East of the Sun

by Janet Rogers

  A lump of distaste formed in her mouth as she watched the brief interaction between the two men. Oh, she hoped he would be joining the party. She could think of quite a few things she would like to say to him. Watching Carl Riverton made her feel queasy, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from him and his companion.

  And then came the shock of another recognition.

  When both men turned their faces towards the building’s entrance, Amelia realised that the second man was also known to her. There was no mistake. He was no ordinary driver, but a man she recognised from a different place altogether.

  26

  ‘I found the diary! It took a bit of digging, but I found it for you. Amelia?’

  ‘Yes?’ She swung around. Ratna was staring at her expectantly. She’d been so intent on the scene outside that she hadn’t realised Ratna had spoken to her. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you, what did you say?’

  ‘I said that I found the diary,’ Ratna repeated.

  Still preoccupied by what she’d seen outside, Amelia was lost for a second.

  ‘Diary?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ratna said, a little more impatiently. ‘Remember? Robert’s appointment book? You asked about it.’

  ‘Oh, of course! That’s great, really good to hear. Thank you.’

  Ratna moved closer, also looking outside. The street was empty now.

  ‘I’ve paged through it,’ she said, ‘there’s not much there.’ Amelia looked at her sharply, wondering if she knew what Amelia had been doing all along. ‘I mean, nothing of interest,’ Ratna continued, as she caught Amelia’s look. ‘Just meeting after meeting. Makes me realise again how hard he worked.’

  ‘May I see it?’ Amelia asked.

  ‘I don’t have it here, it’s in my office next door. Maybe on Monday?’

  ‘How about after this has finished?’ Amelia suggested.

  ‘Yes, okay, I guess that’ll be fine.’

  Over Ratna’s shoulder Amelia could see that Carl Riverton had just entered the room.

  ‘Please excuse me, there’s someone I need to talk to,’ she said as she pushed past Ratna.

  Not as handsome as his boss, but as perfectly groomed, Carl Riverton was a picture of cool sophistication. He stood with a glass in his hand and a serious expression on his face as he listened attentively to something the person standing opposite him was saying. When Amelia pushed through the clusters of people in the room, she saw that it was Patrick he was listening to.

  ‘I see we have a friend in common,’ she blurted as she walked up to them, unable to keep the anger out of her voice.

  Patrick stared at her in surprise and she could see a flicker of dismay on Riverton’s face as he glanced from her to Patrick to others standing close by. She sensed movement in the people around them and then another man appeared next to Riverton: Bruce Jennings, his cool grey eyes revealing nothing more than their unusual golden flecks.

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs Preston?’ Jennings asked, as if the comment had been directed at him.

  ‘The driver, or shall we say lackey, messenger, maybe even hit man. Mr Riverton here was talking to him down in the street a few minutes ago.’ As she spoke, something altered in Jennings’ expression and for a second she thought she saw unease before he managed to compose himself again.

  ‘Amelia?’ She felt a hand on her arm. ‘What’s going on? Is everything all right?’ she heard Patrick ask.

  ‘Just fine, thank you, Patrick. I just want to talk to these gentlemen for a second. I’ll see you later.’ She realised she sounded impatient and dismissive, but she didn’t want an audience when she spoke to Jennings and Riverton.

  Patrick hesitated. ‘Are you sure?’

  She nodded and he left quietly, looking at them over his shoulder once before he disappeared from the room.

  ‘A drink, Mrs Preston?’ Jennings offered. He was in complete control of himself again, the disdainful gleam of their first meeting back in his eyes.

  ‘I’d rather talk about the so-called Mikhail, your errand boy, don’t you?’

  ‘Mikhail?’

  Amelia could feel rage pulsing through her veins as she saw the arrogant smugness on Jennings’s face.

  ‘Shall I refresh your memory? Remember the guy you sent to deliver a message, to meet me in Novodevichy, the guy—

  ‘What are you talking about, Mrs Preston?’

  ‘Oh, cut it out, Jennings!’ Amelia raged. ‘I know you’re involved. Mikhail, or whatever his name is, is just another nail in your coffin.’

  Jennings took a step back from her, as if in disgust at the attack. ‘Calm down, Mrs Preston, please.’

  ‘I’m perfectly calm, Jennings!’ She turned to Riverton. ‘Tell me what you were doing talking to the man in the street.’

  ‘What man?’

  ‘Shall I call a witness or two? Who was it who was standing next to me when I saw you? Was it the ambassador who saw you with the man who demanded sixty thousand roubles from me in exchange for information on Robert?’ Amelia knew the dangers of bluffing, but she had to try everything in her power to get Jennings or Riverton to admit to something.

  ‘The only man I was talking to was my driver.’

  ‘Whom you instructed to terrorise me. You must be getting really nervous about how much I know.’

  Jennings spoke before Riverton could. ‘Mrs Preston, if you have a complaint against this driver, we’ll take it up with him. At a more suitable time, I might add. These accusations are unpleasant and I know nothing about them, so I’d appreciate it if you would stop falsely accusing my co-workers and me of doing terrible things. Everyone in this room has sympathy for your loss, but you’re going too far.’

  It was Amelia’s turn to step back. She was getting nowhere. She could attack him and his sidekicks until she was blue in the face, but if it was a matter of her word against his. He was never going to crack.

  On impulse, she changed tack. ‘Have you ever had the pleasure of enjoying sudak, Mr Jennings?’ Instantly Jennings became very still. He’d understood her reference to Sudakov. His eyes narrowed briefly, but he said nothing.

  ‘I know it was you, Jennings,’ Amelia said quietly, looking into the depths of his cool eyes. ‘You killed Robert,’ she said very slowly, turned around and started walking away from the despicable man she could no longer look at.

  After a moment’s stunned silence, he called after her. ‘You’re wrong, you know.’ She didn’t turn around.

  ‘It wasn’t me,’ she heard him say.

  As she walked away, she noticed something different. To her dismay a hint of amusement wasn’t the only thing she detected in his voice. Along with it, she could also hear the infuriating self-righteousness that often goes with telling the truth.

  Ratna was standing at one of the buffet tables, putting food onto a plate.

  ‘When will you be finished here?’ Amelia asked, hearing the quiver in her own voice.

  ‘Could you give me another half an hour?’ Ratna asked while continuing to survey the buffet.

  Amelia nodded and for lack of anything else to do, she followed Ratna’s example and piled food she knew she wouldn’t eat onto a plate.

  ‘All okay?’ Ratna asked casually.

  ‘Fine,’ Amelia replied.

  ‘Amelia, what’s up with you?’ Ratna asked again.

  Amelia ignored the question. ‘Have you seen Patrick?’

  ‘No, but I’ll tell him—’

  ‘Can you meet me downstairs in half an hour?’ Amelia interrupted, unable to stop herself.

  ‘Fine,’ Ratna sighed. She looked at Amelia for a long moment before she turned away.

  Thirty minutes later Amelia was already in her coat, impatiently waiting, when Ratna finally came down the stairs. After her confrontation with Jennings, agitation was boiling inside her, threatening to spill over. She felt compelled to see the diary as soon as possible. She could see she was irritating Ratna and knew she was being demanding, but the need to do something constructiv
e was stronger than any other consideration.

  It was a few short steps outside and to the embassy next door. They didn’t speak much. Amelia glanced at Ratna’s face. She was suddenly struck by the realisation that, despite the fact that Ratna’s face was mostly inscrutable, there was still a hint of the anger she’d shown when they’d met for a drink. Although she’d apologised and given a plausible excuse, it was undoubtedly still there. As Ratna unlocked her office door and walked over to her desk, Amelia again wondered briefly about the true source of her friend’s anger, but she was impatient to get to the diary.

  Ratna withdrew a navy-coloured A4-size diary from a drawer and slid it over the desk to Amelia. Without a word she started paging through it. Most entries detailed what looked like official meetings and appointments with various people.

  ‘As I said, there’s not much there,’ Ratna said.

  Amelia turned to the weeks preceding Robert’s disappearance. There were repeated entries for meetings between Sibraz and Prism. Finding nothing concrete, Amelia went back further.

  Slowly patterns started to emerge. On Mondays Robert chaired embassy staff meetings, on Tuesdays he met individually with heads of departments, the Consul and other embassy officials.

  ‘What is POD?’ Amelia asked, having noticed a sudden flurry of entries in the months preceding the Sibraz-Prism fiasco.

  ‘Patrick – Patrick O’Driscoll,’ Ratna answered.

  ‘I wonder why they met so often around this time.’

  ‘They always met frequently,’ Ratna said. ‘Let me see?’

  Ratna flicked through the entries of several weeks, frowned, and paged around some more. ‘Oh, yes, I remember now.’

  ‘What?’ Amelia prompted her, sensing something different in Ratna’s tone.

  ‘Oh, no, it’s nothing.’

  ‘What is it?’ Amelia asked her again.

  I probably shouldn’t tell you. It wouldn’t be professional.’

  Amelia sighed. ‘Fine, I’ll ask Patrick.’

  ‘No,’ Ratna said quickly. ‘I don’t think you should. He’ll be embarrassed or upset.’

  ‘Well then?’

  Ratna sighed, her exasperation at Amelia’s insistence visible. ‘All right, fine, I’ll tell you what I know, which isn’t much, and you should keep it to yourself. They had a disagreement over Patrick’s performance review.’

  ‘That’s strange.’

  ‘I know. Robert had been unhappy about some aspect of Patrick’s performance and they were arguing about it, that’s all. You know how passionate Patrick can be.’

  Amelia nodded. She knew that Patrick took great pride in his work. His ambition to rise to the top of the diplomatic ranks had always been clear for all to see. She was saddened for both men that something like this might have impacted on their friendship in those last months.

  ‘Yes, I can see how upsetting that would have been,’ she said aloud. ‘But Patrick was involved in the Sibraz-Prism thing, wasn’t he? It wasn’t like their working relationship was ruined, was it?’

  ‘No, and yes, he did work on the deal,’ Ratna replied slowly. ‘He joined quite late in the negotiations, so I think they’d more or less sorted it all out by then.’

  ‘There is something else I wanted to ask you,’ Amelia said. ‘I’ve wondered about it for a long time.’ Briefly she considered letting her questioning go, again reminding herself that, even if she didn’t have concrete proof, she knew that Prism was responsible for Robert’s disappearance. However, she couldn’t stop the sense of urgency she felt to discover a few more of the details.

  Ratna waited, her eyebrows raised.

  ‘You know Robert’s car was found on Denezhniy Pereulok?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t make sense, does it?’ Amelia thought again about the network of one-ways in Moscow combined with the restricted rules of turning and she hadn’t been able to come up with a logical, reasonable route that would have taken the driver and Robert along Denezhniy Pereulok.

  ‘What doesn’t make sense?’ Ratna interrupted her thoughts.

  ‘Denezhniy lies three blocks up from here. None of the obvious routes they could’ve taken that night would’ve taken them there. It means that the driver would have driven past the turnoff to the residence and then would’ve had to double back along a whole host of back streets. I was wondering if the embassy has safety precautions that involved taking long, winding routes as a safety precaution.’

  Ratna was silent for a while. She took time to consider her answer. ‘In rare cases,’ she finally conceded.

  Amelia hesitated before asking her question, sensing Ratna’s reluctance to indulge what she probably thought of as Amelia’s overactive imagination. ‘Was this a rare case?’

  Again Ratna didn’t reply immediately. She dropped her gaze to her hands in her lap and nodded.

  ‘It was?’ This could be the last part of the mystery. Jennings, or more probably Mikhail or one of his other henchmen, could have bribed the driver to find out Robert’s route that night.

  ‘Who would have told the driver which route to take and how long in advance would he have found out?’

  Ratna didn’t meet her eyes. She sighed deeply a few times before she finally looked up, her eyes dark and troubled. When she spoke, the anger was gone from her voice. Instead, there was a look of utter defeat on her face.

  ‘It was me. I am the one responsible for Robert’s disappearance.’

  27

  Time seemed to slow down and with it her ability to connect things in her head. She was capable only of focusing on the snow globe that sat on the edge of Ratna’s desk. Inside it a miniature Canadian flag planted next to a small Christmas tree hung motionless, the tiny snowflakes lifeless in the bottom.

  Speechless, Amelia reached out and fingered the globe. How could it be? What could Ratna possibly have to do with it all? It didn’t make any sense. She immediately and instinctively wanted to assure Ratna that she was feeling responsible without reason, that she was mistaken. She had to be.

  Yet there had been something in Ratna’s voice that had told her the confession was real.

  ‘You were responsible?’ she finally asked, a sense of disorientation threatening to overwhelm her.

  There was a long, heavy pause before Ratna finally replied. ‘Yes. I am so sorry, Amelia . . .’ Her voice was a whisper, barely audible above the roar in Amelia’s head.

  The room felt hot and the walls seemed to spin around her, but she knew that she had to stay in control somehow. She had to hear the whole story.

  ‘You were responsible?’ she repeated, still unable to comprehend. Desperately she fought for control. ‘Surely not?’

  ‘I am so very sorry.’

  Still Amelia focused on the snow globe, unable to look at Ratna’s face, unwilling to face the person who claimed responsibility for what happened to Robert.

  ‘But why? And how?’ The many questions in her mind started to take shape.

  ‘It’s not what you think, Amelia! I only did it because I was desperate.’

  Amelia stood up, felt her legs buckle and sat down again. She breathed heavily in and out, slowly regaining control of herself.

  ‘Did what?’

  Quietly Ratna started to speak. ‘I thought I was doing a good thing.’

  ‘A good thing? How could Robert’s disappearance be a good thing?’ Amelia erupted, the cumulative frustrations of the past weeks exploding from her in sudden anger.

  ‘Please let me explain.’

  ‘Fine, explain! What exactly did you do?’

  Ratna’s face distorted as she listened to Amelia’s angry words. She bit her lip and didn’t speak immediately. When she did, her voice was quiet. ‘I want you to know what happened. However difficult this is, it’s only right that you should know the truth. I don’t know if it’s even possible, but perhaps if I can explain, you’ll understand on some level why I did what I did.’ She sighed and looked at Amelia. ‘I also want you to know
that I am very, very sorry for the part I played.’

  Suddenly Amelia wanted to lunge at the stranger across from her, wanted to yell at her to not even try to justify or minimise an act of treachery. It took all her strength to focus on her breathing instead. She braced herself for the final truth.

  ‘Just tell me,’ she said.

  For a minute Ratna mirrored Amelia’s breathing before she started speaking. ‘Last year during the summer, I went home to Canada for a few weeks. When I was doing my normal annual household admin and banking, I discovered something. It was terrible, an absolute disaster. Shahendra, my ex, had cleaned out Ravi’s college fund.’ Ratna’s eyes remained on Amelia. Perhaps she hoped for a reaction, but when none was forthcoming, she continued in a heavy voice.

  ‘After Ravi was born, we opened the account together to make sure that one day he’d be able to get the best education possible. A better one than we had. After I left Shahendra, I continued to pay money into it. It was tough doing it on one salary, but I’ve always wanted the best for Ravi. I wanted him to have a choice when it came to his future and the money was meant to enable him to have that choice. The fund had been growing nicely in the last few years. It was a relief to know I would be able to afford Ravi’s education if I continued to add to it, even if it was a little bit at a time.’

  Ratna looked down and shook her head. ‘As you know, Shahendra was a useless, useless father and he never contributed anything to the fund again. If I thought for one moment that he had the audacity to pull this stunt, to steal his own son’s future, I would have changed the signatories of the account years ago, but I just never imagined that he would sink that low or that he would have enough drive to carry out something so daring. He’s a weakling. It never even occurred to me that he would be capable of doing this.’ She raised her head and gazed at a point somewhere over Amelia’s shoulder.