Red Square (23 page)

   
The interview started again at Pavlov.

   
Shamefaced, Arkady sank as far into his chair and as deep into shadow as he could go. If shadow were water he would have drowned happily.

Chapter Nineteen

The phone in the booth rang exactly at five.

   
'Federov here,' Arkady said.

   
'This is Schiller at the Bayern-Franconia Bank. We spoke this morning. You had some questions about a firm called TransKom Services.'

   
'Thank you for calling back.'

   
'There is no TransKom in Munich. No local bank knows it. I spoke to several state offices and no TransKom is registered in Bavaria for workers' insurance.'

   
'It sounds as though you've been thorough,' Arkady said.

   
'I think I've done all your work for you.'

   
'What about Boris Benz?'

   
'Herr Federov, this is a free country. It is difficult to investigate a private citizen.'

   
'Is he an employee of Bayern-Franconia?'

   
'No.'

   
'Does he have a bank account with you?'

   
'No, but even if he did, there are safeguards of depositor confidentiality.'

   
'Does he have a police record?' Arkady asked.

   
'I've told you everything I can.'

   
'Someone who misrepresents an association with a bank has probably done so more than once. He could be a professional criminal.'

   
'There are professional criminals even in Germany. I have no idea whether Benz is one. You told me yourself that you might have misunderstood what he said.'

   
'But now the name of the Bayern-Franconia Bank is in the consulate reports,' Arkady said. 'Remove it.'

   
'It's not that simple. With such a major contract, there's sure to be an investigation.'

   
'That sounds like your problem.'

   
'Apparently Benz showed documents from Bayern-Franconia describing the bank's financial commitment. He took the papers with him, but Moscow will want to know why the bank is pulling out now.'

   
The voice on the other end spoke as distinctly as possible. 'There was no commitment.'

   
'Moscow will wonder why Bayern-Franconia isn't more interested in Benz. If the bank is being unfairly implicated by a criminal, why isn't it more cooperative about finding him?' Arkady asked.

   
'We've cooperated with everything.' Schiller sounded convincing, except there was that letter from him to Benz.

   
'Then you don't mind if we send a man over to see you?'

   
'Send him. Please. Just so we can get this over with.'

   
'His name is Renko.'

The third floor of the Soviet consulate was filled with women in such intricately embroidered blouses and full, brightly striped skirts that they looked like Easter eggs rolled pell-mell into the hall. Since each held a bouquet of roses, negotiating the corridor involved force and apologies.

   
Federov's desk stood among pails of water. He looked up from a. stack of visas with a snarl that announced he had already fulfilled his day's quota of diplomacy. 'What the devil are you doing here?'

   
'Nice,' Arkady said. The office was small and windowless, the furniture modern and slightly miniature. Perhaps the occupant faced a subtle, nightmarish sense of growing larger every time he went to work. And getting wetter. A damp spot on the carpet showed where one pail had been kicked over. Arkady noted the dampness of Federov's trousers and sleeves, pink petals on Federov's lapel and the way Federov's tie had become not looser but tighter and twisted to one side. 'Like a florist's shop.'

   
'If we want to talk to you, we'll visit you. Don't come here.'

   
Besides the passports, the desk top bore sheets of consulate stationery, a pen-and-pencil set and a brace of telephones, all new and shiny as a start-up kit.

   
'I want my passport,' Arkady said.

   
'Renko, you're wasting your time. First of all, Platonov has your passport, not me. Second, the vice-consul is going to keep it until you get on the plane for Moscow, which will be tomorrow if all goes well.'

   
'Maybe I could make myself useful. It looks like you have your hands full.' Arkady nodded towards the hall.

   
'The Minsk Folkloric Chorus? We asked for ten, they sent thirty. They're going to have to sleep stacked like blini. I'll try to help them, but if they insist on tripling their visas they're going to have to suffer.'

   
'That's what a consulate is for,' Arkady said. 'Maybe I can help.'

   
Federov took a deep breath. 'No. I think you're about the last person I would choose as my assistant.'

   
'Maybe we could get together tomorrow, have lunch or tea, even dinner?'

   
'I'm on the run tomorrow. Delegation of Ukrainian Catholics in the morning, lunch with the Folkloric Chorus, catch up with the Catholics at the Frauenkirche in the afternoon, and an evening revival of Bertolt Brecht. Full up. Anyway, you'll probably be flying home by then. Now, if you don't mind, I'm really busy. If you want to do me a favour, don't come back.'

   
'Could I at least make a call?'

   
'No.'

   
Arkady reached for the phone. 'The lines to Moscow are always busy. Maybe I could get through from here.'

   
'No.'

   
Arkady picked up the receiver. 'It'll be quick.'

   
'No.'

   
As Federov grabbed the receiver, Arkady let go and the consular attach
é
stumbled backwards, tipping over another pail of water. Arkady tried from the wrong side of the desk to catch him; instead, he swept all the passports from the desk top. Red booklets landed on the carpet, in puddles, in pails.

   
'You idiot!' Federov said. He scrambled around the pails to pick up passports before they sank. Arkady used handfuls of stationery to soak water from the carpet.

   
'That's useless,' Federov said.

   
'I'm trying to help.'

   
Federov blotted passports on his shirt. 'Don't help me. Just go.' A thought occurred to him as palpably as the squeal of a brake. 'Wait!' Eyes on Arkady, he gathered all the passports on to his desk. Breathing hard, he counted them out carefully not once but twice, and checked to be positive the contents were, even if damp, still intact. 'Okay. You can go.'

   
'I'm very sorry,' Arkady said.

   
'Just leave.'

   
'On the way out, should I warn people below about the water?'

   
'No. Don't talk to anyone.'

   
Arkady regarded the overturned pails, the flood plain of the carpet. 'It's a shame, such a new office.'

   
'Yes. Goodbye, Renko.'

   
The door opened and a woman crowned by a felt hat draped with pearls peeped in. 'Dear Gennady Ivanovich, what are you doing? When do we eat?'

   
'In a second,' Federov said.

   
'We haven't eaten since Minsk,' she said.

   
She took a brave position inside the door and other folkloric singers followed. As they flowed into the room, Arkady went in the opposite direction, squeezing past skirts and ribbons, dodging thorns.

In a Polish secondhand shop west of the train station, Arkady found a manual typewriter with spindly type bars, shabby plastic case and Cyrillic characters. He turned it over. On the base was a stencilled military number.

   
'Red Army,' the shop owner said. 'They're getting out of East Germany and what the bastards don't want to take, they sell. They'd sell the tanks if they could.'

   
'May I try it?'

   
'Go ahead.' The shop owner was already moving to greet a better-dressed, more likely customer.

   
From his jacket Arkady took folded stationery and rolled a page into the machine. The paper was from Federov's desk. At the top was the embossed letterhead of the Soviet consulate, complete with hammer and sickle set in golden sheaves of grain. Arkady had considered trying to write in German, but he didn't trust his grasp of barbed Gothic letters. Besides, for a certain roundness of style, only Russian would do.

   
He wrote:

   
Dear Herr Schiller,

   
This note is to introduce A. K. Renko, a
 
senior investigator from the Moscow Prosecutor's Office. Renko has been assigned to enquire into questions concerning a proposed joint venture between certain Soviet entities and the German firm TransKom Services, and in particular die statements of its representative, Herr Boris Benz. Since die activities of TransKom and Benz may reflect badly on both the Soviet government and the Bayern-Franconia Bank, I hope we share a mutual interest in resolving this matter as rapidly and quietly as possible.

   
With every good wish, G. I. Federov.

The close sounded grandly Federovian to Arkady. He pulled the sheet out and signed it with a flourish.

   
'So it works?' the shop owner called.

   
'Amazing, isn't it?' Arkady said.

   
'I can give you a good price. An excellent price.'

   
Arkady shook his head. The truth was, he couldn't afford anything. 'Do you have many buyers for a Russian typewriter?'

   
The owner had to laugh.

The lights were still out in the Benz flat. At nine p.m., Arkady gave up. With a little planning, half his route back lay through parks: Englischer Garten, Finanzgarten, Hofgarten, Botanischer Garten. He wondered if this was the solace of rabbits - the whispered tread of paths, the soft arms of trees, the balm of shadows. From time to time, he stopped in the dark to listen. A student would wander by, nose in a book, hurrying to the light of the next lamp. Or a jogger at a serious, slow-motion pace. He heard no footsteps that stopped abruptly. It was as if when he had left Moscow he had stepped off the edge of the world. He had disappeared. He was in free fall. Who needed to follow?

   
He emerged from the Botanical Garden a block from the train station. He was crossing the street to check the videotape in the station locker when he saw pedestrians scatter from a car making an illegal U-turn. The civil outcry was so great that he didn't see the car itself. He stayed on the boulevard's central island and hurried past the station and along the switching yard. It was not an example of good survival planning to be surrounded by a wide boulevard with fast-moving traffic. The approaching street was Seidlstrasse, with his room and, farther on, the Soviet consulate. As tyres slowed behind him he turned to face a familiar, dishevelled Mercedes. At the wheel was Stas.

   
'I thought you wanted to see Irina.'

   
Arkady said, 'I saw her.'

   
'You took off before she even finished her interview. You were in the booth one second and the next second you were gone.'

   
'I heard enough,' Arkady said.

   
Stas ignored the
halten verboten
signs, blithely waving on the cars backed up behind him in the fast lane. 'I came looking for you because I thought something was wrong.'

   
'At this hour?' Arkady asked.

   
'I had work to do. I came when I could. How would you like to go to a party?'

   
'Now?'

   
'When else?'

   
'It's almost ten. Why would I want to go to a party?'

   
Drivers behind Stas shouted, honked and flashed their lights in a chorus wasted on him. 'Irina will be there,' he said. 'You haven't actually talked to her yet.'

   
'But I got her message. I got it twice in one day.'

   
'You think she doesn't want to see you.'

   
'Something like that.'

   
'For a man from Moscow, you're very sensitive. Look, in a second we're going to be eaten alive by angry Porsches. Get in the car. We'll just drop in at the party.'

   
'For another round of humiliation?'