The Cutting Edge (Lincoln Rhyme #14)(65)

A touch of guilt. But Lahori reminded himself he was hardly inhumane, certainly not with his son, whom he loved deeply, of course. The boy would find a comfortable sleeping bag in the closet, along with plenty of food and snacks and water and soft drinks. He suspected his son drank so he’d included some lite beer. There was a TV. No Internet or phone of course. The boy might grow even more unstable and call a friend to come break him out. Or the police, claiming he’d been kidnapped.

There would be some tension between them, because of what Lahori had done. But sooner or later the boy would come to understand that his father knew what was right for him. He would thank him, though Lahori honestly did not want thanks, or even an acknowledgment that he was right. He simply wanted the boy to come to the realization that this was the life he was destined for…and to embrace it.

He gripped the bar against the door and tried to shake it. The rod didn’t move a millimeter.

He was satisfied. And at last more or less happy…after these past few days, when events had tried him so sorely. And unfairly.

He climbed the stairs.

Deepro Lahori was in the mood for that game of Scrabble, and he knew his wife and his other son—his good son—would indulge him.





Monday, March 15

III





Sawing





Chapter 31



Now, where is my kuritsa?

Where are you, my little hen?

Aren’t you tired of working, aren’t you hungry for some curry, some vindaloo shrimp, some basmati rice? And who doesn’t love that wonderful raita?

The young man that Vladimir Rostov was waiting for was working in a jewelry store that specialized in wedding bands and engagement rings. It was lunchtime and the fucking kid better take a break soon. Rostov had enjoyed his time with the lovebirds—especially the ring swallowing! But now to work. Finding VL and slicing his throat.

That’s why he was here in this greasy Irish bar, where he sat on a stool, having a bourbon and studying the building across the street.

Come on, my little kuritsa…Your Vladimir is getting impatient and you won’t like him that way. His knife is sitting heavy in his pocket. The razor blade is lonely.

His Persian, no, Iranian, kuritsa, Nashim, had come through for him, and delivered the name of a young man who had worked for Patel a year ago and stayed in touch with the diamond cutter and those who worked for and with him. His first name was Kirtan, and Nashim didn’t know his home address but he did know where he worked: the store that Rostov was staring at right now. He had a passing regret that because of the Persian’s success, Rostov had no excuse to visit Nashim’s plump daughters, Scheherazade and Kitten.

Ah, families, families, families…

After his parents had gone their separate ways and fled the suburbs of Moscow, twelve-year-old Vladimir had found himself in Mirny, a town of about twenty thousand at the time, smack in the middle of Siberia. If Hell had been ice, rather than fire, Mirny could be the Underworld.

The village had sprung from the frozen steppes seventy or so years ago when a vast diamond pipe was discovered. Mir means “peace” in Russian. The geologist who found the lode sent a coded message to Moscow that he was about to “smoke the pipe of peace,” which meant he’d made an amazing find. The town was called Mirny, the mine Mir, and in its heyday it produced two thousand kilos of diamonds a year, 20 percent of them high-quality. Upon its discovery, Mir sent shivers of panic through the staid halls of De Beers, which knew that its output could cause the price of diamonds to plummet. (Still, ever conscious of controlling the market, the Russians manipulated output and bought up reserves—De Beers’s included—to keep prices sky-high.) The mine began as an open pit, ultimately seventeen hundred feet deep, and when that was played out the state company began digging tunnels.

It was in these unforgiving shafts that Gregor Rostov insisted his nephew work, when he wasn’t studying in high school and, later, the polytechnic college. Gregor claimed he used his “pull” to get the boy a job, when in reality the mine was begging for workers mad enough to descend into the shafts.

Digging the open pit had been an engineering challenge—jet engines to heat the ground and soften it enough to dig—but tunneling was a nightmare. Workers were often drowned or crushed, stone dust destroyed lungs faster than three-pack-a-day smoking habits, chemical fumes burned out eyes, tongues and noses. Unstable explosives neatly removed other parts of the body.

It was far warmer down there than at the gray, skin-cracking surface, of course. But more important to Vladimir, it was populated only with rock and dust and diamonds—not the crew-cut youths who leered and bullied the outsider from Moscow, the girls who ignored him, the glum aunt and uncle who resented having to share the tiny apartment with the boy.

Because he was younger, he wasn’t expected to heft the loads of the adult laborers and was treated as something of a mascot. He was safe here. With his stone. Working double shifts. Sometimes staying for days at a time. Wandering the shafts.

Once, he was discovered without his pants, which lay in a pile near him in a deserted shaft. A supervisor had made an unexpected visit to the location. As Rostov dressed hastily the man noted what the boy had been up to. He chose not to reprimand him but firmly told him to confine such activities to his bedroom at home; more deviance would not be tolerated.