Murder in Foggy Bottom by Margaret Truman

Author:Margaret Truman
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery
ISBN: 0449001962
Publisher: Fawcett Books
Published: 2000-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

Pauling hadn’t cultivated a liking for banyas, Russian public baths, which were as much a part of the national culture as borscht and vodka. He’d been to them a dozen times when living in Moscow, always at a Russian’s invitation. Most deal meetings had taken place in hard-currency bars and restaurants owned by organized crime, or secluded rendezvous points on the docks, or in dachas, summer country homes popular with those city dwellers who could afford second homes, which included the political elite, plus stars of movies, organized crime, and crooked business.

But this night it was the baths, the Sandunov Sauna, one of the city’s most popular.

“You don’t have to come in with me,” Pauling told Lerner as they approached the building on Neglinniy Pereulok. “Tell me who the guy is and go catch up with Elena.”

“Oh, no, Max, wouldn’t miss it. Things have been dull since you left. Besides, this gentleman is comfortable with me. We’ve—” He laughed. “We’ve bonded.”

“This is the banker?”

“Yes. I originally called him just to ask whether he’d consider meeting a friend of mine. That’s you, Max. But when he said tonight was convenient for him, I thought you’d want to take advantage of it.”

Lerner paid the admission fee and they were directed to a changing room, where they handed their valuables to an attendant, who asked whether they’d brought bathing suits, towels, shampoo, and sandals.

“Nyet,” Lerner answered.

The attendant assigned them small, curtained changing rooms and handed them the necessities they’d neglected to bring, including plastic robes. Each was also given a venik, a bundle of birch twigs with which to hit themselves, allegedly to get the blood flowing. They changed and met outside their cubicles.

“We shouldn’t be here on full stomachs,” Lerner said.

“Yeah, I remember,” Pauling replied, feeling silly in his outfit.

“And no more than five minutes at a time in the sauna. Hate to have you pass out on me.”

“Worry about yourself. Where are we meeting this guy you’ve bonded with?”

“The sauna. Ready?”

“Sure.”

The sauna, a large room with three tiers of benches— the bottom level was the least hot—contained a dozen towel-clad men. Pauling’s dislike of Russian saunas came back to him—the steam, the heat, the smell of aftershave lotion and toilet water and perspiration permeating the room as it sweated out of the bodies. Bodies, he thought as he and Lerner went to an empty space on the lowest bench, next to an overweight man smoking a long, thick, black cigar. Fat bodies, Russian bodies, expanded by all that grain and sugar and fats and oils and potatoes and greasy meat; what was the statistic? Russians have a 70 percent higher caloric consumption than Americans, and America wasn’t a poster nation for svelte.

“Lerner,” the fat man with the cigar said.

“Mr. Miziyano,” Lerner said, extending his hand, which the banker shook halfheartedly. “Let me introduce you to my friend, Pauling.”

Miziyano scrutinized Pauling before saying, “Zdrastvuti.” Pauling returned the noncommittal greeting.

“So, Yuri, things are well?”

“Da.” He struggled to his feet from the low bench and waved for Lerner and Pauling to follow him.

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