Red Star Rising

“No, not in Moscow,” said Charlie.

“Don’t you live here?”

“No,” said Charlie. “I live somewhere else.”

“My papa lives somewhere else, a long way away. I don’t see him but Mama says she might take me there one day.”

Charlie was conscious of Natalia flushing, very slightly. To his daughter Charlie said, “Would you like that?”

“I’m not sure,” said Sasha, with the serious-faced sagacity of a child, returning to her coloring.

“I wish that hadn’t been said.”

“I don’t have a problem with it,” said Charlie. “The opposite, in fact.”

“It doesn’t mean anything. . that I’ve decided anything. Now I’m even more unsure.”

“Don’t be,” urged Charlie. “It really could be so much easier now.”

“You couldn’t live without the job. You know you couldn’t and I know you couldn’t.”

“I could,” insisted Charlie. “And will. By choice or otherwise.”

“Finished!” announced Sasha, triumphantly, offering Charlie the crayoned image. The lion’s mane and feet were colored green, its body yellow. She’d strayed over most of the guiding outlines in her eagerness to complete it.

“It’s the best picture of a lion I’ve ever seen,” enthused Charlie. “May I keep it?”

“I want you to,” insisted the child. “Are we going to see you again?”

“I hope so,” said Charlie.

“So do I. Next time you can have the giraffe and Igor can have the lion.”

“We have to go,” abruptly declared Natalia, the flush returning as she collected up her valise.

“We haven’t properly talked,” protested Charlie. This could be the last opportunity it would be safe for them to meet, for him to persuade her!

“You knew we couldn’t, not today. That wasn’t what today was about.”

“I’ll call again, when things get clearer. But don’t forget what I said. And that I meant all of it.”

“You’ve told me you meant what you said a lot of times before, Charlie. And haven’t meant them.”

“This time I do. I really do.”

“I’ve got a call to make” insisted Natalia, ushering Sasha before her.

So had he, thought Charlie. And a hell of a lot depended on it.

26

“Hello!” a man’s voice, slightly slurred.

Charlie said, “I have this number to call?”

“This is a public phone.”

“Who are you?” Surely not a hoax! It couldn’t be!

“Get off the line. I want to use the phone.” The voice was slurred, the belligerence rising.

“Did you answer because it was ringing?”

“Get off the fucking line!”

“I will when you answer the question. Otherwise I’ll keep it open: blocked.”

“It was ringing as I got into the kiosk. Now get off the fucking line!”

Charlie did, stepping away from the telephone for a woman who was waiting with a tugging child on reins but stayed close enough to hear her voice when she spoke in case the contact was planned differently from how he expected. It was high pitched, a complaint about a gas installation, not at all the tone he wanted to hear. There could be a simple, easy explanation. The belligerent man could have got to the telephone seconds before the woman, no thought of politely deferring to her using it first. Probably wouldn’t have wanted him to, hanging around to hear everything she said. Made every sense for her to be the one to hold back. She would have heard the ringing: know he’d understood and was trying to reach her. All he had to do was wait. But not too long. The woman for whom he’d stepped aside appeared to be having an argument with whomever she was talking; the tugging child was pulling away, distracting her. Charlie walked to and fro in her eye line, to remind her he was waiting. Pointedly she turned her back on him. It was six minutes past five. His feet throbbed. The child became entangled in its reins and fell, pulling the woman off balance. He began screaming and she finally slammed the phone down, dragging him away.

Charlie wedged himself into the kiosk, determined against abandoning it again, and dialed out the number from the paper slipped into his pocket. The line was engaged. He had to redial continuously four times before he got a ringing tone, counting each separate sound. He got to six before the receiver at the other end was lifted. No one spoke.

Charlie said: “Hello?”

There was no response.

“I have this number to call.”

“You’re late.”

The relief surged through Charlie at the recognizable hoarseness. “A man answered when I called before, right on time.”

“I saw him.”

“Then you know I kept my word.”

“Yes,” she agreed.

“Do you now trust me?”

“I don’t know.”

“It’s a decision you’ve got to make.”

“Yes.”

“I promised to be alone at the Arbat. And I was. And I’m alone now: no one with me.”

“I know.”

“How can you know?” demanded Charlie.

“I can see you.”

Again Charlie avoided any startled reaction. Confident that he’d lost any pursuit, he hadn’t bothered to check out the streets directly around Hlebnyj pereulok, the street from which he was speaking. “Then you must know you’re safe.”

“It’s not true what they’re saying: about gangs and drug running and whores. They haven’t even got the name right!”

He had to put pressure on her, Charlie decided: imperceptibly, to prevent her panicking but sufficient to get out of this conversational cul-de-sac. “We have to meet; start talking differently from this. You know you’re not in any danger.”

“I don’t know that at all!”

At last Charlie looked around him, casually. There was what could be another public facility in the shadow of a building about thirty meters to his right. It was too dark for him to be sure, certainly to distinguish anyone inside. Good tradecraft again. “What do you want? If you want the proper retribution against the people who killed Ivan, I’m the man who can get it for you: the only one.”

“I don’t know that at all,” the woman repeated.

“You’re running away!” Charlie openly accused, conscious of the risk he was taking. “You keep running away from me you’re going to let those who killed Ivan escape. Is that what you want, for them to get away, never be punished?”

“No!”

“Then you’ve got to meet me. Talk to me. Tell me as much as you do know and let me take it on from there.”

“They’re too powerful; too influential.” She broke into a coughing fit.