The Troika Dolls

by Miranda Darling

  The pharmacist just looked at her blankly. Nothing. Stevie tried again, more in the pharmacist’s style, ‘Gorchichniki!

  ’ This time there was the slightest relaxation deep in the rigid cognitive functions of the pharmacist’s brain.

  ‘Ah. Gorchichniki!

  ’ Stevie knew her Russian pronunciation was not good, but she could have sworn there could have been only the smallest difference in her version of gorchichniki, such as might have been produced by an old man with loose dentures, say, or a swaddled babushka mumbling through her layers. The pharmacist pointed to the window next to hers and proceeded to read her papers.

  Stevie, burning with frustration, went to the back of another queue and waited. She had been there twenty minutes already. The elderly had played a vital role in the Era of the Long Queue. Looking around, Stevie wondered if some of them missed the days when they had been indispensable, and the respect that came with that. It appeared that perhaps, in this pharmacy at least, those days were not quite over.

  Shifting her weight from foot to foot, Stevie tried to harvest patience from the most barren of fields.

  The same conversation was waiting for her.

  ‘Gavaritye.

  ’ ‘Gorchichniki.’ The pharmacist stared at her with deep suspicion.

  Stevie scowled back, refusing to smile. The woman pointed to the third window. Stevie could see the packet, a yellow-and-red box, just within the pharmacist’s reach. This was too much. Quite aside from the time it had taken her so far, and the sheer perversity of the pharmacists and their system, Stevie had her dignity. A stand had to be taken.

  Stevie assumed the expression of a brick.

  ‘Gorchichniki.’

  The pharmacist pointed. Stevie repeated her request. A psy-ops guy had told her once that asking the same question over and over again was the quickest way to getting what you wanted. Stevie betrayed no impatience, no anger, only her brick face. She prepared her final assault on the pharmacist’s obstinacy.

  ‘Gorchichniki.’ The pharmacist crumbled and finally reached for the yellow-and-red box. Stevie all but danced away in victory, and walked smack bang into the swinging door.

  She felt her tooth slice into her soft bottom lip, knew it would hurt in a millisecond, bleed into her mouth. But there was no question of stopping. The pharmacist could be watching. So she launched herself into the street, hoping the cold would numb everything, including her embarrassment.

  Stevie surfaced like a penguin from under the ice and snow. The warmth of the metro car had brought on a throbbing of her damaged lower lip. She was tired and her head was heavy, aching; she would have liked maybe to cry a little. But Masha wouldn’t cry. This was exactly why she, Stevie Duveen, would never be heroic.

  Heroes didn’t cry because they walked into a door; heroes struggled against evil, not pharmacists. In the end though, Stevie thought, even if you couldn’t be a hero, you could certainly try to be a part of the solution rather than part of the problem. This, she felt, was perhaps a more manageable expectation, considering her temperament.

  Coward.

  There was a car park right in front of the station. A black 4WD sat idling, its exhaust pipe steaming, tail-lights turning the snow around it a festive red. The windows were completely tinted, as opaque as the doors. Stevie noticed it from the corner of her vision: the sort of vehicle to stay away from.

  She began to scurry, rapid small steps like a cockroach. It was a gait that, in her experience, usually discouraged all approach. There were a few other people about puffing steam; Stevie could see two mil-itzia strolling through the car lot and this time the sight of them was comforting rather than unnerving.

  There was nothing to be afraid of, she told herself. It was just a car waiting for a parking spot. But there were plenty of vacant spaces. It was obviously waiting for somebody to come out of the metro station, it was too cold to walk home. But Stevie couldn’t help it. She was nervous, and she had made an inconvenient bargain with herself a long time ago that she would always trust her instincts over reason.

  There were no shops to duck into and the metro was now quite far behind her. Stevie scanned the area. About a hundred metres ahead was a large intersection, people, some restaurants, safety. The car park ended with a wall about twenty metres before the intersection. The car would not be able to proceed further, the intersection was the best bet for safety.

  Two men walking ahead of her stopped to light cigarettes. One laughed and slapped his friend on the shoulder. Behind her, a babushka built like a bear toddled along carrying heavy shopping bags. Stevie slowed her pace so the old woman could come closer and felt a little safer.

  The 4WD started crawling along behind her. Stevie could hear it, feel it at her shoulder like some malevolent bird of prey. Faster she scurried; faster crawled the black car, speeding up. Stevie was frightened now.

  Had Kozkov’s enemies come after her?

  Stevie and the babushka were maybe five metres from the men when the 4WD pulled up alongside. The front window lowered all the way down.

  There was a man in the passenger seat, shaven head, fat gold chain, leather overcoat and a tattoo creeping up his thick neck. There were others in the car. Stevie couldn’t help but look at him, and he looked right back at her. She saw he had a mouth full of gold teeth. The tip of a handgun was resting on the door.

  The thug raised the gun to the height of Stevie’s head and jerked it sideways twice, as if urging her back. The babushka saw the gun, cried out and skidded on the ice, slammed into Stevie, knocking her to the ground. Four shots rang out. Tyres screeched, filthy grey snow sprayed out over her. The 4WD reversed through the parking lot at speed, spun around and disappeared off down the main road. The two men ahead lay dead.

  Stevie didn’t dare get up yet, but she turned her head slowly to get a clear view. The two militzia had seen the whole thing from the other side of the parking lot. They remained standing there. One was talking into a radio. Neither looked in a particular hurry to get involved.

  Stevie stood cautiously and made herself walk up to the two bodies. The babushka who had knocked her over had disappeared.

  One victim was in his forties, the other much younger. They seemed to be of average means—strong cheap shoes, clean hands, gold rings on the older man—unremarkable in any way. Stevie removed her right glove, then knelt over the older man and checked for a pulse below the ear. The skin was warm and soft to her touch but there was no pulse. A neat bullet hole above the ear was visible. Unsurvivable. The other man had fared no better: no pulse, a wound in the cheek, the forehead and the neck—a disorganised cluster of bullet holes, but effective nonetheless.

  Blood was pooling in the snow, spreading through the ice crystals to form a huge stain like a big red balloon, floating over the heads of the victims. As much as Stevie wanted to flee, she had seen the assassin’s face and it was her duty to describe it to the militzia.

  A pair of tiny babushki hurried past the bodies without even giving them a second glance. The men were obviously not sleeping there on the street, but the old women’s studied incuriosity came from a long history of lessons in self-preservation: see nothing.

  The two militzia men sauntered over and stood over the bodies. They took no notice of Stevie.

  ‘I saw the man who did it, bald with tattoos on his neck. He had gold teeth,’ she told them.

  The policemen stared at Stevie, then went back to looking at the bodies. One bent down and began to search the older man’s pockets. He pulled out a wallet with an identity card. The wallet was empty. The policeman tossed it to the ground.

  ‘They were driving a black 4WD—you must have seen it. It was waiting in the car park,’ she pressed on.

  The men in uniform paid as much attention to Stevie as the dead men in the snow. They began thoroughly searching the younger man’s pockets.

  ‘If you need a statement, I’m staying at the Metropole.’

  One militzia made a hissing noise, jerked his
head twice at Stevie, just like the thug had with his gun. Get out of here, the gesture said, this is not your business.

  Stevie was only too happy to oblige and she resumed her scurry down the boulevard, into the fading frozen light, her cut lip forgotten.

  Back at her hotel, Stevie called down for a bucket of ice. As she went to replace the telephone receiver, her hands began to shake so violently that it took her several attempts to sit it back in its cradle.

  In her mind, she saw the small flecks of brain sitting on snow crystals; the neat bullet hole encircled by singed skin; she remembered the smell of gunpowder and exhaust fumes; the taste of fear like metallic electricity in her mouth. Bile rose in her throat but she fought it down and was not sick.

  Pull yourself together, Stevie, for goodness sake. You have to be stronger than this.

  Considering the adventures of the day, Stevie thought a medicinal afternoon cocktail would not be inappropriate. Not wanting to be alone, she decided on the Metropole bar.

  She floated in, having changed into an emerald-green silk kimono coat covered in birds of paradise, small gold birdcages hanging from her earlobes, and ordered a Brandy Crusta. It was a good drink for dealing with death: brandy, cream and brown sugar on the rim of the glass. Her grandmother’s friends served them at wakes.

  A small television was on behind the bar. Stevie fixed on it, hoping to distract herself from the vivid blood balloon in her thoughts. It was broadcasting a story about Sokolniki Park. The park at this time of year was virtually abandoned, the fun fair, under tarpaulin drapes, sad as only once-happy places can be.

  During the Cold War it had been a famous meeting place for spies and their sources. People thought that had all ended with the thaw, but the activity, if anything, had intensified. Only a few months ago, the British secret service had been discovered planting fake rocks under park benches in Sokolniki. These plastic rocks contained transmitters that could either scramble and send information in lightning bursts (therefore reducing the chances of interception) or record nearby conversations. It had been a major gaffe, a source of much amusement among Muscovites. Children had hunted the park for the plastic rocks and jokes grew up in bars: ‘Ssh, the rocks might hear you’ was particularly funny after a few drinks.

  Stevie placed a cigarette carefully between her damaged lips and reached for the matches, but her fingers were still shaking and she put the box down. Instead, she concentrated on a breathing technique she’d learned on one of her training courses. It was designed to calm the central nervous system.

  A news programme was starting. Stevie held her breath, but there was nothing at all about the shooting. Perhaps it was too soon, but news crews were usually pretty good at sniffing out crimes as visually arresting as the one she had witnessed. There was nothing about Anya Kozkov on the news, not about a disappearance—nor a body, Stevie forced herself to add.

  Perhaps she had been paranoid to think the 4WD was after her, but at least her instincts were still working: the car had been trouble. What would have happened if she had been shot as well? Gunned down on the street like the two men? Would militzia have rifled her pockets and left the body lying in a red lake? And how would David Rice have reacted when told Stevie Duveen had been shot dead on a Moscow street?

  It was so easy to fall through the cracks of life. Or be pushed.

  Would news of her death have made it to Switzerland, or would she just have disappeared into the Moscow city morgue, to lie in a steel tomb unclaimed?

  What mattered in the end, Stevie supposed, was that someone remembered that you had existed. A memory was everyone’s legacy, the small consolation of the dying. The ancient Romans had understood how important remembrance was. It was they who passed damnatio memoriae, the extreme form of dishonour, which ‘removed from remembrance’ the traitor who had shamed the Roman State. Every trace of the condemned man’s life was erased, cancelled, wiped out, as if he had never existed.

  We all do it, erase our ex-lover’s phone number, tear up photos, forbid the mention of his name.

  Stevie was trying very hard to bury Joss Carey in the deepest oubliette she could find, hoping he would quietly starve . . .

  The Soviets, like the Romans, had eliminated people from public memory. It was the ultimate death. Stalin had had all his opponents during the Great Purge removed from history books, and had them doctored out of photographs. Children were instructed to scratch out the faces of ‘traitors’ in their school textbooks as a gesture of patriotism and loyalty.

  Now, as then, history was under strict Kremlin control. To record another version of events was an act of rebellion, even revolution. It was to refuse to forget; it was to dignify a life—lives—with acknowledgement. That was what Masha was trying to do.

  Coming out of this reverie, Stevie suddenly noticed a tall man watching her from the shadows. He was smoking a Turkish cigarette— she could smell the tobacco. The man moved towards her, letting his herringbone overcoat slide from its hook on the left shoulder into his hand.

  ‘Been fighting?’ Henning’s tone was light but his eyes were anxious as he kissed her on each cheek.

  Stevie smiled and gestured with her eyelashes at the spare chair.

  ‘Something like that.’

  Henning sat, crossing his long legs. ‘Don’t tell me you’re drinking chocolate milk.’

  ‘Brandy Crustas.’

  ‘I thought only grannies drank those,’ he teased.

  Stevie took a long sip of her brandy, her eyes avoiding his. ‘Have you forgotten what I’m like already?’

  ‘Quite the contrary, Stevie, quite the contrary.’ Henning leaned back in his chair, all trace of mirth disappearing. ‘What I had forgotten— almost forgotten, and unforgivably—is how fragile you look, how like a robin, all throat, fluttering fingers, huge eyes. Standing over there, watching you, I had a sudden urge to trap you in the hollow of my hands and blow gently on your feathers.’

  Stevie flushed, turning the stem of her glass in her fingers. She didn’t quite know how to respond. She changed the subject. ‘I watched two men die in a drive-by shooting today. That’s why I’m having a brandy.’

  ‘Are you alright?’ Henning’s eyes were inspecting her mouth now.

  ‘What happened?’

  Stevie touched her lip. ‘I walked into a glass door—I’m fine. But I thought the shooters were after me.’ Stevie grimaced, embarrassed.

  ‘Stupid of me. And I’m still shaking. I can’t even light—’ she raised her box of matches in one pale hand.

  Henning leaned over and took the trembling hand firmly in his, box and all; with his free hand he produced a lighter and lit Stevie’s cigarette.

  He did not let go and her hand remained trapped in his. ‘I want to protect you, Stevie. Does that sound terribly old-fashioned?’

  Stevie drew deeply on her cigarette. ‘Protecting people is my job, Henning.’ She exhaled carefully. ‘You do see the irony?’ He smiled, but it quickly faded.

  ‘I’m so sorry about today, about not being here.’ He would not look away. Stevie grew awkward under the scrutiny and tried to disconnect her hand. Henning kissed it quickly and easily, then relinquished it.

  The fingers were squashed white; Stevie rubbed them pointedly.

  ‘It appears I don’t know my own strength,’ Henning apologised, then added softly, ‘nor the strength of my feelings.’

  Stevie swallowed hard, her pulse rising in her ears. ‘My heart is not a rubber ball, Henning,’ she began, her voice shaking. ‘It doesn’t bounce when it’s dropped. It’s more fragile than that.’ She shook her head, staring in her lap. ‘Joss—’ Her words stopped, ‘I can’t . . .’ she tried again. Still the words refused to come. Exhausted, she raised her face, composed now. ‘This is not for now,’ she said firmly.

  Henning considered her words. ‘You’re right,’ he announced, and signalled the waiter. ‘A whisky, if you would be so kind.’ He faced back to Stevie. ‘Still,’ he went on, ‘it remains that I’ve p
ut you in horrible danger.’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’ Stevie shook her head. ‘I’m fine. The shooters weren’t after me. It was bad timing that I was there.’

  Stevie filled him in on everything that had happened since he’d left for Istanbul, including Gregori Maraschenko and ending with the shooting.

  Henning’s eyes grew dark. For a second, he remained frozen, his blue eyes tight with worry, then he broke into a smile. ‘So, what are you scheming, sitting here all alone?’

  ‘How to hunt a suspected kidnapper in a disreputable bar without drawing attention to myself.’ Stevie glanced at Henning. ‘Ourselves. Today is Thursday. Masha said Maraschenko goes to The Boar on Thursday evenings. But we‘ll have to be circumspect. No bright colours.’

  Henning looked at their reflection in the large, gold-framed mirror suspended on the wall: Stevie, tiny as a doll in her wildly printed silk; he, so tall beside her. It would be hard for the two of them to go anywhere unremarked.

  He nodded gravely. ‘Of course.’

  Stevie put out her cigarette. ‘How was Istanbul?’

  ‘Foggy.’

  ‘I want to hear more about this secret language of flowers,’ she said brightly. ‘All I can see in my mind is blood seeping through snow.’

  ‘Well,’ Henning considered where to begin, ‘flowers are the opposite of indifference. Lovers and mourners all over the world have figured this out. If you want to show something matters to you, you give flowers. In nature, flowers are expressions of fertility, of the order of the natural world. They lie like unread books in a library. It is once they’re picked and given to someone—or laid down in their memory—that they become messages, manifestations of desire and emotions and unspoken words. And yet,’ his eyes twinkled with mischief, ‘the flowery messages remain indecipherable to those who aren’t meant to read them.’ Henning’s whisky arrived in a crystal glass and he raised it silently to Stevie.

  ‘You can see how flowers lent themselves perfectly to the job of lovers’ codes in the Turkish harem.’

  ‘What about these flowers then, the ones on our table?’ Stevie gestured to the small vase with its spray of uninspiring hothouse flowers. ‘What are they saying?’