranking Russian officer on the scene. I suggest we search the apartment while we wait for help. When help arrives, evidence may disappear.”

“You are a cynical bastard,” said Hamilton admiringly.

“The recognition of reality in a world of political chaos is not cynicism but reason,” said Karpo.

“Do you always quote Lenin?” asked Hamilton, putting his weapon away but keeping his jacket unbuttoned.

“Do you always recognize when someone is quoting Lenin?” asked Karpo, moving toward a room that looked like an office. The door was open and a computer sat on the desk in the room.

“Not always,” said Hamilton. “But it’s impressive when I do, isn’t it?”

He paused at Kuzen’s body, touched the man’s neck for a pulse. He didn’t find one, but he hadn’t expected to. He moved to the telephone and made the call to the police for immediate backup, using Colonel Snitkonoy’s name.

“Ten-minute search,” said Hamilton, going to the front door and pushing it closed. The lock was now broken, but the door stayed closed.

“Ten minutes will be adequate,” said Karpo, who was now out of Hamilton’s sight.

Even though the man on the floor had a bullet hole in his forehead directly above his left eye, Hamilton knelt again to be sure he was dead. When he entered the office, Karpo was going through papers stashed in neat wooden cubbyholes on the table next to the desk. The walls of the room were filled with books. A stack of manila folders lay neatly on one side of the computer. On the other side were boxes of floppy disks.

“My computer skills are adequate, but not sophisticated,” Karpo said, turning on the computer. “I assume you are well trained.”

Hamilton moved behind the desk and examined the names of the files on the screen. Karpo continued a search of the contents of the envelopes and the cubbyholes.

“I doubt if he’d leave anything incriminating sitting on top of his desk,” said Hamilton.

From where he sat, he could see both of the bodies in the next room. That was the way he liked it.

Karpo examined the cubbyholes. Each was marked by a small white tab in black ink. There seemed to be no order to the slots, not alphabetical, not by subject. There were fifteen slots with labels such as RELATIVES, MARKETS, CARTOONS,CATS, CLOTHING, PENSION.

“Orderly man,” Hamilton said. “Files in order, indexed by subject, title, entry dates.”

Hamilton opened a file at random and shook his head. “No wasted words, our Kuzen. Efficient.”

In front of Karpo stood the less-than-orderly cubbyholes. He stared at them while the FBI agent hurried through the hard-disk files.

“Plenty of data here,” said Hamilton. “Take hours to go through it. Everything looks like it’s backed up and indexed on floppy. I’ll double-check. Then I suggest we look at the backups when we have more time. We’re down to seven minutes.”

“I’ll continue to look,” said Karpo, going through a stack of letters and notes from the cubbyhole marked TAXES.