by Greg Wilson
They sat opposite one another, at a table in the center of the room, the bottle and glasses between them.
“Vari Vlasenko.” It was Nikolai’s opening statement. The silver-haired man glanced up from a hooded brow. Let his gaze hang there for moment then let it fall away.
“What about him?”
Nikolai watched him. “Does he still come here?”
The gaze lifted and lowered again. “Who wants to know?” He was tough. There was no denying that. Beaten but unbowed. Nikolai decided to run it straight. “My name is Nikolai Aven.” He saw Leonid’s eyes flicker upwards again. Recognition locked. “I was his partner.”
The former KGB officer drew a breath through his nose and fidgeted in his seat.
Nikolai continued. “I’ve been here with him. A long time ago. I think you remember.”
The other man’s head inclined in the slightest nod. He raised a hand. Pointed to his shirt pocket. “Cigarettes.”
Nikolai’s gaze fell to his chest. Picked up the outline of the packet beneath the fabric. He nodded. Leonid’s right hand moved slowly, removing the cigarettes and a cheap lighter and placing them carefully on the table while his left hand held the blood-soaked towel to his neck. He glanced at Nikolai. “You want one?” Nikolai shook his head. Leonid shrugged. His fingers worked the packet, pulling a single cigarette free and positioning it between his lips. He picked up the lighter and the flame flared between them. He inhaled and blew out a stream of gray smoke. Spoke around the cigarette. “I remember.”
Nikolai changed course. “What else do you know about me?” Leonid’s eyes rose to his. He gave a shrug. “There were rumors. Customers talk.”
“What about Vari? Did he talk?”
The bar owner pulled the cigarette from his mouth and studied it. Shook his head.
Nikolai pressed on. “Is he still here? In Moscow?”
The hooded look again. “What’s it to you?”
Nikolai trailed his gaze around the shabby former gas station, deliberately, taking his time, letting the other man’s curiosity work for him. Wooden walls, wooden floors. Saturated probably with spilt oil and gasoline. He reached across the table and snapped the towel from the other man’s grasp. The wound below his ear was closing, a crust of dried blood had already formed on the surface of his skin. Nikolai transferred the towel to the hand that held the pistol then reached for the lighter with the other. Struck it and moved it towards the edge of the cloth, his intent unmistakable. His eyes met Leonid’s across the table, measuring his will. The older man snatched a glance at the flame, chewed his lips then finally gave in, tossing both hands in the air. “Okay! Fuck it! What do I owe him?”
Nikolai held the flame steady, unblinking, waiting for more. The older man’s voice was nervous, now. The place was his livelihood. Without it he had nothing. Was nothing.
“I said okay!” Yes, goddamnit! He’s still here! After you disappeared, he did too. A year maybe. Then he came back.” His eyes tracked nervously back to the towel and the flaring lighter beside it. “For fuck’s sake, stop it. Shut it off! Are you fucking crazy?”
Nikolai ignored him. “Keep talking.”
The older man rubbed his jaw anxiously, his eyes fixed on the flame. The words spilled out now. “He still comes in. Once or twice a week. Almost always on Friday. Late. Around midnight.” Tomorrow was Friday. Nikolai glanced outside and noticed the first glow of dawn. No. Today was Friday. His heart had picked up pace. He had found the first thread. He closed down the lighter. Tossed it with the towel back across the table, his eyes holding Leonid’s.
“Where does he live?”
The bar owner regarded him as though he were crazy.
“How the fuck do I know where he lives? You think he invites me home for dinner? He’s a fucking customer, that’s all. I give him liquor; he gives me money. That’s it!” There was a chipped ashtray at the edge of the table. Leonid dragged it to the center, held his cigarette above it and flicked the end of the filter with his thumb.
Nikolai watched. “What does he do now?”
Leonid turned the cigarette in his fingers, examining it. Set it back between his lips, took a long drag then looked aside as he exhaled. “How the fuck should I know?”
Nikolai stared at him, making clear his doubt.
The bar owner slid a glance towards him and grimaced with frustration. “I’m telling you the truth for fuck’s sake! I don’t want to know what he does. It doesn’t concern me. But I’ll tell you something,” he leaned closer, his lips cracked in a cynical sneer. “Whatever it is, it pays a lot better than Putin does.”
Nikolai blinked slowly. “Go on.”
The older man cast a hand contemptuously in the air. “Women. Cars. Money. Clothes. What else is there? Vari Vlasenko is a success now.” He spat the word. “I don’t know why he bothers to come back here any longer. Maybe he has some sick compulsion to return to his roots. You want to know what he does, ask him yourself!”
Nikolai remained silent for a long moment.
“And if I were to do that,” he examined the pistol, “if I were to come back here tomorrow, how could I be certain that between now and then you would remain silent about our meeting and this discussion?”
Leonid picked up the lighter, struck it and stared at the flame. One eye lifted to Nikolai’s. “Would you have done it? Just now? Would you have burnt the place down?”
Nikolai answered without the slightest hesitation. “Of course.”
The former KGB officer closed the lighter and regarded him with a hard stare.
‘Then you have your answer.”
Nikolai walked back to the waking city. Past the old chocolate factory, the place where Gilmanov’s gutted body had been dragged from the river, then further on until he reached the Kamennyy Bridge. He used the time to think, barely aware of his surroundings, until he came to the mid-point of the span and there he stopped to lean on the railing, gazing out to the east across the dawn-gilded surface of the Moskva River to the towering blood red walls of the Kremlin that rose from the Embankment on the other side.
The episode with the lighter seemed to have helped bring the bar owner’s thinking into focus. After that Leonid had been almost cooperative in imparting everything further he claimed to know about Nikolai’s former partner.
He drives some kind of black car. Some American model. If he’s going to show it’s usually by midnight. Always comes by himself. Sits alone. Drinks scotch. Never speaks to anyone. Doesn’t like to be interrupted. Just sits there quietly, staring at the river, then after an hour, maybe two, he pays his tab and leaves.
“And there’s nothing else?” Nikolai had pressed. “Nothing more you know about him? What he does? Where he gets his money?”
Leonid had studied his cigarette again before responding.
‘There are stories,” he shot a glance at Nikolai.” Just as there were stories about what happened to you. I’ve heard he runs businesses out of town. Out of Russia.” The ex KGB officer glanced up from hooded eyes. “The Balkans. Bulgaria.” He strung out the middle syllable.
Nikolai thought about it. “What kind of businesses?”
Leonid drew on his cigarette and pushed a stream of smoke at the ceiling.
“You want to know more, like I said, you ask him yourself. Just remember one thing. The newspapers say that by world standards Moscow is a safe city now, and you know what? It is.” The left side of his face twisted in a sarcastic grin. “Until you start asking too many questions.”
From the Kamennyy Bridge Nikolai turned right into Revolution Avenue, walking through the gardens that lined the western edge of the Kremlin. It was six a.m. now. Already thirty degrees, he guessed, but cooler there on the grass, in the shade of the massive brick walls.
Whether it was the constant draining heat, the lack of sleep or the tension, he wasn’t sure, but he was beginning to feel immensely weary. Deflated. Numbed by the sheer unfathomable complexity of everything.
He noticed tw
o mounted policemen approaching along the concrete path to his left and the weight of Leonid’s pistol in his pocket became suddenly unbearably heavy. Apart from a handful of vagrants and a few tourists intent on making an early start, at this hour the Alexander Gardens were practically deserted. It occurred to Nikolai that in his black jeans and black T-shirt and wrap-around sunglasses he looked like neither a tourist or a vagrant, and therefore probably obvious by default. One of the officers turned towards him, letting his gaze play lazily over Nikolai as the horses sidled closer.
What should he do? Ignore or not?
Ten years ago, when his life was normal, such a question would never have crossed his mind, but this was a different world: at once completely familiar yet totally foreign. For some reason Nikolai recalled a movie he had seen back in his days at university: some oblique, artistic, underground science fiction piece made in the fifties, in black and white, where the hero had woken up to find every other soul in his community taken over by an alien life form. They all still looked the same but now they were different. Suspicious. Wary. And the hero was the only one who could see it because he was the only one who was different to them. Suddenly, overnight, he was alone and everyone else had become a threat and that was how the plot had gone until, in the final scene, the hero had suddenly realized the truth. The others hadn’t changed at all. It was he alone who had become the aliens’ victim. And then, at the very last moment there had been a final twist and the audience was left wondering. Did the aliens ever exist at all. Or had the hero simply gone insane?
He turned aside as the policemen drew nearer, feeling more than seeing the watchful eyes slide over him one last time, hearing the receding hollow clop of hooves on concrete as the horses ambled on.
He ordered pizza and coffee at a food outlet in the mall beneath Revolution Square. The blonde teenage girl who served him wore a candy-striped shirt and a baseball cap. She smiled as she passed him his change and told him to have a nice day. He thanked her. Told her he’d try and wished her the same. He stopped to buy a newspaper from a kiosk, took his order to one of the laminate tables in the center court and wolfed down the pizza while he turned and scanned the pages.
He’d kept the throwaway razor he’d bought at Novosibirsk. A clean-shaven face, he reasoned, suggested discipline and conformity which in turn should make him less conspicuous. When he had finished his food he found the washroom, used the razor and examined his reflection in the mirror. His eyes were ringed with dark translucent circles and his features remained drawn through lack of sleep, but the hours he had spent in the sunlight the day before had at least brought a hint of color to his face.
The face. Would Vari remember the face, he wondered.
After that he moved on from the food court and killed time browsing the stores that lined the underground mall, astonished at the range of goods he found displayed in their windows and on their shelves. It was more than nine years since he had been in a place like this. Back then the free market economy had been just staggering to its feet but now there could be no misconception. It was up and running. Sprinting. Wearing Nike sports shoes, and Benetton colors and leaving the scent of Calvin Klein fragrance fingering in its wake.
He stood in the middle of it all, dazed, as the New Russia swirled around him, until the lights and color and the music reached a crescendo that was suddenly all too much and he felt the cold sweat on his brow and the back of his neck and knew he had to get out.
He found the exit and burst through the double glass doors, leaving the glitter and the noise behind him, through the airlock and back into the gloomy sanctuary of the underpass that carried him to the other side of the square.
By the time he got back to the Gardens it was eleven. A reasonable hour. There were more people now: tourists and students and tour guides and soldiers on leave. He found a quiet shaded corner at the intersection of two carefully tended flower beds, spread himself out on the lawn, unfolded his paper and pretended to read.
20
Twelve hours later Nikolai was back in the shadows of the Krymsky Bridge overpass, rested and alert.
He had slept and that had helped. Dozed on and off for several hours on the grass of the Alexander Gardens then at five, when the Kremlin gates closed and the tourists moved on in search of other sights, he had fallen in with those heading for Arbat Square. Once there he mingled with the crowds browsing the souvenir shops and market stalls that lined the ancient cobbled street.
He found what he was looking for at the river end of Old Arbat, in a stall crouched beneath the shadow of the massive Foreign Ministry. Given its location and the nature of its merchandise, it was a curiously whimsical affair. A canvas tent with green and white striped walls and a bright green roof that rose in a pyramid topped by a large floppy mannequin of a court jester perched cross-legged, leering up at the massive neo-gothic tower. Inside and out the tent’s walls were lined with trestles stacked with military paraphernalia of every kind: fur-lined hats; greatcoats; submariners’ uniforms; petrol cans; tinned rations; compasses; canteens. Nikolai rummaged by himself for a while before the girl who ran the stall decided he needed help. She was bright and skinny with happy eyes and vivid blue hair and a safety pin piercing her nose, and she knew where to go immediately. Dropped to her haunches and rifled through a carton and stood back up and produced them in a flash. Army field glasses. Afghanistan campaign, she grinned enthusiastically, so who knew what they’d seen. Nikolai tried them out on the Foreign Ministry spire; zoomed it in and back out again; looked them over and noticed the shrapnel scar on the casing and what was probably dried blood still ingrained in the embossed patterned grip, and agreed with her. Who knew what they had seen?
He raised them now and scanned the embankment, sweeping backwards until the old gas station came into view then fixing on it, adjusting the focus. There were three vehicles in the parking lot at the front of the building, none of them black. Nikolai checked his watch, lowered the glasses and settled in to wait.
He came at a little after midnight in a sleek, black, two-door sedan. By then the last of the summer twilight had faded so it was the headlights Nikolai saw first. He raised the binoculars and zeroed them in on the vehicle, tracking its advance along the embankment.
The car swung into the lot and eased to a stop nose forward, facing the bridge. Nikolai drew back instinctively, edging further into the shadows around the concrete pylons. The car’s windshield was dark tinted. Impenetrable. He held the glasses evenly. Waiting. Seconds passed then the driver’s door swung open and a squat solid figure stepped out.
Nikolai’s fingers worked the lenses until the driver’s face and upper torso filled the frame. It was Vari, there was no doubt about that. His face and jowls were heavier and his hair and moustache were streaked with gray, but it was him.
Vari pressed the car door closed and thumbed a remote and the indicators blinked, registering the command, then he hesitated, like an animal sniffing the wind, before turning and making his way across the parking lot towards the rundown building. Nikolai followed him through the glasses, taking in the walk. Confident. Assured. The expensive cut of the lightweight gray jacket that hung loose over the dark open-neck shirt. Then the figure disappeared into the alcove that led to the doorway and Nikolai brought the binoculars down and put them aside, measuring his breathing.
He let a half hour pass and then rose. Left the binoculars discarded on the ground and made his way down from the knoll beneath the bridge and across the Embankment towards the riverside bar.
There was no cover now. He was in the open.
Nikolai calculated his approach, skirting the parking lot, moving forward in an arc that brought him to the corner of the building where it joined the timber walkway that ran along its side above the river. When he reached it he moved in close, pressing himself flat against the wall next to the entry and dissolving into the shadows.
Over the next hour a half dozen patrons came and went. Each time the closing door sent a shudd
er rippling through the flimsy timber wall, Nikolai tensed and made ready to move. But each alert proved to be a false alarm, until finally the door slammed again and a familiar lone figure stepped out of the alcove into the night.
If he had been further away it may have been difficult to be certain, but in the cast of light from the glass panel in the doorway Nikolai recognized his former partner immediately. The stocky solidness of the form; the broad, heavy shoulders; the arms that hung loose and wide at his sides. Nikolai’s hand slid under the edge of his soft cotton shirt and closed around the handgrip of the pistol. He eased the weapon free from his belt and waited. Waited until Vari was almost at his car and had taken the remote from his pocket and pointed it then, as he hit the button and the indicators flashed, Nikolai moved. Moved with the silent swiftness of a black leopard, closing the distance between them in three strides, raising the pistol and bringing it to rest on the skin of the back of the other man’s neck so that there could be no mistake. So that he would be able to feel the cold ring of steel and know what it was.
Vari froze. Not so much with fear, or surprise, it occurred to Nikolai, but more with caution. His arms rose slightly from his sides, the remote key in his right hand suspended lightly between thumb and forefinger. When Nikolai spoke his lips were only inches from the other man’s ear.
“It’s been a long time, my friend.”
He read the reaction. The way Vari’s shoulders jerked slightly, up and back. The minute twist of the thick neck as his brain processed the voice. The hesitation and then the release. The slow turn as the apprehension dissolved then – as he swung wider and his face turned into the light – the way his jaw dropped and his thick face unfolded in unconcealed delight.