Red Square

by Martin Cruz Smith

  'I thought you wanted to see Irina.'

  Arkady said, 'I saw her.'

  'You took off before she even finished her interview. You were in the booth one second and the next second you were gone.'

  'I heard enough,' Arkady said.

  Stas ignored the halten verboten signs, blithely waving on the cars backed up behind him in the fast lane. 'I came looking for you because I thought something was wrong.'

  'At this hour?' Arkady asked.

  'I had work to do. I came when I could. How would you like to go to a party?'

  'Now?'

  'When else?'

  'It's almost ten. Why would I want to go to a party?'

  Drivers behind Stas shouted, honked and flashed their lights in a chorus wasted on him. 'Irina will be there,' he said. 'You haven't actually talked to her yet.'

  'But I got her message. I got it twice in one day.'

  'You think she doesn't want to see you.'

  'Something like that.'

  'For a man from Moscow, you're very sensitive. Look, in a second we're going to be eaten alive by angry Porsches. Get in the car. We'll just drop in at the party.'

  'For another round of humiliation?'

  'Have you got something better to do?'

  The party was up four flights in a flat full of what Stas called 'Retro Nazi'. The walls were checkered red, white and black with Nazi flags. On the shelves were helmets, Iron Crosses, gas masks in and out of canisters, various sizes of ammunition, photographs of Hitler, his dental mould, a picture of Hitler's niece wearing an evening gown and the wry smile of a woman who knows this is coming to no good end. The theme of the party was the first anniversary of the demolition of the Berlin Wall. Bits of the Wall – grey concrete with aggregate – were tied up with black crepe like birthday presents. People crowded the stairs, chairs and sofas, a mix of nationalities with enough Russians smoking enough cigarettes to make the eyes smart. Out of the haze, Ludmilla loomed like a long-lashed jellyfish, blinked at Arkady and disappeared.

  Stas warned, 'When you see Ludmilla, the deputy director is not far behind.'

  At the drinks table Rikki was pouring Coke for a girl in a mohair sweater. 'Since I picked her up at the airport, my daughter and I have been doing nothing but shopping. Thank God the shops closed at six-thirty.'

  She was about eighteen, wearing lipstick red as an alarm sign, and had blonde hair with dark roots. 'In America, malls are open all night long,' she said in English.

  'Your English is good,' Arkady said.

  She said, 'In Georgia no one speaks Russian.'

  'They're still Communists; they just play a new flute,' Rikki said.

  Arkady asked, 'Was it an emotional moment for you, seeing your father after all this time?'

  'I almost didn't recognize his car.' She hugged Rikki. 'Aren't there American bases around here? Don't they have malls?' Her eyes lit at the approach of a young, athletic American in a button-down shirt, bow tie and red braces, who included Arkady and Stas in an incriminating gaze. Ludmilla hovered at his back.

  'This must be the surprise guest we had at the station today,' he said. He gave Arkady a firm, democratic handshake. 'I'm Michael Healey, the deputy director in charge of security. You know, your boss, Prosecutor Rodionov, visited the station. We gave him the red carpet.'

  'Michael is also the deputy director in charge of carpets,' Stas said.

  'That reminds me, Stas, isn't there a security directive that says official Soviet guests have to be cleared in advance?'

  Stas laughed. 'Station security is so thoroughly compromised that one more spy could hardly make a difference. Isn't tonight the perfect example of that?'

  Michael said, 'I love your sense of humour, Stas. Renko, if you want to visit the station again, just be sure to give me a call.' He wandered off in search of white wine.

  Stas and Arkady had scotch. 'What's so special about tonight?' Arkady asked.

  'Besides the first anniversary of the tearing down of the Wall? Rumour has it that tonight we will be joined by the former head of the Russian section. My former friend. Even the Americans loved him.'

  'This is the one who re-defected to Moscow?'

  'The same.'

  'Where's Irina?'

  'You'll see.'

  'Ta-da!' The host of the party entered from the kitchen bearing a cake iced in black chocolate, with a candy Berlin Wall surrounded by lots of burning red candles. 'Happy birthday, End of the Wall!'

  'Tommy, you've outdone yourself this time,' Stas said.

  'I'm a sentimental fool.' Tommy was the sort of fat man who had to keep tucking in his shirt. 'Did I show you my Wall memorabilia?'

  'The candles,' Stas reminded him.

  But the first note of the birthday song was interrupted by a commotion on the stairs, a wave of excitement that spread through the flat, and a general movement to greet new arrivals. The first in the door was the professor whom Irina had interviewed at the station. He unwrapped a scarf that looked as if it had been cut from a hair shirt and kept the door wide for Irina, who seemed to glide in on a bubble. Arkady could tell she'd had good food and good wine at a good restaurant. Champagne and something better than borscht. She had probably gone straight from the station, which explained how overdressed she had seemed there. If her eyes noticed Arkady, they registered no interest or surprise. Following her was Max Albov, loose on his shoulders the same elegant jacket he had worn when Arkady had first met him at Petrovka. The three of them were laughing at a joke that had carried them up the stairs.

  'Something Max said,' Irina explained.

  Everyone leaned towards them, wanting to share.

  Max shrugged modestly. 'All I said was, "I feel like the Prodigal Son." '

  Immediately came protests of 'No', explosive laughs, appreciative applause. Max's cheeks glowed from the exertion of the climb and the warmth of the reception. He put Irina's arm through his.

  Someone remembered. 'The cake!'

  The birthday candles had burned themselves out. The candy Wall sank into a pool of wax.

  Chapter Twenty

  * * *

  The cake tasted like ashes and tar. The party, however, took on fresh life and became an event with Max Albov, settled on to a sofa with Irina at the centre. They reigned together, beautiful queen and cosmopolitan king.

  'When I was here, people said I was CIA. When I went to Moscow, people said I was KGB. For some minds those are the only conceivable answers.'

  Tommy said, 'Maybe you're an American television star now, but you're still the best damn head of the Russian section we ever had.'

  'Thanks.' Max accepted a whiskey as a small token of esteem. 'But those days are gone. I'd done what I could accomplish here. The Cold War was over. Not only over, it was passé. It was time to stop being a cheerleader for Americans, friends though they might be. I felt that if I really wanted to help Russia now, it was time to go home.'

  'How did they treat you in Moscow?' Rikki asked.

  'They wanted my autograph. Seriously, Rikki, you're a radio star in Russia.'

  'Georgia,' Rikki corrected him.

  'Georgia,' Max conceded. He told Irina, 'You're the most famous radio voice in Russia.' He slipped into Russian. 'What you're really asking is whether the KGB put the screws to me, whether I spilled any secrets that could have harmed the station or any of you. The answer is no. That time is past. I haven't seen the KGB or even met anyone from the KGB. Frankly, people in Moscow don't worry about us; they're too busy trying to survive, and they need help. That's why I went.'

  Stas said, 'Some of us have death sentences waiting for us.'

  'Those old sentences are being taken off the books by the hundreds. Go to the consulate and ask.' Max switched to English for the larger audience. 'There's probably nothing worse waiting for Stas in Moscow than a bad meal. Or in his case, bad beer.'

  Arkady thought that Irina would be repelled by Max's touch, but she wasn't. With the exception of Rikki and Stas, they were all – R
ussians, Americans and Poles – if not persuaded, at least charmed. Had he suffered from his trip back into the Inferno? Obviously not. No singed hair. Instead, the healthy glow of a celebrity.

  'In Moscow what exactly did you do to help the hungry Russian people?' Arkady asked.

  'Comrade Investigator,' Max acknowledged him.

  'You don't have to call me "Comrade". I haven't been a member of the Party for years.'

  'More recently than I have been, though,' Max said pointedly. 'More recently than any of us in Munich has been. Anyway, former comrade, I'm glad you asked. Two things, in diminishing importance. One, creating joint ventures. Two, finding the hungriest, most desperate man in Moscow and arranging a loan so he could come here. You'd think that man would be more grateful. By the way, how is your investigation coming along?'

  'Slowly.'

  'Don't worry, you'll be home soon enough.'

  Arkady didn't mind so much being skewered like an insect on a pin as seeing his image in Irina's eyes. Look at this mosquito, this apparatchik, this ape at a civilized party! She listened to Max as if she had no independent memory of Arkady at all. She turned to Albov. 'Max, could you give me a light?'

  'Of course. You're smoking again?'

  Arkady retreated from the circle of admirers and found himself back at the bar. Stas had followed. He lit a cigarette of his own and inhaled so deeply that his eyes seemed to glow. 'You saw Max in Moscow?' he asked Arkady.

  'He was introduced to me as a journalist.'

  'Max was an excellent journalist, but he can be what he wants to be, wherever he wants to be. Max is the next step in evolution: Post-Cold War Man. The Americans wanted someone who was knowledgeable about Soviet affairs. Actually, they wanted a Russian who sounded like an American, which is what he is. Why was Max interested in you?'

  'I don't know.' Arkady found vodka hiding behind bourbon.

  Why do people drink? A Latin to be amorous, an Englishman to unbend. Russians were more direct, Arkady thought; they drank to be drunk, what was what he wanted to be now.

  Ludmilla was already there. She emerged from the haze, all eyes and a velvet bow, and stole his glass away. 'Everyone blames Stalin,' she said.

  'That does sound unfair.' Arkady searched around the bottles and ice bucket for another glass.

  'Everyone is paranoid,' she said.

  'Including me.' There were no glasses anywhere.

  Ludmilla lowered her voice, which was already a conspiratorial croak. 'Did you know that Lenin lived in Munich under the name "Meyer"?'

  'No.'

  'You knew that it was a Jew that shot the tsar?'

  'No.'

  'All the bad things, the purge and the famine, were done by the Jews around Stalin to destroy the Russian people. He was the pawn of the Jews, their scapegoat. It was when he started to move against Jewish doctors that he died.'

  Stas asked Ludmilla, 'Did you know that the Kremlin has exactly as many bathrooms as the Temple of Jerusalem? Think about it.'

  Ludmilla backed away.

  Stas filled a glass for Arkady. 'I wonder if she'll report that to Michael.' He cast a consumptive's sardonic gaze around the room, not sparing anyone. 'A mixed bag.'

  The party blossomed into arguments. Arkady took shelter on the stairs with another misanthrope, a German dressed in intellectual black. A girl sobbed at the bottom of the stairs. At any decent Russian party there were arguments and a girl crying at the bottom of the stairs, Arkady thought.

  'I'm waiting to talk to Irina,' the German said. He was in his twenties, with furtive eyes and nervous English.

  'Me, too,' Arkady said.

  There was a silence, comfortable enough to Arkady, until the boy blurted out, 'Malevich was in Munich.'

  'And Lenin,' Arkady said. 'Or was it Meyer?'

  'The artist.'

  'Oh, the artist. That Malevich.' The artist of the Russian Revolution. Arkady felt slightly stupid.

  'There is a tradition of contact between Russian and German art.'

  'Yes.' No one could argue with that, Arkady thought.

  The boy examined his nails, which were bitten to the quick. 'The red square symbolized the Revolution. The black square symbolized the end of art.'

  'Right.' Arkady downed half his vodka in a swallow.

  The boy giggled as if he had remembered something worth sharing. 'Malevich said in 1918 that the footballs of entangled centuries would burn out in the sparks from bubbling light waves.'

  'Bubbling light waves?'

  'Bubbling light waves.'

  'Amazing.' Arkady wondered what Malevich drank.

  Irina was never alone long enough for Arkady to approach her. While he manoeuvred between groups, he was snared by Tommy and led to an enormous map of Eastern Europe tacked to a wall, with German and Russian positions on the eve of Hitler's invasion marked by swastikas and red stars.

  Tommy said, 'This is terrific. I just learned who your father was. One of the great military minds of the war. What I'd love to do is mark exactly where your father was when the Germans rolled in. If you could point that out, it would be great.'

  It was a Wehrmacht map. Place names and rivers were in German. Widely spaced lines climbed the Ukrainian steppe; dashes warned of swamps in Bessarabia, swastikas were massed to sweep on separate fronts to Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad.

  'I have no idea,' Arkady said.

  'Not a hint? Did he leave you any anecdotes?' Tommy asked.

  'Only tactics,' Max joined them. 'Hide in a hole and stab your enemy in the back. Not bad tactics when you're overwhelmed and overrun.' He turned to Arkady. 'Are you feeling overwhelmed and overrun? Question retracted. What interests me, however, is that the father becomes a general and the son becomes an investigator. There's a similarity there, an inclination towards violence. What do you think, professor? You're a medical man.'

  The psychologist who had arrived with Max was still tagging along. He ventured, 'Perhaps a discomfort with normal society.'

  'Soviet society is not normal society,' Arkady said.

  'Then you tell us,' Max said. 'Explain to us why you are an investigator. Your father chose to kill people. That's why men become generals. To say a general hates war is to say that a writer hates books. You're different. You choose to arrive after the murder. You get the blood without the fun.'

  'Much like the victim,' Arkady said.

  'Then, what draws you? You live in one of the worst societies on earth, and then you choose the worst part it. What is the morbid appeal? Picking over the bodies? Sending one more hopeless soul to jail for the rest of his life? As my friend Tommy would say, what's in it for you?'

  They weren't bad questions. Arkady had asked them about himself. 'Permission,' he said.

  'Permission?' Max repeated.

  'Yes. When someone is killed, for a short time people have to answer questions. An investigator has permission to go to different levels and see how the world is built. A murder is a little like a house splitting in half; you see what floor is above what floor and what door leads to another door.'

  'Murder leads to sociology?'

  'Soviet sociology.'

  'Assuming people are honest. I would assume that people would lie.'

  'Murderers do.'

  Arkady noticed that Max's retinue had regrouped around them. Stas watched from a corner. Irina was in conversation in the hall that led to the kitchen, her back to this exchange. Arkady regretted ever opening his mouth.

  'Speaking of honest answers, how long have you listened to Irina on the radio?' Max asked.

  'About a week.'

  For the first time Max seemed genuinely surprised. 'A week? Irina's been doing newscasts for a long time. I expected you to say you'd sat devotedly by the radio for years.'

  'I didn't have a radio.' Arkady glanced towards the hall. Irina was gone.

  'And a week ago you did? And here you are in Munich! At this very party! Now that's an amazing coincidence,' Max said. 'Pure chance hardly explains that.'


  'Perhaps it was luck.' Stas joined the conversation. 'Max, we want to hear more about your new television career. What is Donahue really like? And about your joint venture. I always thought of you as an inspirational leader, not a businessman.'

  'But Tommy was going to tell me about his book,' Max said.

  Tommy said, 'We were just getting to the interesting part.'

  Arkady ducked away. He found Irina in the kitchen, taking cigarettes from a carton open on the counter. Tommy was a haphazard chef; carrot shavings and celery greens spilled from chopping boards and around bright plastic appliances. A portable television sat on a shelf of cookbooks. A poster of an Aryan mother hung on the wall. The clock said two a.m.

  Irina struck a match. Arkady remembered that the first time they had ever met, she had asked for a light, a test to see how he reacted. She didn't ask now.

  That first time, he remembered, he had been unruffled. Now his mouth was dry, his breath stopped, without words. Why was he trying a third time? Was he intent on exploring how many levels of humiliation he could sink to? Or was he a kind of Pavlov's dog that insisted on being kicked?

  What was strange was that Irina looked so much the same and yet not at all the same. She wasn't changed so much as an amalgam of someone he knew and of a total stranger who had moved into the familiar body, not recently but long ago. She folded her arms. The cashmere and gold she wore were a long way from the rags and scarves she used to sport in Moscow. The image of her he had carried with him still fitted her, but only as a mask. Different eyes looked through it.