Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [4]
“I’m in your hands.”
“You’re only in my hands because we have enough to put you in a camp.”
“Circumstantial evidence of nonviolent crimes. Incidentally, another way to say ‘nonviolent crimes’ is ‘business.’ The difference between a criminal and a businessman is that the businessman has imagination.” Rudy glanced at the rear seat. “I have enough technology here for a space station. You know, that transmitter of yours is the only thing in this car that doesn’t work.”
“I know, I know.” Arkady lifted the contact prongs and gently slipped the batteries back in. “There was a woman in your car. Who is she?”
“I don’t know. I really don’t know. She had something for me.”
“What?”
“A dream. Big plans.”
“Is greed involved?”
Rudy let a modest smile shine. “I hope so. Who wants a poor dream? Anyway, she’s a friend.”
“You don’t seem to have any enemies.”
“Chechens aside, no, I don’t think I do.”
“Bankers can’t afford enemies?”
“Arkady, we’re different. You want justice. No wonder you have enemies. I have smaller aims like profit and pleasure, the way sane people live around the world. Which of us helps other people more?”
Arkady hit the transmitter with the recorder.
“I love to watch Russians fix things,” Rudy said.
“You’re a student of Russians?”
“I have to be, I’m a Jew.”
The spools started to roll. “It’s working,” Arkady announced.
“What can I say? Once again I’m amazed.”
Arkady laid transmitter and recorder under the bills. “Be careful,” he said. “If there’s trouble, shout.”
“Kim keeps me out of trouble.” When Arkady opened the door to leave, Rudy added, “In a place like this, you’re the one who has to be careful.”
As the line outside pressed forward, Kim pushed it back with rapid shoves. He gave Arkady a black stare as he brushed by.
Jaak had bought a shortwave radio that hung like a space-age valise from his hand. The detective wanted to stow his purchase in the Zhiguli.
On the way to the car, Arkady said, “Tell me about this radio. Shortwave, long-wave, medium-wave? German?”
“All waves.” Jaak squirmed under Arkady’s gaze. “Japanese.”
“Did they have any transmitters?”
They passed an ambulance that offered vials of morphine in solution and disposable syringes still in sterile American cellophane. A biker from Leningrad sold acid from his sidecar; Leningrad University had a reputation for the best chemists. Someone Arkady had known ten years before as a pickpocket was now taking orders for computers; Russian computers, at least. Tires rolled out of a bus straight to the customer. Women’s shoes and sandals were arrayed on tiptoe on a dainty shawl. Shoes and tires were on the march, if not into the daylight, at least into the twilight.
There was a white flash and a gust of glass from behind them, in the middle of the market. Perhaps a camera bulb and a broken bottle, Arkady thought, though he and Jaak started to return in the direction of the disturbance. A second flash erupted like a firework that caught each face in recoil. The flash subsided to an everyday orange, the sort of fire men start in an oil can to warm their hands on a winter’s eve. Little stars rose and danced in the sky. The acrid smell of plastic was tinged by the heady bouquet of gasoline.
Some men staggered back with sleeves on fire and, as the crowd spread and Arkady pushed through, he saw Rudy Rosen riding a blazing phaeton, upright, face black, hair aflame, hands clasped to the wheel, brilliant in his own glow but motionless within the thick, noxious storm clouds that whipped from the interior and out the gutted windows of his car. Arkady got near enough to look through the windshield at Rudy’s eyes sinking into the smoke. He was dead. There was that silence, that gutted gaze in the middle of the flames.
Around the burning car other cars were moving. Spilling rugs, gold coins, VCRs, a mass evacuation flowed to the gate. The ambulance lumbered off, plowing over a figure in its headlights, followed by a Chechen motorcade. Cycles