Mazurka (15 page)

“I'd be grateful,” Olsky said. There was a long pause before Olsky looked at his watch. “I have to return to Moscow.”

“Of course,” Greshko said.

“Goodbye, Vladimir.”

As he stepped out, Olsky watched Greshko's face, which in shadow appeared enigmatic. But perhaps not. Perhaps there was some other expression barely apparent in the shadows, a hint of amusement, of pleasure, like that of a man enjoying some hugely private joke.

Olsky had no illusions about the way Greshko despised him. He left the house and stood for a moment under a large oak, which shielded him from the morning sun. He listened to the drone of flies, the cawing of rooks, the sound of a horse whinnying in the distance. Then he looked in the direction of his car, wondering if it had been a mistake to come here in the first place. Simple vanity – was that it? Had he wanted the old man to see that the organs of State Security were at last in strong young hands? That the dried-out old ways were inevitably passing and a new generation was changing things? To impress and perhaps worry a sick old man – was that why he'd mentioned conspiracy and his knowledge of Greshko's friendships? If so, he'd underestimated the former Chairman, who wasn't likely to be in the least concerned by references to intrigues and acquaintances of dubious loyalties. A dying man was beyond ordinary fears.

Olsky moved out from under the tree. When he reached his car, he looked back at the cottage. No, he thought. It was the missing file that had really brought him here from Moscow, a file whose removal could have been achieved only by Vladimir Greshko himself or by somebody who'd been given that authority by the old man.

It was strange, he thought, how the old man hadn't asked a single question about Romanenko's assassination – no interest in place and time, no interest in detail, the means the assassin had used or if he'd been apprehended. Absolutely nothing.

Either Greshko didn't give a damn about the killing or else he'd already learned the details of Romanenko's murder from another source. If the latter was true, then he'd been lying when he'd denied ever having heard of Romanenko.

Olsky got inside the car, settled back in his seat and closed his eyes, unable to shake the feeling that Greshko, in his wily way, had been playing a game with him for the past thirty minutes, a game based on subterfuge and concealment. And Olsky felt the frustration of a man trying to introduce new rules when certain players stubbornly prefer sticking, no matter what, to the old ones.

Ten minutes after Olsky's departure, Greshko spoke into the telephone. “Has Epishev gone?”

“He left five hours ago, General,” Volovich replied. “On the first available flight.”

Greshko set the receiver down. He looked at the calendar on the wall. There were now four days left. Sighing, longing to smoke one of the cigars his physician had denied him, he tried to content himself with squeezing a small rubber ball he kept in the bedside table. It was a poor substitute for drawing rich tobacco smoke deep into one's lungs. By God, how he would have loved to light one! He tossed the stupid ball aside in a gesture of contempt, then he opened the flask that contained the special mixture.

He sipped, thought of Olsky, smiled. It was fascinating to watch the new Chairman fish in waters too deep for him ever to penetrate.
You're keeping the wrong kind of company, General Greshko. A certain file is missing, General Greshko. Wipe my arse for me, General Greshko
.

Greshko laughed aloud. He would love to nail Olsky, to crucify that shaven-headed upstart, to see him hung out to dry like a bundle of wet kindling.

Four days
. He corked his flask, knowing he could live that long.

7

London

Kristina Vaska was amused by Pagan's apartment. She wandered through the rooms slowly, thinking disorder was almost a law of nature here, from the untidiness of the bedroom to the flaky state of the bathroom, where towels and discarded socks formed a small, lopsided pyramid. But Jesus, there was something touching in all this mess, something that, in spite of herself, provoked a maternal response. It was an easy reaction and she didn't trust it. If Pagan couldn't look after his domestic life by himself, why should she even think of doing it for him? She'd long ago given up the notion that there was something engaging about men who needed to be looked after. Like careless boys, they couldn't fend for themselves – but she was damned if she was going to find such helplessness attractive. Pagan was already appealing enough in his own hesitant way. He didn't need the assistance of charming ineptitude.

In the bedroom she came across a silver locket that hung from the lampshade by a thin silver chain. On the back of the ornament were the initials R.P. She fingered the item for a time, wondering about the initials. Somebody P. Somebody Pagan.

In the drawer of the bedside table she solved the problem. She found a framed photograph of a woman, a lovely woman with an intelligent face. Across the bottom of the picture were the words
With all my love, Roxanne, September 83. Our Third Anniversary
. Kristina Vaska put the photograph back and wondered what had become of Pagan's wife that she was nothing more than a picture stuffed in a drawer and a locket hung from a lampshade.

She crossed the bedroom and opened a closet, where several suits and sports coats hung on a rack. This was obviously Frank Pagan's neat corner, his tidy place. The suits and jackets were enclosed in transparent plastic bags, set aside from the general chaos of the apartment. An island of order. The suits were good ones, well-tailored in a modern way, and some of the sports coats were, well, slightly ostentatious. There were also several shirts whose patterns might have been designed by a coven of drunken Cubists. Frank Pagan was clearly a man of some vanity who tried to keep in touch with sartorial trends. On the bottom of the closet were shoes, most of them casual slip-ons, all neatly aligned.

She shut the closet and sat on the edge of the bed, staring through the open bedroom door into the living-room, where a stack of long-playing records was arranged against one wall. The first thing she'd done when Pagan had left was to go through the collection of albums, because she believed you could learn about a person from his or her choice of music – a theory tested by Pagan's collection, which consisted entirely of what she considered noise. Every record was early rock and roll, ranging from well-known stuff like Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, to material she found obscure, Thurston Harris and the Sharps, Freddy Bell and the Bellboys. What could she learn about Pagan from this assortment except that he liked loud simplicity and indulged in massive, possibly lethal, overdoses of nostalgia?

She rose, wandered back into the living-room. Clues to a man's life, she thought. The music. The prints on the walls which were mainly old concert posters – The Rolling Stones at Wembley Stadium, Fats Domino at the London Palladium. As if they'd been hung by a hand other than Pagan's, perhaps that of the absent Roxanne, there were also delicately faded prints depicting scenes of 19th century English country life. It was quite a contrast between the rowdy and the bucolic.

She walked to the window, where she parted the curtains and looked down into the street. Across the way was one of those quiet squares that proliferate in London, a dark area of trees beyond the reach of streetlamps. Branches stirred very slightly in the soft night breeze. She imagined incongruous animals foraging for food out there – a badger, a field mouse, creatures disenfranchised by the city. Then she moved toward the sofa and lay down, closing her eyes.

When she heard the sound of Pagan climbing the stairs, then the twisting of the key in the lock, she sat upright. He came inside the living-room with a vaguely unsettled expression on his face, like that of a man who suspects he's stepped inside the wrong apartment. She was amused by his awkwardness, by the way her presence in his territory affected him.

“How was God?” she asked.

“Flustered,” Pagan said.

“I thought Gods were unflappable by definition.”

“They get anxious when something's not quite right in their domain.”

Like Martin Burr, Pagan was also flustered. Like Martin Burr, Pagan had the feeling that something was not quite right in his domain. Part of it was due to this woman's sudden entry into his life. He looked around the room as if he expected to see changes, small rearrangements she might have made in his absence. But everything was the same as before. What would she move anyway? The bloody furniture? It was a ridiculous notion. She probably hadn't even risen from the sofa all the time he'd been gone. He was entertaining some silly thoughts, and he wasn't quite sure why.

“Are you too tired for the rest of my story?” she asked.

“I want you to take a look at this first.” He removed the poem from his pocket and handed it to her. There was a tiny connection of flesh as his hand encountered hers. “Tell me if it means anything to you.”

She read it, looking solemn. “I know it better in the original,” she said, and there was a catch in her voice.
“Küll siis Kalev jõuab koju, Oma lastel õnne tooma, Eesti põlve uueks looma
. It's been a long time since I recited anything in Estonian. And it's been a long time since I read those lines.”

Pagan had never heard Estonian spoken before. What it reminded him of was Finnish, which he'd heard once or twice, finding it a little too arctic to be mellifluous. He looked at Kristina Vaska. She had her eyes shut very tightly and two thin tears slithered down her cheeks. He felt suddenly helpless – what was he supposed to do? Go to her, put his arms round her, comfort her? He wasn't sure how to behave.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“It's okay.”

“It's not okay. I don't like to cry. I don't like feeling homesick and I can't stand being weepy.” She opened her eyes and forced a tense smile. Then she dipped into her purse and took out a paper tissue, which she pressed against her eyelids. Pagan watched in silence. He had a longing to hold her hands.

“Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

“I'm okay.”

“You're sure?”

“I'm sure.” She smiled again, a pale effort, and gazed at the poem. “I haven't read
Kalevipoeg
since I was a kid.”

“Can you explain the poem to me?”

“It's from an old legend. Kalevipoeg was the son of Kalev. Kalev, who founded the kingdom of Estonia, was the son of the god Taara. According to the story, Kalevipoeg impressed the gods with his upright character, so they severed his legs at the knees then they embedded his fist in the stone surrounding the gateway to hell. Which is where he is to this day – preventing the return of the Evil One, the Devil.”

“The gods have a strange way of showing their appreciation,” Pagan said, wondering if a little half-arsed levity was even remotely appropriate. “So Kalevipoeg is some kind of local hero.”

“A symbol of goodness.”

“And he's expected back when things get really rough?”

Kristina Vaska said, “Yeah, but I doubt if he's ever going to return. He's had plenty of opportunities. And if he hasn't come back by this time, I'd say he's simply not going to show. Gods are notoriously unreliable.”

“They have their own timetables, that's all.”

Kristina Vaska scanned the poem again, her hand trembling slightly. “I assume Romanenko had this in his possession, Frank?” she asked. It was the first time she'd used his name and she did so almost coyly, in a way Pagan found appealing – as if she were speaking a very private word.

Pagan nodded. “The question is, why was he carrying it around with him? It was written in something called Livonian and stuck inside a sealed envelope.”

“Maybe I can shed a little light on why Romanenko would have this poem with him.”

“How?”

“By telling you something about the man, which is the reason I'm here anyhow,” she said. “As I recall, I was getting to the end of my tale when I was rudely interrupted. Shall I continue?”

“I'm listening.” Pagan was impatient now.

Kristina Vaska took a deep breath. “Okay. I was up to the part where Romanenko was about to make an appearance. First, a question. Have you ever heard of an organisation called the Brotherhood of the Forest?”

Pagan, sensing an unwelcome detour, shook his head.

Kristina Vaska said, “The Brotherhood fought the Soviet occupation until 1952, maybe 1953. Mainly they had nothing but rifles and guts. But what really finished them off were Soviet reprisals against the farmers who supplied the Brotherhood with food and shelter. So they disbanded. Some were executed, others imprisoned. A few fled from the Baltic. My father, who was a member of the Brotherhood when he was sixteen years old, threw his rifle away and managed to slip back into society, which wasn't easy for him – given his views. I suppose he thought he could continue the struggle by political means. It wasn't a period of his life he talked about, you understand. He let one or two things slip when he was in an expansive mood or if he'd been drinking, but never anything of substance and
only
in front of the immediate family.”

Frank Pagan watched her. The darkness of the eyes, the mouth that was a little too large for the face and yet somehow absolutely right, the soft curl of eyelashes – a skilled portrait artist or a poet might have done justice to her idiosyncratic beauty. Pagan, neither artist nor poet, was content to look and appreciate.

“I want to show you something, Frank.”

She opened her purse. She took out a small, cracked photograph, an old black and white affair with a scalloped edge. She handed it to him. Pagan saw two young men, boys – one neatly bisected by the crack in the picture – standing in shirtsleeves under the branches of a tree. They both held rifles. Their faces were misty with that nebulous quality old photographs often have and their expressions weren't easy to read. There was toughness in them, and grimness, but they were both grinning in a stiff fashion as if the photographer had bullied them into smiling when neither of them felt like it.