I took the mobile telephone out of my pocket and switched it on. Lenochka was due to ring any minute now.
I sprang out of the airport building and ran to the paid car park. There, yesterday evening, straight after landing in Hamburg, a rented “Golf” had been parked. I quickly found the car, started it and raced away from the airport and from the city. I drove south and adjured the telephone lying on the seat to my right: ring! Ring! Ring!
The telephone kept silent, testing my patience. Blast it!
Where has that fool got to?
The plan, agonized over with enormous difficulty, was listing and ready to collapse.
Surely it hasn’t all fallen apart?!!
Only the morning before yesterday, going through Mamon’s papers on the plane flying from Moscow to Frankfurt, I had been in seventh heaven with happiness! Everything I found in Anechka’s secret locker two months ago – rubbish. Anyuta had been playing me. I understood that neither today nor yesterday. It became clear on the day I was discharged from hospital. No, it didn’t become clear. A guess simply flashed by.
The situation: six men are sent by Mamon after Anyuta. Question: will specialists be engaged in the operation, or who? Why was I shot at so strangely: not one of the four bullets touched a vital organ. Had those lads come to San Marco to pick mushrooms or to do serious business? Where was the finishing shot to the victim’s head? Such were the questions I asked myself. Asked, and understood that there’s no smoke without fire. That is why I arrived in Moscow and set about looking for the seal with the password. It was obvious that precisely these little items were of interest. What interest? The morning before yesterday I ascertained from Mamon’s papers exactly what. For the narcotics Anyuta paid in cash dollars. They were delivered to Moscow by courier. Mamon converted the money received into non-cash form. By what means, I understood only dimly. Or rather, didn’t understand at all. Into the meaning of the words non-cash, readies, contract payment, customs clearance* and the rest I failed to tune in, I let it pass me by. The main thing was the following. The non-cash dollars traveled in the opposite direction, from Russia to Holland, and settled in the account of the syndicate “TIST” at the bank «Heidemann». Once every three or four months, when a decent sum had accumulated there, some fifteen or twenty million, Mamon sent it further still, to the Cayman Islands. He had some sort of coded account there, and good luck to him… For me it was the procedure for transferring the money that was of enormous interest. It was described in detail in the banking services agreement that turned out to be in the “Heidemann” folder. That very one, number four. Well then, the procedure was as follows. Mamon drew up a payment transfer with the recipient’s details indicated, entered the password, fastened it with the seal and sent it to the bank by courier. Other forms were not permitted by that very same agreement. Very convenient for types like me or Anya. Incidentally, from Mamon’s personal correspondence I read out that he had been prompted to such a form of service by… Guess who? Anya, of course. The cunning and far-sighted bitch had planned in advance to set Mamon up. Led the naïve simpleton round her little finger. Impressed on him that all Western millionaires have accounts like that. When I read her persuasive letter, I felt a mighty desire ripening inside me to set up one just like it. I’ll definitely set one up. Pah! A clever little item, after all, my Anya, a competent one… In the story of the stolen seal she didn’t show up anywhere at all. She’ll go on working with Mamon. Clever.
But I’m cleverer. I flew into Hamburg not alone. On the same route as me flew Lena, once again furnished with instructions. The instructions were simple. In no way to show that we were acquainted, as though we were each flying on our own. On arrival, to move on by available transport to Essen and wait there for morning. At exactly ten, before Mamon could contact the bank personnel and warn them about the loss of the password and the seal, to come to the bank with the payment order. The payment order I had drawn up the day before. Mamon’s signature was forged, the seal and the password genuine. In the payment order the details of my account at that same «Heidemann» were indicated, and the sum entered was five million, half of what by my calculations Mamon had. A minute after Lena’s arrival at the bank I was due to become a millionaire. The aforementioned sum was due to be credited to my account, which had one peculiarity. All monies received into it were to be transferred to the Caribbean, to that same splendid bank whose name I could never have remembered without the corresponding notes. Some ten words figured on its signboard.
The most important point of the instructions given to Lena was the following: having done everything as prescribed by me, she was to ring my mobile telephone and make her own way to Frankfurt, the place of our meeting.
For all of it, Lenochka had been promised one million dollars. Fair? Very. Who else would fork out such a sum for her?
Only why isn’t she ringing? Decided to redraw the payment order in her own name and appropriate all the cash? Has her own notions of fairness?! I’ll give her notions! Only let her ring, only let her ring!
Ring, go on! Ring!
Bitch! Whore! Ring!
Ring, in God’s name, in your soul’s name, in your mother’s name!
RING!!!
to be continued...