Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [114]
With a remote control, Arkady played the videotape. On Fast Forward, the television screen raced through monks, Marienplatz, beer garden, modern traffic, beer hall, swans, opera, Oktoberfest, Alps, beer garden. Stopped. He rewound to the start of the last scene. It was a sun-dappled garden in a wall of honeysuckle tended by bees. Diners sat exhausted by the effort of heavy lunches, all but the woman at one table. He froze the frame where she raised her glass.
“Never seen her before,” Stas said. “What shocks me is that I’ve never been in this beer garden. I thought I’d been in them all.”
The screen came back to life. She raised her glass higher. Blond hair swept back almost ferociously, gold necklace bedded on black cashmere, cat-eyed sunglasses that expressed amusement, red nails and lips that promised in Russian, “I love you.”
Stas shook his head. “I’d remember her.”
“Not at Radio Liberty?” Arkady asked.
“Hardly.”
“Around Tommy?”
“Possibly, but I’ve never met her.”
Arkady tried a different tack. “I’d like to see where Tommy worked.”
“The Red Archive? The next time I try to sign you in, the guards will call Michael. I don’t mind annoying him, but he’ll just tell the guards not to give you a pass.”
“Is Michael always at the station?”
“No. Between eleven and twelve he plays tennis at the club across the street. But he takes his phone everywhere.”
“You’ll be at the station?”
“I’ll be at my desk until noon. I’m a writer. I turn the decline and fall of the Soviet Union into bite-sized words.”
When Stas left, Arkady neatened the couch, washed the dishes and ironed the clothes that Federov had squashed into the bag the day before. His wrist was ringed with bruises, but the skin wasn’t broken; Stas had seen the marks and said nothing. Every step he took, from sofa to sink to ironing board, he was followed by Laika. So far, she found his behavior acceptable.
While he ironed, Arkady ran the tape again. As the camera panned, he realized he might be looking at a restaurant patio rather than a beer garden. There was indoor dining, though the light outside was too intense to see through the windows.
What did he know about her? She might at one time have been a Moscow putana called Rita. She could be the globetrotting Frau Benz. The only hard evidence of her existence was this tape. This time he noticed that her table was set for two. She had an almost theatrical presence. The gold necklace was Teutonic, but the angles of her face were distinctly Russian. Thick makeup—that was more Russian, too. He wished that just once she would take off her glasses. Slowly her lips formed a smile and said to Rudy Rosen, “I love you.”
Laika whined, walked toward the television set and sat again.
Arkady rewound and froze every other frame. Backward from her glasses. Retreat from her table. Turn from the diners. Embroidery of vines and bees. Sidecart of linen, utensils, water carafes. Stucco. Honeysuckle. Window with one pane that reflected the person with the camera standing before a solid wall of green. That was another question: who took the pictures? A man with distinctively broad shoulders in a sweater that was red, white and black. Marlboro colors.
He played it forward again. Motes floated in the sunlight. Bees stirred and diners came back to semilife. The woman in the glasses repeated, “I love you.”
At the Luitpold garage, an elongated Mercedes with a red car phone was parked by the attendant’s booth. Remembering the Arabs at the Hilton, Arkady climbed the ramp to the next level, chose a BMW that looked light on its feet and gave it a firm shove. The car woke at once with blinking lights and a sounding horn. He heaved into Mercedeses, Audis, Daimlers and Maseratis until the entire level reverberated with an orchestra of alarms. When he saw the attendant come racing up the ramp, he ran down the stairs.
In the booth were ticket punch, register, car tools and a long shiv for opening locked car doors. The shiv demanded patience that Arkady