The Russian behind the desk smiled. “It would be nice if you trusted me, but our relationship is new. Trust will come with time, I feel certain. In the meantime, feel free to look into this matter yourself, do your own research. I’ll have my men take you to a nice hotel. You can spend the evening looking through material I have prepared for you, learning the players, the affiliations, studying the maps. You can come back here tomorrow morning and give me your answer. I am confident you will make the right decision, so after that, we can immediately begin preparing the operation to fit your requirements.”
Court nodded slowly. He asked, “Your men . . . Am I to assume they are under orders to remain at my side?”
Gregor Sidorenko smiled, but his eyes were serious. “You may assume that, yes. Saint Petersburg is not a safe place for the uninitiated. They will watch over you.” Then he said, with eyebrows raised and a bit of a mischievous smile on his sunken face, “You will have much to do tonight, but I can provide you with companionship. You’ve been working hard; there is no shame in a little . . . shall we say, recreation, before beginning your next operation.”
“A hooker, you mean?”
“A companion.”
Court’s shoulders slumped. This was just one more thing to deal with. “Sid, don’t send a hooker to my door.”
“As you wish, Mr. Gray. I only thought it would improve your disposition.” He said something in Russian to the guards and laughed along with them when he finished. Gentry did not pick up a word of it. With a wave of his hand, Sid moved on. “Until tomorrow, then.”
EIGHT
Gentry dined alone at a Russian restaurant with no other patrons. He sat in the back, and his minders sat towards the front and turned potential customers away while the waiters sat by themselves and smoked morosely but did not complain. After his meal he was taken to the Nevsky Palace on Nevsky Prospect. The limousine pulled into a loading dock, and five of Sid’s men ushered the American through an employee entrance. A staff elevator shot the entourage to the twelfth floor, and they continued down a long, bright hall to a corner room. Court was led inside a junior suite and was told his minders would be outside the door and in the next room all night. They would wake him at seven for breakfast and then drive him back to Sid to give him his answer.
A young man with a shaved head closed the door on his way out.
For a junior suite it was opulent, hideously so, and it had clearly been modified by Sidorenko’s men. A large seating area led to a narrow balcony. The telephone was conspicuously absent. A hallway off the living room connected to a large bedroom—again, with no telephone—which was connected to a large, modern bathroom. Court found a massive stock of toiletries on the vanity, enough for a soccer team to prepare for a night on the town. On the bed he found a single change of clothes: a silk tracksuit, multicolored—black with a thick trim of purple and a gold V shape under the velour collar. Obnoxious anywhere in the world except for the countries formerly behind the Iron Curtain.
Back in the sitting room he saw a thick stack of papers, books, and booklets, open and bookmarked and at his service. Presumably Sid had these put here so he could check out everything the Russian mobster had said about the Sudan, the Russians, the Chinese, and Tract 12A in the Darfuri desert.
Court ignored his homework and instead stepped out on the balcony and watched the heavy traffic clogging the road below. He spent a minute scanning the buildings around, squinting down into the streetlights’ glare. He then returned to the bathroom. He scooped up a can of shaving cream and a washcloth and slipped both inside the pockets of his jacket before stepping back onto the balcony. Deftly, he went over the railing with one leg and then the next. He shimmied down the ornamental drainpipe running along the wall next to the balcony, descended to the floor just below him, swung twice for momentum, and then kicked his legs forward. Immediately upon landing on the eleventh-floor balcony he could tell the corresponding room was occupied. Lights were on and clothes were strewn about, but no one seemed to be inside at present. Perhaps, he thought,