Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel (Arkady Renko Novels) (24 page)

“It’s a different kind of puzzle,” Zhenya said.

“You have a very superior air. I’m only trying to help.”

“Do you have children?” Lotte asked.

“No, no. Nothing personal. Personal is verboten. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

“Then don’t,” Zhenya said.

“Suit yourself. You’ve got about an hour, according to my watch. Look, I’ll just talk to the girl. She doesn’t even have to say anything. Write it on a piece of paper, slide it under the door.”

“This is a total waste of time,” Zhenya said. “The man is a killer. He’s just torturing us.”

“I’m only talking to her.”

Lotte took a piece of stationery from the desk and wrote the letter
L.
She slid it under the door.

“That’s it?” the man asked.

“This should be beautiful,” Zhenya said. “He wouldn’t know an Afghan dog if it bit him.”

The page came back. The man on the other side of the door said, “The Roman numeral for fifty. It’s only in every fucking crossword puzzle ever written.”

Lotte went down the list of interpretations for the letter
L
and looked at Zhenya. “We missed that one.”

“It could be fifty thousand, fifty million, fifty percent.”

“For what? And what about the face with an X—or is it a wasp?”

Zhenya found himself looking at her breasts. “The wasp,” he said. “If it’s a wasp caught in amber, then amber is the clue, not the wasp.”

A cell phone rang in the hall. The puzzle man took it and sounded unhappy.

Zhenya asked, “Everything okay?”

There was silence on the other side of the door.

“Is Alexi coming back? We still have half an hour,” Zhenya said.

Again, nothing.

“You just told us we had almost an hour,” Lotte said.

Nothing.

“You can’t kill somebody ahead of time,” Zhenya said, even as he knew how ridiculous he sounded. “Is he still on the phone? Let me talk to him.” He opened the door a chain’s length and the puzzle man held the phone up to the crack. “Alexi, we’re making progress.”

“What have you got?”

“It’s not like the usual notebook or minutes of a meeting. There’s no date. I just know that a submarine will be repaired and that considerable Russian rubles will change hands.”

Alexi said nothing, but the silence was significant. This was the point in a chess match when a player had no choice but to bring his king out from the protection of the back row and plunge it into the center of the board.

“There is going to be another meeting,” Zhenya said.

“On board the
Natalya Goncharova
?”

“Yes.” What else could he say?

“Thank you, that’s all I needed to hear. Give the phone back to my man.”

Zhenya returned the phone and closed the door.

Lotte asked, “Did it work?”

“I don’t know.”

All he got from the other side of the door was silence. No “You did it, kid!” Only a clammy feeling and a dry mouth.

He and Lotte no longer looked at each other. It wasn’t fair. If anyone should hew to a schedule, it should be an executioner. They took in the sounds of the street, the emptiness of the building, the sound of a silencer being screwed onto the muzzle of a gun. He was only seventeen. Chess, he found, was no longer that important to him. He had fantasized about having a chess opening named for him. Now all games seemed trivial. He had other ambitions. This was unjust. Oddly enough, he thought it wouldn’t be so bad to be an investigator like Arkady.

Lotte decided to give up chess for music. Her family had always been artistic. She heard a bow drawn across the strings of a double bass. Something grim from Wagner.
Götterdämmerung.
The Twilight of the Gods.

Zhenya brought out the gun from the back of his belt but Lotte was in his way, trying to hold the door shut. He reached for her hand and they leaned together against the door.

The puzzle man heaved into it at full force. The chain snapped and Zhenya glimpsed a thin man with a vein-lined beak of a nose trying to insert a gun. The door slammed shut and was opened by an elderly man in a bathrobe and slippers.

“Lotte! I found you!” Lotte’s grandfather, the coward, struggled for the gun. “You must run!” The puzzle man swiped him away.

The door shut. Zhenya heard a head being cracked against the doorjamb. The door opened again like a reshuffled deck of cards as Victor Orlov rammed the puzzle man two more times against the doorjamb and threw him down the stairs.

White lights in front, red in back, a line of bikers wound through the early evening chasing streetlights, swerving in and out of streets and parks.

Arkady and Tatiana had signed on for one of the bike shop’s overnight excursions and left Polo in a neighbor’s care.

Joining the group had been Tatiana’s idea. She had batted down every means of escape he suggested. He merely mentioned the bike shop excursion and she seized on it. She rented a bike and gear. Arkady’s pea jacket counted as unusual attire and Karl, the shop owner, asked him when he last rode.

“It’s been a while. I suppose I could use a pants clip.”

Karl looked him up and down. “As long as you have money for a taxi.”

The bikers were not a political crowd. Half were female. Most carried a bedroll and tent and although the route was only fifty
kilometers, hardly a tour at all, there was an air of anticipation, especially once the bikers cleared the city.

Arkady wobbled at first, but traffic was light and he regained his sense of balance. Tatiana bit into the wind and plainly enjoyed herself. Military trucks went by, but that was to be expected so close to the home port of the Baltic Fleet.

Karl was in the lead. At a signal from him, the bikes peeled onto a nearly invisible path between spindly birches and pushed through waist-high ferns to a black palisade of firs. Finally the group came to a stop at a charred circle of stones. At once women gathered wood and men set up tents. Arkady was given a flimsy two-person affair of nylon and plastic hoops. By the time a campfire was flaming, a feast of vodka, wine, sausages, fatback and bread was spread out on newspapers.

All the other bikers seemed to know each other. Karl leaned across the campfire to tell Arkady, “Your friend should take her helmet off. We’re all friends here.”

Tatiana removed her helmet. No one gave a hint of recognizing the famous journalist from Moscow.

“Much better,” Karl said, as if a threshold of friendship had been crossed.

Appetites set in. The bikers were in their thirties and forties, attractive mainly because they were fit. Klim was an accountant, Tolya a fireman, Ina a schoolteacher, Katya a beautician. Arkady couldn’t keep track of all their names, especially as their faces danced in the light of the campfire.

Ina passed a glass of vodka to Arkady. “What do you do?”

“I’m an investigator.”

“And this lady, I suppose, is a femme fatale?”

“Exactly,” said Tatiana.

Karl said, “Well, there is a campfire tradition of tall tales, but there is also a tradition of songs.” From out of the dark, he produced a guitar.

They sang about women with dark eyes, wolves with yellow eyes, Gypsies, sailors, tearful mothers, train tracks that stretched far into the horizon, each song accompanied by a round of vodka. Cheeks grew flushed and as the fire mellowed, Arkady became aware that Ina, the schoolteacher, had stripped to the waist.

Karl said, “The naturist movement has a long tradition in the Baltic states.”

“I can see that,” Arkady said.

“Some do, some don’t.”

Karl had also brought a balalaika, always an invitation for someone to kick his heels like a Cossack. Halfway through a squat, Klim went down like a wounded deer, a cue for the club members to bank the fire and retire. But not for long. Arkady heard bodies slipping in and out of tents.

Tatiana zipped the tent shut. “This is crazy.”

“You wanted to get out of the city.”

“Not at the cost of all dignity.”

“You are welcome to mine. It’s battered but you can have it.”

Arkady unrolled a foam pad that softened a ground cover of needles. Darkness magnified a background of crickets and cicadas.

Tatiana said, “I have to confess, there was a nudist beach on the spit. When we were girls, Ludmila and I used to sneak in and gape. It’s probably still there.”

Feet padded by the tent and stubbed a toe. Arkady waited for the visitor to move on.

“It’s like a badly organized orgy,” Arkady said.

She almost laughed.

“And tomorrow?” he asked. “Kaliningrad is dangerous for you and Moscow is no better.”

“I’ll think about it. Maybe things will calm down.”

“You’ve already been murdered once. I’d say things have gone far enough.”

“Not for you. You can return to Moscow.”

“No,” he said, even though he recognized how seduced he had been and how small his role was. This was her drama and it struck him that she wasn’t interested in escaping. Perhaps escape was the last thing on her mind.

They slept as far apart as possible within the tent, but the night was cool and he woke to find her curled against his back. The other tents were silent, the campfire reduced to the ping of embers.

•  •  •

The assassin’s name was Fedorov. He was smaller and older than Zhenya expected and had the full suit and pencil mustache of an actor from the silent screen, and although Victor had handcuffed him to a radiator, the man maintained a professional air.

“I didn’t like the job. Killing kids didn’t sit well with me. I was just supposed to babysit. Alexi said don’t let them get away or start a ruckus or anything. They seemed nice enough.”

“But you would have shot them?”

“I would’ve done what I was told. What are you going to do?” He shrugged at Lotte. “Sorry.”

“That’s the difference between you and us.” She gathered her grandfather to take him to the elevator. The artist’s act of courage had left him a wreck.

“Maybe.” That was the man’s statement, this assassin who did
crossword puzzles to while away the time. Zhenya looked for tells, the marks and blinks that gave away a gambit before it was played. Fedorov was going to cozy up to Victor because that was where the power lay.

“A smart girl, but unrealistic,” Fedorov said. He managed to free a pack of cigarettes and a disposable lighter. “Like one?” he asked Victor. “No? Could I have an ashtray? Don’t you love these old apartments? High ceilings, fireplaces, parquet floor. Frankly, I’m glad nobody got hurt. I’m the injured party, right? This can all be settled. Do you think you can loosen these cuffs?”

“I don’t think the cuffs are your problem,” Victor said. “Your problem is whether you’re alive ten minutes from now.”

“Well, to be blunt, you’re a notorious drunk and the kid is a hustler. I think you two are just now realizing what trouble you’re in. Just my opinion.”

Victor took his time opening a bottle of Fanta; in interrogations, as in comedy, timing was everything.

He asked, “What is Alexi after?”

“Revenge, I suppose. Trying to find Grisha’s killer. That’s his filial duty.”

“What has that got to do with the notebook that the kids are working on?”

“Beats me. Could I have some ice? I have a terrific headache. You put my head through the fucking wall. I probably should go to the hospital.”

“What were Alexi’s exact words?”

“To wait until he got back. Then he calls and says he wants the kids taken care of right away. No loose ends, that sort of thing.”

“Did he mention Investigator Renko?” Zhenya asked.

“Who’s Investigator Renko?” Fedorov asked Victor.

“Answer the kid,” Victor said.

“You I’ll talk to, not the kid.”

“Is Renko okay?” Zhenya asked with enough heat that even Victor was surprised.

“Fuck knows. You know, it occurs to me that since I didn’t actually do anything, you have no legal reason to hold me. Maybe I should charge you with assault and kidnapping. You’re lucky if I call it even.”

“Talk to the kid,” Victor said.

Fedorov noticed the Makarov resting on Zhenya’s lap and he hiked himself on his elbow the better to ask, “Is that my gun? Zhenya, is that your name? Zhenya, have you ever handled a real gun before?”

Zhenya broke the pistol down to its slide, spring, carriage and clip, as Arkady had taught him.

“Huh.” From Fedorov, a mild surprise.

Zhenya reassembled the pistol and aimed at Fedorov. “Where is Alexi?”

“This is stupid. I made it clear, I don’t answer questions from a kid.”

Victor said, “Don’t tell me, tell him.”

“Who knows? Alexi’s got his own jet. He’s here, he’s there . . .”

“Don’t be flustered,” Victor said.

“I am not fucking flustered.”

“Don’t tell me, tell him.”

“In Kaliningrad?” Zhenya asked.

Fedorov smiled. “Maybe he can strip a gun. That doesn’t mean he can pull the trigger.”

“You forgot the silencer.” Victor handed Zhenya a matte black tube.

Fedorov said, “Believe me, I’ve had guns waved in my direction a hundred times. With kids, it’s always bravado.”

Zhenya screwed the silencer onto the barrel.

Fedorov’s smile ran out of air. “I’m just warning you, little boys shouldn’t play with loaded guns.”

Victor said, “Zhenya is not a boy.”

The gun popped and the parquet floor next to Fedorov exploded. He was covered with splinters.

“Where is Alexi?” Zhenya asked.

“You’re crazy!”

Zhenya’s second shot splintered the floor on Fedorov’s other side. Fedorov’s complexion turned to suet gray and he grimaced in anticipation.

“Where is Alexi?” Zhenya asked again.

“I don’t know!”

Zhenya let the silencer rest on Fedorov’s forehead and squeezed the trigger slowly enough for him to hear the firing mechanism of the gun glide into place.

“Kaliningrad,” Fedorov said. “They’re all there. Alexi, Abdul, Beledon, everyone.”

“I found a ride for my grandfather,” Lotte said as she came back in the door. She halted and took in Zhenya, the gun and the smell of carbon in the air. In an instant, she disappeared back into the elevator.

Zhenya pounded down the stairs after her, caroming off the walls. He caught up at the lobby, but she wrested from his grasp.