Red Square (27 page)

   
Sometimes he thought of normal, alternative lives he and Irina could have led. Lovers. Husband and wife. The ordinary way people live and sleep and wake together. Perhaps even grow to hate each other and decide to leave, but in a normal fashion, not with lives cut in half. Not with a dream that degenerated into obsession.

   
The woman in pink came over with her friend and asked for champagne.

   
'Sure.' Everything seemed like a good idea to Tommy.

   
The four of them took a table in the corner. The woman in pink was Tatiana; her friend in the body stocking was Marina. Tatiana had dark roots and an elaborate blonde ponytail; Marina wore black hair brushed over a bruised cheek. Tommy, playing host, introduced, 'My pal Arkady'.

   
'We knew he was Russian,' Tatiana said. 'He looks romantic.'

   
'Poor men are not romantic,' Arkady said. 'Tommy is much more romantic.'

   
'We could have fun here,' Tommy suggested.

   
Arkady watched a woman walk, hips slowly marching towards another battle as she led a soldier through a beaded curtain to the back rooms. 'Do you see many Russians here?' he asked.

   
'Lorry drivers.' Tatiana made a face. 'Usually we have a more international clientele.'

   
'I like Germans,' Marina said in a reflective mood. 'They wash.'

   
'That's important,' Arkady said.

   
Tatiana lowered her champagne under the table to reinforce it from a flask and generously did the same for the other three glasses. Vodka once again subverting the system. Marina leaned over her glass and whispered, 'Molto importante.'

   
'We speak Italian,' Tatiana said. 'We toured Italy for two years.'

   
Marina said, 'We were with the Bolshoi Piccolo Ballet Company.'

   
'Not necessarily connected to the original Bolshoi Ballet.' Tatiana giggled.

   
'We did dance.' Marina sat straighter to emphasize a sinewy neck.

   
'Small towns. But so much sun, such music,' Tatiana recalled.

   
'There were ten other so-called Russian ballet companies in Italy when we left, all copying us,' Marina said.

   
'I think we can say we spread a love of dance,' Tatiana said. She poured Arkady a second shot. 'Are you sure you don't have any money?'

   
'She's always attracted to the wrong men,' Marina said.

   
'Thanks,' Arkady said to both of them. 'I'm looking for a couple of friends. One named Max. Russian, but better dressed than me, speaks English and German.'

   
'We never saw anyone like that,' Tatiana said.

   
'And Boris,' Arkady said.

   
'Boris is a popular name,' Marina said.

   
'His last name was something like Benz.'

   
'That's a popular name here, too,' Tatiana said.

   
'How would you describe him?' Arkady asked Tommy.

   
'Big, good-looking, friendly.'

   
'Does he speak Russian?' Tatiana asked.

   
'I don't know. He only spoke German around me,' Tommy said.

   
Benz was such a nebulous creature, nothing but a name on a registration form in Moscow and on a letter in Munich, that Arkady found himself relieved to meet anyone who might have met the man in the flesh.

   
'Why would he speak Russian?' Arkady asked.

   
'The Boris I'm thinking of is very international,' Marina said. 'I'm only saying that his Russian is very good.'

   
'He's German,' Tatiana said.

   
'You haven't been to bed with him.'

   
'Neither have you.'

   
'Tima has. She commented on it.'

   
'Commented on it?' Tatiana affected a prissy accent.

   
'We're friends.'

   
'What a cow. I'm sorry,' Tatiana added when she saw that Marina was hurt. She told Arkady, 'He's a Polish sausage, what can I tell you?'

   
'Is Tima here?'

  
 
'No, but I can describe her to you,' Tatiana said. 'Red, four-wheel-drive, also answers to the name "Bronco".'

   
'I know where she means,' Tommy said, eager to get back into the conversation. 'It's right down the road. I'll take you.'

   
'I wish you did have money,' Tatiana told Arkady. Under the circumstances he thought it was the biggest compliment he could expect.

A dozen Jeeps, Troopers, Pathfinders and Land Cruisers had sat in a turnout off the main road, a prostitute waiting behind the wheel of each car. Clients parked on the shoulder to shop. Once a price was set, the woman turned off the red lamp that announced her availability, the client climbed in and they drove to the far side of the turnout, away from the passing lights of the road. Twenty off-the-road vehicles stood there already, on the verge of a black field.

   
Tommy and Arkady walked by the lit cars and then down the centre of the turnout, stepping aside as a Trooper eased by. Tommy was becoming a more eager guide all the time. 'They worked out of caravans in the city until residents complained about the late-night traffic. There's less visual impact here. They're safe; doctors check them once a month.'

   
The back windows of the far cars all had drawn curtains. A Jeep jiggled from side to side as if it were running in place.

   
'What does a Bronco look like?' Arkady asked.

   
Tommy pointed out one of the larger models, but it was blue. They were all high off the ground, what a person would want to set off across the tundra in.

   
'What do you think?' Tommy asked.

   
'They all look good.'

   
'I mean the women.'

   
Arkady caught a different drift. 'Tommy, what do you
really
mean?'

   
'I mean, I could lend you some money.'

   
'No, thanks.'

   
Tommy shifted from foot to foot, then held out his car keys. 'Do you mind?'

   
'You're serious?' Arkady asked.

   
'Since we're here, we might as well enjoy it.' Tommy talked in gusts, gathering bravado. 'Christ, it will only take a few minutes.'

   
Arkady was stunned, and felt stupid for being so. Who was he to judge anyone else? In another second, Tommy would be pleading. He took the keys. 'I'll be in the car.'

   
The Trabi was parked across the road. From it he saw Tommy head directly to a Jeep, agree instantly to a price and run around to the passenger side. The Jeep backed away into the dark.

   
Arkady lit a cigarette and found an ashtray, but no radio. What a perfectly socialist car, designed for bad habits and ignorance, and he was its perfect driver.

   
Headlights swung on and off the road, creating an ad hoc junction. Perhaps it wasn't so much a matter of there being no crime in Germany as how crime was defined. In Moscow prostitution was against the law. Here it was a regulated trade.

   
A Trooper pulled into the slot that the Jeep had abandoned. The driver turned on her red light, primped her curls in the rearview mirror, made up her mouth, adjusted her bra, pushed up her breasts like muscles and then picked up a paperback. The woman in the car ahead stared with eyes that looked as if they were painted on her lids. Neither of them looked like a Tima. Arkady assumed the name was short for Fatima, so he searched for someone vaguely Islamic. At this distance the lights were softened to candle glow. Each windscreen looked like a separate ikon with a separate virgin bored to distraction.

   
After twenty minutes he began to get nervous about Tommy. An image of the cars on the far side of the turnout shone in his mind. A car rocking harder and harder on its springs, its curtain closed tight. If ever there was a place where sex and violence could be confused, this was it. The sound of someone being throttled and beaten? From the outside, that could sound like love.

   
It was an unreasonable fear, but he was relieved to see Tommy darting nimbly back across the road. The American dove into the car and squeezed behind the steering wheel. Breathing hard, he asked, 'Was I gone long?'

   
'Hours,' Arkady said.

   
Tommy pressed himself back in his seat to tuck in his shirt and button his jacket. The smell of perfume and sweat invaded the small car with his return, like the aroma of a trip to an exotic land. He was so proud of himself, Arkady wondered how often he got up his nerve to approach a prostitute.

   
'Definitely worth the money. Sure you won't change your mind?' he asked.

   
'I'll take your word for it. Let's go.'

   
Arkady's door opened. Peter Schiller had to crouch to be on a level with them.

   
'Renko, you didn't answer your phone.'

Peter's BMW stood in the dark far back from the main road. Arkady spread-eagled, leaning against the side of the car while Peter patted him down. They had a clear view of the turnout, of the cars off the road, and of Tommy heading back to Munich alone in his Trabant.

   
'Moscow's a mystery to me,' Peter said. He ran his hands around the small of Arkady's back, the inside of his thighs, along his wrists and ankles. 'I've never been there and never hope to be there, but it seems to me that a senior investigator shouldn't have to work out of a public phone booth. I checked out the number when you didn't answer.'

   
'I hate staying by a desk.'

   
'You don't have a desk. I went by the consulate and talked to Federov. I pried him away from some singers. He doesn't know anything about your investigation, he's never heard of any Boris Benz and I think it's fair to say he wishes he'd never heard of you.'

   
'We never did develop a rapport,' Arkady conceded.

   
When he tried to turn, Peter pushed his face against the roof of the car. 'He told me where to find the pension. Your lights were out. I waited and thought about how to deal most effectively with you. It was obvious you picked Bayern-Franconia out of the blue to run a protection racket on. It's also clear you were doing it alone, to make a few Deutschmarks during your holiday. A little Russian free enterprise. I considered the usual protests to different ministries and Interpol until I remembered how sensitive my grandfather is to any publicity attached to the bank. It's a merchant bank, not for the public, and it doesn't need publicity, least of all the kind you'd give it. So then I considered just taking you out somewhere and beating you until you were a bloody pulp.'

   
'Isn't that against the law?'

   
'Beating you so badly you'd be afraid to tell anyone what happened.'

   
'Well, you can always try,' Arkady said.

   
Arkady didn't have a gun and Peter had a pistol, a Walther from the glimpse he'd had at the bank. He was pretty sure that Peter Christian Schiller wouldn't shoot, at least not until he'd ordered Arkady away from the BMW because a bullet could go right through soft tissue and spread glass and gore all over the interior of his handsome car. If Peter wanted to hit him, Arkady didn't know whether he would resist. At this point what would a little blood or loose teeth matter? He straightened up and turned around.

   
Peter's yellow jacket was whipping around him in a breeze that came off the field. He held his pistol low. 'Then who should show up but your friend in the Trabi. I thought, here's a poor bastard from East Germany. No one drives a Trabi any more if they can avoid it. Sometimes you see them near the old border, but not here.

   
Ten minutes later he comes out of the pension with you. It made more sense that you had an Ossie as an accomplice.'

   
'An "Ossie"?'

   
'East German. He picks the victim, you show up with a phoney letter from the consulate. I called in the numberplate, but the car belongs to a Thomas Hall, American national, Munich resident. Why would an American drive a Trabi?'

   
'He says it's an investment. You followed us?'

   
'It wasn't difficult. Nothing else was as slow.'

   
'So, what are you going to do?' Arkady asked.