Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [167]
“Wait!” Minin said and offered the phone to Arkady again.
Max was laughing. “I get the point. You win.”
“Where are you?”
“Minin will bring you.”
“He can lead me. I have a car.”
“I’d better talk to him,” Max said.
Minin listened grimly before he returned the receiver to the hall. “You don’t have to lead me,” Arkady said. “Just tell me where he is.”
“There’s going to be a curfew tonight. In case there are any roadblocks, it’s better if we all go.”
Kim broke into a grin bursting with personality. “Hurry up. I want to come back and find the girl on the scooter.” It was the first time he had opened his mouth and it wasn’t what Arkady wanted to hear.
“We saw Polina,” Minin said. His tone was judicial, though his tongue left a brief dab on his lips. “You look like shit. You look like you’ve been rolling on the ground. They didn’t treat you too well in Germany.”
“Travel is wearing,” Arkady said. Switching the bag from hand to hand, he slipped out of the soiled jacket. The back of his shirt was black with old blood and red with new. Kim sucked in an audible breath. From the closet, Arkady selected a wrinkled but cleaner jacket, the one he had worn to the cemetery. From its pocket, he pulled his heirloom, his father’s revolver, the Nagant, an ancient firearm with a hammer and wooden grip as curved as apostrophes. The four rounds, thick as silver nuggets, were in the pocket, too. One arm through the handle of the bag, he swung open the cylinder and loaded it. He said, “How many times have I told you, Minin? Don’t just check the closets, check the clothes too.”
Minin and Arkady waited in the courtyard while Kim went for the motorcycle. The sky was dark. Lamplight and rain intensified the blue of the church and lent the windows of the house a pastel oiliness.
Arkady wondered whether the television hypnotist was on tonight. He said, “I have a neighbor who collects my mail and puts food in my refrigerator. There was no mail and no food.”
Minin said, “Maybe she knew you were away.”
Arkady let the inadvertent admission gape for a while. The church gutters were stopped up, as usual, and the overflow fell in bright threads. He said, “She lived right below me. She always heard me walking around, and she probably heard you.”
Minin’s face played in and out of the shadow of his hat.
“Why don’t you just say you’re sorry?” Arkady asked. “She had a bad heart. Maybe you didn’t mean to scare her.”
“She interfered.”
“Pardon?”
“She overstepped. She knew she was sick, I didn’t. I take no responsibility for the consequences of her own actions.”
“You mean you’re sorry?”
Minin put the barrel of the Stechkin where the bag covered Arkady’s heart. “I mean shut up.”
“Do you feel left out?” Arkady asked more softly. “That I’m depriving you? That they’re having a revolution without us, you or me?”
Minin tried to be silent, but he shifted with the feet of an ardent spear-carrier. “I’ll be there when the action starts.”
Kim arrived on his motorcycle and followed them through the low arch of the alley. At the car, Minin jumped in on the passenger side. “I’m not going to let you slip away again. And I’m not going to ride with that lunatic anymore.”
Arkady considered compromises. If he refused to go, he wouldn’t find Albov. Also, he had pressed Minin about as far as he could. “Put the gun in your left hand,” he said.
When Minin did as he was told, the selector catch of the Stechkin was above his top knuckle. Arkady reached across and turned the catch down from automatic to safe. He said, “Keep your left hand where I can see it.”
The Zhiguli had a manual shift. Arkady rested the canvas bag by his left foot and laid the Nagant on his lap.
Kim led the way up Tverskaya in the central, official lane. Rain had chased most shoppers off the sidewalk. At Pushkin Square, a crowd carried banners in the direction of the Parliament