Red Square Read Free

near enough to look through the windscreen at Rudy's eyes sinking into
        the smoke. He was dead. There was that silence, that gutted gaze in the middle of the flames.
        Around the burning car other cars were moving. Spilling rugs, gold coins, VCRs, a mass evacuation flowed to the gate. The ambulance lumbered off, ploughing over a figure in its headlights, followed by a Chechen motorcade. Motorbikes split into several streams, searching for gaps in the site fence.
        Yet some men stayed and, as the stars drifted overhead, fought to catch them. Arkady himself leaped and plucked from the air a burning Deutschmark, then a dollar, then a franc, all lined with worms of burning gold.

 
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
     
    Although the ground was still in shadow, Arkady could see that the site was a layout of four twenty-storey towers around a central square - three of the towers were faced in pre-cast concrete while the last was still in a skeletal girders-and-crane phase that in the hopeful light of dawn appeared both gargantuan and frail. On the ground floors he supposed there would be restaurants, cabarets, perhaps a cinema, and in the middle of the square, when the earthmovers and cement mixers were gone, a view of coaches and taxis. Now, however, there were a forensic van, the Zhiguli and the black shell of Rudy Rosen's Audi sitting on a black carpet of singed glass. The Audi's windows were hollow and the heat of the fire had exploded and then burned the tyres, so at least it was the stench of burnt rubber that was strongest. As if listening, Rudy Rosen sat stiffly upright.
        'Glass seems to be evenly distributed,' Arkady said. Polina followed with her pre-war Leica and took a picture every other step. 'Glass is melted closer to the car, which is a four-door Audi 1200. Left doors shut. Bonnet shut, headlights burned out. Right doors shut. Boot shut, rear lights burned out.' There was nothing to do but get on his hands and knees. 'Fuel tank is blown. Silencer separated from exhaust pipe.' He got up. 'Numberplate black now but a Moscow number is legible and identified as property of Rudik Rosen. By the wide spread of glass, origin of fire seems to have been inside the passenger compartment, not out.'
        'Pending expert reports, of course,' Polina said to maintain her reputation for disrespect. Young and tiny, the pathologist wore one coat and one smirk summer and winter, her hair piled high and stabbed ferociously with pins. 'You should get the thing up on a lift.'
        Arkady's comments were written down by Minin, a detective with the deep-set eyes of a maniac. Behind Minin a cordon of militia marched across the site. Arson dogs dragged their handlers around the towers, racing from pillar to post, raising their legs.
        'Exterior paint is peeled,' Arkady went on. 'Chrome on the door handle is peeled.' There go prints, he thought; nevertheless, he wrapped a handkerchief around his hand to open the front passenger door.
        'Thank you,' Polina said.
        At Arkady's touch the door swung open, spilling ash on his shoes.
        'Interior of the car is gutted,' he continued. 'Seats are burned down to frames and springs. Steering wheel seems to have melted and disappeared.'
        'Flesh is tougher than plastic,' Polina said.
        'Rear rubber floor mats melted around what appears to be puddled glass. Rear seat burned to springs. Charred computer battery and residue of non-ferrous metal. Flecks of gold probably from conductors.' Which was all that was left of the computer Rudy was so proud of. 'Metal shuttles from computer disks.' The megabytes of information. 'Covered with ash.' The file boxes.
        Reluctantly, Arkady moved to the front. 'Flash signs by the clutch. Fragments of charred leather. Plastic residue, batteries in dash compartment.'
        'Naturally. The heat was intense.' Polina leaned in to snap a shoe with her Leica. Two thousand degrees, at least.'
        'On the front