Altar of Bones (46 page)

She saw the ponytailed man’s knife—her knife now—lying on the floor in front of Madame Blotski. In the end it had fallen short, but it had come close enough to do the trick.

Zoe picked it up and started to shove it into her waist as she’d seen them do in the movies, but that didn’t seem like such a good idea after all, so she stuffed it into the bulging satchel instead.

“Okay, I’m ready now,” she said, and looked up at Ry. He had a stunned look on his face, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. But that wasn’t surprising if his head was feeling the way hers was.

“Right,” he said after a moment. “Let’s go.”

He still had his gun pointed at Madame Blotski, but it didn’t seem necessary anymore. The woman stood in utter stillness, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist, as if she needed to hold herself together.

The eyes she turned onto Ry’s face were dark with fear and pain. “You must kill me for my Oksana’s sake. Otherwise how will he know that I did not just let you both go?”

Ry shook his head. “I can’t—”

“You must. You
know
you must.”

Ry put his hand in the small of Zoe’s back and pushed her gently forward. “Go on ahead.”

“What? No!”

He gave her another shove, hard enough this time to send Zoe reeling toward the door. Then he raised the Walther and pulled the trigger.

There was a
spfitt
sound, and Madame Blotski slumped to the floor.

Zoe whirled and started back into the room, but Ry gripped her arm and pulled her after him. She tried to wrench away from him, but he was too strong. She looked back to see that Madame Blotski was sitting up, holding a hand to her side, blood seeping out between her fingers.

“It’s only a flesh wound,” Ry said. “Let’s hope that’s enough.”

Z
OE RUBBED
the steam off the café window so that she could keep an eye on the antiques shop across the Rue des Saints-Pères. Its wooden facade was painted a classy hunter green. Its name, Air de la Russie, was painted in discreet gold script above the door. A mesh metal grill still covered its dark plate-glass windows, though, while the other shops around it glowed invitingly in the gray, rainy morning.

“‘M. Anthony Lovely, Propriétaire,’ “Zoe said, reading aloud the smaller and even more discreet lettering beneath the shop’s name. They’d scoped out the display in the windows before they’d come over to the café, and Zoe had been impressed. From what she could tell, the icons, Fabergé eggs, lacquer boxes, nesting dolls, and jewelry were all of the highest quality. Monsieur Anthony Lovely definitely knew his stuff.

“What an odd name. Anthony Lovely. I bet it was a kick and a half for little Tony, growing up with a name like that. It isn’t Russian, or French either, for that matter. Hopefully he speaks English, because I hate it when people are jabbering around me and I can’t understand a word. Not everybody speaks a gazillion languages like you do, Ry. At least I’m bilingual.”

She stopped to draw breath and check her watch. “It’s after ten already. What if he doesn’t show?”

Ry stuffed the last of his croissant into his mouth. “It so happens I only speak twelve languages fluently, but I am functional in three more.”

Zoe gaped at him; she couldn’t help it. “You’re shi—kidding me, right?”

“I kid you not. It’s just a gift I happened to’ve been born with. Like
having perfect pitch, or being able to multiply 1,546 times 852 in your head. Before I became a DEA agent, I was in the Special Forces, and the army treated me to a lot of immersion courses. The rest I picked up along the way.

“As for Anthony Lovely, the guy who recommended him said he’s a British expat—from the Cotswolds, to be exact—so it’s a good bet he speaks English. He’s a lifelong bachelor, but straight, in his midseventies. Russian antiquities are his life, apparently, since he seems to have no other interests, and my guy says he hasn’t missed a day at his shop in over forty years. He’ll show.”

“Okay.” Zoe was still reeling over the fact that Ry spoke fifteen languages.

The waiter refilled their coffees in passing. Zoe rubbed the steam off the window again, then picked up her cup more to warm her hands than to drink from it. She was already wired to the max.

She looked up and caught Ry staring at her, an intense, almost fierce look on his face. “What is it? You’ve been looking at me weird ever since we sat down in here—”

A horrible thought suddenly occurred to her. She dropped her coffee cup back into its saucer and brushed her fingers over the front of her hair. “Please don’t tell me I still have his blood on me.”

He smiled. “No, you’re fine. All scrubbed up nice and shiny.”

After they’d left the Casbah, they hadn’t dared go to a hotel, where they would have had to show their passports, but they used the cool public shower facilities called Mc Clean that were in the basement of the Gare du Nord railway station. Zoe hadn’t realized how much of the ponytailed man’s head had ended up all over her until she saw all the blood and gore swirling around the drain. Now, she couldn’t think of it without feeling itchy all over.

“Well what, then?”

He shrugged. “It’s just … You surprised the hell out of me back there at the Casbah. The way you saved our butts by going all ninja with a knife.”

Zoe grinned at him, more than a little pleased with herself. “To be honest, it didn’t happen like it was supposed to. I thought it would flip
end over end like you see in movies, but it fell short and just kind of thudded.”

“That’s because the blade is curved. It ruins the balance.” Ry reached for the check. Zoe watched as he pulled a wad of euros out of his jacket pocket. He seemed to have an endless supply of cash—a good thing, she thought, since all she had were a couple of now useless credit cards. If she hadn’t hooked up with Ry O’Malley, she’d probably be in the hands of the French police by now, and then only if she was lucky. Otherwise she’d be in the morgue.

She said, “At least the ponytailed man is out of my life for good now, thanks to you. Madame Blotski said the man on the other end of the phone was a stranger to her, but she seemed pretty convinced he was
mafayi
, and what he said to her does sound like the sort of threat a
pakhan
would make.”

“Yeah, I think we can safely assume Mr. Ponytail worked for Popov’s son.”

“He isn’t going to stop coming after me, is he, Ry? Popov’s son. His dad told him about the altar of bones, and now he wants it for himself and he’s going to keep sending his
vors
after me until he gets it.”

She hadn’t realized she was clutching her coffee mug so tightly until Ry pried her fingers loose and wrapped them up in his big hand. “We’ve bought us some nice breathing room, though. It’ll take some time for Popov’s son to field another
vor
, and that guy’s going to have to track us down. In the meantime maybe we can get a good lead from this icon guy on what and where is the altar of bones.”

“And since Kennedy was killed because the KGB believed he drank from it,” Zoe said, “maybe solving the mystery of the altar will show us a way to get rid of Yasmine Poole and Company as well. I still think she works for that guy in the railroad uniform who showed up at the end of the film to take the rifle from your dad.”

“Yeah. I suppose it’s possible she really does work for the CIA, but like you, my bet is on railroad guy. Whoever he is, though, he must have some serious juice, to—”

“O’Malley, look.” Zoe grabbed his arm and pointed with her chin toward a man in a fedora and crisp gray suit who stood in front of the Air
de la Russie. He carried a newspaper tucked under one arm and a Starbucks cup in one hand, and he had to set his coffee down on the shop’s window ledge to pull a ring of keys out of his pockets.

“It’s him. The icon guy.”

T
HEY DECIDED ON
a cover: She and Ry were here in Paris on their honeymoon, but also to visit her grandmother, an émigré who came over from Russia during the glasnost era, and who’d given them the icon as a wedding present. They wanted to get it appraised, and perhaps insured, before they went back to the States.

“I’ll act bored,” Ry said. “Like this is your thing and I’m just along for the ride, humoring you because I want to jump your bones later on. That way he’s less likely to feel threatened or intimidated by me. You be clueless, but eager to learn, which will get him to open up more. People like to show off their knowledge.”

Zoe felt self-conscious, though, once they were in the shop and she was rattling off their story, as if she were reading her lines off cue cards. But Anthony Lovely didn’t seem suspicious, only mildly curious as she took the icon from her satchel, unwrapped it from its protective sealskin pouch, and laid it on the counter.

The man caught his breath as the light from the shop’s crystal chandeliers glimmered in the jewels and gilt paint on the Virgin’s crown and robe.

“Why, it’s … exquisite,” he said, but Zoe thought he’d been about to say something else.

His hands hovered in the air over the icon, as if he yearned to touch it but didn’t dare. “Yes, it is really rather extraordinary. I would like to examine it under more direct light. May I?”

“Please do. My grandmother said it’s been in the family for generations. Didn’t she, honey?”

Zoe turned to look at Ry, and her mouth nearly fell open. He had morphed into a completely different person—his face looked softer, emptier, as if he’d dropped about fifty points off his IQ. And although he couldn’t make himself grow shorter or less buff, the way he slouched
against the counter, his shoulders drooping, he didn’t look nearly so tough and threatening anymore.

And, oh, boy—he was giving her this hot look, a very hot look, that clearly said he was picturing her naked right now. Naked and sex-sweaty, and lying underneath him—

Anthony Lovely cleared his throat. “Tell me, Mrs….”

Zoe jerked her fascinated gaze off Ry and turned back to the antiques dealer. “Uh, Suzie Carpenter, with a
z
. My husband’s name is Jake Carpenter. We just got married.”

“Yes, so you said. May I ask, how extensive is your knowledge of religious icons?”

“Just that they’re, you know, these religious things,” Zoe said, hoping she sounded clueless enough. “But I want to know more, now that I’ve got one.”

Anthony Lovely shifted his coffee and the folded-up newspaper farther down the counter and picked up a green gooseneck lamp from over by the cash register.

“Because of the veneration in which they were held by the Orthodox Church,” he said, “Russian icons had to conform to strict formal rules, with fixed patterns repeated over and over again. There were severe repercussions for those artists who dared to deviate from the norm. Being whipped to death with a wire flail, for example.”

Zoe shuddered. “Oh, but that’s terrible.”

“Indeed.” Lovely set the lamp down on the counter. “Which is what makes this particular icon of yours so special—because its subject matter so completely violates all the rules, don’t you see?”

He reached beneath the counter and brought out a box of thin plastic gloves, so the oil from his skin wouldn’t get onto the wood. He took a black velvet cloth from out of a drawer, smoothed it out, then reverently laid the icon down on top of it.

Zoe felt a pang of guilt over the cavalier way she and Ry had been handling it, poking and prying and shaking it to see if it had a hidden compartment. She’d even jumped into the Seine with it.

“Normally,” Lovely said, bending at the waist and adjusting his bifocals up, then down, then up again, “the Virgin is depicted holding the
Christ child in her arms, or with her hands folded in prayer. But instead, what we have here is a rather macabre drinking cup. Carved out of a human skull, no less.”

“It is kind of creepy looking,” Zoe said, with another shudder. “Do you think it has some special meaning?”

“To the artist, perhaps. The Church, I rather suspect, would have been horrified at the very idea.”

Lovely lost himself in his thoughts for a moment, and his eyes, Zoe thought, were almost worshipful as he looked at the icon.
He loves this
, she thought.
Not only the icons—he loves Russia herself, her history, her dark and deep mysteries. He loves it all the way to his soul
.