“You were at the bridge when the attack began?”
“Of course.”
“You got a message that in a few minutes half the Russian soldiers in Chechnya would cross your bridge to chase the rebels. Did you worry what they would think if they saw your squad of Black Berets eating grapes and lounging with the enemy?”
“There were some Chechens at the bridge. They turned on us, but we were ready.”
A reply steeped in humility. Wrong choice, Arkady thought. Outrage and a punch to the mouth was always a safer answer. Of course, Isakov was painting himself a rational man for Eva’s sake. So was Arkady. They were actors and she was their audience. It was all for her.
By the time they arrived back at the wrought iron fence snow was starting to stick and narrow the bars.
“I talked to Ginsberg,” Arkady said.
“Ginsberg?” Isakov slowed for the effort of recollection.
“The journalist.”
“I’ve talked to a lot of journalists.”
“The hunchback.”
“How can you forget a hunchback?” Eva asked.
Isakov said, “I remember now. Ginsberg was unhappy because I wouldn’t let him land in the middle of a military operation. He didn’t seem to understand that a helicopter on the ground is nothing but a target.”
“The military operation was the fight at the bridge.”
“This conversation is boring for poor Eva. She’s heard the story a hundred times. Let’s talk about rebuilding Russia.”
“The operation was the fight at the bridge?”
“Let’s talk about Russia’s place in the world.”
“Ginsberg took photographs.”
“Did he?”
Arkady stopped directly under a streetlamp and opened his pea jacket. Inside was a folder, from which he took two photographs, one behind the other.
“Both from the air, of the bridge, bodies sprawled around a campfire and Black Berets walking around with handguns.”
“Nothing unusual about that,” Isakov said.
Arkady held up the other for comparison.
“The second photograph is of the same scene, four minutes later by the camera clock. There are two significant changes. Urman is aiming his gun at the helicopter, and all the bodies around the campfire have been rolled forward or been moved to one side. In those four minutes the most important goal for you and your men was to ward off the helicopter and get something out from under the bodies.”
“Get what?” asked Eva.
“Dragons.”
“The man has lost it,” Isakov said.
“When Kuznetsov’s wife said you took her dragons I didn’t understand what she was talking about.”
“She was a drunk who killed her husband with a cleaver. Is that your source of information?”
“I wasn’t thinking about Chechnya.”
“Chechnya is over. We won.”
“It’s not over,” Eva said.
“Well, I’ve heard enough,” Isakov said.
Eva asked, “Why, is there more?”
Arkady said, “The rest of the world puts its money in banks. This part of the world puts its money into carpets and the most prized carpets have red dragons woven into the design. A classic dragon carpet is worth a small fortune in the West. You don’t want to spill blood on that and, as you said, there’s not much else worth stealing in Chechnya.”
“The dead men were thieves?”
“Partners. Isakov and Urman were in the rug business. They rolled out the carpet for their partners and then they rolled it up.”
Snowflakes swam across the glossy surface of the photographs, over the coals of the campfire, across Marat Urman’s purposeful stride, around bodies sprawled on bloody sand.
“
Isakov had an ear for nuance. “You’ve seen these photographs before?”
“Last night.”
“You told me you were going to the hospital. I watched you pick up the cassettes.”
“I lied.”
“Renko was with you?”
“Yes.”
“And?”
Eva gave Isakov a drawn-out, emphatic “Yes.”
Isakov laughed. “Marat warned me. Look at Renko, look at him, the man looks disinterred.”
Arkady said, “I feel surprisingly good, considering.”
“You don’t care if you’re dead or alive?” Isakov asked.
“In a way, I feel I’ve been both.”
The Walther reappeared in Isakov’s hand.
“Okay, let’s be grown-ups. Marat and I did trade in carpets. So what? In Chechnya, everybody did something on the side, mainly drugs and arms. I doubt that saving a precious work of art from a burning house is against the law. Dealers and collectors certainly don’t ask questions and the Chechens, if you treated them with respect, were trustworthy partners. But that day, when I got the message from a Russian Army convoy that they were a minute away from the bridge, there just wasn’t time to end the lunch, fold the carpets and make nice good-byes. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation.”
Eva laughed. When she wanted to deliver contempt she did it well. “You’re a rug merchant? Fourteen men dead for rugs?”
“And in Moscow, murdering members of your own squad,” Arkady said.
“Loose ends.” Isakov motioned for Arkady to be still and patted him down. “You really don’t have a gun. No gun, no case, no evidence.”
“He has the photographs,” Eva said.
“Prosecutor Sarkisian would tear them up. Zurin would do the same.” Isakov aimed the Walther directly at Arkady, a certain threshold crossed. “They’ll probably let me lead the investigation. You don’t have a gun? Maybe this will do. Maybe you found this old gun at the dig. Mainly, you didn’t have a plan. You saw Eva and jumped off your bike. Was it worth it just to win her back?”
“Yes.” He realized that she was what he had come back for out of the black lake he had sunk into when he was shot.
But part of him was thinking in a professional mode. Isakov would shoot him first, then Eva, and then wrap the gun in Arkady’s dead hand to mimic a murder-suicide, all to be carried out on the street at close range and with dispatch. The Walther was a heavy double-action pistol with a long trigger draw and a huge kick. It filled Isakov’s hand. No rush but no hesitation either. Arkady remembered Ginsberg’s admiration of Isakov’s calm under fire.
Was anyone awake at the security monitors, Arkady wondered? In the BMW? He heard far-off machinery, but where was the white van of the militia? Weren’t bakers abroad at this hour, on their way to their ovens? Sovietskaya Street was as still as a tomb.
“No gun, no prosecutor, no case, no evidence.” Isakov did not stand back to shoot Arkady; he tucked the barrel up under Arkady’s jaw at can’t-miss range. “And then your lover left. No wonder you’re depressed.”
“No wonder you’re depressed,” Isakov’s voice repeated from Eva’s coat pocket.
She took the tape recorder from her coat, popped the machine open and held up a cassette. Isakov watched in disbelief as she threw it over the fence. The cassette happened to be white and disappeared on the snowy lawn. The bright lights of a motion detector flashed on and off.
