Untraceable

by Sergei Lebedev

  Beyond the cathedral’s back wall, in the shade of chestnut trees, lay a small outdoor restaurant with good food. The regular waiters recognized him—or pretended to. They did not try to chat but smiled respectfully. Here he fully felt he was Mr. Mihalski; he took that pleasant and exciting sense of connection, the merging of true and invented identities, as a special gift which he brought back home in the trolley that traveled along the bottom of the valley.

  Today the courtyard was full: a summer weekend. There was only one free table, at the edge behind a wide-branching tree. Next to the sandbox and swings. That meant frenzied children would run around, making noise. Vyrin preferred sitting among people dining sedately, behind strangers, in the buzz of calm conversation, the clinking of knives and forks, where it is hard to eavesdrop, photograph, or take aim.

  Vyrin looked at the diners: Was anyone about to leave? No, they were all relaxed, in a merry lazy mood. The brunette at the nearby table had a provocative drop of crème brûlée on her upper lip. She didn’t wipe it away or lick it off, knowing how seductive and sexy it looked. She wore a dark metal necklace resembling a dog collar—a sign of exotic passions, kinky torment insolently displayed in a restaurant by a church.

  The brunette’s sister, in her eighth month at least—her swollen belly had pulled her dress up to reveal strong, plump legs—was eating chocolate cake and schnitzel simultaneously with great appetite, as if the infant were overripe, born but remaining in the womb, and demanding his share of the feast.

  Vyrin wanted to leave. He was dizzy with fatigue, the heavy scents, the density of human voices—the village was small, everyone was related in some cousinhood, redolent of fetid incest that repulses outsiders like salty seawater.

  But he felt the charm of the play of light in the chestnut leaves, the clay-blue tablecloths pressed so that there wasn’t a single wrinkle, the high-necked bottles of ice water, the harmless murmur of neighbors, the balletic moves of waiters balancing enormous trays of six to eight plates on their shoulders, where atop the delicately tossed salad looking as if arranged by a coiffeur, the leaves green with reddish veins, floated golden-breaded schnitzels, resembling torn blobs of copper blasted from a smelting furnace.

  Yum, yum, yum the pregnant woman crooned to her unborn infant. The limestone angel with a blurred face blew silently into a golden trumpet over the back entrance to the church. He felt himself basking in the insouciant summer that enveloped the entire world.

  Vyrin ordered beer and a steak. Wasps flew toward the fragrant hops. They were not attracted by the remains of dessert on nearby plates, rivulets of honey and chocolate—only by hops. They crawled around the rim of the mug and tried to land on his shoulder, his hand, circling persistently and stubbornly. He waved them away, almost spilling his beer. He had a bad allergy to insect bites. Back when he was in the service, the doctors said it would get worse over the years and offered to give him a medical discharge. Wasps, wasps, wasps—he moved the mug away, flicked a wasp, and then another, from the table, regretting he had not brought a jacket.

  A sting. On the nape of his bare neck. Sudden. As painful as an injection administered by an inexperienced nurse.

  He slapped the bite, but the wasp was gone. He turned, intent on the pain, and noticed a man walking away and getting into a car. The license plates were not local.

  His neck ached. The pain spread up and down, to his shoulder, cheek, temple. He felt something microscopic in the wound—probably the stinger.

  His vision clouded. His breathing became shallow. His body was engulfed by dry heat. He got up with difficulty and headed for the toilet.

  Rinse. He needed to rinse with cold water. Take a pill. But wash first. Such pressure in his throat! He might not be able to swallow the pill. His skin was burning.

  He could barely stand. He leaned against the sink, clumsily splashed water on his face. The wasp sting was on the right side of his neck, and his right arm was stiff. He shoved the tablet into his throat. The mirror showed a gray, bloodless, but swollen face, as if something was trying to undo the plastic surgery and force his old look back on him.

  The tablet should have worked by now. It was the latest medicine.

  But it wasn’t working.

  A rash broke out on the gray skin. His stomach cramped. He sank to the floor, staring at the tiles—and understood. That man had not been a customer at the restaurant. Locals didn’t park where he had stopped the car.

  With a final effort, he rose and holding on to the walls made his way into the corridor. His constricted throat kept him from screaming, calling for help. On the porch, he bumped into a waiter carrying a tray of bottles and wineglasses. The waiter assumed he was dead drunk and moved aside. He fell from the porch, taking the waiter with him, hearing the crashing glass and hoping that everyone noticed and was looking. He hissed and gurgled into someone’s ear:

  “Ambulance . . . police . . . murder . . . not drunk . . . poison . . . I was poisoned.”

  And he collapsed, still hearing the sounds of the world but no longer understanding what they meant.

  CHAPTER 2

  The two generals had known each other a long time. They had served together under the red flag with hammer and sickle.

  The lieutenant general had been chairman of the Party Committee then. And secretly, he was head of the numbered department, which was not indicated even in the top-secret staff register. The major general had been his deputy, successor, rival. The Party Committee was long since disbanded. But the department remained. It survived all the reforms of their agency, all the changes in names and leaders, divisions and mergers. As ever, it had only a number and was not included on the organizational chart.

  They were in the surveillance-free room and could talk without worry of being overheard. However, their language, laden with professional euphemisms, deceitful by nature, allowed the men to formulate sentences so that they could be interpreted as expressing either conviction or doubt.

  They both knew that their conversation would most likely result in the execution of an order, unspoken, not registered in the system of secret case files, but which would still require sanction at the very top. Both generals wanted to avoid responsibility for a possible failure but to claim his share of benefits in case of success. Each knew what the other was thinking.

  “According to the information of our neighbors, he died after four days in an induced coma. The organism almost coped with it, you might say. We can’t rule out that the dose was insufficient. Or its method of introduction was wrong. Perhaps he had time to take antidote pills. Or some other outside substance lowered the effectiveness of the preparation. Weather could have been a factor. Air pressure. It was in the mountains, high altitude. Before passing out, he had time to say he had been attacked. The waiter was a former policeman. Someone else might not have paid attention, thought it was just a drunken fantasy.”

  “So did the neighbors want the incident to attract attention or not?”

  “Naturally, they don’t give us details. They may want to put a good face on a bad game: that they had anticipated this becoming public from the start.”

  “Well then . . . Let’s move on to our information.”

  “An interagency investigation team has been set up. International protocols have been put into action. They’re bringing in foreign chemistry experts. There are very few specialists of that quality. They called in four people. Three are known to us, they are on file. They are people with big names. But the fourth one does not appear in the files. There is no open information about him. At our request, competent agents have been questioned. No one has heard of such a scientist. We are continuing the search; we’ve put the overseas stations on it.”

  “Looks as if he’s a know-nothing, unknown professor.”

  Both gave a restrained chuckle.

  “The source says that this professor was not involved in police cases before. He might have been used by the military, but the source does not know about that. The source is not
directly involved in the investigation. His future abilities are limited. He is only coordinating the cooperation of his country’s police.”

  The generals fell silent. They could picture the bureaucratic strategy in an extreme event: controlled chaos, mountains of paperwork, coordination, documents that have to be shared with other agencies. Forced repeal of secrecy regulations. Temporary commissions. Outside specialists who would otherwise never be allowed through the door. Whether the neighbors’ action had gone according to plan or not, it gave them a wonderful opportunity, which the neighbors did not recognize.

  “There is a high likelihood that this professor is Kalitin,” the deputy said at last.

  “Yes, that probability exists. It fits his scientific profile. Exactly. And since suspicion naturally falls on our country, it’s very reasonable to bring him in. If, of course, he is still alive. And of sound mind.”

  “He’s only seventy. I assume he takes good care of his health. Physical and mental.”

  “We have an address?”

  “The source reported it.”

  “Will that compromise the source?”

  “Can’t say with certainty.”

  “Is he valuable?”

  “Moderately. Because of his past in the GDR he has not been promoted readily. And he’ll be retiring soon.”

  “Understood. An order must be given to the station. Let them check it out. Send the very best.”

  “If they determine it’s him, we can prepare the event. And start the coordination.”

  “Interesting. If it’s Kalitin, then it’s very interesting.”

  “Neophyte.”

  “Yes. Neophyte. His favorite.”

  “None of our operatives today have worked with Neophyte.”

  “I am aware of that.”

  “But there is one candidate—Shershnev. He did an operation with one of Kalitin’s early versions. He doesn’t have any experience abroad, however. But he was born and grew up there. His father was in our army. He knows the language well. Here’s his file.”

  “I’ll take a look. Send all the necessary orders immediately.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The deputy left the room.

  The general opened the file.

  CHAPTER 3

  The bowl and snake. The Bowl of Hygeia.

  Kalitin sometimes thought this emblem, inconspicuous and familiar, was persecuting him.

  Pharmacy signs. Ubiquitous ambulances. Labels on medicines. Hospital reception areas. Badges on medical personnel. He had almost learned to not be bothered, to pay no attention, not take it personally.

  But not right now.

  The doctors’ suspicions raised his own suspicions, which the doctors must not know. What was happening to his body could be the delayed reaction to long-ago experiments, the surf from yesterday’s wave. He had always followed safety measures exactingly, but his substances were too unpredictable, unmanageable to be fully understood. His children. His legacy.

  Some of the medical procedures required local anesthesia.

  The drug the anesthesiologist used had a hidden and harmless side effect, something like a weak, amateur truth serum. Kalitin experienced vivid and clear—almost digital—memories, sentimental dreams about the past, things he had not thought about for years.

  He was a child again, a schoolboy, an obedient son, who had not yet found his calling and his mentor. He was at the stage of development where a child’s ability to fill the world with great mysteries and to experience horror and joy in the face of the inexplicable mixed with the beginnings of a rational autobiography; it is in this living contradiction—sometimes, and not in every life—that attractions, desires, symbols, and profound predeterminations of destiny are born.

  . . . Every Easter his parents take him to visit Uncle Igor.

  Actually, the boy does not know what Easter is. They make blini during the week before Lent. For Easter they dye eggs in onion peel water and bake kulich bread. Is that a holiday? It’s not listed on the wall calendar. They don’t mention it at school. His parents don’t seem to know why Easter should be celebrated. They wouldn’t do it on their own, he thinks. But if Uncle Igor invites you, you can’t say no. He calls on the telephone and names the day; not a word about Easter over the telephone, it is understood.

  Who was Uncle Igor? The boy senses that he is not his real uncle. Or, rather, not quite an uncle—there was a blood tie, but it was complicated, requiring a meticulous, apothecary-like examination of units of relatedness, going through the old photo albums, which are kept in a distant corner and cannot be viewed without an adult. There, among the unfamiliar faces, unknown places, landscapes, houses, and idyllic backdrops used by provincial photography studios, a woman will appear in a white dress, sitting at the gigantic anthracite grand piano, looking at the cryptic musical notation. She would be the beginning of a mysterious chain of corporeal transformations from thin to fat, tall to short, dark to blond and back again, with the final link being Uncle Igor.

  The boy had already learned that it was better not to ask about some people in the photographs. They wouldn’t tell him or they would make up some nonsense. However, it was all right to ask about the people around them, the neighbors, his father’s coworkers.

  About all of them except Uncle Igor.

  They lived in the new City. Ten years earlier it had been unpopulated taiga here. So they are all new settlers, enthusiasts; that’s how they are honored in official speeches. The City is surrounded by a Wall: a gray concrete fence with barbed wire. The Wall was built with room to grow: dug-up empty lots lie between it and the residential areas. Because of the Wall, they can’t be called on a home phone. Or get mail at home. Or have visitors. Their City does not exist on maps, in reference books, or in atlases. Passenger trains do not go there. Ordinary planes do not fly there. The newspapers don’t write about the City. The radio does not mention it. It is not shown on television. It is called Sovetsk-22. For the residents, it is simply the City.

  The boy has no memory of being beyond the Wall. But he does know where he and his parents came from—his mother often misses the capital, where his parents were born, where they studied and met, where his grandmothers and aunt live.

  Uncle Igor seems to have been born here. Appearing together with the City. Right in the six-room apartment on the third floor of a building that everyone in the City calls the House.

  When someone says, “We’re moving into the House soon,” everyone knows with envy which house they mean. The one on Revolution Street. The most famous one in the City. Nine stories. With columns at the entrance and molding under the cornices. With handles on the doors that lead into lobbies, where visitors are met by the guard. With high ceilings and enormous apartments. With two elevators in every entry.

  The rumors say there were supposed to be several such houses. But for some reason, only one was built. It was a big honor to live there. Father sometimes says that maybe one day they would get an apartment there. Mother turns her head and smiles sadly, ironically.

  None of the boy’s classmates has ever been in the House. But he has. The House itself is not very interesting. It’s only a shell—in fact, molded shells support the cornices of the House—that surrounds the secrets of Uncle Igor’s life.

  His parents seem to feel it. His father doesn’t like it. He would rather not bring him there. A different circle, he says. But Uncle Igor invites all three of them. His otherwise intractable father can’t disobey. Why? The boy wants to know.

  His mother . . . Once, when his father was out, the boy secretly watched her trying on a robe, a birthday present from Uncle Igor. Not from here, unearthly, thin burgundy silk, embroidered with birds, flowers, and dragons. She looked in the mirror, pulling it tighter to show her figure then letting the robe’s long skirts open freely. May light splashed from the mirror. The yellow lotus leaves trembled. Twisting passionately and hugging her hips, the silver-and-gold dragons with emerald eyes breathed bead and pearl smoke from their b
road violet nostrils. Dressed, she was so naked about her feelings that the boy grew embarrassed and shut the door. It was not shame that guided him, it was stung passion; he wanted to share the closeness to Uncle Igor that came through the gift.

  Breathless from the double taboo of what he was doing, violating boundaries and wearing women’s clothes, he tried on the robe—and immediately threw it off, stunned by a nasty, longing sensation instigated by the vulgar deliberateness of transformation. However, the boy remembered the incident, the action, putting it away into a piggy bank as it were, with a premonition that it could come in handy.

  The boy already understood how life worked in the City and had categorized all the people he knew. Fortunately the City’s organization made it easy. In the center, behind a second Wall, was the Institute where his father worked. All the residents—guards, cleaning women, carpenters, drivers, scientists, shop clerks, teachers, doctors at the hospital, like his mother—served the Institute directly or indirectly.

  Only Uncle Igor’s role was unclear.

  Not military, not civilian; none of the recognizable, tested types. Separate. Sui generis.

  He was the only one who lived as if there were no City, Institute, Wall, commandant’s office; no red flags, banners, demonstrations, posters calling for vigilance, or watchtowers.

  The boy guessed that he did not see, did not know the main truth about Uncle Igor, which explained his special position. The boy could assume that Uncle Igor’s work was secret, like his father’s, for example. Or even more secret. But the point was that all the adults privy to secrets shared habits, jokes, and little words that Uncle Igor did not. Most important, they lived, like his father, with a sense of borrowed significance that gave them access, and they were afraid of losing it. Uncle Igor was on his own. The boy wanted that kind of unencumbered, independent fate for himself.