Tatiana

24

Arkady rented a Lada, a tin can compared to the ZIL, and drove to the sand spit where he had first seen Vova and his sisters searching for amber. Vova was waiting, barefoot again, ready to wade or run for his life. When Arkady asked where he lived, Vova pointed to a shack half-engulfed by a dune.

“It moans at night. We have beams holding it up. Someday it’s just going to cave in but until then, it’s all ours.” He gave Arkady a sideways look. “You ran into Piggy.”

“The man with the butcher’s van? He’s pretty frightening.”

“Yeah. But nobody will believe me.”

“Try me.”

Vova continually scanned the beach, a lookout’s habit. He had found the business card that Arkady left in the biking shoe of Joseph Bonnafos and had something to tell. Or sell, would be more likely, Arkady thought.

“Are you the police?”

“In Moscow, not here.”

“Because the police will just steal whatever I’ve got.”

They were known for that, Arkady thought. He watched air holes appear in the sand as water retreated, evidence of an unseen world.

“Vova, so far as I’m concerned this is a private affair.”

“Me too.”

“What are your sisters’ names?”

“Lyuba and Lena. Lyuba’s ten. Lena’s eight.”

“On the phone you said you had a bike.”

“A special bike. Black with a red cat.”

A constant wind sculpted sand and whipped Vova’s hair around his brow. Arkady had to wonder what it would be like to live in such a relentless element.

Arkady asked, “Have you shown the bike to anyone else?”

“I told the guys at the bike shop.”

“How much did they offer you?”

“Fifty dollars.”

“That’s a lot.” Maybe a six-hundredth the value of a Pantera, Arkady thought. “Sight unseen?”

“I know these guys, they’d keep the money and the bike.”

“That’s true.”

Vova walked in a tight circle.

“Is there something else?” Arkady asked.

“Piggy.”

“What about him?”

“We saw Piggy kill the biker. We watched from the trees.”

Most eyewitnesses, young or old, tried to re-create the intensity and horror of a murder, like crayoning over the lines of a coloring book. Vova was cool and matter-of-fact. The biker was still alive when Piggy threw him into the butcher’s van. There was a brief sound like feet drumming on the side of the van and then a gunshot. Piggy emerged and went through the biker’s jersey, seeming to become more frustrated as he went and finally tossing it aside.

“Did he see you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then why is he after you?”

“We took the bike.”

That altered the situation. “You stole the bicycle from Piggy?”

“Yes.”

“Does he know?”

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“He saw Lyuba wearing the helmet and tried to run her down, but he couldn’t drive up the dunes.”

“Where are your parents?”

“They’re coming back.” It sounded less a boast than a wish.

“What about you? Who takes care of you and your sisters?”

“Our grandmother. She lives back toward town.”

“Does she feed you?”

“We get by.”

“What’s your full name?” Vova was short for Vladimir.

Vova shut his mouth. No parents, no last name.

“Okay,” Arkady said. “Besides the bike and the helmet, what else did you take?”

“Just a notebook I found in the grass. It was full of gibberish.”

“Then why take it?”

“We found a card too with a cell phone number. When people put a cell phone number on something, they want it back, right?”

“That’s smart.”

“And the lady who answered was nice. She came right away.”

“What did she look like?”

“She looked brainy.”

“Did she say her name?”

“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?”