No one welcomed them. The windows were tinted, rendering it impossible to see anything from outside. The loudest sound he could hear was the stillness of the air. They had not encountered any human presence so far. No porter attended the revolving glass door. Sokolov felt it strange for a place of such size to have so little activity going on. Unless someone was overly sure that no activity be spotted. He shrugged it all off. No time to play mind games with himself.
As he swung the door, Asiyah huddled next to him in the same enclosure. She did not want to separate from him. They crossed the threshold of the hotel in step.
It was far from deserted, they saw.
A sudden gust from the air conditioning chilled Sokolov after the blazing sun. Live piano music was playing softly. At the front desk, the lone receptionist was busy checking-in a new guest, the weight of a leather laptop bag slung over his shoulder wrinkling his expensive suit as he fumbled with his papers and credit cards. Several clients chatted over drinks in the lobby. The marble floor reflected a giant chandelier suspended over it.
Asiyah squeezed his hand, directing his attention to a large plasma screen in the corner of the lobby which displayed an announcement.
Special Guest Speaker
Herman Weinstock
Conference Hall
Sokolov drew a breath. His objective was a few paces away.
No title or position, no topic of his speech, no association to politics was mentioned anywhere in the notice.
The start of the event was listed at just under an hour ago. He did not want to think that they might have missed Weinstock by a few minutes.
Sokolov and Asiyah traversed the lobby. Frantically, his eyes darted around the notice boards which showed directions to the ground floor services.
Restaurant… Gift shop…
Business center…
Conference Hall.
They proceeded along the corridor, facing the tall double door of the Conference Hall. A metallic voice echoed from within it, amplified by a microphone but muffled by the thick walls so that the words were barely comprehensible.
Sokolov stepped closer, his hand hovering over the door handle.
He had no idea what would be waiting for him behind that door. His fingers were colder than the chrome he touched as he pulled the handle. The door was not locked. He pushed it ajar, peering at the audience in attendance. The speaker’s voice flowed clearly now at him through the narrow crack of the opening.
“I must emphasize that it’s absolutely unacceptable… Now, proceeding to the next diagram… Hold on a second… Ah, here it is… As you can see, the figures shown…”
A low, gruff voice.
But Sokolov was unable to see the speaker. As the door was at the back of the hall, he could only glimpse the last rows of chairs in the audience, men and women listening intently to the unseen orator at the other end of the hall. There was no way Sokolov could get a look at the man he hoped to be Herman Weinstock without revealing himself.
He turned to Asiyah, and she nodded in agreement
Sokolov pushed the door and slid inside the hall, Asiyah at his side.
The conference hall was almost full, with around fifty attendees, and some of them turned their heads, responding to the intruders. Sokolov felt the admonishing stares leveled at him. Middle-aged faces; men and women; hard, cynical, lacking any warmth. The room was cavernous, rendering clear acoustics. Light flooded in through a row of double-hung sash windows overlooking the distant riverbank.
Herman Weinstock was just as Ilia had described him. Average height and build, a short haircut. He was dressed casually, wearing a turtleneck sweatshirt, jeans and loafers. His face was chiseled from stone, with heavyset features and piercing eyes. Ilia’s precise tags helped Sokolov identify an otherwise forgettable man that he would never give notice to in a crowded street.
For an instant, Weinstock seemed jarred when Sokolov and Asiyah entered. He paused his narration in mid-sentence. Sokolov’s breath was cut short as he and Weinstock locked eyes. It lasted a beat too long, and Sokolov fought the urge to break away from the intense eye contact. Weinstock’s flash of alarm was replaced by hostility and then an assumed calmness. Again with abruptness, Weinstock resumed his lecture, picking up his monotonous pace as if nothing had distracted him.
The only unoccupied chairs remained in the back rows, at the other end of the hall. Sokolov would not back away now. He intended to take it all the way through. Suffering the attention of every pair of eyes in the room, they walked all the way around the back. They took their seats and the bobbing heads quickly shifted their focus back to the man addressing them.
Hidden behind the crowd, Sokolov studied the people around him. This was the inner core of the Free Action setup. All of them were accustomed to pounding slogans into the brains of ordinary laymen, In this room Weinstock was doing the same to them. Many attendees were making notes of Weinstock’s speech. In the corner of the room, a video camera was mounted on a tripod, one of the participants recording the event for future generations.
As he talked, Weinstock held the microphone lazily at chest level so that his voice, while audible anywhere in the hall, was not overly loud. Next to him, atop a small table, was a laptop hooked to a projector, showing a pie chart on a white screen. Watching, Sokolov struggled to understand how anything about Herman Weinstock could have impressed Ilia. Weinstock’s ramblings about the deficiencies of the Russian government were tepid, as if the limelight put him off balance. His language was simple and straightforward. Not only did his statements lack eloquence and passion, making Sokolov think that Weinstock did not actually believe in what he was saying, but the man had trouble following his own logic, as if his mind was elsewhere. It was shocking.
“There’s something wrong about all this,” Asiyah murmured. “I can feel it.”
Sokolov held Asiyah’s hand. It was as much as he could do to reassure her. And himself. No matter what, Sokolov was determined to come up to Weinstock and use any means to learn what he had done to Constantine. Until he had finished delivering his lecture, in front of witnesses and cameras, all Sokolov could do was wait, and try to learn the most about Weinstock from his speech and body language.
It was then that Sokolov spotted a possible explanation to Weinstock’s edginess. As Weinstock cast his glance around the audience, more often than not his attention lingered on Sokolov and Asiyah. There was no mistake about Weinstock deliberately studying them. Their arrival had unsettled Weinstock. Scared him enough to make his lecture irrelevant. It was the reaction of a man fearing for his life. Weinstock had recognized a threat.
But not the other members, Sokolov’s inner voice told him. The people around him no longer paid any attention to the two outsiders; as compact as Free Action was, the supporters probably did not know each other well enough to get paranoid over seeing a couple of unfamiliar faces joining a meeting. Weinstock alone was rattled, and there was only one reason for such a reaction — Weinstock knew exactly who Eugene Sokolov was and what he wanted.
Weinstock knew they had come because of Constantine.
Anger swelled inside Sokolov.
“And that concludes my presentation,” Weinstock finally said. “Questions and comments are welcome.”
No questions were posed.
As if puzzled by this, Weinstock searched the faces of the attendees, inviting discussion. Crossing his arms, he turned to Sokolov and Asiyah.