Gorky Park

by Martin Cruz Smith

  In the afternoon Billy and Rodney would check into the hotel room above. Once it was dark all Arkady and Irina had to do was climb up a ladder that would be dropped outside their window. Just pick a time when the street was clear and rap on the ceiling. No one would see them from the empty office buildings. Then they’d take the service elevator from the sixth floor to the basement, and go out the rear entrance to a waiting car. There’d be keys, money and carefully marked maps in the glove compartment. Once they were on their way Kirwill would contact the KGB and offer Nicky and Rurik the same trade Osborne had: the sables for Irina and Arkady. What could Rurik and Nicky do? The prisoners were already gone. As soon as the FBI discovered the escape, the old trade would be off, and Osborne would make the sables disappear again to who knew where. It always came down to the sables. The KGB would quickly trade with Kirwill and race to Staten Island.

  He smoked, blocking the match’s flare from Irina’s face.

  Irina didn’t know. How could he describe plans for escape when they were surrounded by microphones? Besides, she lived in expectation of Osborne’s trade, an expectation that was daylight seen from a black pit. There was no reason to frighten her until the new plan went into motion; then he could just motion her to follow him. Before she knew it, they’d be in the car.

  Everything depended on a drunk. Perhaps Rats had found the sable pelt and concocted the entire story. Or he’d have another attack of delirium tremens and be unable to lead Kirwill to the sables. Osborne must be aware that a sable was gone; had he moved the others already?

  Then he and Irina might not get away. Perhaps the FBI watched the windows of their room all the time. Arkady had never driven an American car; who knew how it worked? They could get lost. Maps, at least in the Soviet Union, were deliberately inaccurate. Perhaps he and Irina were so plainly Russian that everyone would recognize them as fugitives. Besides, he was an ignorant man in a foreign country.

  At least, he no longer had to believe Osborne. As Irina said, you believe what you have to. She had no pretense; all she wanted from Osborne was America. An investigator demanded more of a killer, an ascent to a dark view, a landscape of sheets, contact with the soul of evil. What Arkady demanded, Osborne could provide.

  At the ceiling, smoke spread like thought into a cumulus.

  Russian/investigator/killer/American. No one knew Osborne as well as he did – not even Irina or Kirwill. Arkady knew that Osborne had spent a fortune bringing his sables secretly from the Soviet Union. He’d never give them back. He’d be an American hero if he kept them. Osborne’s only crime was Gorky Park, and the only person who could connect him to it was Irina. He’d tried to kill her in Moscow. Nothing was changed, except that now he had to kill Arkady as well. Osborne would send Nicky and Rurik in the wrong direction, and would kill Arkady and Irina the moment they were out of FBI custody. It was the one thing Arkady was sure of. But Osborne would be one day late.

  In her sleep, Irina’s face pressed against his chest. As if she’s blowing life into me, Arkady thought. He ground out his cigarette.

  Falling asleep, he imagined what it would be like in Kirwill’s cabin. Was there tundra in Maine? They’d have to get coats and tea – as much tea as they could buy. And cigarettes. What did Kirwill mean, ‘like Siberia with beer cans’? No matter; Arkady found himself smiling at the prospect. He didn’t enjoy hunting much, but he loved to fish and he’d never been in a canoe. What else would they do? He’d ask Irina to tell her life from the beginning, leaving nothing out. When she got tired, he’d tell about himself. Their life would be two stories. How long they’d have to stay he had no idea. Osborne would want to find them, but he’d be busy hiding himself from Kirwill – they could wait. They’d get some books. American authors. If he got a generator they could have lights, a radio, a record player. Seeds for a garden: beets, potatoes, radishes. He could listen to music while he planted – Prokofiev, New Orleans blues. In hot weather they could go swimming, and in August there’d be mushrooms.

  He dreamed he was on the bank of the Kliazma River at dusk. In the distance Chinese lanterns led down a long stairway to a dock and wooden tubs colored with peonies. A raft on orange oil cans invited swimmers.

  Everyone had left the dock and come up the bank – guests, musicians, the aides-de-camp. His father and some of his friends were in a skiff, which swung around and around in the middle of the river. His father took a knife and dove into the water.

  Although the water was opaquely black, Arkady could see his mother clearly because she was in her best white dress. She seemed suspended in her own dive, her stockinged feet just below the surface of the water, her body perpendicular, one arm reaching down to the river bottom. When they brought her in, he saw that her wrist was hacked by his father’s efforts, but that he had finally given up and left the rope that was tied to her wrist. It was the first time Arkady had seen a dead person. His mother was young – his father too, though already a famous general.

  Painfully, as always in these dreams, he analyzed the crime. At first he believed his father had killed her. She’d danced and laughed, gayer than he’d seen her in weeks, giddy when she walked off by herself. But she was strong and the best swimmer of the whole group, practically a mermaid. There were no signs anyone had forced her down in the water; the boat had not been used, there were no bruises. Slowly he came to realize that the wooden tub full of rocks and the rising meter’s length of rope, its end tied in an expectant slipknot, had been placed on the river bottom by no one but her. Each day of the summer she had added another stone to the tub, weighting it ever more securely. When the time came – in the middle of the evening’s entertainment – she had walked off with bright eyes, slipped into the river downstream, swum to her rope and dived.

  As a child he knew nothing about the purge of the engineers, of the Army, of the poets, of the Party, or of the suicide of Stalin’s own wife, but even a child felt the time’s antic fear, when lanterns became goblins. The kindest uncles became traitors. Women cried for no reason. This photograph was cropped, that one burned. It was difficult to accept that she had followed all those who disappeared because she herself hadn’t disappeared; she was there in the water for all to see. That was why his father had tried so desperately to remove the evidence of the mocking rope and turned her death into an accident or – as Stalin did with his own wife – even murder. In the dark water she seemed still to be the exclamation mark of her accusation, escaping as she swam down, at least in dreams.

  Chapter Four

  When Arkady woke, snow was blowing horizontally by the windows and it appeared as if the room was spinning. Wesley and George and Ray stood over the bed. They were all in heavy coats. The chair that had been propped against the door was on the floor. Ray carried a suitcase and George held a gun. Irina woke and pulled the sheet over herself.

  ‘What do you want?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘Get dressed,’ Wesley said. ‘We’re going.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Today’s the day,’ Wesley said.

  ‘Osborne’s trade is supposed to be tomorrow,’ Arkady protested.

  ‘It’s been moved up. It’s right now,’ Wesley added.

  ‘But it’s not supposed to be until tomorrow,’ Arkady said again.

  ‘It’s been changed.’

  ‘Arkasha, what does it matter?’ Irina sat up, clutching the sheet. ‘We can be free today.’

  ‘You’re free right now. Just do as I say,’ Wesley said.

  ‘You’re taking us to Osborne?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘Isn’t that what you want?’

  ‘Get out of bed,’ George said.

  ‘Leave us alone and we’ll dress,’ Arkady said.

  ‘No,’ Wesley said, ‘we have to make sure you aren’t concealing anything.’

  ‘She’s not getting out of bed with you here,’ Arkady said.

  ‘I’ll shoot you if she doesn’t.’ George aimed the gun at Arkady.

  ‘It’s all right.’ Irina held Ar
kady’s hand when he began to move.

  ‘It’s a precautionary measure,’ Wesley said.

  ‘I have your new clothes here.’ Ray opened the suitcase at the foot of the bed. There was a complete outfit of clothes for each of them.

  ‘How big are the balls on a KGB agent?’ George asked Arkady.

  Irina got out of bed naked, keeping her eyes on Arkady. She moved in front of the window and slowly made a complete turn, her arms away from her body.

  ‘I am not KGB,’ Arkady said.

  ‘I think you’ll find the sizes correct,’ Ray told Irina.

  ‘Comrade Renko?’ Wesley motioned for Arkady to get out of bed.

  Arkady stood, his eyes on Irina. Whatever fat he’d had he’d lost to the doctors; country life with Pribluda had added muscle. George aimed a short-barreled revolver at the midpoint of the scar that began at Arkady’s ribs and disappeared into his pubic hair.

  ‘Are you going to shoot me now and be done with it?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘This just relieves us all of worrying about anything secreted in your own clothes or shoes,’ Wesley said. ‘It makes things easier for everyone.’

  Irina dressed, taking no more notice of the Americans than if she and Arkady were alone.

  ‘I have the jitters myself,’ Wesley told Arkady.

  There were undergarments, brassiere, blouse, slacks, sweater, socks, shoes and parka for Irina: underpants, shirt, pants, sweater, socks, shoes and parka for Arkady.

  ‘Our first snow in America,’ Irina said.

  Everything fit, as Ray had said. When Arkady reached for his watch, Wesley gave him a new one.

  ‘The time is exactly six-forty-five.’ Wesley strapped it to Arkady’s wrist. ‘It’s time to go.’

  ‘I’d like to brush my hair,’ Irina said.

  ‘Be my guest.’ Ray gave her his comb.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘You’ll be there soon and you’ll see,’ Wesley said.

  Had Kirwill found the sables yet? Arkady wondered. How could he find anything in this snow? ‘I want to leave a message for Lieutenant Kirwill,’ he said.

  ‘Fine. Give it to me,’ Wesley offered.

  ‘I mean, call him and talk to him.’

  ‘Gee, I really feel that would gum things up, especially considering last night,’ Wesley said. ‘You don’t want to gum things up.’

  ‘What does it matter, Arkasha?’ Irina asked. ‘We’re free.’

  ‘The lady is absolutely correct,’ George said and put his gun away to prove it.

  Ray helped Arkady into the parka.

  ‘There aren’t any gloves.’ He felt in the pockets. ‘You forgot gloves.’

  The agents were momentarily nonplussed.

  ‘You can buy gloves afterwards,’ Wesley said.

  ‘After what?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘It really is time to go,’ Wesley said.

  Last night’s small, hard flakes were now fleecy and moist. In Moscow there would have been battalions of old women sweeping the snow. Arkady and Irina were put in the back of a two-door sedan with George. Wesley was in front with Ray, who drove.

  The storm produced a steamy confusion: snowplows on garbage trucks before a parade of headlights, police waving orange batons, streetlamps whittled to half-silhouettes. Traffic slowed to a painstaking crunch of tires; pedestrians were hunchbacked. Inside the car the windows fogged; there was the closeness of heavy coats. Arkady would have to climb over Wesley to reach a door; George and his gun were on the other side of Irina.

  ‘Cigarettes?’ Wesley opened a pack and offered them to Arkady. There was a light, girlish blush of excitement on his face.

  ‘I thought you didn’t smoke,’ Arkady said.

  ‘Never. They’re for you,’ Wesley said.

  ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘They’re wasted if you don’t take them.’ Wesley seemed distressed.

  George angrily took the cigarettes.

  They drove on the West Side underneath an elevated highway that partially sheltered them from the snow. Ships loomed up suddenly between docks.

  ‘Where did you go with Kirwill last night?’ Wesley asked.

  ‘Is that why we’re doing this today instead of tomorrow?’ Arkady asked in return.

  ‘Kirwill’s such a dangerous man I’m surprised you’re still alive,’ Wesley said, and repeated to Irina, ‘I’m surprised he’s still alive.’

  Irina held Arkady’s hand. Occasionally snow plunged through great holes in the highway overhead, and she leaned against him as if they were on a sleigh ride.

  Inside Arkady’s new parka, his new shirt felt stiff, like the slippers they put on the dead. Cigarettes were what executioners offered, he thought; gloves were what they forgot.

  Should he tell Irina? he wondered. He remembered her telling about Kostia’s father, the bastard who had tracked escapees in Siberia, how this manhunter would pass himself off as an ordinary trapper and befriend an escapee, share a warm meal and a bottle of vodka, and while the runaway dozed with his head full of dreams, would humanely slit his throat. Irina, Arkady recalled, had approved. Better to die with the illusion of freedom, she felt, than with nothing at all. What could be crueler than taking away even that?

  And what if he was wrong? What if Osborne really was going to trade his sables for Irina and Arkady? For a moment he could even delude himself!

  Osborne would do the shooting, Arkady decided. That would be clean and honest, and the agents were clean and honest types. Arkady and Irina would be trespassers? Enemy agents? Extortionists? It didn’t matter. Osborne was expert at this sort of work. In comparison Wesley was a paper shuffler.

  The elevated highway faded behind them and the sky opened up, pouring down its milky snow, and Irina tightened her grip on Arkady’s hand in excitement. She was so beautiful that he felt foolishly proud.

  Maybe something would happen; maybe the car ride would take forever. Then he thought of Kirwill’s transmitter in the hotel room. Maybe Billy and Rodney had heard everything and were in the car behind. It occurred to him that Kirwill and Rats had planned to cross the Kill in a small boat. They couldn’t have done so in this weather. If Kirwill had given up, maybe he was with Billy and Rodney.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ Irina asked.

  ‘I discover that I have an incurable disease,’ Arkady said.

  ‘That sounds interesting,’ Wesley said. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Hope.’

  ‘I thought so,’ Wesley said.

  The car stopped, and Ray bought a ticket at a booth in front of a green building that said DEPARTMENT OF MARINE AND AVIATION. Arkady could see straight through the bottom of the building to the black water of the harbor. They had reached the end of Manhattan. To one side was an older ferryhouse, its graceful cast-iron columns outlined by snow. A car pulled up behind them, its driver a woman who put a newspaper in front of her face; with her other hand she held a coffee cup and a cigarette.

  ‘What will you do if they stop the ferries?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘If there’s a hurricane, they have trouble in the slips. Snow never stops the ferry,’ Wesley said. ‘We’re right on schedule.’

  Sooner and faster than Arkady expected, a ferry coupled with the building. Gates opened, and apparatchiks and workers emerged holding umbrellas and briefcases up against the storm, trying to pick their way through the snow as they dodged the cars driving off the boat. Then the waiting cars boarded. Wesley’s was first in the middle of three rows, rolling right through the ship to the opposite bow. Pedestrians boarded on overhead ramps. The ferry still pressed against the ferry-house; the swell from the inbound engines rose along the wooden pilings of the slip. The boat filled quickly. Most of the drivers took the stairs up to the saloon level. At the sound of two bells, a crewman in a pea jacket lifted a cylinder from the deck and let it drop back to unlock the inbound rudder. The inbound engines died and the outbound engines cut in. The ferry eased out of the slip and into the water.


  Arkady guessed the visibility at a kilometer. The ferry moved into a veil of quiet that muffled the noise of its own engines. They were surrounded by a snow that seemed to fold into the water. The ferry would have radar, there was no danger of collision. A large wave, perhaps a wake, grew from the water; the ferry only sighed, passing through it. Where was Kirwill? Arkady remembered him running across the frozen Moskva River.

  Ray rolled down a window and breathed deeply. ‘Oysters,’ he said.

  ‘What?’ George asked.

  ‘Smell reminds me of oysters,’ Ray said.

  ‘You hungry or horny?’ George asked, and glanced at Irina. ‘I know what I am.’

  The interior of the ferry was painted a bright mussel-orange. There was a black anchor, a hawser, rock salt and pipes between the rows of cars, cases of life preservers overhead and lifeboats over the stairs. VEHICLE OPERATORS NOTICE STOP ENGINE SET BRAKES PUT OUT LIGHTS DON’T BLOW HORN DON’T SMOKE U.S. COAST GUARD REGULATIONS was in red letters. All that would have kept the car from rolling directly off the front of the boat was a slack cable. There was a fold-up gate a child could have pulled apart.

  ‘Do you mind if we get out?’ Arkady asked Wesley.

  ‘Why would you want to get out in the cold?’

  ‘For the view.’