Page 347 of Edge of Eternity (The Century 3)

He pushed open the door and stepped inside. He stood still and looked around. It was a bleak modern place, cold and plastic, insufficiently warmed by an electric fire and some photographs of flamenco dancers on the walls. The handful of customers gazed at him with interest. They looked like petty crooks. None resembled the photo of Nik in the file.

At the far end of the room was a corner bar with a door next to it marked PRIVATE.

Dimka strode through the room as if he owned it. Without stopping he spoke to the man behind the bar. "Nik in the back?"

The man looked as if he might be about to tell Dimka to stop and wait, but then he looked again at Dimka's face and changed his mind. "Yes," he said.

Dimka pushed open the door.

In a small back room four men were playing cards. There was a lot of money on the table. To one side, on a couch, two young women in cocktail dresses and heavy makeup were smoking long American cigarettes and looking bored.

Dimka recognized Nik immediately. The face was as handsome as the photograph had suggested, but the camera had failed to capture the cold expression. Nik looked up and said: "This is a private room. Piss off."

Dimka said: "I've got a message for you."

Nik put his ca

rds facedown on the table and sat back. "Who the fuck are you?"

"Something bad is going to happen."

Two of the card players stood up and turned to face Dimka. One reached inside his jacket. Dimka thought he might be about to draw a weapon. But Nik held up a cautionary hand, and the man hesitated.

Nik kept his eyes on Dimka. "What are you talking about?"

"When the bad thing happens, you'll ask who's causing it."

"And you'll tell me?"

"I'm telling you now. It's Dmitri Ilich Dvorkin. He's the cause of your problems."

"I don't have any problems, asshole."

"You didn't, until yesterday. Then you made a mistake--asshole."

The men around Nik tensed, but he remained calm. "Yesterday?" His eyes narrowed. "Are you the creep she's fucking?"

"When you find yourself in so much trouble that you don't know what to do, remember my name."

"You're Dimka!"

"You'll see me again," said Dimka, and he turned slowly and walked out of the room.

As he walked through the bar, all eyes were on him. He looked straight ahead, expecting a bullet in the back at any moment.

He reached the door and went out.

He grinned to himself. I got away with it, he thought.

Now he had to make good on his threat.

He drove six miles from the city center to the Khodynka airfield and parked at the headquarters of Red Army Intelligence. The old building was a bizarre piece of Stalin-era architecture, a nine-story tower surrounded by a two-story outer ring. The directorate had expanded into a newer fifteen-story building nearby: intelligence organizations never got smaller.

Carrying the KGB file on Nik, Dimka went into the old building and asked for General Volodya Peshkov.

A guard said: "Do you have an appointment?"

Dimka raised his voice. "Don't fuck around, son. Just call the general's secretary and say I'm here."

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