Black Knight in Red Square (22 page)

When Willery groaned, Platnov put down his book and turned to see what was happening. In the past few hours the student had developed a bit more tolerance for his guest, since he might well prove to be the bridge to Katya.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“I've got to go,” whispered Willery.

“Where?” asked Alexander Platnov.

“Out,” said Willery, getting up on cramped legs. “But I'll be back.”

“Of course,” Platnov said, now looking with some puzzlement at his guest. Had the man obtained drugs? It would not surprise Platnov. Whatever it was, Willery was going out and had not invited Platnov to go with him. The man from the Moscow Film Festival office had said that Platnov should stay with his guest at all times, but it was Sunday afternoon, and every man had his limits of tolerance. Both Marx and Dostoevsky had made that quite clear.

“I'll be back,” Willery repeated, going to the door.

I'm sure you will, said Platnov to himself, wondering if he should go just to keep the man from wandering into a passing motorbus. “Would you like me to come with you?”

“No,” Willery snapped, and then, with a weak smile, he repeated, “no,” quite softly, and went out the door.

Platnov shook his head and turned back to his book. It was about computer technology for heavy machinery factories, and he hated it.

In a halfhearted attempt to get lost, Willery wandered about the city. To Sasha Tkach, who was following him, it looked at times like an amateur's attempt to lose anyone who might be on his trail, but if so, it was so incredibly inept that the man appeared to be feebleminded, a possibility that Tkach, having seen
To the Left
, considered briefly. Willery took no public transportation, went through no buildings, but simply wandered, sometimes winding up where he had been before. It was also possible that he was simply trying to determine if someone was following him, but if so he was doing an amazingly good job of not being caught looking back.

No, Tkach decided, the Englishman was simply some kind of fool who disrupted the lives of policemen who would much rather be home with their families. When this thought came to Tkach, he smiled. A passing old couple saw his smile and smiled back.

That morning as he ate breakfast at their small table, Maya had told him and his mother that she was pregnant. It had struck Sasha like a hammer to the heart. His first response, strangely enough, was a feeling similar to the one he had last winter when he shot the young thief in the liquor store. He wanted the child very much. He had thought about it a lot and discussed it many times with Maya.

Then, as Maya shouted the news to his mother who had failed to hear the announcement, Sasha recognized that feeling in his chest. He didn't give it a name but knew it had something to do with responsibility. Who had said…Yes, Rostnikov had said that for everything good, one has to pay a price, shoulder a responsibility. And then Rostnikov had added that for everything bad one also pays a price and shoulders the responsibility.

He had wanted to stay home with Maya. He'd considered asking Zelach to do a double shift of tailing Willery, or calling Rostnikov and asking his permission to stay home. Sasha wanted to give the news of the coming child to the Washtub, but he thought better of it. Willery was his responsibility. And so he went out and took over from Zelach just as Willery came out of the apartment building shortly before four and began his seemingly drunken wandering about the city.

Shortly before five o'clock, Willery's wandering seemed to become more purposeful. He headed north, hesitated to gain his bearings, and then made his way to the river. Tkach closed the distance between them. There were plenty of people on the streets, most of them coming or going from nearby Red Square; and Willery, as had been made quite clear to Tkach, was not aware of or interested in the possibility that he might be followed.

When they passed the Kremlovskaya Embankment, which runs along the Kremlin Wall, Willery's pace slowed. Through the crowd, Tkach could see the man furrow his brow over his dark glasses and look at his watch. For almost the entire trek, Willery's hand had been moving restlessly in his right pocket. The hand went rigid as they came in sight of the Rossyia Hotel. Willery crossed the street and stood next to Saint Anne's Church, but he was not there to admire the beautiful fifteenth-century building. Instead, he looked over at the hotel. Because of Willery's dark glasses, Tkach could not tell if he was looking at the State Concert Hall or the Zaryadye Cinema. Tkach's guess was that he had simply come to relive the agony of his film screening in the theater.

Certainly there was nothing happening in the theater at the moment. A huge sign indicated that the next screening would be in an hour. A few people were waiting for the doors to open, but there was no crowd. Tkach made his way closer to Willery as it became evident that the man was not going to move.

Tkach had expected to see a pensive look on Willery's face when he got close, but it was not easy to read what he saw. From a distance of about twenty feet Willery looked frightened and determined. His thin lips were tight, as he looked at the people passing by or examining the small church. His eyes ran past Tkach, who turned his back to ask a passerby for the time. Four minutes to five.

Tkach walked across the street toward the theater, his back to Willery, and made his way to a cluster of men and women who were having an animated discussion of montage. He tried to look as if he was hurrying to join them. Moving behind the group of people, he smiled and asked the leader of the discussion what time it was.

“A minute or so to five,” the man said with irritation, and returned to his discussion of montage.

At this point Tkach looked again at Willery, who seemed to be staring back at him though he showed no sign of recognition. It was then that Tkach had an uneasy feeling. The Englishman was not looking at him but at the Zaryadye Movie Theater. He seemed to be expecting something. As he watched, his mouth dropped open and his hand plunged into his pocket. His look was so intense that Tkach turned to the theater to see what there was to look at.

The montage man was in a state of near apoplexy in his argument when the explosion came. It was not a massive, ear-splitting sound, but the boom of a giant stomping on an enormous paper bag. The boom was followed within a breath by the shower of glass.

Tkach had been facing the theater when the first sound came. He turned and threw himself face down on the pavement, covering his head just as the rain of glass exploded behind him.

Something skittered across his back and over his arm like a sharp-clawed animal, and then he heard a tinkling and crackling like a fragile hail. He kept his head down till the sound stopped, and then he looked up.

Sitting in front of him was the montage man, a look of total bewilderment on his bloody face. At his side stood a woman in a blue dress holding her arm, which oozed blood at an alarming rate. Tkach rose, trembling, and looked around. The half-dozen or so people in the immediate vicinity of the theater were in the stage that precedes panic. They were numb; they had no idea what had happened or why. Tkach stepped over a torn movie poster that had been blown to the street and looked at Willery, who stood agape with something in his hand.

“Willery,” Tkach shouted, for now he knew that somehow, for some reason, this lunatic Englishman had set off an explosion in the theater. Tkach had hoped that his shout would paralyze Willery. Even if it did not, he knew he could catch the Englishman. What Sasha Tkach had not counted on was his own injury.

A sharp pain coursed from his shoulder down his back to his buttocks as he pushed past the dazed people. The pain was not nearly as intense as his fear that he had been mortally wounded. The irony of discovering one was to be a father on the day one was killed came to him in a sob and froze him in place.

His eyes were still on Willery, who now spotted Tkach, and suddenly seemed to recognize him. Instead of running, he began furiously pressing his thumb against the small black object in his hand as if it might make this apparition of the policeman go away.

Tkach twisted around to check his back. He couldn't see down to his buttocks, but he could tell that he had received a long straight cut that had gone through his clothes and charted a path as if drawn with a ruler. It was ugly, but Tkach was fairly certain it wasn't severe.

“Willery,” he called again, growing angry now at this man who had almost killed him on the day he had learned that his child Misha was to be born.

Willery saw only a figure who seemed vaguely familiar, and the figure was coming at him, looking determined and furious and calling his name. The man seemed to have emerged from the explosion—a miracle. So Willery had pushed the button again in the hope that another explosion would come and take this man away. The button had no effect, so Willery threw the little box at the man who was advancing on him. He had originally meant to wipe it clean of any fingerprints and heave it in the river, but that was forgotten.

The small box clattered to the ground in front of Tkach, stopping him just in time to prevent his being hit by a small, brown Pobeda automobile whose driver had lost control as his right front tire was punctured by a shard of glass.

Tkach instinctively put his arms to his head in the belief that the object thrown at him might explode. When there was no explosion, and the Pobeda skidded by, Tkach bent and picked up the object. Bending caused him some pain, but even in the madness of the panic-stricken screaming behind him and the skidding, crashing car to his left, he knew he had to get that little box.

“Willery!” he shouted, resuming his determined pursuit.

This time Willery turned and ran. How did it come to this? he asked himself, weeping inside, as he ran without knowing where. I'm a goddamn filmmaker. He wanted to turn to see if the wild man was chasing him, but he didn't dare. He had done some running in school, but that was almost fifteen years ago. But fear and adrenaline prodded him forward, as he pushed past groups of people who were moving against him in the direction of the explosion.

“Stop that man!” shouted Tkach, but no one stopped the thin man with the dark glasses and jeans. His little Edwardian jacket billowed behind him as he dashed madly down Marx Prospekt.

Then a woman stepped in front of him and grabbed Willery's arm, almost spinning him to the ground. She was enormous and insistent.

“What was that noise?” she demanded with authority.

“I don't know what you're talking about, you Russian cow. Let me go!” he cried in English, glancing back at Tkach, who was no more than thirty yards behind.

Not understanding what he said, which was fortunate for him, she pushed him away with disapproval and stalked onward. Willery stumbled, righted himself, and plunged forward.

“Stop him!” Tkach was panting and unsure whether he should continue to expend energy shouting or preserve his strength for the pursuit of the surprisingly swift-footed Englishman. No one stopped Willery. The determined woman reached out to grab Tkach, hoping to get some coherent information about what was going on. Tkach dodged past her, though her hand brushed his shoulder and came away smeared with blood.

Later Tkach would estimate that the chase covered about a mile. In reality, it was only half of that. Tkach feared that Willery would never get tired, but as he passed the Central Exhibition Hall and entered 50th Anniversary of the October Revolution Square he found himself facing a pair of youths wearing caps and silly grins, arms linked, and clearly having drunk more than was reasonable on a Sunday afternoon. Willery tried to dash around them, but the young men, in trying to get out of his way, moved in the same direction as his charge. He hit them full speed, breaking their arm link and sending him into a triple somersault from which he rose like a circus performer. His face was bruised and he seemed to have lost his sense of direction completely. Just then a car pulled up next to him, and two men jumped out. They were very large, sober, dark men, and one was carrying a machine gun.

Exhausted and bleeding, Tkach stopped a dozen yards from the car. People all around were watching, but no one stepped forward as one of the men grabbed Willery by the arm and shoved him roughly into the back seat of the car, then pushed the door closed and turned the gun on Tkach.

There was no doubt in Tkach's mind who these men were. Their look, their size, their command of the situation told him they were KGB.

“He's mine,” panted Tkach, feeling that his kill was getting out of his hands and being taken by predators, vultures. He was the one who had done the tracking and chasing. If he'd had his wits about him, Sasha Tkach would never have questioned the authority of the KGB, but there was a touch of hysteria in his tone now.

The KGB man with the gun said nothing, but simply shook his head firmly and motioned with the gun for Tkach to back off. Willery was hidden inside by the dark windows of the car. Tkach wanted to say something more. He opened his mouth, but the man with the gun shook his head again, silencing him. The man opened the front door and got in, carefully watching Tkach. Then he closed the door, and the black Moscovich turned slowly and drove away.

Passersby who had stopped to watch the show now moved on past the young man with the wounded back, who stood in silent frustration and fury.

How many times can one fail? Tkach asked himself as he walked slowly back in the direction of the explosion. He would have to call Rostnikov and tell him not only that Willery had succeeded in committing an act of terrorism, but also that he had been wrenched from Tkach by the KGB. It was, at best, a sorry effort.

Then a young woman stepped forward and suggested that he see a doctor and Tkach looked down and saw a boy of about three holding the woman's hand. The boy seemed frightened, and he lifted his thumb to his mouth.

Tkach gave the child a pained grin. There was something to salvage in the day. He thanked the child's mother and moved on, thinking that it was absolutely impossible to make any sense out of the ways of the world. He completely forgot, for the moment, the small black object in his pocket.