"Spur of the moment."
"You are still good, Michael." He bent over and examined the severed artery again. "My compliments. You haven't lost it. An excellent job. I believe this incision would have been fatal." He turned back and smiled. "You have a surgeon's touch."
"Are you going to tell me who the hell he is, or do we play twenty questions?"
"He was . . . a professional acquaintance. This was most regrettable. For everyone. Mine was a distasteful task, I assure you." He sighed once more as he laid both weapons against the wall. "I will trust you, Michael. In turn you must trust me. And help me. We need to move this poor unfortunate to a more plausible location."
Vance now realized what Novosty was planning. He was about to pin the murder of the two outside on a dead man, this one. But who were they? Whoever this one was, one of his hands only had three fingers; the little finger had been cut away just below the knuckle.
"Forget it. I'm not going to help you do anything. I'm going to walk out of here, try and find Eva, and get the hell away from all this. You're a negative influence, Alex."
"My friend, be reasonable." He pointed toward the weapons. "We have work to do. We must remove all the prints from those, yours and mine, then create an accident."
"Look, you broke up a small party I had going here tonight. But now that you've ruined my evening, I damned sure don't plan to help you clean up."
"Michael, neither of us had anything to do with this unfortunate business. You or me. I wasn't even in Greece. It must have been some terrible misunderstanding among men of questionable livelihood. Tempers obviously flared. Who knows? Everybody is dead, so there can be no explanation beyond what appearances suggest." He shrugged and slipped his arms underneath the body. "Incidentally, they told me that Volodin was captured this morning. But he didn't talk. Instead he killed himself. So our situation is still secure."
"You must have a hearing problem. Maybe you ought to get it checked. I just told you it's Eva I'm going to help, not you. You can take the money and—"