Black Knight in Red Square

the return from Afghanistan. The expedition had brought the men-those who survived-close together.

As he returned to his barracks room where Misha and Rolf were waiting for him with a chess game, Iosef had two concurrent thoughts. First, he thought it might be interesting to be a policeman as his father was and spend much of the time confronting people as he had confronted Galinarov. He had never seriously considered that before, and though he was trained as a mechanical engineer, he wondered if his father could make some arrangement for him to join the MVD. The second thought was less specific but troublesome: What, in fact, had prompted his parents to call him?

THIRTEEN

James Willery sat silently on the floor, his legs crossed, staring at the wall. Several students came to look in on him and discuss the controversy that had arisen after the screening of To the Left. One of them managed to get a grunt out of him shortly before two o’clock. Half an hour later Alexander Platnov, who was rather enjoying the silence, felt obliged to offer his guest something to eat. Willery rejected the soup but accepted a piece of coarse white bread, which he ate slowly and silently.

“What’s wrong with him?” asked a young woman with long dark hair when Platnov went out in the hall to use the toilet.

“I don’t know.” Platnov shrugged, quite happy to talk to the woman who, until now, had acted as if Platnov was not a member of the human race. “He was in India a few years ago. I think he may be meditating.”

The young woman looked toward the room. “He is a very profound filmmaker,” she said.

He is, thought Alexander Platnov, an ass. However, he said, “Yes, yes, he is. And I’ve learned much from him in the last few days.”

The woman, who was named Katya, looked at him seriously with intense gray eyes.

“I’d very much like to know what he has shared with you, Comrade,” she said.

“When he leaves,” Platnov said, “I’ll be most happy to share his thoughts with you.”

Willery’s thoughts at the moment would have interested the two very much, but not for aesthetic reasons. He was trying to work himself up to a sufficient level of courage-or numbness-to blow up a building. After his walk the previous day, he had gone from despair to euphoria when the woman failed to contact him. He allowed himself to imagine that she had changed her mind, been caught, or met with an accident.

A good two hours after returning to the student residence, while he was discussing the possibility of getting between two thoughts with a young woman he had met at the screening of his film, his hand bumped against his side, and he felt the hard object in his pocket. Without thinking, he pulled it out to look at. It was about the size of a small tape cassette, very black and shiny with a black plastic button in the center.

“What is that?” the young woman had asked.

“This?” said Willery, looking at the object in terror.

She laughed. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” he said. “This is an invention.”

“What does it do?”

“It is a remote control switch for starting a hidden camera,” he said.

“I see,” said the young woman with a wicked smile, “and you have such a camera in this room. Let me push the button and start it.”

She had reached for the black piece in his hand, and he had leaped back, ramming into a desk.

“No,” he said sharply, and shoved the thing back into his pocket.

It had then taken him five minutes and several promises to get the young woman to leave. He had to think, he had told her. Inspiration came on him like that, between two thoughts.

Since she had already decided that part of her fascination with him was his Western eccentricity, she accepted his need to be alone, though she wasn’t at all sure she accepted his reason. As soon as she had left, Willery had headed for the bed and had hidden in sleep in a near fetal position till the next morning. His snoring kept Alexander Platnov up most of the night, but Platnov kept telling himself that the madman would be gone in a day or two. Willery had already been informed unofficially that he had no chance to win a prize in any competition.

In the morning, Willery had accepted coffee and a sandwich and taken his seat on the floor, looking at the wall. Once in a while he adjusted his dark glasses, but otherwise he was completely still.

Willery had come to several conclusions. First, he did not have to get too close to the hotel and the theater when he pressed the button. It would almost surely work from some distance, but what distance? He had been told that when the moment came he was to be across the street, no more man fifty yards away, but maybe it would work from farther away. He could try, couldn’t he? If it didn’t work, he could simply move in a little closer. The best thing about this was that he would not have to see what happened inside the theater when he pressed the button. The worst thing was that he could easily imagine what would happen. He had seen the damage done by IRA bombings in London. He had wanted to make a movie about terrorism, but one visit to the site of a bombing had changed his mind. That was how he had met Robert from World Liberation.

He had no misgivings about blowing up the theater. In fact, he was quite happy about that part because it was the same theater where two nights before the audience had ridiculed his film. Yes, that very ridicule made him an aesthetic martyr. He would tell the Western reporters, especially his friend Elsie Brougham who worked for the Guardian, about the vulgarity of the Russian movie-goers. But still, there would be some justice in imploding that overdone excuse for a movie theater. If only there would be no people in or near it-or if he could carefully select the people who would be inside. He could come up with a nice list, starting with the pock-faced little turd from the Moscow Film Festival Committee who had tried to get him to withdraw his film and had smirked at him every time Willery tried to explain what his film was about.

He looked down at his watch and discovered that it was almost four o’clock. He groaned. In one hour, just one hour, he had to do it. He really had no thought of not doing it. They had killed Monique, and they would surely kill him. The Russians, even if they caught him…One more hour.

When Willery groaned, Platnov put down his book and turned to see what was happening. In the past few hours the student had developed a bit more tolerance for his guest, since he might well prove to be the bridge to Katya.

“What is wrong?” he asked.

“I’ve got to go,” whispered Willery.

“Where?” asked Alexander Platnov.

“Out,” said Willery, getting up on cramped legs. “But I’ll be back.”

“Of course,” Platnov said, now looking with some puzzlement at his guest. Had the man obtained drugs? It would not surprise Platnov. Whatever it was, Willery was going out and had not invited Platnov to go with him. The man from the Moscow Film Festival office had said that Platnov should stay with his guest at all times, but it was Sunday afternoon, and every man had his limits of tolerance. Both Marx and Dostoevsky had made that quite clear.

“I’ll be back,” Willery repeated, going to the door.

I’m sure you will, said Platnov to himself, wondering if he should go just to keep the man from wandering into a passing motorbus. “Would you like me to come with you?”

“No,” Willery snapped, and then, with a weak smile, he repeated, “no,” quite softly, and went out the door.

Platnov shook his head and turned back to his book. It was about computer technology for heavy machinery factories, and he hated it.

In a halfhearted attempt to get lost, Willery wandered about the city. To Sasha Tkach, who was following him, it looked at times like an amateur’s attempt to lose anyone who might be on his trail, but if so, it was so incredibly inept that the man appeared to be feebleminded, a possibility that Tkach, having seen To the Left, considered briefly. Willery took no public transportation, went through no buildings, but simply wandered, sometimes winding up where he had been before. It was also possible that he was simply trying to determine if someone was following him, but if so he was doing an amazingly good job of not being caught