CHAPTER 18
Nikolai
◆
The study is in order at twenty-thirty hours. I am the only variable not yet controlled.
The desk lamp draws a circle on the blotter the size of a dinner plate.
The four wood-handled stamping seals stand in their row inside the circle.
Lambda. Tau. Phi. Chi. Brass dies on rosewood handles, oiled at the grain where my father's thumb wore the wood smoother than the rest of the wood.
The chi-glyph is the seal for the closing of a quarter.
I have pressed it four times a year for nine years. Forty-eight presses.
I press it again now on a wax dot the size of a fingernail and lift the die clean. The wax holds the cross. The cross is the work.
Vitals steady. Breathing even. The Patek is cool against the inside of my wrist where the strap has worn the leather to a softer nap.
I check it. Twenty-thirty-oh-two. The watch is one second slow against the wall clock in the kitchen, where Stefan has been cooking since seventeen-thirty.
I reset the watch at midnight. Always at midnight.
Four glyphs. Four men. Four corners of a bed. I don't believe in symbols. I keep them anyway.
The SIG P226 is in the top right drawer.
I take it out. I check the chamber empty.
I check the magazine seated. I put the SIG in the locked sideboard at the south wall and turn the key.
No weapon enters the master suite. No weapon enters any room she is in.
That is a rule I made when I was twenty-nine in a Brighton Beach kitchen with my father's accountant's blood on the linoleum, and it has held for eleven years.
Gospodi. The Russian sits at the back of the tongue without coming out. The word is a habit. The habit is the architecture.
The foghorn off Brighton Beach calls once, low.
The radiator under the window hisses. The Stoli is emptying by the dining room sideboard, the Baccarat carafe sweating where Stefan set it after the toast. Elena arrived at the curb at eighteen-hundred.
We toasted at nineteen-fifteen. The protocol began at twenty-thirty.
Now the room has closed around the work we prepared for all afternoon.
I have been afraid of this room since I was nine. Tonight that fear gets set down at the door.
---
Three hours earlier, the kitchen smells of butter and rosemary and the faint paper-sweetness of the gnocchi flour Stefan keeps in a glass jar.
Stefan is at the range in shirtsleeves rolled twice, the cord at his left wrist dark against the cuff.
He is humming the four-count under his breath.
Alexei is at the sink in a grey Henley, the right sleeve shoved past the deltoid, a wet washcloth pressed to the bruise from yesterday's garage extraction.
The skin is purpling along the lower edge of the deltoid where the lift's hydraulics caught his arm.
He turns his head when the doorway changes pressure.
Smoke-grey eyes track me, hold one second, return to the bruise.
"Pakhan."
"Alexei. The deltoid."
"It is a bruise."
"It is a contusion grade two. Ice ten minutes, then heat."
"I know where the gel pack is. I work here."
Gabriel is at the table with a Camus paperback in Italian and a cup of espresso going cool at his elbow.
Black silk strap folded in the left lab-coat pocket of the coat he has hung on the back of the chair.
His eyes stay on the page. The left hand is flat on the table next to the book — fingers slightly spread; the tell that means he is about to speak. He says nothing. He is preparing.
I stand in the doorway for ten seconds. The geometry has set itself as the geometry of an OR sets itself: chief at the door, anesthesia at the head, trauma at the table, research at the bench. The bodies know where they are.
Three brothers. One bed. One woman. Tonight the fear stays at the threshold.
"Eighteen-hundred. Kostya at the curb. The carafe is on the sideboard. The bed is made. " Volume is signal. "We toast at nineteen-fifteen sharp. Not a minute past."
"Stoli is cold," Stefan says.
Gabriel turns a page. The hand stays flat. "She will be here in ninety minutes."
"Yes."
"I have prepared the count. On my voice. Uno, due, tre, quattro. Twenty seconds."
"Yes."
That is all. The kitchen returns to butter and rosemary and the low whine of the convection fan.
Vitals still steady. Breathing still even. Twenty-three years since fear last sat at behind my teeth, and here it is again. The afraid sits past her — at the room she is about to walk into being the right room.
Gospodi. Let it be the right room.
---
The Mercedes pulls in at eighteen-oh-three.
Kostya opens the rear passenger door. Elena steps onto the curb in the unripe-wheat cardigan over a soft black dress Stefan chose, the medallion at her sternum a small bright disc above the V of the dress, the auburn knot at her nape held with the yellow pencil.
Her eyes stay on Kostya — one second; a thank-you with the eyes — and then she walks to the door.
The door opens for her without me. Stefan opens it. He has wiped his hands on the towel at his belt and he opens the door with the cord-wrist forward, palm up, the scar showing.
"Doll."
"Stefan."
"Come in. The house is warm. The radiator on the second floor has decided to be a person tonight."
She laughs — small; one breath. It is a sound she has been spending sparingly since I have known her. The house gets it for the first time tonight.
I am at the foot of the stairs. I hold there until she has crossed the threshold and Stefan has closed the door behind her and Kostya has stepped back to the curb.
Then I cross the foyer in four steps and stop at a polite distance and put my hands at my sides.
The watch ticks under the cuff. Her eyes find mine.
I look at her. The four-second look the receptionist clocked on Day One in the chief's office is the same four-second look now and is also entirely different.
"Rossi," I say. It is the last time I will use it for what it has been.
"Nikolai."
"Welcome."
"Thank you."
"Come. The dining room. Stefan has fed us; he will feed you too; we will toast at nineteen-fifteen. Then we will go upstairs."
"Yes."
She walks past me. The cardigan brushes the cuff of my shirt. The medallion's chain catches the lamp once.
---
Dinner is brief. Stefan has set the gnocchi in shallow white bowls and grated parmigiano over each in slow circles.
We eat. Stefan asks her about the cardigan.
She tells him the unripe-wheat is the right colour for the season; he laughs.
Alexei asks her if she counted the laps before she put the dress on; she says twice; he nods and turns the ring on his thumb.
Gabriel stays silent, watching her left hand on the silver as she eats — watching it without making her feel watched.
I eat in my own silence. I track her bites. Six on the gnocchi. Two on the bread. One sip of water at the third bite, one at the fifth, one at the seventh. She is metering. She is eating for the night, not for the meal.
At nineteen-fourteen the Patek's second hand crosses the twelve. I rise. Stefan goes to the sideboard and lifts the Baccarat. The Stoli is oily-cold; the carafe sweats in his hand as a chest tube sweats in mine after an hour. He pours four thimbles. Hers is last.
I lift the glass. The three lift theirs. She lifts hers.
No to us. No to the woman. Nothing that puts her below a thing. I say, in plain English, "To the protocol."
"To the protocol," Stefan says.
"To the protocol," Alexei says.
"To the protocol," Gabriel says.
She holds the glass at the level of her sternum. The medallion is half an inch below it. Her eyes go around the four of us in a steady count — Alexei to Stefan to Gabriel to me — and stop at mine. She says, "To the protocol."
She drinks. Cold. Oily on the tongue. She holds steady.
I drink. I look at Elena.
"Upstairs."
"Yes."
I lead. The three follow. I track the treads to the fourth-floor landing as I mark them every time. Twenty-six.
---
The master suite is warm. Stefan laid the fire at seventeen; it is established now, the logs at the cross-burn that makes the light tractable, the heat at the radiator under the south window steady.
The four-poster stands at the centre, Russian walnut darkened to almost black by Stefan's commissioned finish, the four capitals carved at the corners with surgical-instrument motifs only the five of us know — the clamp, the needle driver, the retractor, the probe.
The bed is made with the charcoal cotton sateen. The cashmere throw is folded at the foot in a long even rectangle. The medallion at her sternum catches the firelight once as she crosses the threshold.
The headboard is the part of the bed I have never told her about.
It is six inches thick, hand-carved, the central panel a deep relief of an Imperial-Russia double-eagle — wings spread, twin heads turned to either side, beak down toward the crown of whoever lies between the four posts.
Stefan had it added in Year Two, past permission.
He had the cabinetmaker carve it from a single piece of Russian walnut.
He gave me the receipt. He said, if you would, Pakhan.
The Romanovs were not those Romanovs. The irony is yours to keep. I keep it.
I set the Patek on the bedside table with the gallery-glass key threaded on the strap. The watch ticks softly against the wood.
Elena stops at the bed's end. The three stand back at the cardinal points — Stefan at the south window, Alexei at the chest of drawers, Gabriel at the door, his left palm braced on the jamb.
The cardigan is on her shoulders. The medallion is at her sternum.
Her hands stay at her sides; her count stays silent.
She is counting; I can see her count in the small motion at the corner of her jaw where she chews the inside of the left cheek when she is measuring the room.