Dancing With Bears - Michael Swanwick [75]
“Sir,” said the tall and cadaverous agent.
“I have something to say to you privately.” Wettig bent low, his ear all but touching his superior’s lips, and Chortenko murmured,“Go to Baron Lukoil-Gazprom’s room. He is currently at the Kremlin for a meeting of the Committee for the Suppression of Dissent. When he returns, kill him.”
Wettig straightened, nodded, left.
Filled with the satisfaction that comes only when one has done one’s work well and sees everything falling neatly into place, Chortenko turned back to his confederates with a slight smile. Then he paused and looked around the room, feeling vaguely that something was missing.
With a touch of bewilderment, he said, “Where is the ambassador?”
Surplus sauntered idly through Red Square.
It was an astonishing space. One entered the square through the Resurrection Gates and so came upon it suddenly: To the right loomed the Kremlin. To the left was the building that locals for reasons nobody could explain called “Goom,” its façade as elaborate as a wedding cake; it had been originally built to house shops and now, after many changes of fortune, was converted to prestigious apartments for the wealthy and connected. Straight ahead was St. Basil’s Cathedral, with its throng of domes painted in bright candy-box colors. Nowhere was there a tree to be seen, or anything that had not been built by human hands. The granite-block-paved square (a rectangle, really, with the long axis running from the gates to the church) rose slightly and then sank down again before St. Basil’s, as if gracefully genuflecting. All these factors put together created an exhilarating effect such that wherever one stood, one felt as if he were standing on the very top and center of the world.
Surplus tested this observation by walking diagonally across the square, slowly twirling the walking stick which, astonishingly, Chortenko had not removed from his possession when he was in the man’s custody. (It was, he supposed, a tribute to his own acting ability, but one which he resolved not to let go to his head.) And, indeed, he found that wherever he stood the sensation was the same. So long as he was in Red Square, he felt himself in the exact center of, if not the universe, then all of the universe that mattered.
It explained so much about Russian history.
Surplus had not come here to sightsee, however, but to compose his thoughts. Already, the heady exhilaration of a successful escape was threatening to give way to the dread and paranoia of the fugitive. Chortenko would assuredly be scouring the city for him at this very instant. Therefore, Surplus had come to the one place it would never occur to the man to look—to the single most open and public space in all of Moscow.
He felt like a bit of a cad for leaving Zoësophia behind. But she had clearly been working hard to convince Chortenko of her helplessness. And if there was one thing Surplus had learned over the years, it was never to step on another professional’s lines. She had a plan, and he could only assume that his absence would, by flustering their mutual foes, help her put it into action. He had wished her luck, slipped unseen up the stairs backwards and on tiptoes (which was an easier stunt than most people realized) while his captives were distracted by Zoësophia’s admittedly fetching struggles, and put her out of his mind.
In the meantime, what was he to do? It was elementary that he could not, under any circumstances, return to the embassy. Nor, given the ubiquity of the secret police, would any ordinary hiding place do. With his distinctive appearance, he could not rent a hotel room in even the seediest neighborhood under an assumed name with any confidence of anonymity. If only he knew where Darger was! He had no doubt that his partner had found a bolt-hole of superior obscurity.
Pointless to dwell on that now, however. He had to look for a more accessible avenue of evasion, and so…
And so his eyes lit up when he saw the Baronessa Lukoil-Gazproma striding determinedly