long sightseeing boat plowed slowly by, its spotlights illuminating great swaths of the river and the buildings on either embankment. They might have been in Paris, a city in which Arkadin had managed to lose himself many times, if only for a short time.
"I need help," she said in a lost little voice that caused him to put his elbows on the table and lean toward her. "The kind of help your friend - what did you say his name was?"
"Oserov."
"That's right. I've always been good at summing people up very quickly. Your friend Oserov strikes me as the kind of man I need, am I right?"
"What kind of man is that?" Arkadin said, wondering what she was getting at and why this normally articulate woman was now having such a hard time finding the words she needed.
"Disposable."
Arkadin laughed. She was a woman after his own mind. "What do you need him for, exactly."
"I'd rather tell him personally."
"The man hates your guts, so you're better off telling me first."
She looked out at the river and the opposite bank for a moment, then turned back to him. "All right." She took a deep breath. "My brother's in trouble - serious trouble. I need to find some way - some permanent way - of extricating him."
Was her brother some sort of criminal? "So the police won't find out, I'm guessing."
She laughed without any humor. "I wish I could go to the police with this. Unfortunately, I can't."
Arkadin hunched his shoulders. "What's he gotten into?"
"He's in over his head with a loan shark - he's got a gambling problem. I gave him some money to help him out but he just blew through that and when he came up short yet again, he stole a piece of artwork I was delivering to one of my clients. I've mollified the client, thank God, but if it ever came out I'd be finished."
"I imagine it gets worse from here."
She nodded woefully. "He went to the wrong people to fence it, got a third of what he should have gotten, an amount that wasn't nearly enough. Now, unless something drastic is done, the lender will have him killed."
"This lender, he's powerful enough to make that happen?"
"Oh, yes."
"All the better." Arkadin smiled. He thought helping her would be fun, but also, like a chess player, he could already see how he could bring her into checkmate. "I'll take care of it."
"All I want you to do," she said, "is introduce me to Oserov."
"I've just told you, you don't need him. I'll do this favor for you."
No," she said firmly. "I don't want you involved."
He spread his hands. "I already am involved."
"I don't want you involved any deeper than you are." The low lamplight fell across her as if they were in an intimate scene in a play, as if she were about to say the things that would make the audience gasp after holding its collective breath. "And as for Oserov, unless I've mistaken him, he likes money more than he hates me."
Arkadin laughed again, despite himself. He was going to tell her she was forbidden to talk with Oserov, but something in her eyes stopped him. He suspected that she would get up, walk away, and he'd never see her again. And he very much did not want that to happen, because this opportunity to hold something vital over her, to use her, would be lost.
The increased jouncing of the cigarette boat returned Arkadin's attention to the present. He had crossed the wake of the schooner and was now bearing down across its port flank. He got on the two-way radio and spoke to the schooner's captain, with whom he had made prior arrangements.
Five minutes later he was bobbing alongside the schooner, a rope ladder had been lowered, and Boris Karpov's rather corpulent body was climbing down.
"A fine place for two Russians to meet, eh, Colonel?" he said with a grin and a wink.
"I admit I was looking forward to meeting you," Karpov said, "under vastly different circumstances."
"Me in manacles or dead in a pool of blood, I can only imagine."
Karpov seemed to be having trouble breathing. "You've amassed quite the reputation for mayhem and murder."
"It's difficult for any one person to live up to those rumors." Arkadin was amused to see that Karpov, rather green around the gills, seemed in no mood for banter. "Don't worry, seasickness lasts only as long as we're on the water."
He chuckled as the ladder was hoisted up. He pulled