Arkady didn't have a gun and Peter had a pistol, a Walther from the glimpse he'd had at the bank. He was pretty sure that Peter Christian Schiller wouldn't shoot, at least not until he'd ordered Arkady away from the BMW because a bullet could go right through soft tissue and spread glass and gore all over the interior of his handsome car. If Peter wanted to hit him, Arkady didn't know whether he would resist. At this point what would a little blood or loose teeth matter? He straightened up and turned around.
Peter's yellow jacket was whipping around him in a breeze that came off the field. He held his pistol low. 'Then who should show up but your friend in the Trabi. I thought, here's a poor bastard from East Germany. No one drives a Trabi any more if they can avoid it. Sometimes you see them near the old border, but not here.
Ten minutes later he comes out of the pension with you. It made more sense that you had an Ossie as an accomplice.'
'An "Ossie"?'
'East German. He picks the victim, you show up with a phoney letter from the consulate. I called in the numberplate, but the car belongs to a Thomas Hall, American national, Munich resident. Why would an American drive a Trabi?'
'He says it's an investment. You followed us?'
'It wasn't difficult. Nothing else was as slow.'
'So, what are you going to do?' Arkady asked.
The wonderful thing about a German face was that the agony of thought played so clearly on it. Even in the dim light from the road, Peter looked torn by fury on the one side and by curiosity on the other.
'You're a good friend of Hall's?'
'I never met Tommy before last night. I was surprised to see him tonight.'
'You and Hall went to a sex club together. That sounds friendly.'
'Tommy said he'd seen Benz there. The women at the club said we should look here.'
'You never talked to Hall before last night?'
'No.'
'You never communicated with him before last night?'
'No. What are you getting at?' Arkady asked.
'Renko, this morning you gave me a fax number to find. I did. The machine belongs to Radio Liberty. It's in the office of Thomas Hall.'
There were surprises left in life after all, Arkady thought. Here he had spent the evening with an apparent innocent, only to discover his own stupidity. Why hadn't he checked the Liberty numbers himself? How many other pieces of information had he brushed off his lap?
'Do you think you can catch up with Tommy?' Arkady asked.
Peter wavered, and Arkady watched with interest to see which way he would go. The German stared back so intently that Arkady thought of the old stage routine of one man pretending to mirror the other.
Finally Peter said, 'Right now, the only thing I'm certain of is that I can catch a Trabi.'
They returned by the same route Tommy had taken but at a different speed. Peter wound the BMW up to two hundred kilometres, as if he were driving on a familiar racetrack in the dark. He kept glancing at Arkady, who wished he would keep his eyes on the road.
'You never mentioned Radio Liberty at the bank,' Peter said.
'I didn't know Liberty was involved. It may not be.'
'We don't need a Russian civil war here. We'd rather you all went home and killed yourselves there.'
'That's a possibility.'
'If Liberty's involved, Americans are involved.'
'I hope not.'
'You've never worked with Americans?'
'You've worked with Americans,' Arkady assumed from Peter's tone.
'I trained in Texas.'
'As a cowboy?'
'For the air force. Jet fighters.'
On a bend, a sign shot by. Arkady thought there was nothing like high speed to make a man appreciate the camber of a road. 'For the German air force?'
'Some of us train there. There's less to hit if we crash.'
'That makes sense.'
'Are you KGB?'
'No. Did Federov say I was?'
Peter produced a sardonic laugh. 'Federov swore you weren't KGB. God forbid. But if you aren't, why are you interested in Radio Liberty?'
'Tommy sent a fax to Moscow.'
'Saying?' Peter demanded.
' "Where is Red Square?" '
They drove in silence until a pink spot emerged ahead.
'We have to talk to Tommy,' Arkady said. He held up a cigarette. 'Do you mind?'
'Roll down the window.'
Air whistled in and with it came an acrid smell that made his throat close.
Peter said, 'Someone's burning plastic.'
'And tyres.'
The pink spot grew, vanished and reappeared, larger and deeper in colour. It disappeared, then came into sight again at the abutment of a cross-ramp, a torch at the base of thick, roiling smoke that leaned away from the wind. Closer, the torch was a meteor furiously trying to burrow its way into the earth.
'Trabi,' Peter said as they went by.
They walked back from the downwind side, hands covering their noses and mouths. The Trabant was a small car, now compacted even more by its impact with the base of the ramp. Yet the flames were enormous, red scalloped with chemical blue and green, and the smoke was black as oil. The Trabi didn't just burn from the inside; it was all on fire at once, plastic walls, hood and roof melting as they burned so that flames rained on to the seats. The tyres burned as spectral rings.
They circled the wreck as best they could in case Tommy had crawled free.
Arkady said, 'I've seen this kind of fire before. If he isn't out now, he's dead.'
Peter retreated. Arkady tried to get closer, crawling on all fours below the smoke. The heat was too intense, a breath that made his jacket steam.
When the wind shifted he saw in the car the kind of portrait a scissors artist cuts out of black paper. It was burning, too.
Peter returned in the BMW, backing up past the fire and searching the road with his spotlight until he found skid marks. He stopped, got out and set his blue flasher on the roof. He was probably a good policeman, Arkady thought.
Too late for Tommy. In violet hues, a plastic door peeled away. As the plastic roof curled back, a stronger updraft made flames swirl like a passionate flower folding and unfolding.
Chapter Twenty-Two
* * *
'You know, in the old days we would have gassed you, tied you up and shipped you home in a crate. We don't do things that way any more. Now that our relations with the Germans have improved, we don't need to,' Vice-consul Platonov said.
'No?' Arkady asked.
'The Germans do it for us. First I remove you from these premises.' Platonov pulled a shirt off the line strung across the room, surveyed a map of Munich spread on the table, the roll and juice by the sink, and then deposited the shirt in Federov's hands. 'Renko, I know it feels like home to you, but since the consulate rents this room, we can do what we want. Right now I want to report you as a vagrant, which is what you are because I have your passport and without it you can't register anywhere else.'
Federov unzipped Arkady's holdall into a yawning mouth, tossed in the shirt and said, 'Germans deport foreign vagrants, especially Russian vagrants.'
'It's a matter of economics,' Platonov said. 'It's bad enough, they think, taking care of East Germans.'
'If you're thinking about political asylum, forget it.' Federov emptied the chest of drawers and bustled around the room like the energetic assistant he was. 'That's out of date. No one wants defectors from a democratic Soviet Union.'
Arkady hadn't seen the vice-consul since his first welcome to Munich, but Platonov had not forgotten him. 'What did I tell you? See the museums, buy some gifts. You could have made a year's salary just buying here and selling when you got back. I warned you that you had no official status, and not to contact German police. So what did you do? You not only went right to the Germans, but you also involved the consulate.'
'Have you been to a fire?' Federov sniffed a jacket.
Arkady had washed the clothes he had
worn the night before, and had showered too, but he doubted that his hair or his jacket would ever be completely free of smoke.
Platonov said, 'Renko, twice a week I have tea with Bavarian industrialists and bankers to convince them that we are civilized people they can do business with and safely lend millions of Deutschmarks to. Then you show up and start twisting arms and demanding protection money. Federov tells me he had a difficult time convincing a lieutenant of the Polizei that he was not part of a conspiracy to defraud German banks.'
'How would you like to be visited by the Gestapo?' Federov asked. He poured wallet, purse, toothbrush and toothpaste into the bag. The locker key and Lufthansa ticket he confiscated and put in his pocket.
'Did he mention any bank in particular?' Arkady asked.
'No.' Federov looked into the refrigerator and found it empty.
'Did the Germans make an official protest?'
'No.' Federov folded up the map and threw it into the bag.
'Have you heard from the police since?'
'No.'
Not even since the car accident? That was interesting, Arkady thought. 'I'll need my aeroplane ticket,' he said.
'Actually, you won't.' Platonov dropped an Aeroflot ticket on the table. 'We're sending you home today. Federov will put you on the plane.'
'My visa is good for another week,' Arkady said.
'Consider your visa cancelled.'
'I'd need new orders from the Prosecutor's Office. Until then I can't leave.'
'Prosecutor Rodionov is a hard man to reach. I have to ask myself why he sent an investigator on a tourist visa, giving you no real authority. The whole affair is too odd.' Platonov wandered to the window and looked out towards the station yard. Over the vice-consul's shoulder, Arkady saw trains slide across the tracks, morning commuters poised on the steps. Platonov shook his head in admiration. 'Now there's efficiency.'
'I'm not going,' Arkady said.
'You have no choice. Either we put you on the plane or the Germans will. Think how that would look on your record. I'm giving you the easy way out,' Platonov said.
'All because I'm evicted?'
'As simple as that,' Platonov said, 'and absolutely legal. I really have to appreciate good diplomatic relations.'
'I've never been evicted before,' Arkady said. Arrested and exiled, but never simply evicted. Life was getting subtle, he thought.
'It's the coming thing.' Federov swept the rest of the washing off the line and into the holdall.
The door opened. Standing in the hall was a black dog that Arkady assumed was part of the eviction process; the animal had eyes as dark as agate and, by its size and density of hair, looked crossbred from a bear. It walked in confidently and regarded the three men with equal suspicion.
Unequal footsteps followed from the hall and Stas looked in. 'Going somewhere?' he asked Arkady.
'Being sent.'
Stas entered, ignoring Platonov and Federov, though Arkady was sure he knew who they were; he had studied Soviet apparatchiks all his life, and a man who studies worms all his life recognizes worms. Federov started to drop the bundle in his arms, but when the dog turned he held on to the clothes.
'I sent Tommy around last night. Did you see him?' Stas asked Arkady.
'I'm sorry about Tommy.'
'You heard about the accident?'
'I saw it,' Arkady said.
'I want to know what happened.'
'So do I,' Arkady said.
Stas's eyes shone a little more than usual. When he glanced at Platonov and the burdened Federov, the dog followed suit. He looked at the open holdall again. 'You can't leave,' he said as if it were a decision.
Platonov spoke up. 'It's German law. Since Renko has no place to stay, the consulate is expediting his return home.'
'Stay with me,' Stas told Arkady.
'It's not that simple,' Platonov said. 'Invitations to Soviet citizens have to be submitted in writing and approved in advance. His visa has been cancelled and he already has his new ticket to Moscow, so it's impossible.'
Stas asked Arkady, 'Can you go now?'
Arkady removed his locker key and Lufthansa ticket from Federov and said, 'Actually, I'm almost packed.'
Stas joined the traffic milling around the centre of town. Though it was a grey summer day, the windows were down because the dog's breath condensed on the glass. The animal filled the rear seat of the car, and Arkady had the feeling that he would be allowed in front with his bag only as long as he moved slowly. When he had left, Platonov and Federov had looked like a pair of pallbearers whose corpse was walking out of the door.
'Thanks.'
'I did have some questions,' Stas said. 'Tommy was a silly man and he drove a stupid car. The Trabi wouldn't go more than seventy-five kilometres per hour and never should have been on a motorway, but I don't understand how he could lose control and hit an abutment so hard.'
'I don't either,' Arkady said. 'I doubt there's enough left of the car to tell the police anything. It burned down to an engine block and axle.'
'It was probably that idiotic heater. A paraffin heater on a car floor? A deathtrap.'
'Tommy didn't suffer long. If the crash didn't kill him, the smoke did. We see the flames, but they die of fumes first.'
'You've seen this kind of thing before?'
'I saw a man in Moscow die in a car fire. It just took a little longer because it was a better car.'
Thinking about Rudy made Arkady remember Polina. Also Jaak. He thought that if he got back to Moscow alive he would be a less critical person, more appreciative of friendship and deathly cautious of all cars and fires. Stas, on the other hand, drove recklessly. At least he watched the road, content to let the dog keep watch on Arkady.
'Did Tommy take you to Red Square?'
'You know about that place?'
'Renko, there are not many reasons to be on that road at that time of night. Poor Tommy. A case of fatal Russophilia.'
'Then we went to a parking lot, sort of a mobile brothel.'
'A wonderful place if you're looking for a wasting disease. German law says the women are checked for AIDS every three months, which means they're more scientific about the beer they drink than the women they sleep with. Anyway, trying to have sex in a Jeep can give you a hunchback and I have enough disabilities as it is. I thought the two of you were going to talk about famous battles of the Great Patriotic War.'
'We did for a little while.'
'Americans always want to talk about the war,' Stas said.
'Do you know Boris Benz?'
'No. Who's he?'
There wasn't a hint of deception or a pause for thought. Children performed clownish, wide-eyed lies. Adults gave themselves away with small gestures, casting the eyes towards memory or couching the lie with a smile.
'Could you stop at the train station?' Arkady asked.
When Stas pulled in among the buses and taxis at the north side of the station, Arkady hopped out, leaving his bag behind.
'You're coming back?' Stas asked. 'I have this feeling that you travel light.'
'Two minutes.'
Federov had brains of stale bread, but he might recognize a station locker key when he saw one, and it was even possible that he could remember the number. Arkady's original deposit had expired and he had to pay the attendant an extra four Deutschmarks to open the locker and retrieve the videotape, which left him with seventy-five Deutschmarks for the rest of his stay.
When he went outside, a traffic policeman was trying to move Stas's shabby Mercedes out of the way of an Italian coach. The coach was polished like a gondola and had a furious musical horn. The more the bus honked and the policeman shouted, the louder the dog barked back. Stas sat himself behind the wheel and enjoyed a cigarette. 'Not opera,' he told Arkady. 'But close.'
Arkady was getting his bearings. He knew when Stas turned north towards the museums and east towards the Englischer Garten. He noticed that a white Porsche he had seen at the station was half a b
lock behind them.
'So, who is Boris Benz?' Stas asked.
'I don't really know. He's an East German who lives in Munich and travels to Moscow. Tommy said he'd met him. That's who we were looking for last night.'
'If you and Tommy were together, why weren't you in the crash? Why didn't you die too?'
'The police picked me up. I was coming back in a police car when we saw the fire.'
'They didn't mention that you were alone.'
'There was no reason to. An accident report is a short, simple form.'
Peter had identified Arkady as a 'witness who observed the deceased consuming alcohol at a roadside erotic club'. A brief but pungent description, he thought. He added, 'Especially a single-car accident where the car has burned so badly it almost disappears. There's nothing left to report.'
'I think there's more. What did this Benz do in Moscow? Why aren't you investigating on a more official level? Where did Tommy meet Benz? Who introduced them? Why would the police take you out of Tommy's car? Was it an accident?'
'Did Tommy have any enemies?' Arkady asked.
'Tommy didn't have many friends, but he had no enemies at all. Why do I have this foreboding that anyone who helps you immediately acquires enemies? I shouldn't have sent him to you. He couldn't protect himself.'
'You can?'
Although he didn't catch any signal from Stas, Arkady felt a hot canine breath at the back of his neck.
'Her name is Laika, but she's very German. Loves leather and beer, distrusts Russians. She makes an exception in my case. We're almost there.' He waved towards a building that was a vertical garden of geraniums. 'Every balcony a beer garden. Bavarian heaven. Actually, the balcony with cactus is mine.'
'Thanks, but I won't be staying,' Arkady said.
Stas swung in front of the building and killed the engine. 'I thought you need a place.'
'I needed to get away from the consulate. You're generous. Thanks,' Arkady said.
'You can't just walk off. Look, the truth is that you don't have a place to sleep.'
'Right.'
'And you don't have much money.'
'Right.'
Red Square Page 24