tomb.
23
Zhenya and Lotte awoke on the couch to find Alexi sitting at the table and studying their notes.
“This is progress. Especially since you didn’t even know what notebook I was talking about, especially since you lied.”
“I found it after you left,” Zhenya said.
“And you’re still lying.”
“I found it,” Lotte said.
“Now you’re lying for each other, a sign of true love.”
Zhenya sat up and made the small adjustments of embarrassment. “How did you get in?”
“With a key, how else?”
“Where is Anya?”
Alexi said nothing but lit a cigarette and observed the burning tip as if it were a poker on a hearth. It occurred to Zhenya that although Alexi’s black eye still looked tender, he was freshly dressed and shaved and back in command.
“Do you have a gun?” Alexi asked.
“No.”
“I heard that Investigator Renko was given an engraved gun for his good services. I can’t imagine Renko getting an award for anything, but that’s what people say.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Lotte?”
She said, “I’ve never met him.”
“It’s important that I find out where in Kaliningrad the investigator is. He didn’t call?”
Zhenya said, “No.”
Alexi smiled. “He didn’t ask you to translate the notebook?”
“No.”
“Of course he did.” Alexi flipped through pages of symbols and lists of possible meanings. “The question is, where exactly is Renko now? You don’t know and Anya won’t say. He operates with a Detective Victor Orlov.”
“Orlov is a drunk.”
“That’s what I hear. So it’s just the two of you, and as of now, you’re translating the notebook for me. I want you to stay right here until you’re done. We’re on the same team now.”
Zhenya said, “I haven’t succeeded in translating anything so far.”
“But you and your friend have an idea, a general sense of what it’s about. You’re onto something.”
“It’s a private language. It could take weeks, if ever.”
“Well, let’s give you an incentive. The temperature at the core of a burning cigarette is seven hundred degrees.”
“So?”
“And your girlfriend has tender, virginal skin.”
“What do you mean?”
“Two plus two. A couple of geniuses ought to be able to work out who’s most vulnerable. The slowest zebra. The tenderest girl.” Alexi collected their cell phones.
Zhenya’s heart pounded. Lotte shivered so hard her teeth chattered.
“I’ll give you ten hours,” Alexi said.
“That’s not reasonable.”
“Do I look like a reasonable man?”
“But it’s impossible,” Zhenya said.
“I’ll give you ten hours. I’m leaving a man at the door.”
“Who is Anya?” Lotte asked.
Alexi said, “If I were you, I wouldn’t worry about another woman. Where are the scissors?” Zhenya found a pair in the desk and was still as a statue as Alexi cut the cord of the apartment phone.
In a fairy tale Zhenya might have surprised and overpowered Alexi. It wasn’t so in reality. It wasn’t the convenient appearance of ashtrays and blunt instruments that won the day for heroes, it was willpower and nerve. How did he propose to be a soldier for Mother Russia if he couldn’t defend himself? He knew where Arkady’s gun was. Where were the bullets? Another puzzle.
Lotte watched Alexi leave and whispered to Zhenya, “You did shoot somebody, didn’t you?”
Zhenya nodded, afraid of horrifying her sensibilities, but she seemed to find it a comfort.
“The bullets are in the bookcase,” Lotte said.
“Yes.” He wondered where she was going with this.
“We just have to find the right book. Something appropriate.”
“Renko has thousands of books. He’s mental about books.”
“What kind of books?”
“His father’s war books. Fairy tales.
“Then he’d choose the right book carefully.” She walked along the shelves of fiction and scanned the authors-Bulgakov, Chekhov, Pushkin-sliding each volume forward to search the space behind.
“That must be it.” She pointed to a title too high for her to reach. “Hemingway.
“Are you feeling clever?”
“Very.”
But when Zhenya pulled the book off the shelf all he found was a single lonely cartridge.
• • •
Arkady waited until the other car was out of sight before sitting up. He felt a sting on his forehead from a sliver of glass but the car’s inner shell of armor plate had not been breached and the bulletproof windows were cracked but not shattered.
He reached across to unbuckle Maxim and push him out the door. With a pocketknife blade he popped the lid of the glove compartment that Maxim had been so desperate to open. Inside were two ferry tickets and a gun.
Maxim shook from outrage. “They tried to kill us.”
“That’s right. You have to choose your friends more carefully.” Arkady climbed out and dragged Maxim down a pathway.
“My beautiful ZIL.”
“Well, it was an armored car built for Kremlin duty and I have to say that for an antique, it held up very well.”
“What about the car rally?”
“You have a way with words. I’m sure you’ll think up something.”
“And what do you mean by ‘choose my friends more carefully’?”
“I mean you agreed to be at this spot at this time. How else could they find us in an entire city?”
“I thought they wanted to talk to you.”
“Instead they tried to shoot us.”
“I thought-”
“And you have two one-way tickets for tomorrow’s ferry for Riga. Who was the other ticket for?”
“I know it seems that way-”
“Shut up.” Arkady walked around Maxim as if he were a specimen. “Alexi saw your disappearing act at the marina when he tried to flatten me under a barge. When he needed you to help him, you ran. That’s the sort of thing that a killer takes personally.”
