“From a line of monsters.” He handed back the tape recorder. As Tatiana reached for it, her backpack tipped over and a pistol spilled out. It was a small pistol, the sort of firearm that women carried more for reassurance than protection. “So you did bring a gun.” He picked it up and let a loaded magazine spring out of the grip. “Very well. There’s one thing worse than carrying a gun, and that’s carrying an empty gun, but you would have to get close to do any damage with this.”
“I just want to hear Alexi confess to murdering Ludmila.”
“And if he does?”
“I’ll shoot him. I’ll write my final chapter from the grave and then I’ll happily disappear.”
Arkady thought of Tatiana’s father, a man who didn’t want to know too much. He looked out at a band of darkening clouds that stretched across the horizon and seemed to suck up the sea.
• • •
On the computer, Zhenya found images of the yacht Natalya Goncharova. Its specifications were daunting: one hundred meters from stem to stern, with a seven-thousand-horsepower engine and a top cruising speed of twenty-eight knots. It was a slap in the face of the working class. At the same time he had never seen a boat as luminous and sleek.
Lotte asked, “Why would criminals from Moscow meet in Kaliningrad? Why sneak into there?”
Victor said, “You can’t sneak through Kaliningrad airport. It’s too small. Besides, part of the roof might fall on your head.”
Zhenya called Kaliningrad airport security and was given the stiff-arm.
Victor took over. “You stinking pile of shit, who are you to ask questions of the Moscow police? You’re going to cooperate or I will pull your entrails out your asshole. Understood?”
The operator’s attitude improved. There was heavier-than-usual traffic of private or chartered planes moving in or out, he said. “You should have been here a couple of hours ago. We had that rap artist Abdul arrive. The Chechen? We took measures. A private plane and a car waiting out on the tarmac. Didn’t help. Once the women spotted him they were hysterical. They had him sign everything, and I mean everything. Could you live like that?”
“Was he with anyone?”
“No entourage. A couple of businessmen. I was a little disappointed by that. I expected a supermodel or two.”
“When is Abdul scheduled to leave Kaliningrad?”
“In his private plane? He’s a billionaire. He can leave any time he wants.”
“Wait, I have some other names for you. Call me if any of them arrive or go.” Victor gave the operator the names and his cell phone number before disconnecting.
“So maybe the second meeting didn’t take place already. But why else would Abdul be in Kaliningrad?” Zhenya said.
Lotte asked, “What about the bullet in Arkady’s head?”
Conversation ceased.
She said, “Zhenya told me a doctor warned Arkady a bullet in his brain could move a millimeter either way and he’d drop dead. He isn’t supposed to do anything strenuous. Shouldn’t he be quiet and stay at home? You’re his friend-is he suicidal?”
Victor considered the point. “No, but he isn’t a ray of sunshine.”
• • •
Tatiana had brought a change of clothing and a stack of papers in her backpack. By lamplight, Arkady flipped through papers of incorporation for Curonian Investments, the Curonian Bank, Curonian Renaissance, Curonian Investment Fund, all of them subsidiaries of Curonian Amber. Altogether, pretty serious work for a spit of sand, he thought.
“Everything refers to Curonian Amber but I didn’t see much activity at the amber pit.”
“High-pressure hosing is dirty but excellent for laundering money.”
“So everything here is owned by a virtually nonexistent amber mine. Except, the way they use it, it’s a gold mine.”
“It was Grisha’s invention,” Tatiana said. “I still haven’t figured it out. Everybody has a grand dream. Every criminal wants to drive a BMW and every politician needs to live in a palace. Only our sailors are willing to accept a modest burial at sea.”
“The moment you started gathering these papers, you targeted yourself.”
“But I don’t have the hard facts or names, which is maddening.”
The beam of a spotlight swept across the screen of the cabin porch.
“Get down,” Arkady said.
A speedboat headed in, trying not to get broadsided in the surf.
“Is this Maxim?” Tatiana asked. “He should know better.”
“It’s not Maxim.”
Arkady made out Alexi at the wheel of a sleek wooden runabout, a classic emblem of motorboat bravado and the worst possible choice for landing on a beach. He inched closer without swinging sideways and rolling but he should have come in an inflatable boat designed for landing in rough seas.
“Tatiana Petrovna! I want to talk to you! Come out and show yourself!” Alexi shouted.
“He’s stuck. He can’t come in any further,” Arkady said.
The searchlight probed the screen and the corners of the porch.
“If you come out, I’ll tell you what happened to your sister. You’re a journalist, don’t you want the details?”
The wind batted his words away. He jockeyed the boat back and forth, letting the inboard engine cough and rumble.
“Renko, don’t you want to know what happened to your boy, Zhenya? Don’t you care?”
“What boy?” she whispered. “You have a son?”
“In a way.”
Alexi called, “Doesn’t either one of you care about anyone?”
The spotlight found Tatiana as she opened the porch door and moved down the stairs to the sand. Alexi motioned her closer. The sky cracked open and in the white glare of lightning, Alexi raised a gun and fired.
The shot went wide. Alexi was a good sailor, but the work he was doing demanded hands on the wheel and the gun while the deck under his feet moved in all directions. One shot went into the water, the next into the air.
She didn’t duck. To her, the shots seemed irrelevant, contemptible, no worse than rain. Arkady caught up to her and felt a hot pluck on his ear. Waves rushed up, fanned and slid away. Alexi fired until he was left squeezing the trigger of an empty gun, like the last strike of a serpent.
Then the boat backed up, seesawing through waves, and retreated to the dark.
• • •
“Hold still.” Tatiana patted Arkady’s earlobe dry. “We’re lucky. My father overstocked everything. We have bandages and antiseptics until the next millennium. Hold still, please. For a detective, you’re very squeamish.”
“How did Alexi know we were here?”
“I don’t know, but it will be a while before he returns. There’s no place on the spit to tie up a big motorboat. He’d have to go to Zelenogradsk. Then he’d have to get a car and return. That will take hours.”
“It makes no sense. Why did he even come here in a boat like that?”
“He was in a rush. People who are in a rush make bad decisions.”
“Now we can’t wait. We have to leave right away.”
“Right away,” she said.
She brushed his hair away from his ear. The Band-Aid would do. He felt her breath on his neck. That and the pain made a strange combination. Her hand stayed longer than need be. He felt her body lean against him. Then her mouth was against his and his hands were inside her shirt, against the curve of her back, against the heat and coolness of her body. Standing with her on the beach, he had been invulnerable despite being nicked. How could she impart so much power and, at the same time, hold on to him as if she might drown without him?
Her depth was astonishing. Endless. And in her eyes he saw a better man than he had been before.
• • •
“Afterward” was an overused word, Arkady thought. It meant so much. A shifting of the planets. A million years. A new sea.
“Alexi will be back,” Tatiana said, although without urgency. “Tell me about Zhenya.”
“There’s not much to say.”
“Tell me anything.”
“He’s seventeen, quiet, scrawny, very bright, unbeatable at chess, brave, honest, deceitful, an excellent shot, and right now he wants to join the army. Both of his parents are dead.”
“Did you know them?”
“I never met his mother. His father shot me.”
“The father was a criminal?”
“Yes.”
“Does Zhenya feel guilty about that?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. Anyway, he shouldn’t. We have, I suppose you could say, a complicated relationship.”
“Do you love him?”
“Yes, but I’m afraid it hasn’t done him much good. Every time we’re together, we clash. We just rub each other the wrong way. On the other hand, if I had a son, I would want him to be like Zhenya. As I said, it’s complicated.”
“I think you’re being hard on yourself. Let’s enjoy the moment.”
“Is that allowed?”
Tatiana found a mattress, luxury itself. She rolled toward him and said, “Definitely not allowed.”
“You think we’re going to pay for this?”
“A thousand times.”
“Why?” Arkady asked.
“Because God is such a bastard, He will take you away from me.”
29
Arkady and Tatiana dressed in the dark and carried their bikes to the road.
There was only one way to go. It might take Alexi three hours to rid himself of the motorboat and return by car from the south. The northern half of the spit was Lithuania and from what Arkady remembered of his earlier trip with Maxim, the Frontier Guards at the border station were probably snug in their beds. A person could practically walk through.
Which was a fantasy, he knew. Alexi had chased them from the cabin. They were mice on the run. The batteries for their headlights were running low and the light they cast was growing feeble. The sound of the ocean rolled on one side and trees murmured on the other. Arkady had no idea how far they had gone. He thought if they could just keep riding, they would be swallowed up by the dark like Jonah and the whale and never be seen again.
Tatiana’s headlight died first and she drew almost even with him to stay in contact.
How did the heart measure distance? How many revolutions of the pedals? How many revolutions of the wheels? He more imagined than saw waves lap the beach and trees sway above the dunes.
As his headlight faded, Arkady halted Tatiana and they came to a standstill in the dark, going nowhere as sand swirled at their feet. He heard breathing dead ahead. Tentative. Waiting.
A blinding light filled the road. The beam was white tinged with blue and emanated from the border station’s ancient searchlight, searching not for high-altitude bombers but targets approaching on foot. Even shielding his eyes, Arkady couldn’t see more than the fire flash of automatic weapons and he couldn’t tell if they were Frontier Guards or Alexi’s men. Between Arkady and the station, figures poured over the road, a carousel of shadows in midair. Silhouettes with antlers milled in confusion, took cover in trees and ran again, while over and around them, branches snapped and bullets ripped the air.
Carrying their bikes, Arkady and Tatiana retreated along the edge of the searchlight’s beam. It seemed to stretch forever, finally faded to a glow and then grew stronger again as the headlights of a car approached.
Arkady knocked Tatiana to the ground. “Stay down.”
The car passed them and stopped. The station searchlight shut down, replaced by flashlight beams that swung back and forth.
Arkady heard the opening of car doors and recognized Alexi’s voice.
“Did you get them?”
“Not yet, but we know they’re here.”
“Then let the dogs out.”
“We let them out, but there’s all these fucking deer.”
“Elk, you idiot.”
“Whatever. The dogs are going crazy.”
“But you did see them?”
“I thought we did.”
“Then find them.”
“What about birders?”
“We’ll get fair warning. I have eyes on the road.”
After Alexi drove away, Arkady and Tatiana struggled through branches. Occasional shots rang out. Finally other car lights left the station, burrowed through the dark, and the night was still.
Dawn didn’t break so much as slowly reveal dunes on one side of the road and sea on the other. Arkady and Tatiana rode silently, saying nothing. Ahead, a figure emerged from the mist dragging his sledge full of trash. The beachcomber, although he could have been a pilgrim or mendicant priest or a Volga boatman heaving on his rope. In any case, he was part of the background, someone seen without being noticed. At the sight of Arkady and Tatiana he hesitated, as a man will when confronted by ghosts. Arkady coasted by before abruptly reversing direction. Tatiana did the same on the other side. It took a moment for the beachcomber to move and when he did, he overturned the sledge, spilling its cargo. Unburdened, he sprinted past Tatiana, knees high, tripped and regained his balance even as he lost his scarf and sack. As Arkady weaved through rolling cans and bottles, the beachcomber plunged like a hare up a dune. Arkady abandoned his bike and climbed after, slipping in a treadmill of sand. At the crest of the dune Arkady caught him by the ankle and dragged him down. He was a small man with a raw, half-starved quality and eyes that seemed to start from their sockets.
“You were watching us,” Arkady said.
“Just watching. No harm in that.”
“And reporting to Alexi.”
“I was doing nothing. I was walking down the road and you attacked me. I’ve got my rights.”
“Forget Alexi. Where’s the butcher? The man in the van with the pig on top. Who is he and where can I find him?”
“No. No way.”
Terror lent strength. The beachcomber wrested one hand free enough to throw sand in Arkady’s face. By the time Arkady cleared his eyes, the man had vanished in the pines.
When Arkady returned, Tatiana was examining the litter of soda cans and bottles, twists of driftwood, shells, scarf and sack. In the sack were a sandwich and a cell phone.
“He’s gone,” Arkady said.
“That’s okay, he won’t be communicating with anyone soon.” Tatiana handed him the cell phone.
He punched up the cell phone’s recent calls. The last was a call to a Kaliningrad number only minutes before. He pressed “Contacts.” The name that popped up was Alexi.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Sure, I’m just sorry he got away.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“Nothing.”
• • •
There were different ways to be on the run. One was to flee, the other was to blend in. In the tourist town of Zelenogradsk, they bought hooded ponchos and binoculars to join the birders who tracked migrating flocks as they streamed overhead. What was it like to be ordinary people? With a baby and grandmother waiting at home, a pan of water on the radiator, a cat with a whimsical name, no fear that a neighbor might put a gun to your head. When a black car cruised by, Arkady and Tatiana played newlyweds and ducked into a souvenir shop to price amber jewelry. Amber was on sale everywhere as pendants, bracelets and necklaces that were honey colored or dark as molasses, with apple seeds or the wings of a primordial fly that had buzzed its last as resin started to encase it.
“You’re enjoying this,” Arkady said. “You like the hunt even if you’re the hunted.”
“When I was growing up, I never understood why, when games began, girls sat down while the boys had all the fun.”
“You haven’t changed.”
“I’m a woman who doesn’t like to be left behind, if that’s what you mean.”
She was the one who found an Internet café, a basement dive soaked in screen glow. Fluorescent decals blossomed on the walls. A counter served espresso and herbal tea. Globs rose and sank in lava lamps. Th
ere were only two other patrons. Tucked into their separate headphones and carrels, between the cigarette haze and fruity exhalation of hookahs, the denizens of the café were oblivious to each other.
Arkady called Victor on the café phone. It was Zhenya who answered.
“Is it you, Arkady? You’re alive?”
“I’m afraid so.”
“Me too.”
A sign on the wall said, NO BLOGGING, NO FLAMING, NO SKYPING. However, the waitress, a girl with a shaved head and blue tattoos, said the warning was meant for tourists, not Koenigs, the native sons of Kaliningrad.
Once the visual connection was made, Zhenya, Victor and a pretty girl with red hair appeared on the screen.
Arkady said, “This, I take it, is Lotte. She must be a good friend.”
During introductions, Lotte regarded Arkady with undisguised curiosity. What a sight he must have made, Arkady thought. A knackered horse next to the beautiful Tatiana. Tatiana studied Zhenya much the same way. Victor maintained a straight face and kept his eyes on the café stairs.
There was no sign of Alexi’s men; it wasn’t their scene, Arkady thought. Alexi was not Grisha. He was calculating but he didn’t command the same loyalty or respect. He was perverse, and even in the underworld that wore thin. Men who should have relentlessly pounded the pavement, foul weather or no, would stop in a hotel lounge for a drink to drive the cold out of their bones.
Zhenya held the notebook up for Tatiana to read. She had seen it before. All the same, the speed at which she scanned the pages was impressive.
He said, “Lotte figured that the symbols with colons were people speaking at the meeting. They were partners.”
“First among partners would have been Grisha Grigorenko.”
“The man with a top hat with the line underneath.”
“Next,” she said, “the man without the line underneath would be Ape Beledon. Old and deadly. The crescent moon could be Abdul. Abdul makes a fortune out of videos and makes even more protecting gas lines that cross Chechnya.”
“I have no idea about the symbol of the blocks,” Zhenya confessed.
“Building blocks,” Tatiana said. “The Shagelmans, Isaac and Valentina, have a construction company. They build highways, high-rises, shopping malls. In fact, they wanted to tear down my apartment house. As for the last two partners, I can’t be so definite. The star stands for official power, someone high up in the Defense Ministry or a strongman in the Kremlin. One of those perpetual thugs. And China. Joseph Bonnafos spoke Chinese, but he also spoke Russian, French, German, English and Thai.”
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