Arkady had been on Arctic ice. It wasn't as cold as this room. That was the trouble with knowing a woman intimately. When you're no longer welcome, you're banished to the dark. You spin around a sun that turns its back.
'How did you get here?' she asked.
'Stas brought me.'
She frowned. 'Stas? I heard he also took you to the station. I told you he was a provocateur. He's going a little far tonight -'
'Do you remember me?' Arkady asked.
'Of course I do.'
'You don't seem to.'
Irina sighed. Even to himself, he sounded pathetic.
'Of course I remember you. I simply haven't thought about you for years. It's different in the West. I had to survive, get a job. I met a lot of different people. My life changed, I changed.'
'Don't be sorry,' Arkady said. The way she described it, they were two tectonic plates moving in different directions. She was cold, analytical, correct.
Irina said, 'I didn't set back your career too badly?'
'A Russian hiccup.'
'Don't make me feel bad,' she said, though there was no indication that he could.
'No. I had inflated expectations. Maybe my memory was playing tricks.'
'To tell you the truth, I barely recognized you.'
'I look that good?' Arkady asked. A feeble joke.
'I heard you were doing well.'
'Who told you?' Arkady asked.
Irina lit a second cigarette from the first. Why do Russians need to burn a little all the time, he wondered. She stared at him, the smoke shifting, her face shrouded by her hair. He imagined holding her. No, it wasn't imagination; it was memory. He remembered the weight of her cheek against his hand, the softness of her brow.
Irina shrugged. 'Max was a friend and support for years. It's wonderful to see him here again.'
'I can tell he's popular.'
'No one knows why he went back to Moscow. He helped you, so you have no reason to complain.'
'I wish I'd been here,' Arkady said.
If I stood and crossed the room, he thought. If I crossed the room and simply touched her, could a touch be the bridge? No, her face said.
'It's too late now. You never followed me. Every other Russian here emigrated or defected. You stayed.'
'The KGB said -'
'I would have understood if you'd stayed for a year or two, but you stayed forever. You left me alone. I waited in New York; you never came. I went to London to be closer; you never came. When I found out where you were, you were doing exactly what you did before, being a policeman in a police state. Now here you are, finally, but not to see me. You're here to arrest someone.'
Arkady said, 'I couldn't come without -'
Irina asked, 'Did you think that I'd help you? When I think of the time when I did want to see you and you weren't here, thank God Max was. Max and Stas and Rikki – everybody here had the nerve, one way or another, swimming, running or jumping from windows, to escape. You didn't, so you have no right to criticize any of them, or question any of them or even to be with them. As far as I'm concerned, you're dead.'
She took a pack of cigarettes with her and left the kitchen as Tommy danced in, humming a polka, gathering olives and crisps. His legs were drunk. On his head was a German helmet. In the helmet was a hole.
Arkady knew the feeling.
Chapter Twenty-One
* * *
The Bayern-Franconia Bank was a Bavarian palace of limestone blocks under the practical hat of a red tiled roof. The inside was all marble, dark wood and the discreet hum of computers calculating mysterious interest rates and currency exchanges. Led up a lift and down a hall with rococo cornices, Arkady felt intimidated, as if he were trespassing in the church of a foreign rite.
There was something padded and posed about Schiller. He sat rigidly behind his desk, about seventy, with clear blue eyes in a pink face. Silver hair was brushed back from a narrow forehead. A linen handkerchief above the pocket of a dark banker's suit. A man in a windcheater and jeans, with a tan that flowed into blond hair, stood at Schiller's side. His blue eyes and expression of restrained contempt were the same as the older man's.
Schiller scrutinized the letter that Arkady had typed on Federov's stationery. 'You are what a senior Soviet investigator looks like?' he asked.
'I'm afraid so.'
Arkady handed over his red identification book. He hadn't noticed before how much the corners were worn, the bindings torn. At arm's length Schiller scrutinized the picture. Even shaved, Arkady felt he looked as if he had sat on his clothes before dressing. He fought the impulse to pinch a crease in his trousers.
'Peter, will you examine this?' Schiller asked.
'You don't mind?' the other man asked Arkady. It was the sort of courtesy extended to a suspect.
'Please.'
Peter turned on the desk lamp. As he held a page under the light his jacket rode up to show a holster clip and pistol.
'Why didn't Federov come with you?' Schiller asked Arkady.
'He apologizes. He's with a church group this morning, then folk singers from Minsk.'
Peter gave back the ID. 'Do you mind if I call?'
Arkady said, 'Go ahead.'
Peter used the phone while Schiller kept watch on his visitor. Arkady looked up. On the ceiling, fat cherubs with tiny wings were painted in mid-flutter against a plaster sky. Walls of Dresden blue coloured the air a sombre grey. Oil portraits of ancestral bankers hung between engravings of merchant ships. The good burghers looked embalmed, then painted. On a bookshelf were tomes on international law arranged by year and, in a crystal dome, a brass clock with a pendulum that wrapped itself around a pole. He noticed a black and white photograph of rubble and burned walls. A roof had collapsed like a tent on a skirt of bricks. A bathtub was set out on the street as a water trough. People huddled around the tub in the grey uniforms of displaced persons. 'An interesting picture for a bank,' he said.
Schiller said, 'That is the bank. That's this building after the war.'
'Very impressive.'
'Most countries have recovered from the war,' Schiller said drily.
Peter finally got someone on the phone. 'Hello,' he checked the letter. 'Is Federov there? Where could I find him? Could you tell me exactly when? No, no, thank you.' He hung up and nodded to Arkady. 'Some religious group and singers.'
'Federov is a busy man,' Arkady said.
Schiller said, 'Your Federov is an idiot if he thinks the Bayern-Franconia Bank considers itself obligated to investigate a German citizen. And only a cretin could imagine Bayern-Franconia joining any venture with a Soviet partner.'
'That's Federov.' Arkady agreed as if the attaché's antics were legend. 'All I know is that I've been told to clear this up quietly. I understand the bank is under no obligation to help.'
Schiller said, 'We have no inclination to help either.'
'I don't see why you should,' Arkady said. 'I told Federov he should inform the ministries and get it out in the open. Bring in Interpol, let it go through the courts, the more public the better. That's the way to protect a bank's reputation.'
'The bank's name could be protected by simply removing it from the reports on Benz,' Schiller said.
'True,' Arkady agreed. 'But the situation in Moscow being what it is, no one at the consulate is willing to take that responsibility.'
'Could you?' Schiller asked.
'Yes.'
'Grandfather, do you want my advice?' Peter asked.
'Of course,' Schiller said.
'Ask him how much he wants to leave the bank alone. Five thousand Deutschmarks? If he splits with Federov, ten thousand? This whole story about TransKom, Benz and Bayern-Franconia – they've cooked it up. There are no reports, there's no connection. I look at him and I know he's lying. I smell it. This is a protection racket. I suggest that we call other banks and ask whether they have been approached by Federov and Renko, whether they have heard a story about joint ventures and investigations.
You should call the consul general right now, make an official protest, and then call a lawyer. What do you think of that?'
The banker's mouth had almost no lips at all, not enough to hold a smile. There was nothing old or weak about the eyes, though. They weighed Arkady as if he were small change.
'I agree,' Schiller said. 'You have probably never seen a less genuine-looking article in your life. On the other hand, Peter, you've never met a Soviet banker. It's true that the bank has no knowledge of or connection with any claims made by the individual whom the Soviet consulate has described. Certainly we feel under no obligation to give the consulate any assistance. However, if we've learned anything from history it is that mud makes good paint. Whether we deserve it or not, it never washes off entirely.'
He fell silent, as if he had left the room for a moment. Then he gathered himself and looked at Arkady. 'The bank will not participate in any enquiry, but purely as a courtesy to us my grandson Peter has volunteered to assist you, as long as this affair is kept absolutely quiet.'
The wires of outrage working in Peter's face showed less than wholehearted enthusiasm, Arkady thought.
'On an informal basis,' Peter said.
'How can you help?' Arkady asked.
Peter produced a much nicer ID book than Arkady's. Authentic leather, gold tooling, with a colour photo in green jacket and cap of Lieutenant Schiller, Peter Christian, Münchner Polizei. This was more of a windfall than Arkady wanted. This was a trap of his own devising, though, because if he didn't accept the offer, the Germans would call the consulate again and again until they got through to Federov.
'I'd be honoured,' Arkady said.
Peter Schiller's police car was a green-and-white BMW, radio and phone under the dash, blue flasher on the back seat. He wore a seat belt and always used the indicator, yielding to bikers who left their lane, passing pedestrians massed in docile formations to wait for walk signs at corners where there was no cross-traffic in sight. He looked a little too big for the car. He also looked as if he would be happy to run down anyone who crossed against the light.
'I bet your radio and phone work,' Arkady said.
'Of course they do.'
Irrationally, Arkady yearned for Jaak's homicidal driving and for the suicidal dashes of Moscow pedestrians. Peter looked as if he kept in shape by lifting small oxen.
His windcheater was yellow. Arkady noticed that yellow was the most popular colour worn in Munich. A gold-mustard-diarrhea yellow.
'Your grandfather speaks Russian well.'
'He learned it on the Eastern Front. He was a prisoner of war.'
'Your Russian is good, too.'
'I think all police should speak it,' Peter said.
They headed south, towards the two bonneted spires of the Marienkirche in the centre of the city. Peter shifted down a gear to let a tram go by that was as well maintained as a toy. You had to work to keep Peter Schiller's kind of tan, Arkady thought. Ski in the winter-time, swim in the summer.
'Your grandfather said you'd volunteered. Volunteer something,' he said.
Peter gave him a couple of level looks before responding. 'Boris Benz has no criminal record. In fact, the only thing we have is that according to the Bureau of Vehicle Registration, Benz has blond hair, blue eyes, was born in 1955 in Potsdam, outside Berlin, and does not need glasses.'
'Married?'
'To a Margarita Stein, a Soviet Jew. Her records are where? Moscow, Tel Aviv – who knows?'
'That's a start. Tax or employment records? Service or medical records?'
'Potsdam is in the DDR. Was in the DDR. Understand, we're all one Germany now, but many East German records have not been transferred to Bonn yet.'
'What about telephone calls?'
'Tsk, tsk. Without a court order, telephone records are protected by law. We have laws here.'
'I understand. You also have customs control. Did you check them?'
'Benz could be home, he could be anywhere in Western Europe. Since the EEC, there isn't any real passport control any more.'
'What kind of car does he drive?' Arkady asked.
Peter smiled, getting into the rhythm of the game. 'A white Porsche 911 is registered in his name.'
'Numberplate?'
'I don't think I'm allowed to share any more information.'
'What information? Call Potsdam and order his records from there.'
'For a private matter? That's absolutely against the law.'
At an obelisk cars merged and separated with none of the nebular fury of a Moscow roundabout. There, particularly in the winter, lorries and cars thundered into roundabouts with all the discipline of yaks. Here drivers, cyclists and walkers seemed to have received their orders for the day. It was like a rest home the size of a city. Peter smiled like a man who could play all day.
'Many murders here?' Arkady asked.
'Munich?'
'Yes.'
'Beer murders.'
'Beer?'
'Oktoberfest, Fasching. Drunks. Not real murders.'
'Not like vodka murders?'
'You know what they say about crime in Germany?' Peter asked.
'What do they say about crime in Germany?'
'It's against the law,' Peter said.
Arkady recognized the trees of the Botanischer Garten. As soon as the BMW stopped at a light, he got out and reached back to stuff a piece of paper into Peter's jacket. 'That's a Munich fax number. Find out who it belongs to, if that's not against the law. On the other side is a phone number. You can call me there at five.'
'Your number at the consulate?'
'I won't be there. It's a private number.' My private minute at the booth, Arkady thought.
'Renko!' Peter shouted as Arkady got to the pavement. 'Stay away from the bank.'
Arkady kept walking.
'Renko!' Peter added another warning. 'Tell Federov what I said.
Armed with soap and string, Arkady returned to the pension, washed his clothes and hung them up to dry. From the floor below came the sweet smell of spiced lamb. He wasn't hungry. Such lethargy came over him that he could barely move. He stood by the window looking down the street and towards the station yard, at the trains sluggishly moving in and out. The rails were as silvery as snail tracks, perhaps fifty parallel lines and as many points shunting an engine from this line to that. How easily, without noticing, a man finds himself parallel to the life he meant to have, then arrives, years later, to find the band gone, flowers dead, love past. He should be ancient, bent and bearded, disembarking with a cane, instead of merely being too late.
He dropped on to his bed, and at once fell into a black sleep. He dreamed he was in a locomotive. He was the engineer, stripped to the waist and sitting at a cockpit of gauges and controls. Blue sky sped by the window. A woman's hand rested lightly on his shoulder. He didn't look back for fear that she might not be there. They were running along the seashore. Somehow, without tracks, the engine ploughed through the beach. Faraway waves reflected rows of sunlight, nearer waves curled lazily over each other and collapsed on the sand; perfect gulls plunged into the water. Was it her hand or the memory of her hand? He was happy not to look and keep the train moving by sheer will if necessary. But the wheels ground to a stop. The sun was sinking. Waves mounted in towering black walls that carried along dachas, cars, militiamen, generals, Chinese lanterns and birthday cakes.
In panic, Arkady opened his eyes. He was in bed in the dark. He looked at his watch. Ten p.m. He had slept ten hours, right through the call to the booth from Peter Schiller – if he had ever called.
Someone was knocking at the door. Getting up, he brushed aside the drying shirts and trousers hanging in his way.
He didn't recognize the visitor, a heavy-set American with stringy hair and a tentative smile.
'I'm Tommy, remember? You came to a party at my place last night.'
'The man in the helmet, yes. How did you know where to find me?'
'Stas. I bugged him until he told me
; then I just knocked on every door here until I found you. Can we talk?'
Arkady let him in and searched for a shirt and cigarettes.
Tommy wore a corduroy jacket stressed at the buttons. He bounced on his toes and his hands hung in soft fists. 'I told you last night that I was a student of World War II. "The Great Patriotic War" to you. Your father was one of the outstanding generals on the Soviet side. Naturally I'd like to talk some more about him with you.'
'I don't think we talked about him at all.' Arkady sat down to pull on socks.
'That's what I mean. The truth is, I'm writing a book about the war from the Soviet side. I don't have to tell you about the sacrifices the Soviet people made. Anyway, that's one reason I work at Radio Liberty – for the information. When someone interesting comes through I interview them. I heard you might be leaving Munich pretty soon, so I came over.'
Arkady searched for his shoes. He wasn't following Tommy closely. 'You interview them for the station?'
'No, just for me, for the book. I'm interested in more than military tactics; I'm also interested in the clash of personalities. I was hoping you could give me some insight into your father.'
Out of the window, the station yard was a field of signal lights. Arkady saw torch beams running around freight cars and heard the heavy grip of couplings engaging. 'Who told you I was leaving soon?' he asked.
'People said.'
'Who?'
Tommy rose on his toes. 'Max.'
'Max Albov. You know him well?'
'Max was head of the Russian section. I'm in the Red Archives. We worked together for years.'
'The Red Archives?'
'The greatest library of Soviet studies in the West. It's at Radio Liberty.'
'You were friends with Max.'
'I'd like to think we're still friends.' Tommy held up a tape recorder. 'Anyway, what I wanted to cover to begin with was your father's decision, despite being overrun, to stay behind the German lines and wage guerrilla warfare.'
Arkady asked, 'Do you know Boris Benz?'
Tommy leaned backwards and said, 'We met once.'
'How?'
'Right before Max went to Moscow. Of course no one knew he was going. He was with Benz.'
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