Death and the Penguin (13 page)

Sonya kept casting eager looks at the alarm clock on the window ledge, as if willing the minute hand forward.

At 9.40 the doorbell rang and she darted out, almost knocking her stool over.

Nina had arrived. A happy exchange of greetings ensued, after which Nina, still in her coat, looked in to say hello.

“Where are you off to today?” Viktor asked.

“Syrets. Walk in the woods, then to Podol and to my place for lunch.”

She gave a dutiful nod and a teeth-concealing half-smile.

“So where’s your little jacket?” he heard her asking Sonya in the corridor. “And now your little boots.”

Five minutes later she looked in again.

“Just off,” she said, with another half-smile.

The door banged. Silence descended, except for a faint stirring in the living room. The door creaked open, and Misha peeped out. Apparently satisfied that the corridor was empty, he advanced to the kitchen door and pushed it open. He contemplated his master from the doorway, then came over and snuggled up against his knee. Viktor stroked him.

After several minutes of this, Misha went to his bowl, and stood looking back. Viktor took two small plaice out of the freezer, cut them up and gave them to him. He then returned to his seat, having topped up his cup of tea.

The relative silence – apart from the sound of Misha’s breakfasting – took Viktor back to when there had been just the two of them living there in peace and quiet, without any sense of strong attachment, but with a feeling of interdependence creating a kind of blood tie between them – as if, in the absence of love, there was concern. After all, even relatives didn’t have to be loved – taken care of, worried about, yes, but feelings and emotions were of secondary importance in that, and not, so long as all was well with them, obligatory …

Making short work of his breakfast, Misha returned to his master who, struck by this unusually affectionate behaviour, stroked him, at which he pressed more firmly against his knee. “Not feeling ill, are we?” he asked gently, looking him over.

We seem to have been neglecting you, he thought. First it was the TV with Sonya, now it’s Nina. I’m sorry. And there was I thinking you and Sonya were playing as you used to. I’m sorry … Viktor sat on at the kitchen table for a good 20 minutes, not wanting to disturb Misha, considering the recent past and
thinking about the future. Life, despite the short-lived dangers he had sat out at the dacha over New Year, seemed on an even course. All was well, or appeared so. To every time, its own
normality
. The once terrible was now commonplace, meaning that people accepted it as the norm and went on living, instead of getting needlessly agitated. For them, as for Viktor, the main thing, after all, was still to live, come what might.

The thaw continued.

At about two the doorbell rang. Expecting it to be Nina and Sonya, he went to the door, but it was Igor Lvovich who marched in, banging the door behind him, took off his coat, and went through to the kitchen without removing his footwear.

Pale, baggy-eyed, the Chief was clearly not himself.

“Make some coffee,” he said, plumping himself down in Viktor’s place.

Seeing to coffee-maker and coffee, Viktor looked back at the Chief. He appeared to be trembling, and for just an instant Viktor felt similarly affected. He lit the burner, poured coffee and water into the coffee-maker, and put it on the flame.

“So what!” the Chief was muttering abstractedly. “So what!”

“Has something happened?”

“It has,” said Igor Lvovich, looking away. “Just wait … Till I warm up …”

Again silence. Viktor stood watching the coffee. As the foam rose, he took the coffee-maker off the heat, fetched cups and poured.

Hands clasped round the cup, the Chief looked across at him.

“Thanks,” he said.

Viktor sat down at the table with him.

“Look,” the Chief began suddenly, “it’s best I tell you nothing.
What’s it to you? Remember how you had to lie low for a day or two?”

Viktor nodded.

“Well,” he smiled wrily, “now it’s my turn. Just for a day or two. Till the boys clear the way. Then back to the grind.”

“I’ve done all the military,” said Viktor. “They’re there, on the window ledge.”

In no mood for obelisks, the Chief dismissed them with a wave.

He drank his coffee, lit a cigarette, and looking in vain for an ashtray, used the table instead, and for some minutes sat lost in thought.

“It’s hard, you know, finding you’ve been put on the spot by your own.” He sighed. “Very hard … Busy just now?”

“No.”

“Well then,” said the Chief, looking earnestly at him, “you can go to my office for me – I’ll ring my secretary to let you in – and bring back the brown briefcase from the safe. I’ll give you the key. If you find you’re being followed, ditch the key, and wander round till dark.”

Viktor suddenly felt afraid. Gulping his coffee, he looked up and into a steady gaze dismissive of any thoughts or qualms.

“When?” he asked, like a doomed man.

“Now.”

The Chief handed over a key from his wallet.

“But wait till I’ve rung through,” he said, as Viktor rose from the table.

The Chief went to the living room.

“Off you go,” he said, returning.

Thaw or no thaw, it was freezing, of which none was more aware than Viktor, walking slowly to the trolleybus stop, no
longer afraid, but mind and whole body numb with cold.

When, an hour later, he entered the newspaper building, he had to show his Press card to three lots of Special Task Militia before finally arriving at the Editor-in-Chief’s reception. The pale secretary nodded recognition, and without a word, unlocked the Chief’s sanctum. Having closed the door behind him, Viktor found himself trembling all over, and remembering he hadn’t once checked to see if he was being followed, felt suddenly afraid.

To calm himself, he went over to the desk and sat in the Chief’s chair. The safe was to his left, on a low table. He got out the key. After a moment or so’s hesitation, he opened the safe. The brown briefcase was on the lower shelf. He placed it on the desk before him. Once again trembling precluded thought. He had no inclination to get to his feet and leave the office, as if he were aware of danger lurking beyond its walls. He had another look in the safe, to spin out time. On the upper shelf lay a folder with several typed sheets on top. Without thinking, he reached for the topmost sheet, and recognized it at once as his
obelisk
for the Director of Ferro-Concrete Reinforcements. In the top left-hand corner someone had written

with a bold, sweeping signature.

His growing astonishment proved a release from fear and trembling.
Today was only February the third
! A glance at the other sheets confirmed that they, too, were recent
obelisks
, each
approved
for some date ahead. Returning to the safe, he took out the folder and untied the ribbons. More
obelisks
, the more or less recent on top, all of them
approved
– one for that very day, the
third, and with the same bold, sweeping signature. He extracted some from the middle of the pile. The first of these, as well as
approved
for a date now past had

written in a different hand.

With his head in a whirl, Viktor sat staring at the brown briefcase, the
obelisks
, the open safe, and suddenly there was a nasty bitter taste in his mouth. He picked up one of the papers lying on the desk. It was a letter to the printers, word-processed except for the signature, and this he studied closely. It wasn’t the Chief who had written approved on the
obelisks
. His signature, unlike the bold, sweeping one, was straightforward and legible. But something about it still seemed familiar, and looking back at the old obituary from the middle of the pile, he saw that
Processed
had been written in the same unsteady, shivering-with-cold characters.

The phone on the desk rang, and he jumped guiltily. He looked at it, expecting it to stop, but it didn’t. And again he was gripped by fear. He looked about him, as if to check whether he was being watched, and suddenly spotted the lens of a video camera mounted on a bracket directly above the door and pointing down at him.

Slipping the
obelisks
back in the folder, he returned it to the safe with the others, and locking the safe, stole a last look at the video camera. The phone had stopped ringing, but the renewed silence was no less intimidating. Fearful of disturbing it, he got gingerly to his feet, picked up the briefcase, and left.

The secretary turned from her computer and the graphic escape-from-pursuit game frozen on its screen. She looked tense.

“Finished already?” she asked.

With difficulty he managed a
Thank you
and a
Goodbye
.

Oblivious to the city, looking neither to left nor right, he made for home, tightly gripping the handle of the briefcase. His feet knew the way.

Not until he was actually at the door of his flat did it register that, sitting on a bench down at the entrance, there had been a young man in training suit and woolly ski hat watching him closely. Having got the door open, he stopped, listened, and hearing no sound from the entrance below, went on in, carefully shutting it behind him.

“Well?” said the Chief coming out into the corridor to meet him.

Seeing the briefcase, he smiled and took it off to the kitchen.

By the time Viktor had removed his boots and jacket, Igor Lvovich had the contents of his briefcase – green trident-embossed diplomatic passport, credit cards, notebook and receipts – spread out on the table.

“Down at the entrance,” said Viktor, “there’s a young chap sitting–”

“I know. One of ours,” confirmed the Chief without looking up. “Got anything to eat? I’m peckish.”

The Chief was his old self again, calm, confident, steady as a rock, intrepid.

Opening the fridge, Viktor got out polonies, butter and mustard, and proceeded to the stove, now with his back to the Chief, but with the acrid taste of the Chief’s tobacco in his mouth.

As he lit the gas, he heard the Chief get up and go through to the living room, and while the water boiled, could just hear him talking to someone on the phone, but had no inclination
to turn and listen. His instinct was to keep his back turned on all that was happening, and let it happen unseen, away from him and his life.

Again the door creaked, footsteps sounded, a stool scraped. The Chief was back at the table.

The polonies were already in boiling water.

“Got any dollars handy?” asked the Chief.

“Some,” said Viktor without turning.

“You can lend me $800.”

After that they ate in silence, Viktor kept an an eye on the old alarm clock on the window ledge. It was getting on for four. Nina would soon be bringing Sonya. And what then? What did the Chief have in mind? To lie low here? For how long? And where would it all end?

Viktor dipped his little circles of sliced polony in the mustard and munched mechanically. Something was missing, he felt suddenly, then saw that it was bread. But across the
table
the Chief was eating away just as happily without. Instead of dipping each little fork-impaled circle in mustard like Viktor, he doused it in melted butter before conveying it to his mouth.

“Tea,” ordered the Chief, pushing away his empty plate.

Viktor made tea. Again they sat opposite each other in silence. The Chief was busy with his own thoughts, and watching him, Viktor thought of the notes adorning his
obelisks
. He would have liked to know who and what lay behind those
approveds
, but was more than certain that the Chief wouldn’t say, but would put him off with a
What’s that to you
? and that would be that.

He sighed, and the Chief, his train of thought broken, shot him a look.

“Another job for you,” he said. “Collect my air ticket, Victory
Square, Window 12, taking the $800 with you. You’ll get them back. Flight booking 503.”

It was getting dark. Viktor didn’t feel like going out again, but knew that he had to, whether he liked it or not.

“All right,” he said, but tardily enough to earn a look of surprise, which was replaced by a weary smile.

Viktor put on his jacket and boots. As he left the block, he noted, out of the corner of his eye, the continuing presence of the sportsman in the knitted ski hat.

Apart from a lone Azerbaijani dolefully studying a flight timetable, the airline booking offices were deserted.

At Window 12 was a woman of about 40, with blue-rinsed hair piled high.

“Booking 503,” he said.

“Passport,” she responded, without looking up, tapping the booking into her computer.

Not having the Chief’s passport, Viktor was sunk.

“Ah!” breathed the window lady suddenly. “No
passport required
. It’s all here. $750 at
exchange rate
or $800 cash,” she said, pointing to the pay desk, still without looking up.

Viktor handed over eight $100 bills. They were counted by a young lady in a blue uniform who put them through a forgery detector, turned and shouted, “Cash received, Vera.”

Window 12 gave him the ticket. For
Kiev–Larnaca–Rome
. He folded it and placed it in an inner pocket of his jacket.

It was about six when he reached the flat. Nina and Sonya were still not back. The Chief was still sitting in the kitchen, having earlier brewed coffee which he was now calmly drinking.

He studied the ticket carefully before concealing it in his wallet.

“Nobody been?” Viktor asked.

“Who are you expecting?”

“Sonya’s nanny should be bringing her.”

“No, no one’s been,” said the Chief thoughtfully. “But I’d advise getting her to take the little girl to her place for the night.” To add weight to his words, he nodded in the manner of one imparting wisdom.

Nina brought Sonya at 6.30, full of apologies for being so late.