‘You didn’t really think I was going to have you shake hands with him, did you?’
Arkady slipped a reel from his coat pocket and put it on a tape machine, a Rekord, the same as he had at the Ukraina. There were two headsets for the machine, for enjoyment that would not disturb a crowded apartment. Kirwill placed one set over his ears, following Arkady’s lead. The pockmarked man watched from the end of a long aisle of TVs. The other was gone – phoning in a description of Kirwill, Arkady assumed.
Arkady pushed PLAY. It was the February 2 telephone call between Osborne and Unmann.
‘The plane is delayed.’
‘It’s delayed?’
‘Everything is going fine. You worry too much.’
‘You never do?’
‘Relax, Hans.’
‘I don’t like it.’
‘It’s a little late to like or not like anything.’
‘Everyone knows about those new Tupolevs.’
‘A crash? You think only Germans can build anything.’
‘Even a delay. When you get to Leningrad—’
‘I’ve been to Leningrad before. I’ve been there with Germans before. Everything will be fine.’
After the recorded click of the phone disconnect and silence, Kirwill pushed STOP, REWIND AND PLAY. He replayed the tape twice before Arkady removed it.
‘A German and an American.’ Kirwill removed his headset. ‘The German’s named Hans. Who’s the American?’
‘I think he murdered your brother.’
A Padoga color set priced at six hundred and fifty rubles showed a woman speaking in front of a map of the world. The sound was off. Arkady checked the name of the factory; there was a big difference between factories.
‘That’s not telling me anything,’ Kirwill said. ‘You’re just stringing me along.’
‘Maybe you’ll thank me later.’ Arkady turned to a channel of folk dancers in pastel costumes silently skipping back and forth, slapping their hands on their knees and heels. He turned off the set, and as the screen dulled he got a clearer reflection of the two men in overcoats at the end of the aisle. The other man had returned. ‘Those two’ – Arkady nodded – ‘I doubt they’d try anything with an American tourist, but they may not know you are one.’
‘They followed us in a car from the garage.’ Kirwill looked at the screen. ‘I thought they were yours.’
‘No.’
‘Not a whole lot of people on your side, are there, Renko?’
Arkady and Kirwill split when they came out on Petrovka Street. Arkady headed for militia headquarters and Kirwill for the Metropole Hotel. Half a block along, Arkady stopped to light a cigarette. The street was filled with after-work shoppers, stoical armies in slow march past store windows. At a distance he picked out the broad figure of Kirwill moving away through the crowd as imperiously as a czar, trailing two retainers in overcoats.
Arkady went to look for the Gypsy.
The truck was painted orange on green, with stars and cabalistic signs in blue. A naked baby stumbled down the truck’s rear steps to the fire, onto his mother’s lap of colored petticoats, and to her brown breast. Half a dozen crones and little girls sat around the fire with an old man. The other men of the family sat on a car, all of them in dirty suits, hats and mustaches, even the youngest of them sporting a silky shadow on his lip. The sun set behind the Hippodrome.
There were Gypsy encampments in all the fields around the race-track, a spontaneous generation like flies. His Gypsy, though, was gone, disappeared as Arkady had expected. Somehow he’d known it wasn’t Swan who had betrayed him.
The apartment was so quiet when he entered that he thought she was gone, but when he went into the bedroom she was sitting cross-legged on the bed. She wore her dress, which was short and tight because of his inexpert washing.
‘You’re looking better.’
‘Of course I am,’ she said.
‘Hungry?’
‘If you’re going to eat, I’ll have something.’
She was starving. She devoured a supper of cabbage soup and had a chocolate bar for dessert.
‘Why did you meet Osborne last night?’
‘I didn’t.’ She took the cigarettes from his hands without asking.
‘Why do you think Osborne had those men attack you?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘In the metro station. I was there.’
‘Then interrogate yourself.’
‘You think this is an interrogation?’
‘And there are men in the apartment below recording this interrogation,’ she said calmly, blowing smoke and looking through it. ‘This is a house of KGB informants, and there are torture cells in the basement.’
‘If you really believe that, you should have left.’
‘Can I leave the country?’
‘I doubt it.’
‘Then what difference does it make whether I’m in this particular apartment or someplace else?’
She rested her chin on her hand and studied Arkady with her dark eyes, one blind. ‘Do you really think it matters where I am or what I say . . .’
The apartment was dark; he’d forgotten to get light bulbs. When Irina rested against a wall she seemed to lean on a shadow.
She smoked as much as he did. Her hair had dried in ringlets around her face and heavy curls down her back. She was still barefoot, and her shrunken dress stretched around her breasts and hips.
As she paced, smoking, thinking up lies, his eyes turned with her. In the faint upcast light of the courtyard lamps, he saw her in parts – a cheek’s curve, her lips sharp as a carving. She had generous features, long fingers, long neck, long legs. There was a flash, like light caught in water, when her gaze crossed his.
He knew she was aware of her effect on him, just as he knew his slightest advance would be surrender to her. Then she wouldn’t even bother to lie.
‘You know Osborne killed your friend Valerya, Kostia Borodin and the American boy Kirwill, and yet you offer him the chance to do the same to you. You practically force him to.’
‘Those names are unfamiliar to me.’
‘You were suspicious on your own; that’s why you went to Osborne’s hotel as soon as you heard he was back in Moscow. You were suspicious as soon as I came to Mosfilm.’
‘Mr Osborne has an interest in Soviet film.’
‘He told you they were safely out of the country. I don’t know how he told you he got them out, but he did get James Kirwill in. Did it ever occur to you that getting out of the Soviet Union, especially for three people, is more difficult?’
‘Oh, it often occurs to me.’
‘And that killing them is simpler? Where did he tell you they were? Jerusalem? New York? Hollywood?’
‘Does it matter? You say they’re dead. In any case, you can’t get them now . . .’
In the dark, lit by her cigarette, she glowed with moral superiority.
‘Solzhenitsyn and Amalrik exiled. Palach driven to suicide. Fainberg’s teeth kicked out in Red Square. Grigorenko and Gershuni thrown into lunatic asylums to make them mad. The ones you throw into jail separately: Sharansky, Orlov, Moroz, Bayev. The ones you throw in by the handful, like the Baltic Fleet officers. The ones you throw in by the thousands, like Crimean Tartars . . .’
She went on and on. This was her chance, Arkady knew. Here was an investigator, and she spat words as if they were bullets aimed at an army of investigators.
‘You’re afraid of us,’ she said. ‘You know you can’t stop us forever. The movement keeps spreading.’
‘There is no movement. Right or wrong, it doesn’t matter. It simply doesn’t exist.’
‘You’re too scared to talk about it.’
‘It’s like arguing about a color neither of us has ever seen.’
He was being too polite, he decided. She was building such a cold distance that she would soon be out of reach completely.
‘So you were writing to Valerya before y
ou flunked out of the university,’ he began again.
‘I didn’t fail any courses,’ she said. ‘As you know, I was expelled from the university.’
‘Failed, expelled, what does it matter? You got thrown out for saying you hated your own country? The country that gave you your education? That’s so stupid it’s the same as flunking.’
‘Think what you want.’
‘Then you pander to a foreigner who killed your best friend. Ah, but that’s politics to you. You’d rather believe the most incredible lie from an American with bloody hands than the truth from one of your own.’
‘You’re not one of my own.’
‘You’re phony. At least Kostia Borodin was a real Russian, bandit or no bandit. Did he know what a fraud you are?’
She inhaled too strongly and the ember lit the sudden heat in her face.
‘If Kostia wanted to get out of the country he had a real reason, he was on the run from the law,’ Arkady went on. ‘That’s a reason anyone can respect. Otherwise he would have stayed. Tell me, what did Kostia think of your anti-Soviet swoons? How many times did he tell Valerya what a phony her friend Irina Asanova was? He’d say it now if he was alive.’
‘You’re disgusting,’ she said.
‘Come on, what did Kostia the Bandit say when you told him you were a political dissident?’
‘That frightens you, the idea of having a dissident under your own roof.’
‘Have you ever frightened anyone? Be honest! Who cares about some so-called intellectuals who get thrown out of school for pissing on the flag? Serves them right!’
‘You never heard of Solzhenitsyn?’
‘I’ve heard about his Swiss bank account,’ Arkady taunted her. She wanted to deal with a monster? She’d get a bigger one than she’d bargained for.
‘Or Soviet Jews?’
‘Zionists, you mean. They have their own Soviet republic; what more do they want?’
‘Or Czechoslovakia?’
‘You mean when Dubcˇek brought Fascist German soldiers in as tourists and the Czechs asked us for help? Grow up. You’ve never heard of Vietnam or Chile or South Africa? Irina, maybe your world view is not quite large enough. You seem to think that the Soviet Union is one enormous conspiracy to keep you an unhappy adolescent.’
‘You don’t believe what you’re saying.’
‘And now I’ll tell you what Kostia Borodin thought.’ Arkady wouldn’t stop. ‘He thought you wanted the pleasure of being persecuted without having the guts to break the law.’
‘That’s better than being a sadist and not having the nerve to use your fists,’ she said.
Her eyes were wet with anger. He was amazed. He could smell the salt in them. She was in the battle, whether she wanted to be or not. There was a little blood on the floor now, so to speak. As battles do, this one shifted to a new field, to the bedroom and the apartment’s single piece of furniture.
They sat on opposite sides of the bed and crushed out their cigarettes in plates. She was ready for the next assault, her head bravely up and her arms folded tight as a locked gate.
‘You want the KGB.’ He sighed. ‘You want torturers, murderers, apes.’
‘You were going to hand me over to them, weren’t you?’
‘I was going to,’ he admitted. ‘At least, I thought I was.’
She watched his silhouette walk back and forth across the windows.
‘Did I tell you just how Osborne did it?’ he asked her. ‘They were having a skating party, he and Valerya, Kostia and the American student Kirwill. But you know that part – you gave Valerya your skates – and you know that Osborne’s business is buying Russian furs, though maybe you weren’t aware that he is an informant for the KGB on the side. That bores you. Anyway, after a little skating in Gorky Park they step off into a clearing for refreshments. Osborne, a rich man, has brought everything.’
‘You’re making this up as you go along.’
‘We have the bag he brought the food in; we pulled it out of the river. So while everyone is eating, Osborne lifts his bag toward Kostia. He has a gun in the bag. He shoots Kostia first, through the heart, then Kirwill, also through the heart. One, two, just like that. Efficient, yes?’
‘You sound as if you were there.’
‘The one thing I have not been able to figure out, and where you can help me, is why Valerya didn’t call for help after she saw the other two killed. Granted there was a lot of music coming from the loudspeakers in the park, but she didn’t even try to call. She stood still, facing Osborne, close enough to touch him while he put the gun to her heart. Why did Valerya do that, Irina? You were her best friend, you tell me.’
‘You keep forgetting,’ she told him, ‘that I know the law. It’s an article of the criminal code that all defectors are state criminals. You’d say or do anything to get them and anyone who helped them. How do I know that the attack in the Metro station wasn’t staged? That you didn’t plan it yourself? Or you and the KGB? Like the bodies you say you have – where did they come from? You say Osborne shot someone? You’d pick any innocent tourist and throw him in the Lubyanka.’
‘Osborne’s not in a cell at the Lubyanka; he has friends at the Lubyanka. They’re protecting him. They’ll kill you to protect him.’
‘Protect an American?’
‘He’s been going in and out of Russia for thirty-five years. He brings millions of dollars in, he informs on Soviet actors and dancers, he feeds his friends silly little people like you and Valerya.’
She put her hands over her ears. ‘Your friends, your friends,’ she said. ‘It’s you we’re talking about. You just want to know where to send your assassins.’
‘To send after Valerya? I can find her anytime I want in a refrigerator in a basement off Petrovka. I have the gun Osborne killed her with. I know who was waiting for Osborne afterward, and in what kind of car. I have photos of Osborne with Valerya and Kostia in Irkutsk. I know about the church chest they made for him.’
‘An American like Osborne could buy twenty different chests from twenty different sources.’ Irina didn’t retreat a step. ‘You yourself mentioned Golodkin. Golodkin would have given him one, and Golodkin didn’t need to leave the country. Money would have been enough, and, as you say, Osborne has millions of dollars. So why would he bring Valerya and Kostia Borodin from Irkutsk? Why them?’
He could make out her eyes deep-set in the oval of her face, and her hand resting on the swell of her hip. He felt her exhaustion in the dark.
‘During the war Osborne killed three German prisoners the same way. He took them into the woods in Leningrad, fed them chocolates and champagne, and shot them. He got a medal for it. I’m not lying; you can read about it in books.’
Irina made no response.
‘If you get out of this thing, what do you want to do?’ he asked. ‘Become a major dissident and denounce investigators? You do it well. Reapply to the university? I’d give you a recommendation.’
‘Be a lawyer, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you think I’d be happy as that?’
‘No.’ Arkady thought of Misha.
‘That director,’ she murmured, ‘the one who offered me the Italian boots? He asked me to marry him. You undressed me; I’m not too unattractive, no?’
‘No.’
‘Maybe that’s what I’ll do then. Marry someone, live at home and disappear.’
After hours of argument her voice was so soft it might have been coming from another room.
‘What it comes down to,’ Arkady said, ‘is that everything I’ve told you is an extraordinarily elaborate lie or the very simple truth.’
He sensed her rhythmic breathing, realized she was asleep and covered her with the blanket. He moved to the window for a while, watching for any unusual late-night activity in the apartments across the courtyard or on Taganskaya Boulevard. Finally he returned to the bed and lay down on the other side.
Chapter Fourteen
Red lin
es were painted on the streets leading to Red Square. Army officers measured the gutters. Television towers rose.
Ten years of marriage to Zoya had amassed at 2 percent interest per year a savings account of 1,200 rubles, from which she had already withdrawn all but 100 rubles. A man can stay ahead of killers, but not his wife – former wife, Arkady corrected himself.
On the way from the bank he saw a sidewalk queue, and splurged twenty rubles on a red-white-and-green scarf decorated with Easter eggs.
Andreev was done.
Valerya Davidova, murdered in Gorky Park, was alive again. Her eyes sparkled, blood coursed through her cheeks, her lips were red and parted with anxiety, she was about to speak. She remained mute, but it took an act of rationalism to believe that plasteline was not soft flesh, that the blush of paint was not complexion, that glass couldn’t see. What seemed incredible was that this apparently living head had no body; its neck balanced on a potter’s wheel. Arkady didn’t consider himself superstitious, but he felt his skin crawl.
‘I changed the color of her eyes to a darker brown,’ Andreev said, ‘which brought out the color of her cheeks. It’s an Italian wig, real hair.’
Arkady walked around the head. ‘She’s your masterpiece.’
‘Yes,’ Andreev proudly acknowledged.
‘I could swear she was going to say something.’
‘She is saying something, Investigator. She’s saying, “Here I am!” Take her.’
Valerya looked up from the wheel. Not as stunning a beauty as Irina, but very pretty, with a shorter nose, a broader, simpler face. The kind of face you’d expect to see smiling from under a fox hat on a winter outing as snowflakes drifted by. A good skater, a lot of fun, full of life.
‘Not yet,’ he said.
He spent the day with Swan talking to butchers, farmers and any other possible source of fresh meat. It was after four when he got to Novokuznetskaya and was called to the prosecutor’s office.
Iamskoy was waiting behind his desk, baby-pink fingers laced on the desk top, his shaved head glistening with thought.
‘I am concerned about the apparent lack of organized progress in your investigation of the Gorky Park matter. It is not my intention to meddle with an investigator, but it is my duty to oversee one who is losing control either of himself or of his investigation. Do you think that is happening in your case? Be sincere, please.’