Madness Treads Lightly

CHAPTER 40

Venya woke up very early. It was still dark outside. He knew the only morning flight from Tyumen arrived at 9:15. It would be foolish to rush just to watch Lena enter the arrivals hall only to be met and embraced by her husband. But he couldn’t stop himself. He was dying to see her. The ten days had stretched out like an eternity. And now today she was flying back.

He wouldn’t get too close. He’d just look at her. And tonight he’d call her and ask her to have a talk with her husband. He hoped he could see her first thing tomorrow. But he wasn’t going to rush her. Let things go however she wanted, so that no one got hurt, her husband above all.

Regina was sleeping in her office. He slipped past the closed door, but she immediately appeared in the doorway in a short nightgown.

“What’s got you up at this ungodly hour?” she asked, yawning.

“Business,” he said, and he headed for the bathroom. He emerged from his shower cheerful and fresh. His face was glowing. While he was putting his boots on in the front hall, Regina appeared again. She was carrying his favorite mug full of steaming coffee with cream.

“You don’t have time for breakfast,” she said, “so at least have some coffee.”

“Thank you.” He took the mug from her.

It was true, hot coffee wouldn’t hurt right now. Regina knew how to prepare it the way he liked—very strong and sweet, with lots of heavy cream. Right now it seemed especially delicious. Venya drank down the entire mug, gave Regina a peck on the cheek, grabbed the keys to his old Mercedes, and left.

Regina stood there a little longer, waiting for the sound of the engine to fade, headed for the kitchen, and washed out his mug very carefully with baking soda and chlorine.

It was a sunny morning. Volkov drove his favorite car and thought about the best way to get to Domodedovo.

On the way, he passed a small flower market, stopped, and bought a bouquet of large tea roses. He wasn’t going to go up to Lena and give her the bouquet. But still, they were for her.

Stopping at the light, he slipped a cassette into the tape deck, an old Beatles album, Help!

He sang along with the first verse, barely understanding the words.

The light turned yellow. He felt a strange, nasty tingle all over his body. A moment later, a sharp, burning pain filled his chest.

Seven girls were looking at him from far away, through a bloody fog. Looking at him gravely and sadly. One was Tanya Kostylyova, and her long, wet braid was tossed over her naked shoulder. The other six remained nameless. He hadn’t wanted to know their names.

Behind him, cars were honking. The light had turned green. He didn’t hear their impatient honks. The pain mounted. It was unbearable. His right hand fumbled desperately over the dashboard. His eyes saw nothing but the bloody fog and the seven young girls’ faces.

His head slammed into the steering wheel. The old Mercedes honked desperately, then immediately fell silent. Venya Volkov’s head had slipped off to the side.

“Hey, buddy, what’s with you?” A truck driver asked after looking into the open window of the black Mercedes, which was blocking his way. “Yesterday” was playing softly in the car. A bouquet of large tea roses lay on the front seat. The man at the wheel was dead.

When the phone rang, Regina looked at the clock.

“Regina Valentinovna Gradskaya?”

“Yes.”

“Your husband, Veniamin Borisovich Volkov…”

“Where should I go?” she asked hoarsely after hearing the news.

“The Botkinskaya Hospital morgue.”

“All right. I’ll be there in an hour.” Her own voice seemed dead to her.

She hung up, lit a cigarette, and was surprised to see that her hands were trembling.

“Venya, Venya, my love,” she whispered. “I had no choice. It was the only way to save the business. Curly would have gobbled us up. And what then? Do you think it was easy for me to pour poison into your coffee? Making the decision, that wasn’t hard. Getting a poison that wouldn’t leave a trace in your blood was even easier. But opening the vial, pouring it into your coffee, and then handing you the mug and watching you drink it—that was completely different. You’re gone now. And no one is going to be able to prove a thing. Ever.”

After their break, they were again walking through the taiga. Lena kept hearing a noise. It would get closer, then move away, and sometimes disappear altogether. The noise seemed to be in her head, from exhaustion and hunger. But the killer explained it was a drill.

“Where are we going?” Lena asked.

But he didn’t answer. She suddenly had the thought that he himself no longer even knew where they were. They were lost. How much farther could they go without food? There was only a small piece of chocolate left. It was getting dark. The twilight was gloomy, and the sky grew overcast. If the moon didn’t peek out, it would soon be pitch black.

Her ears were ringing. Lena no longer felt her own body, which had become light, almost weightless. And the gloom kept thickening. The wind was noisy in the tall firs’ crowns. Snow dust was hitting her in the face. A snowstorm had kicked up. Lena felt like she was flying along with the tiny snowflakes. The ringing in her ears was deafening, and vomit was rising to her throat. The black tree trunks started spinning before her eyes. The heavy, pulsing gloom pulled in everything around her.

Lena fainted.

The special ops team scaled the two-meter stone wall one after the other. The four doghouses were empty.

The house was silent. The team scattered to their positions. A military helicopter hovered over the roof. Two men dropped down a rope ladder and entered the attic through the dormer window.

It soon became clear that the stone house was empty. A thorough search yielded nothing. No weapons, drugs, papers. Nothing.

Or almost nothing. In one of the closets Colonel Krotov found his wife’s leather jacket. The jacket was hanging neatly on a hanger, and her checked woolen scarf was poking out of one sleeve. In the pockets, the colonel found a clean handkerchief, thirty-thousand rubles in small bills, and a key for the Tobolsk Hotel.

On the floor of the same closet lay Lena’s purse. All her documents were there—passport, international press card, an opened pack of cigarettes, two hundred dollars, makeup, and a hairbrush.

The smell of Lena’s perfume lingered in the scarf. The colonel buried his pale face in it.

At first, Lena heard a slow, rhythmic rumble. Then she sensed light through her closed eyelids. Then she smelled something odd, not unpleasant, exactly, but odd. Still not opening her eyes, she realized that somewhere very nearby a train was rumbling. A freight train, probably. There was the smell of cinders and coal, that special railroad air you can’t mistake for anything else.

She was a little cold. She discovered she was lying on a pile of black and yellow rags, wearing someone else’s peacoat, and covered with a ragged quilted jacket. Cautiously rising, she scanned her surroundings.

Around her, wooden walls bore scraps of torn wallpaper. Lying on the floor were pieces of iron, scraps of newspaper, a broken stool, a few empty cans, and a vodka bottle. In the corner was a half-collapsed stove. A gentle morning light poured through a broken window. The door creaked and flapped in the breeze.

The rumble of the train fell silent in the distance.

“Vasya!” she called out.

But no one responded. She went outside. Directly in front of her was a rail bed with a single track. Deep taiga on either side. Not a soul to be seen, just the trackman’s small, abandoned hut.

Lena scooped up a handful of clean snow and wiped her face. Her clenched stomach hurt; she was so hungry. Sticking her hands in her pockets, she discovered a small piece of foil. She took it out and unwrapped it. Of the four squares of chocolate, Vasya had broken off only one for himself.

She vaguely remembered the killer carrying her on his back. She even remembered him saying, “Hold on just a little longer, I’m begging you.”

She didn’t know how long they’d traveled to get to this abandoned hut, but she did remember him laying her on the rags and covering her with the quilted jacket.

The chocolate melted slowly in her mouth. Lena washed it down with clean snow. She didn’t hurry. The killer had taught her to eat slowly. “Cold cocoa.” Chocolate with taiga snow. She felt better, and the pain in her stomach eased up.

Lena brought out the quilted jacket, spread it right by the rails, and sat down. A train would have to come down the track. One already had. There’d be another. She’d hear the wheels knocking from far off and would go out on the rails. The engineer would notice her and stop the train.

The cold sun peered through the thin clouds. The taiga silence was deafening. She could hear tree trunks creaking.

Lena didn’t know how much time had passed. She sat curled into a ball, gradually losing heat. She was afraid to go back into the hut and miss the train. The sun was slowly crossing to the west. No train. Not a one. She closed her eyes. She was so sleepy. She understood she shouldn’t sleep, but she couldn’t do anything about it. The train will wake me up, she thought. It has to wake me up.

But there was no train.

The helicopter circled above the taiga without any hope. Colonel Krotov’s face was pressed up to the porthole.

If they took her away, he thought, her jacket wouldn’t have been hanging there. If they’ve already killed her, I would have found something else, her boots, for instance. She might have run away. Yes, she must have run away.

He sensed there was little logic to his reasoning.

Let’s assume she ran away. How much time has passed? Twenty-four hours? Forty-eight? No more. It hasn’t been intensely cold. It is March, after all. She could have gone toward the sound of the drilling or the railroad. But there’s a phone at the drilling site. They would have let us know.

“It’s going to get dark soon,” the pilot commented. “We’re going to have to go back.”

“Just a little more,” the colonel asked, not tearing himself away from the porthole.

At first Krotov saw a level cut-through, and then the slender stripes of rails. Then a solitary hut, tiny, like a toy.

“Almost no one uses that single track anymore,” the pilot told Krotov. “Only the occasional freight train comes through with timber from Tovda. If the trackman’s hut is still there, it’s abandoned.”

“Lower, please, just a little!” the colonel requested.

He himself couldn’t understand why his heart had suddenly started beating so loud.

The helicopter began to descend. From not very high up, he could clearly see a small, dark figure in the snow. It was a woman, and she was lying there, curled into a ball, right by the tracks.

Lena was trying to keep warm. She didn’t want to wake up. But sleep blocked out the loud noise and cutting wind that made the bottom of her short loose pea jacket flap. Slowly, heavily, she opened her eyes. It took tremendous effort. The wind was beating at her face, her eyes teared up, and she couldn’t see a thing. With a last heroic effort, she raised herself up on one elbow. She saw Seryozha and some other men running toward her through the deep snow. Nearby the helicopter’s huge rotor was turning.

Colonel Krotov picked up his wife.