a hint of who they were. “Kaliningrad hotels” prompted a list that offered a fitness center, indoor pools and views of Old Town and Victory Square. More specifically, “Kaliningrad conference hotels” offered Wi-Fi, business centers, meeting rooms and authentic Russian banyas. Arkady pictured foreign businessmen, red as boiled lobsters, whipping each other with birch twigs.
Arkady felt reasonably sure that an international interpreter was well paid and well traveled. He discounted the possibility that the dead man had been staying with friends. Why sleep on a couch when he could enjoy the attentions of a luxury hotel where his employers presumably paid the bills? They wouldn’t want their interpreter out of reach, not when he was vital to any business they carried on. Anyway, there was something solitary about the interpreter. Arkady could not imagine two people with less in common than himself and Tatiana Petrovna.
How long could they keep the interpreter’s body if he went unclaimed? That depended on shelf space at the morgue and the medical school’s demand for cadavers, in which case he would be whittled away, slice after slice, like a Spanish ham.
Arkady called Kaliningrad’s small clutch of four- and five-star hotels; the replies were humiliating.
“You want to know if we have lost a guest. You don’t know his name or nationality. When he checked in or checked out. Whether he was at a conference or alone. You think he rode a bike. That’s all?”
“Yes.”
“Is this a joke?”
“So far.”
One hotel advised Arkady that “all inquiries concerning criminal or suspicious activity should be reported immediately to Lieutenant Stasov.” A plum assignment, Arkady thought, to have passports, credit cards and luggage pass through his hands.
Arkady moved on to “bicycle rentals.” He doubted that anyone would risk bringing his own custom bike to a city that was famous for the theft of anything on wheels. The problem was that thieves did not advertise and few shops could afford a website.
Noon. After four hours at the computer, he couldn’t stand one more cup of bitter coffee and went to an Irish pub around the corner. The bartender was a genuine Irishman surrounded by faux atmosphere: crossed hurley sticks, a ladder of Irish football teams, a song wailed by the Chieftains. A flat-screen monitor showed of all things a bicycle race in progress. Arkady watched the wheels hypnotically go round and round and round. The chalkboard offered ten beers on tap. A food board offered, among other items, soda bread, barmbrack, goody and crubeens.
Arkady was intrigued. “What is barmbrack?”
“Fooked if I know.”
“What is a goody?”
“Beats me.”
“Crubeens?”
“Pig trotters. A man could starve to death from the fookin’ ambiance here. Come back tonight. We have waitresses in short skirts who step-dance on the bar.”
Arkady didn’t feel up to that. “Just a beer and soda bread.”
“With gluten or without?”
“Just a beer.”
The bartender sneaked a look at the television. “It’s the Irish Ultra Marathon World Cup. Want a thrill?” He picked up the remote control and froze the picture. “That’s me in the emerald-green jersey, right behind the asshole in the Union Jack who’s about to crash. I can’t stand this.” He turned the monitor off. “It gives me a chill every time I see it. Like a goose flew over my grave. What was your order?”
“Just the beer.” Arkady squinted to read the bartender’s name tag. Mick. Mick sounded authentic enough. “So you know about bikes?”
“I hope so. Where are you going?”
“I’ll be back.”
• • •
By the time Arkady was nine years old, General Renko had largely retreated to his library, into an aura of red velvet drapes. The room was forbidden to Arkady. Occasionally, the general called for him to bring vodka or tea and he glimpsed irresistible photographs of a gutted city, and a collection of German helmets and tattered battle standards. The room’s single light was a desk lamp, and there the general conjured up his enemies.
Arkady waited for his chance, and when the door was left ajar, he sneaked in. He raced around the room taking inventory, until he came to standards topped by swastikas and eagles. He was fascinated most by an SS standard of a skull and bones. The fabric was silk, stiff with blood. He didn’t hear the general return until he was almost in the room.
Arkady dove behind the drapes as the old man came in with a bottle of vodka and a water glass that he stopped to wipe clean with his nightshirt. Every move was solemn and ceremonial, like a priest’s at communion; he sat and drank half a glass of the vodka in one go. On the desk were a typewriter and three phones, white, black and red, in ascending importance. Arkady was silent. The general was so quiet Arkady thought he must have fallen asleep. He waited for an opportunity to creep out but then the general twitched or muttered or refilled his glass. He laughed. Waved his hand in a vague manner. Shook his fist as if addressing a crowd. Perhaps he had not been given the field marshall’s baton that was his due, but people who knew, knew!
The red telephone, the line to the Kremlin, hadn’t rung for a year. Nevertheless, he was ready. Just a matter of getting into his uniform and shaving.
“Who’s there?”
Arkady wasn’t aware of having made a sound. He did hear the general’s chair roll back and desk drawers rapidly open and slam shut. He heard the cylinder of a revolver swing open and bullets roll across the desk. “Is that you, Fritz?”
Arkady dug deeper into the curtain.
“I’m going to give you a hint, Fritz,” the general whispered. “If you want to kill a man, if you want to be sure, get close.”
The general succeeded in loading only one bullet. Five hit the floor. Nevertheless, he pulled the trigger. The chamber was empty but the cylinder advanced and he squeezed the trigger three more times hard with no result. Arkady’s calls for help were smothered by the heavy drapes while the general held the drape across his face and clicked on another empty cylinder.
Arkady slipped free and cried, “It’s me!”
As they stood face-to-face, the general raised his gun to Arkady’s forehead.
For a moment they were locked. Then the general blinked in the manner of someone coming awake and a deep groan escaped his chest. He turned the gun on himself and pulled the trigger.
The world came to a stop. The general’s eyes screwed shut and his face turned chalk white as he squeezed the trigger again and again, until, exhausted, he let the gun hang.
Arkady took the revolver away and swung the cylinder open.
“It’s jammed.”
The bullet was stuck between chambers, which sometimes happened to revolvers when the trigger was pulled in too much of a rush.
• • •
Mick the bartender was serving other customers when Arkady returned to the pub. He watched the traffic pass. This was what much of life was all about, doing nothing but counting cars as they went by. Boomer, Boomer, Merc, Lada, Volvo, Lada, Boomer. Russian cars were as scarce as natives struck by a plague.
“You forgot something.” The bartender brought Arkady a beer and pointed to his head for its keenness. “As I remember, the subject was bikes.”
“One bike in particular.”
“Which one?”
“I don’t know because I don’t know what I’m looking at. You tell me.” This time Arkady had brought the notebook. He turned to the rear inside cover with the list of numbers, silhouettes of a cat drawn over and over and a double triangle. “It’s a bicycle frame?”
“Sure.”
