Penguin Lost (9 page)

Half past seven saw Viktor standing outside his own flat wondering which of his two keys to use first, and as reluctant to play unwelcome guest as to play unwelcome flat owner. Tiring at last of just standing, he pressed the bell, and as if Nina had been watching through the peephole the door opened immediately.

“Good that you’ve come,” she said, ushering him in.

Was
it, he wondered, no longer convinced of her sincerity, and was relieved to see Sonya emerge from the kitchen. Sonya he knew
better – he’d known her longer. Sonya’s smile was genuine.

“Like some black pudding?” she asked looking up at him. “Auntie Nina got it for the cat, but the cat doesn’t like it. I do though.”

“I would.”

“Eat it all up, and I’ll show you a secret.”

Her not asking about Misha hurt. Had she really forgotten him?

After supper – fried potato and black pudding, promptly served and piping hot – they retired to the sitting room. Sonya produced a grimly official-looking folder, and undoing the tapes, passed it to Viktor.

It contained drawings, yes, but not the sort he’d been expecting. All were of the same little black and white penguin, and headed in Sonya’s uncertain hand:

“There really is a reward – Auntie Nina’s paying it,” Sonya insisted, seeing how sad he suddenly looked. “All we have to do is stick them on lampposts. We’ll get five penguins straight away for that money, Nina says, and from as far away as Moscow. The main thing will be to tell which is him. But I’ll know at once. Will you help me put them up?”

“Of course.”

Nina said little that evening, but looked at him with a sad sort of warmth, as if to convey that here was still home, that Pasha, Andrey Pavlovich and the Goloseyevo villa no longer existed, and that the only problem was Misha’s disappearance.

“Can’t you stay?” Nina asked warily, when the time came for him to go.

He stiffened and sighed.

“But you were the one who disappeared. You were the one who
went away. It was terrible for Sonya and me on our own.”

“It wasn’t terrible for me,” Sonya broke in. “It was terrible for her. Yesterday she cried!”

A betrayal that earned her a look of dislike and regret.

Polling Day minus 5

It was a night of thunderstorms. Every so often Viktor got up and watched the lightning from his attic window, thinking of Sonya and Nina, of Nina crying, of the thirty Penguin Lost notices, and of the image makers’ computer. He’d mentioned the specialist’s strange behaviour to Pasha, but not of having himself accessed one of the files. Should he tell Andrey Pavlovich that he had? When he woke next morning there was no thunder, but the sound of some disturbance downstairs, which, turning to face the wall, he chose to ignore.

When at last he went in search of breakfast, he found Andrey Pavlovich sitting, pale with fatigue, in the lounge.

“Wonderful night, then this bloody lot!” he said moodily, motioning Viktor to a chair. “That damned computer! State Security, hordes of them, down on us like a ton of bricks. And nothing to do with me! Never touched the thing! Sodding image makers! I’ll shove the prat who put me onto them headfirst down the boghole! And the way they talk, those State Security buggers! ‘Just one finger-print, and that’s your lot!’ Let’s have a whisky.”

Viktor fetched tumblers and a bottle of Black Horse.

“Ice?”

“Just pour. Another bloody thing: Security demands a list of
every visitor in the last three weeks. Still, five more days and I’ll be elected, and sod the lot of them.”

“But I’m afraid I did touch the computer,” Viktor confessed, and told Andrey Pavlovich what he’d seen on it.

“Silly man! Still, you weren’t to know, any more than I was. I’ll have to see what our lot can do to put the lid on this.”

Polling Day minus 4

Although Andrey Pavlovich was away touring Kiev in the 4 × 4 with Pasha in an effort to smoothe things over, indications were not promising. Two taciturn minders were now patrolling and keeping watch outside the house. Viktor, who came in for their indifferent gaze as often as he made coffee in the kitchen, noted that they were in mobile contact with someone, probably Pasha.

At four in the afternoon a silver Chrysler hooted at the gates and drove in followed by a Mercedes 4 × 4. Observing the seven newcomers from the kitchen window, Viktor had no difficulty telling who was who. The four with earphone attachments were bodyguards, the soberly suited pair – the drivers, and the well-groomed Baby Face in long raincoat and stylish square-toed shoes was the big man. Baby Face addressed Andrey Pavlovich’s men, who listened dutifully. The one with the mobile made as if to make a call, but experiencing some difficulty, hurried in to the phone in the hall. Viktor in the kitchen heard every word.

“Pasha, tell the boss to come back now, Kapitonov’s here.”

Twenty minutes later, Andrey Pavlovich arrived, got out and
joined Kapitonov in the Chrysler. Kapitonov’s minders then positioned themselves at the four corners of the vehicle and stood looking outwards.

“What’s up?” Viktor asked as Pasha came into the kitchen.

“Nothing good. They’re piling on the pressure. A deal’s in the air. Big stuff. Someone’ll get sold down the river.”

For two hours the ear-wired minders in their identical macs stood guard over the black-windowed Chrysler. Assailed by the nasty thought that it might be him who was being sold down the river, but seeing no immediate chance of escape, he withdrew to his attic, and gazed out at the gathering dusk. From 40th Anniversary of October Avenue there was the hum of traffic, nearer at hand, a cawing of crows, but of human voices not a sound. Hearing engines start up, he went down to the kitchen and looked from there. Pasha was closing the gates after the Chrysler and the black 4 × 4. The yard was empty.

“Admiring the great free world?” asked Andrey Pavlovich, clapping Viktor on the shoulder. “Pasha’s getting the sauna going. Let’s go and sweat. Meanwhile, have a look at this.”

It was a blue identity card in the name of Andrey Pavlovich, Aide to People’s Deputy Kapitonov, Dmitry Vasilyevich. The photograph bore the stamp of the Supreme Council. The authorizing signature was dated two weeks ahead.

“So that’s me,” said Andrey Pavlovich, pocketing it, “a hired man, and in danger of becoming a fall guy. Anyway, sauna one hour from now! By order, Aide to People’s Deputy Kapitonov,” he added with a rueful smile.

*

“Up like a rocket, down like a stick!” observed Andrey Pavlovich, as they sat drinking beer in the snug, wood-panelled pre-sauna booth.

“I was banking on your winning,” said Viktor, thinking it might now be harder to enlist his help in the search for Misha.

“Got above myself, trying to be a two-headed snail. And along comes a genuine two-head and cuts me down for size.”

“Isn’t a two-headed snail a bit like a two-headed eagle?”

Andrey Pavlovich laughed.

“Except that eagles don’t have shells, and a two-headed snail’s got two: an everyday criminal and an everyday state official one.”

The sauna was pleasantly hot, and they sat on the upper bench. Andrey Pavlovich ladled water onto the heated stones, filling the cabin with scalding steam. Throat and nostrils suddenly afire, Viktor moved down a bench.

“Something wrong with your fire-proofing?” Andrey Pavlovich inquired.

“I need to acclimatize.”

“As you did to Antarctic cold.” Then after a while, he asked, “Keeping the little house in order and strangers out, are we?” He ladled more water. “If I were you, I’d stay submerged for a bit.”

“Keep my head down?”

“Up to you. The minor, highly vulnerable post of Aide to Aide to People’s Deputy Kapitonov is yours if you want it. Though with protection on the thin side. So better Moscow at the moment, where no-one’s after you.”

“There’s still trouble over the computer, then?”

“Not exactly. Just that for the time being the material’s been sat on. When it will be released and who by is uncertain. It might pass its sell-by date. And it might not … Still, come and have some beer.”

With the drop in temperature Viktor’s mental processes revived, but his physical lethargy lingered. Andrey Pavlovich was speaking of his daughter and her three-year-old son whom Viktor had mistaken for Misha at the cemetery, both now in Cyprus for safety over
the election period. On the credit side – as he’d rather forgotten amid the present troubles – a military, chauffeur-driven Volga had been in collision with a minivan on Park Avenue. Both passengers in the Volga had been killed, one of them being the man who had mistakenly shot his daughter’s husband.

“Was it really an accident?”

“They don’t come any realer,” smiled Andrey Pavlovich. After two more bottles of beer they went up and sat in the lounge, Andrey Pavlovich in his tiger-striped bathrobe, Viktor wrapped in a terry towel. Pasha said he’d bring them coffee. Outside it was dark and raining.

The hall phone rang, and soon after, Pasha brought both coffee and the news that friends had just rung to say that finger-prints were to be taken in the morning.

Quickly they drank their coffee, and Viktor went and dressed.

Andrey Pavlovich brought him two passports and dollars in an envelope.

“So, off you go. Pasha will drive you where you want. Oh, and have this.”

It was a visiting card adorned with the Ukrainian trident, the stamp of the Supreme Council, and the legend “Aide to People’s Deputy”.

“If you need help in Moscow, ask at Peking Restaurant for Bim. Say hello to him from me.”

There was warmth and matter-of-factness about their leave-taking. Involuntary as had been his sojourn with Andrey Pavlovich, there
had been nothing of incarceration or forced labour about it. Ahead lay Moscow, where he would have no such safe, snug shell to protect him. But what mattered – and was all that mattered – was to find Misha, get him back to the Antarctic. And after that, start living? For himself and Sonya? But doing what for money? Questions that could be set aside for the moment. There’d be something. There
was
a future and life would reveal it.

Pasha dropped Viktor at the entrance to his Khrushchev-era block, gripped his hand, and with a meaningful “Keep your end up!” drove away.

Craning his head back Viktor looked up at the windows of his flat. They, like all the other windows, Old Tonya’s included, were in darkness.

Taking off his jacket and shoes in the passage, he went on stockinged feet to the kitchen, and put on the light. The carrier bag containing his two passports, the banker’s credit card and letter, and his dollars, he deposited on the table.

He made tea, sat by the window, and contemplated the urn containing the ashes of his friend Sergey, now in its rightful place on the window ledge by the gas stove. He remembered the picnic they’d had on the Dnieper ice and Misha wrapped in a towel so as not to catch cold. Suddenly in need of something stronger to drink, he looked in the cupboard, found an already opened bottle of Smirnoff and fetched a glass.

He remembered the night he’d sat here in the kitchen writing Nina and Sonya a note saying he’d be back when the dust had settled. Maybe he should do the same again, and head for the station.

The sudden squeak of the door made him jump. Misha had been in the habit of thrusting the door with his breast and quietly plip-plopping in while Viktor was working at his obituaries. Swinging round, he saw not a ghost but Sonya’s sleepy face looking round
the door.

“Why aren’t you in bed?” he asked.

“Why aren’t you?” she asked, now coming right in. Her pyjama jacket had an embroidered penguin.

“I’m not here for long – I’ve got to go away.”

“But you promised to help me stick my notices up.”

“Is Nina asleep?”

“She takes something to make her. Sitting up late watching TV makes her eyes ache.”

“What does she take?”

“That.”

“Vodka?”

“I don’t know what it is, but it’s to make her sleep.”

Uneasily aware of Sonya’s scrutiny, he helped himself to some more.

“Do you have to be made to sleep too?”

“No.”

Getting up he emptied his glass into the sink, and turned as if expecting praise.

“Where are you going away to?” she asked blinking sleepily.

“Moscow.”

“Let’s do the posters first.”

“We could do them now while there’s nobody about, if you like.”

“Yes, let’s.”

“Rinse your face then, and put your clothes on. But quietly. Don’t wake Nina.”

Fifteen minutes later they left the block, Sonya carrying the file of posters, Viktor a tube of glue.

“Shcherbakov Street is busiest – that’s where we’ll go.”

They set off through the deserted, sleeping city, passing the kindergarten he had attended, and his old school, No 27, Sonya gazing
around and up at the sky, as if she had never seen the city at night before. In Shcherbakov Street, they stuck their first poster at a trolleybus stop. Further on they came to an election billboard.

“Let’s put one here,” said Viktor indicating a portrait of Andrey Pavlovich’s opponent, and Sonya glued a penguin to his airbrushed features.

The night air was invigorating. He was enjoying his walk with Sonya and the feeling of doing something to find Misha, though Kiev was not where he was. When he’d found him in Moscow, he would bring him back for Sonya to hug and play games with before he flew off to the far south.

Having postered three more trolleybus stops, they were about to tackle another election billboard, when the silence was shattered by the siren of a speeding ambulance, and they watched it out of sight.

Sonya handed him a poster from her file, he smeared the back with glue, and handed it to her, just as a bright red BMW drew up and three young men got out, one carrying a metal scraper.

“What’s that you’ve got there?” a voice demanded.

“Penguin lost notices,” said Sonya calmly.

The man shone his torch, then laughed.

“It looked like you were flyposting,” he said, and joined his companions who were already tearing and scraping off Andrey Pavlovich and his opponent.