Untraceable

by Sergei Lebedev

  “What’s the matter with him?” Kalimullin asked directly, all distinctions erased by the hunt.

  “He’s faded,” Kalitin replied. “Nerves shot.”

  Kalimullin shook Kazarnovsky with unexpected ease—he must have come from a big family where he took care of the little ones, Kalitin thought enviously—and handed him the second half of the loaf and a bottle. Kazarnovsky started drinking and chewing. Obeying his lingering hatred, Kalitin threw out the still-warm crust onto the road; he did not want to share bread with the enemy. With a traitor.

  Kalitin did not inform on him. It would have been unwise by his lights. First you inform voluntarily, then they ask you to do it. He did not like being in a dependent position.

  Kalitin got rid of him swiftly, elegantly, by someone else’s wish. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded, and a coded message came to the Island: send specialists to work in the contamination zone. Everyone in their lab, where they experimented with radioactivity, understood the risk. That was when the director of the institute selected Kazarnovsky, on Kalitin’s suggestion. He quoted the coded message demanding the most qualified specialists loyal to the Party. Immediate departure, the AN-24 turboprop was waiting at the airport. The aim and location of the trip could not be revealed to the family. Kazarnovsky stood up, round-shouldered, weary, and calmly thanked those gathered for their trust. He walked past the long counter, followed by dozens of eyes, met Kalitin’s stare, nodded briefly, almost imperceptibly, and went out the door.

  The union head later sent someone to visit him in the radiology hospital; to bring flowers, fruit, some extra food. But while they were getting approval for the visit and organizing it, Kazarnovsky died.

  He should not have been exposed to a fatal dose; he knew all the norms and calculations. He volunteered to save others and spent too much time in the “hot zone.” It took time to get him to the hospital, for the doctors to attend to him.

  Kazarnovsky was buried in a sealed lead coffin. Kalitin even made a speech. After all, he had been a fairly good scientist.

  After that death, everything went haywire. A fire in the lab held up research for at least a year. Problems with delivery of lab mice—Lord, they couldn’t find mice in the country! Vera’s death.

  Yes, Vera’s death—Kalitin played the list of obligatory memorial phrases through his head, a shorthand transcript of the grief he never felt.

  He would have forgotten his unloved wife long ago. Erased the circumstances of her death from his memory. But he couldn’t. Her death was forever linked to the main moment of his life—the creation of Neophyte. As if Vera had paid his debt with her life.

  CHAPTER 14

  I wonder if the subject knew his wife was an informer, thought Shershnev.

  He was with Grebenyuk in a beer hall, eating pig knuckles with sauerkraut. They had two steins each: the beer was light and begged to be drunk. It would be bliss to down five or six, but they had to drive tomorrow.

  If he were alone, Shershnev would have done it. What could happen to him? It was a good place, even if it was for tourists; no overcharging or crowds. Grebenyuk would have drunk that much for sure. But they were together, and each had to write a report about the other’s behavior. Shershnev felt that if he had suggested it, Grebenyuk would support him. He was a regular guy and would not do him dirt later. But sometimes it doesn’t work out, something is not quite right. So you just sit there fondling your glass.

  I’ll bet he didn’t guess, Shershnev continued thinking. That was a pleasant thought. It put the subject in his place; it aroused the lieutenant colonel’s vanity in a petty, tipsy way. They set the dope up with a pleasant lab assistant, clever and loose, and he fell for it. The lab assistant had been working for the security apparatus since college.

  What worried, even upset Shershnev, was that he couldn’t decide whether her reports could be trusted. Formally—yes. She wrote frankly and did not protect her husband. She could have softened a few things. Even so, decades later, from a different time, Shershnev thought he was reading a diligently edited, clean copy, not lying but omitting. As if Vera, whose agent name was Housewife, had decided: it was better for her to have this vacancy than someone else who could really harm him. She pulled a fast one. In some sense, she sacrificed herself. Did she actually love her husband? Or does it just seem that way?

  That impression pained Shershnev. He believed in the service’s ability to tame, break, see through anyone. To get to the unconditional truth by force, if necessary. And here he came upon someone’s faulty work long ago, the laziness or stupidity of the man who ran Housewife.

  They left the beer hall. The lane led to the square.

  Grilled sausage stands—delicious! Pushers huddled on the corner. A police car drove by. It was the peak of the evening, people had eaten and were headed for the bars.

  “He did it here somewhere,” Grebenyuk said, looking around. “When our tanks came in. Poured gasoline over himself and lit it. They called it a protest against the Soviet invasion. I keep thinking, why? Tanks don’t care. At least throw a grenade . . . I read about it on the train,” he explained, seeing Shershnev’s confusion. “He’s a national hero now. Let’s go get some girls?” Grebenyuk asked without a pause, without transition.

  “I’m not in the mood,” Shershnev replied. He really wasn’t.

  Grebenyuk nodded, even though he must have thought that the lieutenant colonel would also go out seeking entertainment, but preferred doing it alone.

  Shershnev grimaced inside: good thing he didn’t mention it over dinner. A discovery. Grebenyuk was a technician, they were trained differently. That incident was used as an example at their service school: a provocative act done under the influence of enemy propaganda. There was another such incident in Lithuania. In Kaunas. Amazing, he even remembered the formulation. The teacher explained that self-immolation, even if it seems unintentional, accidental, has to be investigated thoroughly, searching for the subjective.

  Odd, Shershnev had forgotten completely that it had taken place here.

  Grebenyuk, assured that his boss did not mind, turned behind a kiosk and immediately vanished among the passersby. Shershnev continued walking. He wanted to end this unnecessary, intervening day as fast as possible; in the morning they would rent a car, and everything would happen tomorrow.

  Tomorrow.

  He went into a store that was open late. He glanced at the windows, picked out a jacket, went into the dressing room, and then abruptly pulled back the curtain. No one.

  He was sure they weren’t being followed anyway. They were clean. But he still felt a weak, strange tension that increased with Grebenyuk’s departure, a whisper of danger. Why did that idiot bring up the suicide? A bad sign. The devil made him do it.

  He went back outside. Two tramps fighting by the garbage. Shershnev went around them in disgust—and suddenly grew wary, pulled himself together, without knowing why.

  A woman.

  A woman up ahead. By the ice-cream stand.

  Shershnev saw her from the back.

  Danger.

  Danger emanated from her body, alien here where elderly people were usually trim, thin, and if they were fat, it was the amiable heaviness of gluttony.

  A heavy but powerful body. You can move it or go around it; she will stand there, forcing you to notice her.

  If ten of these women gather, a communal force develops the likes of which he did not perceive in women of his homeland. In Russian women he knew the power of humiliation, grief, prayer. But these mountain women had the power of impersonal unity, fearlessness born of disdain, a power that bewilders armed men. Not the hysterical-hypnotic power of gypsies, but that of witches, of ravens. Their everyday black dresses, heavy floor-length skirts, granny sweaters with peeling buttons, black or gray vests, woolen scarves. One breed, for him, a foreigner—one face, one voice capable of an unbearable screech that cuts like a saw; a scream with emotion, without relation to words; a pure sound against which there is no immu
nity. That scream can force a cordon of men behind metal shields to retreat, can turn soldiers into boys.

  Shershnev imagined he heard that scream.

  Like that morning after the night spent interrogating the boy in the shipping container on the base in Chechnya, having eaten and washed off in the icy field shower the sour stench of another’s fear and the work of torture. As they left the base, they saw relatives waiting at the gate, most often women like that, rushing up to each vehicle, ready to lie down under a truck, just to learn the truth, to get back a man dead or alive.

  Shershnev knew that there was a large diaspora here, many political refugees. But just here and now—the woman should not have been here. Shershnev was not afraid, he did not panic, but he sensed he was being sucked down into a vortex. A woman, just a woman, an ordinary refugee, there were thousands of them here. Pure statistics. Then why the feeling that this was a mean trick, someone’s game, a setup from an unknown opponent?

  The woman turned around and headed straight for him. Instant relief: no, he did not remember her face.

  Then his heart skipped a beat.

  The people sitting near the food cart had blocked the lower part of her body. He had thought she was using a walker. They were the handles of a wheelchair.

  What Shershnev and Evstifeyev had done to the boy back then left him an adolescent forever. It was only in his face that there was the promise of proud male beauty. Shershnev recognized him. He would have recognized him if he had been wearing makeup, for he had spent a long night in the interrogation container waiting, looking for signs of weakness and emotional fissures in that face. His twin brother? A corpse? Was she wheeling a doll, a wax dummy? Had he lost his mind? It couldn’t be! The boy had died, he was dead!

  Shershnev understood.

  The bastard Mishustin. He had deceived him. Tricked him, the viper. He had promised to finish him off, but instead he secretly sold him to his family. Then Mishustin was killed. Perhaps by the very same purchasers.

  They had not worn masks in the container. It was sweaty, hot, and what for, if there would be no witnesses left. The war would continue for a long time and it would hide all traces.

  Shershnev thought the whole world was looking at his face. His skin burned without turning red, as if it had been scorched by an icy flame. He recalled the boy’s naked body, covered in bruises; the strange, thrilling contrast between the flesh, wet with sweat and blood, and the dry rubber of the gas mask stuck to the head, turning it into a faceless scarecrow. He wanted to be wearing a gas mask, or a carnival disguise, the stupid getup of the guy handing out leaflets in a lion costume; bandages, a lady’s dark veil, anything that would hide his face.

  Police. They got out of their car and lit up smokes. They looked around, apparently casually but attentively. A fresh team, or they had gotten an urgent bulletin.

  The boy was looking a bit past Shershnev. If he moved, the boy would notice him.

  Shershnev looked down slowly, rummaged in his pockets as if looking for a wallet or a pack of cigarettes. The wheelchair was coming closer, the policemen had seen it and watched it go.

  If the boy recognized him and screamed, he wouldn’t get out of there without a fight. Or he could try blindman’s bluff, it might work.

  Coincidences like this don’t happen. It can’t be. Foolishness, failure. Why didn’t he tell them right away who he was? Why? He’d be alive now. But he was dead! Can’t be deader than that! Like the ones in the village Whatever-It’s-Called. Naked men stand in the plowed field stand in the snow the first snow is falling hairy men let them stand evening is falling racers firing beyond the village old man in a fur hat funny naked men lie in the plowed field he fell but the hat sticks to his head what fool plowed a field what was he hoping for there’s a war on what would grow he wants to knock the hat off his head is it glued on what’s holding it the helicopter is whirring creating drifting snow a wolf on the banner white flag pole silver pioneer bugle pain fell off peeling urine-soaked mattresses torn sheets chocolate in the nightstand mother brought it two more weeks to go called his son Maxim like the machine gun she didn’t get the joke Maxim Maxim there on the floor blood on his chest who killed him firing pin clicks magazine is empty—

  The boy went past, two feet away. His eye was caught by the shop window, gold watches in satin boxes.

  The wheelchair was expensive, his clothing modest. Look at him staring at the Rolexes—Shershnev was gabbling to himself—a real mountain dweller, loves gold, it’s in their blood, bling and guns.

  His self-control had almost returned completely. He could see that the boy would not look back, the woman was taking him away, the police were taking their final drags. Another second or two, and they would all be gone. Good thing Grebenyuk had Neophyte. Fewer unnecessary thoughts. The boy would vanish on his own and never return.

  Shershnev didn’t give a damn that he was alive. Who cared now anyway? God? Was it God’s will to have this ridiculous show?

  Behind the bravado, its thin vibrating curtain, lay another thought: How did the boy survive? Mishustin had sold a semi-carcass. Truly: a living corpse. Who had hidden him, nursed him in a place where there was no cover, no food, no medicine, no doctors? Who, how? Half-dead, with squashed fingers and broken ribs—how had he avoided all the traps, roadblocks, minefields, raids? Any soldier who saw him would think he was a wounded fighter. Any roadblock would have arrested him. Whose will, whose power, whose inhuman luck, whose money got the pup out of the place where no one is saved? Who carried him over the mountain passes past the patrols? How? Without documents, wounded—how? And even if he had documents, with a name like that—how? If not Mishustin, then the war would have finished him off. How? How did he get a passport? Or if he didn’t, who smuggled him out, in a train car, a trunk, if he couldn’t walk?

  Shershnev’s experience, his knowledge of the rarity of luck, the price of effort, of the possible and the impossible, all cried out: How? And why? Just so that Shershnev would see him? That they would cross paths in a foreign city? It was a huge operation, if you thought about it, even his service would have trouble carrying it off. Then who did it? The boy didn’t recognize him and never would. He won’t turn around, won’t exact revenge.

  Shershnev had a thought and immediately dropped it, ashamed of the smarmy naivete of his thinking.

  But it stuck.

  There was only one feeling in the world that could combine success, persistence, weakness, hope, fear, calculation, and despair, load them together and turn them into a whole saving gesture of fate.

  Only one feeling could create this miracle.

  Shershnev, a man of war, one of the blue-collar workers of hell, as his colleagues jokingly called one another, was certain of it.

  He wanted to protest, demean it, declare it nonexistent—but his rational mind rose against that, his firm, implacable knowledge of war.

  But whose love was it? Watching the back of the woman with the wheelchair pushing the twice-born boy, he tried to break the hassling thought, disprove himself. That fat woman’s? There were hundreds like her there. A tribe of ravens. Could every one of them do that? Then why didn’t it work? It didn’t!

  There they were, naked in the snow. Not shivering, too proud. Yesterday shots were fired at the roadblock, coming from the village. Let them stand there and freeze. The commanders will decide what to do with them. The old man put on the fur hat, let him enjoy it, why not respect an elderly person . . . It didn’t work! There they lie, shot, and the snow is still melting on their bodies. It didn’t work!

  Shershnev wanted to scream, to shatter windows, anything at all to cross it all out, to return the boy to wherever he had crawled out from. When they called him to receive instruction, one of the generals asked: Isn’t there anyone else? With his list . . . if they capture him, break him . . . Shershnev just stood there, knowing that he was the best, and they would send him no matter what the cautious general thought.

  And now he thought with dreary emptines
s, why didn’t he finish off the prisoner himself? If they got caught, his photo would be in all the papers. The boy would recognize him. The circle would close after all.

  Shershnev had his first thought of possible failure. He thought that this incident had thrown him off the hunter’s rhythm and tossed him into the ordinary, slow time in which everyone else lived; he realized with fear that it had taken away his ability to be a step ahead of the victim, to pass him; someone tremendous and powerful had synchronized their watches.

  Shershnev understood he could not be alone. He called Grebenyuk. He responded quickly; he must have been waiting for the call. Shershnev wanted a woman, wanted to take her painfully, spill his weakness and fear into her—like Marina then. After that tour of duty.

  CHAPTER 15

  Pastor Travniček was praying. Praying for so many days. He was asking for enlightenment for all who were involved and embroiled; he begged God to lead them from the path of evil.

  Earlier, in his long-ago former life, he would have sought a solution from God, direction on how to act. He would have wondered: Should I call the police? Act like a citizen and not a priest? He would wonder: What if he was complicating things unnecessarily? Maybe what was going on was not a matter of faith, church, religion? Of God?

  Now that his second life was heading for the sunset, he knew that there was no need to ask for guidance. He was the decision himself. The deed. The key. He would not act, but something would happen through him. He was blind and seeing. Empty and full. Alienated and involved.

  Travniček had been watching the man on the hill a long time. Sine ira et studio. He did not make inquires. He did not try to call him in for a chat. But he kept the resident of the old house in the field of his wakeful inner attention. His past life had taught him to protect particularly those secrets that are clearly known to you but not out in the open.