The Quest

Chapter 23

Natalia sat on the couch. Her face was still tender where it was bruised. She moved her body slowly to get a more comfortable position; the welts on her back made it awkward to sit. She rearranged the long robe around her as she tucked her legs up onto the sofa, and hugged her knees to her. Karamatsov, she thought, Vladmir.

She sipped at the vodka, feeling the ice against her even white teeth. Would her uncle try to get revenge against Vladmir? The thought chilled her more than the ice. She brushed a strand of black hair away off her forehead and wrapped the blue terrycloth robe around her more tightly. She glanced at the digital clock on the table beside the sofa. Her uncle, General Ishmael Varakov, had called twenty-five minutes before to tell her he was coming to see her. Why?

There was a knock at the door, the one repaired only a few hours earlier. It was the sound of a fist, rather than the metallic click-click-click of the brass doorknocker.

She stood up, tightened the belt around the robe, and reached into the small drawer of the end table. She had put away the gun she’d taken from Vladmir and had the little four-barreled stainless steel COP pistol. She broke the pistol, verified all four barrels were loaded, and dropped the double action only derringer-like gun in the right pocket of her robe. Her hand remained there. It was likely her uncle, she thought, but chances were something only fools took. She stopped, the thought momentarily amusing her. Hadn’t it been a chance to marry the most handsome and most ruthless young officer in the KGB? Some chances didn’t prove out, she thought, staring at the unopened door at the end of the small hallway, hearing the knocking again.

She walked to the door, decided against peering through the peephole, and stood beside the doorframe in the narrow part by the wall. She asked through the door, in Russian, “Yes, who is at the door?” “It is cold out here, and I’m an old man too lazy to button his coat. Hurry, girl!”

She smiled. Natalia loved her uncle like a second father, perhaps more than the father she had lost as a little girl. She verified it was him by glancing through the magnifying lens in the peephole, then released the chain and the deadbolt, and swung the door inward.

The old man stood there, his greatcoat open as he’d told her, rubbing his gloved hands together. He took a step inside, and she let him smother her in his arms as he had always done since she was a child.

“Uncle,” she murmured.

“Child,” he whispered, then, one arm still around her, he started into the hall. “It is cold here—like Moscow—only somehow more damp.” With his free hand he swung the door shut behind them.

They stopped at the end of the hall beside the steps leading down into the living room. She helped him out of his coat, took his hat and gloves, and watched him as he walked into the living room. Hugging the coat to her, she walked back into the hall and hung it on the coat tree and set the hat on the small table, then, taking a deep breath because she was afraid of what her uncle would say, she walked back toward the living room, and down the steps. Natalia sat beside him on the couch, tucking her knees up and her ankles under her again, looking at his deep, almost canine-sad, eyes.

“Natalia, I need information and I will not tell you why. You doubtless already suspect why at any event, child. You may keep your suspicions. I want information.” “Uncle?”

“Fix me vodka, then I will tell you.” He picked up her glass, sniffed at it and smiled, then looked at the ice, his face downturning at the corners of the mouth. “None of this American ice-cube mixing—a ruination of good vodka.” She smiled and leaned across the couch, still on her knees, and kissed his cheek, then got up, walked into the kitchen.

She could hear him humming. Hey! Andrushka, the song itself about drinking vodka. She poured a tumbler about two-thirds full and brought the bottle out with it, and returned to the living room.

He abruptly stopped humming as she re-entered the room. She handed him the glass, and he drank it down neat, exhaled hard and rasped, his voice odd-sounding and breathless.

“It is not like the vodka we made when I was a boy—you used pepper or sand or whatever you could get to make the oil float to the bottom, so it would not go into your mouth with the vodka—ughh. Lovely thing it was!” She laughed, and poured him another glass. He looked at it for a while, not drinking it. She sat beside him and took her own glass. The ice was nearly melted.

“What do you want to know, Uncle?”

“I want to know the name of the man Vladmir had in Samuel Chambers’s inner circle—the traitor to the new President. I want the man’s name, his title or official duties, and how he may be contacted. I want this all now.” And Varakov tossed down the vodka.

Natalia watched his hands. She wondered what they were truly capable of.