The Holy Thief Read Online Free PDF Page A

sensible to accept a favor from a stranger unless he came with a recommendation. After all, you never knew what might be asked in return.
    Reaching the first floor, Luborov led him along the landing.
    “Here you go, Comrade,” he said, opening a door with a key, which he handed to Korolev. “Number seven. You share with Valentina Nikolaevna Koltsova and her daughter Natasha—not a bad child, quiet at least. Comrade Koltsova’s husband was that engineer who got himself killed in the Metro accident last year. E. N. Koltsov? D’you remember him? They made him a Hero of the Soviet Union. Just for getting crushed in a tunnel. It wasn’t that easy in Poland, I can assure you. They were tight with medals back then. All I got was a wooden arm for my heroics and I had to wait three years for that.”
    The door opened onto a large shared kitchen into which the autumn sun splashed, tingeing the surface of a long, planked table in the middle of the room with a warm yellow. An ancient and much-scuffed chesterfield ran along one wall, above which hung a full-length portrait of an officer in turn-of-the-century cavalry uniform. Underneath the large windows a smaller table stood, on which a child’s exercise books were neatly piled beside some knitting. It was positively luxurious compared to Mikhail’s cardboard-walled shoebox.
    “One of the previous owners—a count, I believe,” Luborov said, gesturing at the painting. “Who knows where he is now, eh? Paris? Shanghai? The grave? Serves him right, wherever he is. Covering up the cracks in the wall is all his kind are good for now. Anyway, this is the kitchen: you share it with Citizeness Koltsova, of course, and the cooking area is in there,” Luborov pointed to a smaller room beside the front door in which a primus stove stood, as well as a stone basin. “You have your own stove?”
    Korolev nodded.
    “Excellent, that makes life easier for everyone; this one belongs to Valentina Nikolaevna. Your room’s through here.”
    When Luborov left, Korolev stood alone in the room he’d been allocated. He placed his hat on the writing desk and looked around him. A narrow bar of light marked where the curtains met, leaving most of the room in shadow, and so he walked across to push them as wide as they would go, allowing sunshine to flood in. It was a good room, large, with high ceilings—it even had wallpaper. Of course, the wallpaper was a relic from before the German War, but it was in reasonable condition, and the mattress on the bed looked clean—there was even a worn Persian carpet to cover some of the wooden floorboards. He glanced out of the window at the alleyway below. A quiet street as well, he thought, looking to the left at the domes of the small church of St. Nicholas Vorobinsky. He heard bells chiming for one o’clock and remembered he only had a few minutes to spare, so he looked over the room once again, but this time with a searching eye.
    To start with, he examined the writing desk, opening the lid to the compartment where some nobleman had once no doubt kept a stock of fine writing paper, but which now contained only a browned edition of Pravda from 1928. The desk wouldn’t do. He ignored the bed as being too obvious and, after a quick scrutiny, discarded the wardrobe as well. He flicked back the rug and paused, his focus gradually narrowing until it was entirely aimed at one floorboard and the infinitesimally wider gap between it and its neighbors. There were tiny signs of wear to the edges and he squatted, hearing the cartilage in his knees click, and took the clasp knife from his pocket. He inserted the blade at one end of the board and, sure enough, it came up smoothly.
    The lifted floorboard revealed a small cavity in which lay a photograph of a half-naked woman, looking over her bare shoulder at the camera with a suggestive smile, her breasts pushed over a corset. She seemed to be milking the cow that stood behind her, its head out of shot but the udders