The Domino Game (42 page)

Larisa nodded, still looking away.

“Okay,” he repeated. All the strain and confusion of the last thirty-six hours had caught up with her, he supposed. Although she wasn’t watching he smiled again. “You don’t have to worry about Sergei and Katrina, they’ve both gone out. I’ll be outside. You just come out when you’re ready.”

She nodded reluctantly again and he studied her for a moment before he turned away.

When she joined him in the living room ten minutes later she was wearing sneakers and white socks and bright red shorts that almost touched her knees and a light short-sleeve blouse incongruously patterned for some reason with tennis racquets and slices of cake. Her gleaming dark hair was drawn back in a pony-tail, her skin still glowing from the heat of the shower. She stood in the doorway regarding him uneasily.

“Hello,” she said.

“Hello,” Nikolai replied.

He folded the newspaper he had been reading and set it aside, bounced to his feet and walked across to her, taking her shoulders in his hands, looking down at her and shaking his head. “You’re so beautiful, Larisa,” his voice was hardly more than a whisper. “So much like your mother.”

Her lips eased in a fragile smile.

He pulled himself up and drew a breath. “Let’s explore, shall we?”

“Okay,” she nodded without the slightest trace of enthusiasm.

Whatever had caused her gloom lifted the moment they stepped through the lobby door onto the pavement. They stood there together stunned, outside the mobile phone store beside the entry, looking around in bewilderment at the crazy blur of activity that swelled around them, unsure of which way to turn. Finally Nikolai scooped up Larisa’s hand and steered her towards the closest intersection, weaving through the midday crowd as she tagged along behind, her head straining left and right, her gaze sweeping the gaudy shopfronts and the unfamiliar people moving between them, struggling to take it all in.

There was a banner sign above the intersection:
Brighton Beach
Avenue.

Nikolai turned, locking in his bearings. The street they had come from was Brighton 6th. He set out again with Larisa in tow clutching his hand, her lips parted in awe as they made their way along the street. Past delicatessens and grocery stores and overflowing fruit stands that spilled across the pavement, and bakeries and butchers shops and florists and a bright clinical looking shopfront emblazoned with the sign “APTEKA” and the pharmacy’s familiar green cross.

Larisa caught up to her father and peered at him in dismay. Nikolai grinned and led her on, feeling the pleasant warm dizziness of being suddenly swept up in a strange new environment.

The signs. The voices. The look of the people. In a way it was just like strolling along on Tverskaya on a Saturday morning. The
babushkas
in their scarves and thick stockings and heavy glasses, lugging their huge plastic handbags. The old men in worn suits strolling unhurriedly along, hands clasped behind their backs, Soviet medals proudly pinned to their lapels, stopping now and then to peer into store windows where heavy-chested gray-haired women in white caps and floral aprons moved back and forth behind the counters. The over made-up girls in too-high heels with too-orange hair and lipstick to match, and men in black shirts with gold chains at their necks, lounging, arms folded, beside shadowed doorways, watching the world roll by. Like Saturday on Tverskaya, but different.

The music of balalaikas clashing with rap and the smell of hot dogs and suntan oil and the scent of the ocean and the voices not just speaking Russian, but English and Yiddish and half a dozen other languages as well, dialects outlawed by the Soviets that had found refuge here on the other side of the world.

Russia but not Russia.

A strange amalgam of storybook and Soviet Empire washed up on the shores of America to create this strange foreign outpost. And all the while, the elevated trains rumbling back and forth above the street, their rattle of metal on metal and the tremor of their coming and going vibrating upwards through the concrete pavement.

They carried on for two blocks before turning left down Brighton 4th towards the ocean, crossing the last block towards the massive boardwalk. As they got closer to the sea the noise of the main avenue began to fall away, fading beneath the rising sound of the ocean and the screech of the wheeling gulls. When they reached the boardwalk Larisa stopped, holding her father back, her mouth open, her eyes gleaming as they swept across the blue expanse of the Lower Bay and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. In the distance a huge black oil tanker was sliding slowly across the horizon.

Larisa shook her head, talking to herself as much as to her father.

“I’ve never seen the ocean before. It’s wonderful.”

Nikolai looked out to sea, following her gaze. He had, if you could call Odessa the ocean. He and Natalia had gone there together for a week, nine months before Larisa had been born. He squeezed Larisa’s fingers and she threw her head back, greedily dragging the scent of the sea deep into her lungs and holding onto it as if she never wanted to let it go. Her face began to turn red and finally she gave in, threw her head forward and expelled her breath with a gasp, laughing with delight.

Nikolai looked at her. “Are you hungry?”

She nodded enthusiastically, breathing again. “Starving!”

Nikolai made it her choice. They walked to and fro until she found a place she liked, a cafe named Tatiana, with ruby red canopies stretching along the front and white tables and chairs set out below red umbrellas at the edge of the boardwalk. They took an outdoor table and ordered drinks while they looked at the menu. When Nikolai glanced up he caught Larisa staring at him, the look of uncertainty he had seen earlier playing across her face. He blinked slowly and returned her gaze.

“What is it?” He turned his head slightly as if he were scenting the wind. “What’s wrong, Larisa?”

She glanced down, then up again, her teeth tugging at her lip. For a moment she wasn’t sure she was going to speak then suddenly the words were out.

“Is it true that you’ve been in jail?” Her eyes held his, demanding the truth.

Nikolai expelled a breath. He would have told her everything but he imagined that would be later. When they knew one another better. When she was older and would understand.

“Where did you hear that?” he asked gently, for the moment avoiding the question.

Larisa’s eyes fell down to the table. “Earlier today. Sergei said it. I was in the hall.”

A resigned smile settled across Nikolai’s lips. So that was it. That was the reason she had seemed so distant. He regarded her evenly.

“How much did you hear?” He nodded to the waitress as she set down their drinks. She pulled her order pad from the waist of her apron and readied her pen but Nikolai caught her eye and signaled her away.

“Larisa,” he leaned forward, repeating the question. “Tell me please. How much did you hear?”

Larisa swung her head aside. “I heard you agreeing to work for him; to make up accidents and steal from people. I heard him tell you that there were other jobs you could do and you would know what they were because you had been in prison for nine years.” She swung back defiantly.” And I heard you agree and tell him that was fine.” She stared at him, her expression disillusioned and betrayed.

Nikolai thought carefully about his words. “There are a lot of things I have to tell you, Larisa. And I would have. I would have told you everything, I promise, just as soon as I thought you were old enough to understand.”

Larisa looked up sharply. “I’m not a child.”

Nikolai’s face folded in a weak smile. “You were the last time I knew you. Try to understand that. Please try to understand that it’s hard for me, too.” The corner of her mouth rose in begrudging allowance. Nikolai took a breath. Reached across and covered his daughter’s hand. “I’m going to take a risk Larisa.” He held her gaze. “I don’t know you very well yet, and you don’t really know me, but I believe in you and I believe what you say – that you are not a child any longer – so if you want to hear I’ll tell you now. I’ll tell you everything then what you do after that can be your choice.”

She regarded him cautiously. “What if I hate you? What if you tell me whatever it is and I hate you, and I don’t want to be with you anymore and I don’t want you to be my father?”

A fair question. Nikolai thought about it. Looked out to sea and finally tossed his head.

“I don’t know, he breathed. “I’m sorry, Larisa. I just don’t know the answer to that.” He turned to look at her. “But you can’t turn back now, can you? You can’t pretend, so I suppose that’s a risk we both have to take. Do you want to do it, Larisa? Do you want to go there… where I’ve been?” He watched her. For a long minute she stared back at him then finally she moved her head.

Perhaps it was an hour that passed. Maybe even two. Nikolai hadn’t looked at his watch when he started and he didn’t now, what was the point? Larisa was silent. Stunned by the immensity and horror of it all, her cheeks stained by the trail of her tears. He worried now that it had been too much. Too much for her to absorb if not to understand. At the other side of the table she looked down, her fingers playing with her glass. At some point the waitress had come to their table again and he had ordered more drinks – another Coke for Larisa, coffee and water for himself – and both of them, without saying so, had been relieved by the respite: the chance to take time out. Then when the waitress had gone again he had returned to the story, keeping to the facts without embellishment, skirting his way around detail unless she had pressed for it and only then had he censored the story, not for himself but to shield his daughter from the worst of it. The worst of others and sometimes the worst of himself.

When he finished she stared at him for what seemed an eternity then she looked away, her fingers moving to the glass.

Nikolai forced a smile. “It’s the truth. All of it, I promise. So now, Larisa… now you know it all and you can be the judge.”

She shook her head slowly, her eyes turned down to the table. Her voice was fragile and soft. “I don’t understand. I don’t understand how people can be so terrible to one another.” Finally she looked up. Tears welled in her eyes and she lifted her hand, smearing them aside.

“So…” Nikolai was hesitant. “Do you hate me? Do you want to leave me?”

“No!” A look of desperation filled her eyes and she pushed back her chair, and stumbled across to him, throwing her arms around his neck, burying her face against his chest.

“No I don’t hate you,” she sobbed. “I love you, Daddy. I love you more than anything and I’m so sorry for you, and for Mummy, and I trust you and I never want to leave you and I never want you to leave me. Never!”

Nikolai drew in a breath and pulled her tight, oblivious to the sudden sharp stares from the café’s other patrons and the passers-by. Relief flooded through his muscles and veins and he settled his chin against her head, stroking her back, feeling the lifeblood within his daughter’s chest throbbing against his own. The face she couldn’t see was taut and controlled.

“Then you must understand, sweetheart,” he whispered, sharing his instinct and fear with the only person in the world he could trust. “This may not be over yet so we must both be very, very careful.” Her head moved against his chest again. “Until we get our new papers I have to go along with them because there is no other choice. But I promise you, I won’t hurt anyone unless they try to hurt us. And if you trust me – if you trust me as you say you do – then whatever happens,” he pressed her shoulders back gently and looked deep into her eyes, “whatever happens, Larisa, you must believe in me, and you must do exactly what I say.”

32

MOSCOW

There were two
dimensions to the city end of Ulitsa Tverskaya. Two worlds hyphenated by brief voids of transition when one set of characters changed places with another.

From nine in the morning, when the travel agencies and computer stores and airline offices and banks began to open their doors, until five or six when they closed it was all hard-edged commerce. Delivery vans and armored cars; couriers on motorcycles; office girls coming and going; and men in gray suits striding hurriedly between appointments. Then, when these establishments shut their doors, the traffic fell away and for a few hours a strange deserted stillness settled over the street until sometime around eight or nine when the cast of Tverskaya’s second life began moving into position.

The staff used the rear doorways. Slipping inside from the alleys that spread like veins between the backstreets, so that when the lights and signs above the canopies flickered to life the stages inside were already set, the characters already in position. Then the front doors were thrown open from inside by dark haired, white-shirted and bow-tied young men who rolled carpets to the curb and set up crowd restraints, and behind them the dark-suited, hard-faced security guards took up their places: the men who managed the
face control –
the determination based on demeanor and appearance of who would and who wouldn’t be allowed entry to a particular establishment. Then, soon after, the sleek expensive cars began to arrive, prowling the street, their paintwork and chrome gleaming as they passed through the rippling pools of pulsing light.

It was a few minutes after one when the black sedan slid to the curb. Of all the clubs on Tverskaya this was the grandest, stretching thirty meters or more along the street and rising half a dozen levels into the velvet night.

The driver stayed behind the wheel while the two other men got out, one from the front, the other from the back, slamming the doors behind them. The man from the front paused a moment to look up at the floodlit facade. Across the second level the name REVOLUTION blazed in red neon English letters. Above it was a massive illuminated gold rendition of the Soviet emblem, the hammer and sickle, modified to its application by the addition of a reclining female form, arms thrown back in abandon, cupped in the palm of the scythe. The cascading gold light merged with the red to cast a shimmering glow of fire across the man’s upturned face. He studied the sign for a moment then snapped his head away and stepped across to the red carpet that spanned the broad pavement from the entry to the curb, the warm air around him throbbing with the insistent muted pulse of the music from inside, the second man following, falling in two paces behind.

The carpet was two meters wide. As it neared the door its edges were defined by rows of gleaming brass posts hung between with red velvet cord. The throat between the barriers was blocked by a cluster of suited figures, foreign business executives probably, out for a night of dissipation at their shareholders’ expense.

Seeing the two men from the car approaching, the security guards moved in from left and right with silent efficiency, clearing their path, grasping the suited men by their jackets, steering them unceremoniously aside. One of them was foolish enough to protest. As the first man from the car stepped past he heard the shrill objection severed by the dull, heavy impact of a fist slamming into the man’s gut and from the corner of his eye he saw the suited man collapse, doubling over at the waist like a half-filled sack of grain. He took it all in without slowing, his shoulders hunched forward and tightened slightly, his eyes set on the entry ahead.

Hands appeared from either side as he reached the doors, taking the brass handles, pulling them back, and the man from the car continued on without breaking step, striding into a huge circular foyer as dark and cool as a cave. It was carpeted in black, the walls draped with crimson velvet. Apart from the hooded brass lights that lined the reception desk, the only other illumination spilled from a row of softly glowing lamps mounted atop waist high Roman columns set back in alcoves at intervals around the walls. As he passed them he recognized that the lamps were in fact glowing busts of the heroes of the Revolution – Lenin and Marx and Engels and Stalin – cast as shells from some sallow, opaque pinkish-yellow material then lit from within, swirling veins of undissolved blue and red resin tracing cheeks and foreheads and necks like the blood vessels beneath the pallid skin of a week-old corpse. He had seen dead men who looked just like that.

The uniformed men and women behind the reception counter looked up but made no attempt to challenge him. He carried on past them, the music growing louder, the throbbing pulse of the techno-rock seeping from behind a set of leather padded doors bracketed by two female figures in tight-waisted Soviet officers’ jackets and red-banded caps and nothing more. Statuesque twin blondes with fair skin and red lips and thick gleaming hair that fell loose across their squared uniformed shoulders, standing at ease, one at either side, their hands clasped behind their backs, their taut, pale thighs and calves shaped and anchored in black stilettos.

They came to attention as he approached and stepped aside, each taking a door handle and drawing it back, and he passed between them without a second glance, into the dark inner sea of pulsing noise.

He was on a broad landing now, a platform that projected above the cavernous hall below carved from what he presumed would have been the original basement. The platform extended for some distance to either side before turning at right angles to form a broad, dimly lit lounge suspended above three sides of the void. Above him the open atrium towered upwards twenty meters or more, finishing finally in a midnight blue ceiling that glittered with the light of a thousand flickering electric stars.

The man from the car walked forward to the top of a wide marble staircase that led down to the dancefloor as he had been instructed and stepped aside to the glass balustrade, pausing for a moment to look below. The floor of the stadium was packed with a surging ocean of struggling human forms painted in electric colors timed to the music’s pulse. Every so often the sweeping blaze of searchlights mounted high above swept across the crowd, drenching pale flesh and colored clothing in scathing arcs of white light. The perimeter of the dance floor and the balcony provided the spectator zones: dark carpeted lounges scattered with luxuriously upholstered low couches assembled around lower tables set with old-fashioned red telephones and small hooded lights, waitresses in forage caps and belted military shirts and long bare legs above high heels moving between them, setting down silver-bucketed bottles and gleaming glasses, collecting and dispensing cash in the muted glow of the lamps.

A minute trickled by and he was joined at the railing by a tall thin figure in a dark suit and shirt and a pale gray silk tie. The man from the car turned, studying the newcomer for a moment in the distorted light. His face was narrow and pale, a thick fissure of scar tissue carving a bleached line between his lower lip and the cleft of his chin. He nodded without speaking, inclined his head and turned aside and the man from the car followed, his associate a step or two behind, weaving around a brace of couches, observing their occupants as he passed… The man who leaned forward to the table, cutting and straightening two white lines of powder on a small square of glass. The girl opposite with her thick mane of flowing copper-colored hair. The older heavy-lidded man beside her, one hand already pressing beneath the edge of her dress, the other rising to disengage the clasp at the back of her halter and her bored expression as he peeled the blue satin top away, dragging it down across her pale, dark-nippled breasts.

Up ahead the other man had stopped at a bank of twin elevators set in a vertical capsule of glass. The two men from the car caught up as the doors to the right-hand lift car opened. The man with the scar held the button, nodded them inside and followed. He pulled a key from his pocket, inserted it in a lock and pushed the button for the sixth floor then faced the front, speaking to the glass as the lift began to rise.

“As you can see, the dance floor is below. Then we have the lounges over the next two levels. Above that is the casino then we have private rooms, then offices…” He might have been a realtor explaining the attributes of some property he was looking to sell. “And above that,” he turned, blinking slowly, “your stop. The sixth floor. The executive apartment.”

The first man from the car gave an expressionless nod, looking down and catching a last glance of the rippling colored sea on the dance floor below as the elevator car swept silently upwards into a dark void. Twenty seconds more and they came to a hanging stop. The doors opened and the man from the car stepped out into a wide black marble foyer, his associate following a pace behind. Their guide remained inside the lift car, holding the button. His explanation was matter-of-fact.

“There would usually be a bodyguard on duty here. As you can see, there isn’t.” He nodded towards the stainless steel sheathed double doors ahead. ‘The lock is disengaged. The security cameras are off. Do you require anything further?”

The man from the car turned back.

‘This elevator runs to the basement?”

The other man’s nod confirmed the answer. “It opens to the car park. There is a dark blue van parked down there. Keys in the ignition. You’ll need this.” He pulled the key from the lift panel and extended it. The second man stepped forward, took it from his fingers.

“After I take this elevator down it will be locked off the system then it can only be operated with that key. Leave it in the panel when you’ve finished. One more thing.” He raised his free hand and pointed upward, crossing his outstretched arm. “There’s a light switch up here on the panel. As you saw, the elevator passes through the atrium. Perhaps it may be a good idea to turn off the lights on your way down.”

The man holding the key nodded. Slipped it into his pocket.

‘So…” The man in the lift car pursed his lips. “I will leave you then.” He waited a moment. If he had been expecting a response he received none. He lifted his finger from the button and the doors slid shut.

The first man glanced at his associate, registered his nod of confirmation, pushed back the edge of his jacket and drew the black Sig-Sauer automatic from his belt. Crossed to the silver doors, took the handle on the left and turned it, easing the panel back into the room beyond, following it inside. Behind him he heard the door click shut as his partner closed it after him.

They were in a huge expanse of living space. Polished timber floors, expensive furnishings, walls painted dark plum and gray and hung with massive canvases splashed with violent color. At the edge of the room tall shuttered windows overlooked what he presumed would be the street. The only light came from lamps that bracketed a sideboard set against the wall to the left, augmented by a faint glow from the corridor that intersected the room on the other side. Classical music played softly in the background, the muted, breathless groans of passion rising above it from beyond the hallway.

The first man eased back the safety on his Sig, returned it to his side and started quietly across the room, turning right into the corridor, making his way towards the open door at its end, hearing the soft footfalls padding behind him. They passed open doors to the left and right. An office, bedrooms, bathrooms… continuing on towards the source of the light, the grunts and cries growing louder as they came nearer. Two meters away, while he was still in shadow, the man in the lead stopped and drew back. Through the open doorway he could see the end of the wide low bed, the bare soles of two feet facing him, toes straining upward to the ceiling. Beyond them, further along, astride the man, the graceful hourglass shape of a female form above him: straight, erect back tapering to narrow waist; below it the slow, steady undulation of the hips working methodically against the form below. At the head of the bed a huge silver-framed mirror was mounted on the wall. From where he stood the man from the car could see the girl’s face and body reflected in its surface. He paused to admire it for a moment: the short dark hair; the small full breasts and the upstretched fingers that squeezed and fondled them; the expressionless dark eyes that followed themselves in the mirror as she worked, then moved aside, finding him in the reflected shadow of the corridor and watching him now.

He stepped away from the wall and moved forward again, using the girl’s body to shield his approach from the man beneath her. When he reached the end of the bed he moved to the right while his associate went left.

Even now Vitaly Kolbasov was unaware that he was there, his eyes grimaced shut somewhere between pleasure and pain as the girl moved above him. The man from the car was beside her now. She glanced at him, unsurprised by his presence, apparently unconcerned by her nakedness, the intimacy of her occupation or the audience she had acquired, continuing to work the body below her, watching him as he raised the pistol. His eyes swept across the bedside table, past the near-empty bottle of vodka and the two used glasses, settling on the scattered trail of amyl nitrate capsules that littered its surface. How many had they taken, he wondered, to prolong the enjoyment.

It wasn’t until Vitaly Kolbasov felt the cold steel of the barrel pressed against his forehead that he opened his eyes, then when he did they flooded with dismay and wild confusion and disbelief. His mouth started to open and move but the man with the gun raised a finger to his lips to quieten him and for some reason Kolbasov chose to obey. His eyes strained sideways beneath the pressure from the weapon and he saw the second man to his right, watching him, expressionless, a pistol in his hand as well. Then his gaze snapped back to the girl. For some reason she was still going. Still soothing up and down above him, watching him, and despite everything he could feel himself still hard; rigid as a rock inside her. His gaze snapped back to the first man – the one holding the gun to his head – and now, from the jumble inside his brain, he managed to form a panicked string of desperate questions.