Winter Palace by T. Davis Bunn

Author:T. Davis Bunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781441270894
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group

Chapter 21

The same woman who had brought them upstairs appeared soon after Ivona had departed and announced in heavily accented English, “I am responsible for your file.”

“Great,” Jeffrey replied.

“Come,” she said, heading for the door. “We take taxi.”

She led him out to the taxi rank on overly tight, high-heeled shoes, her feet crammed in so that the flesh puffed out around the edges and threw her weight forward. She slid into the taxi with difficulty, her dress being far too tight for her girth.

“Bottom floor of palace was warehouse for metal pipes,” she said, propping the folder open on her knees as the taxi drove them to the estate.

“So they told me.” He watched a throng of people moving slowly past a group of old ladies selling everything from cold potato pancakes to shoe polish on the street curb. “I wonder what happened to all the people who worked for the company that was upstairs.”

“Who’s to say?” She did not raise her head from the file in her lap. “Now is no more socialism. Now all is private initiative. Fine. Let some private initiative find people more work.”

The taxi turned from the main thoroughfare onto a boulevard lined with old apartment houses and shadowed by the past. They swung around the corner and stopped beside a small caretaker’s lodge. It was built into an outer wall constructed of brick and hand-wrought iron. Huge, rusty hinges, now broken and twisted, had probably once held impressive gates. Through the sweeping entrance, Jeffrey could see what once must have been a formal garden and now was little more than a jungle.

His attention was caught by the sight of a large American car parked along the curb opposite the estate. The black Chevrolet totally dwarfed the little plastic cars near it, including their own taxi. Jeffrey paid the driver and got out in time to see a tall, lanky man with a blond buzz-cut, his tie at half-mast, saunter out through the main gates.

Jeffrey’s guide did not like this development at all. She clambered from the taxi and paraded toward the blond man. Jeffrey was right behind her. The woman shouted a full blast of rapid Russian.

“Sorry, lady,” the man drawled in English. “I don’t speak the lingo.”

Jeffrey stepped forward, unaccountably irritated by the intruder’s air of nonchalant superiority. “She wants to know what you’re doing here,” he said. “And so do I.”

That startled him. “You American?”

Jeffrey nodded. “I asked what you are doing here.”

The guy flicked a glance at something behind them, and sidled swiftly back into the estate. “What’s it to you?”

“He official bidder,” the woman answered, following the man’s backward movement, her tone rising indignantly. “He have right to ask. I am ministry official. I have more right. Now you say, what you are doing here?”

“Just having a little look. No harm in that, is there?” Keen eyes flickered back from their inspection of what was behind them and rested on Jeffrey. “That right, what the lady said? You want to buy this place?”

“I don’t see how that’s any business of yours,” Jeffrey retorted.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.