Tatiana

22

Drawn in the first panel of the first page was

and the words blah blah. In the second panel,

and

In the third, an insect,

, and

In the fourth,

and

In the first panel of the second page was

and

In the second panel,

,

and

In the third panel,

,

and

In the fourth,

and

In the first panel of the third page was

,

and

In the second panel,

and

In the third panel,

,

and

In the fourth panel,

,

,

,

and

In the first panel of the fourth page was

In the second panel,

and

In the third panel,

, and in the fourth,

In the first panel of the fifth page,

, in the second panel,

, in the third,

and

, and in the fourth,

And on and on in that inscrutable vein-

,

,

,

,

,

— until the name Natalya Goncharova and a drawing of a woman wearing a pearl necklace,

Even as a hasty sketch it was clear she was meant to be strong willed and beautiful.

She was followed by blank pages all the way to the notebook’s back inside cover, which had five identical sketches of a cat, the word Ercolo, and a short list of numbers.

60 cm

56.5 cm

1990 g

Zhenya found the challenge irresistible.

Lotte shook her head. “The sample is too small. I studied linguistics at the university. We can’t possibly translate this with so few symbols, not in a million years.”

“Don’t think of it as a translation, think of it as a game. We have to win a game. Don’t go by grammar, go by your gut.”

“What makes you think that we can do that?”

“Because I’m a gambler. What are the first symbols?”

“An equals sign, ‘blah blah,’ and what could be a cannon or a man in a top hat with a colon or dots and a line under it.”

“That’s a start. If we get a couple of symbols we can triangulate and build a context. Like building a ladder rung by rung.”

“I don’t think that’s possible.”

“Sure it is. Like in the rest of the second panel there’s an ear or half a heart.”

“Third?”

“Some kind of bug and two rings interlocked, which could signify agreement, marriage or handcuffs.”

“Fourth?”

“A fish-”

“Or an early Christian symbol of a fish-”

“Or tongs, a rocket or a plane,” said Zhenya.

“Two B?”

“An address, a room, ‘To be or not to be.’ ”

“First panel of the second page?”

“A box with a stick through it, maybe carrying something hot, or high explosives.”

“Or a box kite?” Lotte said.

“Maybe. Next, a star or a starfish or a Western sheriff’s badge.”

“Okay.”

“The bug; sunrise, sunset, Humpty Dumpty, a sleepy eye, a hedgehog? And a triangle, pylon or nose. In the third panel, the man in the top hat with colon again but without a line beneath, a question mark and crossed swords. In the fourth, interlocked rings and the fish symbol again.”

“But this time under a wave,” Lotte said.

“Right. Then on the third page, the crescent moon or slice of apple or a fingernail. Then arrow down and bug. In the second panel, the ear and equals sign. The third panel, black and white figs or teardrops, and RR for ‘railroad.’ In the fourth, star followed by arrow down, and a fence, RR and capital L. On the fourth page, building blocks, dollar sign and the bug. See, it helps to get a rhythm going.” Zhenya tried to be breezy.

“Really?”

“In the third panel, the box kite. In the fourth, the symbol for radioactivity. Then on the next page, the man in a top hat with colon-”

“With no line under it.”

“With no line. And a spiral, whirlpool or hypnosis. And the third symbol is the ear again, the fourth, the box with a line through it, and an oval shape with an X inside. Then it goes on and on: ending in a crescent moon, fence, wave, arrow pointing down with a loop at the top, the man in the top hat with a line, and the bug, until we get to the drawing of a woman and her name, Natalya Goncharova, the greatest tramp in Russian history, tsarinas excluded, of course.”

“We never hear her side of the story,” Lotte said.

“She marries Pushkin, Russia’s greatest poet, sleeps around and gets him killed in a duel. What that has to do with the Mafia beats me. So, what do you think?”

“Maybe we’re not as smart as we think we are. This isn’t a secret code, not even language, it’s just pictures. The person who wrote it must have had an incredible memory. It’s probably one percent of what was actually said.”

Zhenya sank back in his chair. “So you think it’s impossible.”

“I didn’t say that. These are notes of a meeting, right? A colon tells you who is speaking. Six symbols-Top Hat with a Line, Top Hat Without, Box Kite, Blocks, Crescent Moon and Star-have colons. These are the participants and this is their conversation.”

“Then why did the guy taking notes divide the pages into panels?”

“Why does a chessboard have sixty-four squares? To keep the pieces from running in all directions. The symbols are personal cues. We’ll see where they run.”

Now that Zhenya thought about it there were similarities to chess. Its symbols were as definite as pieces-only a player had to figure out what moves each symbol made, and there was a gun at the endgame.

• • •

Maxim knew a restaurant that served its guests in a plastic version of the Amber Room, the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

The room was paneled with artificial amber and gold into the likenesses of cherubs and Peter the Great. Waitresses were costumed à la Marie Antoinette, with gold dust sprinkled in their hair and a beauty spot carefully placed on their décolletage. In a gilded cage in the center of the room, a mechanical nightingale opened its beak and spewed birdsong.

“This almost makes up for my wet feet,” Maxim said. “Maybe a little fois gras and a duck à l’orange will help.”

“And maybe you can tell me why children would be chased by a van with a pig.”

“Amber.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Very. When the Teutonic knights ruled here they chopped off the hands of anyone who poached amber. The van was probably just trying to scare off the kids.”

“It felt like more than that. I’m fairly sensitive to whatever is chasing me.”

“In your profession I suppose that’s a gift. Are you treating? I find I’m more talkative when I’m well fed and dry.”

“Stuff yourself.”

“Excellent. Here’s our waitress.”

Maxim ordered the feast he had promised himself. Arkady had vodka, black bread and butter.

“Was it?” he asked.

“What?”

“The Eighth Wonder of the World?”

“I should think so. Imagine walls of glowing amber, gold leaf, Venetian mirrors and mosaics of semiprecious stones. People said that when the sun poured in the windows of the palace, the Amber Room appeared to burst into flame. It was the favorite room of Catherine the Great. Unfortunately, it was also the favorite war prize of the Nazis. It was dismantled and hidden in a bunker, in a well, in the Black Forest, or taken away in an icebreaker, or maybe in a submarine. Imagine the Amber Room resting in the dark on the bottom of the sea. Like a seed.”

Watching Maxim shovel food around his plate reminded Arkady of the earthmovers at the strip mine. Maxim, in turn, said he found it painful to watch Arkady eat so little.

“There are two kinds of poets. The starving poet and the randy, dissolute poet. I prefer the latter.” He summoned the sommelier.

“Like a seed,” Arkady said. “What did you mean by that?”

“A commonplace metaphor. What distinguishes amber from diamonds, sapphires and rubies is that amber was alive. Fifty million years ago, it was resin dripping from a pine tree, capturing a bee here, a sow bug there. Think of a diamond with a mosquito in the center. Doesn’t exist. That’s why, when other Mafias tried to muscle in on the amber trade, Grisha pushed back.”

“Out of scientific interest?”

“Not quite. There was a push and pull called the Amber Wars.”

“That sounds quaint.”

“Quite bloody, actually. Would you like a charlotte russe? The custards here are very good.”

“Is the Amber War over?”

“We’ll have the petits fours and the custards,” Maxim told the waitress, and sighed when she curtsied and her bosom nearly tumbled free. He cocked an eye on Arkady. “What is the war to you? I thought you were just examining the circumstances of Tatiana Petrovna’s death.”

“Her death gets stranger and stranger and is as involved with Kaliningrad as it is with Moscow.”

“In what way?”

“The interpreter’s notebook.”

“Which is being decoded by experts even as we speak?”

“I would assume so.”

“Why do I have the feeling that great heaping piles of horseshit are being stacked around me?”

“Because you’re a poet.”

• • •

Zhenya and Lotte were learning the depth of the Russian language. Each interpretation spawned two more, which only multiplied again. They were following streams of words as imagined by someone else’s lifetime of experience, anything that would relate to any other symbol or all the unknowns of the interpreter’s background: a scuffed knee, a ripe fig, a bedtime story.

They were looking for mnemonic cues, one man’s message to himself with a world of symbols and words to choose from. God forbid, the words could have come from another language, and a professional interpreter spoke at least five.

Even a simple arrow could be a child’s top, a fallen tree, “exit” or “this way to Estonia.” Or a missile. Each interpretation turned the text upside down.

“You should go home,” Zhenya told Lotte.

“I’m not going to leave when we’re halfway done.”

“I wish we were. I think we’ve gone in reverse.” Which was true, he thought. They had learned nothing and they were exhausted. “Your family must be worried.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“So?”

“On Tuesdays my father meets his lover, an oboist in the symphony, and my mother meets her lover, a baritone in the chorus. They live six-day weeks. They won’t notice I’m gone for another twenty-four hours.”

“What about your grandfather?”

“He has a new model. He won’t notice anything either.”

Zhenya’s cell phone rang. He made the “quiet” sign to Lotte before answering with a hypercasual “Hello.”

“This is Arkady. Are you at the apartment?”

“No.”

“Are you alone?”

Arkady had to repeat the question because Maxim’s ZIL was outside Kaliningrad and cell coverage was spotty.

“Yes.”

“Have you still got the notebook of Tatiana Petrovna?”

“No.” Three lies in a row. A good start, Zhenya thought. If cell phone coverage was patchy, that was fine with him. “Have you thought about our deal?”

“How far have you gotten on the translation?” Arkady asked.

“We’re working on it.”

A pause. “We?”

“My friend Lotte.”

“A girlfriend?”

“A friend.”

There were a number of reasons for Arkady to be furious. The girl’s safety for a start.

“If she’s a friend, send her home. Any sign of Anya?”

“No.”

“What about Alexi Grigorenko?”

The reception broke up again.

Arkady said, “You know the safe you took Tatiana’s notebook from? Is my gun still there?”

“I can’t hear you.”

“The ammunition is in the bookcase. .”

“Yes?”

“Can you hear me now?”

“Where?”

But the connection was gone.

Lotte had pressed her ear close to the phone. When coverage broke up completely, she asked, “What deal?”

“The army. I needed his permission for early enlistment.”

“Now you’re scaring me.”

“Do you want to go home now?”

“Let’s finish the puzzle.”

• • •

The road back into the city took Maxim and Arkady by housing blocks as stained as pissoirs and storefronts that were little more than shipping containers decorated with posters. Maxim decided to show off what he called the Ninth Wonder of the World, the ugliest building of the Soviet era.

“A Frankenstein’s monster of a building. A zombie.”

“You sound proud.”

“I don’t mean merely the ugliest building west of the Urals. I mean from here to the Pacific. From the silver herring of the Baltic Sea to the red salmon of Kamchatka.”

“An ambitious scope.”

“I speak as a Koenig, a native son.”

“How is the cell coverage at the ugliest building?”

“As a matter of fact, excellent.”

Streetlamps gave Maxim’s ZIL such a translucent quality that it seemed to float through the city. Heads turned from the cheap goods offered at sidewalk stalls and clothing racks to follow the one-car procession.

Arkady needed space to phone Victor, drunk or not, and send him around to the apartment. There was a new tone to the boy’s voice. Not alarm, but definitely anxiety.

“During the war, the British bombed the city of Koenigsberg to dust. Their special target was Koenigsberg Castle, which stood on a hill overlooking the city. When the war was over there was no castle anymore, and Stalin rebuilt where the castle had stood.”

Maxim rolled across a dark lot and drew the car to a stop.

At first, Arkady did not see anything odd. It took time to see that half the night sky was blocked out.

“The last Communist Party headquarters,” Maxim said. “Koenigs call it the Monster.”

Dogs barked hysterically on the other side of a chain-link fence, waiting for Maxim or Arkady to do something as foolish as offer a finger through the links. Arkady suspected that they were fed infrequently. Bottles and trash had accumulated where winds had blown them.

Arkady craned his neck to take in the size of the Monster. Twenty stories high, the building loomed over him.

“It’s the largest building in the city and it’s never been used,” Maxim said. “Not for a day.”

Most windows were broken out. The Monster had four legs, and more than anything it put Arkady in mind of a headless elephant.

“What is the problem?”

“History. Before they even finished the top of the building, the bottom started to flood from old tunnels underneath the castle. Now the entire building is sinking and too expensive to demolish. The Party borrowed from the banks and would have had to pay them back. They’re all sinking together. It’s wonderful.”

“They can’t go on forever.”

“Why not? When Putin visited, they merely painted the building blue and pretended it wasn’t here. It was the world’s greatest mass hallucination.”

At least the cell phone coverage was good. Maxim made himself scarce while Arkady called Victor, who assumed a righteous tone.

“Where the devil are you?”

“Kaliningrad.”

“I thought you were only going to be there overnight.”

“I thought so too. Things got complicated.”

“That will be on your tombstone, ‘Things Got Complicated.’ ”

“Have you seen Alexi Grigorenko?”

“As a matter of fact, I was doing surveillance at the Den when Alexi came in. He had a hell of a shiner.”

“We had an encounter at the marina.”

“So he didn’t run into a door. Abdul gave him the horse laugh.”

“Abdul?”

“That snake wanted the manager to play his video in the restaurant. It’s an insult to every Russian soldier who served in Chechnya. I couldn’t abide it.”

Arkady watched Maxim buff the fender of the ZIL.

“What did you do?”

“I told Abdul I would stuff my gun down his pants and blow his balls off.”

“See, this is why I can’t leave you alone.”

“Well, you’d better hurry back. Anya and Alexi are getting very close.”

“Anya’s doing research.”

“Is that what you call it?” Victor asked. “The sooner you’re back here, the better. Just look out for the so-called poet Maxim Dal. He’s a slippery character.”

“I’m doing my best.”

Arkady heard a whistling sound from on high and looked up in time to see a windowpane sail through the air and explode on impact. A monster at play, he thought.

• • •

Zhenya said, “According to Arkady, there’s an old navy saying, ‘First speed, then direction.’ ”

“Meaning what?” asked Lotte.

“Going anywhere is better than going nowhere.”

They pitched in words together, listening for a more solid echo, writing them down on index cards by speaker as they went.

Man in the Top Hat with Line: ear, bug in a circle, two rings, fish and 2B.

Box Kite: star, bug, sunrise, triangle.

Man in Top Hat No Line: question mark, crossed knives, two rings, fish under wave.

Crescent Moon: arrow down, bug, ear, equals sign, black teardrop, white teardrop and RR.

Star: arrow down, railroad tracks, RR and the letter L.

Building Blocks: dollar sign, bug, box kite, radioactive.

Top Hat No Line: spiral, ear, box kite, face with X for mouth, or a bug in a circle.

Zhenya said, “What kind of bug, anyway?”

Lotte leaned forward to show him the pendant that hung around her neck. Trapped in amber was a wasp.

They tried themes. Railroads, as in RR and train track.

Naval, as in fish and wave. An underwater fish had to be submarines or torpedoes. L could be Lenin; that was always safe. An arrow could mean direction, exit or consequence. Or Diana the Huntress or William Tell. The teardrops could be agony, oil, blood, apple seeds, figs or pears. The fence could be a zipper, a railroad track or stitches. The waves could mean the sea, the navy, the Baltic Fleet.

“Sometimes you play the player, not the board,” Zhenya said.

“Meaning what?”

“I can see some of these players. There’s the interpreter himself. He’s relaxed, confident, writes down ‘blah blah’ for the formalities. Maybe acts a little superior. Then there are the others, mainly the first Man in a Hat. The first thing he tells everybody is that they are all equal. Everyone’s going to get a fair hearing. Classic Soviet-time etiquette. He opens the meeting and he closes it. There’s no confusing him with any other player. He has a line under him, like the braid on an admiral. The second Man in a Hat, the one without a line underneath, is enforcement. He carries the knives. We can learn a lot from little details.”

“That reminds me,” Lotte said.

“Yes?”

“I was at a tournament in Warsaw, playing a Chinese girl. It’s amazing how many good players they’re producing.”

“And?”

“Her name was on a plaque that had the box kite symbol. Actually, it stands for China.”

“Oh.” So to keep things in perspective, while he had been hustling in railway stations, Lotte had been traveling the international chess tournament circuit. “That’s a pretty big detail. How did you do?”

“Second place.”

“That’s great. Do you remember anything else?”

“One of the sponsors of the tournament was a Chinese bank, the Red Dawn Bank of Shanghai.”

“Not Sunrise or Sunset?”

“No, in China, the dawn is always red.”

“Probably because of all the pollution there. So, we’re making progress. What do you think Natalya Goncharova stands for?”

“Beauty,” said Lotte.

“Or adultery.” He spread index cards across the kitchen table. “Everything is open to interpretation. It could be, ‘Due to a Chinese spy ring, a torpedo sank a damaged nuclear submarine and left the victims in a vast oil slick, for which the Russian defense minister awarded himself the Order of Lenin.’ ”

“Or?” Lotte asked.

Zhenya rearranged the cards. “ ‘The great Russian poet Pushkin and his unfaithful wife, Natalya, were sailing off the coast of China when she was fatally stung by a wasp. The music at her funeral brought tears. Fish and figs were served after the ceremony.’ ”

• • •

They drove around the parks and lantern-lit paths in the center of the city, to what purpose, Arkady did not know. To escape the Monster? To impress a tourist?

“Here’s the future,” Maxim said. “The so-called Fishing Village, a facsimile of old Koenigsberg.”

“It looks like a theme park,” Arkady said.

“The future will be a theme park.”

The village’s half-timbered buildings and lighthouse were a disguise for expensive shops and upper-class housing. Where were the bustling of fishmongers, barrows of herring, nets hung to dry and glistening like a bright arras of silver scales? Not even a single true fishing boat, only a pair of dinghies kept for maintenance and only one of them with an outboard engine.

“Sometimes, to complete the scene, a friend and I take out one of the boats and fish for perch. It’s relaxing.”

“Did Tatiana go with you?”

“Tatiana? No. She never relaxed. She knew she was in danger every time she left her door. Even in her own home. But she welcomed danger. Her life was a waltz with danger. Only Kaliningrad could have bred a woman like her. She told me once that she preferred a short life, a dash across the sky.”

“A dash or a waltz?” Arkady asked.

“Somehow both, my dear Renko.”

“As long as she could take her dog with her? That’s what Obolensky told me. A little pug, isn’t it?”

“You’ve seen it?”

“I’m not sure. What was its name?”

“Polo.”

“When was the last time you saw her?” Arkady asked. “Tatiana, I mean.”

“The day she died.”

“You were over her by then?”

“I was still fond of her. We respected each other, but we were long past the white-hot stage of a relationship.”

“She confided in you?”

“To a degree. I’d say she was closer to her sister, Ludmila, and Obolensky.”

“Did she mention any Mafia?”

“No one in particular.”

“What about Abdul? The Shagelmans? Ape Beledon? They each had a grievance, as they saw it.”

“Criminals always have a grievance,” Maxim said. “The fact is they want Kaliningrad. There’s much more here than amber. Auto plants, shipping, the Baltic Fleet and soon, maybe, casinos. Under the rough surface, a handsome principality.”

“All of which Alexi Grigorenko wants as his inheritance.”

A Mercedes slowed out of respect, it seemed, to let the ZIL go by. BMWs built in Kaliningrad seemed to jump directly to Moscow; Nissans and Isuzus made the reverse trek from Pacific ports and had the look of secondhand shoes.

“Are you looking for somebody?” Arkady asked. Maxim kept glancing at his wing mirrors.

“Acquaintances.”

“Maybe your old fishing companion? There’s nothing like old friends to keep you on your toes.”

A bridge led to a small island and the sharp spire of a cathedral.

“Tatiana will have a statue here one day when we are long forgotten. People will ask why we did nothing while she was murdered. You carry the weight for all of us.”

“I wouldn’t count much on that,” Arkady said.

“Then we’re in trouble.”

The church spire stood in its own bed of lights. Maxim approached at a crawl.

“Our cathedral.” Maxim pointed at a tomb that was tucked into a corner. “Our philosopher.”

The tomb was rough stone surrounded by a portico and a wrought iron gate. The headlights of the ZIL brushed along a plaque that read IMMANUEL KANT.

“Is this a midnight cultural tour?” Arkady asked. “Or are we simply adrift?”

“Come, come, you must have studied Kant at the university,” Maxim said. “The greatest mind of his age? Perhaps the most famous philosopher of any age? ‘Rational beings.’ ‘Categorical imperative.’ ”

Maxim kept the car moving slowly, weaving between trees, making a turn at the narrow end of the island.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Arkady said.

“Or ‘the inquiring murderer.’ Even if a murderer asks the whereabouts of someone he intends to kill, honesty requires you to tell the truth.”

“I’m afraid that went over my head.”

“But the old boy may have been sick,” Maxim added. “Now doctors think it’s possible Kant had a brain tumor. He displayed all the signs. Loss of vision, loss of social inhibition, fainting spells. We may have been taking our moral cues from a man who was going crazy.”

“It wouldn’t be the last time.”

A bright light was followed by a shove. Arkady twisted around to see a black Mercedes SUV ride the ZIL’s rear bumper. The ZIL leapt forward and plowed through a flower bed to a walkway by the river. As the SUV pulled alongside, Arkady saw one man at the wheel and two in back. Maxim shouted and pointed at the glove compartment. Arkady pulled on it, punched and kicked it, but the compartment stuck. The SUV inched ahead, gaining enough angle to steer the ZIL off the walkway and toward the water. Maxim had no choice but to stop. Two men emerged from the Mercedes, each with a semiautomatic pistol. They stood side by side along the ZIL, illuminating the car with muzzle flashes, punching holes in its doors, planting star patterns on its windshield and windows and shouting, “You want to fuck with me? Say hello to my little friend.”

The work was over in a matter of seconds. Their pistol clips were empty. They shared a moment of satisfaction until the ZIL came back to life. No rounds had penetrated the bulletproof interior of the car. The windows were starred but not shattered. Heavy as a tank, the ZIL backed onto the path and broadsided the other car even as the would-be assassins piled into it. While it could, the Mercedes sped off past the philosopher’s tomb.