Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [43]
“What do you mean, ‘too much blood’?”
Polina shrugged; she had offered. “Describe the explosions when Rudy died,” she said. “What you saw, exactly.”
“Two bursts of flame,” Arkady said. “The first was a surprise. It was brilliant, white.”
“That was the red sodium-copper sulfate device. The second burst?”
“The second was bright, too.”
“As bright?”
“Less.” He had run them together in his mind before. “We didn’t have a clear view, but maybe more orange than white. Then we saw burning money rising in the smoke.”
“So two bursts of flame, but only one hot enough to leave a flash point in the car. Did you smell anything after the second burst?”
“Gasoline.”
“The gas tank?”
“That blew later.” Arkady watched a brawl at the kiosk, where a customer claimed he had been given only four packs for the month, not five. A pair of soldiers carried him like a suitcase, one arm around his neck and one around his crotch, and threw him into a van. “Gary told us that Kim threw a bomb into the car. It could have been a Molotov cocktail, a bottle of gasoline.”
“It was better than that,” Polina said.
“What’s better?”
“Gelled gasoline. Gelled gasoline sticks and burns and burns. That’s why there was so much blood.”
Arkady still didn’t understand. “Before, you said burning didn’t cause bleeding.”
“I went over Rosen again. He simply didn’t have the number or kind of cuts to produce all that blood inside the car and out. I know that the lab said it was his blood type, but this time I checked it myself. It wasn’t his type. It wasn’t even human blood. It was cattle blood.”
“Cattle blood?”
“Drain the blood through a cloth and use the serum. Mix it with gasoline and a little coffee or baking soda. Stir until it gels.”
“A bomb of blood and gasoline?”
“It’s a guerrilla technique. I would have caught on faster if the lab result had been correct,” Polina said. “You can thicken gasoline with soap, eggs or blood.”
“That must be why they’re in short supply,” Arkady said.
The couple behind Polina were listening intently. “Don’t get eggs,” the woman warned. “The eggs have salmonella.”
The bureaucrat countered, “That is a baseless rumor started by persons who intend to keep all the eggs to themselves.”
The line shuffled forward another step. Arkady wanted to stamp his feet to keep warm. Polina was in open sandals, but she could have been a plaster bust for her reaction to rain, blood and the insanity of the wait. Her entire attention was focused on the nearing scales. The rain fell harder. Drops ran along the contour of her temple and webbed the pagoda curve of her hair.
“Are they selling by weight or by count?” she asked her neighbors.
“Dear,” the old woman said, “it all depends whether they have rigged scales or little beets.”
“Do we get beet greens, too?” Polina asked.
“There’s another line for greens,” the woman said.
Arkady said, “You did a good job. I’m sorry it had to be so gruesome.”
Polina said, “If it bothered me, I’d be in the wrong profession.”
“Maybe I’m in the wrong profession,” Arkady said.
Most of the transactions at the scales were mute and sullen exchanges of rubles and ration chits for beets, though every fourth or fifth erupted into an accusation of cheating and a demand for more, denunciations that sang with frustration, hysteria and rage, which drew the line anxiously closer until soldiers pushed it back and the customer on, so that there was a constant eddy and pulse within the line. At least the rain washed the beets, showing their scarlet under a lamppost. In its light Arkady could see that the sacks heaped behind the scales exhibited the effects of their rough passage from the country, dirt and bruises staining the wet burlap. The wetter sacks were smeared bright red, the ground around them was steeped red, and the scales were dyed a winy vermilion speckled with the skins of beets. In the reflection off the water running from the sacks, the entire park glowed in a spreading lens of red. Polina stared down at her toes and open sandals,