“First the gun,” Arkady insisted. “We have to go to the bank for the money.”
“I need it now.”
Then he needs it now, Arkady thought. He heard shouts from the casino. The last thing he wanted was Zhenya in the middle of a standoff between a madman and heavily armed guards.
“We’ll leave the boy here and you and I will go directly to the bank. I’ll vouch for you.”
“I know who you are. You’re the one that hid him.”
Hid him? Arkady had thought Zhenya was trying to find his father. Anyway, this was not a direction Arkady wanted to take.
“You and I will get the money and then we’ll have some vodka.” Arkady moved closer.
“I looked for a year.”
“First give me the gun because the guards are coming, and if they see you waving it, you know how they’ll react.” Arkady reached out. “You don’t want to be shot down in front of your son.”
“A son who runs away?”
“It’s not working,” Victor said.
Zhenya’s father pressed the gun against Arkady’s head. The muzzle tickled his hair.
Platonov tried to make himself as small as possible, perhaps the size of an atom. This was the difference, Arkady thought, between reality and chess. No next game. Traffic tore blindly by. His car, a couple of meters away, was too far for cover. Victor’s hand snaked forever to his holster.
“Give me the gun.”
“This is bullshit,” Zhenya’s father said after consideration, and fired.
Arkady had the sensation of a ripple on a lake, but one expanding at incredible speed, on and on and on.
13
The brain is intact, but it’s bleeding. Massively.
We can drain it, but we can’t stop it. As simply as I can possibly put it, the brain is a gelatinous mass and the skull is bone. The brain expands, the skull does not. Right now, our patient’s tender brain is trapped and compressed against the sharp ridges of the interior of his cranium. Which is the least of his problems, because pressure alone brings more bleeding, which only increases the pressure and brings yet more bleeding until his brain physically shifts to one side or herniates, in which case the game is pretty much over. We can keep his head up, pump in oxygen, drain and mop, but we won’t know more until he reaches the peak of the bleeding in, we estimate, twelve hours. If he survives that, then we can start worrying about his faculties. He may be the man he was or he may not be able to count to ten. While I probe, Natasha, take the drill, please, and give me the fiber optic.”
“Can he hear?”
“Yes, but it will mean nothing to him. He is in a void. No doubt he is losing brain cells. As the brain deconstructs, who knows what is uncovered? Greatest joys, worst fears? He was not conscious when he came in, and that is not a good sign. The vitals?”
“Heart rate seventy-five. ECG normal. Blood pressure one sixty over eighty.”
“When will the neurosurgeons arrive?”
“They are all occupied. Children, you are the team. With brain trauma we do not wait for anyone or anything. Seek and you shall find. Here inside the entry wound, between the occipital bone and the dura, a bullet, bone fragments and a good-sized clot. Gauze, please. This is not a hopeless case. Maria, now that you have the tube in, please keep this man asleep.”
“I have no halothane. I’m using ether.”
“Ether? Wonderful, the choice of the nineteenth century.”
“Elena Ilyichnina, this is not what I trained for.”
“You are all doing an excellent job. We want to be sure everything is nice and clean. We will have to remove the clot before we secure the bleeding point. I stand corrected, bleeding points. Valentina, step in or step out.”
“I’ll stay.”
“You do it, then. Delicately. You’re not drilling for oil.”
“I don’t understand. When he was prepped there was gunpowder in his hair. He was shot at point-blank range, but the bullet only penetrated the skull?”
“Evidently he is a hard nut to crack.”
“Did you see the ligature marks on his neck? I understand that strangulation can sometimes be a sexual game.”
“How do you know these things, Tina?”
“Only saying, he’s been hung by the neck and shot in the head and he’s still alive. He’s a lucky man.”
A silence.
“We will see. It depends on what you call lucky.”
Snipping and the ping of monitors.
“Good. Drill, please. Remember, the brain has no nerve endings; it feels no pain. Suction, please, and for the forehead a smaller bit on the drill.”
“The forehead?”
“To monitor pressure on the brain. Not pretty, but accessible.”
“Are you sure he doesn’t understand?”
“Let’s hope not. He would be very discouraged.”
Arkady started by wandering among picnic blankets looking for Zhenya. Instead he saw his parents, who were sitting with an open hamper on a quilt weighted with bottles of champagne.
“Reporting in?” the General asked.
Arkady saluted. “Reporting in, sir.”
“Is the camp secure?”
“The camp is secure.”
“You hear that, Belov? Arkasha is going to be my new aide de camp. You’re out of a job.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant said.
“But we’d better check, hadn’t we?” He easily swung Arkady up onto his shoulders and ran across the lawn. They called it a lawn even though it was mostly an untended meadow of wildflowers bounded on one side by the dacha-a four-room cabin and porch-and, at the lower end, birches and willows and the bright glints of a river.
His father whipped through high grass and the white heads of daisies and Arkady, even in short pants, felt like a Cossack with a saber.
“You’re getting too big.” His father let Arkady down and they were at the quilt with Arkady’s mother and Belov enjoying tea sandwiches. They had champagne, he had lemonade. The lawn was covered with the blankets and hubbub of officers and their families. None were as handsome as Arkady’s father in a tailored uniform with stars on his shoulder boards or as beautiful as his young wife, Arkady’s mother. In white lace, her black hair falling to her waist, she was wrapped in a dreamy aura.
“You know what you remind me of?” his father said to his mother. “During the war I spent a few days in a nondescript place with a beautiful legend of a lake where all the swans go. A lake that only the truly innocent can find, hence no one has seen it for hundreds of years. But you are my swan, my redeeming swan.” He leaned across the blanket to collect a kiss and then turned to Arkady.
“How old are you now, Arkasha?”
“Seven, next month.”
“Since you’re almost seven I have an early birthday gift for you.” The General gave Arkady a leather box.
His mother said, “Kyril, you’ll spoil him.”
“Well, if he’s going to be my bodyguard…”
