Toward midnight I had loaded up on information beyond measure.
It turned out Mamon had channeled part of his talents into a lawful bed and turned into an honest entrepreneur. He owned a countless number of retail outlets, carried out export-import operations, was setting up production of consumer goods, was registered as a participant in foreign economic activity, was a responsible land user, provided services to the population, extended sponsorship assistance and God knows what else. Some sort of economic octopus rather than a middling criminal. Could an error have crept into my notions?
No. There could be no error. The director’s surname on most of the papers was familiar to me. In his telephone conversations Mamon often gave his interlocutors instructions: «Timokhin will do that, sign this, draw up the other… Then Timokhin will drive over there, come by here.» It turned out Mister Timokhin was no errand boy but the General Director of a certain open joint-stock company with the intricate name «Commercial-Production Scientific Association «Rostekhprominfokomplekt». My eyes nearly climbed onto my forehead at such intricacy.
And when I got to the payment orders clipped into a separate folder, my eyes definitely made their way beyond the limits prescribed by nature. The recipient of every second currency transfer was some outfit under the name of «TIST», which had an account – attention! – at the «Heidemann» bank. I nearly choked on my own saliva with surprise, but quickly came to myself. Nothing surprising in it. Why should Anechka be worse than me? She too could have known from Hans about the existence of that wonderful financial institution and – nobody has abolished female talkativeness – shared the secret knowledge with Mamon. Logical. I took the calculator off the desk and ran through the sums sent to Holland over the past month. It came out to something around five million dollars. They work well. It looked as though «Heidemann» was the first bank in a long laundering chain. Or wasn’t it? Maybe I am mistaken?
Without question, a surplus of information leads to doubt. One must be simpler.
I decided to be simple and comprehensible. Going out into the corridor, I picked up a wastebasket and threw it through the glass door behind which the stairway lay. There came a crash of collapsing glass and the rustle of mild bewilderment below. Before long a man with a shotgun appeared on the shard-strewn steps. Simply, without frills, I shot him in the thigh and ordered him to lie down on the floor. Then, on my command, he cuffed himself to the stair railings with my own handcuffs and assumed the front-leaning rest position. Until morning, by the look of it. I threw him a bandage so he would have something to occupy himself with and not think about all sorts of foolishness like “How do I get out of the handcuffs” or “What signals should I send to the police and how”. Then I advised him to lie there and keep quiet. In any case I would be the only one to hear the shouting. And in that case my mood might deteriorate so badly that no doctor would be needed, only a forensic examiner and a pathologist.
With the gun at the ready I went quickly down to the first floor and found nobody in the empty corridor. “Where have the other two got to? Gone to ground in ambush? That’s not what we agreed,” – and along with the appearance of sensible thoughts in my head came the sound of an incomprehensible scuffling to my ears. Its source was the rest room. I dashed for the room, kicked the door open, threw my hands with the pistol up to shoulder level and… saw three naked girls with two guards naked below the waist. The guards’ arms were tangled in the sleeves of the tunics they were pulling on and flapped nervously behind their backs. “Everybody on the floor,” I said quietly and distinctly.
The citizens obeyed. I inspected the room. On the table stood a bottle of champagne, three bottles of vodka and a little something to eat with it. The empties on the floor could not be identified. Of greater interest was one more shotgun propped against the couch. I took it in my hand and reflected that I had miscalculated on the handcuffs. I had only two pairs left. There was no way I could have supposed the office was guarded by a merry party.
On my command the guards put their hands behind their backs and cuffed themselves to the radiator. One of them made an attempt to kick out but was calmed with a blow to the head. Then I taped their mouths shut and spent a long time reckoning what to do with three underage girls, snotty and drunk. With a certain delay a clever thought did come into my head after all. I ordered the girls, who were shivering either from cold or from fear and appeared to be sobering up, to each take a bottle of vodka. In a couple of minutes half the contents of the bottles had migrated into their stomachs. Migrated without anything to chase it, which was the whole point of the barbaric scheme. With an escort of three hiccupping girls I went up to the second floor and kicked in the door of Mamon’s office.
Where?
Where? Where is my dark-eyed girl, where…
Whistling a simple little tune, I looked over the office. Contrary to expectation, Mamon’s workplace turned out to be cozy and rich. Rubber plants stood green in tubs. In the corner burbled a wonderful replica of the Angel Falls. Stylish furniture called up from memory the word “neoconservatism”. On the walls hung pictures à la russe, nothing but Shishkin in a pine forest. I herded the girls onto the sofa and set about tearing pictures and tapestries off the walls. The concealed fireproof cabinet was discovered where it was supposed to be discovered, in the wall behind the writing desk. The nickel-plated semblance of a safe held in its belly the key to eight million dollars. The prospects opening up were most exciting.
I glanced at the girls, arranged on the wide leather sofa like hens on a perch. Knees drawn up to their chins, they were shivering, looking at me in fright and visibly getting drunk. This was attested by the slowed movements of their limbs and the complete absence of coordination as such. I suddenly felt, vividly, crudely and palpably, that I had not been close to a woman for a long time, and here were three at once… Halt! I am not yet fifty, to be eyeing fifteen-year-olds. I calmed my agitated flesh in a moment and ran quickly up to the third floor for the bag. On the way I checked on the wounded guard’s behavior. It was exemplary; the leg was being bandaged not exactly deftly, but confidently.
Back in the office, I laid out my tools on the desk and set to work. For a qualified safecracker, opening Mamon’s safe would have been entertainment rather than labor. Old Heinrich would have dealt with that nickel-plating in a couple of minutes. I fussed with it for over an hour. In the end I wrecked the door, threw it open and…
And what?
Nothing. Three thousand conventional units, a stack of rubles two fingers thick and some papers. No seal. No password either. A setback.
I threw the entire contents of the safe into my bag and set about searching the writing desk. There too nothing interesting turned up. Beside myself with rage I overturned the desk, woke the girls with cuffs to the back of the head, shoved them off the sofa onto the floor, then out of spite wrecked all the furniture in the office, smashed it to smithereens and was gone. Departed satisfied, to the sounds produced by the vomiting girls.
Having run to Fedya, revving and spinning the wheels, I drove very nervously to Nagatino to get some sleep before the assault on Mamon’s dacha. It looked as though the seal and the password, if they existed in nature at all, were kept there, under the pillow. Nowhere else.