Sitting beside her, the bearded man found the ignition key amid the cluster in his hand and started up the engine.
They pulled away from the curb, driving west along Twenty-eighth Street, the vender’s stand bumping along in tow.
The van rolled into the auto repair lot at Eleventh Avenue and Fifty-second Street at ten minutes past five. Although the shop would not open for business until 8:30, the garage door was elevated and Akhad drove right in. Three men in gray mechanics’ coveralls were waiting inside near the door to the office.
Gilea pushed out of her door and jumped down off the running board.
“Where’s Nick?” she asked.
“On his way,” one of the men said in Russian.
She gave him a look of displeasure. “He should have been here.”
The man didn’t answer. Gilea let the silence expand.
“The body’s in the van,” she said finally. “You’ll have to dispose of it.”
“Right.”
She reached into her purse for the laminated vender’s license, and handed it to him.
“That should be altered immediately,” she said. “And I want the stand ready by tonight.”
“It’ll be done.”
“It had better,” she said. “We have less than three days.”
“Don’t worry, there won’t be any problems.”
She shivered and wrapped her arms around herself.
“It’s miserably cold in here,” she said. “How can you take it?”
He nodded toward the van and grinned.
“It helps to keep busy,” he said.
THIRTEEN
With just moments to go until airtime, Arkady Pedachenko was having trouble deciding how to begin his weekly television program. Of course this had nothing to do with any format change or lack of preparation. Each broadcast invariably opened with a ten-to-fifteen-minute spot in which he sat alone on camera and editorialized about a variety of issues. This was followed by a phone-in segment that gave Pedachenko a chance to address his viewers in a conversational, interactive mode, supposedly taking their calls at random — although the questions and comments were, in fact, mostly scripted, and fed to him by plants in the network audience. The second half hour of the show featured interviews or panel discussions with politicians and other public figures.
No, his problem wasn’t the format. Pedachenko valued structure above all else and was averse to deviations from the tried and true. Nor was the show’s content in doubt, since his opening remarks were already cued-up on the teleprompter, and his guest, General Pavel Illych Broden of the Russian Air Force, had arrived at the studio on schedule and was presently in the “green room,” as the producers called it, getting ready for his appearance.
It was, rather, a question of style, of tone, that was occupying Pedachenko’s mind right now. Should he deliver his commentary with his usual strident flair, or take a softer, cooler stance? His media consultants had advised the latter, suggesting he avoid anything that might be interpreted as pessimism at a time when viewers were emotionally geared for a celebration, longed to forget their hardships, and were in desperate need of inspiration from their leaders. On the other hand, what better occasion than the eve of the new millennium to stir their emotions? To remind them of the evils of internationalism, and the failure of governmental policies which had been passed down directly from Yeltsin to Starinov? To present himself as the only man to lead the country forward at a critical juncture in history?
Pedachenko thought about it. He was not someone to let an opportunity go to waste. But a little surface restraint might be a good idea. He would make it clear to his audience that there was room for hope and optimism as they stepped into the twenty-first century…
“Sixty seconds!” the stage manager announced.
Pedachenko glanced at his image in the monitor. A handsome man of fifty with brush-cut blond hair, a carefully trimmed mustache above a mouth full of white teeth, and a build conditioned by frequent and rigorous exercise, he viewed his good looks chiefly as a tool, important for whatever competitive advantage they gave him rather than reasons of vanity. He had learned as a boy that a loose and easy smile could gain the indulgence of his parents and teachers, and later in life had found that same charming manner useful in attracting women to his bed, and ingratiating him with people of influence. He knew his acceptance as a media personality owed as much to his telegenic features as his political opinions, and it didn’t bother him at all. What mattered was summoning up popular support any way he could. What mattered was getting what he wanted.
He motioned to a hot spot on his forehead and a makeup woman scurried from behind the camera, brushed some powder on it, then dashed off the set again.
The stage manager raised his hand and counted down the seconds to airtime, ticking them off with his fingers. “Four, three, two, one…”
Pedachenko looked at the camera.
“Friends and fellow citizens of the Russian land, good evening,” he said. “As we join in preparing for a new century, I believe we would do well to look back a moment and stand in remembrance of history. And as we strive toward a greater future, let us allow ourselves to feel a noble rage at the slackness of authority that has damaged our national will, and caused so many of the problems that we — every one of us — must face. Two centuries ago, in the first Patriotic War, our soldiers fought against Napoleon’s Grand Army and drove them from our capital in defeat. Earlier in our present century, we again mustered our courage, our determination as a people, to defend our soil from German fascists, overcoming them in what came to be known as the Great Patriotic War. Tonight, then, let us all commit to the final Patriotic War. It is a sacred war that will be fought not on the Field of Mars but a moral battleground; a war in which we are threatened not by guns and bombs, but by cultural stagnation and decadence. A war, my dear countrymen, that demands we examine our souls, stand by our cherished traditions, and fight temptation with iron discipline…”
“… war that cannot be won by scampering after American dollars, or standing with our hands out for American bread crumbs like hopeless beggars, or letting our younger generation be corrupted by American fashion and music,” Pedachenko was saying, his voice earnest and persuasive. “I do not deny that things are bad, but we must take responsibility for ourselves…”
Watching him on the television screen in his office, Starinov had to give him credit. Grinding away at the same old themes, yet finding sensitive points in the national psyche that no one else in recent times had struck as effectively. His use of the phrases “sacred war” and “noble rage,” both allusions to the most famous military anthem of World War Two, was nothing less than brilliant. And repackaging his familiar political agenda as a new Patriotic War was an inspired, even sublime manipulation of simmering passions, evoking Russian pride at its deepest roots, likening his country’s current problems to the hardships of the past, and placing the struggle to overcome them within the same context as legendary battles against foreign invaders… battles won, in each instance, only after the motherland fell back on its own resources, and its citizens and soldiers mobilized in an explosive uprising of solidarity.
Starinov inhaled, exhaled. He would never forget the May Day celebration of 1985, the fortieth anniversary of the victory against the Nazis — huge crowds gathered for the memorial ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Alexander Park, the thunderous procession of soldiers and tanks and marching bands, the fireworks splashed across the sky over Red Square, the inspirational songs and waving Soviet banners, the groups of aged World War Two veterans passing in military lockstep, straight and dignified and somehow glorious despite their frailty…
Starinov had stood with General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev and other high-ranking Party officials that day
