I tried to hold my thighs still, because they’d started trembling. I wondered if the best course of action might be to go back upstairs and open that bottle of vodka, now that I’d proven to myself that there was something outside my room. But the claustrophobia wouldn’t let go and the trembling hadn’t abated, either, so I pushed the bounds of my snow globe further still by putting on my hat and mittens and going outside.
There wasn’t anybody in the street, though night was turning to day. The suburbs were probably jumping with people on their way to train stations or scraping ice off their cars. For all I knew, maybe Ivan was laboring right now to get his car into drivable shape while cursing internationalization generally and Norwegians specifically.
My thighs were still trembling, but now it was more from cold than anxiety.
I contemplated the icy wind from Siberia and my thoughts returned to that sinkhole. What would it be like to approach a crater like that? On foot over the Siberian tundra. An encompassing darkness that was suddenly penetrated by dancing flames and billowing gas that settled like a membrane over the land. I’d crawl toward the top of the tallest ridge and look down at the flaming opening.
What would I see?
What would I understand?
What would I remember?
Suddenly I noticed that it had stopped snowing and the canal lay covered in ice before me. I stared at the opposite shore, where the bluish buildings of the Hermitage stood out in the darkness. It had gotten to be six a.m. and traffic was already flowing in a steady stream.
Thoughts of the icon agitated me.
I pulled out my phone and called Bjørnar, who answered just as I was about to tap the red button with my finger.
“Good morning,” I said. “You do exist!”
“Yes.” He yawned. “Just barely.”
“How’s it going?”
“The way it usually goes when you’re solo-parenting three kids and are busy at work.”
“Yeah.”
He yawned again and then asked, “How are you?”
“Fine. It’s a little weird here. I wonder if I have a fever.”
“Mm.”
“Well, I just wanted to say hi. Make sure you weren’t just a dream.”
“Nope, I’m real.”
“No news on the house?”
I regretted it as soon as I heard the words slip out of my mouth.
“The agent thinks we should consider taking it off the market.”
“Oh?”
“So it comes up higher in the searches. There’s no interest in it, not even from reptiles.”
“Replicants.”
“What?”
“You meant replicants.”
“Anyway, nothing’s happening. We’re probably going to have to be prepared to own two houses.”
“Don’t say that!”
“I’m trying to be a little realistic.”
“I know.”
“We can talk about it when you get back. I have to hang up in a sec if I’m going to manage to get us all out of here on time. I have an early meeting.”
“Say hi for me,” I said flatly.
I looked at the canal and thought about gulags.
25
When I got back to the hotel, breakfast had just been served, and I sat down at a table conveniently positioned right behind a gigantic palm, but with a view of the lobby. Ivan turned up a few minutes later. He stood at the entrance to the breakfast room and looked around, but didn’t see me.
I was nowhere. I was invisible.
Right up until I wasn’t.
Pretty Putin bowed slightly, without saying anything.
“Hungry?” I held my plate up to him.
“I already had breakfast,” he said.
“Lucky you. It’s not that good.”
He nodded disinterestedly.
“I don’t know if the others are up yet,” I said, “but Ivan was just here, if you’re looking for him? He was wandering around in the lobby.”
He looked tiredly up at the ceiling.
“I wanted to talk to you.”
“To me?”
He nodded and pulled up a chair.
“What about?”
“About the purpose of your visit.”
“Oh?”
I began to break out in a cold sweat. Truth be told, I had no idea what the purpose was beyond general descriptions like cooperation, internationalization, and synergistic potential. After Ivan’s crazy tour of the university, I had assumed that no one else had any idea, either, that everyone was just pretending.
I cursed the Voight-Kampff test.
I cleared my throat.
“The purpose of the visit is to negotiate the terms of a cooperative agreement.”
“With whom?”
“Saint Petersburg State University.”
“With what intentions?”
“Intentions?”
I took a sip of my coffee.
“Internationalization.”
“Internationalization?”
I nodded.
“For students?”
“Bilateral ties at all levels.”
“A broad exchange agreement then?”
“Innovation. Synergy. Professional lock-in. Mobility.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I see.”
“Do you?”
He nodded.
“I have to go now. Ivan and Irina will be here soon to pick you three up so that you can photograph the Neva. I understand that your colleague with the cowboy hat really wanted to see it.”
“It’s not a cowboy hat,” I said. “It’s an urban bowler.”
“Why does he have it?”
“He’s cold.”
“But he bought it in America?”
“I doubt that. I bet he bought it in Hounslow.”
“Where?”
“Hounslow.”
“Can you spell that?”
He jotted down the name on a small notepad, bowed slightly, and disappeared into the lobby.
I counted slowly to sixty, then stormed out the same way and took the stairs three at a time up to Peter’s room, where I pounded on the door until he opened it.
“Where did you put it?” I asked, forcing my way into his room.
“Put what?”
“The icon!”
“It’s still in the bag.”
I ran over to the table he pointed to and found the icon with a sad mix of half-melted chocolate.
“You can’t store it like this! Look, you got chocolate on it.”
I got a hand towel and started rubbing away the brown spots.
“I just talked to Pretty Putin.”
“Who?”
“Artemis! He suspects us. I’m convinced. Oh, and we’re going to go see the Neva with Ivan and Irina. They’re definitely going to search our rooms while we’re gone. We have to hide the icon somewhere they’ll never find it.”
“Go right ahead,” Peter said and laughed hysterically.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I have faith in you. You’ve got this.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t like Artemis being so involved. If only we had duct tape!”
“I have duct tape.”
“You do?”
“Of course. I never travel without it.”
I considered asking what kind of travel he usually did but had no time to lose, so I started wrapping toilet paper around the icon and then stuck the little bundle into an empty pillowcase. I wrapped that in newspaper and used most of a roll of duct tape sealing it.
“Aren’t you overdoing it a little now?”
“You can thank me when we’re sitting on the plane home,” I said, and thrust the icon and the duct tape under my jacket. “If anyone asks you, say you vaguely remember someone showing you a picture when we were in the dean’s office, but you weren’t really paying that much attention. You know nothing. Nothing! Got it?”
I swung the door shut on my
way out and hurried down the hall as if I had a plan. In reality, I had no idea what my next move should be.
I tried to think what a professional icon thief would do. Probably find an icon exhibit and slip this in with a bunch of cheap copies for sale. But I didn’t have access to an exhibit like that, plus I’d already wrapped it all up.
Hiding it on our floor didn’t make sense. They were sure to search there first. Maybe they were already setting up surveillance equipment.
But what about the top floor? I raced up the stairs and found myself in an exclusive bar with a view of large swaths of Saint Petersburg. There were big sofas and armchairs and little side tables featuring various types of orchids.
Not a customer in sight.
Not an employee in sight.
Was this wise? I couldn’t think.
Plus I had to go to the bathroom.
I went right over to the farthest sofa, back in the corner, and used the rest of the duct tape to secure the wrapped icon to its underside. Without further reflection, I secured the mummified icon to the bottom of the sofa in the bar. Preserved it for posterity. Or antiquity.
Either way, it was hidden now. And could be forgotten.
If we just pretended like we’d never taken it, we’d start believing it ourselves. And then it would be almost impossible to figure out what was actually true.
Everyone knows that the replicants that are hardest to identify are the ones who don’t know themselves. The ones who think they’re humans.
“Chew on that, Voight-Kampff,” I said to the empty room, to no one, and to everyone.
26
Most of the day was spent trudging along the Neva with Irina and Ivan. They didn’t ask us any questions and hardly exchanged any words with any of us. At one point Peter asked if we could stop somewhere and eat lunch, but an icy look from Irina put an end to that idea. So we kept marching until she got a phone call and led us back to the hotel, where they deposited us with a small nod.
As I waited for the others in the lobby bar, I was actually able to connect to the Internet again. After I deleted the e-mails in my in-box from the PTA, the chair, and the alarm salesman (who had somehow mysteriously tracked down my e-mail address), I did a search for “stolen valuable art” and found a site called the Missing Art Database. “Icons” had their own category. Against my better judgment I clicked, but although there were several that looked like it, the Dean Icon Christ figure didn’t appear to be in the system. On one side of the screen, there was a number you could call if you had information about any of the stolen artworks. It was the number for INTERPOL.
My body forgot how to breathe.
I could picture the headlines: “World-Famous Masterpiece Found in Hotel. Thieves Claim It Was a Gift.” “Norwegian Government Unable to Help Academics in Gulag.” “Icon Ingrid Dead of Overdose.” Because that was the worst thing. I was going to take the fall. Ingvill was completely unaware of what had happened, and Peter would wriggle his way out of the whole thing. Plus, he was a British citizen so the Queen would surely help him.
I, on the other hand, was in trouble.
“Where did you hide it?” Peter whispered when he came downstairs. His face was weirdly expressionless, and I wondered if the Neva stroll might have left him with permanent frostbite.
“It’s best if you don’t know.”
“But I was the one who got it!”
“Stole it,” I said. “Stole it.”
“You know—”
I cut him off.
“We have to stop thinking about it, pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“Pretend what doesn’t exist?” Ingvill asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing,” Peter said.
“I wish you didn’t exist,” she said to me.
“And I wish you—” I began, but Peter elbowed me in the side.
“I think Irina’s interested in you,” Ingvill told Peter.
I started laughing uncontrollably, but stopped when I saw the look on his face.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I’m sorry, but she’s not interested in you.”
“How do you know that?” Ingvill asked.
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“First of all she looks like Nastassja Kinski.”
“So?”
“And, by the way, Ivan is also completely uninterested in you.”
Ingvill scoffed and walked over to the bar to buy herself a glass of wine.
“I’ll have you know that she took my arm right before we reached the hotel,” Peter said. “And said she was looking forward to seeing me again. Plus she wondered if we could meet, just the two of us. Tonight. Before the opera.”
“What? When was this?”
“Right after she finished her phone call.”
That silenced me for a second. And frightened me more.
“Peter, it’s a honey trap!”
“What?”
“You mentioned them yourself, just yesterday! It’s when a secret agent lures someone with access to sensitive information into an emotional relationship or, better yet, into compromising themselves, and then pressures him or her into spilling the beans.”
“But Ingrid . . .”
“You said Irina wanted to meet you for a drink?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“It’s a well-known fact that the Soviet intelligence system used a lot of honey traps. You know, back in the sixties, even the wife of Norway’s prime minister got tricked.”
“What?”
“Werna Gerhardsen, during a trip to Armenia. Apparently it’s true.”
“What?”
My head had started throbbing, and suddenly I was incredibly exhausted.
“Don’t walk into a honey trap, Peter.”
“Maybe I could just go a little ways into the honey trap, but without compromising any sensitive information? You know, kind of turn the tables? Besides, I don’t know anything, anyway. You’re the one with the icon after all. I’ve hardly even seen it.”
The pounding in my head increased.
“Good news,” Ingvill reported as she returned from the bar.
“Yes?” Peter said expectantly.
“What is it?” I asked warily.
“Ivan called. The Russian government extended our visas so we can stay two more days. We landed a meeting with the university president, which according to Ivan is like getting an audience with Putin. I shouldn’t say so myself, but clearly there’s a good chance that my transnational socializing skills have finally borne concrete results.”
That was when it happened, right then, the terrible thing I’d been waiting for, the thing that had been lurking, lingering at the edge of my consciousness, the sinkhole that so far had been a sleeper cell, waiting to suck me in.
I had a vision of myself in the gulag. Bald, with a bunch of tattoos I’d given myself when I was high. How long would it take before I was addicted to opiates? Probably half a day. And then I’d have to turn tricks to get more heroin. Until I died of an overdose. Icon Ingrid.
I tried to call Bjørnar, but couldn’t get through, so I had one of the amazons at the front desk call the chair of the department instead.
She was in an unusually good mood.
“I have to say, I had my doubts about you, Ingrid.” She chuckled. “But this is looking really promising. Really promising.”
“But I . . .”
“Go to the meeting with the university president and we’ll let bygones be bygones. I’m going to meet with the administration here myself next week. As a department, we’re not all that popular with them these days. A cooperative agreement with Saint Petersburg State University could turn everything around, in a jiffy. Do a good job, Ingrid, and all your mistakes—the defiance, the not coming to meetings, the mindfuckery—will be forgotten. I believe in you. Good luck!”
She hung up.
“But I have to go home!” I shouted into a black hole.
/>
And I repeated that to Bjørnar once I had the same amazon dial him.
“I have to come home,” I repeated. “We’re moving.”
“Well, there’s home and then there’s home,” he said, deadpan.
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing. I’m just exhausted. We had to give someone a tour of the house this afternoon, and the place was a zoo. Alva was crying, and they just had to look around on their own because I needed to make dinner. And now I have to work all evening, because we have a contract that needs to be finished by Friday morning.”
“I’m so sorry for being here and not there.”
“We’re going to have to postpone the move,” he said, “until you come home. It’s not like there’s anyone who wants to move into this house right away, anyway.”
“Postpone the move?”
My cold sweat was back.
“What did you think? That I was going to do it alone? We haven’t even reserved a moving van yet. And we’re nowhere near finished packing up the kitchen. And if you’re going to be off dancing the kalinka for a few more days, I don’t really see any other option.”
“It’s not that I want to stay here longer!”
He snorted.
“Obviously, but you have to. You said so yourself. To keep your job. And you need to keep your job. I mean, I earn plenty of money, but no one can make that much money. And besides, it’s not like we’re ever going to go to Russia on vacation, right?”
“Not even to visit me in the gulag?”
“If you end up in the gulag, you’ll just have to do the best you can. I’ll send you cigarettes so you can trade for deodorant and toothpaste, but we’re not coming to visit.”
“But surely the kids would want to see me?”
“I’ll tell them you’re dead.”
“Dead?”
“Yup. Then I don’t have to deal with all the fuss. Maybe we’ll get a dog to replace you.”
“But . . . To be or not to be?”
“Not if one of us is in the gulag.”
The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter (The Ingrid Winter Misadventure Series) Page 14