On the other hand, Jaak might be dead, but he was not a bad detective. Arkady looked through all the drawers and under them, and then brought out Jaak's oversized key. Each undercover detective had his own safe, a locked repository of his work. He tried the key on all four ancient safes in turn, fishing for a tumbler, until the last lock yielded and the iron door swung open to the three private shelves of Jaak's life. On the lower shelf were dead files tied in red ribbon, a basement of Jaak's professional memory. On the top shelf were personal items: loose photos of a boy and a man fishing, of the same boy and a man holding a model plane, of that boy now grown into an Army uniform and recognizable as Jaak posing with a happy but self-conscious woman smoothing her apron. They stood on the steps of a dacha. Light covered Jaak's eyes, shade covered his mother's. A picture of soldiers in their tent, singing, Jaak the one with the guitar. Divorce papers, eight years old, torn apart and taped back together. A snapshot of Jaak with Julya in an earlier phase of dark hair, blurred because they were plummeting on an amusement ride, also torn and taped together.
On the middle shelf was a grey criminal code book stuffed with the sloppy addenda of daily changing laws: protocol forms for investigation, search, interrogation; red directory of detectives in the Moscow region; loose Makarov slugs in copper casings. There were a surveillance photo of Rudy, a mug shot of a young Kim, Polina's shots of the black market and the burned shell of Rudy's car. Also an inter-office envelope. Arkady opened it and found the German videotape he had given Jaak along with two developed stills. So Jaak had got the pictures done.
They were individual photographs of the woman in the beer garden. On the reverse side of one, Jaak had written, 'Identified by reliable source as "Rita", emigrated to Israel 1985.'
A romantic name, Rita, short for the flower, marguerite. He guessed Julya was the source. If Rita married a Jew and got out, Julya would remember her.
Israeli? The combination of blonde hair, black sweater and gold chain struck Arkady as a classic German style, added to a full red mouth and line of the cheek that were pure Slav. Why wasn't she in the Jerusalem tape instead of the Munich one? Why had Arkady seen her in Rudy's car and intercepted a glance from her that had read him and his Zhiguli as a man and machine all too familiar? Why had he seen her mouth on the tape, 'I love you'?
The second picture was identical. On its back, Jaak had written, 'Identified by Soyuz receptionist as Mrs Boris Benz. German. Arrived 5/8, departed 8/8.' Two days ago.
The Soyuz Hotel was not one of Moscow's best, but it was the closest to where he and Jaak had sighted her with Rudy.
The outside line rang. He picked up.
'Who's there?' Minin demanded.
Arkady laid the receiver on the desk and softly left.
By now they would be watching his flat. Arkady drove to the south bank of the river, parked and walked to stay awake.
Moscow was beautiful at night. The other day when he was in the café with Polina, he had recited a poem by Akhmatova. 'I drink to our ruined house, to the dolour of my life, to our loneliness together; and to you I raise my glass, to lying lips that have betrayed us, to dead-cold, pitiless eyes, and to the hard realities: that the world is brutal and coarse, that God in fact has not saved us.' Polina, the romantic, had insisted that he recite it again.
Moscow was the ruined house, a cityscape that looked half burned at night. Yet a streetlamp showed an iron gate opened to a court of graceful lime trees around a marble lion on a pedestal. Another light, askew, shone on a church cupola, azure, studded with gold stars. As if in Moscow anything that wasn't ugly dared display itself only at night.
His own bitterness surprised Arkady. He had been willing to tolerate a background of meanness and corruption if he could carry out his work at a certain level of efficiency, the way a surgeon might be content with setting bones in the middle of an endless catastrophe. His own honesty became a shell for him, a way both to deny and to accept the general misrule. See the contradiction, Arkady told himself – a lie, to be concise. Still, if he'd lost Rudy and Jaak, never even caught sight of Kim and probably been an evil influence on Polina, just how good was he?
What did he want? What he wanted was to be far away. For years he had been patient, yet for the last week he had felt that every second was like another grain of sand rolling through his fingers, ever since he'd heard Irina's voice on the radio.
If he felt this way, maybe he was in the wrong city. Was it possible to escape from the ruins of his old life?
The Central Telegraph on
Gorky Street
was open twenty-four hours a day. At four a.m. its grand hall was populated by Indians, Vietnamese and Arabs wiring home, and by equally desperate Soviets trying to reach relatives in Paris, Tel Aviv or BrightonBeach.
The air tasted of ashes, and the odour lingered on the teeth. Writers sat with telegram blanks to compose messages at five kopecks a word, men wadding up rejected attempts, women sitting more thoughtfully over one. Family groups collaborated in a circle of heads, usually brown heads with bright scarves. Occasionally a guard wandered in to make sure that no one stretched out on a bench, so the drunks in the hall made every effort to keep their bones assembled in a sitting position. There was an expression: a Russian is not drunk while there's a single blade of grass to hold on to. Maybe it was a law, Arkady wasn't sure. On the other side of a high counter, clerks maintained a quiet hostility. They held their own prolonged and whispered phone calls, turned their backs to read novels in privacy, disappeared for discreet naps. Their understandable grudge was that their shift gave them no chance to shop during working hours. Clocks above the counter showed the time: 0400 in Moscow, 1100 in Vladivostok, 2200 in New York.
Arkady stood at the counter and studied the two identical photographs, one of a Russian prostitute in Israel, the other of a well-dressed German tourist. Was either identification correct? Neither? Both? Jaak probably had the answer.
On the back of a telegram blank, he drew Rudy's car, the approximate positions of Kim, Borya Gubenko, the Chechens, Jaak and himself. On the side, to give her a name, he added Rita Benz.
On a second blank, he wrote 'TransKom' and listed Leningrad Komsomol, Rudy and Boris Benz.
On a third, under 'Lenin's Path Collective': Penyagin, Rudy's killer, maybe Chechens. From the blood, maybe Kim. Rodionov absolutely.
On a fourth, under 'Munich': Boris Benz, Rita Benz and an 'X' for whoever had asked Rudy, 'Where is Red Square?'
On a fifth, under 'Slot Machines': Rudy, Kim, TransKom, Benz, Borya Gubenko.
Frau Benz was the connection between the black market and Munich, and the contact between Rudy and Boris Benz. If Borya Gubenko had slot machines too, was he part of TransKom? Who better to introduce Rudy to his unlikely associates at a Komsomol gym than a former football idol? And if Borya was in TransKom, then he knew Boris Benz.
Finally Arkady drew a diagram of the farm, indicating road, yard, pens, barn, shed, garage, fire, Volvo, pit. He marked it with an estimate of distances and an arrow north, then added a diagram of the barn, with a sketch of the pail and cheesecloth of gore.
He thought of the pet shop under Kim's flat and the shelf of dragon's blood and the blood in Rudy's car. This reminded him of Polina. Public phones took only tiny two-kopeck pieces but he found one in his pocket and dialled her home.
Her voice had the low register of half-sleep, then was instantly awake. 'Arkady?'
'Jaak is dead,' he said. 'Minin is taking over.'
'Are you in trouble?'
'I am not your friend. You have always been suspicious of my leadership. You felt the investigation had strayed on to non-productive paths.'
'In other words?'
'Stay clear.'
'You can't order me to do that.'
'I'm asking you.' He whispered into the phone, 'Please.'
'Call me,' Polina said after a silence.
'When everything is straightened out.'
'I'll take Rudy's fax and put it on my nu
mber. You can leave a message.'
'Be careful.' He hung up.
Suddenly exhaustion overwhelmed him. He stuffed the blanks into the pocket with the gun and assumed a semi-upright position at the end of a bench. As soon as his eyes closed he was half asleep. He didn't dream as much as feel that he was falling down a soft, loamy hill in the dark, rolling lazily and without a sound, following the course of gravity. At the bottom of the hill was a pond. Someone ahead dove in and ripples spread in white rings. He hit the water without a struggle, sank, and then really was asleep.
Two eyes stared up from a face of loose, badly shaven cheeks. A hand raised a black pistol. The fingers were filthy and calloused and shaky. Another dirty hand held Arkady's ID. As he came fully awake he saw a plaque of war ribbons sewn on to a stained jacket. He also saw that the man, legless, stood on a wooden trolley. By its casters lay two blocks surfaced with strips of rubber tread for him to propel himself with. The face unveiled steel teeth and a breath like petrol fumes. A human car, Arkady thought.
The man said, 'I was only looking for a bottle. I didn't know I was going to run into a fucking general. I apologize.'
The pistol was the Nagant. Carefully he handed it to Arkady butt first. Arkady took the ID, too.
The man hesitated. 'Spare some coins? No?' He picked up the blocks to push himself away.
Arkady checked the clock; it was five a.m. He said, 'Wait.'
Something had occurred to him. While the idea was fresh, he laid his gun and ID down and pulled out the sketch of the farm. On a fresh blank he drew the interior of the shed as best as he could remember it: door, table, stacks of VCRs and computers, racks of clothes, copier, dominoes, telltale Grozny newspaper on the table, prayer rug on the floor. Referring to the farm sketch, he added an arrow north. Now that he thought about it, the rug had been new, with no wear from knees or forehead, and it had been aligned east-west. But from Moscow, Mecca was directly south.
'Do you have a two-kopeck piece?' Arkady asked. 'For a ruble?'
The beggar dug a purse from his shirt and produced a coin. 'You're going to make a businessman out of me.'
'A banker.'
He used the same phone he had called Polina on. For once he felt he had the advantage. Rodionov wasn't used to being confused and in the dark, but Arkady was.
Chapter Fourteen
* * *
At Veshki, on the verge of the city, the Moscow river seemed to hesitate among sedges and reeds, reluctant to leave a village where the drumming was the sound of frogs, the water reflected the morning hunt of swallows, and the steam of dawn wreathed beds of lilies.
Arkady had sailed here as a boy. He and Belov would tack back and forth, disturbing the ducks, reverentially trailing the swans that summered in Veshki. The sergeant would draw the boat up on the beach and he and Arkady would walk up to the village through a maze of lanes and cherry orchards to buy fresh cream and sour fruit drops. The sun always seemed to be uphill, beyond the crows that roosted in silhouette on the belfry of the church.
Better, the village was surrounded by the lush tangle and wonderful disrepair of old forest. Tier upon tier of birches, ash, broad-leafed beeches, larches, spruces, oaks, and sky that the sun penetrated only in providential single rays that searched for mushrooms. Everything was still and moving at once: ground litter alive with the tunnelling of shrews and moles, an explosion of needles and leaves when a hare left its cover, warblers and tits cleaning branches of caterpillars, woodpeckers ministering to the trunks, the cello drone of insects. Veshki was the fantasy of all Russians, the village of perfect dachas.
Nothing had changed. When he slipped into the woods he followed paths that were familiar even in the mist. The same solitary oaks, not quite so dark and grandiose. A stand of birches with pale, trembling leaves. Someone had once tried to set out a lane of pines, but vines and smaller trees had sprung up around them and hauled them down. Everywhere ferns, ivy, the boughs of secondary growth tried to hide the way.
Fifteen metres to the left, a squirrel with tufted ears swayed on a lower branch, hanging upside down to scold an overcoat lying in the leaves. Minin lifted his face, which only annoyed the squirrel more. Arkady counted a windcheater huddled in the bushes and a trouser leg further to Minin's left. He moved right, behind a screen of pines.
He stopped when he caught sight of the road. It was smaller and the macadam more frayed than he remembered. A jogger went by in a tracksuit, a Gypsy with caved-in cheeks and black eyes on the woods. A woman rode by on a bicycle, chased by a terrier. When she was well past, he took the last few steps into the clear.
In one direction, the road continued for fifty metres, then veered right, approaching and then pulling away from a high gate, a black square framed by green trees. In the other direction, only ten metres away, were Rodionov and Albov. The city prosecutor looked surprised to see his investigator, though this was the appointed hour and place. Some people resented missing even a single night's sleep, Arkady thought. Rodionov walked stiffly, angrily, as if it were cold, instead of the pleasant summer day that was unfolding. Albov, however, appeared well rested, in tweed jacket and slacks, with an aura of aftershave. 'I told Rodionov we wouldn't spot you,' he said as a greeting. 'You must have visited here quite a lot.'
Rodionov said, 'You were supposed to return to your office and write your account of what happened at the farm. Instead, first you disappear, and then you call and demand that we meet you in the middle of nowhere.'
'Hardly nowhere,' Arkady said. 'Let's walk.' He started to amble in the direction of the gate.
Rodionov stayed by his side. 'Where is that report? Where did you go?'
The road was still deep in shadow. Albov lifted his eyes appreciatively to sunlight spilling halfway down a wall of trees.
'Stalin had a number of dachas around Moscow, didn't he?' he asked.
'This was his favourite,'
Arkady said. 'Your father visited frequently, I'm sure.'
'Stalin liked to drink and talk all night. In the morning, they would walk here. Notice that the larger trees are firs. Behind every fir was a soldier who had to stay absolutely silent and out of sight. Of course times have changed.'
From either side of the road came the sound of crashing, as if heavy-footed mice were trying to keep pace.
Rodionov was exasperated. 'You didn't write a report.'
He jumped back when Arkady reached into his jacket. Instead of the Nagant, however, he produced a folded sheaf of yellow pages neatly filled with handwriting.
Rodionov said, 'It will have to be typed on the proper forms. That's just as well. We'll go over it together at the office.'
'And then?' Arkady asked.
Rodionov was encouraged. A report, even handwritten, was a token of surrender. 'We're all shaken by the death of our friend General Penyagin,' he said, 'and I understand how upset you must be over the murder of your detective. Nevertheless, nothing excuses your disappearance and wild accusations.'
'What accusations?' Arkady kept walking. So far he had made no mention of his first phone calls to Albov and Borya Gubenko. Neither had Albov.
'Your erratic behaviour,' Rodionov said.
'Erratic in what way?' Arkady asked.
'Your disappearance,' Rodionov said. 'Your unprofessional reluctance to cooperate in the Penyagin investigation simply because you will not be in charge. Your fixation on the Rosen case. The pressure of being back in Moscow was too much. For your own sake, a change is in order.'
'Out of Moscow?' Arkady asked.
'It's not a demotion,' Rodionov said. 'The fact is that there are crimes in other cities besides Moscow, real hot spots. I'm always lending investigators where they're needed. Without the Rosen case you are available.'
'Where?'
'Baku.'
Arkady had to laugh. 'Baku is not just out of Moscow, it's out of Russia.'
'They asked for my very best men. This is a chance for you to recoup some honour.'
Between the three-wa
y civil war going on between Azeris, Armenians and the Army, in addition to mafia battles over the drug trade, Baku was a combination of Miami and Beirut. There was no easier place on earth for an investigator to vanish.
Twenty metres back, Minin stepped into the road to brush leaves from his overcoat, which was a signal for other men to emerge from the trees. The Gypsy jogged back to Minin's side.
To Arkady it looked as if the stroll had become a parade. 'A fresh opportunity,' he said.
'That's the way to look at it,' Rodionov agreed.
'I think you're right; it is time for me to leave Moscow,' Arkady said. 'But I wasn't thinking of Baku.'
'Where you go is not up to you,' Rodionov said. 'Or when.'
They had reached the gate. Up close, it wasn't black but dark green, with a guardwalk over double doors of wood backed with steel plates and guard towers on the side. In front was a striped barrier to keep the curious away, but how could anyone resist? Arkady stepped over and ran his hands over the lacquer finish, still lovingly maintained. Through it the long sedans used to roll another fifty metres to the dacha, to the midnight dinners and the after-midnight writing of the lists of names, when men and women passed, even while they slept, from the living to the dead. Sometimes children were brought to the dacha to decorate a lawn party or present a bouquet, but always during the day, as if they were safe only in the sun.
This was the door of the dragon, Arkady thought. Even if the dragon was now dead, the gate should be charred black and the road should be scarred by claws. Bones should be hanging from the branches. The soldiers in greatcoats should at least have stayed on as statues. Instead, watching from the guardwalk, was the solitary wide-angle eye of a security camera.
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