The Troika Dolls - Miranda Darling [166]
Stevie herself couldn’t stop smiling. Although Kozkov was dead, nothing could change that. The time to mourn the dead would come, but Anya was alive and right now it was about rejoicing in the living.
While Anya and her mother chattered away, Vadim said very little. Stevie watched his face closely. He was so pale she could see the faint blue veins under his skin. She doubted he would ever be the same again, and moved closer to the boy.
She held out a cigarette. ‘Sometimes you have to let it go or it consumes you. My father was murdered too, and my mother.’
Vadim took the cigarette and fixed haunted eyes on Stevie. ‘Didn’t you want revenge?’
‘I still have no idea who did it. I’ll find out one day . . . It was a case of mistaken identity.’ She shrugged her shoulders at her young friend. ‘What was I going to do, run around killing people at random to satisfy my rage? Then the assassins would have destroyed me as well as my parents. I suppose I went into this line of work instead.’
Vadim stared past her and out at the milling crowds on the platform. ‘I saw Gregori Maraschenko, you know, one day in Moscow. I went looking for him at The Boar and I followed him for three days. I wanted to kill him. I carried my knife in my jacket and walked the streets.’
This was exactly what Stevie had been afraid of.
‘On the third day,’ Vadim continued, ‘he went to the banya and I followed him in. It was so steamy in there. I managed to get very close, on the same bench. We sat there sweating together for half an hour. My mind was crazy.’
Vadim drew heavily on the cigarette. ‘I wanted to kill him for what he had done to Anya. I wanted to slit his throat. But my knife was in the locker. I think I was almost glad it was—then I told myself I was a coward for feeling glad. What brother wouldn’t avenge his sister? I wasn’t worthy of being called a brother. My heart wanted to shrivel and die. I was so angry and so powerless.’
His free hand was shredding a paper napkin into snowflakes. ‘I even thought about killing myself. Idiot, neh?’
Stevie smiled back. ‘Idiot.’
‘Then I saw another man come in. Even in the mist I could see he had the most frightening eyes—black and small and cold. Maraschenko got up and went to sit on a stone slab in the centre of the banya. When a new burst of steam filled the room the man with the eyes got up too. He walked over to Maraschenko. I thought maybe they were friends.’ Vadim’s voice grew hoarse. ‘Suddenly he grabbed him by the hair and cracked his skull against the stone. He did it twice. It made a sound like billiard balls.’
Vadim was shaking and Stevie wasn’t surprised. ‘Then he dropped his head, wiped his hands on his towel and walked out. Maraschenko was unconscious or maybe dead already, bleeding from the back of the head. The heat in the banya made the blood flow faster and faster. It started to drip and pool. I—’ He looked as if he might be sick. Instead he downed his drink. ‘I left after that,’ he whispered.
Stevie was staring at the Bahnhof clock. She didn’t know what to say. Maraschenko’s killer might have been Orlikov himself—Vadim’s description of his eyes was unmistakable. Maraschenko’s link to Dragoman had been enough to get him killed. It was happening already.
Stevie felt so relieved Vadim had not killed the man, but horrified at what had happened. And yet it was all part of the plan she had set in motion.
Was she now a killer, too? Shouldn’t she feel guilty?
She did feel guilty, and sick.
Only by looking across at little Anya’s happy face and Irina’s tears could she numb the horrid feeling in her throat. Every action had a reaction and they were all living out the consequences of their choices, good and bad.
‘How is Masha Ivanovna?’ she asked finally.
Vadim’s face cleared. ‘Very busy saving Russia.’ He shrugged. ‘The eternal optimist. She has finished her book on the lives of ordinary Russians. She didn’t know whether she should leave Gregori Maraschenko’s story in it, out of respect for my family. I told her she must.’ Vadim brushed his hair nervously from his eyes. ‘I think