Rogue Angel 51: The Pretender's Gambit

by Alex Archer

  Klykov leaned toward the woman, spoke softly and patted her on the shoulder. Nadia Silaevae smiled at the old gangster, and for a moment Annja got a glimpse of what the woman must have been like as a young woman.

  “My husband always wished my father had gotten the elephant from his father instead of my uncle receiving it. Asaf Chislova never cared so much to have the elephant, only that he possessed it and my father did not. There was jealousy between them. Brothers, you know. Either they get along or they fight. Sometimes both. My husband, like my father, treasured old things. They were forever taking me to markets to look at old junk.”

  Annja felt a kinship because of that. She always trolled the markets and bazaars wherever she was because artifacts still turned up in curio shops. So much history had been lost, and still continued to be lost.

  “My father and husband only bought a few things while my father still yet lived,” Nadia Silaevae continued. “Most of our finances were used to raise our children. Things were very hard then, but we made do, as people always must.” She shifted forward and touched the elephant gently. “I am so glad you came my way, Annja Creed, and I am so glad I finally got to see the elephant that has been so much a part of my family.”

  * * *

  IT WAS ALMOST dark by the time Annja and Klykov left Nadia Silaevae’s home. The old woman had insisted on feeding them supper, and she had offered them the use of her home to stay in. Klykov had politely turned her down and thanked her again for her time.

  Vladi still waited for them in the sedan out front, and Annja realized guiltily she had forgotten about the man in the excitement of getting the story. As they approached the car, Vladi got out and opened the rear door so Annja and Klykov could get inside. It was already running, and the interior was warm, taking away the bite of the cool night breeze.

  “Did you get something to eat, Vladi?” Klykov asked as the big man slid behind the wheel.

  “Da. I hire boys to bring me dinner from restaurant.” Vladi put the car in gear. “Where you want to go?”

  “A hotel. Somewhere nice.”

  “Sure.” Vladi nodded and pulled onto the street.

  Annja’s phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number but saw that it was from Moscow. “Hello.”

  “Annja Creed?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am Sophie Argunov. We have a friend in common, yes? Nadia Silaevae?” The young woman spoke good English with only a hint of an accent.

  “We’re just leaving her house now.”

  “I know. She just told me you would like to talk to me. Would you have time to meet this evening?”

  “Definitely, but I don’t want to inconvenience you.”

  Sophie laughed pleasantly. “I am dancer in Russia. My life off the dance floor is an inconvenience to my trainer. I am just now out of dance school, out of practice for so long, so I can meet if you wish. I must admit I am very curious. Nadia Silaevae told me this is all very exciting and that you have the elephant.”

  Exciting? Annja and Klykov hadn’t even mentioned the murders and the close calls they’d had while searching for the story behind the elephant. “I’d love to meet with you if you have time this evening.”

  “Good! I was hoping this would be no imposition to you. We are preparing for big competition and time is very scarce. Since you are in Moscow, is all convenience, yes?”

  “Yes. Maybe we could meet somewhere for drinks?”

  “Good. Where do you stay?”

  Annja asked Vladi where they were heading and relayed the answer on to Sophie.

  “Fabulous. Is not far. I can meet you there in an hour?”

  “An hour?” Annja looked at Klykov, who nodded. “An hour will be fine.”

  “Also, I took liberty of contacting my boyfriend, Peter Kargaltsev, and asking him to join us. He is a historian and, as a favor to me and Nadia Silaevae, was working on deciphering the origins of the elephant Captain Leon Argunov stole from Queen Catherine. I thought perhaps you and he could speak. Did Nadia Silaevae tell you about the night the elephant was nearly taken from the Winter Palace by Japanese thieves only a few weeks after its arrival there?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I believe you will find this a most enjoyable story. Peter found out about the attempted robbery when he was doing research on the elephant.”

  “I’m looking forward to it.” Annja said goodbye and pocketed her phone.

  “What is on your mind?” Klykov asked.

  “According to Nadia Silaevae, the Japanese gave the elephant to Catherine the Great, but Sophie says her boyfriend discovered that Japanese thieves tried to steal it back a short time afterward.”

  “That’s interesting. Perhaps this will help explain this young man’s interest in the elephant. Nguyen Rao, nyet?”

  “Yes, but he’s not Japanese. He’s Cambodian. And if the elephant is Cambodian, how did the Japanese get their hands on it?”

  Chapter 31

  “The thieves who broke into the Winter Palace were not Japanese.” Peter Kargaltsev sat across the table from Annja in the lounge around the corner from the main desk at the hotel Vladi had delivered them to. Peter was tall and blond and blue-eyed, a charmer who was very confident of his language and his subject matter. He kept himself in shape and looked nice in his dark blue suit. “Sophie got that part wrong.” He flashed a grin at the beautiful, elfin woman seated next to him. “Sometimes when I talk, she does not listen as closely as she thinks she is.”

  Dark haired and dark-eyed, her skin the color of milk, Sophie Argunov swatted playfully at her significant other. “He never shuts up, this one. Always with dates and wars and things. Some days I can think of nothing else from listening to it all. I do not know how he remembers so much. Thankfully he is beautiful man, so when I am not listening, I can still look at him.”

  Smiling, obviously in love with the young woman, Peter shrugged. “Perhaps I do talk about my job too much.”

  “Tonight we are here to talk about your job, so talk and I will listen,” Sophie said. She wore a little black dress and the two of them together made Annja feel underdressed in her khaki pants and pullover. Klykov didn’t help because he had evidently packed a nice suit in his bags, and the hotel was more upscale than Annja had expected.

  Peter spread his hands and looked at Annja. “Where would you like me to begin?”

  “How did you get involved looking for the elephant?” Annja asked.

  “Sophie mentioned the elephant to me and showed me pictures of it, copies she had gotten from Nadia Silaevae. I met Nadia and her husband a few times. He was a wonderful old man, and Nadia’s charms you have seen for yourself.”

  “Boris Silaevae and I met on a genealogy site,” Sophie said. “He had contacted my mother a few years ago and started talking. Then, because I was interested in elephant, I talked. I got to know Nadia Silaevae, as well.” She glanced at Peter. “I met this one at university two years ago and wanted to get to know him better. Since I knew he liked historical things, I decided to find something mysterious in my past to catch his interest.”

  “Nyet!” Peter laughed, picked up her hand and kissed it tenderly. “This one had my heart from the moment I laid eyes on her. The mystery of the elephant was only a gift. A bonus, I believe you Americans would call it.”

  “We would.” Annja smiled.

  “Finding information about the elephant and Captain Argunov was not easy. And I was sidetracked often by her.” Peter grinned at Sophie. “But, thankfully, her dancing is demanding and I have time to deal with trifles such as work and elephants and historical mysteries.” He reached into a briefcase at his side and pulled out a sheaf of papers. “I took the liberty of printing these off.”

  Annja accepted the papers and began leafing through them. All of them were in Russian, which disappointed her.

  “If you don’t have someone who can do the translations, I will be happy to provide them,” Peter offered. “I had not thought to transcribe them in English, but
I thought you might like the copies.”

  “Yes, thank you. I have someone who could do it, but if you have time, that would be wonderful.”

  “Absolutely.” He nodded. “As to the story, it is a small enough tale, but very enigmatic. Perhaps even a bit sinister. Only a few weeks after Catherine the Great received the elephant, an attempt was made to steal it back from the Winter Palace where she was staying. Captain Argunov was there, possibly thinking even then of stealing something from the queen. Evidently the attempt made by the bandits convinced him as to what he should take.”

  Annja made notes diligently on her tablet, but her attention never wavered from the young historian. He had a speaker’s natural voice and used it to enhance his tale.

  “Captain Daikokuya Kodayu commanded the few surviving Japanese sailors that had sailed from Amchitka in the Rat Islands. His return home was not direct. He landed in Russia in 1784, but it was not until his audience with Catherine the Great in 1791 that he was returned home. And that audience was, strangely enough, made possible through the efforts of a Finnish-Swedish clergyman named Erik Gustavovich Laxmann. In addition to serving in the church, he was also a scientist and an explorer. Men wore many hats in those days.”

  The details of the story dovetailed with what Annja had learned from the internet while awaiting Sophie and Peter. “It took Captain Kodayu a long time to get back home.”

  “I think the Japanese captain had a bit of wanderlust in him, as well. It was a time when the world was new and there were so many things you simply had to see for yourself. There was no Discovery Channel after all.” Peter grinned. “I envy you all the places that you go and the things that you see.”

  “Sometimes I miss the time to devote to studying,” Annja replied. “Traveling eats up a lot of hours, and you can spend weeks or months at a dig and not learn much.”

  “The elephant,” Sophie reminded. “You two can talk like old women later.”

  Klykov grinned and winked at the pretty ballerina.

  Peter toyed with his empty wine glass. “The decision to return Captain Kodayu and his men to Japan was not entirely an act of humanitarian kindness. Queen Catherine chose to do so in hopes of opening trade with Japan. She hoped it would be an opening gambit in a new trade empire.”

  “At that time, all of Asia was pretty much closed to the rest of the world,” Annja said.

  “Things didn’t turn out as well as Catherine had hoped, but she did manage to establish trade relations of a sort.”

  “A trading post on Dejima.” Annja had looked into the Japanese end of the trade voyages, too.

  “Exactly.” Peter nodded happily. “Dejima has a fascinating history, as well. Since the Tokugawa shogunate forbade foreigners to enter Japan, and Japanese merchants wanted foreign trade, the locals dug a canal through the peninsula at Nagasaki and created an island to carry out their exchange of goods. Even then, the shogunate imposed strict rules about who came and went on the island.”

  “It’s always about trade,” Annja said. “The quest for profits built roads, railways, shipping lanes and in this case, an island.”

  “Yes. Catherine sent Captain Adam Laxmann, Erik Laxmann’s son, to take the Japanese crew back to Nagasaki. Meager trade was allowed in time, but it was never what Catherine had hoped it would be. Captain Laxmann brought back the elephant as part of the gifts given by the shogunate for the safe return of Captain Kodayu and his crew. Then, only weeks after Captain Laxmann’s return to Russia, bandits broke into the palace and attempted to take the elephant.”

  Peter pulled out one of the papers that had a copy of a pencil drawing and placed it in front of Annja. She studied the image of robed figures armed with swords that dueled with Russian guardsmen in a great hall.

  “This page was taken from Captain Argunov’s journal,” Peter said. “Captain Argunov was visiting the palace at the time, though his affair with Catherine was over—he was even involved in the fight.”

  “The bandits were never identified?” Annja asked.

  “No. Captain Argunov at first thought they were Japanese, but investigation into the matter revealed that they were monks from Cambodia.”

  “How did he find that out?”

  “As men do, Captain Argunov was telling the story over drinks in a tavern. One of the captain’s acquaintances, a Portuguese merchant named Joao Clemente, had a look at the drawings of the men and their personal effects, and identified them as Cambodian.”

  “How did a Portuguese merchant know about Cambodians?” Sophie asked. Evidently parts of this story were new to her.

  “Because, dear one, the Portuguese had, in their day, been ambitious traders. They had traded with Longvek and other cities of the Cambodian kingdom. The trade was given up in light of the wars between the Siamese and the second Le Dynasty, though. People often forget that Asia has been swallowed up in one war after another, which is why Japan and China remain so standoffish these days. They’ve had trouble enough inside their continent without seeking more elsewhere.”

  Sipping her wine, Annja thought about the connections, turning them over in her mind, trying to fit the pieces together. Russia had been an interesting connection to make, but the thought of feudal Asia with all its various dynasties and kingdoms was even more so.

  “Captain Argunov was never able to find out where the elephant came from?” Klykov asked.

  Peter shook his head. “Nor have I been able to, though I have spent many days investigating. However, I may have had a breakthrough.” He glanced at Annja. “I have followed the story of the elephant of late, tracking back through the various news stories that have surfaced concerning it. I hope I did not offend, but I did want to give Sophie and Nadia Silaevae answers if I was able.”

  “Certainly,” Annja replied.

  “Given what I knew, and of the high profile that elephant has gotten in the United States recently, I managed to get in touch with Professor Ishii in Nagasaki in hopes that the history of the elephant might be better investigated there. I have inquired at the history department of the University of Tokyo several times before, but no one was interested.” Peter smiled ruefully. “Perhaps I would not have gotten an answer this time, but I dropped your name, Annja. Professor Ishii replied only minutes before we met here. He is open to meeting with you, and he believes he has information about the elephant.”

  “He couldn’t just give you the information?”

  “He would like to meet with you.” Peter reached inside his jacket and took out a sheet of paper. Professor Hamada Ishii’s name, phone number and email were all written neatly in English. “He says if you cannot come, he might be able to make arrangements.”

  “What do you know about Professor Ishii?” Klykov asked.

  Peter shrugged. “Only what I have read about him on the university website and in papers he has written. He appears to be very erudite and quite knowledgeable about Asian history, particularly Cambodian and Vietnamese.” He paused. “If the elephant did, indeed, come from one of those areas, he might very well know where it came from.”

  Annja hoped it wasn’t that easy. She loved the chase. When things were just handed to her, a lot of the excitement was lost.

  She took the paper, folded it and stored it in her tablet cover. “I’ll give him a call in the morning and see if we can work something out.”

  “Perhaps,” Klykov said, “this Professor Ishii will also know why Nguyen Rao pursues the elephant so rigorously, as well. You have so many mysteries, and so few answers.”

  Chapter 32

  “You cannot keep pursuing Annja Creed, Nguyen Rao. We barely managed to get you into Moscow.”

  “I am trying to catch her, Venerable Father, but the path she takes is unknown to me, and Sequeira and his minions make the task more difficult.” Rao spoke quietly on the cell phone as he rode in the backseat of the Russian cab. “I know part of the path she must yet take if she discovers the nature of the elephant, but we do not know where it will lead in the end.”<
br />
  The old man was silent for a time. “We know this as well, and we have been thinking upon your suggestion to join forces with Annja Creed. You have risked your life on several occasions, and we constrain you by insisting that you continue to operate independently of her.”

  Some of the tension inside Rao relaxed. Finally the elders were starting to see that they had asked him to engage on a battlefield on two fronts. Even though Annja Creed was not an enemy the way Sequeira was, she still thwarted his attempts to recover the elephant and divine the secrets that it hid.

  “You feel that you can trust her?”

  “I do, Venerable Father. I think Annja Creed would only wish to know what we believe the elephant holds secret. She does not intend to take that which is not hers.”

  “In that we have reached agreement. Contact Annja Creed, and tell her what you know of the elephant. Perhaps together you will discover the rest of its story.”

  “Thank you, Venerable Father.” Rao peered out at Moscow’s colorful nightscape. In the distance the lighted skyscrapers towered over the Volga River that snaked through the heart of the city. “Unfortunately, though I have arrived in Moscow, I do not know where Annja Creed is at this moment.”

  “We have found her.”

  “How?” Though he had been raised around the temple all of his life, the methods of the monks remained mysterious to Rao.

  “Some of the younger members hacked into Fernando Sequeira’s computer network.”

  Rao grinned at that and felt foolish. Sometimes he forgot that the temple was wired into the modern world, as well. The elders kept the doctrine and the teachings, but they availed themselves of younger acolytes that knew about the internet and electronic communications. After all, they had recruited him to follow the elephant and Annja Creed because he had his own skill set.