Tatiana

by Martin Cruz Smith

  On the chance that Tatiana’s body had been moved, Arkady searched different morgues, rolling out the deceased, checking their toe tag and appearance, which was generally not good. There were fourteen morgues in Moscow, some as clean as model kitchens, others abattoirs with carts of bloody saws and chisels. Arkady fell into a kind of fugue state, seeing with a cold professional eye, being there and not there.

  At the end, he found himself in a mourning room with a few folding chairs and a vase of artificial lilies. One body was on view, a man in the uniform of an army general. His uniform had stayed the same size, but the general had shrunk. His face, sallow and peaked, was nearly hidden between his cap and a chest full of honors: Order of Lenin, campaigns at Stalingrad and Bessarabia, a ribbon for the fall of Berlin. His only mourner was a teenage girl listening to her iPod, oblivious to death, which was probably the way it should be, Arkady thought.

  Crossing the river by the Kremlin Pier, Arkady saw Grisha Grigorenko’s superyacht, the Natalya Goncharova, anchored in the middle of the water. The Natalya was white as a swan, a vessel that inspired envy and ambition, with three decks, wraparound windows, sunning deck, dance floor and Jet Skis docked on the stern. Figures moved around doing whatever the crew on a superyacht did, polishing the brass, fine-tuning the radar, shuttling passengers back and forth. Still there was, Arkady thought, an air of indecision. The king was dead and the new king had yet to be anointed.

  • • •

  Sometimes it was hard to say where crime ended and punishment began. Police headquarters was a town house on Petrovka Street with a bust of Dzerzhinsky, the vulpine founder of revolutionary terror, watching over beds of petunias. In the heady days of democracy this symbol of terror had been pulled down from his pedestal. After years in exile he had been returned to his perch.

  Behind headquarters spread a complex of holding cells, laboratories and ballistics. Blue and white police cars, mainly Skodas and Fords, were parked haphazardly. Next to the district prosecutor’s office, witnesses gathered for a smoke. In a basement directly across the street was the Den, a restaurant favored by both sides of the law as they drifted back and forth from the courtroom door for a drink, a cigarette, a word with a lawyer or a confederate. From time to time, patrons noticed thunderheads piling up and moved inside the restaurant, where the atmosphere was blue with smoke. Autographed photos of hockey and soccer stars, snapshots of catered affairs and postcards of belly dancers decorated the walls. Grilled kebabs and Middle Eastern music played in an absentminded way. Victor had yet to arrive but through the haze Arkady saw Anya at a corner table drinking Champagne with Alexi Grigorenko. He would have taken odds that Grisha’s son would not survive a week in Moscow and here he was practically a celebrity hobnobbing with the press. Arkady knew he should wait outside for Victor, just avoid the whole scene, but he was drawn irresistibly to Alexi’s table, and when a bodyguard moved to intercept Arkady, Alexi waved the man back.

  “It’s all right,” Alexi said. “I know Investigator Renko. He even attended my father’s funeral.”

  “What’s the happy occasion today?” Arkady asked.

  “Two of Alexi’s friends were found innocent of murder,” Anya said.

  “Innocent as a baby or innocent as a bought judge?”

  “The judge ruled there was insufficient evidence to hold them,” Alexi said.

  “Judges can be expensive,” Arkady told Anya. “They should put an ATM in the courtroom and eliminate the middleman.”

  Alexi allowed Arkady a smile. “That, of course, would be the lawyer.”

  Alexi was not a typical gangster. He had a healthy tan, sculpted hair, a tailored suit casually worn. The kind of man, Arkady thought, who belonged to an athletic club and could swim more than fifty meters without sinking. He leaned forward confidentially.

  “What are you after, Renko? I heard you’re looking for missing bodies now. Do you expect one to pop up here?”

  “You never know. Last month a man was gunned down at this very table. Was he a friend of yours?”

  “I knew him.”

  “Was he also from Kaliningrad?”

  “I think so.”

  “All these people from Kaliningrad. Maybe it’s a matter of perspective. I read a story once about a man who fell in love with a one-legged redhead, and from then on he saw one-legged redheads everywhere.”

  Anya said, “We would ask you to join us but we know how busy you are chasing ghosts.”

  Arkady pulled up a chair. “No, no, I’ve all the time in the world; that’s the thing about ghosts. They’ll always be there.”

  At a nod from Alexi, a waiter brought another glass. Such service! Arkady thought it was good to be a Mafia chief, until you were shot.

  He was interested in how Anya would play this encounter. He noticed a necklace of amber the color of honey that hung around her neck.

  “Very nice.”

  “A gift from Alexi.”

  “Take a closer look,” Alexi said. “In the centerpiece, you’ll see a mosquito trapped sixty thousand years ago.”

  “Even longer than you’ve been an investigator.” Anya blew smoke Arkady’s way.

  The serious journalist Anya seemed to have been replaced by Anya the gun moll. What Arkady did not understand was why Anya was wasting time with a would-be Mafia chief like Alexi when she was supposed to be writing an earthshaking article about Tatiana.

  “You and Anya are old friends,” Alexi said.

  “Our paths have crossed.”

  “So Anya told me.” Alexi’s smile was like a hook in the mouth. “Is it true that you don’t carry a firearm? For what reason?”

  “I’m lazy.”

  “No, really.”

  “Well, when I did carry one I hardly ever used it. And it makes you stupid. You stop thinking of options. The gun doesn’t want options.”

  “But you’ve been shot.”

  “There’s the downside.”

  “Cheers!” Anya said.

  They drank, listened to thunder and poured some more, as if they were old friends gathering before a storm. A waiter coasted by with menus.

  “You know, I’ve never actually eaten here. Recommendations?” Alexi asked Arkady.

  “Wait for my partner Detective Orlov. He’s an epicure. So, Alexi, who do you think killed your father?”

  “You’re very rude for a man without a gun.”

  “I’m simply wondering how you expect to take over your father’s varied business interests.”

  “I will put things on a genuine business setting. This country is run like an Arab bazaar. There have to be rules and norms. How can there be investment when there is no future, and how can there be a future when there is no honesty?”

  “Alexi has plans,” Anya said.

  “My father was a great man, make no mistake, but he lacked a business strategy, an overall plan. I’ll correct that.”

  “But first a little revenge?”

  Alexi softly drummed his fingers on the table.

  “Your friend is joking,” he told Anya.

  “I’m joking,” Arkady said.

  “Because you’re jealous,” Alexi said. “You see your beautiful woman with me and you’re jealous. Cherchez la femme, right?”

  “He’s after a different femme. Someone he lost,” Anya said.

  “Anyone I know?”

  “Tatiana Petrovna.”

  “The journalist? I heard she jumped out a window.”

  “Arkady has dark suspicions,” Anya said. “Did you ever meet Tatiana?”

  “All I know is that she wrote a good deal of lies about my father. She probably got what she deserved.”

  “Then you don’t think it was suicide, either,” Arkady said.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Don’t put words in my mouth.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it.” Arkady got to his feet. He decided he didn’t want to be a spoilsport any longer. Anya had her own game to play.
Perhaps it had something to do with marrying a millionaire.

  Besides, Victor had arrived with a recommendation.

  “Try the soup. I think they stir it with a mop.”

  • • •

  Victor’s car was parked half over the curb outside the courtroom door. In the backseat was a cardboard box that rocked and howled.

  “Don’t open it,” Victor said, and showed Arkady the bloody scratches on his hands.

  “Snowflake?”

  “Snowflake.”

  The box was open just enough for a maddened green eye to peer out.

  “It’s white?” Arkady asked.

  “Take my word for it.”

  “You found it in the care of some sweet old lady?”

  Victor leaned on the car. “Not quite. I found Snowflake in the arms of a skinhead called Conan at the construction site next to Svetlana’s. Apparently, they had a relationship. A skinhead and a prostitute; could love be far behind? She left Snowflake in his keeping because she was going home.”

  In the box, the green eye retreated, replaced by a swipe of claws.

  “Where is home?”

  “Kaliningrad. Nothing more specific.”

  “Did you get a true ID on him?”

  “No.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Like a Conan. Lots of time in the weight room, leather vest, abs you could crack clams on. Plenty of tattoos, but Nazi, not Mafia. I promised him I would find Snowflake a home with ample mice.”

  “Why would he give you the cat?”

  “He was going on a bike ride. He left there and then on a black Harley. I wasn’t close enough to catch the license.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  “He mentioned Central Asia.”

  “Look on the bright side, you did find Snowflake.”

  “Now all I need is a suit of armor to open the fucking box.” Victor looked at the Den. “What is Anya up to with Alexi Grigorenko?”

  “Research.”

  “His father’s not around to protect him anymore, so I hope she works fast.”

  Night and day, Arkady thought.

  When Victor got in the car, Snowflake produced a genuine growl. Victor rolled down the window to say, “One other thing. Conan liked Tatiana for helping Svetlana. He thought she was a saint.”

  • • •

  Arkady’s apartment was a battlement against the storm. Sometimes it sounded as if nature was laying siege against the city, as if black furies and Irish banshees were tearing up and down the streets. It was two in the morning and he was wide awake. For dinner he had eaten something greasy with bread and vodka. It occurred to him that quite possibly this might be his last case, that he might close his so-called career chasing the anonymous dead. Which served him right. He picked up a shoe box of audiocassettes he had taken from Tatiana Petrovna’s apartment and fed one into his own recorder. What did a saint sound like?

  He pushed “Play.”

  “The bastards won’t let me through. They did before. This time they won’t. There are more than three hundred children in the school and this is the second day of the siege. I’ve brought food and medical supplies and the chance to negotiate. The FSB doesn’t want negotiations. In fact, the federal troops, the FSB, GRU and OMON sharpshooters, have been ordered further back from the school, further away from any communication. It’s not as if they have any plan apart from ‘no negotiation with terrorists.’ If not negotiations, what? Without negotiations, there will be a slaughter of horrific dimensions, but is anyone from the Kremlin here? The Chechen leaders are no better. They could intercede with their brothers in the building. Instead, they remain silent. They all remain silent as the slaughter of three hundred children draws closer.”

  By the end of the tape, his throat was constricted and he discovered that his face was wet with tears. An unlit, forgotten cigarette was still in his hand. He screwed the cap back on the vodka bottle and tried another tape.

  “Am I a dupe? They’ve asked me to be part of the negotiating team. We walk into the theater with food and messages, we walk out with hostages that have been freed, mainly women, children, and Muslims. So far, two hundred of them have been released, leaving an estimated seven hundred hostages in the hands of Chechen rebels. A musical revue was taking place when the rebels appeared so suddenly onstage that people thought they were part of the entertainment. The body in the aisle brings us back to reality. I suppose I’m one of the few Russians the Chechens have any trust in, but their demands are impossible. And for a negotiator in a hostage situation, it’s difficult to bargain with someone who wants to die.

  “Ten hours into the siege. For the hostages this must be like finding yourself a passenger on an airplane flight of unknown destination. The orchestra pit is their toilet. It’s no time for heroism. A man broke through the police barrier to bring out his son. A courageous soul. The rebels threw his dead body out like trash.”

  Outside, the storm slapped a door shut and seemed to echo a shot fired ages ago.

  “Twenty-eight hours. The Black Widows wear long black burkas with eye panels to see through. The burkas are loose, to hide the belts of high explosives strapped around their waists. I wonder about these young women and their suicidal mission. True, they have lost their husbands, but most of their own lives lie before them. I think each must live in the stultifying confines of her husband’s coffin, until her own death will release her. I know the feeling.”

  Arkady heard voices and footsteps on the landing as Anya slipped into her apartment. It was three in the morning, an hour shared by insomniacs.

  “It’s over,” Tatiana said. “Fifty-seven hours into the siege, a sleeping gas was introduced by Special Operations into the ventilation system and when Russian troops entered thirty minutes later, there was virtually no resistance. Fifty Chechen rebels—including Black Widows—were executed where they were found. Seven hundred hostages were freed and not a single one of our soldiers lost in what clearly should have been a triumph in the war against terrorism. However, the gas also killed one hundred thirty hostages; families without a breath between them still occupy their theater seats. Hundreds more need hospitalization. There is an antidote, but we are informed that the nature of the gas is a state secret and cannot be divulged. The man from Special Operations says, ‘When you chop wood, chips fly.’ ”

  The rest of the cassette was so faint it was virtually blank, a heartbeat in the dark.

  8

  Arkady squinted in a morning light so bright that crumbs cast shadows on the kitchen table. Anya was in dark glasses, her fingernails painted scarlet red, black hair brushed to a shine. Uncertainty was in the air. She had spent the evening and half the night with Alexi, and Arkady didn’t know whether to be angry or feign nonchalance. He hadn’t expected her to show up on his doorstep the morning after, looking fresh as a daisy, although she held his gaze a little too long and lit a cigarette with movements that were a little too quick.

  “Have some caffeine with that.” He poured her a cup. “You were out late.”

  “Alexi and I went to a club.”

  “That sounds like fun.”

  “He says you’re jealous.”

  “He told me.” Since there was nothing he could say now that wouldn’t sound jealous, he plunged ahead. “How is the writing going?”

  “I’m still doing research.”

  “With Alexi?”

  “What have you got against him?”

  “Nothing, except that he’s a slicked-back version of a real Mafia boss. Someone is going to put a bullet through his empty head any day now.” That didn’t sound fair, he thought. “I just hope you’re not in the way.” That didn’t sound any better.

  “So you were up late too.”

  “Listening to Tatiana. I found some old tapes in her apartment.”

  “Sometimes I think you’d rather listen to ghosts than to someone alive.”

  “It depends.”

  “And now, on top of
ghosts, you have a Saint Tatiana. Maybe you should pray.”

  “What would help more than prayers is the notebook Tatiana brought back from Kaliningrad.”

  “It’s funny. Everybody wants it and no one can read it.”

  “I’d like to try.”

  She opened her tote bag and produced the spiral notebook that Obolensky had shown him. “Just for you, the Holy Grail.”

  “You’ve read it?”

  “Over and over.”

  “May I?”

  “Be my guest.”

  The pages were covered with enigmatic symbols. Inside the back cover were geometric shapes, a list of numbers and sketches of a cat.

  Anya gathered up her coat. “I myself prefer a hothead to an ice cube.”

  He heard the decisive slap of her shoes and perhaps the word idiot as she shut the door.

  • • •

  Whenever Arkady visited the university, he could not help but measure his progress in life against the precocious student he had been. What promise! A golden youth, son of an infamous general, he had floated easily to the top. By now, he should have been a deputy minister or, at the very least, a prosecutor, ruler of his own precinct and feasting at the public trough. Somehow, he had wandered. Almost all the cases that came his way were fueled by vodka and capped by a drunken confession. Crimes that displayed planning and intelligence were all too often followed by a phone call from above, with advice to “go easy” or not “make waves.” Instead of bending, he pushed back, and so guaranteed his descent from early promise to pariah.

  One exception to the general disappointment was Professor Emeritus Kunin, an elderly iconoclast who dragged an oxygen tank and breathing tube around his office. A linguistics expert, he had once been arrested for speaking Esperanto, considered in Soviet times a language of conspiracy. Arkady convinced the judge that the professor was speaking Portuguese.

  “I apologize, my dear Renko, that my office is such a mess. There is a system, I promise you. With all these . . . charts and chalkboards . . . I can’t even see the windows. I know there’s a bottle of cherry liqueur here somewhere.” He waved his arms futilely at charts, at audio equipment, at photographs of small brown people with oversize bows and arrows. Two blue macaws in separate cages cocked their heads skeptically at Arkady and blinked their sapphire eyes.