Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [159]
“You prick.”
Arkady grabbed the pistol when she brought it over the table. It was Borya’s .22. He bent her wrist and twisted the gun free.
“You fuck,” Rita said.
Borya had betrayed her, run to Moscow and abandoned her with this puny gun. Arkady removed the rounds from the breech and clip and tossed the empty pistol in her lap. “I love you, too,” he said.
At an airport souvenir shop, Arkady bought a beer tray and a cotton shawl embroidered with the rats of Hamelin. In a bathroom stall, he covered the painting with the shawl, wrapped the tray in bubble plastic, put it in Rita’s canvas bag, and then rejoined Peter and Irina in a corner of the transit lounge.
Arkady said, “Think of all the paintings and manuscripts confiscated from artists and writers and poets for seventy years, hidden away by the Ministry of the Interior and the KGB. Nothing is thrown away. Poets may get a bullet in the back of the head, but the poem is stuffed in a box and buried in a cellar. Then, at a magical moment, when Russia joins the rest of the world, all that evidence becomes valuable assets.”
“But they can’t sell it,” Irina said. “Art more than fifty years old cannot legally be taken from the Soviet Union.”
“But it can be smuggled out,” Peter suggested.
Arkady said, “Bribes will do. Armored tanks, railroad trains and crude oil have been moved across the border. To bring a painting out is relatively easy.”
“Even so,” Irina said, “the sale isn’t valid if Russian law is broken. Collectors and museums don’t like to be involved in international disputes. Rita couldn’t sell ‘Red Square’ if it came from Russia.”
Peter said, “Maybe it’s a fake from Germany. There were fantastic forgers in East Berlin, all out of work now. Has this painting really been examined?”
Irina said, “Completely. It’s been dated, X-rayed and analyzed. It even has Malevich’s thumbprint.”
“All of that can be faked,” Peter said.
“Yes,” Irina admitted, “but it’s a curious thing about fakes. They can be the best forgeries on earth, with the correct wood, paints and technique, but they don’t look right.”
Peter said, “This is becoming spiritual.”
Irina said, “It’s like knowing people. After a while you learn the fake from the real. A painting is an artist’s idea, and ideas can’t be forged.”
“How valuable did you say the painting is?” Peter asked.
“Perhaps five million dollars. That’s not much here,” Arkady said, “but in Russia it’s five hundred million rubles.”
“Unless it’s fake,” Peter pointed out.
Arkady said, “ ‘Red Square’ is real and it’s from Russia.”
“But they found it in a Knauer crate,” Irina said.
Arkady said, “The crate is fake.”
“The crate?” Peter sat up. Arkady could see him mentally rearranging. “I hadn’t thought from that direction before.”
Arkady said, “Remember, Benz wasn’t interested in the art your grandfather stole. He had his own. He was interested in the crates your grandfather built—with Knauer carpenters, if you remember.”
“That’s good,” Peter said appreciatively. “That’s very good.”
Arkady laid the shawl on Peter’s knees. Peter sat up straighter. “What are you doing?”
“The cultural atmosphere is a little unsettled in Moscow right now.”
“I don’t want it.”
“You’re the only person I can leave it with,” Arkady said.
“How do you know I won’t disappear with it?”
“There’s a kind of justice in making you a guardian of Russian art. Besides, it’s a trade.” Arkady patted the jacket pocket with the passport and visa that Peter had returned to him and the ticket he had bought with Ali’s money.
There had been no difficulty in getting on the regular Lufthansa flight to Moscow. There was nothing like a military coup at a destination for decimating a passenger list. What Arkady still didn’t understand was why leaders of the new Emergency Committee were allowing planes to land at all.
Stas limped off the Munich flight with a tape recorder and a camera. He was full of perverse good cheer. “Such a glorious idiocy. The Emergency Committee didn’t arrest any of the democratic leaders. Now it’s a standoff. The tanks are in Moscow, but they just keep