Peter said, 'Ask yourself, where does an Ossie find the money to buy eighteen new cars? Or live in Munich? For a man with no history, Benz was born with impressive connections.'
'But why bother your grandfather?' Arkady asked. 'What did he get except war stories?'
'Stasi was more than spies; they were thieves. They targeted people with valuable goods. People weren't just arrested; their savings were taken as "reparations to the state", and their paintings and coin collections ended up in the home of a Stasi colonel. Maybe when Benz disappeared, he took something and doesn't know quite what. There's so much still hidden in this country. So much.'
Peter's was a perfectly German, exquisitely logical answer to the identity of Boris Benz. It wasn't Arkady's answer, but he admired it nonetheless.
Peter asked abruptly, 'Who is Max Albov?'
'He's given me a place to stay in Berlin.' Surprised, Arkady tried to go on the offensive. 'That's why I was calling you. You have my passport and I can't stay in a hotel without it. Also I want to extend my visa.'
Peter tested a post before leaning against it. 'Your passport is the leash I have on you. I'd never see you again if I gave it to you.'
'Is that so bad?'
Peter laughed, then cast his eyes over the trees. 'I can imagine myself growing up here. Running in the hall, climbing the roof, breaking my neck. Renko, I worry about you. I followed you to that flat on Friedrichstrasse yesterday. Albov arrived before I left for Potsdam and I identified him by his licence. From the checking I've done, he's a slippery type. A defector twice, no doubt connected to the KGB, an ersatz businessman. What could possibly bring the two of you together?'
'I met him in Munich. He offered to help.'
'Who's the woman? She was with him in the car.'
'I don't know.'
Peter shook his head. 'The correct answer is "What woman?" I see now that I shouldn't have left; I should have camped on Friedrichstrasse and watched. Renko, are you safe?'
'I don't know.'
Peter accepted that. He took a deep breath. 'Berlin air. It's supposed to be good for you.'
Arkady lit a cigarette. Peter took one. From the balcony below came audible snoring mixed with the garden sound of flies. 'The Workers' State,' Peter said.
'What about the house?' Arkady asked. 'Are you going to be a landowner, are you going to move in?'
Peter leaned on one railing, then another. He said, 'I like to rent.'
Chapter Thirty-Three
* * *
The day was fading when Peter dropped Arkady at Zoo Station. Over the city was a momentary hush, a pause between afternoon and evening. Minute by minute, Arkady was learning what he would do to stay with Irina. The answer seemed to be anything.
She would be going to dinner with American collectors. Arkady bought flowers and a vase and walked through the Tiergarten in the direction of the Brandenburg Gate, its columns and pediments as high as a five-storey building. He saw how impressive a promenade this could be, a boulevard that ran the length of the western half of the city and continued through the Gate into the old imperial squares of the east. He had it practically to himself. When the Wall was up, this hundred metres of tarmac had been the most carefully observed spot on earth – from one side by watch towers, from the other by tourists who climbed a platform to gawk.
At the base of the columns was a white Mercedes and a man bouncing a soccer ball on his head. Wearing a camelhair coat tied as casually as a dressing gown, he balanced the ball on his forehead, dropped it to knee, to instep, tipped the ball to his other foot and flipped it up again. A professional player like Borya Gubenko didn't lose his skills if he kept in shape. He bounced the ball from knee to knee.
'Renko!' He waved Arkady closer, keeping the ball in steady motion.
As Arkady approached, Borya kicked the ball high into the air. Arms out like a tightrope walker, he caught it on his foot, cradled it on his instep and flipped it up to his head. 'I've been doing more than just hitting golf balls in Moscow,' he said. 'What do you think? Think I'm ready to run back out there and defend the goal for Central Army?'
'Why not?'
When Arkady was close enough, Borya stepped back to let the ball drop, then stepped forward and kicked it full force into his stomach. Arkady dropped. As he landed, he heard the vase break. His legs went different ways. The ground spun and he couldn't get his balance even lying down. There was a ring around his vision and spots in the sky.
Borya knelt and put a gun to his ear. An Italian pistol, Arkady thought. 'I owe you a lot more than that,' Borya said.
The gun wasn't necessary. He rose, opened the passenger door of the Mercedes, lifted Arkady by the collar and the back of his belt – the same way drunks were toted out of football games – and threw him into the front seat, put the ball in the back and slid behind the wheel. The car's acceleration shut Arkady's door.
Borya said, 'If it were up to me, you'd be dead. You never would have left Moscow. If people saw us kill you, so what? We'd pay them off. I think there's a self-destructive streak in Max.'
Arkady breathed shallowly. He hadn't had the wind knocked out of him for so long that he had forgotten the utter helplessness. Flowers and vase were lost. His stomach still felt concave. He was aware that Borya was taking a scenic route along the Spree river, more or less in the direction of the sunset, maintaining just enough speed so that Arkady wouldn't jump out. Borya could have killed him by now.
Borya said, 'Sometimes smart people overcomplicate. Great plans, no execution. What's the classic example?' He snapped his fingers. 'In that play.'
Arkady said, ' Hamlet?'
' Hamlet, perfect. You don't admire the ball forever, you kick it.'
'Like you kicked the Trabi off the road in Munich?'
'It could have solved our problems. It should have. When Rita told me you were still alive and that Max had brought you here, I honestly couldn't believe it. What's going on with you and Max?'
'I think he wants to prove he's the better man.'
'No offence, but Max has everything and you have nothing.' Borya broke into a smile. 'In the West that's how it's scored. He's the better man.'
Arkady asked, 'Who's the better man, Borya Gubenko or Boris Benz?'
Borya's smile spread into the grin of a boy caught stealing cookies. He fished out a pack of Marlboros and gave one to Arkady. 'As Max says, we have to be new men for new times.'
Arkady said, 'You needed a foreign partner for the joint venture and it was easier to create one than find one.
Borya stroked the wheel. 'I like the name Benz. It has a more reassuring sound than Gubenko. Benz is a man people want to do business with. How did you figure it out?'
'Obvious things. You were Rudy's partner, but on paper Benz was Rudy's partner. Once I knew Benz was a paper identity, you were the most likely candidate. It struck me as odd that the clinic at your Munich house believed me for a second and let me in the door when I claimed I was you. I don't sound very German. Then you made the mistake of videotaping a restaurant window when you were taping Rita. Your reflection wasn't a perfect portrait because you were holding the camera, but on a big screen an old football hero still stands out.'
'The tape was Max's idea.'
'Then I should thank him.'
Heading south towards the Ku'damm, they passed a service station with signs in Polish. Borya said, 'What the Poles do is they steal a car, a nice car, cut it off the motor, drop the car on a legal motor, maybe a piece of junk that barely runs, and drive to the border. The border guards check the number on the motor and they let it through. It's like a joke: how many Poles does it take to steal a car? If you have any money, you just pay the guard and drive through.'
'Getting a painting across the border, is that more difficult?' Arkady asked.
'You want to know the truth? I like that painting. It's a rare work of art. But we don't need it. There's a difference of opinion here. We were doing very well with the slot machines, the girls –'
'That's the personnel part of TransKom, bringing prostitutes from Moscow to Munich?'
'It's legal. It's an opportunity. The world's opening up, Renko.'
'Then why smuggle the painting?'
'It's democracy. I was outvoted. Max wants the painting and Rita loves the idea of being Frau Margarita Benz, gallery owner, instead of a madam, which is what she was. After I missed you in the Trabi, I wanted to hit you here. I was outvoted again. I have nothing against you, but I wanted to leave Moscow behind. When I heard you were here, I exploded. Max says you're going to be quiet, you have a personal involvement and you're not going to get in the way. That you're on the team. I'd like to believe it, but when I follow you I see you jump in a car with the German police and go for a day trip to Potsdam. Put me anywhere in the world and I recognize the local militia. You're two-facing us, Renko, and that's a mistake. This is a new world for both of us and we should take advantage instead of tearing each other down. We can't be Neanderthals the rest of our lives. I'm happy to learn from the Germans or the Americans or the Japanese. The problem is the Chechens. They're going to spoil Berlin the way they spoiled Moscow. They pick on Russian businesses. It's a shame that they bring down their own people. Walking around with automatic weapons as if they were at home, kicking their way into restaurants, busting up shops, kidnapping children – horrible stories. So far the German police don't know what to do because they've never seen anything like it. They can't infiltrate because none of them can pass for Chechen. Not close. But it's short-sighted on the part of the Chechens because they have so much money that if they invested it here legally they could make a fortune. I could show them how to get into the positive side of business. Rudy was an economist, Max is a visionary, but I'm a businessman. I can tell you from experience that business is based on trust. At the golf range I trust that my suppliers are selling me good liquor, not poison. The suppliers trust that I'm paying them in real money, not rubles. The most civilizing idea in the world is trust. If Makhmud would just listen, we could live in peace.'
'That's all you want?'
'That's all I want.'
They drove through the now familiar hordes of the Ku'damm, under neon grails of AEG, Siemens, Nike and Cinzano below a sky of pale lavender. The ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Church looked out of place because it was the only building in sight that wasn't new. Hard behind it stood the glass wall of the Europa Centre, starting to blaze with office lights. Borya parked in the Centre's garage.
In its shopping area, the Europa Centre had more than a hundred shops, restaurants, cinemas and cabarets. Borya led Arkady past the entreaties of sushi bars, first-run westerns, cultured pearls, Swiss watches and nail salons. His eye had a speculative glint, as if he were considering expanding on his golf range.
'Makhmud trusts you. With you along, he might listen.'
'He's here?' Arkady asked.
'It's one thing for Max to say that you're as good as on the team. If you do this for me, this little thing, then I'll know you're okay. He's right upstairs. You know how he is about his health.'
They climbed three flights. Arkady had imagined that any meeting with Makhmud Khasbulatov would take place in the back of a car or in the corner of a dimly lit restaurant, but at the top of the stairs was a brightly illuminated carpeted foyer and a counter lined with a selection of organic shampoos, sunglasses and chelated vitamins. For sixty Deutschmarks the attendant issued them towels, rubber slippers and metal-bead chains with locker keys.
'A bathhouse?' Arkady said.
'A sauna,' Borya said.
The changing room had lockers, showers, hair dryers, complimentary mousse. Arkady hung his miserable few clothes on the hangers, locked up and slipped the chain over his hand like a bracelet. Borya had to stuff his wardrobe in. Most men when they stripped looked misshapen or diminished. An athlete like Borya Gubenko had undressed before other people all his life. He wore physical ease. Arkady looked starved alongside him.
'Makhmud comes here?' Arkady asked.
'Makhmud is a health nut. Wherever he is, here or Moscow, he spends an hour a day in a sauna.'
'How many other Chechens are here?' At the South Port car market, Makhmud never had less than half a dozen.
'A few. Relax,' Borya said. 'I just want you to talk to Makhmud face to face. For whatever reason, he likes you. Also, I want you to see that everything I do here is legitimate.'
'This is a public place?'
Borya pushed open the sauna door. 'It couldn't be more public.'
Arkady was used to utilitarian bathhouses, to pale Russian torsos and the smell of alcohol working its way out as sweat. This was different. A veranda with a tropical forest of plastic plants opened on to a circular indoor swimming pool surrounded by marble steps. Swimming, floating, stretched across chaise longues were naked bodies so pink they looked as if they had just rolled in snow. Male, female, boys and girls. The scene would have been hedonistic if it hadn't been so serious. They looked as fit as Olympians and as stiff as mummies, some with the embellishment of a towel, some without. A man with a goatee and a belly of grey hair walked up the steps as gravely as a senator. Chechens were easy to find. Two of them leaned on the balustrade watching a woman swim slowly back and forth in bathing cap and goggles, nothing else. Although Chechens would never allow their wives to go naked in public, they had no objection if Germans wanted to.
Toddlers with hair as fair as goose down ran out of a dining area, their shrieks echoing off the copper baffles above the pool. Arkady heard the bang of dominoes being slapped on a dining table. Probably more Chechens there.
Borya took Arkady the other way, past two smaller sitting pools and through the wooden door of a dry sauna. Inside was the senatorial German. They climbed benches to the warmest air. The German paid them no attention. He sat by a wall thermometer and rubbed sweat like soap over his body. Every few seconds he checked the temperature. Sweating seemed to take all his concentration. The metal beads of Arkady's chain were already hot. The sauna was well insulated. He could hear no pool sounds at all.
'Where's Makhmud?'
'Somewhere here,' Borya said.
'Where's Ali?' If Makhmud was nearby, so was his favourite bodyguard.
Borya put a finger to his mouth. He could have been a sculpture except for the dew of sweat starting to appear on his temple, upper lip, the hollow where his neck sank into the armature of muscle that was his chest. He whispered, 'Dry heat takes too long. Let's try the Russian bath.'
He climbed down and Arkady followed. Outside, the Chechens at the balustrade watched the swimmer dry herself by the near edge of the pool. She wasn't young, but from the back she had a hard, athletic body to be proud of and she turned towelling down into an elaborate process. She pulled off her cap, releasing thick, blonde hair that she swung round to rake fiercely with her fingers, then brush back wet from a face that was broad, Slavic, not the least German, with eyes that were so bold and diffident they summed up and dismissed both the Chechens and Arkady at the same time. It was Rita Benz.
Borya pushed through a door labelled russisch dampfbaden and Arkady followed, plunging into an aromatic cloud. The bench on his side was empty. He sat, put his hand out and touched a limestone rim. A fountain. The only light rose as a smoky glow from four glass floor tiles around the fountain's base. He couldn't see Borya on the other side.
A sauna was an oven that slowly baked the sweat out; a Russian bath was so saturated by moist steam that perspiration bloomed in an instant. The scent of cypress helped open the pores. Sweat flowed down Arkady's forehead, ran over his chest, accumulated between his toes, filled every crevice of his body; he felt like one great conduit of sweat. He thought about Rita and the first time he had seen her in Rudy's car. The way she had looked at him now was the way she had looked at Rudy then.
'Ali?' Makhmud's voice came out of the corner.
Arkady was already moving towards the door when Borya hit him. His head bounced off the wall and he toppled off the benc
h and to the floor.
He didn't so much lose consciousness as pass through a brief eclipse. Then his eyes were open and he half crawled, half swam off the floor and perched unsteadily on the edge of the bench. Aside from his poor balance and a compression problem in his ears he was in one piece. The question that victims of concussions always asked was what happened? A second ago he had been in the Russian bath with Borya and Makhmud. Now he seemed to be alone.
The steam was pink. To Arkady that meant his head was cut and blood was running into his eyes. He found a knot on his scalp, but no cut. He wiped his face with a towel. The bath was still a cube of rose-coloured steam.
Arkady looked down. The glass tiles on the floor were red. As he manoeuvred around the fountain he saw a red foot dangling from the opposite bench. The foot led to a small, desiccated body that he pulled towards the light.
Makhmud seemed to be eating a towel. So many puncture marks bled from his neck and chest that he looked as if he had been the target of an automatic weapon, but the taped grip of a knife stuck out of his withered stomach. Arkady remembered that he had worn a towel tied prudishly around his waist. Borya had carried his towel in his hand. Arkady felt his wrist. The chain and key were gone.
There was a knock on the door. When Arkady didn't answer, the door opened and Ali stepped halfway in. Steam rushed out. He looked fat and strong and his hair hung in ringlets around his eyes. 'Grandad, don't you think you've been in here long enough?'
Arkady said nothing. He felt the fact register in Ali's mind that steam should be white. Ali moved all the way in and shut the door. His pudgy hand groped through the mist. Arkady stood on the bench so that his feet wouldn't be visible in the light and walked around to the other side.
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