"Have you been wrapped before?" Mr. Big asked.
"Wrapped?"
"I'll take that as a no. It's simple. I am going to ask you where to find this girl and her baby. If you give us no answer or a wrong answer, we will wrap your head."
These were all scare tactics, Ali thought. Nobody did such things.
"We'll demonstrate. Are you claustrophobic?"
"No, sir."
"We'll see."
It took two people, one to hold the first turn of food wrap and another to circle with the box and unreel more. The tape was clear plastic. Ali could see through it and witness the whole operation in the reflection of the office window. Air was totally cut off. He nodded to indicate he got the idea but they continued to wrap until he was covered from his neck to the top of his head.
"It's important not to panic," said Mr. Little. "The faster your heart rate the faster you use up oxygen."
The wrap got tighter and molded itself to Ali's face. He wanted to protest that this was more than a demonstration, but his mouth was wrapped and muffled. In the reflection of the window he wore a silver helmet and rocked from side to side.
"Ali, relax! You have five minutes to go."
Five minutes? They misjudged! They must have thought they'd leave a little air! No, no, no, no! He rocked hard enough to lift himself and the chair clear of the floor. Banged his chin against his chest. Felt his lungs and chest begin to cave, a roar rise up in his ears and his vision go dark.
When Ali was conscious again, he was still handcuffed to the chair but the plastic wrap had been removed, rolled into a ball and tossed into a wastebasket.
"Disposable," said Mr. Little.
Mr. Big asked, "Who needs the rack or the Spanish Inquisition when there's a roll of food wrap in the kitchen?" It was a philosophical proposition, not a question.
"Would you like some vodka?" Mr. Little poured vodka into Ali as if he were filling a gas tank. Ali drank in gulps, eager to be stunned.
"Back to business," said Mr. Little. "Where did the girl go?"
"Please, I have a family, small children and aged parents in Pakistan who have no other means of support."
"You putrid shit. What were you doing with your little whore, writing letters home?"
"I was weak. I was tempted and fell."
"Where would the girl go?"
"I swear I don't know."
"Last chance."
"Please."
Mr. Big ripped off a section of plastic wrap and at its touch to Ali's cheek, he jumped, chair and all.
"Genius. Everybody calls him Genius but his real name is Zhenya. I don't know his last name but he is often in the company of a prosecutor's investigator, Renko."
"Where?"
"The boy is always around Three Stations. You can't miss him; he hustles chess in the waiting rooms. I'll point him out to you. You don't need to wrap me anymore."
"Wrap you? Like what, a leftover piece of cheese? You must think we're fucking barbarians."
"No, not really but… I didn't know what to think."
Mr. Big slapped Ali on the back. "You should have seen your face. Come on. We'll take you down in the service elevator."
Ali laughed. He was unsteady after the handcuffs were removed and he dressed clumsily because of the vodka. And because when the elevator came he had to step over Yegor's body. The screw-off pool-cue butt that had been Yegor's scepter and cudgel was stuffed into his mouth. Ali couldn't stop laughing.
24
"Why did you wait so long to call?" Arkady asked Zhenya.
"She didn't want to involve the police."
"Why not? Three days ago we could have turned the city inside out. Today? No one would lift a finger. Is she deaf?"
"No." Although for all the attention Maya gave Arkady, she might have been. The windows of the car were fogged with condensation on which she drew a happy face.
The longer they waited for Victor, the more questions Arkady had for Zhenya.
Who was this girl?
How old was she?
Where was she from?
How could she lose a baby?
Did Zhenya ever actually see a baby?
Did anyone besides the girl ever see a baby?
Maya was mute. She hated Zhenya's so-called friend, Arkady. Zhenya may have lied to her, but he was the only one who had the nerve to walk into a building in search of her and lead her down the stairs while the two men in the elevator were busy stuffing Yegor into a body bag. It took her a moment to realize that the investigator was asking her directly, "Did you recognize the yellow station wagon?"
"No."
"From where?"
"I told you. Nowhere."
"Did you recognize the two men?"
They were the men she called the Catchers.
"No."
"They seemed to know you." He passed back the poster of her that the two men had been circulating. She let her forehead rest on the coolness of the backseat window and answered in a dreamy tone that she had never seen them before.
"And the Pakistani?"
"No."
"You never bought anything at his kiosk?"
"No."
Zhenya said the last they saw of the kiosk clerk, he was being dumped in the Volvo and covered with a tarp.
"Did they see you?"
"On the street," Zhenya said. "That's how I found her, by following their car."
"Did they get a good look at you?"
"Yes."
"What did they look like?"
"Average. Average everything."
"Nothing else?"
The word Zhenya came up with was "Brothers."
Victor climbed into the Lada and said the office site was microscopically clean.
"Anyway, who is going to report that a runaway like Yegor is missing, or give a damn about a Pakistani? Not to mention, the age of consent is still sixteen. Do you think men who have sex with children are going to report suspicious activity?"
Arkady said to Zhenya, "You know better. You should have called."
It wasn't until they reached the richly dressed shop windows of Tverskaya Street that Maya realized the investigator hadn't taken her and Zhenya to the police.
Arkady remembered that his cupboard was bare and sent Victor and Zhenya dashing through the rain into a food emporium. Also, Arkady wanted a private word with Maya. He had not appreciated at first how close to the edge the girl was. He wasn't prepared for her. The streets of Moscow were lined with Viking women. Maya was small and graceful and her shaved head added vulnerability. He could see why Zhenya was senseless around her.
"You want to talk?" Maya said.
"That's right. Just you and me."
"Okay. Let's hear what kind of bullshit you come up with."
He thought she might be a good judge of character. He wondered what kind of self-justification had been poured into her ears by men paying for sex with a child.
"If you love your baby so much, why won't you try to find her?"
"Won't look for her? All I've done for the last three days is search the stations again and again."
"I know. But that's punishing yourself, not searching for the baby anywhere but Three Stations. There's much more to Moscow. It confuses me because I believe you're a good mother."
"How would you know that?"
"Because you're suffering."
"You don't know anything."
"Then let me guess. You're a runaway, you're a prostitute and you're running for your life."
She asked, "What else?"
"You hid the baby in something it could breathe in, maybe a basket, and probably traveled second class at night. Pickpockets and confidence artists work as teams. One bumps you while the other lifts your money. Or one threatens you and the other comes to your rescue."
"Auntie Lena chased a soldier who was bothering me."
"Afterward, did Auntie Lena give you anything to drink?"
"Yes."
"It had knockout powder. Once yo
u drank that, you didn't have a chance."
"I asked people later if they saw a woman with a baby get off the train."
"By then the soldier had joined her, only he didn't look like a soldier and she didn't look like anybody's Auntie Lena. They looked like an ordinary family on a trip. That would be my guess."
"And…"
"And the two men you saw in the elevator with Yegor are after you. I'm not sure whether you've seen them before, but you know what they are. Once in a while a girl escapes. Then someone has to go after her and not only catch her, but make an example of her, so other girls won't try."
"They take pictures."
"I've seen them."
She had visions of women hanging from a meat hook, set on fire, floating facedown in a swimming pool.
"They tell us it's useless to escape because they're everywhere. Not only in Russia. They never stop looking and sooner or later they find you. I could be on the North Pole and they would find me. Is that true?"
"Pretty much."
"You're cheery."
"Sorry."
"What about the…"
"The bodies? I don't care about them, I care about you. They're dead, you're alive. There are two professional killers after you. We have to keep you as far from this scene as possible."
"I could do it if I knew Katya survived."
"That's the baby's name?"
"Katya. She has a blue blanket with a design of baby chicks and a birthmark on the back of her neck if you lift her hair. I haven't settled on a last name yet."
"Keep your options open."
"My own is Pospelova. Remember that later." She smiled. "Maya Pospelova was here."
They spread a bounty of cheese, bread, red caviar, chocolates and coffee on Arkady's kitchen table. He kept his eye on Maya. Surrendering her name seemed to have relieved her mind, as if a decision had been made. Her serenity worried Arkady, that and her use of the word "later." Arkady saw her wrist. He suspected that while Maya had little in the way of Plan A, she always had a trusty Plan B in the form of a razor blade.
Meanwhile Maya was entertained by Victor's stories. According to Victor, the art of the suicide note had deteriorated.
"A suicide tweet is not the same thing."
"Don't you think that people who believe in love are happier?"
"It depends on who you are. Arkady falls in love with the regularity of spawning salmon, whereas I have incredibly high standards, yet we're equally miserable. It's become a national crisis. No romance, no little Russians, no army. That's why Putin played Cupid."
"I don't remember that," said Maya. There hadn't been newspapers at the bordello.
"He declared a Holiday of Love with bouquets for all the married women who came to Red Square. The weather was a little cool, a little cloudy. Putin wants everything perfect, so he salts the clouds.
"We do it for every parade. Planes go back and forth seeding clouds. The seeds are pellets of silver iodide and liquid nitrogen compacted into a block of cement powder. Each block, as an airman throws it out of the plane, explodes into a puff of dust. All but one."
Arkady said, "It's a shame you don't have children just so you could terrify them."
Victor continued unabashed. "One block stays together and plunges to the city from ten thousand meters like, well, a block of cement. To the pilots it appears that the block is aimed directly at the Kremlin. Options are considered. Try to shoot the block and make it disintegrate, at the risk of mowing down dozens of mothers in Red Square? Ram the block, at the risk of bringing down the plane? Do nothing and perhaps witness the most unusual political assassination in history? Of course they ended up doing nothing and the block came down in an apartment building nowhere near and tore through a roof and three bathrooms before coming to rest in a tub. I like to think of it as 'Putin's Arrow.'"
Arkady was restless. He didn't know why. He fancied he heard the click of a latch out on the landing.
"Excuse me." Arkady got up and went to the hall. Music was playing faintly in Anya's apartment. A samba.
Arkady knocked. When there was no answer, he rang the bell. He knocked again, then knelt and saw light under the door sash. The door was locked, but he carried a credit card for jimmying door locks.
Victor came out from Arkady's apartment. "What's the matter?"
"Tell Zhenya and Maya to stay there."
Arkady shoved the card in between the door and the jamb. A primitive method, but the door eased open.
The layout of Anya's apartment was a mirror of Arkady's, only hers was furnished with cheerful silk flowers, painted chairs and a buoyant disarray. Art covered the living-room walls. Mainly retro Socialist Realism painted with a smirk. The kitchen was dominated by a cafe-size espresso machine with brass fittings. There was little evidence of cooking besides a microwave oven and a list of phone numbers for take-out food. An empty glass stood in the sink.
Arkady called out Anya's name. No answer.
Victor pulled latex gloves from his pocket. Arkady wondered how many men walked around with latex gloves in their pocket, just in case.
Anya's office was a research center of book stacks, files, computer gear and photographs of Alexander Vaksberg pinned to a corkboard. Arkady's heart pounded, as if saying, Getting warmer.
"In here," Victor said. "The bedroom."
Arkady had the general impression of a bright, messy bedroom with artwork and photos. He focused on Anya. She was on her back between a bureau and the bed, her nightgown pushed up to her waist. Her right ankle was over the left and her arms stretched back and gently touched, a perfect demonstration of the fifth position. She had no pulse or respiration and her skin was blue.
GOD IS SHIT was spray-painted on the wall above her. The paint was still wet and smelled of acetone. Victor turned where he stood as if they had fallen into a cave.
Arkady read the emergency bracelet on her wrist.
Milk.
Some people were fatally allergic to peanuts or shellfish. One taste and their immune system reacted so violently that they went into anaphylactic shock: their hearts stopped and their airways shut tight. Anya was blue for lack of oxygen. But there was death and there was death, and in between was a netherworld where the brain was on its own. He knelt beside her to look into her eyes. Her pupils still had their shape, not collapsed, and when he shined a penlight at them, they drew tight.
"She's still alive." So far, he could have added. Without oxygen, brain cells started dying at two minutes. At four minutes half the brain was dead matter. She would certainly be dead by the time an ambulance arrived.
Arkady had his moment of clarity. Anya didn't eat, she drank coffee.
The emergency kit-a white plastic box with a red cross-was the only item in the refrigerator. The contents of the kit were a plastic mask attached to a rubber bulb and an EpiPen preloaded with adrenaline.
Arkady exposed the needle and thrust it into Anya's thigh. Instantly, she jerked and her heart began to beat.
He slipped the mask over Anya's face. Her heart would race until it dropped like a dead horse unless she started to breathe. Each squeeze of the mask's rubber bulb forced air into Anya's mouth. Her lips were purple and although it was like trying to animate clay, he maintained a rhythm of squeeze and release, squeeze and release, every five seconds as if her heart were in his hand.
"How long are you going to try this?" Victor asked.
Arkady heard a gasp and caught Zhenya and Maya standing in the doorway. Maya's hand was over her mouth.
Victor whispered, "The longer it takes, the less likely she can be revived. You can't raise the dead."
She wasn't dead, Arkady thought. He wouldn't allow it.
"Arkady." Victor tried to pull him up.
"Wait," Maya said.
Squeeze and release. Squeeze and release.
Anya's first breath was harsh and ugly. Arkady continued to pump until her respiration was steady and the blue cast of her skin gave way to pink.
25
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Arkady had put Anya in his bed. Light hurt her eyes, and he had turned off all the lights except a reading lamp that he turned low. He expected her to fall into a deep sleep, but adrenaline was still racing through her system.
"Half the time I think I'm dead again."
"You had a traumatic experience. I would guess that being dead, even for a short time, qualifies as traumatic."
"It wasn't what I expected."
"No white light?"
"Nothing."
"No family or friends?"
"Zero."
"Let's talk about whoever tried to kill you."
"I don't know who it was. I don't remember anything from this afternoon on." Anya shifted for a better view of Arkady. "You knew what to do. You've seen someone in shock before. Was it a woman?"
"Yes. I didn't know what to do then. I do now."
Overlap was the last thing he wanted. No spilling of memory from one woman to another. Yes, he had helplessly witnessed anaphylactic shock before. This time at least he had a chance to save someone. Arkady had taken no chances. He had concentrated on the bulb and mask as if they were a rope out of an abyss, and hadn't even noticed when life first began to creep back into her body.
"This was different, someone tried to kill you."
"They did kill me."
"But you're alive now."
"Maybe."
"I heard two separate sets of footsteps leave your apartment, and you say you didn't have any guests?"
"I don't remember. Could I have a cigarette now?"
"Definitely not. Somebody left a glass with a residue of milk in your kitchen sink. Can you tell me who that somebody might be?"
"I'm a journalist. Don't you know it's open season on journalists?"
"And you don't want to call in the police."
"Why should I when I have you?"
"Well, I have been dismissed. How much I can help is debatable."
"I'll take my chances." In a different tone, she asked, "How long was I dead?"
"Comatose."
"Dead," she insisted. "In other words, am I swimsuit ready? Sasha Vaksberg has asked me to go to his dacha tomorrow." She pulled back the sheet from her leg to examine the dark bruise left by Arkady and the needle.
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