But the connection was gone.
Lotte had pressed her ear close to the phone. When coverage broke up completely, she asked, “What deal?”
“The army. I needed his permission for early enlistment.”
“Now you’re scaring me.”
“Do you want to go home now?”
“Let’s finish the puzzle.”
• • •
The road back into the city took Maxim and Arkady by housing blocks as stained as pissoirs and storefronts that were little more than shipping containers decorated with posters. Maxim decided to show off what he called the Ninth Wonder of the World, the ugliest building of the Soviet era.
“A Frankenstein’s monster of a building. A zombie.”
“You sound proud.”
“I don’t mean merely the ugliest building west of the Urals. I mean from here to the Pacific. From the silver herring of the Baltic Sea to the red salmon of Kamchatka.”
“An ambitious scope.”
“I speak as a Koenig, a native son.”
“How is the cell coverage at the ugliest building?”
“As a matter of fact, excellent.”
Streetlamps gave Maxim’s ZIL such a translucent quality that it seemed to float through the city. Heads turned from the cheap goods offered at sidewalk stalls and clothing racks to follow the one-car procession.
Arkady needed space to phone Victor, drunk or not, and send him around to the apartment. There was a new tone to the boy’s voice. Not alarm, but definitely anxiety.
“During the war, the British bombed the city of Koenigsberg to dust. Their special target was Koenigsberg Castle, which stood on a hill overlooking the city. When the war was over there was no castle anymore, and Stalin rebuilt where the castle had stood.”
Maxim rolled across a dark lot and drew the car to a stop.
At first, Arkady did not see anything odd. It took time to see that half the night sky was blocked out.
“The last Communist Party headquarters,” Maxim said. “Koenigs call it the Monster.”
Dogs barked hysterically on the other side of a chain-link fence, waiting for Maxim or Arkady to do something as foolish as offer a finger through the links. Arkady suspected that they were fed infrequently. Bottles and trash had accumulated where winds had blown them.
Arkady craned his neck to take in the size of the Monster. Twenty stories high, the building loomed over him.
“It’s the largest building in the city and it’s never been used,” Maxim said. “Not for a day.”
Most windows were broken out. The Monster had four legs, and more than anything it put Arkady in mind of a headless elephant.
“What is the problem?”
“History. Before they even finished the top of the building, the bottom started to flood from old tunnels underneath the castle. Now the entire building is sinking and too expensive to demolish. The Party borrowed from the banks and would have had to pay them back. They’re all sinking together. It’s wonderful.”
“They can’t go on forever.”
“Why not? When Putin visited, they merely painted the building blue and pretended it wasn’t here. It was the world’s greatest mass hallucination.”
At least the cell phone coverage was good. Maxim made himself scarce while Arkady called Victor, who assumed a righteous tone.
“Where the devil are you?”
“Kaliningrad.”
“I thought you were only going to be there overnight.”
“I thought so too. Things got complicated.”
“That will be on your tombstone, ‘
“Have you seen Alexi Grigorenko?”
“As a matter of fact, I was doing surveillance at the Den when Alexi came in. He had a hell of a shiner.”
“We had an encounter at the marina.”
“So he didn’t run into a door. Abdul gave him the horse laugh.”
“Abdul?”
“That snake wanted the manager to play his video in the restaurant. It’s an insult to every Russian soldier who served in Chechnya. I couldn’t abide it.”
Arkady watched Maxim buff the fender of the ZIL.
“What did you do?”
“I told Abdul I would stuff my gun down his pants and blow his balls off.”
“See, this is why I can’t leave you alone.”
“Well, you’d better hurry back. Anya and Alexi are getting very close.”
“Anya’s doing research.”
“Is that what you call it?” Victor asked. “The sooner you’re back here, the better. Just look out for the so- called poet Maxim Dal. He’s a slippery character.”
“I’m doing my best.”
Arkady heard a whistling sound from on high and looked up in time to see a windowpane sail through the air and explode on impact. A monster at play, he thought.
• • •
Zhenya said, “According to Arkady, there’s an old navy saying, ‘First speed, then direction.’ ”
“Meaning what?” asked Lotte.
“Going anywhere is better than going nowhere.”
They pitched in words together, listening for a more solid echo, writing them down on index cards by speaker as they went.
Man in the Top Hat with Line: ear, bug in a circle, two rings, fish and 2B.
Box Kite: star, bug, sunrise, triangle.
Man in Top Hat No Line: question mark, crossed knives, two rings, fish under wave.
Crescent Moon: arrow down, bug, ear, equals sign, black teardrop, white teardrop and RR.
Star: arrow down, railroad tracks, RR and the letter L.
Building Blocks: dollar sign, bug, box kite, radioactive.
Top Hat No Line: spiral, ear, box kite, face with X for mouth, or a bug in a circle.
Zhenya said, “What kind of bug, anyway?”
Lotte leaned forward to show him the pendant that hung around her neck. Trapped in amber was a wasp.
They tried themes. Railroads, as in RR and train track.
Naval, as in fish and wave. An underwater fish had to be submarines or torpedoes. L could be Lenin; that was always safe. An arrow could mean direction, exit or consequence. Or Diana the Huntress or William Tell. The teardrops could be agony, oil, blood, apple seeds, figs or pears. The fence could be a zipper, a railroad track or stitches. The waves could mean the sea, the navy, the Baltic Fleet.
“Sometimes you play the player, not the board,” Zhenya said.
“Meaning what?”
“I can see some of these players. There’s the interpreter himself. He’s relaxed, confident, writes down ‘blah blah’ for the formalities. Maybe acts a little superior. Then there are the others, mainly the first Man in a Hat. The first thing he tells everybody is that they are all equal. Everyone’s going to get a fair hearing. Classic Soviet-time etiquette. He opens the meeting and he closes it. There’s no confusing him with any other player. He has a line under him, like the braid on an admiral. The second Man in a Hat, the one without a line underneath, is enforcement. He carries the knives. We can learn a lot from little details.”
