The words had barely left Arkady’s mouth when the horizon rose. The steering wheel of the ZIL twisted over ruts as hard as cement and the car came to a precipitous stop looking down at the spectacle of a strip mine and giant machinery at work.
“Gold? Coal?” Arkady asked.
“Amber,” said Maxim.
It didn’t take a large crew to operate a strip mine. One man to control a front-end loader, another in a bulldozer that pushed the earth this way and that. The maestro was a man on foot aiming a high-pressure hose with the aid of a tiller driven into the ground. Loose soil was hunchbacked; black slag rose in peaks. Meanwhile, an earthmover maintained a pattern of roads that descended six levels from top to bottom. Between the grinding of engines and jet of water, a meteor could have hit the mine and no one would have noticed.
Maxim said, “Ninety percent of the world’s amber comes from Kaliningrad. Control Kaliningrad and you control the world’s production of amber. That’s worth some degree of fuss.”
“Who controls it?”
“Grisha Grigorenko did, until somebody shot him. Who knows, maybe there’s a new war? Or maybe a man with your talents can start one.”
22
Drawn in the first panel of the first page was and the words blah blah. In the second panel, and . In the third, an insect, , and . In the fourth, and . In the first panel of the second page was and . In the second panel, , and . In the third panel, , and . In the fourth, and . In the first panel of the third page was , and . In the second panel, and . In the third panel, , and . In the fourth panel, , , , and . In the first panel of the fourth page was . In the second panel, and . In the third panel, , and in the fourth, . In the first panel of the fifth page, , in the second panel, , in the third, and , and in the fourth, . And on and on in that inscrutable vein—, , , , , —until the name Natalya Goncharova and a drawing of a woman wearing a pearl necklace, . Even as a hasty sketch it was clear she was meant to be strong willed and beautiful.
She was followed by blank pages all the way to the notebook’s back inside cover, which had five identical sketches of a cat, the word Ercolo, and a short list of numbers.
60 cm
56.5 cm
1990 g
Zhenya found the challenge irresistible.
Lotte shook her head. “The sample is too small. I studied linguistics at the university. We can’t possibly translate this with so few symbols, not in a million years.”
“Don’t think of it as a translation, think of it as a game. We have to win a game. Don’t go by grammar, go by your gut.”
“What makes you think that we can do that?”
“Because I’m a gambler. What are the first symbols?”
“An equals sign, ‘blah blah,’ and what could be a cannon or a man in a top hat with a colon or dots and a line under it.”
“That’s a start. If we get a couple of symbols we can triangulate and build a context. Like building a ladder rung by rung.”
“I don’t think that’s possible.”
“Sure it is. Like in the rest of the second panel there’s an ear or half a heart.”
“Third?”
“Some kind of bug and two rings interlocked, which could signify agreement, marriage or handcuffs.”
“Fourth?”
“A fish—”
“Or an early Christian symbol of a fish—”
“Or tongs, a rocket or a plane,” said Zhenya.
“Two B?”
“An address, a room, ‘To be or not to be.’ ”
“First panel of the second page?”
“A box with a stick through it, maybe carrying something hot, or high explosives.”
“Or a box kite?” Lotte said.
“Maybe. Next, a star or a starfish or a Western sheriff’s badge.”
“Okay.”
“The bug; sunrise, sunset, Humpty Dumpty, a sleepy eye, a hedgehog? And a triangle, pylon or nose. In the third panel, the man in the top hat with colon again but without a line beneath, a question mark and crossed swords. In the fourth, interlocked rings and the fish symbol again.”
“But this time under a wave,” Lotte said.
“Right. Then on the third page, the crescent moon or slice of apple or a fingernail. Then arrow down and bug. In the second panel, the ear and equals sign. The third panel, black and white figs or teardrops, and RR for ‘railroad.’ In the fourth, star followed by arrow down, and a fence, RR and capital L. On the fourth page, building blocks, dollar sign and the bug. See, it helps to get a rhythm going.” Zhenya tried to be breezy.
“Really?”
“In the third panel, the box kite. In the fourth, the symbol for radioactivity. Then on the next page, the man in a top hat with colon—”
“With no line under it.”
“With no line. And a spiral, whirlpool or hypnosis. And the third symbol is the ear again, the fourth, the box with a line through it, and an oval shape with an X inside. Then it goes on and on: ending in a crescent moon, fence, wave, arrow pointing down with a loop at the top, the man in the top hat with a line, and the bug, until we get to the drawing of a woman and her name, Natalya Goncharova, the greatest tramp in Russian history, tsarinas excluded, of course.”
“We never hear her side of the story,” Lotte said.
“She marries Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, sleeps around and gets him killed in a duel. What that has to do with the Mafia beats me. So, what do you think?”
“Maybe we’re not as smart as we think we are. This isn’t a secret code, not even language, it’s just pictures. The person who wrote it must have had an incredible memory. It’s probably one percent of what was actually said.”
Zhenya sank back in his chair. “So you think it’s impossible.”
“I didn’t say that. These are notes of a meeting, right? A colon tells you who is speaking. Six symbols—Top Hat with a Line, Top Hat Without, Box Kite, Blocks, Crescent Moon and Star—have colons. These are the participants and this is their conversation.”
“Then why did the guy taking notes divide the pages into panels?”
“Why does a chessboard have sixty-four squares? To keep the pieces from running in all directions. The symbols are personal cues. We’ll see where they run.”
Now that Zhenya thought about it there were similarities to chess. Its symbols were as definite as pieces—only a player had to figure out what moves each symbol made, and there was a gun at the endgame.
• • •
Maxim knew a restaurant that served its guests in a plastic version of the Amber Room, the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”
The room was paneled with artificial amber and gold into the likenesses of cherubs and Peter the Great. Waitresses were costumed à la Marie Antoinette, with gold dust sprinkled in their hair and a beauty spot carefully placed on their décolletage. In a gilded cage in the center of the room, a mechanical nightingale opened its beak and spewed birdsong.
“This almost makes up for my wet feet,” Maxim said. “Maybe a little fois gras and a duck à l’orange will help.”
“And maybe you can tell me why children would be chased by a van with a pig.”
“Amber.”
“You’re not serious.”
“Very. When the Teutonic knights ruled here they chopped off the hands of anyone who poached amber. The van was probably just trying to scare off the kids.”
“It felt like more than that. I’m fairly sensitive to whatever is chasing me.”
“In your profession I suppose that’s a gift. Are you treating? I find I’m more talkative when I’m well fed and dry.”
“Stuff yourself.”
“Excellent. Here’s our waitress.”
Maxim ordered the feast he had promised himself. Arkady had vodka, black bread and butter.
“Was it?” he asked.
“What?”
“The Eighth Wonder of the World?”
“I should think so. Imagine walls of glowing amber, gold leaf, Venetian mirrors and mosaics of se
miprecious stones. People said that when the sun poured in the windows of the palace, the Amber Room appeared to burst into flame. It was the favorite room of Catherine the Great. Unfortunately, it was also the favorite war prize of the Nazis. It was dismantled and hidden in a bunker, in a well, in the Black Forest, or taken away in an icebreaker, or maybe in a submarine. Imagine the Amber Room resting in the dark on the bottom of the sea. Like a seed.”
Watching Maxim shovel food around his plate reminded Arkady of the earthmovers at the strip mine. Maxim, in turn, said he found it painful to watch Arkady eat so little.
“There are two kinds of poets. The starving poet and the randy, dissolute poet. I prefer the latter.” He summoned the sommelier.
“Like a seed,” Arkady said. “What did you mean by that?”
“A commonplace metaphor. What distinguishes amber from diamonds, sapphires and rubies is that amber was alive. Fifty million years ago, it was resin dripping from a pine tree, capturing a bee here, a sow bug there. Think of a diamond with a mosquito in the center. Doesn’t exist. That’s why, when other Mafias tried to muscle in on the amber trade, Grisha pushed back.”
“Out of scientific interest?”
“Not quite. There was a push and pull called the Amber Wars.”
“That sounds quaint.”
“Quite bloody, actually. Would you like a charlotte russe? The custards here are very good.”
“Is the Amber War over?”
“We’ll have the petits fours and the custards,” Maxim told the waitress, and sighed when she curtsied and her bosom nearly tumbled free. He cocked an eye on Arkady. “What is the war to you? I thought you were just examining the circumstances of Tatiana Petrovna’s death.”
“Her death gets stranger and stranger and is as involved with Kaliningrad as it is with Moscow.”
“In what way?”
“The interpreter’s notebook.”
“Which is being decoded by experts even as we speak?”
“I would assume so.”
“Why do I have the feeling that great heaping piles of horseshit are being stacked around me?”
“Because you’re a poet.”
• • •
Zhenya and Lotte were learning the depth of the Russian language. Each interpretation spawned two more, which only multiplied again. They were following streams of words as imagined by someone else’s lifetime of experience, anything that would relate to any other symbol or all the unknowns of the interpreter’s background: a scuffed knee, a ripe fig, a bedtime story.
They were looking for mnemonic cues, one man’s message to himself with a world of symbols and words to choose from. God forbid, the words could have come from another language, and a professional interpreter spoke at least five.
Even a simple arrow could be a child’s top, a fallen tree, “exit” or “this way to Estonia.” Or a missile. Each interpretation turned the text upside down.
“You should go home,” Zhenya told Lotte.
“I’m not going to leave when we’re halfway done.”
“I wish we were. I think we’ve gone in reverse.” Which was true, he thought. They had learned nothing and they were exhausted. “Your family must be worried.”
“It’s Tuesday.”
“So?”
“On Tuesdays my father meets his lover, an oboist in the symphony, and my mother meets her lover, a baritone in the chorus. They live six-day weeks. They won’t notice I’m gone for another twenty-four hours.”
“What about your grandfather?”
“He has a new model. He won’t notice anything either.”
Zhenya’s cell phone rang. He made the “quiet” sign to Lotte before answering with a hypercasual “Hello.”
“This is Arkady. Are you at the apartment?”
“No.”
“Are you alone?”
Arkady had to repeat the question because Maxim’s ZIL was outside Kaliningrad and cell coverage was spotty.
“Yes.”
“Have you still got the notebook of Tatiana Petrovna?”
“No.” Three lies in a row. A good start, Zhenya thought. If cell phone coverage was patchy, that was fine with him. “Have you thought about our deal?”
“How far have you gotten on the translation?” Arkady asked.
“We’re working on it.”
A pause. “We?”
“My friend Lotte.”
“A girlfriend?”
“A friend.”
There were a number of reasons for Arkady to be furious. The girl’s safety for a start.
“If she’s a friend, send her home. Any sign of Anya?”
“No.”
“What about Alexi Grigorenko?”
The reception broke up again.
Arkady said, “You know the safe you took Tatiana’s notebook from? Is my gun still there?”
“I can’t hear you.”
“The ammunition is in the bookcase . . .”
“Yes?”
“Can you hear me now?”
“Where?”
But the connection was gone.
Lotte had pressed her ear close to the phone. When coverage broke up completely, she asked, “What deal?”
“The army. I needed his permission for early enlistment.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
“Do you want to go home now?”
“Let’s finish the puzzle.”
• • •
The road back into the city took Maxim and Arkady by housing blocks as stained as pissoirs and storefronts that were little more than shipping containers decorated with posters. Maxim decided to show off what he called the Ninth Wonder of the World, the ugliest building of the Soviet era.
“A Frankenstein’s monster of a building. A zombie.”
“You sound proud.”
“I don’t mean merely the ugliest building west of the Urals. I mean from here to the Pacific. From the silver herring of the Baltic Sea to the red salmon of Kamchatka.”
“An ambitious scope.”
“I speak as a Koenig, a native son.”
“How is the cell coverage at the ugliest building?”
“As a matter of fact, excellent.”
Streetlamps gave Maxim’s ZIL such a translucent quality that it seemed to float through the city. Heads turned from the cheap goods offered at sidewalk stalls and clothing racks to follow the one-car procession.
Arkady needed space to phone Victor, drunk or not, and send him around to the apartment. There was a new tone to the boy’s voice. Not alarm, but definitely anxiety.
“During the war, the British bombed the city of Koenigsberg to dust. Their special target was Koenigsberg Castle, which stood on a hill overlooking the city. When the war was over there was no castle anymore, and Stalin rebuilt where the castle had stood.”
Maxim rolled across a dark lot and drew the car to a stop.
At first, Arkady did not see anything odd. It took time to see that half the night sky was blocked out.
“The last Communist Party headquarters,” Maxim said. “Koenigs call it the Monster.”
Dogs barked hysterically on the other side of a chain-link fence, waiting for Maxim or Arkady to do something as foolish as offer a finger through the links. Arkady suspected that they were fed infrequently. Bottles and trash had accumulated where winds had blown them.
Arkady craned his neck to take in the size of the Monster. Twenty stories high, the building loomed over him.
“It’s the largest building in the city and it’s never been used,” Maxim said. “Not for a day.”
Most windows were broken out. The Monster had four legs, and more than anything it put Arkady in mind of a headless elephant.
“What is the problem?”
“History. Before they even finished the top of the building, the bottom started to flood from old tunnels underneath the castle. Now the entire building is sinking and too expensive to demolish. The Party borrowed from the banks and would have had to
pay them back. They’re all sinking together. It’s wonderful.”
“They can’t go on forever.”
“Why not? When Putin visited, they merely painted the building blue and pretended it wasn’t here. It was the world’s greatest mass hallucination.”
At least the cell phone coverage was good. Maxim made himself scarce while Arkady called Victor, who assumed a righteous tone.
“Where the devil are you?”
“Kaliningrad.”
“I thought you were only going to be there overnight.”
“I thought so too. Things got complicated.”
“That will be on your tombstone, ‘Things Got Complicated.’ ”
“Have you seen Alexi Grigorenko?”
“As a matter of fact, I was doing surveillance at the Den when Alexi came in. He had a hell of a shiner.”
“We had an encounter at the marina.”
“So he didn’t run into a door. Abdul gave him the horse laugh.”
“Abdul?”
“That snake wanted the manager to play his video in the restaurant. It’s an insult to every Russian soldier who served in Chechnya. I couldn’t abide it.”
Arkady watched Maxim buff the fender of the ZIL.
“What did you do?”
“I told Abdul I would stuff my gun down his pants and blow his balls off.”
“See, this is why I can’t leave you alone.”
“Well, you’d better hurry back. Anya and Alexi are getting very close.”
“Anya’s doing research.”
“Is that what you call it?” Victor asked. “The sooner you’re back here, the better. Just look out for the so-called poet Maxim Dal. He’s a slippery character.”
“I’m doing my best.”
Arkady heard a whistling sound from on high and looked up in time to see a windowpane sail through the air and explode on impact. A monster at play, he thought.
• • •
Zhenya said, “According to Arkady, there’s an old navy saying, ‘First speed, then direction.’ ”
“Meaning what?” asked Lotte.
“Going anywhere is better than going nowhere.”
They pitched in words together, listening for a more solid echo, writing them down on index cards by speaker as they went.
Man in the Top Hat with Line: ear, bug in a circle, two rings, fish and 2B.
Tatiana Page 14