Jigsaw (49 page)

‘Frank …'

He was about to speak her name but then he realized that his world had changed in a matter of seconds, that he didn't know her name. ‘You were killed in a skiing accident in Vermont in 1988. Your neck was broken when they carried you off the slopes. DOA. Brennan Carberry doesn't exist.'

THIRTY-ONE

VENICE

T
HE PLANE FROM
L
ONDON LANDED AT
M
ARCO
P
OLO
A
IRPORT AT EIGHT
minutes before three a.m. Swarmed by security personnel, Gurenko disembarked and was escorted down the gangway to a car that carried him a couple of hundred yards to the dock. Everything was done with all the frenzied haste of a polka. He was hustled, Budenny at his elbow, pressured along by a variety of underlings, their ears plugged to listening devices, their lapels wired. They created a large human pool around him. The photographers and journalists awaiting his arrival had no opportunity to get near him. He was swept on to the launch, which was encompassed by a dozen craft, each manned by a contingent of guards, some Russian, others Italian.

When he was seated in the lounge of the launch, he lit a cigarette and attempted to move the curtain from the window in preparation for his first sight of Venice – but Budenny, forever paranoid, forever alert, advised him against it on the grounds that such an act might expose him.

‘Expose me to what?' Gurenko asked.

‘You never know,' Budenny said.

Gurenko puffed away at his cigarette with a show of resentment. All his life he'd wanted to see the lights of the city along the Grand Canal, and now he was to be denied the pleasure. The Palazzo Loredan, the Farsetti, the Grassi, the Ca' Foscari – and he wasn't allowed to draw back the curtain and look. He was a lover denied the sight of his mistress's face.

He walked up and down the narrow curtained lounge. He had the sensation of travelling inside a sealed box. All this security was overkill. He crushed out his cigarette. ‘I feel caged,' he said. ‘And very, very frustrated.'

Budenny smiled. ‘It's exactly how you're supposed to feel.'

‘I've dreamed of this city for years, Budenny. When I was a student, Venice was where I wanted to be. Not London, not Paris, always Venice … During all the years when foreign travel was difficult for us, I would read histories of the place, look at photographs, study books of paintings. Magnetism, Budenny. And now you won't let me look out of the damned window.'

Budenny said, ‘I have responsibilities. Besides, you'll get the chance to see what you want to see. Sit down. Be patient.' Budenny opened a folder, studied a typed schedule. ‘Luncheon with the Italian Prime Minister and his cabinet members. A private meeting with the Prime Minister after luncheon – who, incidentally, would have preferred to meet you in Rome, but he seems, good fellow that he is, to understand your artistic interests. After the meeting, a quick tour of Venice before you head for Berlin in the evening.'

Quick, Gurenko thought. Like a tourist. He wanted the impossible, probably: the time in which to embrace the whole place. Even in London, when he'd spent five hours with the dour British Prime Minister, and then two hours with Caan, the US Ambassador – a glossy character altogether, a smooth New World product who reassured him that democratic reform in Russia had priority on the US agenda of foreign affairs – he'd been thinking of Venice. Then in Paris, where he'd eaten a late dinner with the President and talked of Russia's future with a confidence he wasn't sure he felt, he'd caught himself drifting. When the Frenchman was interrogating him on the subject of popular support for the new Russian constitution, his mind had now and then wandered.

He regarded Budenny a second. In his well-tailored grey suit, white shirt and bright flowery tie – a blinding length of silk – he was so different from the old Vassily. If you looked at a photograph of Budenny taken ten years ago, you'd be staring at a quite different man, a colourless Party functionary dressed in the kind of shapeless baggy clothes that resembled rejects from a zoot-suit factory. Now he subscribed to fashion magazines published in London and New York; he made shopping trips to foreign cities – Amsterdam, Milan, Paris – and always returned with boxes of shirts and suits and shoes. In recent years, Gurenko thought, he'd become something of a dandy. He'd also acquired implanted teeth to go with the clothes and the blow-dried hair. Budenny could
never
understand the attraction of Venice. You could explain until there was a heatwave in Siberia, and he'd still never grasp it. His life was all schedules and anxiety. He lived like a man whose eyes are forever looking sideways.

The launch was slowing now. The motor was silenced; the hull knocked against a quay. Gurenko, again surrounded, squashed by his human shields, was assisted out of the launch to the jetty, then escorted under a barrage of umbrellas to the lobby of the hotel. He had an impression of marble, chandeliers, a thick red carpet underfoot. Otherwise, his view was strictly limited. He suddenly thought of a phrase from a poem he'd read at university, something from Max Eastman, written in the 1920s.
Fear is the only danger
. Old Max, a Bolshevik New Yorker who'd written in Russian as well as English, was correct. Budenny and his security buffoons should have read that poem.

And now he was jammed inside a lift rising to the upper floor of the hotel, where every room and suite had been reserved for the Russian party. There he'd be trapped until it was time to be ushered back into the world.

Inside the lift, squeezed between Budenny and his guards, he had a moment of stifling dizziness. The doors slid open, the hotel manager stood in the hallway, obsequiously stooped, a fake smile of welcome on his face.
We're so proud to have you stay with us
, et cetera, et cetera, and Gurenko nodded, returned the smile after a fashion, and then was whisked down the corridor to his own suite of rooms, two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a sitting-room filled with flowers and baskets of fruit, and wine chilling in a silver container.

Under Budenny's scrutiny, the security guards checked the rooms, as they'd done so many times before Gurenko's arrival. They swept the place with electronic devices, examined the telephones, sampled the fruits, sipped the wines, explored the bunches of flowers – what did they expect to find? transmitters concealed in petals? tiny explosives stuffed in stems? – then departed, seemingly satisfied, or as close to satisfaction as they were likely to get. Gurenko, overwhelmed by their zeal, by their mute dedication, was left with Budenny. Exhausted, he slumped on the sofa and put his legs up.

He remembered another phrase from Eastman's poem.
But they are feeble and their watch is brief
. He was about to quote it for Budenny's sake – but poetry was pointless in Budenny's world, a luxury for the very few, an artsy-fartsy pastime for weirdos.

Budenny pressed the remote control for the TV. There was a dazzling chorus of dancers, bright-faced young men in bullfighting suits and leggy girls in abbreviated skirts – a garish spectacle, just the kind of thing Budenny would enjoy. Gurenko felt the frustration rise in him again. Stuck here in front of a stupid TV – when all around him in the city lay great works of art, creations of genius. Lost opportunities: what a life.

‘Nice, very nice,' said Budenny, eyeing the dancing girls.

Gurenko picked up the remote control and pressed the off button. ‘But not to my liking,' he said.

Budenny laughed. ‘Pretty girls. One should always appreciate them. To my mind,
they
're, the real works of art. Not stuffy old canvases hanging on a mouldy wall.'

Gurenko looked at the dead screen. He concluded that Budenny's soul was a lost cause. Tomorrow's schedule,' he said. ‘It includes the Scuola Grande di San Rocco?'

‘Of course it does. Did you think I'd overlook your request?' Budenny pretended to be offended. He was a great ham with a huge repertoire of exaggerated expressions.

‘I simply wanted to be sure,' said Gurenko. Tomorrow, he'd at least have the chance to be in the presence of the Tintorettos in the Scuola – even if he couldn't actually give them the study they required because he didn't have the time. But they'd be all around him in their luminous glory.
The Adoration of the Magi. The Flight into Egypt. The Slaughter of the Innocents
.

Budenny yawned, covered his mouth with his hand. ‘I'll leave you. Let you get some sleep. If you need me, my room is next door.'

Gurenko said good night, watching Budenny go. Alone, he undressed, opened his suitcase, took out a brown bathrobe. Then he lay down on the bed. He picked up a small guidebook to Venice, flicked the pages until he came to the Scuola.
The Crucifixion
, in his own modest view the painter's best work.
The Miracle of the Manna, The Punishments of the Serpents
. He knew he'd experience the kind of awe that always overcame him in the presence of genius, that reverential hush of his heart, the dumbstruck silences of his mind. Great art had a way of putting things in perspective for him; it reminded him of his own mortality.

He closed the book, opened a small plastic bottle, and dutifully swallowed two multi-vitamin capsules as Svetlana had instructed him.

Vassily Budenny locked the door of his suite. He rubbed his hands together briskly. His blood pressure was high, his pulses too fast, his heart quick. Earlier, on the flight from Paris, he'd gone inside the toilet and taken a mild tranquillizer. He'd studied his face in the mirror for such a long time he'd experienced a sense of unfamiliarity in the reflection; he might have been looking at a stranger. What will history have to say about Vassily Budenny? Would it vilify him? applaud him? Or would there only be silence? Perhaps his role would never be known, perhaps a century might pass before his significance was discovered. What did it matter?

Historical judgements lay in the hands of people as yet unborn. It was an odd consideration. Even as he'd gazed at himself in the mirror he'd imagined coupling on some double bed in a strange city, two people copulating in Minsk, say, the passage of sperm from man to woman, the fertilization of the egg, an embryo that would become an historian of the future, an eager young man or woman whose eventual academic labours would be a doctoral thesis on the life and times of Vassily Budenny. Heroism or denunciation – it made no difference. His patriotic duty was clear.

He lay down on the sofa, kicked off his shoes, turned on the TV, enjoyed the dancing girls. Pert little bottoms. Poor Gurenko, he thought. The man would have been happier as the administrator of an obscure province, scribbling poetry in the evenings, contemplating the mystery of moths that, attracted to light, fluttered under his desk lamp.

THIRTY-TWO

LYON

‘J
UST WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?'
P
AGAN ASKED.
H
E LOOKED INTO THE
girl's face and thought: Some things you couldn't absorb at once. You needed time and distance. You had to be far away from the epicentre of the blast before you grasped the extent of the damage. She was gazing at him with a serious expression.

‘You didn't trust me,' she said. ‘You had to do some checking, didn't you? You couldn't stop yourself.'

‘Old habits.'

‘And bad ones,' she said quietly.

A smell haunted him, fiery turpentine, canvases devoured by flame. His unruly thoughts stampeded. He was unable to harness them. He thought: Fool. Middle aged and pathetic. A lonely man too careless with the remains of his heart. He remembered how they'd made love, that passion.

‘Who are you?' he asked again.

‘Who do you think I am?'

‘Do me a favour. Spare me the enigmatic questions.'

She was quiet. She appeared to be gathering herself for an explanation of some sort, and although she seemed calm Pagan had the feeling it was a superficial thing taking enormous effort. He was sensitive to other people's anxieties, but not, seemingly, to his own. He'd staggered blindly into an affair with this girl, he'd plunged without pause, and when he'd taken a step back to survey his situation it was too late. Questions crowded him.
Her identity. The fact she knew where to find him in Lyon. Her motive for lying. For the façade, all the sweet words
.

‘Brennan Carberry was convenient,' she said. ‘She served her purpose.'

‘You got a copy of a dead girl's birth certificate, then applied for a passport in her name.' Pagan heard himself speak in a flat fashion, one that belied his bewilderment.

‘The paper game,' she said. ‘You know how easy it is to play. One phone call gets you a copy of a birth certificate. The rest is plain old sailing.'

Plain old sailing, he thought. He had a flash of her body in the hotel bedroom. The image was curiously inverted in his head, and strange, as if he were looking at the behaviour of another person altogether, another Frank Pagan. He felt suddenly drained, all energy depleted. Systems down, wires disconnected.

She moved as if to lay her fingers across his wrist. He pulled his hand away quickly. He said, ‘
I couldn't take disappointment. I don't handle it well. I'm not built for heartbreak.
'

‘You have a good memory, Frank,' she said. She reached for something beyond his range of vision, a large leather handbag. She set it in her lap, opened the clasp, put her hand inside.

‘Some things just stick,' he remarked. ‘Especially bullshit.' He had a surge of raw bitterness, a sharp awareness of loss.

‘You think that's all it was?'

‘It was a bad script,' he said. ‘Who wrote your lines for you? Or did you manage to make them up on the spur of the fucking moment all by your little self?' He reproached himself for the crude anger in his voice, but what was he supposed to do? Stay detached? He didn't have the capacity for icy disinterest. She'd lied to him, and the lies ran deeper than the matter of assuming the identity of a dead woman: how had she known where to find him? What exactly was being played out here in a hospital room in a rainy French city?