Authors: Greg Wilson
“I’ve put fresh clothes on the bed, little brother. With my gut they’re probably far too big but they should do for now. I’ve been doing some thinking. Come outside when you’re ready. Maybe I’ve got an idea.”
The shadow moved sideways and the light returned. Nikolai looked up, his eyes defying the hammering spray. So Vari had been thinking, had he? His hand reached out to the gold tray, fingers closing around the soft, scented soap, lifting it and running it over his body. So had he.
The basin was frosted glass, suspended above a narrow sliver of white marble. To the left he found a razor, shaving foam, a fresh toothbrush and paste and deodorant. Even a small bottle of Tabac with the seal still intact. He dried himself on the soft white towel and used them all, watching his reflection in the mirror, judging himself, his face unmoved as his senses digressed, reacquainting themselves with each of the small unfamiliar luxuries. When he had finished he studied himself again. Ran his fingers through his hair then noticed the comb and brush laid out neatly on the other side of the basin. Everything an unexpected guest might want. He left the brush and comb untouched and made his way back to the bedroom, stopping to examine the clothes laid out on the covers.
The trousers were soft black wool. He pulled them on trying them for size. Too big at the waist by four inches but the belt would help. He let them fall to his ankles and picked up the shirt. It was dark green with long sleeves, not silk but something similar. Loose and soft and flowing like a dress he remembered Natalia used to wear; a fabric that slid and folded with every movement of her body. He pushed the thought aside. Ran one arm into a sleeve then the other and moved his fingers down the buttons, closing them, then dragging the trousers back to his waist and holding them there while he threaded the soft leather belt through the fabric loops.
He cinched the belt as tight as it would run then glanced around. Fresh socks as well. He pulled them on then dragged the sneakers he had bought at Novosibirsk over them, lacing them tight then standing. There was a full-length mirror fixed to the back of the bedroom door and he turned to it, meeting his own reflection.
Almost a different person. On the outside, anyway.
The clothes were presentable. A little oversized perhaps but that helped to disguise the gauntness of his frame. His hair was growing fast – more than half an inch in the last few days – and the sunlight had already begun to coax some of the long absent color back into his face. But otherwise his skin remained as pale as parchment, the top outline of the tattoo rising starkly against it in the triangle formed by the deep open neck of Vari’s shirt. His hand rose instinctively to the collar, his fingers locking the top button, hiding the image from view.
He swung his reflection aside and crossed the threshold into the hall, stepping out into a sudden dizzying haze of forgotten aromas… the smell of coffee and hot bread and summer berries and spices and newsprint and sunshine warming fresh paint. Morning in the city.
Vari was seated on one side of the glass-topped dining table, his back to the window, one hand curled around a steaming black mug, the other clutching the remnants of a thick slab of rye bread. An early morning edition of
Pravda
lay folded at his elbow. He looked up as Nikolai entered, his jaw working studiously as he nodded towards the place opposite. Between them lay a row of plates piled unceremoniously with bread and cheese, cured meats and fresh fruit, and a coffee plunger already a third empty. Vari lifted the hand that held the bread and swept it across the dishes, his voice muffled as he chewed.
“Eat, little brother. Come on, you need food.” He swallowed as Nikolai pulled back the chair. Reached for the plunger and tipped hot coffee into Nikolai’s mug. Nikolai stared at the plates until his stomach became impatient and insisted he do more than look. He took a piece of bread, found the butter and started spreading it. Vari observed him a moment then reached out and pushed a dish of meat deliberately across the table. Waited until Nikolai began forking slices onto his plate then took another bite from his bread, chewed again and swallowed.
“I guess there’s no point in asking how you slept.”
Nikolai glanced up, his eyes offering the answer. Returned again to his work.
Vari nodded. “Me either. But like I said…” He paused. “I’ve been thinking and maybe I have an idea.”
Nikolai lifted his gaze to Vari and waited for him to continue. Vari slid the last of his own bread into his mouth and washed it down with a long mouthful of coffee.
“There’s nothing either of us can do about Natalia, Niko. She’s gone.”
Nikolai froze.
Gone. A life dismissed with such brutal simplicity. He lowered his hand slowly and set what was left of his food back down on his plate.
Vari’s expression softened. “I understand how you must feel, little brother, truly I do. Not how you
do
feel, only you can know that.” His eyes drew together, serious. “But we have to be realists. There will be time for you to mourn Natalia later but right now you’re free so we have to work with what we’ve got.” He leaned in closer, his expression intent. “You have to get out of here, Niko. Out of Russia. Ivankov is not your worry now, it’s the authorities. If they track you down it’s all over.” He shook his head, slowly. “I can’t even begin to imagine what you’ve been through but you know for yourself, only too well. You want to go back to that, Niko?” His gaze narrowed. “You want to go back to Siberia or wherever the hell they take you next time?”
The question rested between them without need of an answer.
Vari reached towards a plate of ripe peaches, took one and set it down on the table in front of him, staring at Nikolai.
“You’re alive.”
His hand returned to the bowl and took another, smaller this time. He set it down beside the first.
“And Larisa’s alive.”
Nikolai looked up at him sharply.
Vari leaned closer, his voice lowered. “I can get you out, Niko. I have money and I have contacts. I can get you out of here to somewhere safe where they’ll never be able to touch you again.”
Nikolai stared at him. “And Larisa?”
The older man drew a breath, nodding slowly. “And maybe,
just maybe,
Larisa, as well.”
Nikolai’s head moved a fraction, his gaze narrowed.
The corner of Vari’s mouth lifted in a thin smile. “I still have the tapes, Niko, and I know where to reach Kolbasov.” The possibilities played through Nikolai’s mind. “I don’t know,” Vari cast his hands apart. “Maybe it won’t work but maybe it will. Maybe even Ivankov wants to put all this behind him now.” His dark eyes locked on Nikolai’s.” If you want me to, Niko, I’m prepared to try. The tapes for Larisa, little brother. It’s not everything but it’s all that’s left. The past for the future.”
26
The bank was
on Ulitsa Tverskaya next to the Museum of the Revolution. Or at least that’s what it had been called the last time Nikolai had been here. Now, according to the signage, it had apparently become the Museum of Modern Russia, another disagreeable chapter of the past sanitized, revised and reclassified without a blink. But then that had always been the Russian way. It occurred to Nikolai that almost nothing in Russia was actually real; it was all illusion. The whole society and its past a maze of fractured pieces constantly reassembling themselves inside some crazy massive kaleidoscope: fragments of gleaming glass so intense in their color and pattern that it was hardly possible to imagine that only yesterday they had made up another mosaic entirely.
They took the Range Rover this time since it was the less conspicuous of Vari’s two vehicles. Waited until ten to make sure the safe deposit vault would be open when they arrived then pulled out of the compound and slid west into Zubovskiy Bulvar following the Garden Ring past Patriarch’s Pond and the aquarium to pick up Tverskaya.
Vari parked in the museum lot. Judging by the absence of visitors it seemed the Museum of Modern Russia was not currently one of the city’s most popular destinations. Nikolai waited, counting through the minutes, screened behind the black glass, invisible to anyone outside.
The air had turned heavy and oppressive, the heat already unbearable, the day’s fate sealed when somewhere in the early hours of the morning the wind had swung suddenly to the east, dragging a thick pall of fire smoke from the forests across the roof of the city and trapping the poisonous smog mercilessly beneath. Now, even here inside the passenger compartment – even with the ignition turned on and the climate control churning at full force – the air still tasted bitter, tainted with lead and diesel and the acrid fumes of burning resin that clutched at the back of Nikolai’s throat each time he drew a breath.
The driver’s door swung open and a sudden wave of searing heat burst into the cabin. Vari followed it, clambering inside, tossing a yellow paper-wrapped package into Nikolai’s lap, plastic bouncing against plastic inside as it landed.
Nikolai looked from the package as Vari slammed the door. “You’re sure about this?”
Vari reached for the gearshift, arching his brows. “In this place you can’t be sure about anything, little brother, you know that. The whole thing could explode in our faces. The real question is, if it doesn’t…” He threw the wagon into reverse and backed out of the bay, hit the brake, threw the shift into drive and swung the wheel, “… are you sure you can handle what comes next?”
Nikolai slid his gaze away, thinking about Larisa. How tiny and anonymous she had seemed immediately after her birth, then how rapidly she had begun to become her own precious person, emerging like a tiny magical butterfly from its chrysalis, growing each day more and more like her mother. Then the agonizing shock of her illness and the dreadful possibility that they might lose her forever and, after that, all the bittersweet hours he and Natalia had spent together praying and waiting, locked in each other’s arms until, in the end, something had saved her. The medicine, or the desperation of their love, or God, or perhaps Larisa’s own defiance. Who could tell and what did it matter? She had been saved. They had come through purgatory together, the three of them, and Larisa had survived and after that life had been almost perfect and then…
“It wasn’t your fault, Niko.” He heard Vari’s voice beside him and looked back. “You have to stop blaming yourself. You were trying to do the right thing but the good guys don’t always win. Especially not here.” He steered the Range Rover back into the traffic. “So tell me, if it does work out, do you think you can handle the consequences? What is it you really want, little brother?”
Nikolai stared at the windshield. Beyond it the dense white cloud that wrapped the city was stained a brackish green by the tint of the glass. He swung back slowly, the muscles of his face taut, his jaw set rigid, his brown eyes burning slowly.
“I want my daughter back, Vari. I want my daughter and my life returned to me, that’s what I want.”
Vari’s eyes slid sideways then back to the road. “And nothing more, you’re sure? Because if you start thinking revenge now, Niko… If you start thinking of going for these guys after all this time… ” He chewed his lip, staring through the traffic. “You don’t want to do that, Niko. You can’t win against them. You’ll lose everything.”
A humorless smile settled at Nikolai’s lips. He turned back slowly, his voice as dangerous and brittle as black ice on a winter road.
“And just exactly what would that be, old friend. Right now what do I have to lose?”
Vari pulled the Range Rover through the gates and past the security booth, wheeling it to a stop in front of the building’s main entry. He snatched a glance at his watch.
“I’ll be two hours, maybe three. You know how to get in? The number?”
Nikolai nodded once.
“Okay. Remember it. You’ll need it for the elevator and the gate.” The older man leaned sideways, fished in his pocket and pulled out a gold money clip fat with US bills, peeled off five, hesitated then counted out five more. Reached across and pushed them into Nikolai’s hand. His eyes fell to the package Nikolai still held in his lap. “Take the tapes upstairs, then go out and buy yourself some things: a few changes of clothes, a couple of pairs of shoes, a suitcase, travel things. Then come back here and wait.”
Nikolai counted the money. A thousand dollars. Looked from the notes to Vari, nodded again and sprung the door.
“And one more thing.”
Nikolai turned back.
“Find a photo shop. Get some passport shots. You’re going to need them.”
Nikolai slid the money into the pocket of his shirt, opened the door and stepped out into the blinding heat. Vari reached across for the handle.
“And make sure you stay out of trouble.”
Nikolai watched as the dark red SUV passed back through the gates and swung away into the street, then he walked to the entry and keyed Vari’s security code into the digital pad. The glass panels slid back, silently releasing a surge of chilled air. He stepped through it and the doors sealed behind him again.
He used the same code in the elevator. Waited for it to deliver him to Vari’s floor then stepped out and tracked along the thick carpet towards the door at the end. Halfway there another door ahead opened and a woman stepped out. She was preoccupied at first, tucking something into her handbag, juggling her keys, then she noticed Nikolai approaching and drew up with a start. She was middle-aged, he judged, but trying hard not to look it, with thick lacquered hair the color of forest honey, swept back and frozen too hard around a soft, pretty face. Nikolai smiled at her and she smiled back, tentatively at first, then – as he drew closer – more naturally, her surprise relaxing, the color of sudden attraction and self-consciousness rising in its place. Their eyes met as he passed and her lips moved a fraction and she dipped her head, blushing, then turned away setting off in the opposite direction. As he covered the remaining distance to Vari’s door, Nikolai knew that if he looked back he would find her doing the same. A sudden raw need ran through him. The need to touch. To feel the curves and softness of a woman’s body against his own; to lose himself in its taste and scent and his own release. He reached the end of the corridor and stopped. Closed his eyes and tensed, wrestling the instinct and the thirst aside, then hit the keypad, stepped into the apartment and sealed the door behind him.
He found the remote for the television on the sideboard, a disconnected video player stacked beneath a DVD player on a shelf in the closed cupboard beneath. It took him five minutes to reconnect the older machine and figure his way around the maze of controls. When he had them worked out he pulled the drapes, opened the package and slid one of the tapes into the machine, thumbing the remote and waiting, standing in front of the huge flat screen. For ten seconds the picture tracked through grains of white against black then suddenly the screen burst into color and Nikolai was hit by a rolling wave of dizziness as the characters took their places. It was the first tape: Patrushev and his assistant on one side; Marat Ivankov and Vitaly Kolbasov on the other. He fell to the sofa and watched, unable to move his eyes from the screen, from the images that wound his existence back through nine years of torment to the last moments of his former existence. For two minutes he let it run, the familiar dialogue a blur of white noise in his brain, then he hit the fast-forward button, watching the characters play through their roles with sharp, exaggerated movements, their speech blurred into an unintelligible screech. When the screen cut to black he rewound and switched the first tape for the second, ran it through to the end then rewound and ejected it and slipped both cassettes back into their cases and placed the cases back into the envelope. After that he retraced his actions. Switched off the television, disconnected the VCR, reconnected the DVD player, closed the cabinet, opened the drapes and returned the remote to where he had found it. Then he stepped back and checked everything again before leaving.
Inside the elevator the air was laced with the soft fragrance of lilac, the same scent he had recognized as he had passed the woman in the hall. He reached for the button, shifting the parcel to his other hand, breathing it in and thinking, watching as the numbers ran down.
For what he needed the Arbat was closest. It was only fifteen minutes on foot but time was important so he walked only as far as Ostozhenka then hailed the first taxi he saw.
He had the driver drop him at the river end on Smolenskiy Bulvar, paid the fare from what was left of Florinskiy’s rubles and started back along the cobbled street towards Arbat Square in the searing heat, feeling the perspiration trickling down his skin beneath Vari’s shirt. He passed the stall where he had bought the binoculars, catching and returning the smile of recognition from the happy, blue-haired girl, then turned off the tourist track into the maze of lanes that spread like tentacles behind the restaurants and bars and souvenir shops and the gracious old apartment houses that lined the main street. They had nearly all been restored now, dressed in fresh coats of elegant gray and fawn with crisp white trim and flourishing art nouveau balcony rails of gleaming black wrought iron, when just a decade before most had appeared to be little more than unsalvageable, grime-stained ruins.
For over two centuries the backstreets of the Arbat had been the center of Moscow’s artistic community. Now that film had become an accepted artistic medium the tools of the art would be as fundamental as brushes and palettes to a painter, so it seemed a reasonable assumption that he would find what he was looking for here. It took half an hour but eventually he did. It was on the third level of an unrestored old tenement a block back from the Pushkin House Museum with only a small engraved plaque pinned to the wall beside the entry to announce its existence. Nikolai climbed the stairs to the door, knocked once and entered.
The interior of the apartment was the complete antithesis of the dilapidated building and lobby. Another world. White and chrome with splashes of colored furniture: strange red chairs and vivid blue couches that might have materialized from a child’s fantasy, with bright spotlights and expensive speakers pumping pulsing electronic rock into the chilled air. The receptionist’s head rose from her magazine as Nikolai entered and he followed the movement, her neck as long and graceful as a swan’s, her dark hair swept up in an untidy scattered pile, pinned with two oriental lacquer sticks. She looked past him as if she may have been expecting someone else to follow, then when he closed the door behind him her gaze came back. Her eyes were a dazzling electric green, her face slender, her make-up calculated to accentuate the impossibly high sweep of her cheekbones. There was a television monitor mounted on the wall behind her, the volume switched to mute, a station logo at the bottom of the picture stamping the channel as something called
Fashion TV.
Nikolai’s gaze shifted between the tilted, zooming images on the screen and the girl seated before him. Fantasy becomes reality.
“May I help you?” Her head tilted slightly. He was surprised at how easily her smile dissolved the practiced severity.
Nikolai glanced around the room, past the girl to the open door of a second room behind, where a young slender man was moving animatedly between racks of machines.
“I have some video tapes,” he said. He opened the envelope and dropped the two cassettes into his open hand. “Can you copy them?”
She stared at the cassettes. Took one and inspected it as though it may have been an artefact from a lost world.
“Video tapes?” She shook her head slowly in dismay. “No one uses video tapes anymore.” She gave Nikolai a wide-eyed look. “Where have you been for the last decade.”
Nikolai let the irony slide by. “I asked, can you copy them?”
The girl shrugged. “Not to video tape any longer. But to DVD, this is possible.” She placed the cassette on the desk, rolled her chair aside, pulled open a drawer, fished inside, rolled back and pushed a price list across to him. “But not cheap.”
Her eyes dropped to the cassette then lifted to meet Niko’s. “And if it is porno, price will be double.”
Nikolai’s pushed the price list aside without looking at it. “No. It’s not porno. But if you can copy them within 30 minutes I’ll pay double the porno rate.”
The girl sat upright, approving. She called back across her shoulder to the other room without bothering to look. “Andrei. Come out here, please. We have an important customer.”
Nikolai sat in an Alice in Wonderland chair, sipping the coffee the girl had made for him while Andrei worked in the other room. At one point he glanced up and found the girl looking at him, regarding him appraisingly. He dropped his gaze but it came to a stop at her knees, pinned neatly together beneath the open desk. Since he was there already he let his eyes trail down the long slender legs to the impossibly high-heeled sling-backs in which they perched, then brought them back up again slowly to her face. She met them, welcoming them back, quietly confident, it seemed, that they had enjoyed their trip. She turned back to her magazine, raising her right hand and running her middle finger down the side of her neck. Distractedly, or maybe not. Then Andrei bounced through the doorway in his tight black pants and diagonal striped shirt, holding the two black cassettes in one hand, two DVD cases in the other, the tuft of beard below his upper lip compressed in an eager grin. Nikolai set the coffee cup down and stood, peeling back a hundred dollar bill from the fold in his hand and lay it down on the desk.