Zhenya expressed his disdain by choosing to play at blitz speed while his opponent considered every move at a normal pace. It was like watching someone slowly, meticulously assemble a clock. Zhenya traded a bishop for a rook, doubled a pawn, lost momentum, and was caught in a pin five moves ahead. Before Zhenya knew it, the game was over. He looked up. His opponent was wearing a Metallica hoodie. He was fifteen years old.
In his second match Zhenya lost to an ancient grandfather with a wispy beard. He had not lost two games in a row for more than a year. There were murmurs at Zhenya’s back. So this was the fearsome chess bandit. Onlookers hovered by the chessboard rather than miss a second of Zhenya’s agony.
“It’s not looking good,” Arkady said.
“No, it isn’t.” If a man could speak from the grave, he would sound like Zhenya.
“He’s got an hour to regroup,” Sosi said.
“Then why isn’t he eating?”
“The last thing I feel like is eating,” said Zhenya.
“You have to have something in your stomach.” Arkady didn’t know if it was true, but it was a change of subject.
“Tea sandwiches is all they have,” Sosi said.
“Good enough.” Arkady stuffed money into Sosi’s hands. “Do you mind? There’s a cafeteria in the basement. We’ll be outside.”
Once they were on the sidewalk, Arkady asked, “What happened?”
“Have you ever seen such bad lighting? It’s like a cave,” Zhenya said.
“It’s not the lights that’s hurting your game. I’ve seen you play in a subway tunnel.”
“Well, it’s pretty distracting in there.” Zhenya lit up a cigarette. “As soon as I got here, they informed me that I couldn’t smoke. Smoking’s not a problem anywhere else, but it is here. Why do they hate me?”
“Try smiling,” Arkady said. Zhenya tried and produced a rictus of a grin. “Never mind. Do you think you can beat the boy?”
Zhenya dropped his usual bravado. “He plays the whole board.” It was hard to say more about a player.
“Don’t worry so much. You either beat him or you don’t. He’s two and zero and you’re zero and two, which is not good but not impossible. If you win the next two games, you’ll probably come up against him in the last round. There is an underhanded ploy you can try, but you have to get to the last round. Can you do that?”
“Fuck, yes.”
“That’s more like it. Do you know if the boy smokes?”
“Like a locomotive.”
“Okay, once you’re in your respective chairs and begin to play, you tap out a cigarette.”
“I can’t. We’re not allowed.”
“I didn’t say light it; it’s important that you don’t. Just set it on the table and make sure that it’s his game clock that’s running, not yours.”
“It’s a distraction. They’ll make me put the cigarette away.”
“Which you will put barely visible in your breast pocket but he won’t forget it. The threat, as they say, is more effective than the execution.”
“That’s cold,” Zhenya said.
“It is, isn’t it. Of course, you may not need to use it. That’s up to you.”
Zhenya was full of admiration. Sosi came out of the chess club carrying a plate stacked with watercress sandwiches cut on the angle. Zhenya devoured them one by one and finally smiled. “I’m sorry about the Moscow Bridge thing. I was scared.” This was a major admission for Zhenya.
Now that Zhenya had revealed his vulnerability, the chess hall was eager for a bloodletting, but Zhenya played a spotless White and won without exertion. The fourth match, likewise, was a simple lesson in mathematics, grinding out a win.
In their first match, the boy in the Metallica hoodie had taken advantage of Zhenya’s overconfidence and the fact that he was used to overwhelming opponents in a matter of minutes. Zhenya had gotten sloppy and overconfident. It only took someone capable of offering a systematic waiting game to trip Zhenya up.
The fifth and final match was a duel between Zhenya and the boy in the Metallica hoodie. Playing White, the boy opened with the Queen’s Gambit and followed with a suite of moves new to Zhenya. The game was always deep enough to create a flow and counterflow, first sniping and then engaging in cut and thrust. Zhenya stayed even in pieces. Bit by bit, however, he was losing ground. His men seemed scattered. Time pressure started to be more of a problem for Zhenya. This was the point, if ever, to use Arkady’s cigarette trick. Both sides were even down to a queen, a knight, a rook, and four pawns, but Metallica’s men supported each other, while Zhenya’s were scattered all over the board. He kept his cigarettes deep in his pocket.
It was a given that chess was the most Russian, most intellectual of all mental contests. It rarely looked like fun, Arkady thought. He had seen pictures of Lenin, Trotsky, Gorky, and Chekhov playing chess. They never looked like they were having a good time. No wonder Russians flocked to it.
Now each side was down to a rook, a knight, and two pawns. White was under time pressure. Would Black offer a gentleman’s draw? Not Zhenya—not while there was more humiliation to be exacted.
After much shuttling back and forth, Metallica freed a pawn and sent it exuberantly racing across the board on its way to a second life as a queen. As for Zhenya, he finessed White’s new queen by under-promoting his pawn into a relatively lowly knight and announcing as if surprised, “Checkmate!”
* * *
“I didn’t need that stupid cigarette trick,” Zhenya said once they were back in the car. “Fucking checkmate. And then he quits, like he has sudden indigestion. What a pussy. Sorry,” he excused himself to Sosi, “but I knew as soon as he started moving his pawn down the board to become a queen, that was all he could think of. His downfall was a pawn that kept saying, ‘Move me, move me.’ ”
“And the way they swarmed over you when they declared you the winner!” Sosi said.
“I guess the shoe’s on the other foot now.”
“Maybe your next lesson should be winning with modesty.” Arkady opened his door to his flat and Zhenya and Sosi happily tumbled in.
The prize was a chess king set in glass; Zhenya hadn’t let go of it since they left the club.
“They’ve invited Zhenya to other tournaments,” Sosi said.
“Suddenly I’ve got business cards from guys who want to be my coach. Actually, the kid wasn’t a bad player for a heavy metal fan.”
10
The next day at the prosecutor’s office, Zurin asked Arkady to walk to his car with him. Arkady was suspicious but it was a bright, sunny day, the sort that inspired people to walk their dogs.
“Do you know anyone who has a dog?” Arkady asked.
“I own one.”
“Really? What kind?”
“A miniature French poodle. We have to walk it four times a day. It’s a little crap machine.”
Imagine that, Arkady thought. Zurin had a poodle.
Across the river, demonstrators marched with placards. They were inflamed by new evidence that the president owned ocean-cruising yachts and not one but four estates, with swimming pools, horse stables, tennis courts, and cascading waterfalls. One of them even had a separate house for ducks. Ducks! In this manner, corruption was quantified and understood.
“You had something on your mind?” Arkady asked. “Do you still dream about a posting in Cuba?”
Zurin pressed his lips together for lack of anything to say.
“I’ll give you a letter of recommendation if that helps,” Arkady volunteered.
“Very funny. You would probably just fuck me over.”
“Probably.”
“Well, you’ll get yours soon enough.” The prosecutor’s tone changed. “How do you think it looks when a senior investigator protects a notorious dissident like Tatiana Petrovna?”
This was the game Arkady and Zurin always played: Arkady the snake charmer and Zurin the snake.
“Has she broken the law?” Arkady asked.
“It’s not what she did or did not do, it’s her attitude.”
“You can’t simply change someone’s attitude.”
“Why not?” Zurin asked. “Dostoevsky spent two years in a Siberian prison camp and it has to be said that he came out with a much improved attitude.”
He produced from his pocket pictures of Tatiana Petrovna and Kuznetsov.
“What about the man with her?” Zurin asked. “They look like they’re good friends.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“You never met him?””
“No.”
“But you know who he is. Mikhail Kuznetsov.”
“I’ve seen his face in newspapers and magazines,” Arkady said.
“Your Tatiana seems to be more than friends with an ex-convict and a known enemy of the people.”
“And what does this have to do with me?” Arkady was running out of patience.
“It’s just that it’s very convenient for you and for me that you will be in Siberia picking up Aba Makhmud. I want you to also track down this Kuznetsov and report back to me. We want to know what he’s up to.”
Arkady shoved his hands into his pockets. “Is this official or unofficial?”
“Tell me, why are you always the troublemaker? What do you gain from that?”
Arkady broke into a smile. “As Dostoevsky said, ‘Right or wrong, it’s very pleasant to break something from time to time.’ ”
11
After a binge, Victor could count on three days of delirium tremens in the drunk tank. But he had lucid spells, and even through chattering teeth he declared Arkady the greater lunatic.
“Let me get it straight,” Victor said. “You propose going into the world’s largest landmass, most of it frozen, in search of someone who may not want to be found?”
“That’s right.”
“Would you like me to write your obituary today or tomorrow? Maybe I should just leave the date open. And I suppose you don’t have any leads.”
“I have a lead thanks to Boris Benz. He says Tatiana’s near Lake Baikal, and apparently, she’s good friends with Mikhail Kuznetsov.”
“I wouldn’t trust Benz as far as I could throw my grandmother.”
“Zurin showed me a picture of the two together.”
The tank offered spare accommodations: tile walls and floors, one lightbulb, twelve beds, a defibrillator, and a pail. On this day Victor was the only occupant. He lay on twisted dirty sheets and sounded even more hollow than usual.
“You know there are different kinds of therapy: massage, water, electric shock, group. For me they have suggested implanting a ‘torpedo’ of medication under the skin of my butt. It’s a kind of aversion therapy.”
“It sounds it. We’ve got to get you out of here. Let me speak to the doctor.”
“We’ve been through this a hundred times.”
“Then we will do it again.”
“Not this time. Nina was here. It’s hard to believe but she’s never seen me like this before. Handcuffed! I’m her older brother. I am a fucking disgrace. She was crying. I didn’t even know she was capable of it, but I made her cry. How low can you get? So, thank you, Arkady, my good friend, but not this time. This time I’m going to stick it out.”
“At least, let me get you clean clothes.”
Victor shook his head violently. “No, I’ll do this on my own.” He turned his face to the wall.
Those were words Arkady had often hoped to hear Victor say but that Victor always turned into a joke. Now that he was saying them in all sincerity, Arkady was unprepared. Victor had become Arkady’s sounding board. They were partners in a peculiar business and he had come to count on Victor for what he felt was half his intelligence and most of his wit. Suddenly he had no one to take Victor’s place.
* * *
Freed from her safari gear and with her copper hair released from its tight headband, Nina seemed relaxed. As she and Arkady walked by the habitats, he was aware that in some cases, at least, animals had it easy. Emus sat on their eggs for eight weeks without bothering to leave their nest. The Peruvian condor lived seventy majestic years. Flamingo babies were balls of gray fluff with smiles turned upside down. For sheer indolence, however, the prize went to the brown bears Masha and Sasha. It was a late Indian summer day and they stretched out languorously even to their claws.
“If there is a Bear God, he would look down and smile,” Nina said. “I’m relieved nobody was actually hurt.”
“Except you?”
“Yes. I’ve lost my position as zoo director. It seems that my brother’s little performance at the museum annoyed one of our most important patrons.”
“Boris Benz?”
“Yes. It will be announced next week. It’s just as well. I can go back to just teaching, which I much prefer. And it will leave me time to study my apes.”
“I wanted you to know that I’m going to Siberia tomorrow,” Arkady said, “and Victor will need help from time to time.”
“Of course. I saw him this morning and he seems determined to stop drinking. I won’t let him starve. Don’t worry.”
A swan touched down for a heavy landing in the pool, setting off comic flapping and outrage among the ducks.
“We’ll see how it goes,” she said.
“But no bears?”
“Bears are thugs. Gorillas are buttercups.”
12
Sergei Obolensky was cleaning the inside of his aquarium with a small squeegee. After the raid on his office he had purchased a new underwater display of brilliant neon tetras and a sunken pirate chest. He had rolled up his sleeves and pulled on rubber gloves. In short, he looked like a man who dealt with worry by keeping busy.
“You can’t go wrong with tetras,” he told Arkady. “They look like little roadside signs.”
“Shouldn’t you take your wristwatch off?”
Obolensky mumbled something obscene.
“Any news from Tatiana?”
“No.”
“Have you tried to reach her?”
“Have I tried? Of course I’ve tried, to no avail. Damn, where is that fish net? Obviously you have never worked with Tatiana. I told you before, she works alone, on her own, at her own pace. When the story is done, she will waltz through the door and we will all look like fools for being worried.” Obolensky sounded as if that had happened to him more than once.
“What about the death threats she’s received?”
“Nothing new or out of the ordinary.”
“In an emergency, how would you reach her?” Arkady asked.
“She has no living relatives and she called on a single-use phone, so I’m dealt out, just like the rest of us.”
“Did you ever inform the police about the raid here?”
“Of course not. Do I look like an idiot?”
“Well, you don’t have to help me. I’m going there myself.”
Obolensky swayed on his feet. “Being an oligarch in Irkutsk is like being God.”
“I want to make sure she’s alive and well. You said she met with Kuznetsov in Irkutsk. I’ll start there.”
* * *
Arkady planned to have Zhenya and Sosi take over his flat while he was gone. “All I ask,” Arkady said, “is that you collect the mail and make sure that owls don’t nest in the halls.”
“Where are you going?” Sosi asked.
“Siberia.”
“Like, where in Siberia?” Zhenya asked.
“Irkutsk.”
“How long?”
“I’m not sure.”
A little deflated, Zhenya asked, “This is about Tatiana, isn’t it?”
Arkady was surprised: he didn’t know Zhenya was even aware that Tatiana had been gone for a long time.
“Yes, she’s been away too long.”
“I can set up motion detectors,” Zhenya said.
“I have no doubt. I can see myself stumbling home one night and being pinned to the floor by a cyborg,” Arkady said.
&nb
sp; “What about police?” Sosi asked.
“If you have to let them in, document them on camera. Otherwise, no guns and no resistance.” Arkady went off to his bedroom to pack.
Sosi wandered in. “Do you mind?” she asked.
“No, go ahead. Sit down.”
She watched him pack and unpack an athletic bag; it was his aim to carry little more than a toothbrush and a razor.
She plopped onto a chair and surveyed the room. “You have a lot of books.”
“Don’t be misled. I haven’t read them all, but if I like them, I read them again.”
She nodded and hummed. Today she was wearing purple-tinted glasses to match her purple hair. It was a little like being visited by a Martian, Arkady thought.
“I walked around,” she said. “Are all the banners and medals yours?”
“No, they were my father’s.”
“He was a hero?”
“To give him his due, he was much loved by his men.”
“You sound—”
“He killed more of the enemy than of his own men, but it was close.”
“Zhenya really admires you. I don’t know if you know that.”
He glanced her way in case he was missing any sarcasm. “No, I didn’t know that.”
“He talks about you all the time. ‘Arkady would do this; Arkady would do that.’ ”
Arkady smiled. “I’ll take your word for that.”
“You’re going to Siberia? Have you been there before?”
“Briefly,” Arkady said.
“It’s cold. I mean, really cold.”
“So you have family in Siberia?”
“My parents were visiting professors at the university in Irkutsk. They were good teachers.”
“Are they still there?”
“No, they moved back to Armenia and tried farming, but their vineyard developed a fungus and then all their truffles were consumed by pigs. Now they’re back in Ararat pumping gas. I stayed in Moscow when they moved, because I was still at the university here and had a resident’s permit, but that will run out in a few more months and I’ll sleep where I can. Zhenya is very kind.”
The Siberian Dilemma Page 4