Isakov kept the gun tight on Arkady. “Go get it.”
“There’s a camera at the gate.”
“I don’t care if you go over, under or through.” Isakov let Arkady go and gave him a push. “Get it.”
“Or what? I don’t think that tape is going to be easy to find. You’ll never have time to find it once you fire that old cannon, and you have to find it because it’s a full confession. In chess that’s called a pin.”
A grinding sound announced the approach of snowplows scraping the street. The trucks traveled slowly but majestically in a blaze of light that Arkady and Eva walked next to. From the motorcycle they saw Isakov still in front of the gate, immobilized.
26
Riding to the apartment, Arkady was exhilarated and exhausted, as if he and Eva had crossed a wasteland of betrayal and misunderstanding, and survived. He knew that later they would talk about it and words would diminish the experience, but for the moment they rode the motorcycle in a happy stupor.
Only once she spoke over the noise of the bike, “I have a gift for you.” She took a cassette from inside her coat. “The real tape.”
“You are a wonderful woman.”
“No, I am a terrible woman, but that’s what you’re stuck with.” Waiting for the elevator doors to close they spoke of trivialities, preserving the bubble of the moment.
“Are you still an investigator?”
“I doubt it.”
“Good. We can take a trip to someplace with a sunny beach and palm trees.”
As the elevator doors began to close a cat with spiky fur came on board, arched its back in surprise, and ran off.
“And Zhenya?” Arkady said.
“We should take Zhenya with us,” Eva said.
Why not, Arkady thought? To golden sand, blue water and a regular drubbing on a chessboard. If that wasn’t a holiday, he didn’t know what was. Eva removed her scarf and snapped off the snow as they stumbled out of the elevator on Arkady’s floor. Being happy was like being drunk. He didn’t have the usual ballast.
At the apartment door he asked, “Would you like to see a dragon?”
“Let’s just get Zhenya and go,” she whispered.
Eva entered first. As she turned on the light Bora stepped out of the bathroom. Arkady recognized the same dagger that he had failed to find on the ice at Chistye Prudy. It was double edged and sharp as a razor and Arkady grabbed it only to have his palm sliced open. Bora turned and drove the knife into Eva’s side and carried her backwards over the body of Sofia Andreyeva. Sofia Andreyeva’s throat had been slit, her face white under garish mascara and rouge. The walls and posters were speckled with signs of struggle. Zhenya was barricaded behind a coffee table in a corner of the room, a long knife in one hand. On the table lay a partially assembled Tokarev awaiting its recoil spring and bushing.
Bora wore rubber gloves and an easy-to-wash training suit. He asked Arkady, “Are you laughing now?”
As he drew the knife out of her, Eva sank to the floor trying to catch her breath.
In the corner Zhenya fumbled the spring and it rolled off the table. It was unfair, Arkady thought. They had been so clever, Eva most of all.
Bora had the confident approach of a butcher, ready to open the belly but willing to start carving an arm or a leg. In films this was where the hero wrapped a cloak around one arm as a shield, Arkady thought. No cloaks seemed to be available. Instead, Arkady tripped on the carpet and went down. At once Bora was on top of him, pressing the bruised side of Arkady’s head against the floor.
Bora’s breath was hot and damp. “There’s a weight room in your courtyard. I was coming out and who do I see pulling off a motorcycle helmet but the man from Chistye Prudy? Remember the fun you had on the ice there? You laughed at the wrong man.”
Bora was all muscle, while Arkady got winded climbing stadium steps. Also, he had only one good hand to fend off Bora. Everything was wrong. The red ring around Sofia Andreyeva’s neck. Zhenya’s despair as the pistol’s recoil spring sprang and rolled out of reach. Eva’s hoarse efforts to breathe.
Bora leveraged more weight onto the knife.
“Are you laughing?” Bora introduced the knife to Arkady’s ear, tickling the fine hairs of the whorl.
Slowly, reluctantly, Arkady’s arm gave way. He remembered a dream in which he had failed everybody. He didn’t recall the details but the sense was the same.
A chessboard bounced off Bora’s head. He looked up and Zhenya fired.
There wouldn’t be a second shot, because the boy pulled the trigger without the recoil spring.
There didn’t need to be a second shot. Bora was spread out on the floor, a black hole the size of a cigarette burn in his head.
With wind and snow constantly shifting, it was hard to tell whether the ambulance was making forward progress.
Arkady and Zhenya rode with Eva and a paramedic, a girl with a check list. Eva was strapped into a litter, blankets up to her chin, an oxygen mask cupping her face and wires connecting her to a rack of monitors. On a jump seat, Zhenya hugged his knees.
“She’s taking shallow breaths,” Arkady said.
The paramedic assured Arkady that while stab victims could die from shock and loss of blood in a matter of seconds, at twenty minutes after being attacked Eva was still conscious, her eyes focused on Arkady and she had hardly bled at all. Arkady tried to seem confident, but the experience was like being in a plunging elevator. He saw the floors go by, but couldn’t get off.
Eva lifted the oxygen mask. “I’m cold.”
He pulled Eva’s blanket back and tore her dress for a better look at the wound, a slit edged in purple between the ribs. There was no external bleeding from the cut unless he applied pressure, then wine-dark blood seeped out.
Waiting.
Arkady and Zhenya sat on a bench outside the scrub room, trying to catch a glimpse of Eva whenever the door opened to the OR she had been rolled into. Arkady measured the hall in footsteps again and again. He stared at the Do Not Smoke and No Cell Phones signs on a wall. At one end of the hall an Emergency Only door accessed the roof; outside, snow was covering the deck and pushing along cigarette butts and empty packs. He flipped through commercial brochures on a table without really reading, “What to do in Tver,” “Sovietskaya’s Luxury Row” or “How to Win at Roulette.” Felt himself petrify. Zhenya hid in Eva’s coat, two legs sticking out, until Arkady put his arm around him and thanked him for saving everybody. They would all be dead if it hadn’t been for Zhenya.
“I think you’re the bravest boy I ever met. The best one ever.”
Zhenya’s crying under the coat sounded like the tearing of wood.
Elena Ilyichnina came out in purple scrubs dark with sweat and spoke to Arkady in a soft, special tone that offered no false hope at all. “We drained a considerable amount of blood. Doctor Kazka presented little external bleeding, but internally she was drowning. There are so many organs for a knife to hit-the lungs, liver, spleen, diaphragm and, of course, the heart-depending on the reach of the blade. A complete laparoscopy and repair could go on for hours. I suggest you go to the emergency room and have your hand properly looked at.”
Arkady could picture the emergency room and its nocturnal population of drunks and meth-heads vying for attention. Everything but vampires.
“We’ll stay.”
“Of course. How silly of me to suggest medical attention.”
Arkady didn’t see why she was so brusque. “Could you please tell me where I can use a cell phone?”
