Last Snow - Eric van Lustbader [52]
“No matter,” Jack said. “Thank you for your time.” He took the murder weapon and turned to Annika. “In any event, we’re late for your appointment. Dr. Sosymenko has to change your dressing.”
Annika played along smoothly, though she must have been as taken by surprise as was Boyer. “Oh, yes, I got so engrossed here I forgot all about it. Come along, darling,” she said and, taking Alli’s hand, walked out the door with Jack right behind her.
“What was that all about?” she said when they were out on the street.
“In the car,” Jack said. “Now!”
He flipped Annika the keys and she slid behind the wheel while he got in beside her and Alli climbed into the backseat.
As she started up and pulled out into traffic, she said, “Do we have a destination or should I drive in circles for a while?”
“Drive in circles,” Jack said, staring intently at the off-side mirror.
“That was a joke, Jack.”
“I know, but I want to make sure we’re not being followed.”
“Okay,” she said, turning right at the first stoplight, “I give up.”
“Alli found a bill of lading in the back of the shop for a set of those sulitsa complete in their quiver about to be delivered to a client by the name of M. Magnussen.”
Annika nodded. “Which means Boyer was lying to us.”
“So who the hell was he calling?” Jack said.
“The SBU or the cops?” Annika ventured.
“Or maybe this Magnussen, who asked him to be on the lookout for anyone coming around with a spare lung sticker.”
“You’re thinking he’s the killer,” Alli said, hunched forward, her face between them.
“That’s right, you heard Boyer, a single sulitsa is worthless. Magnussen ordered a new set of sulitsa because he used one from his original set to kill Rochev’s mistress.”
“But why would anyone use one of those things to commit murder?” Alli asked.
“D’you think the police would know what they’re looking at?” Annika made another right. “It would simply confuse them.”
“Except,” Jack said, “if someone else other than the police found the body. Someone smart enough—”
“—or interested enough,” Annika cut in.
“Yes,” Jack continued, “to pursue the investigation.”
“Which is why,” Alli said, “he gave Boyer instructions to call him if anyone came in inquiring about it.”
“By the way,” Jack interrupted, “see that dark sedan two cars back? We are being followed.”
Annika proved herself as adept as Jack at flushing tails and getting rid of them, which was, he thought, one advantage of her being trained by the FSB. On the other hand, he couldn’t bring to mind another.
She spent the next ten minutes lulling them into thinking they hadn’t been made before she tore through a red light, leaving an angry chorus of blaring horns and squealing brakes. She made a right, then an almost immediate left, rolling down an alleyway so narrow the brick walls sheared off their side mirrors. A third of the way along, she turned off the engine, and they sat waiting. Forty seconds later the black sedan sped by the alleyway, and Annika immediately fired up the ignition, and they rolled to the far end of the alley, where she turned left.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
Jack gave her the address. “The collector’s named M. Magnussen.”
“Doesn’t sound Ukrainian,” Alli said.
“Or Russian, for that matter,” Annika added, as she navigated through Kiev’s crowded streets.
“Whatever his nationality,” Jack said, “there seems to be a clear line back to my starting point. Senator Berns is killed by a hit-and-run on Capri after having flown from here. The last person he met with was Karl Rochev, whose mistress has been murdered in bizarre fashion with an antique Cossack weapon, and Rochev himself is nowhere to be found. Now it seems clear that the murder weapon belonged to this M. Magnussen.”
“Whoever he is,” Alli said.
WHOEVER MAGNUSSEN was, he was wealthy. He lived outside the city, in one of the areas so high-priced that not a high-rise or even a block of cement was to be seen. Instead, rolling farmland not unlike that of rural Virginia protected his domicile from