The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [90]
‘Is he that good?’ she asked, surprised. ‘The Cartier Cup is played by high-goal teams.’
‘From what I hear, he’s afraid of horses—no, he’s pretty much bought Urs Schwarzenbach’s old polo team and he plans to cheer them to victory from the comfort of one of the tents.’
The waitress arrived and they ordered veal sausages and a carafe of red wine. Rice waited until she had left the table then continued. ‘The Hammer-Belles have been invited to stay at his chalet and watch the match. From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going to be quite a lavish affair.’
‘More Russians.’ Stevie wanted to groan but was luckily distracted by the arrival of the wine.
‘Have a good glass of this, Stevie—put some fire back into your blood.’
Stevie obediently took the glass, hoping the subject of her bungled escapade would magically elude David.
‘Constantine told me what happened, Stevie.’
She swallowed a mouthful of wine. ‘Kozkov sent me home with my tail between my legs, his daughter still in the hands of the kidnappers.’ She fought back a most humiliating tear and stared defiantly at Rice, almost daring him to pour his heaviest scorn on her.
David fixed her with his grey eyes for a moment. ‘Well for God’s sake, don’t lose your appetite over it.’
Stevie hadn’t touched the sausage.
‘Look, Stevie,’ his voice was rough with the concern that didn’t show on his face. ‘You can’t win them all. You’re well out of that one. You were a little fool to get involved in the first place.’
Stevie looked down at her hands, her eyes pricking again. Tears certainly wouldn’t do. She bit her lip to concentrate herself and forced herself to look Rice in the eye.
He held her gaze gently. ‘Maybe the girl will be found safely without you—Kozkov’s plan might work . . . the thing is, you can do no more. Hundreds of girls disappear this way in Russia every year. My advice—maybe you’d call it harsh but I am a realistic man—is concentrate on the ones you can do something about.’
Stevie picked up her knife and cut rather viciously into the sausage. ‘Did you find out anything about the Ukrainian?’
Rice gave a sharp glance at the table nearest to them—an elderly couple eating Zürcher Geschnetzeltes mit Rösti. They were too far away to hear anything. He sat back in his chair. ‘Felix Dragoman, born in Chernobyl, Ukraine, nineteen years before the accident. The bio’s pretty grim. His father worked at the reactor as an engineer, his mother cleaned it at night. Our man left school and got a job driving dangerous goods trucks in and out of the reactor grounds.’
Rice paused to refill their glasses.
‘Dragoman’s father was one of the thirty-five people who died instantly when the core of the reactor melted in April, 1986. He was inside the plant. Dragoman’s brother was one of the firemen sent in to put out the fire.’
‘Didn’t they get sent in wearing paper masks and Wellington boots?’ Stevie remembered seeing terrifying pictures of the clean-up crews at ground zero.
Rice reached for his glass but didn’t drink just yet. ‘The Soviets just threw the rescue workers on the fire like buckets of sand—and don’t tell me they didn’t know they were sending the men to their deaths!’
Rice had cast his warrior soul during the Cold War and it showed every now and then. Stevie liked it when it did. Why? Maybe it revealed a passion that appeared to be absent in the everyday David Rice. It made her feel closer to him.
‘Anyway,’ Rice took a swallow of wine and continued, ‘the brother died shortly afterwards. Dragoman was watching a victory parade that was staged through Chernobyl only a few hours after the accident. Classic Soviet stuff—they couldn’t tell anyone that there had been a terrible accident. They had orders to hide everything. And so the victory parade had to go on, as scheduled.’
The waitress cleared their plates—Stevie had relaxed during Rice’s story and managed to eat everything. They ordered espresso.
When the coffee arrived, Rice stirred far too much sugar into the tiny cup and lit a thin cigar.