Red Square - Martin Cruz Smith [83]
Ludmilla gave Arkady a last sweep of her eyes and went out the door, leaving a vapor trail of suspicion.
Stas rewarded himself and Arkady with cigarettes. “That was our security system. We have cameras and bulletproof glass, but they don’t compare to Ludmilla. The DD is our deputy director for security.” He looked at his watch. “At two steps a second, thirty centimeters a step, Ludmilla will reach his office in exactly two minutes.”
“You have security problems?” Arkady asked.
“The KGB blew up the Czech section a few years ago. Some of our contributors have died from poisoning and electrocution. You could say we have anxiety problems.”
“But she doesn’t know who I am.”
“Undoubtedly she has seen the identification you left at the desk. Ludmilla knows who you are. She knows everything and understands nothing.”
“I’ve put you in a difficult situation, and I’m in the way of your work,” Arkady said.
Stas patted the bulletins. “Because of these? This is the daily budget of wire-service reports, newspapers and special monitoring reports. I’ll also talk to our correspondents in Moscow and Leningrad. From this flood of information, I will distill about a minute of truth.”
“The newscast is ten minutes long.”
“I make up the rest.” He added quickly, “Only joking. Let’s say I pad. Let’s say I don’t want to put Irina in the position of telling the Russian people that their country is a rotting corpse, a Lazarus beyond resurrection, and that they should lie down and not even try to get up.”
“You’re not joking now,” Arkady said.
“No.” Stas leaned back to release a long sigh of smoke; he actually wasn’t much wider than a bent chimney pipe, Arkady realized. “Anyway, I’ve got all day to trim the budget, and who knows what newsworthy disasters will happen between now and airtime?”
“The Soviet Union is fertile ground?”
“I must be modest. I only harvest, I do not sow.” Stas fell silent for a moment. “Speaking of the truth, I can well believe that the bloodiest, most cynical Soviet investigator could fall in love with Irina, jeopardize family and career, even kill for her. Afterwards, as I heard it, you received a Party reprimand, but the only punishment was a short tour in Vladivostok, where you had a soft job with the fishing fleet shuffling papers in an office. Then you were brought back to Moscow to help the most reactionary forces stifle business entrepreneurs. I heard that the prosecutor’s office could barely control you because you were such a well-connected Party member. So when you joined us at the beer garden yesterday, you were not the plump apparatchik that I expected. I noticed something else.” He rolled his chair forward; he moved more agilely on casters. “Give me your hand.”
Arkady did so and Stas spread the hand to look at scars that crossed the palm laterally. “Those aren’t paper cuts,” he said.
“Trawl wires. The fishing equipment is old, so the wires fray.”
“Unless the Soviet Union has changed more than I knew, hauling a bloody net is hardly the usual reward for a favorite of the Party.”
“I lost the trust of the Party a long time ago.”
Stas studied the scars like a palm reader. It struck Arkady that he had that heightened level of concentration that came from years of being either crippled or confined to bed. “Are you after Irina?” he asked.
“My business in Munich has nothing to do with her.”
“And you can’t tell me what that business is?”
“No.”
The phone rang. Although dust seemed to rise with the clamor, Stas equably regarded the phone as if it were waving from a distant shore. He checked his watch. “That’ll be the deputy director. Ludmilla has just told him that a notorious investigator from Moscow has infiltrated the station.” He studied Arkady. “It just occurred to me that you’re hungry.”
The Station Cafeteria was on the floor below. Stas led Arkady to a table, where a German waitress in a black-and-white dirndl took their orders for schnitzel and beer. Young, fresh-faced Americans went outside to the garden. The tables inside were occupied by an older, largely male émigré population that lingered