The Eighth Sister (Charles Jenkins #1)(20)

“Then I’ll be checking out,” Jenkins said. “Thank you for your hospitality.”

“Wait,” the clerk said.

Jenkins did not respond.

“We’ve had a cancellation, Mr. Jenkins. I’ll send the bellboy to your room in one hour.”

“I’d like to be asleep in one hour,” Jenkins said, knowing the delay was to bug the alternate room. This clerk had been in contact with Federov. “Send the bellboy now.”

He hung up the phone before the clerk could respond, grabbed the champagne and the note, and picked up his bag. Within minutes the bellboy knocked on his door and escorted Jenkins to a room on the opposite side of the hotel and two floors higher.

“Spasibo.” Jenkins handed the young man the bottle of champagne and a twenty-dollar bill. Then he said, “I’d like to know if anyone comes to the front desk asking about me.”

The bellboy nodded. “No problem.”



That evening, prior to departing his hotel room, Jenkins again placed a scrap of paper on the carpet near the door. He’d also opened the closet door several inches, unscrewed his mechanical pencil, removed a filament of lead, and slid that filament onto the door hinge. If someone did search his room, they’d be savvy enough to leave the closet door similarly ajar, but they’d have no way of putting the lead filament back together once it snapped when they opened the closet, in the unlikely event they even saw it.

Jenkins stepped out the back door of the hotel at 8:15 p.m. Federov was not prompt. Jenkins suspected the FSB officer and his partner, Arkady Volkov, were sitting in a parked car with the heater blasting, taking great pleasure knowing Jenkins stood in the cold, freezing his nuts off.

The Moscow temperature had plunged with nightfall; meteorologists said a cold wave rippling across the country would drop the temperature to minus thirty degrees Celsius. Jenkins stood beneath a decorative lamppost—the light like a candle flame in an oxygen-deprived room. Soon the cold seeped into his joints, despite his heavy coat and the hat with earflaps he’d purchased in Seattle. Jenkins moved his arms and his legs, trying not to freeze. After fifteen minutes he’d had enough. He walked back through the lobby doors into the warm hotel interior.

As he made his way across the marbled lobby, the bellboy he’d generously tipped appeared with an envelope. “Excuse me, Mr. Jenkins, a message came for you.” The bellboy paused and looked about. “There’s a taxi waiting out front.”

“Spasibo,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins considered the lobby but did not see anyone overly interested in him. He opened the envelope.

Change of plans. Take taxi out front.

Jenkins swore, stuffed the envelope into his coat pocket, and slid on his gloves as he walked across the marbled foyer, down the steps, and out the front door. A man stood outside a waiting cab, his shoulders hunched against the cold. Smoke from a cigarette filtered from his nostrils. When Jenkins made eye contact, the man tossed the cigarette butt into the snow and quickly moved behind the wheel.

Jenkins slid into the back seat. The driver didn’t ask where Jenkins wanted to go or flip the lever on the cab meter. He appeared to be driving without a destination, though certainly with a purpose—to determine if Jenkins was being followed. Jenkins used the Kremlin, lit up in the hazy night sky, as a landmark, and confirmed they were driving in circles. After fifteen minutes, a cell phone rang. The driver answered it, listened, then set down the phone and pulled a U-turn in the middle of the street. They crossed the Moskva River. Jenkins again kept note of the street signs. The taxi made another right, this time on Krymsky Val. Minutes later he pulled to the curb and stopped.

The driver pointed down a pedestrian walkway in what looked to be a park. “Carousel.”

When Jenkins stepped from the cab, the cold again engulfed him. He pulled up the collar of his jacket and pressed the flaps of his hat tight against his ears as he walked a path illuminated by old-fashioned streetlamps struggling to provide a sallow light. The path led to a children’s playground with several colorful carousels, but neither Federov nor the black Mercedes. More waiting. So Russian.

Several more minutes passed before the Mercedes slowly approached, driving toward Jenkins on the deserted pedestrian walking path.

Jenkins raised his hand to deflect the glare of the car’s lights and watched Federov exit and approach, smoking a cigarette. The streetlamp cast a tempered glow across the car’s windshield, illuminating Volkov’s presence in the driver’s seat, and the red glow of his cigarette. “This is a pedestrian walkway,” Jenkins said to Federov. “You could get a ticket if a police officer comes by.”

“I’ll take my chances,” Federov said. Despite the cold, he wore only a leather car coat, no hat or gloves—no doubt another display of Russian men’s physical and mental virility. Jenkins really didn’t care. He wasn’t out to impress Federov with feats of strength—physical or mental. He shoved his gloved hands into his coat pockets, preferring not to get frostbite.

“Where are we?” Jenkins asked, looking about.

Federov feigned surprise. “Do you not read, Mr. Jenkins? I took you to be a man of the arts.”

And that place where Jenkins had stored information from the past, including the street name, revealed itself. “Gorky Park,” he said.

Federov smiled, nodding. “Very good. Your Martin Cruz Smith, I believe.”