Murder in Foggy Bottom - Margaret Truman [60]
“Don’t flatter him,” Lerner said, holding out a chair for her. “He naps now.”
Elena looked quizzically at Pauling.
“Ignore him,” Pauling said. “Come on, catch me up on what you’ve been doing since I left—and be sure to include how my leaving devastated everyone.”
They chatted about many things over the caviar, and the zhulienn , a small casserole of mushrooms and sour cream served in individual metal dishes, and the Dover sole flown in from England. When cups of strong, black coffee had been served to accompany vanilla morozhenoe— Pauling had forgotten how good Russian ice cream was—Elena said she had to leave.
“So soon?” Pauling said.
“Yes. I have an early meeting tomorrow, and unlike you, Max, I didn’t have time to nap today.”
Pauling laughed and stood. “Wonderful seeing you again, Elena. I hope we can do this again many times.”
“We’ll make a point of it.” She kissed Lerner on the lips, glanced about the dining room, and left the table.
“Beautiful as ever,” Pauling said, watching the gentle sway of her hips as she navigated the tables and disappeared from view. Elena Alekseyevna was more handsome than beautiful, Pauling knew: tall and sturdy, chiseled features, minimal makeup, and salt-and-pepper hair worn short, businesslike. She usually wore tailored suits, as she had that night, befitting her middle-level position at the Central Bank.
When the two men had resumed their seats and ordered more coffee, Pauling discerned an unmistakable sadness in Lerner’s eyes. “You okay?” he asked.
“Yes, of course.”
“I envy you. She’s a fine woman.”
“That she is.” Lerner made a show of drawing a deep breath, sitting up straight, and smiling. “Let’s finish up, Max, and go take a bath.”
Pauling hadn’t cultivated a liking for banyas, Russian public baths, which were as much a part of the national culture as borscht and vodka. He’d been to them a dozen times when living in Moscow, always at a Russian’s invitation. Most deal meetings had taken place in hard-currency bars and restaurants owned by organized crime, or secluded rendezvous points on the docks, or in dachas, summer country homes popular with those city dwellers who could afford second homes, which included the political elite, plus stars of movies, organized crime, and crooked business.
But this night it was the baths, the Sandunov Sauna, one of the city’s most popular.
“You don’t have to come in with me,” Pauling told Lerner as they approached the building on Neglinniy Pereulok. “Tell me who the guy is and go catch up with Elena.”
“Oh, no, Max, wouldn’t miss it. Things have been dull since you left. Besides, this gentleman is comfortable with me. We’ve—” He laughed. “We’ve bonded.”
“This is the banker?”
“Yes. I originally called him just to ask whether he’d consider meeting a friend of mine. That’s you, Max. But when he said tonight was convenient for him, I thought you’d want to take advantage of it.”
Lerner paid the admission fee and they were directed to a changing room, where they handed their valuables to an attendant, who asked whether they’d brought bathing suits, towels, shampoo, and sandals.
“Nyet,” Lerner answered.
The attendant assigned them small, curtained changing rooms and handed them the necessities they’d neglected to bring, including plastic robes. Each was also given a venik, a bundle of birch twigs with which to hit themselves, allegedly to get the blood flowing. They changed and met outside their cubicles.
“We shouldn’t be here on full stomachs,” Lerner said.
“Yeah, I remember,” Pauling replied, feeling silly in his outfit.
“And no more than five minutes at a time in the sauna. Hate to have you pass out on me.”
“Worry about yourself. Where are we meeting this guy you’ve bonded with?”
“The sauna. Ready?”
“Sure.”
The sauna, a large room with three tiers of benches— the bottom level was the least hot—contained a dozen towel-clad men. Pauling’s dislike of Russian saunas came back to him—the steam, the heat, the smell of aftershave lotion and toilet water and perspiration permeating the room as it sweated out of the bodies.