Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [173]
Arkady let himself be swept forward. As the pace quickened, he found himself running with the crowd down a side street that had been turned into a dead end by army trucks parked bumper to bumper. But the canvas cover of one truck was pulled back and people helped each other up, as if climbing a country stile.
On the other side of the truck, the wide Red Presnya embankment road curved between the river and the White House. It was a relatively new building, a four-story marble box, with two arms 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 rumor. 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 trash, and around votive candles stuck into 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 many ways to reach the White House because the bridge over the 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. 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 defense was festooned with flowers. The soldiers on board were boys with the hollowed eyes of determination and fear. The turrets swung toward 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 tape of heavy metal. 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 maneuvered 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 tricolor 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 toward the White House steps. As Arkady tried to catch up, he saw there was a defense 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 armor 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 vets stood in groups of ten. Above them was an inner cordon of men wearing dark ski masks over their faces and shouldering weapons. At the top of the steps strobe lights popped around microphone booms and still and video