Red Square (45 page)

   
Arkady shot. Max had been standing in the black behind the torch. Now he held a shield of phosphorescent white brilliant enough to light the entire slaughterhouse. Polina's canvas had ignited as the slug passed through and Borya squinted, stupefied by the blaze. When he understood what was happening, he turned back to Arkady and fired wildly four more times.

   
Arkady shot and Borya dropped to his knees, into the soft folds of his coat. The breast of his coat showed a bright rosette. Arkady fired a second time in the same place. Borya swayed, rose and lined his eye on the sight. His eye wavered. As he started to topple, he put his hands on the floor, still clutching his gun, trying to keep the world from spinning. His head rolled and he relaxed and slumped across the floor at full length, as if he were diving for a penalty kick.

   
On the floor, the canvas produced a white light that broke into noxious smoke against the ceiling. Max's sleeve was on fire. He was framed in the doorway for a moment, a man attached to a torch. Then the doorway went dark as he ran.

   
The room filled with a chemical cloud that made Arkady's eyes smart. Flames ran down the blood grooves of the floor. His chest stung, though he didn't feel particularly hurt. Borya's kick had folded his knees in a new way and his legs were numb. He dragged himself over the floor to retrieve his jacket and Borya's gun, a little TK pistol that was empty. He crawled to the door, pulled himself up so he could exit erect, staggered out and leaned as stiff as a ladder against the wall until sensation returned.

   
Except for the glow from the slaughterhouse and the headlights of the car, the yard was black. The surface of the lime pit seemed to seethe, but it could have been an effect of raindrops. There was no sign of Max, not even smoke.

   
The Mercedes raised its headlights and Arkady's shadow jumped the pit. He stepped back and started to slide, so he stood his ground and fired the Nagant's last shot, though his eyes were so overloaded he could barely see his hand, much less the car. The lights swung to the side, raced across the yard and on to the road that led through the pens towards the village. Rear lights danced from rail to rail until they disappeared.

   
More on one foot than two, Arkady made it to the step of the lorry. His knees still felt rearranged. When he opened his shirt, he could see that his stomach was pocked by cement, no worse than bird shot. He wished he had a cigarette.

   
He buttoned his shirt and pulled on his jacket, then removed the ignition keys from the lorry and locked the back doors. Hobbling to the bunker, he closed it against the rain.

   
In the last glimmer from the fire, Arkady staggered across the yard to the Zhiguli. The car had the gaping windows and crumpled fender of an abandoned wreck. Max had a head start. On the other hand, the Zhiguli was made for Russian roads.

Chapter Thirty-Nine

The radio picked up nothing. He might have been travelling cross-country in Antarctica.

   
He would have seen more in Antarctica. Snow reflected light, potato fields absorbed it. Man didn't have to search for black holes in the universe when there were potato fields.

   
By the time he was on the main road his leg had stiffened so much from Borya's kick that he no longer knew whether he had the clutch in or out.

   
The ring road was a starry line of lights. Above the city, tracers dotted the sky. He tried the radio again. Tchaikovsky, of course. And a warning that a curfew was in effect. Arkady turned the radio off. The air rushing through the broken windows made him feel as if he were re-entering earth.

   
On the Leningrad Road, armoured personnel carriers stopped pedestrians but let cars drive through, so that there were long spaces of sparse traffic and empty pavements, then crossing spotlights and military vehicles proceeding slowly on a circular road. The Zhiguli, bent door and all, drew no attention. At night a driver noticed that Moscow was a series of concentric rings, and how much the city resembled orbits of light in a void.

   
The metro and buses were shut down, but people started to reappear out of the dark singly or in groups of ten or twenty, heading south. Troops were non-existent at one corner, massed at another. In the Red Presnya district, Belovaya Street was blocked by tanks; the idling of their engines sounded like deep thought. Regular militia was off the street.

   
Arkady parked and joined the pavement traffic. A stream of men and women poured towards the river. Obviously some knew each other because there was quiet murmuring. Mostly they were silent, as if everyone was saving their breath for the walk, and as if that breath, visible in the rain, was sufficient communication. No one mentioned or looked askance at Arkady's bloody shirt. To his relief, his leg functioned, knee and all.

   
Arkady let himself be swept forward. As the pace quickened, he found himself running with the crowd down a sidestreet that had been turned into a dead end by Army lorries parked bumper to bumper. But the canvas cover of one lorry was pulled back and people helped each other up, as if climbing a country stile.

   
On the other side of the lorry, the wide Red Presnya embankment road curved between the river and the White House. It was a relatively new building, a four-storey marble box, with two wings that seemed to float lightly in the glow of thousands of people carrying candles. Arkady's group squeezed single file between buses and bulldozers that had been set up as a barricade.

   
Along the way, he heard every rumour. The Kremlin was ringed by tanks ready to move down Kalinin Prospect to the White House. Riot troops were stationed outside the Bolshoi. The Committee was bringing gas canisters by barge to the embankment. Commandos had found tunnels to the White House. A helicopter assault would land on the roof. KGB agents inside the building would machine-gun the defenders at a secret signal. It would be like China or Rumania, but worse.

   
People hovered over small warming fires of rubbish, and around votive candles stuck in makeshift altars of wax. These were people who in all their lives had gone to-no public demonstration that hadn't been organized and herded. Yet their feet had brought them here.

   
There weren't that many ways to reach the White House because the bridge over die river was barricaded at both ends. Arkady spotted Max among people arriving from Kalinin Prospect. From a distance he didn't look much the worse for their encounter. He nestled one hand in his jacket pocket but moved with an assurance that parted the crowd.

   
At a corner of the White House a tank that had come to its defence was festooned with flowers. The soldiers on board were boys with the hollowed eyes of determination and fear. The turrets swung towards Kalinin Prospect, where Arkady heard the drumming of automatic fire.

   
Students played guitars and sang the kind of sappy songs about birches and snow that usually drove Arkady insane. Around another fire, rockers took sustenance from a heavy metal tape. Ancient veterans linked their arms and puffed up the ribbons on their chests. A battalion of street cleaners, women in black coats and scarves, stood like a row of witnesses.

   
Arkady manoeuvred to keep Max in sight since he seemed to know better which way to go. He skirted a barricade being assembled from construction timbers, mattresses, iron fences and benches. Its builders were men with attaché cases and women with shopping bags who had come directly from offices or bakeries to the battle line. A girl in a raincoat scaled the makeshift palisade to tie a Russian tricolour to the highest plank. Polina looked down from her vantage point without seeing Arkady in the crowd below. Her cheeks were flushed, her hair free, as if she were riding the crest of a wave. Her friend from the airport climbed after her, more carefully, as the sound of weapons fire resumed.

   
Max moved towards the White House steps. As Arkady tried to catch up, he saw there was a defence plan of sorts. Within the barricades, women had established themselves as an outer ring that soldiers would have to break through first. Then came shock troops of unarmed citizens, a mass that water cannon or armour would have to dislodge. Behind them, younger and stronger men were organized in divisions of about a hundred. At the bottom of the White House steps Afghan veterans stood in groups often. Above them was an inner cordon of men wearing dark ski masks over their faces and shouldering weapons. At the top of the steps flashbulbs popped around microphone booms and still and video cameras.

   
'You?' A heavy-set militiaman grabbed Arkady's arm.

   
'I'm sorry.' Arkady didn't recognize him.

   
'You almost ran me over last week. You caught me taking money.'

   
'Yes.' Arkady remembered; it had been after the funeral.

   
'See, I'm not just someone who stands in the street and takes bribes.'

   
'No, you're not. Who's in the ski masks?'

   
'A mix - private guards, volunteers.' The officer's concern, however, was Arkady. He gave his full name, insisted that Arkady repeat it and shook his hand. 'You never know another man until a night like tonight. This is the drunkest I've ever been and I haven't touched a drop.'

   
Everywhere was a common look of astonishment, as if they had all ventured individually to drop their lifelong masks and show their faces. Middle-aged teachers, muscular lorry drivers, wretched apparatchiks and feckless students wandered with expressions of recognition, as in
I know you
. And among all these Russians, not a bottle. Not a one.

   
Afghan veterans with red bandannas around their arms patrolled the perimeter. Many still wore their fatigues and desert caps; some held radios, others carried sacks of Molotov cocktails. Everyone had said how they'd gone to Afghanistan, become drug addicts and lost the war. These were the ones who had lost their friends in the dust of Khost and Kandahar, fought on the long retreat on the Salang Highway, and avoided the anonymous ride home in zinc-lined coffins. They seemed very competent tonight.

   
Max's hair and one ear looked singed and he had changed jackets, but he seemed remarkably untouched after having one arm on fire at the collective. He stopped by worshippers huddled around a priest who was blessing crucifixes at the base of the White House steps, then turned and saw Arkady.

   
A loud-hailer announced, 'Attack is imminent. We are observing a blackout. Extinguish all lights. Those with gas masks, prepare to put them on. Those without should tie wet cloths over their noses and mouths.'

   
Candles disappeared. In the sudden dark there was a stir of thousands of people slipping on goggles and tying scarves and handkerchiefs over their faces. Undeterred, the priest pronounced blessings through a gas mask. Max had slipped away.

   
The loud-hailer appealed, 'Please, reporters, do not use your flashes!' But someone stepped out of the White House door and the response at the top of the steps was an explosion of flashbulbs and spotlights. Arkady saw Irina among the reporters and Max climbing towards her.

   
The embankment was blacked out, but the scene at its centre was an illuminated theatrical production. The steps spilled over with lights and journalists trading shouts in Italian, English, Japanese and German. There were no official press passes for the coup, but reporters were professionals used to mayhem and Russians were accustomed to disorder.

   
Max was stopped halfway up by two men in ski masks. Half an eyebrow was gone and his neck had a raw sheen, yet he seemed unruffled and in control. Cameramen rushed up and down the steps on either side. He enlisted the guards in conversation, employing a confidence that commanded any situation, an ability to flow around any obstacle.

   
' . . . you can help me,' Arkady heard him say as he caught up. 'I was on my way here to join my colleagues from Radio Liberty when my car was deliberately run off the road. In the explosion one man was killed and I sustained injuries.' He turned and pointed to Arkady. 'There is the driver of the other car. He followed me.'

   
The guards had cut eye holes in woollen ski caps that were a contrast to their satiny suits. One was hulking and the other small but they both had sawn-off rifles that they held casually in Arkady's direction. He didn't even have his father's gun, and by now he was so exposed he couldn't retreat.

   
'He's not from the press. Ask for his identification,' Arkady said.

   
Max took hold of the situation like the director of a film. It looked like a stage set: wet marble steps, vying spotlights, the fairy lights of tracers in the clouds. 'My identification burned in the car. It doesn't matter because a dozen reporters here will vouch for me. Anyway, I think I recognize this character. His name is Renko, one of Prosecutor Rodionov's gang. Ask him for identification.'

   
Dark eyes stared through the masks. Arkady had to admit that Max had defined the moment neatly; here his identification could condemn him.

   
'He's lying,' Arkady said.

   
'Is his car a wreck? Is my friend dead?' In the clamour of the steps, Max's whisper was all the more effective. 'Renko is a dangerous man. Ask him whether he killed someone or not? See, he can't deny it.'

   
'Who was your friend?' the smaller guard asked through his mask. Though he had no face to go by, Arkady thought he had heard the voice before. The guard could have been militia, like the traffic officer at the bottom of the steps, or a private bodyguard.

   
'Borya Gubenko, a businessman,' Max said.

   
'
The
Borya Gubenko?' The guard seemed to know the name. 'He was a
close
friend?'

   
Max answered quickly, 'Not close, but Borya sacrificed himself to get me here and the fact is that Renko brutally killed him and tried to do the same to me. Here we are, surrounded by the cameras of the world. The world is watching these steps tonight and you can't afford to let a reactionary agent like Renko near anybody. The main thing is to get him out of sight. If you should trip and accidentally shoot him in the back, it would be no loss to the world.'

   
'I don't do anything accidentally,' the guard assured him.

   
Max began to sidestep to continue his climb. 'As I said, I have colleagues here.'

   
'I know you do.' The guard lifted off his mask. It was Beno, Makhmud's grandson. His face was almost as dark as his mask, but it was lit by a smile. 'That's why we came, in case you tried to join them.'

   
The larger guard pulled Max back by the tail of his jacket.

   
Beno said, 'We were looking for Borya too, but if Renko took care of him then we can concentrate on you. We'll start by asking about four cousins of mine who died at your apartment in Berlin.'

   
'Renko, what is he talking about?' Max asked.

  
 
'Then we'll talk about Makhmud and Ali. We'll make a night of it,' Beno said.

   
'
Arkady
' Max appealed.

   
'But since it's going to get dangerous here in about an hour,' Beno said,' we'll do our talking somewhere else.'

   
Max wrestled free of his jacket and ran diagonally down the steps. On the bottom he slid on wax, crashed through the line of veterans, regained his feet and fought his way through the circle of worshippers around the priest. The larger Chechen raced after him. Beno waved calmly to a group in the crowd and pointed in Max's direction. In his white shirt he was easy to follow.

   
Beno regarded Arkady. 'Are you staying? It's going to be bloody.'