Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [45]
“I’m laughing, so I must feel a little better.”
“I’ve never heard you laugh before. It’s a nice sound.”
“Yes.” Polina slowly rocked back and forth. Her smile sank. “At medical school we used to ask each other, ‘What is the worst way to die?’ After Rudy, I think I know. Do you believe in hell?”
“There’s a question out of the blue.”
“Well, you’re like the devil. You take a secret glee in your work, like you’ve come to grab the damned. That’s why Jaak likes to work with you.”
“Why do you work with me?” He didn’t think she was going to quit now.
Polina took a moment. “You let me do things right. You let me get involved.”
Arkady knew this was the problem. The morgue was a simple theater of black and white, dead or alive. Polina had been full of analytical detachment, a blind determinism perfect for labeling the dead as so many cold and inert specimens. But a pathologist who became involved in the investigation outside the morgue started seeing bodies as living people, and then the cadaver on the table became the picture of someone’s worst and ultimate breath on earth. He had robbed her of professional distance. In a way he had corrupted her.
“Because you’re smart.” Arkady left it at that.
She said, “I’ve been thinking about what you said last night. Kim had a gun. Why use two different kinds of bombs on Rudy? It’s such a complicated way to kill him.”
“The point wasn’t just to kill him; the point was to burn him. Or burn all the records and computer disks and every piece of information that would connect him to someone else. I’m more sure of that all the time.”
“So I am a help.”
“A Hero of Red Labor.” He toasted her.
Polina drank her cognac and leveled her gaze. “I heard that you left once,” she said. “There was a woman, I heard.”
“Where do you hear all these things?”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“I don’t know what people say. I was out of the country for a short time and then I came back.”
“The woman?”
“Did not come back.”
“Who was right?” Polina asked.
Now that, Arkady thought, was a question asked only by the very young.
Irina said, “The Soviet Defense Minister conceded that Soviet troops attacked civilians in Baku to prevent the overthrow of the Azerbaijan Communist regime. The army had stood aside when Azeri activists rioted against Armenians in the capital, but went into action when an Azeri crowd threatened to burn down Party headquarters. Tanks and troops broke through blockades set up by anti-Communist militants and stormed into the city, firing dumdum bullets and spraying apartment buildings without provocation. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of civilians are estimated to have died in the assault. Although the KGB had spread rumors that Azeri militants would be armed with heavy machine guns, only hunting rifles, knives and pistols were found among the dead.”
Arkady had left Polina and hurried home in time to catch Irina’s first broadcast. Drinks with one woman, then rushing to the voice of another. What a sophisticated life, he thought.
“Official justification for the military operation was the mob violence against Armenians by militants who showed documents identifying themselves as leaders of the Azeri Popular Front. Since the Front does not issue such documents, a KGB provocation is once again suspected.”
While Arkady listened, he changed to a dry shirt and jacket.
Who was right? She was. He was. There was no choice, no right or wrong, no black or white. He wished for one blinding ray of certainty; even to be wrong would be a relief. He had stepped back in his memory so many times his tracks would have worn through stone, and he still didn’t know what else he could have done. He had told Polina, “We’ll never know.”
Irina said, “Increasingly, Moscow has cited nationalist tensions to justify the continued presence of Soviet Army troops in different republics, including the Baltic states, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and the Ukraine. Tanks and missile launchers that were supposed to be scrapped in the arms-control agreement