“Yes. I hope you’ve kept my room.”
“Of course.” Her indignation was high until it caught on his smile. “It’s just as you left it. I mean, I’ve cleaned it. The police came round when you hadn’t returned, but other than that, yes, just as you left it. Let me help you.”
“Bolot, I think I will be well taken care of from here on. Don’t worry.”
“Okay. I’ll get your rucksack out of the car and leave it at the desk. I’ll call tomorrow to see how you’re doing.”
Saran helped Arkady up the stairs.
“What happened to you?”
“I’ll tell you when we get to the room. I can’t walk and talk at the same time.”
His room was indeed exactly as he’d left it. It was an unsettling feeling. He had gone one morning fully expecting to be back by evening, and it had taken him the best part of a month to return.
Now that she had a chance to study him, Saran saw a different Arkady, someone haggard, perhaps someone who had barely endured. He sat heavily on the bed.
“I lost a bear fight.”
“You look it.”
Arkady laughed.
“Boris Benz is dead.”
“I know. It’s big news here. How did he die?”
“Somebody killed him with a sniper’s rifle. They also killed Georgy, the man who was looking after the oil rigs.”
She leaned forward. “And Tatiana?”
“She’s okay.”
“Who killed them?”
“That’s the question.”
“Are you going to stay?” Saran asked.
“Not for long. I plan to cause some trouble and then go.”
He could tell that she was saddened by this news.
“You know, I have to wonder why you still live here. You’re so smart and inquisitive, not to mention pretty. Why haven’t you set out to conquer the world yet?”
Saran blushed.
Arkady rose to take off his coat, and the fingers of his good hand felt something hard in one of the pockets. He brought out the key ring Bolot had found in the snow by Benz’s body.
It was a moment or two before he realized that Saran was staring at him. More precisely, she was staring at the key ring.
“That’s Dorzho’s,” she said. “I gave that to him, and one of those keys is mine.”
“You gave this fish to Dorzho?”
“Investigator Renko, that isn’t a fish; it’s Lusud Khan, the dragon monster of Lake Baikal, if you believe in that kind of thing.”
“Do you?”
“Kind of. May I take my key off the key ring?”
“Of course.” He handed it to her. “Are you afraid he will come to visit you one night?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know if Dorzho worked for Benz?” Arkady asked.
“Yes, in the boxing club.”
“You’re sure?”
“A blowhard like Dorzho shouted it all over town when he got that job. Later he worked with Mikhail Kuznetsov.”
Arkady turned the key ring over and over in his hand as though it would offer up its secrets if he caught just the right light.
“Do you know where Dorzho is?” Arkady asked.
“No, but I can help you find him.”
No, that wasn’t quite what he had in mind. He didn’t want her anywhere near Dorzho.
* * *
In the following week Saran delighted in taking care of Arkady while he regained his strength. She brought him food and walked beside him whenever he ventured out.
“You don’t have to do this, you know,” Arkady said on one of these walks.
“You should probably be in a hospital.” She had a habit of sneaking worried glances in his direction. “Why isn’t Tatiana here with you?”
“She’s busy campaigning with Kuznetsov in Irkutsk and Novosibirsk.”
“When does she get back?”
“Maybe tomorrow.”
36
Tatiana called the next morning. “How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Better; in fact, much better.”
“Are you still having trouble walking?”
“No, I’m walking farther every day.”
“I wonder if you want to come over to the Montblanc this afternoon. We are filming a video for the campaign.”
“ ‘We’?” Arkady asked.
“Don’t start. Yes, we.”
How was it, Arkady wondered, that while Tatiana had demonstrated her love for him these past few weeks, he could still let the doubts flood in?
* * *
Kuznetsov had taken over a large suite at the Montblanc. Unsmiling bodyguards with cropped hair and suits stood outside the elevators and at the entrances to staircases. They refused to let Arkady pass, Moscow investigator or no, until Tatiana came to vouch for him, and even then it was only because they knew she was Kuznetsov’s friend.
Tatiana walked over and kissed him on the cheek. “You look good.”
“Saran took good care of me.”
“Oh?”
In the suite, activity was everywhere. Arkady stepped over a line of cables duct-taped to the floor and dodged young interns hurrying along with clipboards.
“I need to talk to Kuznetsov,” Arkady said.
“What about?”
“What happened up at the wells. There have been developments.”
“What kind of developments?”
“I’ll tell you when I tell him.”
“Okay,” she said, “but it will have to be after we’re done with this.”
“How long will that be?”
“An hour. Maybe two.”
“Nobody will watch a campaign video that long.”
She gave him a look of exasperation. “The video is only going to be 108 seconds long.” She indicated a young man with black-framed glasses and blue jeans. “Fedor is the social media expert, and he says that’s the optimum length. But 108 seconds isn’t long, so we have to make every one of them count.”
She led him into another room with curtains tightly drawn. Kuznetsov sat on the far side, hemmed in by video cameras and studio lights. He was wearing a black polo neck shirt beneath a dark gray sports jacket. Billionaire chic, Arkady thought, pitched at just the right level; not the bland suit and tie of workaday politicians, but smart enough to show that he was taking this seriously.
“Stay here,” Tatiana said. “I’ll tell him, but like I said, you will have to wait.”
Arkady nodded. There wasn’t much else he could do.
She went over to Kuznetsov and talked softly in his ear. Kuznetsov glanced across at Arkady and nodded.
There was a seat next to Kuznetsov. Tatiana took it. A man standing next to Arkady, clearly the director, clapped his hands.
“Okay, everybody. Quiet, please. Mikhail, let’s do the bit about ‘Another Russia.’ Look at Tatiana, imagine you’re talking to her and not the camera, okay?”
Kuznetsov leaned forward in his chair and looked at Tatiana as instructed.
“This election will not be an honest one. I know it won’t, and so do you. But one day it will be, and that’s the day we’re working toward: the day when the people who come to power represent the interests of all segments of our society. Not the Russia we have now but another Russia, a better Russia, a Russia committed to human rights, the rule of law, and a strong civil society. Today I launch ‘Another Russia’ but I do not lead it. The last thing we need is yet another party with one man in charge. I see ‘Another Russia’ as a horizontal alliance of those many, many small groups who form the underlying fabric of that civil society that the regime suppresses but cannot eliminate.”
Arkady wondered how many of these words were Tatiana’s and how many were Kuznetsov’s.
Kuznetsov sat back. The director clapped his hands again. “Excellent!”
He was good, Arkady thought. Passionate without being hysterical, sincere without being smarmy. The campaign crew approached Kuznetsov in turn like supplicants seeking approva
l from a medieval potentate. Arkady could hear enough of their conversations to know who was who: the strategist whispering about likely reaction from Moscow, the accountant with his spreadsheet, the pollster with her numbers, the logistics manager with a pin-studded map, and the data miner, whatever that was.
Kuznetsov spoke to each of them briefly, turning the full incandescence of his charm and attention on them with the politician’s trick of making the interlocutor feel as if he were the only other person in the room. A touch of the arm here, a smile at a shared joke there. Kuznetsov was always on. Every interaction was weighted with a demand, an order, a calculation, well hidden behind his undeniable charisma. Arkady wondered if Kuznetsov ever just was, at work or at home. Probably not, which helped explain why Kuznetsov was a billionaire running for president and Arkady was a Moscow investigator chasing his tail five thousand kilometers from home.
Tatiana had said an hour, maybe two. It turned out to be three and a half, by which time Kuznetsov had done so many takes of so many different sections that Arkady felt he could deliver a pretty decent campaign speech himself.
“I’m sorry, Arkady,” Kuznetsov said. “You know how these things are. Ten takes when one will do.” He fixed Arkady with his gaze and Arkady, despite being aware of exactly what Kuznetsov was doing, still found himself charmed by the focus of such attention.
“You’re a hero. Tatiana called from Ust-Kut to tell me everything that happened. You seem to be lucky,” Kuznetsov said.
“Luck is important if you’re going to be a hero,” Arkady said.
“If I’d known that you had all gone up there, I’d have sent out a rescue party.”
“You didn’t know we’d gone?”
“No.”
“What did you think when Tatiana vanished for a few weeks?”
“That she’d finally realized how tedious my life is.” He smiled to show that he neither thought nor meant this. “Or that Obolensky had called her away to another story.”
“You didn’t think it strange that you hadn’t heard from Boris Benz for so long?”
“Not at all. He does—did—his thing, I do mine. Quite often we’d go weeks without speaking. Nothing sinister. That’s how it is when you have interests all over the country.”
“You assumed he was traveling?” Arkady asked.
“I would have if I’d given it enough thought. Is this an official interrogation?”
“This isn’t my jurisdiction, but two people have been killed and I would like to know why. If you went up to a remote area and didn’t come back, how long do you think it would be before people noticed that you were missing?”
“Not too long, I hope.” Kuznetsov gestured round the room, where a handful of people were putting equipment away or poring over laptops. “I have plenty of people who rely on me, especially now.”
“So, why should it be different for Boris Benz?”
“It shouldn’t. But that’s not what you asked me. You asked me if I felt it strange that I hadn’t heard from him. Would it have been strange for him not to have heard from me if the situation had been reversed? No, not especially.”
“So you had no idea that someone took the helicopter, disabled the truck up there, and left the three of us to fend for ourselves, knowing that in those conditions we could easily have died. Did you even know that Benz and Georgy were killed?”
“Tatiana called me from Ust-Kut and told me.”
Arkady wanted to believe him—he really did. The look on Tatiana’s face showed she did believe Kuznetsov. She flashed Arkady warning looks.
Then again, Arkady knew something that she didn’t.
“Where’s Dorzho?” he asked.
Kuznetsov, who had opened his mouth in preparation for the inevitable denial, closed it again and curled his lips into a thin smile.
“I suppose there’s no point asking how you know him,” Kuznetsov said.
“None at all.”
Tatiana looked genuinely puzzled by this turn in the conversation.
“He’s in Irkutsk,” Kuznetsov said.
“I’ll need more than that.”
“I’ll give you his address. Phone number, too, if you’d like.”
“I would,” Arkady said. “Would you refrain from warning him in advance?”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because I want to keep what element of surprise I have. And remember, it wouldn’t do your campaign any good if it emerged that you employ a suspected killer.”
“Come, Investigator. There’s scarcely a candidate for high office in this country who hasn’t been accused of something. One might even say that a candidate is not taken seriously until then.”
“Possibly. But there’s a big difference between being accused of fraud and being accused of murder.” Arkady wondered whether he was making himself a target and found to his surprise that he didn’t care.
Tatiana was now looking at Kuznetsov. Kuznetsov returned her gaze, unflinching, before turning back to Arkady.
“Okay, if that’s what you want, I won’t tell him you’re coming. I never gave him a direct order—not in this case. I told him to use his discretion when dealing with Benz and the oil rigs. Second, I had no idea you, Tatiana, and your friend Bolot had gone with Benz. None at all. As I said before, I would certainly have sent a rescue party for you had I known.”
Here was a man, Arkady realized, who had strong emotions but who could turn them off completely when it came to making decisions. Kuznetsov’s thinking ran contrary to his feelings.
Kuznetsov scribbled an address and a phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to Arkady. “Dorzho’s details.”
“You know them by heart?”
“Of course.”
“For all your employees?”
“The ones who work directly for me, yes.”
Impressive, Arkady thought, to have a memory like that. It was all he could do to remember his own telephone number.
* * *
“No way. Absolutely not. You’re insane,” Saran said.
Arkady wondered whether she was going to cry. He tried to make a joke of it. “It’s funny: Tatiana said the same thing.” He realized even as he said it that mentioning Tatiana in this context wasn’t particularly sensitive.
Saran composed herself. “You really have a death wish, don’t you?”
“Not at all.”
“You’re no match for him, do you understand? That boxing club he used to go to—you saw them. They’re not messing around there. Even at your best, he will pound you like Muhammad Ali. And you’re very far from your best right now. Look at yourself.”
Arkady was amused but knew she had a point.
“Do you have a picture of him?” he asked.
Saran sighed in exasperation at his stubbornness. Nonetheless, she delved into one of the drawers of her desk, rummaging through old phone chargers, tubes of paper glue, and gently rolling phalanxes of loose batteries. Finally she pulled out an old photograph of herself with Dorzho on the banks of Lake Baikal, arms around each other.
“Clearly taken in happier times,” Arkady ventured.
“If by that you mean that I could stand to be in the same hemisphere as him, then yes.”
Dorzho was no Romeo, that was for sure. He looked more mean than stupid. He was dangerous, and it seemed incongruous that a woman as pretty and intelligent as Saran should have chosen someone as lumpen as Dorzho, but couples like that could be found all over Russia. In any other country, a Dorzho could never have dreamt of marrying a Saran. Here he was practically a catch.
“He’s everything you’re not,” Saran continued. “And I mean that as a compliment to you.” She dabbed at the corner of her eye with a tissue. “You’re going to go no matter what I say, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Then that’s one way you are just like Dorzho. You are pigheaded. Take someone with you. Take Bolot. Take Aba too. You’ll need them.”
37
They flew t
o Irkutsk the next morning. Bolot and Aba were as excited as schoolchildren on an outing, which made Arkady feel like a sensible teacher trying to herd delinquents.
Bolot had found Kuznetsov’s campaign speech on his cell phone. It clocked in at one minute forty-eight seconds, just as Tatiana had promised.
“I like what he says,” Aba said.
Five kilometers below them, Lake Baikal stretched out, long and thin, bringing to mind a woman in repose. Bolot leaned across him and pointed to a spot about two-thirds of the way up on the western shore.
“Follow my finger,” Bolot said. “That’s Cape Ryty. That’s where we’re not going.”
“Why not? Because it’s not on the way?” Arkady said.
“Well, yes.” Bolot’s deflation was only momentary. “But even if it were, the pilot would give it a wide berth. His instruments would stop working, for a start. You know the Bermuda Triangle? Cape Ryty’s the Baikal Triangle.” Aba scoffed. Bolot wagged his finger.
“Supposedly, evil spirits live there. Locals won’t go near it. Even if their cattle wander off, they won’t go after them. Boats go missing. Just the other day, one called the Yamaha. Clear day, good cell phone coverage, experienced sailors…” He clicked his fingers. “Gone! Vanished. They never found a thing. Not a single piece of wreckage. As if it had been swallowed up by the lake itself. There was another one when the crew came back with thick beards and said they’d been gone for weeks, but they’d only been out for the afternoon. Can you imagine?”
Yes, Arkady thought, that he could easily imagine.
“There’s always a reason for that kind of thing,” Aba said.
“Like what?”
“Storms, hurricanes, typhoons. Enough of these things happen, and people panic and make it a myth.”
Arkady looked at Bolot’s phone. Little bits of slickly edited Kuznetsov should anchor him to the here and now, to the rational, to the secular, to the world he understood. He listened.
“I believe in government by parliament, by the representatives of the people. So the first thing I would do as president is reinstate term limits. Yes, I’m campaigning to do myself out of a job.”
The Siberian Dilemma Page 15