LITMIR.BIZ

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played only those games where chances and luck were on his side, but not obviously on someone else's. Levko was a very clever gambler.

      Five minutes to one Levko tore his eyes from the monitors and went to the farther corner of his office where the lunch table was laid by the window, and attentively inspected it. The table was served in Chinese style with the blue elegant porcelain. Levko was an aesthete in everything. At lunch he liked listening to classical music, particularly opera arias, which he adored. Therefore, he swiftly went through the disk collection on the shelf, looking for something Asian, and chose Cio-Cio-San.

      Levko was an avid concertgoer and frequenter of opera theatres, at home and abroad. He had many friends behind the stage, and almost all ladies, whom he invited to his two-storey apartment, were of those arty circles. Those nights he sent away his servants, so they wouldn’t babble, because Levko was married. His wife and son lived mostly in London, coming back just for short visits, and that suited Levko fine. The reason was his son’s bad case of mischief. His son, a sixteen-year-old goof, studied at school there, but a year ago he got involved in a bad incident of group rape. All the boys involved were from good rich families, though the girl was from a respectable family too. To hush up this case Levko had to disburse, with pain in his soul, several hundred thousand of British pounds. The case was "amicably" hushed up, but after that incident his wife rented apartment near his son’s school and lived there, keeping an eye on her son

      Levko seated his guest facing the window and took place at the opposite side, to watch two large plasma monitors on a wall.

      “Well, I don't offer you a ‘martini’, but I will drink one for the appetite,” said Levko fingering a napkin. “Or will you?”

      Rebrov shook his head and pursed up his lips; he didn’t drink for several months. Young waitress, with a happy smiling face, brought a bowl and poured soup into cups with porcelain spoons. When she closed the door behind her, Levko said, “Vladimir arrives next Friday.”

      Rebrov tore off his eyes from the window where he watched the crows sitting on a poplar tree and looked at Levko. "That's it,” he thought, “So it’s real."

      “Are you ready?” Levko asked, and Rebrov just nodded. “Did you warn your men?”

      “Not yet, too early.”

      Both fell silent taken up by their soup. Rebrov tasted some, and then just stirred the soup with the spoon, driving swallow’s little fishes around the cup. Levko ate with healthy appetite, considering his next important and touchy question.

      “What on earth happened to that poet Sergey?” He asked very lightly.

      “Suicide, they say. Hung.” Rebrov shrugged his shoulder.

      “Why? Such a capable twin!”

      Levko contemplated Rebrov's face with sharp eyes of a gambler: any muscle of his face could give him out. Levko had met that Sergey just once, and he went to see him out of curiosity, as a freak of nature, and was amazed by his resemblance to the great poet. Levko didn’t care at all about that strange out-of-date twin, and whether he already met with his great prototype. What he worried about now was a possible double game being played behind his back. Didn’t Rebrov himself put Sergey’s head into the noose?

      Rebrov didn’t answer the question considering it rhetorical. He caught with his spoon a little fish and asked, “How do the swallows catch them, as they can’t swim?

      “They are Chinese,” Levko said, engaged with his soup. Listening to quiet aria of unhappy Cio-Cio-San he continued to think of nuisances. He never trusted anybody in his affairs, and the leftist politician Fomin, he recently met, could be trusted even less. One could expect anything from such a determined Communist. Their great purposes, as it well known, justify any means. That’s what he told Levko, though what means were appropriate for him any current minute one could only guess. More so, because of their ideology the banker Levko should have been their worst enemy.

      Levko had fed already millions of dollars to this leftist party, but they asked more and more, and he with no debate donated more off his thin, almost ruined bank balance. But it shouldn’t have to go this way much longer. His investments should return soon with a thousand-fold gain, just in one week, at longest one and a half. Although, there was no hanged poet in their scenario! Why is this mess?

      Suddenly the charts on TV screens on the opposite wall sharply stirred, and Levko jerked his head up and fixed his cold eyes on them. In the morning Levko entered into a pair of not very big deals in the currency markets; first one, with an expectation of the growth of the dollar against the euro in London Stock Exchange, and the second, of the fall of the dollar against the Russian ruble in Moscow Exchange. All the morning before lunch current prices for both deals looked like curved saws on the charts, though both were heading to the monitor corners where Levko wanted them to go. Thus, a steep hill was formed on a London chart, and an abrupt slope on Moscow one. But suddenly latest teeth of both chart saws crumpled and abruptly jumped: London, up, and Moscow, down.

      “Excuse me,” said Levko and almost leaped to his computer. All was ready there for his final touch; he just twice clicked with the mouse button, and both his deals were closed, and very successfully closed. With his two fingers he earned these morning twenty thousand dollars, just a trifling in his situation, but very pleasant and encouraging, and it will warm him from inside till the end of a day. Levko returned to the lunch table in a very high spirits.

      Pekinese duck was served, and when waiter girl closed the door Rebrov asked, “So what’s happened to our money, Leonid? How are things?” By Levko’s carefree grin, familiar to Rebrov for twelve years, he guessed that it was too bad.

      “So-so. But one bank promised me to help with credit. Don’t you worry; we’ll break through as usual. Don’t worry.”

      “Very bad, and I am sick of it already. It’s so shaky, Leo.”

      “In two weeks you will be billionaire. It suits you?”

      “I doubt it.”

      “Ivan, I just ask you to be honest with me. You know where we’re heading, and we should stick together as one fist. And please, don’t you trust this Communist maniac.”

      “Did he find a madman for this job?”

      “I don't know and I don't want to know. That homicidal part is strictly your business, and don’t you ever talk with me about it.”

      “Since when did you turn into such a saint?”

      “Long enough, and please never even mention these things to me.”

      “OK, Leo, and don’t you worry too. They say he hired some private detective. I guess for this job.”

      “Did you see him?”

      “Not yet. Perhaps, I’ll see him tomorrow at the funeral.”

      “Probe him, talk to him, we don’t want this sniffer dog spoil us everything.”

      They ate the duck in silence. Rebrov just pecked his plate with the spoon.

      “Why don’t you eat? Does it hurt?” Levko asked going on with his duck, not even looking up.

      “No appetite.”

      “What does the doctor say?”

      “Nothing.”

      “Did you really question him?”

      “When I die? Not yet.”

      Levko knew better than his partner when he will certainly die, because he consulted this matter with a renowned doctor. With the symptoms of the cirrhosis of the liver that Rebrov told him once, with the bleedings from the bowel veins, he was already on the last stage of the decease and could live no longer than half a year, but perhaps even less. When Levko was told about it he wasn’t much distressed. He wasn’t glad too, because he considered himself a decent man, but certainly he was not distressed. Levko was afraid of Rebrov for a very long time. He often had nightmares with this man doing something cruel to him. He even called him in his mind nelud, werewolf in Russian, or devil. Twelve years ago, as it was apparent now, he underestimated Rebrov. He thought then that he

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