CHAPTER 9 #3
She had the black canvas bag from the morning, a second tote, and a small linen-wrapped package the size of her palm at the top of the bag. ID lanyard with the pediatric pin at her collarbone. Her eyes went past me to Castellan.
He held a small ring with a single physical key on it in his left palm.
"Elena. You will hold the key. We will not.
There is a thumb-turn deadbolt on the inside of the door that releases the steel without a card.
This is the spare. You hold it. If you lose it I will replace it.
If you want to throw it down the corridor I will retrieve it.
The card-keyed entry on the outside reads our cards.
Today you are not on the access list as a card.
Tomorrow you will be. The card is not the key.
The key is the key. The lock keeps us out, not you in. "
She took the ring. Closed her hand around it. Put it in the front pocket of her scrub top with the medallion's chain at her sternum brushing her knuckles as she went in.
"Thank you."
"You are welcome."
She came inside. Stefan set the carafe on the burner and poured a glass of water onto the cardboard coaster I had brought down from the garage.
She drank half. Walked to the queen bed at the west wall and put the canvas bag by the bed's foot and the tote next to it.
She put the linen-wrapped package on the writing-desk's drawer. It stayed wrapped. She turned in place.
"I would like to be alone for two hours."
"Doll. If you would. Yes," Stefan said. "I will leave the espresso pot on the burner. The kettle is on the back. The fruit is in the small refrigerator. The tea is in the upper-left cabinet. Pakhan will bring you dinner at seventeen hundred. He will sit. He will leave when you tell him to."
"Thank you, Stefan."
"It is done."
I said: "Krasivaya."
She looked at me.
"Two hours. We will leave the door alone. If you need a thing you push the silver button at the inside of the door beside the thumb-turn. The silver button is to me. I am five minutes from this corridor for the rest of the day. No knock, krasivaya. I come."
"Alexei."
Until now, she had kept my first name out of her mouth. She said it now as you say a name you are getting ready to use as a verb.
"Yes."
"Thank you."
I stepped out. Castellan went back to Lab A.
Stefan pulled the door to behind me. The brass strike plate seated without a sound.
The corridor LED at the card-key reader went from green to red on a one-second pulse.
I heard her slide the thumb-turn deadbolt to the locked position.
The deadbolt landed quiet. Nobody had told her the deadbolt was hers to choose. She had chosen it anyway.
I stood with my back against the corridor wall for one minute thirty. Prayer is a thing other men do. Mine stays unsaid.
I turned the ring on my thumb once. Cracked my neck.
Walked to the freight elevator. Went up to the trauma surgeons' lounge on Floor Eleven.
Opened my locker. Looked at the photograph taped to the inside of the door — eleven years old, Murmansk pier, a fishing rod, a face I have spent twenty-one years deciding whether to keep on the inside of a metal door. Closed the locker with my hands empty.
At sixteen fifty I went back down to Sub-basement Two.
Pakhan was in the corridor at the suite door with a small black tray balanced on his left forearm.
The tray had a covered plate, a bread basket, a small ramekin of pickled cucumbers, butter on a dish, a glass of water.
A cloth napkin draped over his left elbow.
He had carried it himself. He always carries trays himself.
"Pakhan."
"Volkov."
"I came to see if you wanted me at the door."
"I do not. Thank you for being at the dining-room arch."
He looked at me at the four-count he uses on a resident who has done what the resident was asked to do. The four-count is the thing he gives you instead of an embrace. The last time my Pakhan embraced me was the day Vincent died nine years ago, and the four-count has been enough since.
I went down the corridor toward the freight elevator. I heard him knock at the door at five seconds to seventeen hundred. I heard the brass deadbolt slide. I heard him at the threshold, low, the line he had been turning under his right thumb since six in the morning.
"Rossi. Do not be afraid of us. Be afraid of what we will do to anyone who is not careful with you."
I rode up to the brownstone study at eighteen oh five.
The standing order was on Pakhan's desk.
Stefan at the chair on the right. Castellan on the leather seat by the window.
Kostya at the door. The four of us signed.
Kostya witnessed. The page went into the center drawer with the three retired Patek straps.
The drawer locked. The key went on the third strap.
The third strap went under the Patek on Pakhan's wrist.
He poured four small glasses of the Stoli as he pours four when he is closing a thing he is not ready to name. We drank them. Stefan at a sip. Castellan at a swallow.
Pakhan opened the laptop at eighteen twenty.
The security feed for the suite was on the second monitor.
We watched her on the feed in silence. She was at the kitchen counter.
The plate was in front of her. He had brought her chicken.
Bread. Butter. The pickled cucumbers in the small ramekin.
The water glass with the medallion's silver chain at her throat catching the daylight-spectrum lamp at the right angle when she leaned in.
For the first minute the fork stayed where Pakhan had set it.
She sat with her right hand on the medallion at her sternum and her left hand on the writing-desk's drawer where the linen-wrapped package was, and the four of us watched her on the second monitor with our hands at our four glasses and the foghorn through the second-floor window at one minute twenty seconds in the harbor's October keeping.
She lifted her right hand off the medallion. Put it in her lap. Picked up the fork. Put it down. Picked it up. Put it down. Picked it up.
She counted to a hundred. Then she ate.