The Final Fabergé by Thomas Swan Page B

Deryabin.
    Deryabin said, “I took my own knife and pistol, but found a heavier knife in the kitchen. I hid it in my sleeve.”
    Trivimi leaned forward in his chair. “He never suspected?”
    â€œNo. I told him that his scheme had too many complications. He insisted he had worked through the plan and got rid of extra details. I told him he was wrong, baiting him to argue back. He did. Then I tore his plan apart and said he’d have to make changes. It made him furious. After another minute we were shouting at each other. It was exactly what I was hoping for. I wanted his neighbors to hear a loud argument come from his apartment. It was eleven o’clock and I figured they had come home from wherever they had been.”
    Deryabin stepped to the table and picked up a cigarette and jabbed the air with it as he continued. “We were standing a few feet from each other in the middle of the room. I slipped the knife from my sleeve and when he saw it in my hand it was as if he turned to stone. I remember that the only feeling I had was whether his blood would get on my clothes. I struck him twice. The first was in his chest. I aimed the second thrust lower, at his heart.”
    Trivimi had not budged, his gaze still riveted on Deryabin’s face. “Had you done that before?”
    Deryabin said he had not, but said that during officer’s training he had been taught to strike twice. The first to inflict pain and neutralize the opponent, the second to kill. Then he explained, as dispassionately as if he were describing the fundamentals of rowing a boat, how when the heart stopped beating, the blood stopped flowing.
    â€œPrekhner fell against a chair and when I pulled it away he rolled onto the floor. Then I went into the bedroom for Vasily. I carried him out and put him next to Prekhner’s body. I put the knife in his hand and
closed his fingers over the handle. I bloodied his arms and shirt. Then I went to the bathroom and cleaned the blood off my shirt and hands.”
    â€œDid you find the photographs and the negatives?” Trivimi asked.
    Deryabin was relieved to have told the story, and finally lit the cigarette he had been holding.
    â€œPrekhner’s work area, his ‘office,’ was in his kitchen. There was a desk and typewriter, a telephone and a file cabinet. I found two sets of the photographs and the negatives in a desk drawer. I learned I wasn’t the first to be sucked into Prekhner’s blackmail business. There were other photographs and negatives. Enough fucking and sucking to fill twenty pornographic magazines.”
    â€œAkimov suspected that you killed Prekhner? That’s why you wanted him eliminated?”
    â€œI told you there were five of us in the card game.” He printed four more names on the board in the same big letters. He called out their names as he did.
    â€œAs I said, in addition to Prekhner, there was Sasha Akimov, Vasily Karsalov, Leonid Baletsky, and myself. These three,” he drew a line under Akimov, Karsalov, and Baletsky, “stayed together in the navy. First in Tallinn, then in Petersburg where they were transferred in 1970. They were all friends, including Prekhner.”
    â€œI’ll ask again. Did Akimov suspect you killed Prekhner?”
    â€œI didn’t think any of them knew about it. Then, a few months ago, Leonid Baletsky appeared out of the blue. He was waiting at the entrance to our building. I hadn’t seen him in all those years and didn’t recognize him. But he knew who I was. He told me that after he left the navy he lived in Moscow with his wife and son. Then his wife died and he moved back to Petersburg. He said he had read about New Century and me, and did I have a job for him. He said he had talked with Akimov. About the egg and the poker game. And about other things, too.”
    Deryabin stared at Baletsky’s name. “He was nervous and couldn’t look me in the eye. He