Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel (Arkady Renko Novels) (26 page)

“That sounds like a perverse pleasure.”

“I’m afraid so. What do you know about Grisha?”

“Personally? He was rich, he was feared and he had fun. A full life, you could say.”

“As a businessman?”

“A businessman, public benefactor and Mafia boss.”

“In both Kaliningrad and Moscow.”

“Well, he was a man of ambition. A leader.”

“And how would you describe Alexi?”

“Crazy.”

The word had a razor’s edge.

“You’ll stay away from him, won’t you?” Arkady said.

“He killed my sister.”

“I think so too, but don’t dismiss Ape Beledon or the rest of Grisha’s pallbearers. They are all capable of killing anyone who gets in their way. For them it’s like swatting a fly.”

“You can be a monster,” Tatiana said evenly.

“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.”

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?”