Nine Layers of Sky (10 page)

Part Three

One

ALMATY, KAZAKHSTAN, 21ST CENTURY

That morning, Elena found herself applying her makeup with more than her usual care, using the American lipstick that had been a birthday present from her sister, and coaxing the last grains of Clarins powder from its case. Then she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror and frowned. Was she so desperate for a boyfriend that she would dress up for a madman with a sword? She had not had a date in over a year, and there had been no one serious since Yuri had chosen space in preference to her. But she knew that the smart suit and the lipstick weren’t for the mysterious Ilya Muromyets. They were for herself, for her future, in a way that she did not fully understand.

The weather was still cold. Elena hesitated between her raincoat and the full-length rabbit fur, eventually deciding on the latter. She did not want to risk it in the rain, but she felt the need to persuade these unknown people that she was someone to be reckoned with, a professional woman with money. The fur coat was over seven years old, but still had its silver sheen. Now that the winter was passing, she would sell it before they left Moscow. She could not stop thinking about Anna and the German. Where was her sister today? In the restaurant or, God forbid, flat on her back in someone else’s hotel room? Elena was determined to wring a decent price out of Muromyets’ contacts, if it was the last thing she did.

She collected the ball from its place on the dressing table. It lay heavy and innocent in the palm of her hand. There had not been the rustle of something inhuman, bolting beneath the dresser in the night. What had Ilya Muromyets meant, with his talk of
rusalki
? A lunatic, she thought again, or perhaps merely a poet. She remembered, uneasily, the addict in the park and the girl’s head flying toward the wall of the marketplace corridor. She could not have seen such a thing; she must have imagined it.

She took a last look into the mirror. Then, making sure that the ball was safely zipped into the inner pocket of her handbag, she checked the gas stove and the locks on the door, slipped into her best pair of heels, and walked down into daylight.

The Hotel Kazakhstan was on the other side of town. Elena found herself looking warily about her as she walked, but the day was dreary and overcast. As she turned the corner onto Abai Street, a plume of cloud lifted up from the mountains, briefly revealing their snowy summits. The wind changed, veering round to the north. The first heavy drops began to fall and Elena decided to take the chance and hitch. She put out a hand, waiting until a car with a single occupant appeared, and flagged it down.

“Kyda?”

“Hotel Kazakhstan,” Elena said. If she was lucky, and the man wanted the fare, he might take her all the way. But he shrugged.

“Sorry. I’m not going down Lenina. I can drop you at the bottom of the park, if you like.”

“Thanks,” Elena said, though the thought of the park brought back some unpleasant memories. She studied the man covertly as they drove. Charms dangled in the windows of the car; the seats were cracked and cheap. A cheerful Kazakh face, nothing sinister about it. She had a brief, broken memory of the thing in the pine tree, the snap of teeth. She ought to be glad of the prospect of getting rid of the ball, but her lethal curiosity had also been aroused.

That was the trouble, Elena thought. If there was the promise of anything interesting, she always wanted to get involved. Then the doors would slam shut, just as they had during her time in the space program. It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just the way things went, and at least in this case there might be a chance of getting some money out of it. Then Anna wouldn’t have to do what she had done. Thinking of her sister, Elena felt a dull, dim bemusement, as though she had been living with a stranger all these years.

The car pulled toward the curb and stopped. Elena handed the driver a hundred
tenge
note and got out into the chilly air. Lenina stretched before her. She could see the lattice of the Hotel Kazakhstan reaching up to the heavens like a crown. The tiny square of the cable car appeared behind it, hauling itself up Koktubye Hill where the radio mast stood. It was perhaps a twenty-minute walk and there was enough time; she was reluctant to spend any more money on car fares. Elena set off toward the hotel.

Despite the chill, she could already taste spring on the wind. There were buds on the oaks along Lenina and the gutters were still running with snowmelt. In the distance, she could see the statue of the Golden Warrior coming into view, high on its immense pedestal, riding on a griffin. Another of Lenin’s replacements, overlooking the government square. Elena had seen the original armor half a dozen times; it had been dug up in an archaeological find in the 1920’s, high in the mountains. She dimly remembered her father snorting with drunken derision and remarking that an empty suit of armor was as good a representation of the new state as any. But everyone agreed that it was a useful landmark. It meant that she was no more than a few minutes’ walk from her destination.

When she reached the concrete forecourt of the hotel, she paused. Ilya Muromyets was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps he was already inside. She made her way to the double doors of the building, stepping aside as a group of businessmen came through. Americans, or perhaps European; she could not tell. They wore expensive coats and their faces appeared freshly scrubbed, as though their mothers had polished them with handkerchiefs. One of the younger men gave Elena a frank, appraising glance as he went by. Elena smiled back. It was good to know that she wasn’t entirely unremarkable, sliding into the invisibility of middle age. But then she thought of Anna’s German engineer, of international dating agencies, and felt her smile fade.

Then she was through the door and into the gloom of the hotel foyer. It took her eyes a moment to adjust and realize that the shadowy figure standing before her was Ilya Muromyets. His sharp-boned face was haggard. She wondered where he had spent the night.

“Are you all right?” Elena asked.

“Yes, yes, I’m okay,” he told her, dismissively. “Do you have it?”

“Yes. Are they here?” Apart from Ilya, herself, and a bored girl emptying the ashtrays, the foyer was empty.

“They’re upstairs in one of the rooms. Eighth floor, number 820. I phoned the main guy again this morning. He didn’t want to meet down here.”

“I’m not going up there,” Elena said firmly.

Ilya looked at her, opened his mouth as if to argue, and then seemed to think better of it.

“You can understand why?” Elena asked.

Rather to her surprise, he nodded. “Yes, I understand. And maybe you are wise.”

“I’m a woman,” Elena said. “I have to think of these things.”

Ilya gave a sudden wry grin. “So you do. I’ll look after you, you know. But there’s no reason why you should trust me. It makes the situation more difficult.”

“Just call the person doing the deal. Tell him to get down here if he wants the thing. How long is this likely to take?”

“Do you have a mobile phone?”

Elena did, but the phone card cost money and she was reluctant to use it up. “Ask the desk to call upstairs.”

Ilya went across to the bell and summoned a receptionist, a young woman with an elaborate bouffant hairstyle. She looked vaguely familiar. She regarded Ilya with undisguised disdain.

“Room 820,” Elena said. “Can you call them for me? Tell them there are some people waiting for them downstairs.”

The receptionist’s face relaxed a little as she studied Elena.

“Isn’t it Elena Irinovna? I went to school with your sister. I’m Natalya Yulieva.”

“Yes,” Elena said, and smiled. “I remember you. You used to live on Pushkin Street.”

“We still do. How’s your sister? I haven’t seen her in ages.”

Ilya nudged Elena’s elbow. “She’s fine,” Elena said hastily. “Could you make that call for me? Thanks.”

“Of course,” Natalya said. Ilya melted back into the shadows.

“She thinks I’m a drug dealer,” he murmured.

“Are you?”

Ilya shook his head. His face was drawn and pale and his hands were jammed into the pockets of his overcoat. She could not see whether they were trembling. If he was an addict, it would explain his shabby appearance, which didn’t make her feel any more secure. Perhaps he’d been in the military: a lot of people had picked up the habit in Chechnya, or perhaps Afghanistan. It was hard to judge his age—late forties?—and she had once heard that heroin made people look older. The thought sealed her decision not to go anywhere alone with him.

The receptionist was frowning at the phone.

“There’s no answer.”

“No? Maybe they went out.”

“I’m sure they didn’t. I’d have seen them. Ivan Mikhailovich!” Natalya called. A man at a desk in the corner glanced up. “The three men in 820. Have any of them gone out?”

The man shrugged. “Not to my knowledge.” He turned back to his papers. Elena turned away, deliberately ignoring him, and she saw that Ilya was doing the same. “Keeping an eye on the Americans,” Ilya whispered. Elena nodded. The presence of the FSB man made her feel a little safer. She leaned over the reception desk. “Can you try again?”

“Sorry, there’s no reply. It’s just ringing and ringing.”

“Look, it’s past eleven,” Ilya said tightly. His head was on one side, Elena noticed, almost as though he was listening to something. He added abruptly, “Wait there,” and vanished in the direction of the lifts. Elena turned away, but from the corner of her eye she saw that once Ilya had gone, the FSB man rose from his place at the desk and unobtrusively followed. Watching American, or dealers, or everybody? Elena paused indecisively. If she lost Ilya, she’d lose all chance of selling the object.

“If my friend comes back, tell him I’ve gone to the ladies’ room,” Elena said to Natalya. She slipped around the side of the foyer, to the second set of elevators. The elevator cranked upward, as if it was being winched by hand. There were more buttons indicated on the door panel than there were floors. Elena wondered what would happen if she pressed number 20. Go right out through the roof, probably.

Moments later, she was on the eighth floor. She followed the signs. Rooms 810–820 were around a corner. There was a peculiar musty smell in the corridor, as though it hadn’t been cleaned for years. Perhaps they no longer bothered; it occurred to her to ask Natalya on the way back down, see if they wanted another cleaner. She could hear nothing. Cautiously, she peered around the corner. The door to room 820 stood wide open. There was no sign of Ilya or the FSB man. Caution warred with curiosity. She would just look through the crack of the door; she would not go in. . . .

The smell grew stronger as she crept along the corridor, but it was no longer musty. It reminded her of something, like the atmosphere in the launch chambers at the cosmodrome: electric and anticipatory. She put her eye to the crack in the door. She could see a man’s hand, lying limp on a red carpet. The fingers were curled and unmoving. Elena stepped back from the door.

“Ilya?” She had not meant to speak, and her voice sounded very loud in the overwhelming silence. Then he was standing in front of her. His face had been pale before, but now it was grey.

“What happened?” Elena asked. She tried to step around him to see through the open door, but he blocked her path.

“They’re dead. Don’t look. We have to go.” He grasped her hand and pulled her down the corridor. For a visibly sick man, he was disconcertingly strong.

Elena, too startled to protest, said, “Where’s the man from the FSB? I saw him follow you.”

“I don’t know. He’s not in the room. Although it’s hard to tell.”

“What do you mean? Let go of me,” Elena said and tugged her hand free. “Did you kill them?”

“No. Why would I have done such a thing?”

“I have no idea, Ilya! I know nothing about you.”

“You know I saved your life. I think Ivan-from-the-FSB went to fetch his friends. I think he suspects something’s happened. He’s right. We have to get out of the hotel.”

They took the lift as far as the second floor, and then the stairs to the basement. The kitchens were like a dungeon, cavernous and damp. A chef was putting something into an oven; Ilya and Elena waited until his back was turned, and made a dash for the door. They fell out into a yard, surrounded by dustbins.

The hotel towered above them. The mountains lay ahead, mist curling across the distant rows of pines. Elena’s mind was racing. Both the receptionist and Ivan-from-the-FSB had seen her in Ilya’s company. And they would suspect Ilya of the murder. That lean and hungry look was not one to inspire thoughts of innocence. The receptionist knew who she was, knew where she lived, and even if Natalya was disposed to keep her old friend’s sister out of trouble, Ivan must have heard them talking. The foyer had been as quiet as the grave. The FSB was never overly concerned whether one was guilty or not. They liked order, and neat solutions, and a murder pinned on the nearest possible suspects was usually neat enough.

Her earlier words to Ilya floated back into her mind, the mockery of an echo.
I’m not going anywhere
with someone I don’t know.
Now it seemed that she had no choice.

“Come on.” Ilya was already making his way between the dustbins.

“Where are we going?”

“Away from here, for a start.”

Elena, deeply regretting her choice of shoes, followed him across a cracked concrete forecourt and into an ornamental garden. In summer this was a pleasant enough place, with umbrellas and fountains, but now the water had congealed to icy mud, broken by twisted willows. They crashed through a line of bushes and out onto a potholed track. And now Elena knew where they could go.

“The cable car!”

Ilya spun around. “What?”

“It leads up to Koktubye Hill. There are villages on the other side.”

Ilya nodded. “Quickly, then.”

As they panted up to the kiosk, the car was rattling into the terminus. Ilya thrust change into the attendant’s hand and there was a brief teeth-gritting wait before the car set off again. Elena felt Ilya’s cold fingers close briefly over her own. The bandage across his palm was grimy. Gently, she pulled her hand away.