by Greg Wilson
“I was wondering…” He tested his voice. Removed the cheap sunglasses and threw a glance back towards the building. “Would you happen to recall some people who lived there once?” The woman rested on her rake and studied him through narrowed eyes. He tried the smile again. “Quite a few years back now… nine or ten, I expect. A man and a woman. They were on the third floor. They had a little girl. She was…”
She cut him off. “I remember them.” She took a step closer and peered up into his face. “They’re not here now. They left a long time ago.”
“I see.” Nikolai pursed his lips. “I don’t suppose…”
She tossed her head. “I’ve no idea where they went.” Her eyes travelled between his. “They left suddenly. The man first.” Her voice drifted off and she hesitated. ‘The woman and the little one a week or two later. They were practically the last to go. Once the place was empty the owners started fixing it up.” She glanced across his shoulder. “Spent a lot of money. More than it was worth. They’re all new people now. Some even own their places, can you believe that?” She shook her head. “All the old tenants are long gone. The old times are long gone.”
“I see.” Nikolai stubbed the toe of his sneaker into the grass.
“You’re not the first,” the woman added unexpectedly. Nikolai looked up. “Not the first to ask about them. There have been others.”
He tipped his head to the side in question. She studied him cautiously for a long moment, weighing up, he presumed, whether she should go any further. In the end she shrugged to herself, as though apparently concluding there could be no harm.
“A woman first.” Her eyes looked past him. “A nice woman, but very nervous.” Zalisko’s wife, Nikolai wondered? “Then later – a year perhaps – a man. He came in big car, expensive, with a driver. I spoke to them both.” She smiled around her. “I’m always here, you see? Always here.”
Nikolai took a step closer. ‘The man. Do you happen to remember him? What he looked like?”
She dropped her eyes aside. Thought about it and after a moment shook her head.
Nikolai nodded. “I see… Thank you, anyway.”
“Not what he looked like.” She hadn’t finished. “But I remember his voice.”
“His voice?” Nikolai made her words into a question.
There was a touch of exasperation in the old woman’s response. “What he sounded like.”
Nikolai paused. “And what did he sound like?”
She shrugged as if it should have been evident. “American. He sounded like an American.”
Nikolai blinked. She was studying him again, searching his face, section by section. He began to nod slowly then something caught his attention and he turned aside. A blue and white police Lada trawling slowly along the street. She said something more but he missed it. He turned back to her and shook his head. “I’m sorry?”
“What I said was: “You used to play with her.”
He stared at the old woman and shook his head again. “I don’t understand. Play with whom?”
‘The little girl, of course. You used to play with her. Here, in the park.” Her gaze strayed beyond him, following the path of the police car as it cruised towards them. Then her eyes returned to his and narrowed in recognition. “I remember you. You’re her father.”
Something she saw in his face must have scared her then because she took a step away and he saw her eyes flicker past him again, towards the street. What did she know? What could she know? Nikolai felt himself tense with the grip of fear. Fought to control it. The old woman’s eyes flickered back to his and he caught and held them, moved in closer to her and spoke in a quiet measured tone.
“You’re mistaken.” He tried to smile but the muscles of his face pulled tight in resistance. “The family were acquaintances, that’s all.”
She watched him. Began nodding slowly and lowered her gaze. “Of course.” Her voice faded to a murmur. “Acquaintances. How foolish I am.” She turned aside and set about her work again. As if he wasn’t there.
He left her then. Strode away quickly, taking the short cut between the buildings that bordered the park, back to Mira, playing the conversation over in his head and wondering. She had seemed so certain and there was nothing wrong with her memory; she had recognized Nikolai after all this time.
An American. A year later, maybe two. Who was it and what did it mean?
After that he had taken the Metro to Chistye Prudy then switched lines to Kropotkinskaya, coming back up to the street opposite the towering new Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer. Nine years ago it was still being built. Now it was complete, the massive white stone structure with its golden domes towering above the old district. The symbol of a reconciliation – of convenience – between church and state. Two hundred and fifty million dollars Nikolai had heard it had cost. Was God impressed, he wondered?
He crossed the square and began walking down Ulitsa Prechistenka to the place where it had all begun.
The building that had served as Marat Ivankov’s headquarters nine years ago was an art gallery now. He thought about paying the entrance fee and going inside to look around but what purpose would that serve? Instead he only went as far as the café in the foyer. Ordered coffee and struck up a conversation with the woman at the register while he waited.
How long had the gallery been open, he asked?
Three years. Four. She wasn’t sure. She pointed him to a plaque on the wall beside the entry. He thanked her and took his coffee to one of the tables overlooking the carefully tended garden. Set the cup down and went to inspect the inscription forged elegantly in brass.
The Ivankov Gallery:
This historic building was constructed in 1820 as the Moscow residence of Prince Anatoly Rostov, a cousin of Tsar Nicholas I. The property remained in the hands of the Rostov family until the Revolution of 1917 after which it was converted to apartments. It was subsequently acquired in 1993 and restored to its original condition by businessman and philanthropist Marat Ivankov. In 1998 it was converted to a private gallery to house the Ivankov Collection of Modern Russian Art. On 1 January 2000 the building and the Ivankov Collection were generously gifted by their owner to the people of Moscow in celebration of the new millennium.
A few paces away, fixed to the wall, Nikolai noticed a glass showcase holding a captioned photograph. He moved across to look at it more closely and felt a cold shiver run through his veins as he recognized the two dinner-suited figures standing at the foot of the marble staircase just a few meters from where he now stood himself, their hands clasped warmly as they smiled into the camera. His eyes fell to the caption below the image.
President Vladimir Putin accepting the generous presentation of the Ivankov Gallery and the Ivankov Collection on behalf of the people of Russia, from Marat Ivankov, philanthropist and Chairman of ZAVOSET.
1 January 2000.
On that day – 1 January 2000 – he had been lying close to death with pneumonia in the stinking, filthy hospital of the prison camp at Pechora. Where had Natalia and Larisa been, he wondered? He left his coffee untouched at the table by the garden and quietly walked out.
From Prechistenka he had taken the metro again, back to Revolution Square and then to Paveletskaya on the southern side of the river. From there it was a five minute walk to the building where Vari used to live. On the way an ambulance passed him, its siren blaring as it sped on to its destination, and for a moment he thought of Borisov. Wondered how well the doctor was sleeping now that almost three days had passed since Nikolai’s escape. It had been a bluff, of course. There had been no contract on Borisov’s life, so there was no message to send. If there had been, would he have sent it? To tell the truth, he wasn’t sure.
Vari’s apartment had been one of a hundred in a tower block a dozen stories high. Cheap red brick with concrete balconies that had always looked suspect and had now begun to fracture and lean away from the main structure at precarious angles.
From behind his sunglass
es Nikolai studied the place from the street, recalling the message Zalisko had passed on from his wife as he had been working on the first tattoo all those years ago, clasping the ancient wind-up razor, turning his head this way and that to study the extent of his progress through the limited perspective of his single eye, dipping the sharpened guitar string into the mixture of soot and urine and shampoo then moving it up to Nikolai’s chest and stabbing it delicately into his skin.
The phone is disconnected. Your friend has gone.
He dismissed the idea of asking any questions here. Wondered, in fact, why he had even bothered coming. What was the point? It was all so long ago.
It suddenly occurred to Nikolai that wherever he went it would be the same. Out here everything had moved on. The world had forgotten him. Closed over the traces of his existence the way skin repairs itself over a wound.
He remembered the man in the washroom at Novosibirsk. The old woman in the park. The way each, in the end, had reacted as if he wasn’t there.
Perhaps he wasn’t. Perhaps Florinskiy had been wrong and there was no way back and the possibility of freedom was just a cruel mirage… something he could see but never really touch. The world wasn’t interested in who he used to be, it was only interested in who he was now. Nikolai Aven convicted murderer; escaped prisoner. Even if he could find Natalia and Larisa, what future could they have with him? Where would they go and how would they survive?
The reality sank in and he felt his chest starting to constrict, then suddenly the panic subsided. Whatever it was that now lay at his core overwhelmed it and took control, and his mind became clear and focused again. The answers would come in time but for now what he needed was a beginning. A thread to follow.
And then, just as suddenly, it occurred to him where perhaps he might find it.
19
At nine Nikolai made his way to Gorky Park.
He paid the five ruble entry and wandered around the tired fun fair, watching the people. Exhausted parents battling to control excited children; teenage lovers returning from the bushes, red-faced and guilty; elderly couples strolling quietly together along the unkempt pathways. At one point, when he was sitting on a bench looking out across the river, he noticed a young woman walking briskly in his direction. She was holding tight to the hand of a little boy who trailed at her side. The child, he guessed, would have been seven or eight, still dressed in his school uniform despite the late hour. The girl herself not much more than twenty years older, but by their resemblance and the playful, loving way they communicated they were almost certainly mother and son. She was striking. Tall, with a flurry of white blonde hair, with long, slender legs and slim hips and a smile that danced across her face as she chatted animatedly with the little boy at her side. Then, as they approached, Nikolai noticed the sway of her walk. The high heels, the impossibly tight gold skirt and the top that clung to the curves of her body. She smiled at him as they passed – not the way she would have smiled at a potential client, but the smile of a mother caught sharing a moment of pure pleasure with her little boy – and Nikolai smiled back, wondering what would become of them as they grew older. What would the son think of his mother when he was old enough to understand the truth?
He sat alone considering that, and a lot more besides, until close to midnight when the last summer light had faded and the last ferry boat had left, and then he made his way towards the darkened pier.
By then most of the visitors had gone and the stall holders were clearing up, boarding up their booths, counting takings and shutting down lights. There was an old roller-coaster at the water’s edge: the “Silver Mine Railway”, a sad, low-budget replica of something that someone must have seen at Disneyland or some other American amusement park. By the time he reached it, its compound lay in darkness, its fake boulder mountains and the tall trestles that carried its tracks silhouetted in black against the strange green glow of the summer night sky.
He wandered past it to the riverbank then down the platform to the end of the pier and stood there for a moment, pretending he was doing nothing more than taking in the view. Then, when he was certain he was alone and that no one was watching, he hooked his fingers high up into the links of the tall chain wire fence that defined the perimeter of the park and pulled himself up and over, bouncing to rest on his feet on the other side.
He was on the river walkway now, his destination two hundred meters ahead at the other side of the Krymskiy Bridge. He started forward, taking his time. Closing the distance.
The building appeared unchanged. Still no sign or name. No more or less dilapidated than he remembered from the last time he had been there with Vari Vlasenko nine years before, on the night the terror began.
He found a place in the shadows beneath the bridge and waited. Until one; then two; then almost three, when the last vehicle wheeled out of the small parking lot and someone inside began switching off the lights. Only then did he start forward again.
When he reached the cover of the entry alcove he pressed himself flat against the wall and peered through the glass panel set in the door. Inside he could see a lone man moving slowly between the tables in the near darkness, collecting empty glasses, running a rag over the timber tops, straightening chairs and moving on.
Nikolai tried the door handle and felt it turn in his grasp. He edged the door inwards and slipped inside, closing it as silently as he had opened it, finding the single barrel bolt and easing it home.
The man was ten meters away on the other side of the room with his back to the entry but Nikolai saw him flinch. Just a fraction and for just a second, but he looked neither up nor back: just continued what he was doing, working his way clockwise around the room, making his way back gradually towards the counter that served as the bar in the opposite corner. From his place in the shadows beside the door Nikolai watched him as he turned. The face was older, of course, but it had the same sharp features, the same short-cropped silver hair. He waited until the man’s hands were full with empty glasses and bottles then took a step forward into the dull light and spoke his name as a question.
“Leonid?”
The man turned towards him slowly, reacting without surprise. Studied him for a moment across the distance that separated them.
“And if I am?” He turned away, continued forward towards the counter. Nikolai measured the distance to the point of interception. If he moved quickly he still had time to get there first. Leonid glanced at him again and read his thoughts. He stopped and spoke again, his voice lazy, unconcerned, coarse from cigarettes. “I asked you a question.”
Nikolai took another step forward. Saw the bar’s owner glance towards the counter and back again. “If you are, then I need to talk with you. That’s all.” He raised his hands slowly and spread them apart. A gesture of truce.
Leonid pursed his lips. Regarded the bar again. Shrugged. “You want a drink?”
Nikolai thought about it. Shook his head.
The former KGB officer shrugged again. “Please yourself. I do.” He started forward. Nikolai paced him, step for step.
Leonid set down the dirty glasses, tossed his towel aside and moved behind the counter. He reached behind him for a bottle of vodka, up-ended a thick glass and cracked the top of the bottle with the same hand that held its neck. The fingers that held the glass slid backwards, almost naturally, dropping beneath the counter top. Nikolai stepped in closer until he was standing directly opposite the older man, facing him across the bar. He calculated what was happening. There would be a gun beneath the counter. Probably a tire lever or something similar as well, but they were too close for that so he would go for the firearm. Firearms were foreign to Nikolai but he was unperturbed. There was still time.
Leonid studied him. Tipped his head aside and looked at him through narrowed eyes. “I know you?”
Now Nikolai shrugged. His hand settled on an empty beer bottle. One with a long neck. He picked it up, turning it in his fingers, pretending to study the label. “That’s
why I’m here. I was hoping your memory might be good.”
The silver-haired man’s left hand came up again and Nikolai tensed. But it was empty. Leonid’s fingers closed around the glass. For a fraction of a second Nikolai thought he had misjudged but the other man was smarter than he had given him credit. Now his right hand fell beneath the counter while his left lurched suddenly forward, tossing the vodka at Nikolai’s face.
He saw it coming and jerked aside, spinning the empty beer bottle in his hand in the same movement, locking its neck in his palm, arcing it back behind him, slamming it upwards into the underside of the counter and sweeping it forward in a continuation of the same path. By the time Leonid had had a chance to raise his pistol above the counter, the jagged end of the broken bottle was already pressing into the hollow below his left ear.
Leonid froze. Released his grip on the weapon and let it fall to the counter. Nikolai made no attempt to reach for it. Instead he pressed the broken point of the glass further into the soft flesh until it drew blood. The older man snared a breath. His body tensed and his jaw locked rigid. His eyes fell sideways, watching the blood drip onto the collar of his shirt. Nikolai saw his mind working, calculating options, then slowing and hooking into neutral when he realized there were none. When that moment came he lifted both hands cautiously until they were level, opened his palms and gave Nikolai a grim smile of acceptance. “So, you want to talk? Then talk.”
With his free hand Nikolai scooped up the gun then lowered the broken bottle gradually and tossed it aside, out of reach. It hit the wall and shattered and the bar owner’s body relaxed a fraction. Nikolai picked up the bar towel and tossed it at him.
“You’re bleeding.” His voice was flat. Devoid of any emotion.
The older man snatched the towel and held it to his neck. Gave a wry smile in return. “It could have been worse.”
Nikolai regarded him. He was right. It could have been. His eyes turned down to the Vodka. “I think maybe I will have that drink now.” He hooked another glass from the row at the side of the counter and slid it towards the bottle. He saw the other man’s mind working again, noticed the eyes fall instinctively, recalculating possibilities. What else did he have beneath the counter, Nikolai wondered? What other tricks? Nikolai’s mouth creased in a smile. He lifted the pistol and studied it a moment. The safety was off. At least he knew enough about firearms to recognize that. He raised the weapon and set the barrel against the center of the other man’s forehead. “I think we’d both be more comfortable at a table, don’t you?”
