Arkady asked, 'That didn't have a blasting cap or a fuse? Just chemicals?'
'Just what you saw, although with solutions at different concentrations. I have others with phosphorus and aluminium powder. Those need a cap or some sort of blow to detonate.'
'That one seemed pretty effective,' Arkady said.
He had expected some sort of spontaneous combustion, but not an explosion of such strength. Already the fire had taken root, the front seat and dash covered with lapping flames that produced dark, noxious smoke. How did anyone ever escape car fires? 'Thanks for not letting me take a closer look,' Arkady said.
'Entirely my pleasure.'
'And I apologize for criticizing even by suggestion your professional dedication, since you're the only member of the team who has shown any competence. I'm in awe, really.'
While Polina scrutinized him for sarcasm, he lit a cigarette. 'I'd roll down the window if there were a window,' he said.
The second car burst into flame without the explosive force of the first, and the bomb in the third car was even weaker – hardly a blast at all, though it was followed by a steady, hard-working flame. The fourth met the initial standard. By now Arkady was a veteran observer and could appreciate the sequence: the initial eruption of crystallized safety glass, the blinding flare of ignition, the whump of compacted air, and then the two-step flowering of roseate flames and brown, toxic smoke. Polina jotted down notes. She had delicate hands made even smaller by the rolled cuffs of her coat. Her rapid writing was as neat as type.
Belov had said there would be a funeral for his father. Were they going to bury the body or a pot of ashes? They could skip the crematorium and bring the old man out here for a glorious postmortem ride in one of Polina's flaming chariots. Irina could report it on the news as one more Russian atrocity.
It occurred to Arkady that cars were not meant for Russians. First of all, Russians didn't have enough roads free of frost heaves and mud wallows. More important, vehicles capable of any speed should not be placed in the hands of people given to vodka and melancholy.
'Did you have something else planned tonight?' Polina asked.
'No.'
The fifth and sixth cars exploded almost simultaneously, then burned very differently, one developing into a bowl of fire and the other, already a burnt-out shell, subsiding into guttering flames. No fire engines had arrived yet. The era of nightshifts was long over, and at this hour the factories around the dock were empty except for watchmen. Arkady wondered how much of the city he and Polina could torch before anyone noticed.
As she leafed through her notes, Polina said, 'I wanted to put dummies in the cars.'
'Dummies?'
'Mannequins. I wanted thermometers, too. I couldn't even find oven thermometers.'
'Everything's so hard to find.'
'Because chemical combustion is inexact, especially in the lead time to ignition.'
'It's my impression that it would have been more exact for Kim to spray Rudy with a submachine gun. Not that I'm not having a wonderful time watching cars blow up. It's sort of like suttee. You know, how Indian women immolate themselves on their husbands' funeral pyres? This is like a grand suttee on the Ganges, except that we're on the Moscow and it's not the middle of the day, it's the middle of the night and we neglected to bring any widows. Even dummies. Otherwise, it's practically romantic.'
Polina said, 'That's hardly an analytical approach.'
'Analytical? I wouldn't need an oven thermometer. I smelled Rudy. He was done.'
Polina was stung. Arkady was shocked at himself. What could he say now? That he was tired, upset, wanted to be home cupping his ear to the radio? 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That was mean.'
'I think you'd better get a different pathologist,' Polina said.
'I think I'd better go.'
As he got out, the seventh car exploded, shooting fountains of glass high into the air. After the clap of detonation, the glass rang like chimes as it fell and scattered in crystals around his feet. The Moskvitch burned like a furnace at full blast, white flames leaping excitedly from window to window, broadcasting a circle of heat that made Arkady flinch and step back. As the seat burned, the nature of the flames changed into roiling purplish smoke rich with toxin. Paint bubbled and the whole dock glowed with shining glass, like coals.
He noticed that Polina was making notes again. She would have made a good assassin, he thought. She was a good pathologist. He was an idiot.
Chapter Nine
* * *
'It's sad about Rudy. He was very human, warm, concerned about Soviet youth.' Antonov winced as one boy backed another into a corner and knocked out his mouthpiece. 'Many's the time he was here, encouraging the kids, telling them to mind the straight and narrow.' Antonov bobbed sympathetically as the beleaguered fighter slipped free. 'Stick him, stick him, move! Well that's a good imitation of a propeller! Anyway, Rudy was like an uncle. This is not the centre of Moscow. These kids are not going to special schools for ballerinas. Hit him! But youth is our most precious possession. Every boy and girl in Komsomol gets a fair chance. Model planes, chess, basketball. I bet Rudy sponsored ever' club here. Backpedal! Not you! Him!'
Jaak hadn't checked in yet. Polina had called, but the last place Arkady had wanted to start the day was the morgue. Didn't she ever get her fill of gore? On the other hand, watching boys pummel each other was proving no cure for a headache. Master of Sport Antonov gave the impression of a man whose brains had long since been pounded into more solid stuff. He had a grey crewcut and flat, utilitarian features, and in his fists, so knotted that he seemed to have extra knuckles, he held a bell mallet and a watch. The boys in the ring wore leather helmets, tank tops, shorts. Their skin was as pale as potato flesh except where they'd been hit. Sometimes they looked like they were boxing, the next moment as if they were dancing badly. Besides the ring, the Leningrad Borough Komsomol gymnasium also gave room to wrestling mats and weights, so the walls resounded with the puffing of wrestlers and lifters. There were two different psychological types, Arkady thought; weightlifters were soloists of grunts, while wrestlers couldn't wait to get tangled. A dim light penetrated whitewashed windows, and an ancient reek clung to the air. Wrestling and boxing ladders framed the door and a sign that said CIGARETTES AND SUCCESS DON'T MIX!, which reminded Arkady he had unwittingly put on the jacket with Borya's two packs of Marlboros, so there was a bright side to things.
'Rudy was a sports enthusiast – that's why you asked me to come? You had a trophy for him?'
Antonov asked, 'He's really dead?'
'Absolutely dead.'
'Follow up, follow up!' Antonov shouted up at the ring. To Arkady he said, 'Forget the trophy.'
'Forget the trophy?' Antonov had called the office twice a day about the trophy.
'What's Rudy going to do with a trophy now?'
'That's what I wondered,' Arkady said.
'I don't want to be disrespectful, but I had a question. Say, in a cooperative, the person who signs the cheques dies. Does that mean the other partner in the cooperative gets whatever money is left in the account?'
'You were partners with Rudy?'
Antonov sneered as the question were ridiculous.
'Not me personally, no. The club. Excuse me. Don't switch leads! If you're right-handed, stay right-handed!'
Arkady started to wake up. 'The club and Rudy?'
'Local Komsomols are allowed to be in cooperatives. It's only fair, and sometimes it helps to have an official partner involved when you want to bring in certain stuff.'
'Slot machines?' Arkady took the happiest guess.
Antonov remembered his watch and whacked the mallet on a pail. The fighters reeled away from each other, neither able to raise a glove.
'It's perfectly legal,' Antonov said and lowered his voice. 'TransKom Services, with a capital K.'
TransKom. The Young Communist League plus Rudy equalled the Intourist slot machines. Seen in the light of Rudy's talent, this dingy lit
tle Komsomol club was dross turned to gold. For Arkady it was a minor victory, admittedly inconsequential compared to finding Kim.
Antonov said, 'You'll see, the club's on the cooperative papers. There were the names of the partners, statement of services, bank accounts, everything.'
'You have the papers?'
'Rudy had all the papers,' Antonov said.
'Well, I think Rudy took them with him.'
The dead were perverse.
In the morgue they were patient. Stretcher trolleys lined the hall, the bodies under soiled sheets waiting their turn on the table with a final, supine lack of urgency. No matter to them if they rotted for lack of formaldehyde. There was no offence taken if an investigator lit an expensive American cigarette to mask the stench. Rudy was in a drawer, internal organs in a plastic bag between his legs. Polina, however, was gone.
Arkady found her midway in a queue of a thousand people queuing for beets in the small park next to Petrovka. Rain fell as a steady, insinuating drizzle that sparkled around lamplights. Some umbrellas were up, though not many, because people needed both hands free for bags. At the head of the queue soldiers piled sacks in the mud. With her raincoat buttoned to her chin, drops beaded on her dark hair, Polina looked as if she were being borne forward by a centipede of pinched eyes and mouths. There were other queues for eggs and bread, and a queue that wound around a kiosk for cigarettes. Food vigilantes patrolled the queues to make sure no one switched. Arkady didn't have his coupons, so all this plenty was wasted on him.
Polina said, 'I came here after the dock to finish up Rudy. I told you there was too much blood. He's all yours now.'
Arkady doubted there could ever be too much blood for Polina, but he maintained an attitude of appreciation. Obviously she had worked all night.
'Polina, I'm sorry about the dock. I'm terrible about forensic medicine and pathology. You have more nerve than I do.'
Behind Polina, a woman with a grey shawl, grey eyebrows and moustache leaned towards him to demand, 'Are you trying to cut in?'
'No.'
The woman said, 'They should shoot people who cut in.'
'Watch him,' advised the man behind her. He was a short, bureaucratic type with an impressive briefcase, the kind that could hold a lot of beets. All the way down the queue, Arkady saw faces regarding him with suppressed fury. They moved one lock step forward, crowding to make a wall he couldn't breach.
'How long have you been queuing?' Arkady asked Polina.
'Just an hour. I'll get some beets for you,' she said and glared at the pair behind her. 'Fuck them.'
'What do you mean, "too much blood"?'
Polina shrugged; she had offered. 'Describe the explosions when Rudy died,' she said. 'What you saw, exactly.'
'Two bursts of flame,' Arkady said. 'The first was a surprise. It was brilliant, white.'
'That was the red sodium-copper sulphate device. The second burst?'
'The second was bright, too.'
'As bright?'
'Less.' He had run them together in his mind before. 'We didn't have a clear view, but maybe more orange than white. Then we saw burning money rising in the smoke.'
'So two bursts of flame, but only one hot enough to leave a flash point in the car. Did you smell anything after the second burst?'
'Petrol.'
'The petrol tank?'
'That blew later.' Arkady watched a brawl at the kiosk, where a customer claimed he had been given only four packs for the month, not five. A pair of soldiers carried him like a suitcase, one arm around his neck and one around his crotch, and threw him into a van. 'Gary told us that Kim threw a bomb in the car. It could have been a Molotov cocktail, a bottle of petrol.'
'It was better than that,' Polina said.
'What's better?'
'Gelled petrol. Gelled petrol sticks and burns and burns. That's why there was so much blood.'
Arkady still didn't understand. 'Before, you said burning didn't cause bleeding.'
'I went over Rosen again. He simply didn't have the number or kind of cuts to produce all that blood inside the car and out. I know that the lab said it was his blood type, but this time I checked it myself. It wasn't his type. It wasn't even human blood. It was cattle blood.'
'Cattle blood?'
'Drain the blood through a cloth and use the serum. Mix it with petrol and a little coffee or baking soda. Stir until it gels.'
'A bomb of blood and petrol?'
'It's a guerrilla technique. I would have caught on faster if the lab result had been correct,' Polina said. 'You can thicken petrol with soap, eggs or blood.'
'That must be why they're in short supply,' Arkady said.
The couple behind Polina were listening intently. 'Don't get eggs,' the woman warned. 'The eggs have salmonella.'
The bureaucrat countered, 'That is a baseless rumour started by persons who intend to keep all the eggs to themselves.'
The queue shuffled forward another step. Arkady wanted to stamp his feet to keep warm. Polina was in open sandals, but she could have been a plaster bust for her reaction to rain, blood and the insanity of the wait. Her entire attention was focused on the nearing scales. The rain fell harder. Drops ran along the contour of her temple and webbed the pagoda curve of her hair.
'Are they selling by weight or by count?' she asked her neighbors.
'Dear,' the old woman said, 'it all depends whether they have rigged scales or little beets.'
'Do we get beet greens, too?' Polina asked.
'There's another queue for greens,' the woman said.
Arkady said, 'You did a good job. I'm sorry it had to be so gruesome.'
Polina said, 'If it bothered me, I'd be in the wrong profession.'
'Maybe I'm in the wrong profession,' Arkady said.
Most of the transactions at the scales were mute and sullen exchanges of rubles and ration chits for beets, though every fourth or fifth erupted into an accusation of cheating and a demand for more, denunciations that sang with frustration, hysteria and rage, which drew the people anxiously closer until soldiers pushed them back and the customer on, so that there was a constant eddy and pulse within the queue. At least the rain washed the beets, showing their scarlet under a lamppost. In its light Arkady could see that the sacks heaped behind the scales exhibited the effects of their rough passage from the country, dirt and bruises staining the wet burlap. The wetter sacks were smeared bright red; the ground around was steeped red, and the scales were dyed a winey vermilion speckled with the skins of beets. In the reflection off the water running from the sacks, the entire park glowed in a spreading lens of red. Polina stared down at her toes and open sandals, which were already stained pink. Arkady watched her face turn to wax and he caught her as she dropped.
'Not the morgue, not the morgue,' she said.
Arkady put her arm over his shoulder and half carried, half walked her out of the park and down
Petrovka Street
in search of somewhere she could sit. Across the street an ambulance was leaving the gate of a buff-coloured mansion, the sort of pre-Revolutionary building the Party loved to use for offices. It seemed to be some kind of clinic.
As soon as he got her into the courtyard, though, Polina insisted, 'Not a doctor.'
On one side of the courtyard was a rustic wooden entrance whimsically painted with crowing roosters and dancing pigs. They went through into an empty café. Small tables were surrounded by leather-upholstered benches, and a row of stools stood along a padded bar. In back of the counter was an arsenal of orange-juice presses.
Polina sat on a bench, put her head between her knees and said, 'Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.'
A waitress appeared from the kitchen to chase them away, but Arkady held up his ID and asked for brandy.
'This is a medical clinic. We don't serve brandy.'
'Then medicinal brandy.'
'For dollars.'
Arkady put a pack of Marlboros on the table. The waitress stared, unmoved. He ad
ded the other pack.
'Two packs.'
'And thirty rubles.'
She disappeared, returned a moment later and in one circular motion set down a flask of Armenian cognac with two glasses and scooped up the cigarettes and money.
Polina sat up and let her head loll back. Her hair hung in sad ringlets. 'That's half your weekly salary,' she said.
'What was I going to save it for? Beets?'
He poured her a glass that she downed in one swallow.
'I don't think you really wanted borscht, anyway,' he said.
'That lousy body. Once you know what happened, it's worse, not better.' She tried long, deliberate breaths. 'That's why I went outside. Then I saw the food queues and joined the nearest one. No one makes you go back to work if you're shopping.'
At the bar, the waitress dug under her apron for a lighter, lit a cigarette and exhaled with a sensuality that hooded her eyes. Arkady envied her.
'Excuse me,' he called. 'What kind of clinic is this? A café with leather seats and soft lighting, it's rather fancy.'
'It's for foreigners,' the waitress said. 'It's a diet clinic.'
Arkady and Polina shared a glance. There must be hysteria in the air, he thought, because she seemed ready to laugh and cry at the same time, and he felt the same way himself. 'Well, Moscow is certainly the right place,' he said.
'They couldn't come to a better place,' Polina said.
Arkady saw colour return to her cheeks. It was interesting how quick recovery was in someone young, like roses. He poured her another glass and one for himself. 'It's insane, Polina. It's Dante's Inferno with breadlines. Maybe there's a diet centre in hell.'
'Americans would go,' she said. 'They'd do aerobics.' There was a real smile on her face, perhaps because there was a real smile on his. It merely took appreciating insanity together. 'Moscow could be hell. This could be it,' she said.
'Good cognac.' Arkady poured two more glasses. It had a terrific impact on an empty stomach. 'To hell,' he added. He could feel the damp in his clothes rising like steam. He called to the waitress, 'What kind of food is on this diet?'
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