Tatiana

28

Arkady and Tatiana sat on the porch and watched waves rip and roll as foam up the beach. In the eaves, cobwebs billowed with each blast of wind. Tatiana wrote nonstop on a yellow pad. She looked so slight, a moth in lamplight, it was hard to believe she inspired anger and fear among armed men.

“Do you mind if I ask what you’re writing?”

“It’s an opus horribilis. Or a chronicle of corruption, whatever you want to call it. There’s so much corruption to choose from it’s hard to know where to begin. Imagine a defense contractor embezzling three billion rubles out of its budget for building docks for nuclear submarines. That’s a hundred million dollars in real money that was invested into real estate. The police say when they raided the apartment of one of the alleged embezzlers they found art, jewelry and, guess what, the defense minister himself with his mistress.

“But that’s nothing compared to the siphoning of seven billion rubles from our satellite navigation system, which might account for all our failed satellite launchings. The list goes on and on. The Defense Ministry admits that a fifth of the military budget is stolen. One can only imagine what an independent investigation would find.”

She wrote effortlessly, but it struck him that there was something guarded, omitted, incomplete.

“That’s it?”

“In a nutshell, yes.”

“Do you have a tape recorder?”

“A journalist always has a tape recorder.” She reached into her backpack and handed the recorder to him. “Why?”

From his pea jacket he took a cassette. “I’ve been carrying this around for days for no good reason except that I found it in your apartment and, in very small letters, the label says ‘Again.’ Again what?”

He pushed “Play.” The tape was tinny but distinctive, a continuous metallic tap, tap, tap, scrape, scrape, scrape until Tatiana turned it off.

“An SOS from the submarine Kursk,” she said. She could as easily have said hell.

“Why should you care about an accident at sea that took place a dozen years ago?”

“Nothing has changed,” she said.

Arkady waited.

She said, “When the torpedoes on the Kursk exploded, our navy press office reported that the submarine had encountered ‘minor technical difficulties.’ By that time it had plunged to the ocean floor. Altogether, we made fourteen futile attempts to rescue the men inside before Norwegian help was accepted. The entire crew of one hundred eighteen men died. How could this happen to a submarine in the Red Navy? What did we learn? That the torpedoes were volatile and the hatches refused to close and, most important, when reporters revealed the truth they could be threatened with criminal libel. That’s what we learned.”

“That’s the past.”

“No, that’s the future. We have a new nuclear submarine, with much the same problems as the Kursk.”

“What is it called?”

“The Kaliningrad.”

“Of course.”

“Only there’s a problem. The Kaliningrad didn’t pass muster. They don’t dare let it operate. It has to be refitted from top to bottom. The original construction costs were a hundred billion rubles and the refit will cost just as much, yet the Kremlin and the Ministry of Defense are happy.”

“How is that possible?”

“It’s all in the notebook. All I know is that we don’t have a government anymore, just thieves.”

“Is that what you’re writing about? The Kaliningrad is just one more example?”

“No, this is not the same. The Kursk was an example of incompetence. The Kaliningrad is an example of incompetence and greed. It carries a blood curse. It’s a black mark that can never be erased.”

“Maybe the submarine’s problems can be reengineered or remedied, at least?”

“Maybe. My experience is that it’s easier to put reporters into the ground. The interpreter Joseph knew and he’s dead.”

“Who knew about your connection to Joseph?”

“No one aside from my editor.”

Arkady’s impression of Sergei Obolensky was that he was a gossip, but no one needed to have talked. The interpreter Joseph Bonnafos had served his purpose. Once the meeting was over, he was a loose string fated to be clipped.

She said, “You’re playing investigator again.”

“I make a stab at it from time to time.”

“What does it matter? You have no authority here.”

“I have no authority anywhere, but I like to understand things.”

“That sounds like a perverse pleasure.”

“I’m afraid so. What do you know about Grisha?”

“Personally? He was rich, he was feared and he had fun. A full life, you could say.”

“As a businessman?”

“A businessman, public benefactor and Mafia boss.”

“In both Kaliningrad and Moscow.”

“Well, he was a man of ambition. A leader.”

“And how would you describe Alexi?”

“Crazy.”

The word had a razor’s edge.

“You’ll stay away from him, won’t you?” Arkady said.

“He killed my sister.”

“I think so too, but don’t dismiss Ape Beledon or the rest of Grisha’s pallbearers. They are all capable of killing anyone who gets in their way. For them it’s like swatting a fly.”

“You can be a monster,” Tatiana said evenly.

“From a line of monsters.” He handed back the tape recorder. As Tatiana reached for it, her backpack tipped over and a pistol spilled out. It was a small pistol, the sort of firearm that women carried more for reassurance than protection. “So you did bring a gun.” He picked it up and let a loaded magazine spring out of the grip. “Very well. There’s one thing worse than carrying a gun, and that’s carrying an empty gun, but you would have to get close to do any damage with this.”

“I just want to hear Alexi confess to murdering Ludmila.”

“And if he does?”

“I’ll shoot him. I’ll write my final chapter from the grave and then I’ll happily disappear.”

Arkady thought of Tatiana’s father, a man who didn’t want to know too much. He looked out at a band of darkening clouds that stretched across the horizon and seemed to suck up the sea.

• • •

On the computer, Zhenya found images of the yacht Natalya Goncharova. Its specifications were daunting: one hundred meters from stem to stern, with a seven-thousand-horsepower engine and a top cruising speed of twenty-eight knots. It was a slap in the face of the working class. At the same time he had never seen a boat as luminous and sleek.

Lotte asked, “Why would criminals from Moscow meet in Kaliningrad? Why sneak into there?”

Victor said, “You can’t sneak through Kaliningrad airport. It’s too small. Besides, part of the roof might fall on your head.”

Zhenya called Kaliningrad airport security and was given the stiff-arm.

Victor took over. “You stinking pile of shit, who are you to ask questions of the Moscow police? You’re going to cooperate or I will pull your entrails out your asshole. Understood?”

The operator’s attitude improved. There was heavier-than-usual traffic of private or chartered planes moving in or out, he said. “You should have been here a couple of hours ago. We had that rap artist Abdul arrive. The Chechen? We took measures. A private plane and a car waiting out on the tarmac. Didn’t help. Once the women spotted him they were hysterical. They had him sign everything, and I mean everything. Could you live like that?”

“Was he with anyone?”

“No entourage. A couple of businessmen. I was a little disappointed by that. I expected a supermodel or two.”

“When is Abdul scheduled to leave Kaliningrad?”

“In his private plane? He’s a billionaire. He can leave any time he wants.”

“Wait, I have some other names for you. Call me if any of them arrive or go.” Victor gave the operator the names and his cell phone number before disconnecting.

“So maybe the second meeting didn’t take place already. But why else would Abdul be in Kaliningrad?” Zhenya said.

Lotte asked, “What about the bullet in Arkady’s head?”

Conversation ceased.

She said, “Zhenya told me a doctor warned Arkady a bullet in his brain could move a millimeter either way and he’d drop dead. He isn’t supposed to do anything strenuous. Shouldn’t he be quiet and stay at home? You’re his friend-is he suicidal?”

Victor considered the point. “No, but he isn’t a ray of sunshine.”

• • •

Tatiana had brought a change of clothing and a stack of papers in her backpack. By lamplight, Arkady flipped through papers of incorporation for Curonian Investments, the Curonian Bank, Curonian Renaissance, Curonian Investment Fund, all of them subsidiaries of Curonian Amber. Altogether, pretty serious work for a spit of sand, he thought.

“Everything refers to Curonian Amber but I didn’t see much activity at the amber pit.”

“High-pressure hosing is dirty but excellent for laundering money.”

“So everything here is owned by a virtually nonexistent amber mine. Except, the way they use it, it’s a gold mine.”

“It was Grisha’s invention,” Tatiana said. “I still haven’t figured it out. Everybody has a grand dream. Every criminal wants to drive a BMW and every politician needs to live in a palace. Only our sailors are willing to accept a modest burial at sea.”

“The moment you started gathering these papers, you targeted yourself.”

“But I don’t have the hard facts or names, which is maddening.”

The beam of a spotlight swept across the screen of the cabin porch.

“Get down,” Arkady said.

A speedboat headed in, trying not to get broadsided in the surf.

“Is this Maxim?” Tatiana asked. “He should know better.”

“It’s not Maxim.”

Arkady made out Alexi at the wheel of a sleek wooden runabout, a classic emblem of motorboat bravado and the worst possible choice for landing on a beach. He inched closer without swinging sideways and rolling but he should have come in an inflatable boat designed for landing in rough seas.

“Tatiana Petrovna! I want to talk to you! Come out and show yourself!” Alexi shouted.

“He’s stuck. He can’t come in any further,” Arkady said.

The searchlight probed the screen and the corners of the porch.

“If you come out, I’ll tell you what happened to your sister. You’re a journalist, don’t you want the details?”

The wind batted his words away. He jockeyed the boat back and forth, letting the inboard engine cough and rumble.

“Renko, don’t you want to know what happened to your boy, Zhenya? Don’t you care?”

“What boy?” she whispered. “You have a son?”

“In a way.”

Alexi called, “Doesn’t either one of you care about anyone?”

The spotlight found Tatiana as she opened the porch door and moved down the stairs to the sand. Alexi motioned her closer. The sky cracked open and in the white glare of lightning, Alexi raised a gun and fired.

The shot went wide. Alexi was a good sailor, but the work he was doing demanded hands on the wheel and the gun while the deck under his feet moved in all directions. One shot went into the water, the next into the air.

She didn’t duck. To her, the shots seemed irrelevant, contemptible, no worse than rain. Arkady caught up to her and felt a hot pluck on his ear. Waves rushed up, fanned and slid away. Alexi fired until he was left squeezing the trigger of an empty gun, like the last strike of a serpent.

Then the boat backed up, seesawing through waves, and retreated to the dark.

• • •

“Hold still.” Tatiana patted Arkady’s earlobe dry. “We’re lucky. My father overstocked everything. We have bandages and antiseptics until the next millennium. Hold still, please. For a detective, you’re very squeamish.”

“How did Alexi know we were here?”

“I don’t know, but it will be a while before he returns. There’s no place on the spit to tie up a big motorboat. He’d have to go to Zelenogradsk. Then he’d have to get a car and return. That will take hours.”

“It makes no sense. Why did he even come here in a boat like that?”

“He was in a rush. People who are in a rush make bad decisions.”

“Now we can’t wait. We have to leave right away.”

“Right away,” she said.

She brushed his hair away from his ear. The Band-Aid would do. He felt her breath on his neck. That and the pain made a strange combination. Her hand stayed longer than need be. He felt her body lean against him. Then her mouth was against his and his hands were inside her shirt, against the curve of her back, against the heat and coolness of her body. Standing with her on the beach, he had been invulnerable despite being nicked. How could she impart so much power and, at the same time, hold on to him as if she might drown without him?

Her depth was astonishing. Endless. And in her eyes he saw a better man than he had been before.

• • •

“Afterward” was an overused word, Arkady thought. It meant so much. A shifting of the planets. A million years. A new sea.

“Alexi will be back,” Tatiana said, although without urgency. “Tell me about Zhenya.”

“There’s not much to say.”

“Tell me anything.”

“He’s seventeen, quiet, scrawny, very bright, unbeatable at chess, brave, honest, deceitful, an excellent shot, and right now he wants to join the army. Both of his parents are dead.”

“Did you know them?”

“I never met his mother. His father shot me.”

“The father was a criminal?”

“Yes.”

“Does Zhenya feel guilty about that?”

“Not that I’ve noticed. Anyway, he shouldn’t. We have, I suppose you could say, a complicated relationship.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes, but I’m afraid it hasn’t done him much good. Every time we’re together, we clash. We just rub each other the wrong way. On the other hand, if I had a son, I would want him to be like Zhenya. As I said, it’s complicated.”

“I think you’re being hard on yourself. Let’s enjoy the moment.”

“Is that allowed?”

Tatiana found a mattress, luxury itself. She rolled toward him and said, “Definitely not allowed.”

“You think we’re going to pay for this?”

“A thousand times.”

“Why?” Arkady asked.

“Because God is such a bastard, He will take you away from me.”