Red Square

Martin Cruz Smith

Also by Martin Cruz Smith

THE INDIANS WON

GYPSY IN AMBER

CANTO FOR A GYPSY

NIGHTWING

STALLION GATE

GORKY PARK

POLAR STAR

ROSE

HAVANA BAY

First published in Great Britain 1992 by Collins Harvill

This edition published 1996 by Pan Books

an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Ltd

25 Eccleston Place, London SW1W 9NF

Basingstoke and Oxford

Associated companies throughout the world

www.macmillan.com

ISBN 0 330 34655 5

Copyright © Martin Cruz Smith 1992

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be

reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or

transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written

permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized

act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal

prosecution and civil claims for damages

7 9 8 6

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from

the British Library.

Phototypeset by Intype London Ltd

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Mackays of Chatham plc, Chatham, Kent

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not,

by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out,

or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent

in any form of binding or cover other than that in which

it is published and without a similar condition including this

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For Em

Part One

MOSCOW

6 August - 12 August 1991

Chapter One

In Moscow, the summer night looks like fire and smoke. Stars and moon fade. Couples rise and dress and walk the street. Cars wander with their headlights off.

   
'There.' Jaak saw an Audi passing in the opposite direction.

   
Arkady slipped on headphones, tapped the receiver. 'His radio's out.'

   
Jaak U-turned to the other side of the boulevard and picked up speed. The detective had askew eyes set in a muscular face and he hunched over the wheel as if he were bending it.

   
Arkady tapped out a cigarette. First of the day. Well, it was one a.m., so that wasn't much to brag about.

   
'Closer,' he said, and pulled the phones off. 'Let's be sure it's Rudy.'

   
Ahead were the lights of the ring road that circled the city. The Audi swung on to the ramp to merge with ring road traffic. Jaak edged between two flatbed lorries carrying steel plates that clapped with every undulation of the road. He passed the lead lorry, the Audi and a tanker. On the way, Arkady had caught the driver's profile, but there were two people in the car, not one. 'He picked someone up. We need another look,' he said.

   
Jaak slowed. The tanker didn't pass, but a second later the Audi slid by. Rudy Rosen, the driver - a round man with soft hands fixed to the wheel - was a private banker to the mafias, a would-be Rothschild who catered to Moscow's most primitive capitalists. His passenger was female, with the wild look achieved by Russian features on a diet, somewhere between sensual and ravenous, with short, stylishly cut blonde hair brushed back to the collar of her black leather jacket. As the Audi passed, she turned and sized up the investigators' car, a two-door Zhiguli 8, as a piece of trash. In her thirties, Arkady thought. She had dark eyes, and a wide mouth and puffy lips, parted slightly as if starving. As the Audi swung in front, it was followed by the sound of an outboard engine and the appearance of a Suzuki 750 that inserted itself between the two cars. The motorcycle rider wore a black dome helmet, black leather jacket and black hightop shoes that sparkled with reflectors. Jaak eased off. The biker was Kim, Rudy's protection.

   
Arkady ducked and listened to the headset again. 'Still dead.'

   
'He's leading us to the market. There are some people there, if they recognize you, you're dead.' Jaak laughed. 'Of course then we'll know we're in the right place.'

   
'Good point.' God forbid anyone should exercise sanity, Arkady thought. Anyway, if anyone recognizes me it means I'm still alive.

   
All the traffic squeezed off the same exit ramp. Jaak tried to follow the Audi, but a line of 'rockers' - bikers - swarmed in between. Swastikas and tsarist eagles decorated their backs, all wreathed in the rising smoke of the exhaust pipes stripped of silencers.

   
At the end of the ramp, construction barriers had been pushed to one side. The car bounced as if they were crossing a potato field and yet Arkady saw silhouettes that loomed high against the faint northern sky. A Moskvitch went by, its windows crammed with swaying rugs. The roof of an ancient Renault wore a living-room suite. Ahead, brake lights spread into a pool of red.

   
The rockers drew their bikes into a circle, announcing their stop with a chorus of roars. Cars and lorries spaced themselves roughly on a knoll here, in a trough there. Jaak killed the Zhiguli in first; the car had no neutral or parking gear. He emerged from the car with the smile of a crocodile who has found monkeys at play. Arkady got out wearing a padded jacket and cloth cap. He had black eyes and an expression of bemusement, as if he had recently returned from a long stay in a deep hole to observe changes on the surface, which wasn't far from the truth.

   
This was the new Moscow.

   
The silhouettes were towers, red lights at the top to warn off planes. At their bases were the chalky forms of earthmovers, cement mixers, stacks of good bricks and mounds of bad, metal-reinforced bars sinking into mud. Figures moved around the cars and more were still arriving, an apparent convention of insomniacs. No sleepwalking here, though; instead, the swarming, purposeful hum of a black market.

   
In a way it was like walking through a dream, Arkady thought. Here were cartons of Marlboros, Winstons, Rothmans, even despised Cuban cigarettes stacked as high as walls. Videotapes of American action or Swedish porn sold by the gross for distribution. Polish glassware glittered in factory crates. Two men in tracksuits arranged not windscreen wipers, but whole windscreens, and not merely carved out of some poor sod's car but new, straight from the assembly line. And food! Not blue chickens dead of malnutrition, but whole sides of marbled beef hanging in a butcher's lorry. Gypsies lit kerosene lamps beside attaché cases to display gold tsarist rubles in mint condition, sealed and sold in plastic strips. Jaak pointed out a moon-white Mercedes. Further lamps appeared, spreading the aura of a bazaar; there might be camels browsing among the cars, Arkady thought, or Chinese merchants unrolling bolts of silk. An encampment to themselves was the Chechen mafia, men with pasty, pocked complexions and black hair who sprawled in their cars like pashas at their ease. Even in this setting, the Chechens enforced a space of fear.

   
Rudy Rosen's Audi was in a choice central location near a lorry unloading radios and VCRs. A well-behaved queue had formed outside the car under the gaze of Kim, who stood, one foot on his helmet, about ten metres away. He had long hair that he pushed away from small, almost delicate features. His jacket was padded like armour and open to a compact model of the Kalashnikov called Malysh, 'Little Boy'.

   
'I'm getting in line,' Arkady told Jaak.

   
'Why is Rudy doing this?'

   
'I'll ask.'

   
'He's guarded by a Korean vampire who'll be watching every move you make.'

   
'Make a note of numberplates, then watch Kim.'

   
Arkady joined the queue while Jaak loitered by the lorry. From a distance, the VCRs seemed solid Soviet goods. Miniaturization was a virtue for consumers of other societies; generally, Russians wanted to show what they bought, not to hide it. But were they new? Jaak ran his hand along the edges, searching for the telltale cigarette burns of a used machine.

   
There was no sign of the golden-haired woman who had come with Rudy. Arkady felt himself being scrutinized and turned towards a face whose nose had been broken so many times it had developed an elbow. 'What's the rate tonight?' the man asked.

   
'I don't know,' Arkady admitted.

   
'They twist your prick here if you have anything but dollars. Or tourist coupons. Do I look like a fucking tourist?' He dug into his pockets and came out with crumpled notes. He held up one fist. 'Zlotys.' He held up the other. 'Forints. Can you believe it? I followed these two from the Savoy. I thought they were Italian and they turned out to be a Hungarian and a Pole.'

   
'It must have been pretty dark,' Arkady said.

   
'When I found out, I almost killed them. I
should
have killed them to spare them the pain of trying to live on rucking forints and zlotys.'

   
Rudy rolled down the window on the passenger side and called to Arkady, 'Next!' To the man waiting with zlotys, he added, 'This will take a while.'

   
Arkady got in. Rudy was well wrapped in a double-breasted suit, an open cashbox on his lap. He had thinning hair combed diagonally across his scalp, moist eyes with long lashes, a blue cast to his jowls. A garnet ring was on the hand that held a calculator. The back seat was an office of neatly arrayed file boxes, laptop computer, computer battery, and cases of software, manuals and computer disks.

   
'This is a thoroughly mobile bank,' Rudy said. 'An illegal bank.'

   
'On my disks I can hold the complete savings records of the Russian Republic. I could do a spreadsheet for you some other time.'

   
'Thanks. Rudy, a rolling computer centre does not make for a satisfying life.'

   
Rudy held up a Game Boy. 'Speak for yourself.'

   
Arkady sniffed. Hanging from the rearview mirror was something that looked like a green wick.

   
'It's an air freshener,' Rudy said. 'Pine scent.'

   
'It smells like armpit of mint. How can you breathe?'

   
'It smells cleaner. I know it's me - cleanliness, germs - it's my problem. What are you doing here?'

   
'Your radio's not working. Let me see it.'

   
Rudy blinked. 'You're going to work on it here?'

   
'Here is where we want to use it. Behave as if we're conducting a normal transaction.'

   
'You said this would be safe.'

   
'But not foolproof. Everybody's looking.'

   
'Dollars? Deutschmarks? Francs?' Rudy asked.

   
The cashbox tray was stuffed with currencies of different nationalities and colours. There were francs that looked like delicately hand-tinted portraits, lire with fantastic numbers and Dante's face, oversized Deutschmarks brimming with confidence, and, most of all, compartments of crisp-as-grass green American dollars. At Rudy's feet was a bulging briefcase with, Arkady assumed, much more. Tucked by the clutch there was also a package wrapped in brown paper. Rudy lifted the hundred-dollar notes from the tray to reveal a transmitter and micro-recorder.

   
'Pretend I want to buy rubles,' Arkady said.

   
'Rubles?' Rudy's finger froze over the calculator. 'Why would anyone want to buy rubles?'

   
Arkady played the transmitter's power switch back and forth, then fine-tuned the frequency. 'You're doing it, buying rubles for dollars or Deutschmarks.'

   
'Let me explain. I'm exchanging. This is a service for buyers. I control the rate, I'm the bank, so I always make money and you always lose. Arkady, nobody buys rubles.' Rudy's small eyes swelled with sympathy. 'The only real Soviet money is vodka. Vodka is the only state monopoly that really works.'

   
'You have some of that, too.' Arkady glanced at the rear floor, which was littered with silvery bottles of Starka, Russkaya and Kuban vodka.

   
'It's Stone Age barter. I take what people have. I help them. I'm surprised I don't have stone beads and pieces of eight. Anyway, the rate is forty rubles to the dollar.'

   
Arkady tried the 'On' button of the recorder. The miniature spools didn't move. 'The official rate is thirty rubles to the dollar.'

   
'Yes, and the universe revolves around Lenin's arsehole. No disrespect. It's funny, I deal with men who would slit their mother's throat and are embarrassed by the concept of profit.' Rudy became serious. 'Arkady, if you can just imagine profit apart from crime, then you have business. What we're doing right now is normal and legal in the rest of the world.'

   
'He's normal?' Arkady looked in the direction of Kim. His eyes fixed on the car, the bodyguard had the flat face of a mask.

   
Rudy said, 'Kim's there for effect. I'm like Switzerland, neutral, everybody's banker. Everybody needs me. Arkady, we're the only part of the economy that works. Look around. Long Pond mafia, Baumanskaya mafia, local boys who know how to deliver goods. Lyubertsy mafia, a little tougher, a little dumber, just want to improve themselves.'

   
'Like your partner, Borya?' Arkady tried tightening the spools with a key.

   
'Borya's a great success story. Any other country would be proud of him.'

   
'And the Chechens?'

   
'Granted, Chechens are different. If we were all a pile of skulls, they wouldn't mind. But remember one thing, the biggest mafia is still the Party. Never forget that.'

   
Arkady opened the transmitter and slapped out the batteries. Through the window he noticed customers growing restless, although Rudy seemed in no hurry. If anything, after his initial nervousness, he was in a serene, valedictory mood.

   
The problem was that the transmitter was militia goods, never strong cause for confidence. Arkady twisted the connecting jacks. 'You're not scared?'

   
'I'm in your hands.'

   
'You're only in my hands because we have enough to put you in a camp.'

   
'Circumstantial evidence of non-violent crimes. Incidentally, another way to say 'non-violent crimes' is 'business'. The difference between a criminal and a businessman is that the businessman has imagination.' Rudy glanced at the rear seat. 'I have enough technology here for a space station. You know, that transmitter of yours is the only thing in this car that doesn't work.'