Rogue Angel 51: The Pretender's Gambit

by Alex Archer

  No one seemed overly interested in them.

  “They are not here, Annja. Do not worry. I would know. I am watching for them now.” Klykov touched his nose in a knowing way.

  Annja didn’t point out that Klykov wasn’t going to be there forever, or the fact that she’d been used to taking care of herself long before he showed up. He was just demonstrating the male mindset, the same way Bart had been doing by trying to protect her, she supposed. She didn’t mind because they were good men—as long as that attitude didn’t slow her down. “They surprised us at the market.”

  “Here we are ahead of them.” Klykov paused at the curb. “For now.”

  Just before she could ask him what he was waiting on, a dark sedan slid to a stop in front of them. A big man with a sad, seamed face and iron-gray hair got out from behind the steering wheel and walked around to the rear of the car to open the door.

  When the burly man waved her in, Annja slid across the backseat to make room for Klykov. The chauffeur put their bags in the trunk then took his seat behind the steering wheel. He spoke in Russian.

  “English, please, Vladi,” Klykov said, nodding to Annja. “Out of respect.”

  “You have address?” Vladi’s English was a trifle stilted. He put the car in gear and eased into traffic.

  Annja gave the address. Nadia Silaevae lived in the Kitai Gorod neighborhood, not far from the old KBG building on Lubyanka Square. Annja was faintly aware of the area being part of Moscow’s old city, and a quick perusal of the neighborhood via the internet hadn’t broadened her familiarity with the locale appreciably.

  Once they were on the highway, Vladi reached under the seat and brought out a shoe box, which he passed back to Klykov.

  “Is good,” Vladi said. “Is one I have used, but never on business.”

  “Thank you, Vladi.” Klykov opened the box and took out a pistol. “Very nice.”

  “I have included three extra magazines since you have had trouble in Odessa. And there is a silencer for when you wish to be quiet. Very good silencer. Easy on, easy off.”

  “Thank you, my friend.” Klykov tested the weight of the weapon, then put it in his right coat pocket. He dropped the spare magazines and the silencer in his left pocket.

  Annja silently hoped that they wouldn’t need them. She didn’t wish to bring trouble to Nadia Silaevae’s door.

  * * *

  DEEP IN THE Kitai Gorod neighborhood, Klykov had Vladi pull the sedan to the curb in front of a small grocer’s. Klykov got out of the car and Annja followed.

  She loved the small shop because it felt casually comforting in its sameness even though the products were all listed in Russian. It still felt a little like the bodega down the block from her apartment. She couldn’t help thinking that there wasn’t a metropolitan area, anywhere in the world, where someone wouldn’t be able to find quaint neighborhood shops or markets. Cities were like home everywhere.

  A handful of children in school uniforms under their jackets stood in front of the candy section. Klykov walked over to them, talked briefly and got them all to laugh. Then he pressed coins into their hands. For a moment, he looked like any Russian grandfather doling out allowances, but Annja couldn’t forget how heavily his coat pockets hung with the pistol and extra magazines.

  He picked up a large shopping basket, walked to the back of the shop where the bread was kept and picked out three large loaves. He added a dozen small pirozhkis, which were pies filled with fish, cheese, cabbage or jam. He added klyukva s sakharom, which were sugar frosted cranberries, cans of sardines, a jar of pickles and packets of tea.

  “Not just tea,” Klykov told Annja when she asked about it. “This is black tea meant to be served with cardamom and lemon or cream. If you have not had it, you will enjoy it. Very robust.” He picked up the condiments for the tea, as well.

  “I didn’t know we were going on a picnic.”

  Klykov smiled at her. “At her age, Nadia Silaevae is probably a woman alone. Even if she is not, she will appreciate not having to make a meal or two for her husband and herself after we have gone. She is doing us a favor. She should not be doing this for nothing.”

  Annja couldn’t argue with that logic.

  After the purchases were made, they returned to the car and Vladi drove on.

  * * *

  NADIA SILAEVAE LIVED on the first floor of a six-story apartment building that looked as if it had survived most of the era since the time of the Bolsheviks. Scars decorated the bricks, and the mortar needed replacing in several areas. A few children lounged around the steps and the small yards, eyeing Annja and Klykov with open and wary speculation.

  Arms loaded with food, Annja and Klykov stood outside the unit that Klykov said had the woman’s surname on it. Annja couldn’t read the Cyrillic alphabet, but Klykov verified the address. He knocked on the door.

  The peephole inset in the door darkened for a second, then a woman’s voice spoke in Russian.

  Klykov quickly replied and Annja recognized her own name. Then he smiled and looked at Annja. “Nadia Silaevae is afraid we are door-to-door salesmen trying to sell her something.”

  A short round woman appeared in a dark dress and scarf. She held a heavy cast-iron frying pan in one hand. Quietly, she and Klykov talked for a few moments, then Nadia Silaevae stepped back from the open door and directed them in. As they passed, she inspected the grocery bags with keen interest. Annja suspected the groceries had done more to gain entrance to the home than anything Klykov said or Tanechka Chislova had told her.

  The living room was small and it led to the kitchen. At Nadia’s instruction, Klykov and Annja carried the bags to the small, modestly dressed dining table where white-petaled chamomile blossoms stood proudly on spindly stalks in a leaden glass vase. The faint scent of apples from the fragrant blossoms lingered in the kitchen.

  Once the bags were on the table, Nadia chased Klykov and Annja from the kitchen to the living room and began to put the food away. Klykov guided Annja to the small green sofa and he sat beside her. Across a low coffee table, a matching love seat sat with a knitting basket beside it. Judging from the way the knitting project laid on top of the basket, they had interrupted Nadia’s work.

  Klykov and Nadia spoke back and forth intermittently. Annja felt left out of the conversation and satisfied herself with looking around the room. Guessing from the number of knickknacks on shelves and a small shadowbox on the wall, Nadia had lived in the apartment for a long time.

  There was a shelf of books that made her curious. Closer inspection of those revealed that some of the titles were in English and that they were spy novels by British and American authors. None of them were recent editions, so she supposed Nadia’s husband had been the reader.

  No sign of the husband, other than pictures of a couple with a much younger Nadia featured in them. The absence was circumspect, but Annja felt sad for the old woman.

  “I am sorry, Annja,” Klykov said. “I could translate my communication with Nadia Silaevae, but there is nothing of consequence we are discussing. Merely pleasantries and some catching up on events and people in Moscow.”

  “I heard my name come up a few times.”

  Klykov smiled. “Nadia Silaevae is very curious about you. She asked if you were my granddaughter, and I told her that you were an American television star, that I was merely your guide.”

  Annja stopped herself from pointing out that she was an archaeologist first and foremost, then she decided making the argument wasn’t justified.

  “Nadia Silaevae is most impressed. She has never had a television star of any kind in her home, let alone one from America. She feels very honored.”

  “Please tell her thank you for me, and mention that she has a lovely home.”

  Klykov nodded and spoke to the old woman again. They had a brief exchange and Klykov turned to Annja again. “Nadia Silaevae would like to know how you will take your tea.”

  “Lemon, please.”

  The choice was r
elayed. A few more minutes passed, and then Nadia Silaevae carried a tea service to the living room. She spoke to Klykov and he nodded and began pouring tea while she returned to the kitchen. When she reappeared, she carried another tray, this one covered with bread and jam and a few of the pirozhkis. She passed out small plates, sat in her chair and gestured to the food with a smile.

  Annja accepted her tea from Klykov, selected one of the pies stuffed with fish because she suddenly realized she was hungry and added a couple of pickles.

  Nadia Silaevae spoke to Klykov, who immediately translated for Annja. “She would like to see the elephant.”

  “Oh, sure.” Annja reached into her backpack beside the sofa and brought out the piece. While at Odessa International Airport, she’d found a curio shop that featured small keepsakes that came in boxes with foam padding. She’d bought the keepsake, which she hadn’t kept, and tucked the elephant safely inside.

  She took the piece out and handed it to Nadia Silaevae, who smiled in recognition and talked in an excited voice. She handed the elephant back to Annja and left her seat to walk to a small closet.

  “She has never before seen the elephant,” Klykov explained, “but she has seen pictures of it. Her family was very proud of it.”

  “What does she know about it?”

  Klykov shrugged. “We will see.”

  Nadia Silaevae returned to her seat and opened the thick photo album she had brought back with her. Growing more animated, she flipped through the album and stopped a few pages in. She pointed proudly.

  Six black-and-white photographs on the page were of a gray-bearded old man who looked wrinkled as a prune. He was grinning widely in most of the pictures, and he was holding the piece in his hand, posing with it on his biceps and holding it again in his cupped hands.

  “May I?” Annja pointed at the photo album.

  “Da. Puzhalsta.”

  Yes and please were two of the words Annja knew in Russian. In fact, she knew yes, no, please, thank you, and where can I find food in most languages. “Spasiba.” Thank you.

  “Puzhalsta,” Nadia Silaevae repeated, only this time it meant, “not at all.”

  Annja surveyed the photographs, then turned the page and saw still more paragraphs of different family members showing off the elephant. Evidently the piece had become something of a treasured heirloom.

  “This is wonderful,” Annja said, listening to Klykov translating beside her. Evidently he had experience in playing the go-between. “What can you tell me about the elephant? Where did it come from?”

  Chapter 30

  “The elephant was given to Queen Catherine by the Japanese sailors who were rescued from America,” Nadia Silaevae explained, and Klykov translated only a few seconds behind her words. The old woman spoke slowly so that Klykov had no problem keeping up. “It was among the gifts delivered to the queen in return for the safe passage for the men to their homes in Japan.”

  Annja interrupted for a moment, apologized and asked about the Japanese sailors.

  “They were part of a trading business sent to America.” Nadia Silaevae held up a gnarled finger, then got up and went to the bookshelves. She returned with a geography book that looked ancient. The book was in Russian and contained many maps. When she opened the book, it fell open to a familiar place.

  The map was of the western border of the United States. Her finger traced the Aleutian Islands.

  “My father was brother to Asaf Chislova,” Nadia Silaevae went on, “great-uncle to Rachel Chislova, with whom you have spoken. My father was younger brother, so their father left the elephant to Asaf. But my father was a sailor in World War II. He was on a ship that patrolled the islands where the Japanese sailors were rescued so many years before. The Russian ships were there to help protect America from the Japanese after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They were quickly recalled though, because the United States and Canada did not trust them so much in those days. My father said it was his wish to visit that island where the Japanese had been, but that was never to happen.”

  Annja had her journal out and was taking notes. The battles in the Aleutians were sometimes called the “Forgotten War” because so much focus had been on what later developed into the Battle of Midway. For a time the Japanese had occupied a couple of islands before they were taken back by Allied forces.

  “My father was more interested in the elephant than his brother.”

  Annja gestured toward the pictures. “Are those pictures of your father?”

  “No, those are of my grandfather. My father’s father.” Nadia Silaevae sipped her tea. “My father was forever worrying at the story of the elephant. Always a curious man. He was the one who discovered among my grandfather’s things how the elephant came to be in our family’s hands. You know of Queen Catherine, nyet? Also called Catherine the Great?”

  “I do.”

  “It is said she took hundreds of lovers while she was in power.” Nadia Silaevae looked somewhat embarrassed by her words, but a hint of merriment danced in her eyes. “I would not speak ill of the dead, but the woman took excesses.”

  Annja grinned. “Yes, she did. It is well documented, so you are not speaking ill of her.”

  “One of the men in her life was Captain Leon Argunov.” Nadia Silaevae pronounced the name carefully and spelled it, which Klykov had to guess at for the translation. “He was one of the queen’s lovers, but only for a short time. He was supposed to be related to Grigory Grigoryevich Orlov. He was an important man. Do you know this name?”

  “Yes.” Annja nodded. “Orlov helped Catherine overthrow her husband, the Grand Duke Peter, and take the throne. She didn’t marry Orlov because he wasn’t a very good strategist, and she needed someone who could help her with political arrangements.”

  “A very practical woman,” Nadia Silaevae stated with a small smile. “Very Russian.”

  “She knew what she wanted and would settle for nothing less.”

  “Da. As I said, Argunov was a lover only for a short time. He made a name for himself during the second war with the Turks.”

  Annja jotted that down as well, fixing the time frame in her mind. Time was so important in her line of work, and when an artifact had been around for centuries like the elephant had, figuring out a time line became exceedingly important. The Second Russo-Turkish War had taken place in the late 1780s to the early 1790s.

  “When did the Japanese deliver the elephant to Queen Catherine?” she asked.

  Nadia Silaevae shook her head and looked troubled. “Sometime after the war, but I cannot say when for certain.”

  Annja made a note to check on the Japanese story. That seemed too big to not have been mentioned somewhere. “That’s fine. You said Argunov took the elephant?”

  “Yes. Usually Queen Catherine gave a—” Nadia Silaevae hesitated, obviously searching for the correct word even in her native language.

  Annja grinned. She’d already known of the queen’s habit of giving her lovers something, which included positions of power and palaces, depending on how much they could do for Catherine once she’d dismissed them from her bed. Almost always she had put them in places that had benefited her, either by shoring up her rule or getting them out of her way.

  “In Captain Argunov’s case, no such arrangement was made,” Nadia Silaevae continued. “Or, if an arrangement was made, he considered that arrangement too small. So he took the elephant before he left Queen Catherine’s palace.”

  “Why did he choose the elephant?”

  The old woman shrugged, and her answer made Klykov laugh before he was able to translate. “Who knows what goes through a man’s mind? Over fifty years I was married to my husband, and still I never knew exactly what he was thinking.”

  Annja grinned again.

  “I have been told he took the elephant because he believed it would lead him to great wealth.”

  “What wealth?”

  Nadia Silaevae frowned. “These are old stories, handed down and handed down yet
again, over and over. Who is to say what was then and what is now? I cannot.”

  “Was Captain Argunov part of your family?”

  “No.”

  “Then how did the elephant end up with your family?”

  “Captain Argunov remained with the Russian army after his separation from Catherine. The person I have been talking to regarding this matter—I will give you her name and an introduction when we are finished here—believes that Captain Argunov hoped to discover the secret of the elephant. Instead he ended up dying during the march into India when Emperor Paul decided to join forces with Napoleon against the British.”

  “How did Argunov die exactly?”

  “Captain Argunov perished from sickness. One of those things men get when they are out chasing wars. I do not know the precise cause. While he was there in India, and he knew he was going to die, he gave the elephant to my ancestor, who was also a soldier and carried the elephant home with him when the Russian army turned back from India. It had been with our family ever since, here in this country, till Asaf Chislova brought it to the United States.” Nadia Silaevae smiled and looked at the elephant there on the coffee table between them. “And now you have it.”

  “Once I am finished with it, I’ll return the elephant to your family,” Annja promised.

  “No, no. My family has carried the elephant long enough, and it was never ours to begin with. It would be better if you discovered who it truly belongs to and gave it back to those people.”

  “If I can. If not, I’m sure there is a museum that would love to have this piece if I can successfully document its history.”

  “As you wish. You know more about such things than I do.”

  Annja looked down at her notes. “You said there was someone else who might be able to give me more information about the elephant?”

  “Yes. Her name is Sophie Ezria. She is descendant of Argunov. She is also ballerina here in Moscow. We met through my husband, who had always been in love with the story of the elephant. He and Sophie Ezria searched some of the same histories and discovered each other. Their interests made them friends, and I became friends, too. She is lovely girl. But, even though they worked together, they could not find answers to mystery of elephant. My husband always wished he could solve the puzzle.” Nadia Silaevae smiled sadly. “Is always way of Russian men, you know, to fall in love with things they can never possess.”