Tatiana

Maxim knew a restaurant that served its guests in a plastic version of the Amber Room, the “Eighth Wonder of the World.”

The room was paneled with artificial amber and gold into the likenesses of cherubs and Peter the Great. Waitresses were costumed à la Marie Antoinette, with gold dust sprinkled in their hair and a beauty spot carefully placed on their décolletage. In a gilded cage in the center of the room, a mechanical nightingale opened its beak and spewed birdsong.

“This almost makes up for my wet feet,” Maxim said. “Maybe a little fois gras and a duck à l’orange will help.”

“And maybe you can tell me why children would be chased by a van with a pig.”

“Amber.”

“You’re not serious.”

“Very. When the Teutonic knights ruled here they chopped off the hands of anyone who poached amber. The van was probably just trying to scare off the kids.”

“It felt like more than that. I’m fairly sensitive to whatever is chasing me.”

“In your profession I suppose that’s a gift. Are you treating? I find I’m more talkative when I’m well fed and dry.”

“Stuff yourself.”

“Excellent. Here’s our waitress.”

Maxim ordered the feast he had promised himself. Arkady had vodka, black bread and butter.

“Was it?” he asked.

“What?”

“The Eighth Wonder of the World?”

“I should think so. Imagine walls of glowing amber, gold leaf, Venetian mirrors and mosaics of semiprecious stones. People said that when the sun poured in the windows of the palace, the Amber Room appeared to burst into flame. It was the favorite room of Catherine the Great. Unfortunately, it was also the favorite war prize of the Nazis. It was dismantled and hidden in a bunker, in a well, in the Black Forest, or taken away in an icebreaker, or maybe in a submarine. Imagine the Amber Room resting in the dark on the bottom of the sea. Like a seed.”

Watching Maxim shovel food around his plate reminded Arkady of the earthmovers at the strip mine. Maxim, in turn, said he found it painful to watch Arkady eat so little.

“There are two kinds of poets. The starving poet and the randy, dissolute poet. I prefer the latter.” He summoned the sommelier.

“Like a seed,” Arkady said. “What did you mean by that?”

“A commonplace metaphor. What distinguishes amber from diamonds, sapphires and rubies is that amber was alive. Fifty million years ago, it was resin dripping from a pine tree, capturing a bee here, a sow bug there. Think of a diamond with a mosquito in the center. Doesn’t exist. That’s why, when other Mafias tried to muscle in on the amber trade, Grisha pushed back.”

“Out of scientific interest?”

“Not quite. There was a push and pull called the Amber Wars.”

“That sounds quaint.”

“Quite bloody, actually. Would you like a charlotte russe? The custards here are very good.”

“Is the Amber War over?”

“We’ll have the petits fours and the custards,” Maxim told the waitress, and sighed when she curtsied and her bosom nearly tumbled free. He cocked an eye on Arkady. “What is the war to you? I thought you were just examining the circumstances of Tatiana Petrovna’s death.”

“Her death gets stranger and stranger and is as involved with Kaliningrad as it is with Moscow.”

“In what way?”

“The interpreter’s notebook.”

“Which is being decoded by experts even as we speak?”

“I would assume so.”

“Why do I have the feeling that great heaping piles of horseshit are being stacked around me?”

“Because you’re a poet.”

• • •

Zhenya and Lotte were learning the depth of the Russian language. Each interpretation spawned two more, which only multiplied again. They were following streams of words as imagined by someone else’s lifetime of experience, anything that would relate to any other symbol or all the unknowns of the interpreter’s background: a scuffed knee, a ripe fig, a bedtime story.

They were looking for mnemonic cues, one man’s message to himself with a world of symbols and words to choose from. God forbid, the words could have come from another language, and a professional interpreter spoke at least five.

Even a simple arrow could be a child’s top, a fallen tree, “exit” or “this way to Estonia.” Or a missile. Each interpretation turned the text upside down.

“You should go home,” Zhenya told Lotte.

“I’m not going to leave when we’re halfway done.”

“I wish we were. I think we’ve gone in reverse.” Which was true, he thought. They had learned nothing and they were exhausted. “Your family must be worried.”

“It’s Tuesday.”

“So?”

“On Tuesdays my father meets his lover, an oboist in the symphony, and my mother meets her lover, a baritone in the chorus. They live six-day weeks. They won’t notice I’m gone for another twenty-four hours.”

“What about your grandfather?”

“He has a new model. He won’t notice anything either.”

Zhenya’s cell phone rang. He made the “quiet” sign to Lotte before answering with a hypercasual “Hello.”

“This is Arkady. Are you at the apartment?”

“No.”

“Are you alone?”

Arkady had to repeat the question because Maxim’s ZIL was outside Kaliningrad and cell coverage was spotty.

“Yes.”

“Have you still got the notebook of Tatiana Petrovna?”

“No.” Three lies in a row. A good start, Zhenya thought. If cell phone coverage was patchy, that was fine with him. “Have you thought about our deal?”

“How far have you gotten on the translation?” Arkady asked.

“We’re working on it.”

A pause. “We?”

“My friend Lotte.”

“A girlfriend?”

“A friend.”

There were a number of reasons for Arkady to be furious. The girl’s safety for a start.

“If she’s a friend, send her home. Any sign of Anya?”

“No.”

“What about Alexi Grigorenko?”

The reception broke up again.

Arkady said, “You know the safe you took Tatiana’s notebook from? Is my gun still there?”

“I can’t hear you.”

“The ammunition is in the bookcase. .”

“Yes?”

“Can you hear me now?”

“Where?”