Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel (Arkady Renko Novels) (23 page)

“No. She had a little dog.”

“What kind?”

“It had buggy eyes.”

“Buggy eyes? What about the tail?”

“Short and twisty. She was pretty.”

“The dog?”

“The woman.” Vova added man to man, “And she had nice legs.”

“You noticed that?”

“You asked.”

“How much did she give you for the notebook?”

“Fifty dollars. What I really need is a gun.”

What kind of world was this, Arkady wondered, where children lived in holes in the ground and casually asked for a gun?

Arkady said, “I tell you what. I’ll give you fifty dollars if you and your sisters stay off the beach.”

“You’re serious?”

Arkady opened his billfold. “Stay off the beach for a week, can you do that?”

“No problem.” Vova cheered up. “I wish you were here during the Amber War. Bodies washed up on the beach every day.”

“You’ll be rich after you sell the bike.”

“There’s a problem. Lena took the bike out and forgot where she left it. The sand shifted and now it’s disappeared.”

•  •  •

Zhenya and Lotte had a plan that, much like a chess game, depended on the opponent’s moves, on whether the man in the hall would call them out onto the landing or step into the apartment, be alone or have accomplices. Zhenya would take the gun and if he missed, Lotte could follow through with the ski poles, assuming the man obliged and came within reach. Four hours of Alexi’s deadline had already passed and fear and exhaustion were wearing them down.

In Zhenya’s hands the gun was a leaden question mark, a loss of control rather than control, a sense of doom instead of decision. Lotte couldn’t help staring at the door as if blood were already seeping over the threshold. One idea about a symbol was haltingly followed by another and sometimes minutes would pass without a word being spoken.

Lotte tried. “Two interlocked rings could mean cooperation.”

“Or two eyes, two eggs, two cymbals, two wheels,” Zhenya said.

“So you think it’s a bad idea.”

“No, but we don’t have time to be an encyclopedia.”

“It goes with the equals signs, the ears for a fair hearing and the ‘blah blah’ of the opening.”

Zhenya said nothing.

“So you think this is possible?” Lotte asked.

“Tricky,” he conceded.

“Except for a chess hustler, I suppose.”

“Yes.” Zhenya wasn’t a psychiatrist, but he felt that he could read the character and skill level of anyone who sat across from him at a chessboard. What he saw in the notes of the interpreter suggested vanity. What he saw in Lotte was that she was scared but game.

He said, “Money, China, banks, rubles, dollars, submarines. What does it all add up to?”

“What does ‘L’ stand for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Black figs?”

“Teardrops?”

“Oil,” Lotte said. “When Russia can’t pay in cash, it pays in oil.”

“And natural gas, the white teardrop.”

“For what?”

Zhenya asked, “What if the fence isn’t a fence at all, but stitches? What if they’re repairs?”

“What about Natalya Goncharova? She has no connection to anything.”

“She’s an anomaly,” Zhenya conceded.

“An anomaly is something you don’t know how to deal with. Isn’t the best clue what doesn’t seem to fit?” Lotte asked.

Scandals of the imperial court had never been Zhenya’s strong point. He said, “As I remember, Natalya Goncharova dragged her husband into a duel and he was killed. That’s about it. The stuff of romance novels.”

“Or murder,” Lotte said. “Her husband happened to be Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet. The other duelist wore a coat studded with silver buttons. Pushkin’s bullet bounced off. Three days later he was dead and Natalya Goncharova found solace in the arms of the tsar. So, adultery, conspiracy, murder. Where do you want to begin?”

Since his first visit to Ludmila Petrovna’s garden, her sunflowers had become slightly blowsy, her tomatoes had grown heavy on the vine and her zucchini had gone rogue. Her weeds, on the other hand, were thriving.

A pug ran out of the cottage door in chase of a rubber ball. The dog seized the ball, shook it furiously and began to race back to a woman who leaned against the doorway with her arms crossed.

“Polo!” Arkady said.

The woman looked up. The dog stopped and tried to look in two directions at the same time, then, with an eye to a new playmate, carried the ball to Arkady.

“You’re back,” she said.

“I’m afraid so.” Arkady extracted the ball from the dog’s mouth. “I’m sorry to say your friend has no sense of loyalty.”

She didn’t smile but he had the sense that in some grim way, she was amused. “Every time I try to garden, Polo wants to play.”

“Maybe that’s the price of friendship.” He looked around the garden. “Your vegetables look ready to burst.”

“Perhaps I haven’t been paying them enough attention.”

“I couldn’t tell you,” Arkady said. “I’m not a gardener.”

“It’s supposed to be pretty simple. Plant them and water them.”

“And keep the dogs out. A lot of your vegetables look ready to pick. I could help you.”

“What about your investigation?”

“It can wait,” Arkady said.

“What makes you think I need help?”

“When I was here with Maxim, you wore dark glasses because you were sensitive to light.”

“Maxim is always looking out for me.”

“That was my impression. And you haven’t weeded since then. Ludmila was the gardener.”

“How did you know?”

•  •  •

Besides the dog, the derelict garden and the absence of dark glasses? He had listened to Tatiana’s voice on tape for hours. He’d have known her anywhere.

She turned and walked into the cottage and although there had been no invitation, Arkady followed. The pug followed Arkady, dropping the ball as a suggestion, letting it roll and retrieving it. While she heated water for tea, Arkady looked at knick-knacks that occupied kitchen shelves and cabinets. Family photos of Ludmila Petrovna holding babies and small children of varying ages. Postcards from all over the world. Framed photographs
of the same two girls with bright smiles and golden hair biking, kayaking, running down a sand dune with arms outstretched as if they could fly.

“Who was older?”

“She was. We were only ten months apart.”

“Are these pictures of her children?”

“No. Cousins, friends, children of friends. In spite of her poor eyesight, Ludmila was an avid amateur photographer.” She placed two cups of tea on the table and sat. “Sugar?”

“No thank you.”

“All the men I know have their tea plain. Why is that?”

“I don’t know. Why do all the women I know suck tea through a sugar cube?” He caught her in the act.

“I told Ludmila not to come to Moscow, but she always had to be the big sister. She hated to worry and I’m afraid I made her life miserable. How did you know? Oh, yes, the dark glasses.”

“You seemed to have been miraculously cured.”

“It was as simple as that?”

“More or less.”

“Do you think I’m going to get out of here alive?”

“I doubt it. You could take your chances as Ludmila, but my guess is that they’re suspicious.”

“Why do you think they’re suspicious?”

“I noticed on the way in there’s a man in a car watching your door.”

“That’s Lieutenant Stasov. He’s made me his personal project. He pushed his way in and searched the house. Now he lingers on the street.”

For a second Arkady had the impulse to touch her and see if
she was real and wondered how often she had that effect on men, the creation of a faint vibration.

He pressed ahead. “Let’s assume the person who killed Ludmila was waiting in your apartment. Where were you?”

“I was working late at the magazine with Obolensky. Maxim swooped in and said I had been reported dead, that I had jumped from my balcony and we had to get out of Moscow as quickly as possible. Because once you’re officially dead you soon will be. It’s a matter of bookkeeping. We drove all night to Kaliningrad. I didn’t know Ludmila was going to my apartment.”

“The question is who pushed her. She would have rung the bell when she got to your apartment.”

“I wasn’t there.”

“But Ludmila had a key of her own, didn’t she?”

Her voice hollowed out. “Yes. My sister was mistaken for me and she died. Now I’m alive pretending to be her.” Although she clearly despised tears, she wiped her eyes before she changed the subject. “Maxim told me about your adventure on the beach. So you met the boy called Vova.”

“He drives a hard bargain.”

“I know. I paid fifty dollars for the notebook.”

“What’s in it?”

She said, “I confess, I don’t know.”

Arkady almost laughed. “You don’t know? People are being shot and thrown off balconies for this notebook, and you don’t know why?”

“Joseph, the interpreter, was going to translate it for me.”

“And this was going to be a big story, as big as a war in Chechnya or a bomb in Moscow?”

“That’s what Joseph said. And the proof was in the notebook.”

“He didn’t give you any idea?”

“Only that it couldn’t be understood by anyone but him.”

“Why was he willing to help you? Why was he willing to put his life in danger?”

“He wanted to be somebody. He wanted to be something besides an echo, which is what he had been all his life. Besides, he thought that keeping everything in notes that only he could read would keep him safe.”

“Instead it’s poison passed from hand to hand.”

“Have you got the notebook?” she asked.

“It’s with a friend.”

“An interpreter?”

“You could say that.”

The tea had gotten cold. Tatiana stared out the screen door at a row of watermelons that had swollen and split open.

“It’s my fault,” Arkady said. “If I had just kept my nose out of it and not questioned the identification of Ludmila’s body, you might be safe.”

“Now you have to follow through. You’re the investigator.”

Arkady heard a noise. The pug had nudged open a cabinet and spilled the box of dog biscuits.

Tatiana swept them up. “What a little pig.”

“That reminds me, how did Polo get here?”

“Maxim brought him later.”

“That’s a long drive. You have to go through Lithuanian and Polish customs and all. Maxim was happy going back and forth?”

“He seemed to be.”

Arkady wondered what they would do to her, those censors who follow journalists with a pistol or a club. Just as she must have been wondering.

“Do you know Stasov?” Tatiana asked.

“We’ve talked on the phone.”

The gate was open. Arkady pulled a window shade aside to see a man in a weathered Audi parked across the street at a travel agency that promised romance in Croatia. He didn’t look like someone planning holiday.

“Do you have a gun?” Arkady asked.

“Do you?” She read his pause. “What a helpless pair of human beings.”

Arkady shrugged. So it seemed.

He went to the other rooms. The house was small and snug, feeding off one narrow hallway. The furniture was prewar oak. Ancestors looked out from oval frames. The back room had been made into a photography darkroom with a back door that did not open.

“You’re not going to find anything. Stasov took my laptop.”

“But he still thinks you’re Ludmila?”

“So far. I erased everything.”

On the bed was a backpack stuffed to the gills. It wasn’t the sign of someone resigned to being trapped.

“Where is your canary? She seems to have taken her cage with her.”

“With a friend.”

“Then you’re ready to go.”

She took a second to say, “I suppose so.”

“Where?”

She fixed Arkady with a look that told him he was asking for more trust than he had earned. After all, how long had she known him? Fifteen minutes? And what could he do for her while she was trapped?

•  •  •

Arkady went first with Polo and rolled the pug’s rubber ball underneath the detective’s car. The dog set in yapping hysterically enough that Arkady had to shout, “Don’t move.”

Stasov rolled down his passenger window. “What? What are you talking about?”

“My dog is under your car. If you move, you’ll run over him.”

“Then get him out.”

“I’ll try if you don’t move.”

“I’m not moving, for God’s sake.”

“He was chasing a ball.”

“Just get the fucking dog. What an idiot.”

“Do you have the emergency brake on?”

“Hurry up or I’ll run you both the fuck over.”

“He’s only a puppy.”

“He’s roadkill if you don’t get him out.”

“Can you reach his leash from your side?”

“No, I can’t reach his fucking leash.”

“Oh good, we have more people to help.”

“We don’t need more people.”

“You can’t blame a puppy.”

“I will fucking shoot you if you don’t get away from the car.”

“Well, he seems to have disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Oh, I see him. It’s all right, thank God.” Arkady pulled Polo out by the leash and picked him up. By then Tatiana had slipped out the garden gate and joined the shoppers in the stalls.

•  •  •

“Six letters, a breed of dog, starting with the letters
Af.
”

“I don’t believe this,” Zhenya said.

“Come on, don’t be such a stick. You’re doing a puzzle, I’m
doing a puzzle. We can help each other. Okay, favorite television show, two words, starting with
Da.
It’s not like you’re going anywhere. Okay, have it your way.”

Half an hour passed before the man in the hall pressed his mouth to the door again. “Don’t be such a hard-ass. Two words, starting with
Da.
”

“
Dating Game,
” Lotte said.

“It fits. See, that wasn’t so bad. Now you can ask me one.”

“Ask you?”

“Fair is fair.”

Zhenya wondered what the man on the other side of the door looked like. Tall or short? Thin or fat? In between murdering people did he bounce a baby on his knee? Zhenya and Lotte waited with one shot from Arkady’s gun and ski poles under the table.