The Chameleon Fallacy (Big Bamboo Book 2) (34 page)

Agent Black tapped him on the shoulder. “Baby Joe, can you come over here, please?”

Baby Joe looked back at Agent Black. He looked at his reflection and then back to the agent. He followed him back to the table.

“
Baby Joe,” Agent White said, “we may have something. Major Oblov recognizes this name. Zalupa. Khuy Zalupa. Apparently he is a serious badass. Into everything that there is to be into, and then some. Just the kind of creep who’d be mixed up in a deal like this. The major is going to show us his crib. We need you to go with us, but it might get hairy. We’re not asking you to get involved.”

“
I ain’t asking for a fucking invitation.”

“
We leave at midnight.”

***

Khuy Zalupa was standing on the bridge, looking down at the lights reflected in the river. It was beautiful. And sad. The darkened ships sailing down to the sea. To where? The current flowed away like time. Gone forever. He had never thought of it in that way before. That kind of thinking was alien to his nature, but he was enjoying it. There was something else too. He was scared. Not in any physical sense, but scared of losing what he had found. That was an entirely new sensation to him as well. Ever since his sister, there had never been anything or anyone in his life that meant so much to him that he was afraid to lose it. He suddenly wanted to speak to Fanny. He reached for his phone. She sounded sleepy.

“
Were you sleep?” he said.

“
Yeah, yeah. I just dropped off. But that’s okay. You all right?”

“
Da, da
. I am good. I have question. If you go anywhere in world, one place, and stay there, where you go?”

“
Paris,” she said.

“
Okay. We go. I finish deal with Americans; we go. Okay?”

“
Okay. You gonna be long? I miss you.”

“
Nyet
. I wait Oleg. Soon as he come, I come home. Half hour.”

“
Okay. I’ll be awake.”

Khuy put the phone away and went back to studying the river. He found himself wondering how cold it would be if you fell in. He looked at his watch. Three thirty a.m. Where the fuck was Oleg? Oleg was never late.

See? It had started already.

***

A basic rule of dining out: If you expect to go home without a case of botulism and without having a phlegm wad secreted in your Chicken Kiev, don’t be rude to the waiters. More especially, do not be rude to the maître d’. The maître d’ does not view himself as a servant; he views himself as an expert collaborator whose job it is to cooperate with you in ensuring that you enjoy a memorable dining experience. So whatever you do, don’t call him “boy.” This rule especially applies in countries that, until recently, didn’t have much of a customer service culture. Russia, for example. But then, Crispin had never been to Russia before, so how was he supposed to know?

Crispin looked like a six-month-old penguin chick. He was wearing a fluffy white astrakhan coat and a boyar hat, which he had bought at a discount from a man in the car park at the airport who had a load of such items in the trunk of his Lada, and who had assured him that the hat had been worn by Omar Sharif in
Doctor Zhivago
.

As always, Crispin had insisted on the best, so they were staying at the Leningradskaya Hotel and eating at Johannes Places on Tverskoy Boulevard, seated at a table for two under a huge picture window. The flight over had been dreadful. Not that there was anything intrinsically wrong with the flight itself, but Asia had been so tearful the whole way that Crispin had not been able to distract or reassure her. She was in the grip of an increasing sense of desperation and helplessness, exacerbated by a sense of foreboding that Baby Joe was going to suffer some harm, that something bad was going to happen to him as a consequence of a chain of events that she herself had set in motion or due to an unwonted vulnerability or recklessness engendered by her own rejection of him. She knew in her heart that the only way to forestall it was to put her arms around him, and make him all right again so that he could make her whole again.

The fact that she had not revealed the true extent of the psychological and emotional damage she had suffered did not help, nor did the fact that Crispin himself was concealing a hysterical neurotic in his psyche, a traumatized basketcase who was liable to leap out of his emotional closet at any given moment and shout “boo” before suffering a complete cranial meltdown. They were two fractured personalities quivering on the edge of the drop with only each other to cling to, and they really had no business cavorting around the streets of a foreign city on a wild goose chase that had little chance of success and contained the potential to push them both over the top completely.

But for better or worse, there they were. So he had brought her to what was generally considered the best restaurant in Moscow as part of his continuing effort to make her feel better.

“
So,” Crispin said. “All we have to do is find a person who may or may not be here, in a city of eleven and half million people, where we don’t speak the language, don’t know anybody, and have absolutely no idea where to begin. Piece of cake.” He stared at Asia and pointedly sipped his Black Russian.

“
Crispin, don’t be sarcastic now, please. I can’t handle it. I know how difficult it will be to find Baby Joe, but you knew that, and if you didn’t believe we could do it, you shouldn’t have come.”

“
I didn’t come to find Baby Joe. Personally, I don’t believe Baby Joe needs finding. I came to give you moral support, whether we find him or not, and especially if we don’t find him.”

Asia reached out and touched Crispin’s fat hand. “I know, Crispin. I’m sorry. Please don’t let’s quarrel. I’m just not myself.”

“
I know, pumpkin. Listen. Let’s enjoy our dinner and have a few drinks, or maybe more than a few, and we can start early in the morning. We can hire someone to translate, and we can call the hotels, and you said Baby Joe was working with our government so we can check with the Embassy and they’ll be sure to know something. Okay?”

Asia smiled at him. “Okay. We can do this, can’t we Crispin?”

“
Most certainly we can. Now, two more Black Russians, I think. Or would you prefer a White Russian this time?”

After a few vodkas flowed, Asia started to feel imbued with a renewed sense of hope and optimism, and the ambience started to work its charm on her, and she was almost enjoying herself. After a few more vodkas flowed, she was on the good foot, getting down on it, with her mojo working, and about ready to do the funky chicken.

Anyway you looked at it, the joint was cooking. The food was sublime, the service excellent, the music ridiculously romantic, the décor and attention to detail wonderful, and there was absolutely nothing at all that any reasonable person could possibly complain about, and Crispin was as enchanted with the place as the place was enchanting.

The trouble didn’t start until halfway through the dessert, when a guy with a violin came up to their table and started to play a selection of Prokofiev, and something about
Peter and the Wolf
tripped a switch in Crispin’s noodle and switched it to weird-out mode.

***

Fanny watched her image gradually appear as the condensation faded from the mirror. She felt sad. Something undefined ached inside her. It was the kind of feeling you got sometimes when you looked at an old photograph. She looked at her body. She studied her face. She was still a fine-looking woman. Still beautiful. Still sensual. But the frost of fall was upon the rose. As yet, it expressed itself only in the subtlest of ways, but she could feel the autumn breeze. Soon the leaves would begin to turn.

Well, if these were the last days of summer, she was sure as hell going to make the best of them. She went to her closet and opened her underwear drawer. She put on black silk-seamed stockings and a suspender belt. She went back to the mirror and did her make-up, but not after her usual fashion. She plastered it on, brash and gaudy, heavy black Cleopatra eyes and bright red lipstick. She painted rouge on her cheeks so that she looked like a china doll. Or a whore. She put on red stilettos. She pulled a chair up to the mirror, put her feet up on the sink, and painted her labia bright red. She smiled at herself.

She slinked over to the bar and popped a bottle of champagne, then took her glass over to a deep satin-covered armchair and sat down. She turned out the light.

Through the windows she could see the lights of the airplanes passing in the distance on the way to the airport. The light from the lamps outside on the street glowed softly in her hair. It was silent. She sipped her champagne and began to touch herself, ever so gently stroking her clitoris. She half-closed her eyes and waited for the sound of Khuy’s footsteps on the wooden floor of the hall. They came. She heard the key in the door and stood up as it began to open, and she walked up to put her arms around Khuy and open herself to him.

Except it wasn’t Khuy.

***

“
You’re where now?”

“
St. Petersburg, with Hyatt.”

“
What the fuck? Why didn’t you tell us you were going?”

Endless Lee had patched his phone onto the big screen, so both he and Momo could see Sebastian Type.

“
It was a short-notice deal, man. I needed a particle accelerator to make some tests. For this kind of bread, we need to be real sure, right? Anyway, I’m in this, like, top-fucking-secret military installation. Your man Zalupa’s got some serious juice, let me tell you.”

“
So, what’s the verdict?”

“
Fucking buy it. Pronto. It’s a hundred percent legit.”

“
Are you sure that the gizmo is the only one?”

“
Yeah, for two reasons. One, they don’t have the tech here for proliferation. Two, fucking Hyatt is not as smart as he thinks he is. It’s not that easy. Even for me. I figure we’re about three months away from having the systems in place for mass production. Momo will have to patent the reproduction technique as well as the R3.”

“
Okay, so we’re good to go. When will you be back?”

“
I’m not coming back to Moscow. I’m heading straight back to the States, first flight tomorrow morning. There’s some shit I got to get cracking with.”

“
Okay. Momo and me’ll take care of this end, and we’ll see you back home.” Endless Lee hung up and turned to Momo. “All right, then. Showtime. Call Huckleberry and tell him to meet us in the usual spot, around nine.”

In the next room, Hyatt also hung up. He walked over to the bar and poured himself a vodka over ice. He went back to the DVD and flicked on the R3.

“
Damn, I’m good,” he said out loud, laughing as he watched the replay of the late, lamented Sebastian Type convincing the Americans to part with approximately one gazillion dollars.

***

Oleg sat behind the wheel, watching the other car pull away. He could see the American in the back, talking to the interpreter. Funny how you could tell, even from behind, and in that light, that he was an American. Something about the way he held his head. A kind of undefeatable optimism. Oleg was confused. And surprised. He didn’t know Americans were so smart. How could he know the things that were in Oleg’s mind, when Oleg wasn’t really sure about them himself? He looked down at the case. All that money. He should be happy, right? It was what he wanted, right? It was the way it had to be. It was survival. It was smart. So why did he feel so bad? He took up the bottle and drained half of it. Fuck it. It was done. There was no going back.

Oleg turned the key, jammed the car into gear, and pulled out without looking, ignoring the screeching of tires and the angry honking of horns.

***

“
Calculate the entire mobile phone turnover for a year and triple it, add in the combined revenues of Fox sports and the Disney Corporation, and stick Pablo Escobar’s laundry bill in the hat, just for good measure, and you’ll have a rough idea of the kind of dough-re-mi we’re talking about here. I’m talking astro-fucking-nomical, galactic-financial-insanity amounts of money.”