Authors: Mikhail Elizarov
A
ND THEN CAME
the whirlwind, breakneck sequence of bloody events with which my new life began. It all happened literally in seconds.
The man who was walking towards us suddenly shuddered and collapsed to his knees, holding one hand to his temple, and beside him the short crowbar that someone had flung out of the darkness landed on the ground with a dull thud. The previous day’s Yeltsin-hater, the bald, husky man with the paper bundle, was already beside the driver. He made a stabbing movement and the bundle suddenly buried itself in his adversary’s stomach, so that the paper folded up concertina-wise around the bald man’s fist. He jerked his hand back out, and I saw a long, straight blade. The bald man drove his weapon into the driver’s side for good measure and the driver slumped down, lifeless, onto the ground. The killer deftly wiped down the blade with the crumpled paper.
Kolesov manage to run off a couple of metres, but he was overtaken by the false dacha folk. I heard the dull sounds of a struggle.
Alik tried to say something, but instead of words he belched out blood. The point of a knitting needle was protruding from his throat. Standing behind him was an elderly woman, the same one who had been knitting on the bench. Alik shuddered and another needle ran through the hand that he was holding over his Adam’s apple.
The mechanic appeared, picked up the fallen crowbar and finished off the dying man with a sharp blow to the back of the
head, then informed the elderly woman who had done in red-faced Alik with her needles:
“This one’s finished, Margarita Tikhonovna.”
Tucking the crowbar into his belt, he gave me a conspiratorial wink and said, “No noise now!”
A dark-coloured RAF minibus drove up with its lights off. Two men jumped out of it and started deftly throwing the corpses into the back. The men acted swiftly, in unison.
Repeatedly casting anxious glances at me through her glasses, Margarita Tikhonovna whispered:
“Quietly now, quietly, everything’s fine, just keep it quiet…”
The dacha lady came running up to her. Her vegetable-garden implement turned out to be a short pike. She held out the confiscated book and called in a whisper:
“Pal Palych, hurry up.”
The man with the moustache dragged over Kolesov, bound and gagged, and flung him crudely into the RAF.
The bald man said to Margarita Tikhonovna:
“I’ll go with Palych in their car and we’ll follow you.”
“No, Igor Valeryevich, you come with us and Pal Palych will manage on his own,” she said, carefully tucking the book into the cuff of her cardigan before adding the command: “Let’s clear out!”
Nudging me gently in the back, the bald man moved me onto a side seat in the minibus and perched on the seat beside me. The mechanic and the women also climbed in, the door slammed, and the RAF set off into the darkness.
I should say that while the massacre was taking place I stood there without stirring a muscle, as if I had turned to stone, and probably couldn’t have given a shout, even if I had wanted to—I was struck completely dumb by the shock.
Scenes flashed in front of my eyes from television reports about bandits who found out about apartment sales from inside informers. If Kolesov himself were not in a rather sorry state, I would have
assumed that he had set everything up, but since we hadn’t signed any documents yet, such behaviour made no sense.
Nightmarish questions buzzed around inside my head like an enraged swarm of bees: “Could the bandits really have made a mistake in their haste? What’s going to happen to me? I have been left alive and they haven’t even laid a finger on me. But why, or more to the point, for how long? Until it becomes clear that I don’t have any money and the sale hasn’t taken place?”
Kolesov squirmed in his bonds on top of the corpses on the jolting floor of the RAF. It occurred to me that he had every reason to assume that I had set him up, although that also seemed absurd—no one takes the money with him to look at an apartment.
Of all the people around me, the mechanic could certainly be taken for a genuine bandit—he had a really brazen face. The bald, husky man, who looked like a butcher from the market, also made a sinister impression. But looking at Margarita Tikhonovna and the dacha lady, it was impossible to believe that these genteel-seeming women had proved to be cold-blooded killers.
The elderly woman immediately rebuked the mechanic:
“Sanya, have you got any brains at all? If that crowbar had fallen on the asphalt, what a clang it would have made!”
The young guy apologized.
“Margarita Tikhonovna, honest to God, I was going to throw a mallet at first, but then I suddenly felt afraid—he was such a big, strong brute.” The mechanic prodded the dead man with his foot. “What if it didn’t stun him…”
“Don’t scold Sasha,” the dacha lady interceded for her partner in crime. “I think it all went off quite excellently.”
“Exactly,” the driver agreed. “Clean as a whistle.”
“Tanechka, I know what I’m saying,” Margarita Tikhonovna objected. “And another thing, all of you; I asked you not to mention any names on an assignment! And there you go, like little children, ‘Margarita Tikhonovna’, ‘Pal Palych’…” she said, mocking them. “What did you think you were doing?”
The dacha lady and the mechanic smiled guiltily.
“Oh, come on now, Margarita Tikhonovna,” the bald man put in, “they were whispering… And you yourself, as it happens, addressed me in full form, name and patronymic, you just didn’t mention my surname,” he laughed.
“I’m sorry, Igor Valeryevich, I should be thrown on the scrap heap too,” Margarita Tikhonovna said dejectedly. “But nonetheless, you young people, be more vigilant next time.”
The mechanic, who had been sitting there, hanging his head, stopped acting out his contrition and suddenly held his hand out to me.
“Alexander Sukharev.”
“Alexei Vyazintsev,” I forced out.
“Pleased to meet you,” the mechanic said, smiling. He looked about the same age as me, perhaps a little younger. “Well, how are you doing? Your pants are probably filled to overflowing, right?”
While I was still pondering my reply to this familiar suggestion, Margarita Tikhonovna rapped the mechanic over the knuckles first.
“Stop that, Sasha!” She gave a deep sigh and said in an exceptionally solemn tone of voice, “Alexei… Dear Alexei Vladimirovich, I can only imagine the conclusions you must have drawn from what you have seen. But let me tell you that you are in no danger whatsoever in our company. If only because all of us…”—at these words the mechanic, the dacha lady, bald Igor Valeryevich, the driver and his navigator nodded in unison—“… loved and respected your uncle Maxim Danilovich Vyazintsev… I swear on his cherished memory, we did not wish to frighten you, but unfortunately we could not warn you either. Too much would have had to be explained, you might not have believed us, and the criminals would have escaped unpunished. I hope that in the near future you will be able to make sense of everything for yourself and will not condemn us for this violence. Six months ago these… monsters…”—her voice trembled—“… villainously waylaid and murdered Maxim Danilovich…”
The bald man turned over the lifeless Alik (a knitting needle protruded from his throat, running through his hand and holding it in place), threw back the leather flap of the dead man’s jacket and took out a very long awl, as slim as a needle, covered up to the handle with a narrow plastic tube.
“There, feast your eyes on that,” he said, turning to me, “just so you won’t have any doubts about these characters. Their own make. They temper them specially in sealing wax—the blade’s as strong as diamond, it’ll pierce anything you like.”
“Ooh, the bastards!” said the mechanic Sasha Sukharev. He grabbed Kolesov by the scruff of the neck, shook him a few times and tossed him back onto the dead bodies, throwing in a heavy punch to the kidneys. Kolesov groaned.
Margarita Tikhonovna observed this scene without the slightest sign of sympathy, and then mockingly waved the confiscated book under Kolesov’s nose.
“Well, then? What’s that your name is? Vadim Leonidovich? How did you make such a mess of things, eh?”
Kolesov squirmed in his bonds and his eyes flashed, full of torment and fear.
“Now listen carefully. Your informer Shapiro has been detained. And therefore I hope you will be appropriately forthcoming at the interrogation… I can’t guarantee you your life, by the way, but even in the worst-case scenario, you’ll still see Saturday. Is there anything you want to say?”
The mechanic Sukharev lifted Kolesov up, ripped the plaster off his mouth and pulled out the brownish, blood-soaked gag. Kolesov gurgled: “I didn’t kill anyone. That’s nothing to do with me… It was Marchenko who gave the orders…” Then the gag stopped his mouth again.
“So you are prepared to cooperate?” Margarita Tikhonovna asked severely. “Or… were you killed during arrest? In principle Shapiro is enough for us. What do you think, Igor Valeryevich?”
The bald man pressed the confiscated awl to Kolesov’s side and the miserable Vadim Leonidovich started nodding his head rapidly. What else could he do? In his place I would have accepted any conditions too.
The mechanic frisked the bodies while the false dacha lady Tanya gazed at me with tenderness in her eyes, then suddenly said:
“Alexander Vladimirovich, you behaved quite splendidly, and you are very, very much like Maxim Danilovich…”
“Very true,” said the driver, turning round for a moment. “I noticed that too. The same face.”
“I can hardly believe it,” said the navigator. “A dead ringer for his uncle…”
“Alexei Vladimirovich,” said Margarita Tikhonovna, touching my knee cautiously, “I realize that you are perturbed and shocked. If you wish to collect your thoughts, please, do not speak. Rest and recover your equilibrium.”
In fact I had a lot of questions. What did they kill Uncle Maxim for? Who are these people who supposedly killed him? And finally, most important of all: what’s going to happen to me? However, complying with Margarita Tikhonovna’s categorical proposition, I spent the rest of the journey looking out through the black window at the agitated cardiogram of roadside lights.
Along the way they discussed where to take me. Margarita Tikhonovna urged me to come to her place, but bald Igor Valeryevich insisted that his place was better, since Margarita Tikhonovna’s address might be known to the foe. This argument proved decisive and the RAF swerved off the lit street and wound its way between faceless buildings of precast concrete panels—it turned out that Igor Valeryevich lived somewhere around here.
At the entrance to the building the company divided. The driver and his navigator, having been instructed to guard Kolesov, immediately drove off with their dead cargo.
I
CAN’T SAY NOW
that it was the most terrifying night of my life. Rather, it was one of a series of terrifying nights.
We went upstairs, and in the doorway of the apartment Igor Valeryevich told me to make myself at home. The others didn’t need any special invitation. Tanya went off to the kitchen to play housewife. Sukharev whistled as he locked himself in the toilet. Margarita Tikhonovna showed me into the sitting room and Igor Valeryevich pointed to the adjoining room: “Alexei, the bedroom’s all yours for the night.”
I politely declined tea—what if they slipped something into my cup? My fear had subsided slightly and my legs no longer felt rubbery, although my stomach was still on fire with adrenaline intoxication. I tried to behave with dignity, but my voice betrayed my condition and I preferred to keep silent and restrict myself to a nod for “yes” or a brief shake of my head for “no”.
Margarita Tikhonovna did not forget to repeat: “Alexei Vladimirovich, the important thing is not to forget that you are among friends and perfectly safe.” But I didn’t really believe it.
Still smiling, Margarita Tikhonovna sat down to speak on the phone. The words she heard in the receiver jerked her clean out of her previous state of calm.
“What do you mean ‘got away’? When?” Margarita Tikhonovna exclaimed plaintively. “Now calm yourself, Timofei Stepanovich, no one is accusing you of anything! What about the others? Oh, you kill the very heart in me… I’m speechless… All right, let
them search… Yes, come immediately. We’re at Igor Valeryevich’s place!”
She put the phone down and, struggling to conceal her own agitation, announced:
“Comrades, stay calm now. We have an enormous problem. Shapiro has escaped. Vadik Provotorov is wounded…”
A tense silence enveloped the room. Then Igor Valeryevich’s fist crashed down onto the table. Cups rattled and hopped up in the air. Tanya gasped. Sukharev started dashing around the room, swearing.
“Stop all this emotion!” Margarita Tikhonovna ordered. “What way is that to behave? At least show some dignity in Alexei Vladimirovich’s presence!”
Sukharev immediately fell silent and slumped down into an armchair, breathing noisily through his nose.
Igor Valeryevich exclaimed bitterly:
“Well, there you have it, never count your chickens before they’re hatched…”
“Perhaps they’ll still manage to catch him?” Tanya suggested timidly.
“I doubt it,” Margarita Tikhonovna sighed. “Shapiro’s already gone to ground, and the most ghastly thing of all is that he has warned Marchenko.”
Igor Valeryevich picked up a saucer that had flown off the table.
“Then get in touch straight away with Tereshnikov, or whoever it is that’s in charge of things now, and…”
“Igor Valeryevich…”
“Otherwise Marchenko will do it first. If he hasn’t already.” Seeing Margarita Tikhonovna hesitate, he added: “Marchenko knew all about Shapiro’s plans anyway, and the raiding party was acting with his knowledge too. He would have sounded the alarm himself in a day.”
Margarita Tikhonovna gave me a compassionate look.
“How I wish, Alexei Vladimirovich, that I could tell you everything, so that you would calm down at last… But it’s a long,
complicated story. It’s better if we put it off for later. You must have realized that we have run into unexpected difficulties…”
Margarita Tikhonovna spent the next fifteen minutes or so calling essential people, while I clutched at every word in the hope of investing it with meaning and clarifying my own fate.
“Good evening, Comrade Tereshnikov. I’m sorry to trouble you, this is Selivanova here, from the Shironin reading room. We have an emergency situation… A meeting is required, tomorrow… Twenty hundred hours, as usual. Please understand, this is a matter of extreme urgency! If they go to the station today, then by tomorrow evening they could… We really shouldn’t drag this out… I can hint that we have something that could spoil… Yes, in triplicate. The fourth is alive and willing to talk about the Gorelov reading room… I am astounded by your perspicacity… Yes, by all means, inform Lagudov and Shulga… And don’t try to intimidate me with the Council of Libraries… All to the way to the Supreme Soviet if you wish! And don’t you dare address me in such a tone of voice! I’m not some young girl! Thanks be to God, I’m sixty-three years old! Yes!… Good night to you!”
“What a scoundrel!” she concluded, after the receiver clattered into its cradle.
Mind you, Margarita Tikhonovna spoke to the others far more cordially.
“Comrade Burkin, how do you do… I was just talking to Tereshnikov. We’ve arranged a meeting for Saturday. What do you think, will you support us? Well, thank you so much… Vasily Andreyevich, it really requires more than just a couple of words… In general terms, we’re going to expose the Gorelovites’ true colours… Caught in the act… Yes… Three-quarters were liquidated, one-quarter with a battered face is bound and under guard… Nothing good about it. Shapiro has got away from us… We’re clarifying that… I’m far from delighted myself… Yes, thank you…”
“Zhannochka Grigoryevna… Good evening… How is your health?… We really need you very badly tomorrow… A meeting…
The Gorelovites have blundered… Today… We liquidated three of them. But it’s still too early to congratulate us on our good fortune— the key witness, who is also the accused, has escaped… Yes, Shapiro, the very same… What do I think? I think that Sunday is going to be a very hot day… Yes… Zhannochka Grigoryevna, I have always counted on you… Thank you for those kind words, my dear…”
“Comrade Latokhin, good evening. This is Selivanova. There’s a meeting on Saturday… Dear man, I realize this is a bolt out of the blue… I called Tereshnikov… We’ll dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s tomorrow… Our own initiative… We had a little fox hunt here… With mixed results… We let the most important one get away. He escaped just as we had things… Pilipchuk was in charge, Timofei Stepanovich… Well, he blames himself, he’s in a desperate state… A heart attack is just what we need at the moment… And how am I doing? Comrade Latokhin, I’m like that speckled hen in the fairy tale; I calm everyone down: ‘Don’t cry, Granddad. Don’t cry, Grandma…’ Yes… Tereshnikov? His usual self, trying to intimidate me with the Council of Libraries… Thank you, Comrade Latokhin, we never doubted you…”
I caught the gist of what had happened. The escape of a certain Shapiro had totally confounded my abductors’ plans, so that the murderous attack on Kolesov and his comrades had spawned serious problems. Margarita Tikhonovna used the words “library”, “reading room” and “council” rather often, but it seemed to me that in this context they had a somewhat different meaning.
“I’ve done everything I can do. Burkin, Simonyan and Latokhin are on our side, I never expected any different,” Margarita Tikhonovna summed up.
The doorbell trilled abruptly and insistently. Then someone knocked.
“That’s Timofei Stepanovich,” Margarita Tikhonovna said with a start. “At least, I hope it is…”
Grabbing his blade, Igor Valeryevich went to answer the door. A few seconds later the new arrival’s rasping voice could be heard in the hallway.
“We let him get away! He tricked us! He’s scum, the bastard! Forgive me, comrades!”
There was a clatter of iron-shod boots as an old man with shaggy hair and broad shoulders came running into the room. He was dressed like a collective-farm chairman, but he looked as if he’d been fighting with the partisans for at least a year: his baggy-kneed, mud-smeared trousers were tucked into his boots, and here and there patches of pine needles and wood resin were clinging to his jacket.
“It’s my fault!” the old man exclaimed, wrenching a grey strand out of his tousled thatch. “I let Shapiro get away! I’m prepared to accept the severe consequences of my failure!”
“Timofei Stepanovich, please calm down at once!” Margarita Tikhonovna declared quietly but imperiously. “How is Provotorov? Alive?”
“They took Vadka off to hospital…” said the old man, examining the strand of hair clutched in his fist. “The doctors said it’s nothing serious… Shapiro stunned him and hopped out through the window…” He unclenched his fingers and the wrenched-out tuft dropped onto the carpet.
“Timofei Stepanovich, my dear, how could you have?” Tanya asked dejectedly. “Where were you?”
“In the privy…” said Timofei Stepanovich, almost crying. “Provotorov and Lutsis were left with Shapiro… You told me just a while back, ‘Shapiro’s a traitor.’ But it was Maxim Danilovich himself who brought him into the reading room! I just couldn’t believe that he… I thought we were wrong to suspect the man, one of our own comrades, that we’d be ashamed afterwards and have to apologize for it!” Timofei Stepanovich suddenly hesitated with a strange air. “And who’s this?” he asked, gawping wild-eyed at me.
“Maxim Danilovich’s nephew,” said Margarita Tikhonovna. “Alexei Vladimirovich Vyazintsev. I told you…”
“Take my word…” Timofei Stepanovich wheezed, darting towards me.
I hid ingloriously behind Margarita Tikhonovna.
“Alexei Vladimirovich, take my word for it, I will make amends…” said Timofei Stepanovich, thumping himself on the chest with a resounding thud. “I’ll gnaw that Shapiro’s heart out…”
“Timofei Stepanovich, my dear,” Margarita Tikhonovna implored him wearily, “curb your heroic temperament for now. Alexei Vladimirovich has suffered enough as it is. He has had more than enough new impressions to cope with today. Why don’t you just tell me where Ogloblin and Larionov are?”
“They’re guarding that one you captured,” said Timofei Stepanovich, reluctantly backing away from me, “in the Vozglyakovs’ shed.”
“And the others?”
“Searching for Shapiro…” said the old man with a dismissive gesture. “They divided into two groups. Dezhnev and Ievlev are in charge.”
“I’ll tell you what I’m afraid of…” Igor Valeryevich put in. “If Kolesov finds out that we haven’t got Shapiro, he’ll refute all his testimony. We have to hand him over to the observers tomorrow in any case. He’ll have time to talk to Marchenko…”
“Boys and girls,” said Tanya, pointing at me, “we have Alexei Vladimirovich! He’s a witness too!”
A sudden foreboding brought me out in a sweat.
“And why not,” said Sukharev, perking up feebly. “He was there, wasn’t he? He saw the whole thing. Right, Alexei?”
“I’m against it,” Margarita Tikhonovna said after pondering briefly. “I wouldn’t like to get Alexei Vladimirovich involved…”
“Maybe just as a back-up option?” Igor Valeryevich put in cautiously. He sat down beside me. “Of course you’re not in the mood for all this right now… But what did happen at Maxim
Danilovich’s place, I mean at your place, when Kolesov showed up? Only in detail, now.”
As far as I was able, I recited the sequence of events: the note in the door, the strange visitors and the book that was found on the shelves, which Kolesov cadged from me.
“In principle, Tereshnikov is obliged to take this into account,” said Margarita Tikhonovna. “Even if Kolesov tries to squirm out of his testimony, we have the letter, which is evidence of a kind… By the way, where is it, Alexei Vladimirovich?”
“I’ll go for it,” Sukharev piped up. “If Alexei just tells me where…”
“Here it is,” I said, taking the creased sheet of paper out of my pocket in the feeble hope that it might somehow serve as my ransom.
“Alexei Vladimirovich! My ray of sunshine!” Margarita Tikhonovna exclaimed. “How excellent that you brought it with you!”
She tucked the letter into her handbag and spoke words that transformed the floor into a lurching deck.
“Alexei Vladimirovich, I really am most reluctant to impose on you, but I think that tomorrow we shall require your help after all. Could you repeat to the meeting everything that you have told us?”
I didn’t dare to risk saying “no”, recalling the manner in which problems of “cooperation” were dealt with in this company. Sukharev had the confiscated awl, tempered in sealing wax, tucked into his belt, and bald Igor Valeryevich hadn’t put his fearsome blade away yet.
Margarita Tikhonovna thanked me, old Timofei Stepanovich rushed to shake me by the hand, Tanya smiled, Sukharev patted me on the shoulder, Igor Valeryevich said that my agreeing to help was a tribute to the memory of Uncle Maxim. And I realized in horror what an inescapable quagmire today’s events had turned into.
In conclusion Margarita Tikhonovna said:
“Igor Valeryevich, we leave our guest in your keeping. Let him rest. We’ll come for you early tomorrow evening.”
*
They left. I meekly withdrew into the other room, but of course I had no intention of sleeping. And, to all appearances, neither did my guard. I heard the sound of ponderous steps, and then the springs of an armchair sighed under his weight. A strip of light came in under the door. I heard the rustle of a newspaper and the jingle of a circling teaspoon.
About halfway through the night the light went out and, after waiting for the sound of regular snoring, I tried to get out into the sitting room without making any noise. The treacherous door didn’t merely creak, it whinnied like a horse. The snoring immediately broke off, Igor Valeryevich lifted his head up off the cushion, sleeked down round his bald patch the hair that had straggled across his temples and the back of his head, and turned on the standard lamp with his other hand.
“Alexei, the toilet’s right beside the front door, only the tank’s acting up,” he said, screwing his eyes up drowsily against the bright light. “That’s Sanya’s fault, the pest, he broke the handle again last night. There’s a green bucket in there, fill it with water and pour that in, and I’ll fix the tank in the morning…” Igor Valeryevich was wearing tracksuit trousers and a singlet that emphasized his bovine fleshiness. The knife was lying beside him on a nightstand. “Finding it hard to sleep in a strange place?”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s no big deal, I was only half dozing anyway… If you need anything, don’t stand on ceremony, just go ahead and get me up…”
As I came out of the toilet, I noticed an oval plaque on the door, with a bas-relief image of a little urchin peeing into a chamber pot. One exactly like it used to hang in our home about twenty years earlier, but then it had got lost somewhere. Strangely enough, the sight of this tranquil urination that had been going on for decades in apartments of the most various kinds suddenly relieved my anxiety. Or perhaps the fear had simply drained out of me spontaneously and I had flushed it away with water out of the green bucket.