Red Square

by Martin Cruz Smith

  'You haven't seen Benz since?'

  'No. It was purely by chance. Max and I were surprised to see each other.'

  'You met Benz only once and yet you remember him?'

  'Under the circumstances, yeah.'

  'Who else was there?'

  As Tommy squirmed, his shirt-tail showed under his jacket. 'Employees, customers. No one I've seen since. Maybe this isn't a good time for an interview.'

  'It's the perfect time. Where did your encounter with Benz and Max take place?'

  'Red Square.'

  'In Moscow?'

  'No.'

  'Munich?'

  'It's a club.'

  'Would it be open now?'

  'Sure.'

  'Show me.' Arkady picked up a jacket. 'I'll tell you all about the war and you tell me about Benz and Max.'

  Tommy gulped down a brave breath. 'If Max was still with Liberty, you couldn't get a word –'

  'Have you got a car?'

  'Sort of a car,' Tommy said.

  Arkady had never ridden in an East German Trabant before. It was a fibreglass tub with tail fins. The sound of its two cylinders was a syncopated popping. Fumes flowed not only from the exhaust but from a kerosene heater that sat on the car floor between his feet. They drove with the front windows rolled down; the rear windows were glued shut. Every time an Audi or Mercedes passed, the Trabant bobbed in its wake.

  'What do you think?' Tommy asked.

  'It's like getting on the road in a wheelchair,' Arkady said.

  'It's more an investment than a car,' Tommy said. 'The Trabi is a piece of history. Except for being slow and dangerous and polluting, it's probably the most efficient piece of technology in the world today. It goes fifty miles an hour and it'll run on methane or coal tar -probably even on hair tonic.'

  'Sounds more Russian.'

  In truth, however, the Trabant made Arkady's Zhiguli look like luxury. It made a Polska Fiat look good.

  'Ten years from now, this will be a collector's item,' Tommy promised.

  They'd reached the outer city, a black plane where stakes of light led to different autobahns. When Arkady twisted to see whether anyone was following, the seat almost snapped beneath him.

  'The whole German-Russian thing is so incredible,' Tommy said. 'Historically, with the Germans always moving east and the Russians always moving west, and then you add Nazi racial laws, making all Slavs into Untermenschen only good for slaves. Hitler on one side, Stalin on the other. Now that was a war.'

  His face was creased with a new grin of pride and camaraderie. He was a lonely man, Arkady realized. Who else would ride around late at night with a Russian investigator? When a tanker approached in the passing lane, engulfed the air and roared by, the Trabi vibrated violently in the shock wave and Tommy glowed with pleasure.

  'I got to know Max best before I came to the Red Archives, when I ran the Programme Review section. I didn't create programmes; I had a separate staff that reviewed them for content. Radio Liberty has guidelines. Our strongest anti-Communists, for example, are monarchists. Of course we're supposed to be pushing democracy, but sometimes a little anti-Semitism creeps in, sometimes a little Zionism. It's a balancing act. We also translate programmes so that the station president knows what we're putting on the air. Anyway, my life was easier because Max was head of the Russian desk. He understood Americans.'

  'Why do you think he went back to Moscow?'

  'I don't know. We were all amazed. Obviously he had to be in contact with the Sovs before he went back, and they played it as a feather in their cap when he showed up in Moscow. But nobody here suffered. He wouldn't have been welcome at the party if anyone had.'

  'How do the Americans at the station feel about him?'

  'To begin with, President Gilmartin was upset. Max was always the favourite. It was a shock to think that the KGB had penetrated Liberty. You met Michael Healey at my party. He's deputy director. He tore the station apart looking for moles. Now it looks like Max went back just to make money. Like a capitalist. You can't blame him for that.'

  'Did Michael talk to Benz about Max?'

  'I don't think Michael knew about Benz. You don't want Michael messing with your life. Anyway, it all turned out okay. Max came back smelling like a rose.' Tommy made his point stronger: 'He's been on CNN.'

  Arkady turned in his seat to look behind them again. If something was impinging on his consciousness, there was nothing in sight but the haze of the city.

  Ahead, the road forked north towards Nuremberg, south to Salzburg. Tommy turned right, and as soon as they came off the curve and through an underpass Arkady saw what appeared to be a pink island in the dark. He didn't know what he had expected – Kremlin walls or St Basil's domes rising like phantoms by the autobahn? Whatever, something more than a one-storey building of white stucco framed in red neon, with a square red light bleeding into the air beside a sign that said red square and, in more demure cursive, sex club. As he got out of the Trabi he thought nothing you dream is as strange as what you see.

  The inside of the club was so washed in red lights that it was difficult to focus, but Arkady did notice women in suspender belts, black stockings, push-up bras and corsets. The theme was established by brass samovars on the tables and fluorescent stars on the walls.

  'What do you think?' Tommy scooped his shirt back into his belt.

  'Like the last days of Catherine the Great,' Arkady said.

  It was interesting how intimidated men were at a house of prostitution. They had the money, the choice, the chance to leave. Women were servitors, slaves, mattresses. Yet the power, at least before sex, was inverted. The women, ogled in their lingerie, sprawled on love seats as comfortably as cats; the men betrayed the tics of the undressed. American soldiers stood at a horseshoe bar. Approached by a prostitute, they nervously played out a charade of charm and seduction while she maintained a face so slack and bored that she could have been asleep. What amazed Arkady was that the women actually were Russian. He heard it in their accents and whispers to each other, saw it in the pallor of their skin, the tilt of their eyes. He saw a woman in pink silk as broad-shouldered as a farm girl from the steppe who might have wandered west in her underwear. She whispered to a more delicate friend with huge Armenian eyes and a body stocking of black lace. When he looked at them he couldn't help wondering why. How did imported Russian prostitutes differ from the local German? In wingspread, submissiveness, the ability to heal? They pointed to him. They could spot it; he was Russian, too. He asked himself how desperate was he for love, or at least for a facsimile of it. Did the need shine from him or did he look dead as a charred match?

  He reminded Tommy, 'You said that Max Albov came back to Munich smelling like a rose.'

  Tommy said, 'If anything, I think we respect Max more. I bet he'll make a million.'

  'Doing what? Did he say?'

  'Television journalism.'

  'He mentioned a joint venture.'

  'Properties, assets. He says a man who can't make money in Moscow couldn't find flies on shit.'

  'Sounds inviting. Maybe everyone should go back to Moscow.'

  'That was the idea.'

  Tommy couldn't take his eyes off the women. He looked red-faced and overheated just by proximity, pressing his shirt against his belly, raking his hair with thick fingers, signs of an excitement Arkady did not share. Love was the mountain breeze, sunrise and nirvana; sex was a roll in the leaves; paid sex was the taste of worms. But it had been so long since he knew either sex or love, who was he to judge? One man imagines paid sex to be coarse and deadening, the next man finds it simple and direct. Does the next man have less imagination or more money?

  Every race has its catalogue of features. A Tartar heritage of narrowed, upward-slanting eyes. Slavic oval outline and rounded brow. Small lips, skin pale as snow. None of the women looked like Irina, though. Her eyes were broader and deeper, more Byzantine than Mongol, both more open and more hidden in their look. Her face was less oval, li
ghter in the jaw, her mouth fuller, more articulate. It was curious; in Moscow he heard Irina five times a day. Here, silence.

  Sometimes he thought of normal, alternative lives he and Irina could have led. Lovers. Husband and wife. The ordinary way people live and sleep and wake together. Perhaps even grow to hate each other and decide to leave, but in a normal fashion, not with lives cut in half. Not with a dream that degenerated into obsession.

  The woman in pink came over with her friend and asked for champagne.

  'Sure.' Everything seemed like a good idea to Tommy.

  The four of them took a table in the corner. The woman in pink was Tatiana; her friend in the body stocking was Marina. Tatiana had dark roots and an elaborate blonde ponytail; Marina wore black hair brushed over a bruised cheek. Tommy, playing host, introduced, 'My pal Arkady'.

  'We knew he was Russian,' Tatiana said. 'He looks romantic.'

  'Poor men are not romantic,' Arkady said. 'Tommy is much more romantic.'

  'We could have fun here,' Tommy suggested.

  Arkady watched a woman walk, hips slowly marching towards another battle as she led a soldier through a beaded curtain to the back rooms. 'Do you see many Russians here?' he asked.

  'Lorry drivers.' Tatiana made a face. 'Usually we have a more international clientele.'

  'I like Germans,' Marina said in a reflective mood. 'They wash.'

  'That's important,' Arkady said.

  Tatiana lowered her champagne under the table to reinforce it from a flask and generously did the same for the other three glasses. Vodka once again subverting the system. Marina leaned over her glass and whispered, 'Molto importante.'

  'We speak Italian,' Tatiana said. 'We toured Italy for two years.'

  Marina said, 'We were with the Bolshoi Piccolo Ballet Company.'

  'Not necessarily connected to the original Bolshoi Ballet.' Tatiana giggled.

  'We did dance.' Marina sat straighter to emphasize a sinewy neck.

  'Small towns. But so much sun, such music,' Tatiana recalled.

  'There were ten other so-called Russian ballet companies in Italy when we left, all copying us,' Marina said.

  'I think we can say we spread a love of dance,' Tatiana said. She poured Arkady a second shot. 'Are you sure you don't have any money?'

  'She's always attracted to the wrong men,' Marina said.

  'Thanks,' Arkady said to both of them. 'I'm looking for a couple of friends. One named Max. Russian, but better dressed than me, speaks English and German.'

  'We never saw anyone like that,' Tatiana said.

  'And Boris,' Arkady said.

  'Boris is a popular name,' Marina said.

  'His last name was something like Benz.'

  'That's a popular name here, too,' Tatiana said.

  'How would you describe him?' Arkady asked Tommy.

  'Big, good-looking, friendly.'

  'Does he speak Russian?' Tatiana asked.

  'I don't know. He only spoke German around me,' Tommy said.

  Benz was such a nebulous creature, nothing but a name on a registration form in Moscow and on a letter in Munich, that Arkady found himself relieved to meet anyone who might have met the man in the flesh.

  'Why would he speak Russian?' Arkady asked.

  'The Boris I'm thinking of is very international,' Marina said. 'I'm only saying that his Russian is very good.'

  'He's German,' Tatiana said.

  'You haven't been to bed with him.'

  'Neither have you.'

  'Tima has. She commented on it.'

  'Commented on it?' Tatiana affected a prissy accent.

  'We're friends.'

  'What a cow. I'm sorry,' Tatiana added when she saw that Marina was hurt. She told Arkady, 'He's a Polish sausage, what can I tell you?'

  'Is Tima here?'

  'No, but I can describe her to you,' Tatiana said. 'Red, four-wheel-drive, also answers to the name "Bronco".'

  'I know where she means,' Tommy said, eager to get back into the conversation. 'It's right down the road. I'll take you.'

  'I wish you did have money,' Tatiana told Arkady. Under the circumstances he thought it was the biggest compliment he could expect.

  A dozen Jeeps, Troopers, Pathfinders and Land Cruisers had sat in a turnout off the main road, a prostitute waiting behind the wheel of each car. Clients parked on the shoulder to shop. Once a price was set, the woman turned off the red lamp that announced her availability, the client climbed in and they drove to the far side of the turnout, away from the passing lights of the road. Twenty off-the-road vehicles stood there already, on the verge of a black field.

  Tommy and Arkady walked by the lit cars and then down the centre of the turnout, stepping aside as a Trooper eased by. Tommy was becoming a more eager guide all the time. 'They worked out of caravans in the city until residents complained about the late-night traffic. There's less visual impact here. They're safe; doctors check them once a month.'

  The back windows of the far cars all had drawn curtains. A Jeep jiggled from side to side as if it were running in place.

  'What does a Bronco look like?' Arkady asked.

  Tommy pointed out one of the larger models, but it was blue. They were all high off the ground, what a person would want to set off across the tundra in.

  'What do you think?' Tommy asked.

  'They all look good.'

  'I mean the women.'

  Arkady caught a different drift. 'Tommy, what do you really mean?'

  'I mean, I could lend you some money.'

  'No, thanks.'

  Tommy shifted from foot to foot, then held out his car keys. 'Do you mind?'

  'You're serious?' Arkady asked.

  'Since we're here, we might as well enjoy it.' Tommy talked in gusts, gathering bravado. 'Christ, it will only take a few minutes.'

  Arkady was stunned, and felt stupid for being so. Who was he to judge anyone else? In another second, Tommy would be pleading. He took the keys. 'I'll be in the car.'

  The Trabi was parked across the road. From it he saw Tommy head directly to a Jeep, agree instantly to a price and run around to the passenger side. The Jeep backed away into the dark.

  Arkady lit a cigarette and found an ashtray, but no radio. What a perfectly socialist car, designed for bad habits and ignorance, and he was its perfect driver.

  Headlights swung on and off the road, creating an ad hoc junction. Perhaps it wasn't so much a matter of there being no crime in Germany as how crime was defined. In Moscow prostitution was against the law. Here it was a regulated trade.

  A Trooper pulled into the slot that the Jeep had abandoned. The driver turned on her red light, primped her curls in the rearview mirror, made up her mouth, adjusted her bra, pushed up her breasts like muscles and then picked up a paperback. The woman in the car ahead stared with eyes that looked as if they were painted on her lids. Neither of them looked like a Tima. Arkady assumed the name was short for Fatima, so he searched for someone vaguely Islamic. At this distance the lights were softened to candle glow. Each windscreen looked like a separate ikon with a separate virgin bored to distraction.

  After twenty minutes he began to get nervous about Tommy. An image of the cars on the far side of the turnout shone in his mind. A car rocking harder and harder on its springs, its curtain closed tight. If ever there was a place where sex and violence could be confused, this was it. The sound of someone being throttled and beaten? From the outside, that could sound like love.

  It was an unreasonable fear, but he was relieved to see Tommy darting nimbly back across the road. The American dove into the car and squeezed behind the steering wheel. Breathing hard, he asked, 'Was I gone long?'

  'Hours,' Arkady said.

  Tommy pressed himself back in his seat to tuck in his shirt and button his jacket. The smell of perfume and sweat invaded the small car with his return, like the aroma of a trip to an exotic land. He was so proud of himself, Arkady wondered how often he got up his nerve to approach a prostitute.<
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  'Definitely worth the money. Sure you won't change your mind?' he asked.

  'I'll take your word for it. Let's go.'

  Arkady's door opened. Peter Schiller had to crouch to be on a level with them.

  'Renko, you didn't answer your phone.'

  Peter's BMW stood in the dark far back from the main road. Arkady spread-eagled, leaning against the side of the car while Peter patted him down. They had a clear view of the turnout, of the cars off the road, and of Tommy heading back to Munich alone in his Trabant.

  'Moscow's a mystery to me,' Peter said. He ran his hands around the small of Arkady's back, the inside of his thighs, along his wrists and ankles. 'I've never been there and never hope to be there, but it seems to me that a senior investigator shouldn't have to work out of a public phone booth. I checked out the number when you didn't answer.'

  'I hate staying by a desk.'

  'You don't have a desk. I went by the consulate and talked to Federov. I pried him away from some singers. He doesn't know anything about your investigation, he's never heard of any Boris Benz and I think it's fair to say he wishes he'd never heard of you.'

  'We never did develop a rapport,' Arkady conceded.

  When he tried to turn, Peter pushed his face against the roof of the car. 'He told me where to find the pension. Your lights were out. I waited and thought about how to deal most effectively with you. It was obvious you picked Bayern-Franconia out of the blue to run a protection racket on. It's also clear you were doing it alone, to make a few Deutschmarks during your holiday. A little Russian free enterprise. I considered the usual protests to different ministries and Interpol until I remembered how sensitive my grandfather is to any publicity attached to the bank. It's a merchant bank, not for the public, and it doesn't need publicity, least of all the kind you'd give it. So then I considered just taking you out somewhere and beating you until you were a bloody pulp.'

  'Isn't that against the law?'

  'Beating you so badly you'd be afraid to tell anyone what happened.'

  'Well, you can always try,' Arkady said.