Red Square (42 page)

   
Stas said, 'It's been so long. I have a brother I haven't seen in twenty years. We call once a year, at New Year's. He called this morning to tell me he was going to the Parliament building to defend it. He's a little fat man with kids. How is he going to stop a tank?'

   
'Do you think you can find him?' Arkady asked.

   
'He told me not to come. Can you imagine that?' Stas stared out of the window for a long while. Vapour had condensed into balls of water between the double panes. 'He said he'd wear a red ski cap.'

   
'What is Rikki doing?'

   
'Rikki went to Georgia. He put his mother, daughter, TV and VCR in his new BMW and they went tootling off. I knew he would. He's a lovely man.'

The closer they got to Moscow, the more Irina looked like the girl who had left it, like someone returning to a fire with a particular glow. As if the rest of the world were an unlit, interim place. As if she were coming back with a vengeance.

   
Arkady thought he could be swept up by her and follow. Happily, once he was done with Borya and Max.

   
How much of all this was his private score, to atone in some small measure for Rudy, Tommy and Jaak? The dead aside, how much was because of Irina? Dealing with Max wouldn't erase the years she had known him. He could call them émigré years, but seen from a height Russia was a nation of émigrés, inside and out. Everyone was compromised to some degree. Russia had a history of such confusion that when a few moments of clarity arrived, everyone naturally rushed to the event.

   
In any case, Max and Borya were more likely to be the thriving specimens of a new age than he was.

As they crossed into Soviet air space, Arkady expected the plane to be ordered to turn around. When they approached Moscow, he thought it would be directed to a military base, refuelled and sent home. When seat-belt signs lit, there was a general, last-second extinguishing of cigarettes.

   
Out of the window were the familiar low woods, powerlines and grey-green fields that led to Sheremetyevo.

   
Stas held his breath like a man diving.

   
Irina held Arkady's hand as if she were the one bringing him home.

   
Part Four

MOSCOW

21 August 1991

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Arrival in Moscow was never a rose-strewn path, but this morning even the normal bleakness was accentuated. After Western lights, the baggage area was dark and cavernous, and Arkady wondered whether there had always been as much numbness in the faces, such a closed-down look to the eyes.

   
Michael Healey was waiting at the customs booths with a colonel of the Frontier Police. Radio Liberty's deputy director wore a trench coat of many belts and watched passengers through dark glasses. The Frontier Police was KGB; they wore green tunics with red tabs and faces screwed to perpetual suspicion.

   
Stas said, 'The winged shit must have taken the direct flight from Munich. Damn.'

   
'He can't stop us,' Irina said.

   
'Yes, he can.' Stas admitted. 'One word and the best that can happen to us is to be put back on the plane.'

   
Arkady said, 'I'm not going to let him take you back.'

   
'What are you going to do?' Stas asked.

   
'Let me talk to him. Just get in the queue.'

   
Stas hesitated. ''If we do get through, there's a car waiting to take us to the White House.'

   
'I'll meet you there,' Arkady said.

   
'You promise?' Irina asked.

   
In this setting, Irina's Russian seemed different, softer, with more dimensions. This was why beautiful ikons had plain frames.

   
'I'll be there.'

   
Arkady walked ahead to Michael, who followed his approach like a man pleased to find gravity working in his favour. The colonel seemed to be primed for more prosperous targets; he gave Arkady only passing notice.

   
Michael said, 'Renko. Good to be home? I'm afraid that Stas and Irina won't be able to stay. I have their tickets for the flight back to Munich.'

   
'You'd really point them out?' Arkady asked.

   
'They're ignoring orders. The station has paid them, fed them, housed them, and we're entitled to a little loyalty from them. I just want to make it clear to the colonel that Radio Liberty refuses any responsibility for them. They aren't assigned to this story.'

 
  
'They want to be here.'

   
'Then they're on their own and they can take their chances.'

   
'Are you going to cover the story?'

   
'I'm not a reporter, but I've been around reporters. I'll help.'

   
'You know Moscow?'

   
'I've been here before.'

   
'Where is Red Square?' Arkady asked.

   
'Everyone knows where Red Square is.'

   
Arkady said, 'You'd be surprised. A man here in Moscow got a fax just two weeks ago asking him, "Where is Red Square? "

   
Michael shrugged.

   
Ahead of Stas and Irina, photographers top-heavy with gear and hand luggage clattered forward. Stas slipped fifty-Deutschmark notes into his passport and Irina's.

   
Arkady said, 'The fax came from Munich. In fact, it came from Radio Liberty.'

   
'We have a number of facsimile machines,' Michael said.

   
'The message came from Ludmilla's machine. It was sent to a black-market speculator who happened to be dead, so I was the one who read it. It was in Russian.'

   
'I suppose it would be, a fax between two Russians.'

   
'That's what fooled me,' Arkady said. 'Thinking that it was between two Russians and that it was about Red Square.'

   
Michael seemed to have found something to chew on. His dark glasses maintained a smooth gaze, but his jaw was busy.

   
Arkady said, 'But just when you least expect it, Russians can be exact. For example, the fax asked where was 'Krassny Ploschad'? Now in English a square can be a place or a geometric figure, but in Russian the geometric figure is a
quadrat
. In the English language, Malevich painted
Red Square
. In Russian, he painted
Krassny Quadrat
. I didn't understand the message until I saw the painting.'

   
'What are you getting at?'

   
' "Where is Red Square the place?" makes no sense. "Where is Red Square the painting?" makes a great deal of sense when you're asking a man who thinks he will have the painting to sell. Ludmilla couldn't use the wrong word, no Russian could. Her office is next to yours, as I remember. In fact she works for you. How is your Russian, Michael?'

   
Siberians killed rabbits at night with torches and clubs. The rabbits would sit up and stare red-eyed at the beam until the club came down. Even through glasses, Michael had the transfixed attention of a rabbit. He said, 'All that proves is that whoever sent the fax thought the person on the other end was alive.'

   
'Absolutely,' Arkady agreed. 'It also proves that they were trying to deal with Rudy. Did Max put you and Rudy together?'

   
'There's nothing illegal about sending a fax.'

   
'No, but in your first message you asked Rudy about a finder's fee. You were trying to cut out Max completely.'

   
'It doesn't prove anything,' Michael said.

   
'Let's leave that up to Max. I'll show him the fax. It has Ludmilla's number on it.'

   
The customs queue shuffled forward again and Stas Kolotov, state criminal, stared directly through the glass at the officer, who compared eyes, ears, hairline, height to the picture in the passport, then riffled through the pages.

   
Arkady said, 'You know what happened to Rudy. It's not as if you'd be safer in Germany. Look what happened to Tommy.'

   
Stas got his passport back. Irina pushed her passport through the slot and presented a glare so defiant it invited arrest. The officer never noticed. After a professional frisk of the pages, her passport was returned and the queue moved forward.

   
'Michael, I don't think this is a time to call attention to yourself,' Arkady said. 'This is a time to ask, "What can I do for Renko, so that he won't tell Max?"

   
Despite Stas's urging, Irina stopped at the far side of the booths. Arkady mouthed the word 'Go', and he and Michael watched Stas lead her through the exit.

   
It turned out that Michael did have something to say. 'Congratulations. Now that you got her in, she'll probably be killed. Just remember, you brought her back.'

   
'I know.'

   
A German television crew was negotiating the price of bringing in a video camera. The Emergency Committee, a colonel of customs informed them, had only that morning banned the transmission of video images by foreign reporters. The colonel accepted an informal bond of a hundred Deutschmarks to ensure that the crew didn't violate the Committee's laws. The other camera crews ahead of Arkady all had to make their own financial arrangements with customs and then race to their cars. Arkady's Soviet passport was a disappointment, a no sale.

   
Like a cashier, the customs officer just waved him through.

   
An open double door led to the waiting hall and a reception line of emotional families waving cellophane-wrapped bouquets. Arkady watched for dry-eyed men with heavy sports bags. Since Sheremetyevo's metal detectors were haphazardly manned, the only persons sure to be unarmed and unprotected were arriving passengers. He held the canvas bag to his chest and hoped that Rita's call saying that he had the painting had got through.

   
Arkady recognized a small figure in a raincoat sitting alone in a row of chairs halfway down the waiting hall. Polina was reading a newspaper -
Pravda
by the look of it. Not a difficult guess, he admitted, since most papers had been banned the day before. He stopped for a cigarette by the flight board. Amazing. Here was an entire nation that could go about its business and keep its eyes down. Maybe history was nothing but a microscope. How many people had actually stormed the Winter Palace? Everyone else was searching for bread, trying to stay warm, or getting drunk.

   
Polina pulled her hair away from her eyes to give Arkady a sharp glance, dropped her newspaper and marched out. Through the window, he watched her join a male friend who was sitting on a scooter at the curb. The friend came to attention and moved to the rear seat. Polina sat in front, stomped the starter pedal with more fury than weight and drove off.

   
Arkady walked up the hall, took the seat she had left and looked at the newspaper, which said, 'The measures that are being taken are temporary. They in no way signal a renunciation of the course aimed at profound reforms . . . '

   
Under the newspaper were car keys and a note that said, 'White Zhiguli licence X65523MO. You shouldn't have come back.' Translated from Polina-ese, this meant, 'Welcome home'

   
The Zhiguli was parked in the front rank of the terminal car park. On its floor was a square canvas covered in red paint. Arkady removed the beer tray from the plastic wrap, replaced it with the painting and put it into Margarita's bag.

   
He took the motorway south to Moscow. As he reached the dark of an underpass, he rolled down the passenger window and sailed the beer tray out.

   
At first the road seemed normal. The same unrepaired cars rolled at high speed over the same potholes, as if he had been gone for a single morning. Then, set back from the motorway behind a row of alders, he saw the dark outline of a tank; once he'd spotted one, he saw more tanks like dark watermarks on a screen of green.

   
There were no tanks on the road itself, in fact no sign of the military at all until the side road at Kurkino, where an endless line of armoured personnel carriers filled the slow lane. Soldiers wearing campaign caps rode in open hatches. They were boys with eyes streaming in the wind. Where the main road crossed the ring road and became the Leningrad Road, the caravan exited and headed into the city.

   
Arkady sped up and slowed down while a sleek, metallic-blue motorcycle with two riders stayed a steady hundred metres behind him. They could simply put a bullet in his head as they drove by. Except for the painting, on which they wouldn't want a scratch.

   
A light rain cleaned the street. Arkady looked on the dashboard. No wipers. He turned on the radio and after Tchaikovsky heard instructions on how to remain calm. 'Report the agitation of provocateurs. Allow responsible organs to carry out their sacred duty. Remember the tragic events of Tiananmen Square, when pseudo-democratic agents provoked unnecessary bloodshed.' The accent seemed to be on
unnecessary
. He also found a station operating from the House of Soviets that denounced the coup.

   
At a red light, the motorcycle pulled up behind him. It was a Suzuki, the same model he and Jaak had admired outside a cellar in Lyubertsy. The driver wore a black helmet, leather jacket and trousers sculpted like armour. When Minin hopped off the back, raincoat flapping, hand on hat, Arkady floored the accelerator, raced through the cross-traffic and left the bike behind.

   
The Voikovskaya metro station was surrounded by Muscovites who had emerged from rush-hour trains to study the clouds, arrange their raincoats and gather resolve for the dash home. Calmer souls loitered at the entrance to buy roses, ice cream, piroshki. The scene was surreal because it was so normal. Arkady began to wonder whether the coup was taking place in another city.

   
Cooperatives no bigger than shacks had set up business behind the station. He queued at one that sold Gauloises, razor blades, Pepsi, canned pineapple, and bought himself a bottle of carbonated mineral water and a tall lavender aerosol can of 'Romantic' deodorant. He went on to a secondhand shop that sold watches without hands and forks without tines and bought two collections of odd keys on wire loops. He tossed away the keys and kept the wires, which he added with the water and deodorant to the canvas bag.

   
Back in his car, Arkady returned to the avenue and cruised until he picked up the motorcycle again outside Dynamo Stadium. Traffic was becoming more congested. When the Sadoyava Ring was blocked by a procession of armoured personnel carriers, he made a left and followed them until he could slip through at Fadayeva. He first smelled, then saw the black exhaust of tanks idling in Manege Square along the west wall of the Kremlin. Crossing Tverskaya, he had a glimpse of Red Square, its brow of cobblestones blocked by lines of Internal troops spaced like hedgerows.

   
Shoppers emerged from Children's World bearing stuffed animals. On the pavement women held up stockings and used shoes for sale. A coup? It might be happening in Burma, darkest Africa, the moon. The majority of people were too exhausted. If there was shooting in the streets, they would still queue. They were sleepwalkers, and at this sunset Moscow was the centre of sleep.