Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [175]
Dark eyes stared through the masks. Arkady had to admit that Max had defined the moment neatly; here his identification could condemn him.
“He’s lying,” Arkady said.
“Is his car a wreck? Is my friend dead?” In the clamor of the steps, Max’s whisper was all the more effective. “Renko is a dangerous man. Ask him whether he killed someone or not. See, he can’t deny it.”
“Who was your friend?” the smaller guard asked through his mask. Though he had no face to go by, Arkady thought he had heard the voice before. The guard could have been militia like the traffic officer at the bottom of the steps or a private bodyguard.
“Borya Gubenko, a businessman,” Max said.
“The Borya Gubenko?” The guard seemed to know the name. “He was a close friend?”
Max answered quickly, “Not close, but Borya sacrificed himself to get me here and the fact is that Renko brutally killed him and tried to do the same to me. Here we are surrounded by the cameras of the world. The world is watching these steps tonight and you can’t afford to let a reactionary agent like Renko near anybody. The main thing is to get him out of sight. If you do trip and accidentally shoot him in the back it will be no loss to the world.”
“I don’t do anything accidentally,” the guard assured him.
Max began to sidestep to continue his climb. “As I said, I have colleagues here.”
“I know you do.” He lifted off his mask. It was Beno, Makhmud’s grandson. His face was almost as dark as his mask, but it was lit by a smile. “That’s why we came, in case you tried to join them.”
The larger guard pulled Max back by the tail of his jacket.
Beno said, “We were looking for Borya too, but if Renko took care of him, then we can concentrate on you. We’ll start by asking about four cousins of mine who died at your apartment in Berlin.”
“Renko, what is he talking about?” Max asked.
“Then we’ll talk about Makhmud and Ali. We’ll make a night of it,” Beno said.
“Arkady,” Max appealed.
“But since it is going to get dangerous here in about an hour,” Beno said, “we’ll do our talking someplace else.”
Max wrested free of his jacket and ran diagonally down the steps. On the bottom one he slid on wax, crashed through the line of veterans, regained his feet and fought his way through the circle of worshipers around the priest. The larger Chechen raced after him. Beno waved calmly to a group in the crowd and pointed in Max’s direction. In his white shirt he was easy to follow.
Beno regarded Arkady. “Are you staying? It’s going to be bloody here.”
“I have friends here.”
“Get them out.” Beno slipped his cap back on and adjusted the holes over his eyes. He took one step down. “If you don’t … good luck.” Then he plunged, a dark figure, into the crowd.
Arkady climbed the rest of the way to the jostling lights at the top of the steps, arriving just as a spokesman emerged from the door protected by guards carrying bulletproof shields. Ringed by cameras, the spokesman was outside just long enough to announce that snipers had been seen on the roofs of nearby buildings. He ducked back inside, but the journalists stayed in clear sight to check notes.
Irina had appeared with the spokesman and remained. “You came,” she said.
“I said I would.”
Her eyes were set deep with exhaustion and brilliant with exhilaration at the same time. “Stas is inside on the second floor. He’s on the phone to Munich. They still haven’t cut the wires. He’s broadcasting right now.”
Arkady said, “You should be with him.”
“Do you want me to?”
“No, I want you with me.”
As more tracers fanned across the sky, the bullhorn insisted futilely on an absolute blackout. Cigarettes reappeared, along with gas masks—a perfect Russian blackout, Arkady thought. As the sound of patrol boats approached on the river, the lights of a convoy appeared on the far bank. The women on the outer line had started to sing, and parts of the crowd picked up the song and swayed, so that in the dark they