Red Square Read Free Page B

deceased.' Jaak reached into Gary's pockets to pull out handfuls of half-burned Deutschmarks and dollars.
        It was going to be a warm day. Already the dewiness of dawn was turning to beads of sweat. Arkady squinted at a sunlit banner that hung limply across the top of the western tower. 'NEW WORLD HOTEL!' He imagined the banner filling with a breeze and the tower sailing away like a brigantine. He needed sleep. He needed Kim.
        Polina knelt on the ground on the passenger side of the Audi.
        'More blood,' she called.
     
    As Arkady unlocked the door to Rudy Rosen's flat, Minin pressed forward with a huge Stechkin machine pistol. Definitely not standard issue.
        Arkady admired the weapon but he worried about Minin. 'You could saw a room in half with that thing,' he told him. 'But if someone's here, they would have opened the door or blown it off with a shotgun. A pistol won't help now. It just scares the ladies.' He dispensed a reassuring nod to the two street sweepers he'd gathered as legal witnesses to the search. They answered with shy glimpses of steel teeth. Behind them, a pair of forensic technicians pulled on rubber gloves.
        Search the home of someone you don't know and you're an investigator, Arkady thought. Search the home of someone you do know and you're a voyeur. Odd. He'd watched Rudy Rosen for a month but never been inside before.    
        Upholstered front door with peephole. Living/dining room, kitchen, bedroom with TV and VCR, another bedroom turned into an office, bathroom with whirlpool. Bookcases with hardback collections of culture (Gogol, Dostoyevsky), biographies of Brezhnev and Moshe Dayan, stamp albums and back issues of Israel Trade , Soviet Trade , Business Week and Playboy . At once, the forensic technicians began a survey, Minin one step behind them to make sure nothing disappeared.
        'Don't touch a thing, please,' Arkady told the street sweepers, who stood reverentially in the middle of the room as if they had stepped into the Winter Palace.
        A kitchen cabinet held American scotch and Japanese brandy, Danish coffee in aluminum-foil bags; no vodka. In the refrigerator, smoked fish, ham, pât é and butter with a Finnish label, a cool jar of sour cream and, in the freezer, a chocolate bar and an ice-cream cake with pink and green frosting in the shape of flowers and leaves. It was the sort of cake that used to be sold in common milk shops, and was now a fantasy found only in the most special buffets - a little less rare, say, than a Faberg é egg.
        Kilims on the living-room floor. On the wall, matched portrait photographs of a violinist in formal clothes and his wife at a piano. Their faces had the same roundness and seriousness as Rudy's. The front window looked down on Donskaya Street and, over rooftops, north towards the giant Ferris wheel slowly rolling nowhere in Gorky Park.
        Arkady moved on to an office with a Finnish maple desk, Stairmaster, telephone and fax. A power-surge protector at the outlet, so Rudy had used his laptop computer in the flat. The drawers held paper-clips, pencils, stationery from Rudy's hotel shop, savings book and receipts.
        Minin opened a closet and slapped aside American tracksuits and Italian suits. 'Check the pockets,' Arkady said. 'Check the shoes.'
        In the chest of drawers in the bedroom even the underwear had foreign labels. Bristle brush on the television set. On the night table, travelogue videotapes, satin sleep mask and alarm clock. A sleep mask was what Rudy needed now, Arkady thought. Safe but not foolproof, was that what he had told Rudy? Why did anyone ever believe him?
        One of the street sweepers had followed him as silently as if she moved in felt slippers. She said, 'Olga Semyonovna and I share a flat. We have Armenians and Turkmen in the other rooms. They don't speak to each other.'
        'Armenians and Turks? You're lucky they don't kill each other,' Arkady said. He