“If you think it would be better, I can turn Tibor Alexandrovich down,” Lazlo said. Bianca could tell from the lack of inflection in his voice how much he would regret having to do that.
“No, you should accept.” Bianca curled a hand around the door handle as she spoke. “The gala starts at eight, which is about the time your part of the show should finish. I’m guessing you won’t need to be at the museum until around nine. I’ll give you a more precise time after I measure the distances and check out a few more details.”
“I was thinking the performance could be like an alibi for us, if questions are ever asked about where we were during the robbery,” Lazlo said.
“It would,” Bianca agreed. “But let’s hope those questions are never asked.”
“From your lips to God’s ears,” Lazlo said.
Through the window Bianca saw Dedi, who’d been standing inside the apartment building out of the cold as she apparently waited for Bianca to arrive, step outside and gesture impatiently at her. With a quick smile for Lazlo, Bianca slid out of the truck. The blast of cold air that greeted her made her shiver.
The apartment was a third-floor walk-up. The stairway was cold and grungy. The smell of borscht was strong. The stairs and hall were uncarpeted linoleum with greasy walls. Sound from the two dozen apartments that opened off the hall ranged from babies crying to a couple arguing to several loud TVs blaring. If there was insulation, you couldn’t tell it.
The number of the apartment that Dedi took Bianca, Bela, Elena and Maria to was 318, identified by cheap metal numbers nailed on the cheap hollow-core door. Inside, the apartment consisted of a small living room with a couch, two armchairs and a dining table with four chairs, and a galley kitchen opening off one end. A single bedroom with two sets of triple bunk beds that, placed against the walls, left just enough open floor space for someone to walk between them and a bathroom completed the apartment. The walls were avocado green; the two windows were covered with grimy lace curtains.
Bianca reflexively chose a top bunk to make it harder for anyone to sneak up on her as she slept.
After Dorottya had arrived with her dogs, and the men along with Griff had gone up to their fourth-floor apartment, the whole gang, minus the animals, got together and went down to have dinner at the Burger King around the corner. Bianca was wary of patronizing an American franchise, but she was still in the long brown wig and glasses she wore as Maggy and she was one of a troupe of circus performers, groups of whom often frequented the restaurant, which should provide additional cover. She figured that she was safe enough for the brief time it took them to order food and eat.
But the homey smells of burgers and fries notwithstanding, she was uncomfortable the entire time she was inside. The bright lights of the restaurant coupled with the darkness of the night outside made it possible for anyone on the street or in passing vehicles or nearby buildings to see everyone in line at the counter, or seated at the tables and booths. She enjoyed the ketchup-dipped fries in particular, but she didn’t like the idea that someone could be watching her while it was too dark outside for her to see them. And she couldn’t shake the crawly feeling at the back of her neck.
The ubiquitousness of the FSB was a concern, as were the professional killers who made the capital their home. The CIA kill team wouldn’t have given up: she had no doubt that they were still hunting her and Mason. And then there was Mickey, who she was sure was still searching for her and Mason, as well.
Nobody had any reason to suspect that she was in Moscow. As crowded and busy as the city was, Maggy Chance was just one more grain of sand on the beach.
On the other hand, they’d tracked her to Macau.
That was the worry she couldn’t get out of her head.
25
After they ate, the entire troupe went over to the Nikulin and met Tibor Alexandrovich. A short, burly man of around fifty, he had thinning dark hair and a bristling salt-and-pepper mustache. He was dressed like a seventies-era John Travolta, in a white suit with a red silk shirt open halfway down his chest, which was festooned with gold chains. He greeted them warmly, welcoming them to his circus and telling them how much he was looking forward to seeing the Circus Nagy perform on Friday night. He then passed them on to Oskar’s cousin Patrik Szabo.
Patrik was sixty-two. He resembled Oskar, with the same nearly black eyes and wiry build, but his face was far less lined and weathered and, all in all, he gave the impression of a man who was enjoying a good life. Like Oskar, he had once been an acrobat. He had retired from performing fifteen years previously and now worked as the circus’s assistant manager.
“Vy gordites nashey semyey,” he said to Oskar—You do your family proud—as he released him from an embrace, then looked at Oskar’s four grandsons. “So these are our hopefuls.”
He still spoke Russian, but Bianca’s ear had adjusted and she now translated without having to think about it.
As the young men rather shyly agreed that they were, indeed, the hopefuls, and Dorottya proudly extolled their virtues as performers, Patrik showed the entire group around the building. It looked more like a luxuriously appointed theater than a typical circus. In the lobby, which was full of people there for the evening performance, guests could buy popcorn, cotton candy, ice cream, cookies, soda—and also get their photos taken with two of the night’s animal stars, a tiger and a leopard, both of whom seemed to regard the commotion with bored tolerance. Inside the arena, the venue was breathtaking, with frescoes and gilt embellishments surrounding the high-domed ceiling, an elaborate staircase down which the principal performers entered and a stage for the live orchestra that played every show. Tiered, red-plush seating for two thousand surrounded a single well-groomed ring. Four more performers’ entrances—two beneath the staircase and two on opposite sides of the ring—caught Bianca’s eye as the lights went down and a troupe of clowns poured into the ring through them.
As Patrik introduced them to those of the acts that they came across and showed them around the labyrinthian backstage area, Bianca’s attention kept being drawn to the ongoing performances in the ring.
Jugglers juggled. Dancers danced. Magicians pulled rabbits out of hats. Trapeze artists flew overhead. Tightrope walkers played leapfrog thirty feet above the ground. Dazzling white horses cantered around the ring while their riders leaped through hoops of fire. Two enormous brown bears lumbered into the ring, climbed into two clown cars and drove away, to the comic dismay of the clowns.
All to the tune of the audience’s wild applause.
Catching a glimpse of Lazlo’s face as he, too, watched the action in the ring, Bianca was reminded that this was the life that he and all of his family had been born into and loved. Even with the lure of a four-million-dollar payday, she thought that they would find leaving it behind bittersweet.
Before she returned to the apartment, Bianca went to check on Dedi, who since the family had come on board about the theft had been working tirelessly to make copies of all 101 objects that made up the main part of the treasure. This was the part that was on display in Room Three of the Pushkin, and this was what she was planning to steal. Other, less famous pieces were in storage elsewhere or on display at various other museums, but she wasn’t going to worry about them.
One of the camper trucks contained Dedi’s small workshop, which included a workbench and tools, a small kiln and, among other things, loads of faux gold stamping blanks, which were penny-size and used with metal stamps for jewelry making. Bottles of different solutions and powders for antiquing the finished product, refining the color and producing an authentic-looking period piece were housed in spice-bottle-like racks. A potter’s wheel was set up in a corner.
To anyone who didn’t know what Dedi was really doing, it looked like she was making ordinary costume jewelry for sale. Which, as she caustically told Bianca when Bela, who was helping Dedi and who she was training to one day ta
ke her place, admitted her to the truck, was what she told anyone who was nosy enough to ask.
“How’s it coming?” Bianca approached the workbench with interest. The truck was parked in the open area behind the barns, and the generator was running. The interior was warm and well-lit. Dedi had been pounding away with a rubber mallet when Bianca entered. Now, as Bela resumed her place on the bench beside Dedi and picked up a metal stamp to press a design into one of a string of penny-size gold discs, Dedi upended a plastic bottle over her creation, which was a small, basket-shaped gold earring.
Bianca recognized it instantly as a replica of one the earrings in the treasure. Looking past Dedi, she saw that a detailed picture of the original piece along with its size and weight specifications was pinned to the corkboard affixed to the wall. Also on the corkboard was the picture of the smaller of the two gold diadems—headdresses—that supposedly had once been worn by Helen of Troy. The strand of golden discs Bela was working on clearly belonged to it.
“The job will be finished in time,” Dedi replied as a few drops of a milky fluid were squeezed out of the bottle onto the earring. She set down the bottle and used a brush to work the solution into the earring. Almost immediately the gold started to take on an antique patina. A strongly astringent smell that made Bianca think of rubbing alcohol had her wrinkling her nose. “Most of the pieces are very simple.” With a nod she indicated a quartet of finished bracelets set off to one side of the work bench that were nothing more than spirals of gold wire. “These we are working on now are the more complicated ones.”
A ping in the background caused Bela to put down the metal stamp and get up.
“The kiln,” Dedi explained as Bela opened what looked almost like a microwave and, by means of a long-handled platter, removed the item inside. It was, Bianca saw, the two-handled sauceboat that was unusual enough to rate its own small display case. The only problem was, this sauceboat was made of clay and was a dull terra cotta in color, while the real sauceboat was made of solid gold and was colored, uh, gold.
“Do not worry, it will be spray painted later,” Dedi reassured her, Bianca’s expression clearly having betrayed her surprise. “Put it with the others,” she directed Bela, who nodded and carefully carried the pottery sauceboat from the truck.
Dedi’s expression softened as she watched her great-granddaughter go.
“She is a good child, that one,” she said to Bianca after the door closed behind Bela. “She is why I will make sure that these pieces are good. Our life, the circus, always the worry about money—it is too hard. I want her to have more.”
Bianca nodded. “She is lucky to have you,” she said, and meant it.
“I am lucky to have her,” Dedi replied. “I am old now, and I know—family is the most important thing.”
Before anything more could be said Bela returned, and Bianca left them to it.
* * *
“You mean to tell me they’re fake?” Doc was whispering, but his voice was still loud enough with outrage to make Bianca shush him under her breath. The few people around them were clearly tourists, but speaking English would attract attention in and of itself and, anyway, one couldn’t be too careful.
“Yes.” Her voice was scarcely louder than a hiss. She was fluent in Russian. At the moment it did her no good whatsoever: Doc couldn’t speak the language.
He quieted down. “All of them?”
“Yes. Here’s a tip-off—that’s Michelangelo’s David.” Bianca nodded to a supersized piece of sculpture on a pedestal in the middle of the room. “The original’s in Florence, remember? And it’s smaller. And marble. That’s a plaster cast reproduction.”
Doc gave the sculpture a squinty-eyed once-over. “I totally knew that.”
“Moscow University used to use this building as a teaching aid, so they made copies of a lot of valuable art that they don’t actually possess,” Bianca said.
“Ain’t nothing like the real thing, huh?” Doc looked at the towering statues around them with fresh eyes. “Only, I guess not so much.”
It was the following day, just after lunchtime. They were inside the Pushkin Museum’s main building passing through what Bianca thought of as the Hall of Statues. It had massive Greek columns and oversize replicas of famous statues, along with mosaics, vases, and a pulpit against one wall.
The gala would be held on the first floor, according to her information. If she were a betting person, she would bet that any catering tables would be set up in this very hall. It was long and wide, centrally located—and drafty enough to draw smoke like a flue.
Be still my heart.
They were making their way toward Room Three, which was dedicated solely to King Priam’s Treasure, or, as it was billed in the museum literature, The Treasure of Troy. They’d started out walking from the apartment building, then after about a mile had caught a taxi. (Almost any private citizen could turn their car into a taxi; the key was to be cautious and it helped that Bianca spoke the language.) They’d ridden around in the taxi for a bit and then set out on foot again, all through a lightly falling snow. There was as yet no accumulation on the ground. That would come later in the month, and certainly by Christmas. Bundled up in coats and hats and scarves against the cold, they blended easily with the throngs of pedestrians on the busy streets.
A three-mile trip that, walking the entire way, should have taken forty-five minutes, had required an hour and a half.
And that would be because she was operating under Moscow Rules.
Being identified was now a perpetual concern of hers, but between her layers of outerwear and the sheer number of people out and about, she thought that the chances of a would-be assassin spotting her were remote. Nevertheless, tradecraft had been invented for a reason, and that reason was to keep those who practiced it alive. Moscow Rules had been developed during the cold war specifically for agents who were conducting clandestine operations in that city because it was said to be the most hostile environment in which to work.
The rules were:
Assume nothing.
Never go against your gut.
Everyone is potentially under opposition control.
You are never completely alone.
Go with the flow; blend in.
Vary your pattern and stay within your cover.
Lull them into a sense of complacency.
Do not harass the opposition.
Pick the time and place for action.
Keep your options open.
Bianca had extended the list to include the most extreme form of antisurveillance tactics. The CliffsNotes version was: a straight line might be the shortest distance between two points, but never take it if you’re traveling somewhere. Start left if you mean to go right. Double back frequently. Walk around the block in the middle of a route. If you start out walking, switch to a vehicle and then switch back. Ducking into a store is a good way to uncover surveillance. Window-shopping, because windows could be used as a mirror to spot tails, is your friend. Do not take the Metro, because (1) the Metro is full of surveillance cameras, and (2) everybody takes it, including agents of the FSB and SVR.
Her purpose in visiting the museum, of course, was to see the treasure and the cases containing it, check out the locks she would need to pick and any encumbrances, such as surveillance cameras and alarms, they might encounter, and evaluate the size, probable weight and appearance of what they would be stealing.
It was always important to see the site of an upcoming job in person, to measure distances and obstacles so that she could come up with a precise timeline, to identify entrances and exits and get a true visual handle on the space. The trick lay in only visiting once, if at all possible. Multiple visits were problematic in that they might arouse suspicion. “Casing the joint” was a concept as well-known in Moscow as anywhere. Even if it wasn’t noticed by the museum staff at the time, such s
uspicious activity would be glaringly obvious if a theft was discovered and surveillance footage was reviewed by, say, the FSB. For that reason, she didn’t want the Nagys to visit the museum prior to the robbery. For their own safety, they would have to learn everything they needed to know from pictures and diagrams. That precaution, coupled with the firefighters’ uniforms they would be wearing when they did the job, should keep them from being identified even after the theft was discovered, as sooner or later it would be.
Doc was with her because he needed to probe the computerized portion of the Pushkin’s security system with an eye to hacking into it on the night in question. For that purpose, he had his laptop with him, concealed in a slit in the lining of his coat because the Pushkin required all bags, backpacks, etcetera to be checked into lockers at the door. In a few minutes, he would go to the men’s room, find a stall, sit down, get out his laptop and run his tests. After that they would be ready to leave.
In the meantime, here they were checking out the museum.
The design of the building itself, which dated from 1912, was based on the model of a Greek temple. Its classical facade was fronted by a row of Ionic columns. Inside, it was ornate and old-fashioned and beautiful, with soaring domed ceilings punctuated by large, mullioned skylights (or, as they were known in the trade, means of ingress). The walls were a combination of white with pastels—eggshell blue, mint green, soft yellow. Paintings, statues and artifacts were displayed on walls, on pedestals, in corners and in dedicated display cases. The display cases and pedestals were old, the benches and woodwork showed wear, and the overall impression was one of magnificence that had been allowed to grow shabby.
The place smelled just a little musty.
“Kind of reminds me of the Met,” Doc said.
Knowing that Doc, a Bronx native, was referring to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Bianca glanced at him in surprise. “Did you go there a lot?”
“All the time. Best free Wi-Fi in the city.”
The Moscow Deception--An International Spy Thriller Page 26
