Requiem For a Glass Heart by David Lindsey

Author:David Lindsey [Lindsey, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-56815-1
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 1996-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

“A woman?” Hain reared back in his chair in front of the computers, holding the telephone in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other. “A good-looking woman?” He looked at Ometov on the sofa, with his shoes off, his legs stretched out as he studied a folder of documents in his lap. “Olya Serova?”

Ometov, looking back at him, shrugged. Hain glanced at Erika, who sat in an armchair with her feet folded up under her, reading a magazine. She shook her head at the name and then got up and went to one of the computer screens. She bent over, tapped in the name, and waited.

“Where is she staying?” Hain listened. “That’s interesting. I’ll be damned. Okay, thanks. Listen, when can you get us a picture?” He looked at his watch. “Okay, great, we’ll be waiting.”

As soon as he slammed down the telephone, he turned to Ometov.

“Okay, what the hell’s this, Leo?”

Ometov had sat up and placed his socked feet on the floor. Looking down, he was pondering. He didn’t answer.

“Krupatin’s woman?” Hain suggested.

“The name is not in the files,” Erika said, looking at the computer screen. “S-e-r-o-v-a. Right?”

“Right,” Hain confirmed. He was looking at the Russian intelligence officer.

Ometov tilted his feet back on his heels a couple of times, a thoughtful, rhythmless gesture, his forearms on his knees as he stared at the floor.

“Not a mistress,” he said finally. “Not a mistress.”

“Why not?”

“Not this time. He wouldn’t do that, ferry in his favorite woman. It’s too cumbersome. Not for this, I think.”

Hain looked at Erika.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I think maybe Leo is right.”

“Okay, then.” Hain shrugged his huge frame at them, looking back and forth between them.

Ometov rose slowly from the sofa and padded to the windows that looked out into the courtyard. Earlier he had found the switch that turned on the landscape lights, and he delighted in looking out at the palms and the sagos and the bougainvillea.

“You asked where she was staying?” he asked.

“Yeah. When she checked in, she asked where the others were staying. When they told her, she said she preferred to move higher up, because of the view. She was new to the city and wanted a view. She looked at a layout of the place and chose a suite on the top floor.”

“A suite,” Ometov said thoughtfully, gazing out at the courtyard. “Very expensive, I suppose.”

“That’s right.”

Ometov said nothing for a while, his hands clasped behind him, looking out at the night palms.

“To be honest,” he said at last, “I don’t have any idea, Curtis.” He pronounced Hain’s first name as “cur-TESS.” “It could be that this woman belongs to someone else.” He turned around. “I don’t know why I refuse to believe it is Krupatin, but it simply is not right for some reason. I’ll think about it. It will come to me. I am sure I am right, but it may take me a little while to understand why.”

The fax machine beeped, and Hain went over

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