like to play
Ape shook his head. “A classic car. I would never do that.”
“It doesn’t matter who ordered it,” Alexi said. “Our plan is still good.”
Arkady said, “You weren’t even in the plan while your father was alive.”
“I’ve been watching you for years,” Tatiana said to Ape. “I’ve been following your corruption of the state.”
“And I’ve read your articles,” Ape said. “They’re very good but they’re all in the past.”
“Not Curonian Amber. Not building a deathtrap of a nuclear submarine. We’ll print it, and if you try to stop us we will see you in court.”
Alexi said, “So what? We’ll buy the court. We’ll buy the Kremlin if need be.”
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Arkady asked. “Who killed Grisha?”
The deck was like a chessboard, Arkady thought, except that all the pieces were moving at the same time. The partners from the ministry set down their glasses and rose to their toes. The Chinese were no longer playing invisible; they were gone.
Ape turned to Maxim. “I liked your poem.”
“What?”
“That poem. It was years ago. ‘F Is for Fool.’ ”
“Yeah.” Maxim had to laugh.
“I don’t remember all of it. Something like, ‘F is for fool, the man who returns home early and finds himself replaced. Another man is in his bed, folded like a jackknife around his wife.’ Is that it?”
“Close enough.”
“I could never get over the image of the jackknife. Would you say the poem is about betrayal?”
“I was inspired.”
“I can believe it. We’re all betrayed at one time or another and we never forget.” Ape asked Arkady, “
“I’m afraid so.”
The old man said, “Renko, remember how we talked about Grisha? We couldn’t understand how he let his killer get so close. There’s a word for it. It’s a big one.”
“Patricide.”
Ape whispered and nodded to his sons. “Let one boy get away with it and you encourage the others.”
Tatiana was on her own tangent. She aimed a pistol at Alexi and asked, “Remember my sister?”
It was her moment, but the trigger pull of a cheaply manufactured pistol could be stiff and hard to gauge. So Alexi shot first. Maxim, who had seemed adrift, stepped in between and took a bullet in the shoulder. Ape fired. Alexi’s head rang like a cracked bell. He dropped facedown and Ape stood over him and shot him twice more in the back.
“You crazy Russians,” said Abdul. The Wolf of the Caucasus bolted to the gangway ramp and the Shagelmans hustled after him.
Ape turned the gun on Arkady. “Why shouldn’t I shoot you too?”
“Because we’re still recording.” With elaborate care, Arkady brought out his cell phone.
“Are you? Well, maybe you are and maybe you aren’t.” After consideration, Ape let his gun hang. “As it is, all you can charge us with is saving your miserable lives. Get out of here. Next time, you may not be so lucky. Sometimes it’s more important to teach my boys a lesson than to make another hundred million dollars. We’ll pack away the Champagne for another day.”
As Maxim struggled to his elbows Ape pressed his gun into Maxim’s hands. “Congratulations. By the evidence, you just killed your first man. Now that’s something to write about.”
33
Sand.
Arkady let it pour from his fist to the valley of her back and when she turned over Arkady let it run off her stomach to the hollow of her hip, scattering over her skin like grains of salt. It got in every crevice, into her hair and into the corners of his mouth.
Wind.
Constant breezes played like spirits on the cabin’s steps. There were dead dunes and live dunes, according to Tatiana.
Time.
A live dune remade itself and changed from day to day. The entire spit moved like the sweep hand on a watch.
“Have you ever looked at sand through a magnifying glass?” Tatiana asked. “It’s many different things. Quartz, seashells, miniature worm tubes, spines.”
The cabin had its small discomforts-the thin mattress and rough wooden floor-but they lent a sharpness to the senses. The heat within her made up for a cold stove. The cabin creaked agreeably like an ancient ship.
A few birders came their way. All in all, however, the beach belonged to Arkady and Tatiana. Their sand castle.
Insomnia arrived in the middle of the night like a tardy guest. Arkady saw a lantern moving through the trees. He chased the light to the road, where it moved too fast to follow. In the morning he found a pair of footprints circling the cabin. The wind had erased them by the time Tatiana woke.
• • •
Arkady watched Tatiana walk down the road trying to get a cell phone signal. It was like ice fishing, he thought, not a sport for the impatient, but a hundred meters away, she waved her arm, and when she returned it was with a flush of excitement.
“I talked to Obolensky. He’s coming to Kaliningrad to do a special edition of the magazine about Russia’s most corrupt city.”
“Well, that’s a kind of honor.” Arkady paused in the task of hammering a plank in the cabin’s porch. “Written by you?”
“The main article, yes.”
“I would think so. It’s not every day his favorite journalist comes back from the dead. When?”
“It’s a rush job. I’ll be gone one day, maybe two. What do you think?”
It was the first anxious note he’d heard in her voice.
“I think you’ve got to do it.”
“I told Obolensky I would.”
“You did the right thing.”
“Can you come with me?”
“I’ll find things to do around the cabin.” Arkady tried to sound like a handyman.
He wondered what they looked like from a distance: a man and woman seesawing over something as innocent as a day apart. In fact, Obolensky had done him a great favor. Ever since Arkady had felt Piggy’s presence, he had wanted to remove her from the scene.
“You don’t mind, then,” she said.
“I’ll stay busy.”
• • •
The spit was famous for birding. It was home to mergansers and swans and was on a flight path for migrant eagles and kites. Cormorants with crooked necks perched on driftwood, gray herons stalked the lagoon and devout birders with cameras sat for hours to capture the image of a sodden duck.
Arkady dressed for the weather in a poncho and rainproof cap. He walked the beach and climbed the dunes, trying to stay a moving target. His only weapon was Tatiana’s Spanish pistol, as useful as a peashooter in the wind.
