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.
Box Kite: star, bug, sunrise, triangle.
Man in Top Hat No Line: question mark, crossed knives, two rings, fish under wave.
Crescent Moon: arrow down, bug, ear, equals sign, black teardrop, white teardrop and RR.
Star: arrow down, railroad tracks, RR and the letter L.
Building Blocks: dollar sign, bug, box kite, radioactive.
Top Hat No Line: spiral, ear, box kite, face with X for mouth, or a bug in a circle.
Zhenya said, “What kind of bug, anyway?”
Lotte leaned forward to show him the pendant that hung around her neck. Trapped in amber was a wasp.
They tried themes. Railroads, as in RR and train track.
Naval, as in fish and wave. An underwater fish had to be submarines or torpedoes. L could be Lenin; that was always safe. An arrow could mean direction, exit or consequence. Or Diana the Huntress or William Tell. The teardrops could be agony, oil, blood, apple seeds, figs or pears. The fence could be a zipper, a railroad track or stitches. The waves could mean the sea, the navy, the Baltic Fleet.
“Sometimes you play the player, not the board,” Zhenya said.
“Meaning what?”
“I can see some of these players. There’s the interpreter himself. He’s relaxed, confident, writes down ‘blah blah’ for the formalities. Maybe acts a little superior. Then there are the others, mainly the first Man in a Hat. The first thing he tells everybody is that they are all equal. Everyone’s going to get a fair hearing. Classic Soviet-time etiquette. He opens the meeting and he closes it. There’s no confusing him with any other player. He has a line under him, like the braid on an admiral. The second Man in a Hat, the one without a line underneath, is enforcement. He carries the knives. We can learn a lot from little details.”
“That reminds me,” Lotte said.
“Yes?”
“I was at a tournament in Warsaw, playing a Chinese girl. It’s amazing how many good players they’re producing.”
“And?”
“Her name was on a plaque that had the box kite symbol. Actually, it stands for China.”
“Oh.” So to keep things in perspective, while he had been hustling in railway stations, Lotte had been traveling the international chess tournament circuit. “That’s a pretty big detail. How did you do?”
“Second place.”
“That’s great. Do you remember anything else?”
“One of the sponsors of the tournament was a Chinese bank, the Red Dawn Bank of Shanghai.”
“Not Sunrise or Sunset?”
“No, in China, the dawn is always red.”
“Probably because of all the pollution there. So, we’re making progress. What do you think Natalya Goncharova stands for?”
“Beauty,” said Lotte.
“Or adultery.” He spread index cards across the kitchen table. “Everything is open to interpretation. It could be, ‘Due to a Chinese spy ring, a torpedo sank a damaged nuclear submarine and left the victims in a vast oil slick, for which the Russian defense minister awarded himself the Order of Lenin.’ ”
“Or?” Lotte asked.
Zhenya rearranged the cards. “ ‘The great Russian poet Pushkin and his unfaithful wife, Natalya, were sailing off the coast of China when she was fatally stung by a wasp. The music at her funeral brought tears. Fish and figs were served after the ceremony.’ ”
• • •
They drove around the parks and lantern-lit paths in the center of the city, to what purpose, Arkady did not know. To escape the Monster? To impress a tourist?
“Here’s the future,” Maxim said. “The so-called Fishing Village, a facsimile of old Koenigsberg.”
“It looks like a theme park,” Arkady said.
“The future will be a theme park.”
The village’s half-timbered buildings and lighthouse were a disguise for expensive shops and upper-class housing. Where were the bustling of fishmongers, barrows of herring, nets hung to dry and glistening like a bright arras of silver scales? Not even a single true fishing boat, only a pair of dinghies kept for maintenance and only one of them with an outboard engine.
“Sometimes, to complete the scene, a friend and I take out one of the boats and fish for perch. It’s relaxing.”
“Did Tatiana go with you?”
“Tatiana? No. She never relaxed. She knew she was in danger every time she left her door. Even in her own home. But she welcomed danger. Her life was a waltz with danger. Only Kaliningrad could have bred a woman like her. She told me once that she preferred a short life, a dash across the sky.”
“A dash or a waltz?” Arkady asked.
“Somehow both, my dear Renko.”
“As long as she could take her dog with her? That’s what Obolensky told me. A little pug, isn’t it?”
“You’ve seen it?”
“I’m not sure. What was its name?”
“Polo.”
“When was the last time you saw her?” Arkady asked. “Tatiana, I mean.”
“The day she died.”
“You were over her by then?”
“I was still fond of her. We respected each other, but we were long past the white-hot stage of a relationship.”
“She confided in you?”
“To a degree. I’d say she was closer to her sister, Ludmila, and Obolensky.”
“Did she mention any Mafia?”
“No one in particular.”
“What about Abdul? The Shagelmans? Ape Beledon? They each had a grievance, as they saw it.”
“Criminals always have a grievance,” Maxim said. “The fact is they want Kaliningrad. There’s much more here than amber. Auto plants, shipping, the Baltic Fleet and soon, maybe, casinos. Under the rough surface, a handsome principality.”
“All of which Alexi Grigorenko wants as his inheritance.”
A Mercedes slowed out of respect, it seemed, to let the ZIL go by. BMWs built in Kaliningrad seemed to jump directly to Moscow; Nissans and Isuzus made the reverse trek from Pacific ports and had the look of secondhand shoes.
“Are you looking for somebody?” Arkady asked. Maxim kept glancing at his wing mirrors.
“Acquaintances.”
“Maybe your old fishing companion? There’s nothing like old friends to keep you on your toes.”
A bridge led to a small island and the sharp spire of a cathedral.
“Tatiana will have a statue here one day when we are long forgotten. People will ask why we did nothing while she was murdered. You carry the weight for all of us.”
“I wouldn’t count much on that,” Arkady said.
“Then we’re in trouble.”
The church spire stood in its own bed of lights. Maxim approached at a crawl.
“Our cathedral.” Maxim pointed at a tom
b that was tucked into a corner. “Our philosopher.”
The tomb was rough stone surrounded by a portico and a wrought iron gate. The headlights of the ZIL brushed along a plaque that read IMMANUEL KANT.
“Is this a midnight cultural tour?” Arkady asked. “Or are we simply adrift?”
“Come, come, you must have studied Kant at the university,” Maxim said. “The greatest mind of his age? Perhaps the most famous philosopher of any age? ‘Rational beings.’ ‘Categorical imperative.’ ”
Maxim kept the car moving slowly, weaving between trees, making a turn at the narrow end of the island.
“I’ll take your word for it,” Arkady said.
“Or ‘the inquiring murderer.’ Even if a murderer asks the whereabouts of someone he intends to kill, honesty requires you to tell the truth.”
“I’m afraid that went over my head.”
“But the old boy may have been sick,” Maxim added. “Now doctors think it’s possible Kant had a brain tumor. He displayed all the signs. Loss of vision, loss of social inhibition, fainting spells. We may have been taking our moral cues from a man who was going crazy.”
“It wouldn’t be the last time.”
A bright light was followed by a shove. Arkady twisted around to see a black Mercedes SUV ride the ZIL’s rear bumper. The ZIL leapt forward and plowed through a flower bed to a walkway by the river. As the SUV pulled alongside, Arkady saw one man at the wheel and two in back. Maxim shouted and pointed at the glove compartment. Arkady pulled on it, punched and kicked it, but the compartment stuck. The SUV inched ahead, gaining enough angle to steer the ZIL off the walkway and toward the water. Maxim had no choice but to stop. Two men emerged from the Mercedes, each with a semiautomatic pistol. They stood side by side along the ZIL, illuminating the car with muzzle flashes, punching holes in its doors, planting star patterns on its windshield and windows and shouting, “You want to fuck with me? Say hello to my little friend.”
The work was over in a matter of seconds. Their pistol clips were empty. They shared a moment of satisfaction until the ZIL came back to life. No rounds had penetrated the bulletproof interior of the car. The windows were starred but not shattered. Heavy as a tank, the ZIL backed onto the path and broadsided the other car even as the would-be assassins piled into it. While it could, the Mercedes sped off past the philosopher’s tomb.
23
Zhenya and Lotte awoke on the couch to find Alexi sitting at the table and studying their notes.
“This is progress. Especially since you didn’t even know what notebook I was talking about, especially since you lied.”
“I found it after you left,” Zhenya said.
“And you’re still lying.”
“I found it,” Lotte said.
“Now you’re lying for each other, a sign of true love.”
Zhenya sat up and made the small adjustments of embarrassment. “How did you get in?”
“With a key, how else?”
“Where is Anya?”
Alexi said nothing but lit a cigarette and observed the burning tip as if it were a poker on a hearth. It occurred to Zhenya that although Alexi’s black eye still looked tender, he was freshly dressed and shaved and back in command.
“Do you have a gun?” Alexi asked.
“No.”
“I heard that Investigator Renko was given an engraved gun for his good services. I can’t imagine Renko getting an award for anything, but that’s what people say.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Lotte?”
She said, “I’ve never met him.”
“It’s important that I find out where in Kaliningrad the investigator is. He didn’t call?”
Zhenya said, “No.”
Alexi smiled. “He didn’t ask you to translate the notebook?”
“No.”
“Of course he did.” Alexi flipped through pages of symbols and lists of possible meanings. “The question is, where exactly is Renko now? You don’t know and Anya won’t say. He operates with a Detective Victor Orlov.”
“Orlov is a drunk.”
“That’s what I hear. So it’s just the two of you, and as of now, you’re translating the notebook for me. I want you to stay right here until you’re done. We’re on the same team now.”
Zhenya said, “I haven’t succeeded in translating anything so far.”
“But you and your friend have an idea, a general sense of what it’s about. You’re onto something.”
“It’s a private language. It could take weeks, if ever.”
“Well, let’s give you an incentive. The temperature at the core of a burning cigarette is seven hundred degrees.”
“So?”
“And your girlfriend has tender, virginal skin.”
“What do you mean?”
“Two plus two. A couple of geniuses ought to be able to work out who’s most vulnerable. The slowest zebra. The tenderest girl.” Alexi collected their cell phones.
Zhenya’s heart pounded. Lotte shivered so hard her teeth chattered.
“I’ll give you ten hours,” Alexi said.
“That’s not reasonable.”
“Do I look like a reasonable man?”
“But it’s impossible,” Zhenya said.
“I’ll give you ten hours. I’m leaving a man at the door.”
“Who is Anya?” Lotte asked.
Alexi said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about another woman. Where are the scissors?” Zhenya found a pair in the desk and was still as a statue as Alexi cut the cord of the apartment phone.
In a fairy tale Zhenya might have surprised and overpowered Alexi. It wasn’t so in reality. It wasn’t the convenient appearance of ashtrays and blunt instruments that won the day for heroes, it was willpower and nerve. How did he propose to be a soldier for Mother Russia if he couldn’t defend himself? He knew where Arkady’s gun was. Where were the bullets? Another puzzle.
Lotte watched Alexi leave and whispered to Zhenya, “You did shoot somebody, didn’t you?”
Zhenya nodded, afraid of horrifying her sensibilities, but she seemed to find it a comfort.
“The bullets are in the bookcase,” Lotte said.
“Yes.” He wondered where she was going with this.
“We just have to find the right book. Something appropriate.”
“Renko has thousands of books. He’s mental about books.”
“What kind of books?”
“His father’s war books. Fairy tales. Alice in Wonderland, Ruslan and Ludmila, Oz. He used to read them to me.”
“Then he’d choose the right book carefully.” She walked along the shelves of fiction and scanned the authors-Bulgakov, Chekhov, Pushkin-sliding each volume forward to search the space behind.
“That must be it.” She pointed to a title too high for her to reach. “Hemingway. A Farewell to Arms.”
“Are you feeling clever?”
“Very.”
But when Zhenya pulled the book off the shelf all he found was a single lonely cartridge.
• • •
Arkady waited until the other car was out of sight before sitting up. He felt a sting on his forehead from a sliver of glass but the car’s inner shell of armor plate had not been breached and the bulletproof windows were cracked but not shattered.
He reached across to unbuckle Maxim and push him out the door. With a pocketknife blade he popped the lid of the glove compartment that Maxim had been so desperate to open. Inside were two ferry tickets and a gun.
Maxim shook from outrage. “They tried to kill us.”
“That’s right. You have to choose your friends more carefully.” Arkady climbed out and dragged Maxim down a pathway.
“My beautiful ZIL.”
“Well, it was an armored car built for Kremlin duty and I have to say that for an antique, it held up very well.”
“What about the car rally?”
“You have a way with words. I’m sure you’ll think up something.”
“And what do you mean by ‘choose my friends more carefully’?”
“I mean you agreed to be at this spot at this time. How else could they find us in an entire city?”
“I thought they wanted to talk to you.”
“Instead they tried to shoot us.”
“I thought-”
“And you have two one-way tickets for tomorrow’s ferry for Riga. Who was the other ticket for?”
“I know it seems that way-”
“Shut up.” Arkady walked around Maxim as if he were a specimen. “Alexi saw your disappearing act at the marina when he tried to flatten me under a barge. When he needed you to help him, you ran. That’s the sort of thing that a killer takes personally.”
“You’re spinning this out of whole cloth.”
“There was a dog at the marina, a heroic pug named Polo. There aren’t that many pugs in Moscow.”
“Pure fantasy.”
“Did Alexi offer you money? What about the wonderful American fellowship and the fifty-thousand-dollar prize?”
Maxim was deflated. “It’s over. They chose someone else.”
Arkady gave the big man a push to get him moving.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wanted to know what was in the notebook.”
“Why?”
“For Alexi.”
“Why help him?”
“I was afraid.”
Arkady wondered if that was the truth, half truth or poetic license.
• • •
Zhenya and Lotte didn’t know if the man that Alexi had stationed outside the apartment was big or short, dressed to the nines or covered in cigarette ash. They heard him shuffle back and forth like a bear in the zoo.
Zhenya had loaded Arkady’s pistol and tucked it into the back of his belt. Lotte had found skiing gear in a closet; she removed discs from the poles and had herself a pair of flimsy spears.
Meanwhile, Zhenya had found a theme.
“If you align them right, the waves are the ocean, the fish are ships or submarines and the star is Russian authority, most likely the navy.”
“Could be.”
“Since there is a dollar sign, RR could be Russian rubles, not railroad. In which case ‘two B’ wouldn’t be Shakespeare but two billion. Even in rubles that’s a lot of money. What do you think?”
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