Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [76]
“What’s so hilarious?”
“Pardon?” Arkady came out of his reverie.
“What’s so hilarious?” The place across the table had been taken by a large man with a florid face and crisp white shirt. A small wool hat perched on a head as bald as a kneecap. He held a beer in one hand and protected a whole roast chicken with the other. Arkady noticed that the entire table was elbow-to-elbow with people hoisting drumsticks, ribs, pretzels, golden beers.
“You’re enjoying yourself?” the man with the chicken asked.
Arkady shrugged rather than unveil a Russian accent.
The man’s eyes darted to his Soviet coat. He said, “You like the beer, the food, the life? It’s nice. We worked forty years to have it so.”
The rest of the table paid no attention. Arkady realized he hadn’t eaten anything except an ice cream. The table was so awash in food that he almost didn’t need to. The band slid from Strauss to Louis Armstrong. He finished the beer. Of course there were beer bars in Moscow, but there were no steins or glasses, so patrons filled cardboard milk cartons. As Jaak would have said, “Homo Sovieticus wins again.”
Not that everyone recognized the fact. When Arkady opened a map, the man across the table nodded, suspicions confirmed.
“Another East German. It’s an invasion.”
Retreating, Arkady headed toward the nearest buildings over the tree-line, which proved to be offices for IBM and the tower of a Hilton. The lobby of the hotel could have been an Arab tent. Each chair and divan was occupied by a man in flowing white kaffiyeh and djellaba. Many were elderly, with canes, walkers and worry beads; Arkady assumed they had come to Munich for medical attention. Dark boys in Western slacks and button-downs played tag. Their sisters and mothers were in Arab dress; married women wore ornate plastic masks showing only their chins and brows and trailed perfume through the air.
In the hotel driveway, one young Arab was photographing another beside a new red Porsche. When the boy posing sat on a fender, the car’s alarm erupted with a blaring horn and blinking lights. While the boys chased around the car and beat on the hood, the doorman and porter watched with expressively blank faces.
Arkady found the route he had come by cab, following the east side of the park to the museums on Prinzregentenstrasse. Cars flashed past under street lamps. The sky, however, was already darker than a Moscow summer night, and the classical façade of the Haus der Kunst looked almost two-dimensional.
It occurred to him that the west side of the park was bordered by Königinstrasse, where Boris Benz lived. The houses were appropriately grand for a “Queen’s Street,” stone mansions set behind gardens of aromatic roses and gates with plaques that warned VORSICHT! BISSIGER HUND!
Benz’s address was between two enormous houses done in coquettish Jugendstil, the German answer to art nouveau. They looked like a pair of matrons peeping over fans. Squeezed in the middle was a garage that had been renovated as medical offices. The third-floor button was for Benz. Arkady pushed the button just in case. No answer.
On either side of the door was a panel of leaded glass for viewing visitors. Inside, on a side table, was a vase of dried cornflowers and three neat stacks of mail.
There was no answer when Arkady pushed the button for the office on the second floor. When he pushed the one for the first floor, a voice answered and Arkady said, “Das ist Herr Benz. Ich habe den Schlüssel verloren.” He hoped he’d said that he had lost his key.
The door chimed and opened. Arkady sorted quickly through the mail for the doctors, medical journals and advertisements for car care and tanning salons. The only letter for Benz