Gorky Park

  ‘Thanks for reminding me. Yes, of the murder victims.’

  Using both hands, Arkady laid out the pictures of Borodin and of Valerya Davidova sorting fur. Golodkin’s eyes were a marvel, darting from the girl to Osborne, to the circled bandit to Osborne in the crowd, to Arkady and back to the pictures.

  ‘You begin to see how it looks, Feodor. Two people come from thousands of kilometers away and live here secretively for a month or two – hardly enough time to make enemies except for a business competitor. Then they are killed by someone sadistic, a social parasite. See, I’m describing a very rare bird – a capitalist, you might say. You, in fact, and you are the bird in my hand. The pressures brought on an investigator to close out this sort of case are enormous. Another investigator would need nothing more. You were seen arguing with the victims. You were seen killing them? That’s a very fine line.’

  Golodkin stared up at Arkady. Eel and eeler. Arkady sensed this would be his only chance, before the hook was coughed up.

  ‘If you killed them, Feodor, you will receive the death sentence for homicide aggravated by profit. If you perjure yourself, you’ll get ten years. If I as much as think you’re lying to me, I’ll send you away for all those minor matters we talked about before. The truth is, Feodor, you’re not going to have any special status in camp. The other convicts have very strong views about informers, especially unprotected informers. The truth is, Feodor, you can’t afford to go to camp. You’ll have your throat slit before the first month is out, and you know it.’

  Golodkin clamped his mouth shut, the hook deep in his guts now and not to be disgorged. He was landed and exhausted and losing color, all the vodka-courage gone.

  ‘I’m your only hope, Feodor, your only chance. You must tell me everything about Osborne and the Siberians.’

  ‘I wish I was drunk.’ Golodkin slumped forward until his forehead rested on the table, as if his face were in the dirt.

  ‘Tell me, Feodor.’

  Golodkin wasted some time protesting his innocence, then began his tale, his head between his hands.

  ‘There’s a German, a guy named Unmann that I know. I used to get him girls. He said he had a friend who’d pay a lot for ikons, and he introduced me at this party to Osborne.

  ‘Osborne didn’t really want ikons. What he wanted was a church chair or a chest with religious panels. For a big chest, good quality, he promised me two thousand dollars.

  ‘I spend the whole fucking summer looking for a chest and finally get one. Osborne shows up in December, just like he said. I call to give him the good news, and suddenly the prick gives me the brush-off and hangs up. I go right over to the Rossiya, just in time to see Osborne and Unmann coming out, and I follow them to Sverdlov Square, where they meet up with a pair of country bumpkins, the ones in your pictures. Unmann and Osborne split, and I follow the other two and talk to them.

  ‘There they are in the middle of Moscow reeking of turpentine. I know what’s up, and I tell them so. They’re fixing up their own chest to sell Osborne while I’m left in the cold with mine. I had the deal first and I had expenses. Fair is fair, I want half of what they get – a commission, like.

  ‘The guy, this Siberian ape, puts his arm around me real friendly and suddenly there’s a knife at my neck. He puts this knife right through the collar of my coat to my throat in Sverdlov Square and says he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but he better not see me again and Osborne better not either. Can you believe it? Sverdlov Square. It was the middle of January – I remember because it was the Old New Year. Everyone’s drunk, and I could bleed to death and nobody would notice. Then the Siberian laughs and they just walk off.’

  ‘You didn’t know they were dead?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘No!’ Golodkin picked his head up. ‘I never saw them again. You think I’m crazy?’

  ‘You got up the nerve to call Osborne as soon as you heard he was back in town.’

  ‘Just testing the water. I still have the chest, I can’t sell it to anybody. You can’t smuggle out a chest. The only customer was Osborne. I don’t know what he had in mind.’

  ‘But you met Osborne in Gorky Park yesterday,’ Arkady tried.

  ‘That wasn’t Osborne. I don’t know who it was, he never gave me a name. Just some American who called and said he was interested in ikons, and I thought maybe I could still unload the chest. Or break it up and sell part. All he wanted to do was take a walk through the park.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ Arkady pressed.

  ‘I swear I’m not. He was some fat old guy with stupid questions. He spoke great Russian, I’ll say that, but I’m pretty much of an expert at spotting foreigners. So we walked through most of the park and stopped at a muddy field.’

  ‘On the north side of the park off the path?’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, I thought maybe he wanted some privacy to ask about a girl, having a party, understand, but he starts in about some exchange student, an American named Kirwill I’ve never heard of. I only remember now because he kept asking. I told him, I meet a lot of people. That was it. The jerk walks off’ – Golodkin snapped his fingers – ‘just like that. Anyway, as soon as I saw him I knew he wasn’t serious about buying ikons.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘He was so fucking poor. All his clothes were Russian.’

  ‘Did he describe what this Kirwill looked like?’

  ‘Skinny, he said. Red hair.’

  Everything was coming Arkady’s way. Another American name. Osborne and a black marketeer. Two open sesames. He telephoned Major Pribluda. ‘I want information on an American with the last name of Kirwill. K-i-r-w-i-l-l.’

  Pribluda took his time answering. ‘This sounds more like my business,’ he finally said.

  ‘I agree absolutely,’ Arkady said.

  A specific alien was under investigation. How could there be any doubt who should investigate him?

  ‘No,’ Pribluda said, ‘I’ll give you more rope. You send your Detective Fet around, I’ll give him whatever I have.’

  Naturally, Pribluda would release information only if it came with his own informant, Arkady knew. Good. He reached Fet at the Ukraina, then for an hour played with matches on a sheet of paper while Golodkin sipped from his bottle.

  Chuchin wandered into the interrogation room and gawked at the sight of his own informer with another investigator. Arkady brusquely told the investigator for Special Cases that if he had any complaint, to take it up with the Prosecutor, and Chuchin rushed out. Golodkin was impressed. Finally, Fet arrived bearing a briefcase and the air of a reluctantly invited guest.

  ‘Maybe the chief investigator would care to fill me in.’ He adjusted his steel-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Later. Take a seat.’

  If Pribluda wanted a report from Fet, then Arkady would give him a good one. Golodkin liked the rebuff of the detective, Arkady saw. He was getting his bearings, adjusting to a new loyalty. Arkady emptied the briefcase of photostats. There were more than he’d expected. Pribluda was generous with what he called ‘rope.’

  There were actually two dossiers.

  The first read:

  U.S.A. Passport. Name: James Mayo Kirwill. Birthdate: 4/8/52. Height: 5’11” [about 1.7m., Arkady calculated]. Wife: XXX. Minors: XXX. Birthplace: New York, U.S.A. Eyes: brown. Hair: red. Issue date: 7/5/74.

  The black-and-white passport photo showed a young, underweight man with deep-set eyes, wavy hair, a long nose and a small intense smile. The signature was tight and precise.

  Residence Visa. James Mayo Kirwill. Citizenship: U.S.A. Born same date, same place. Profession: student of linguistics. Object of stay: studies at Moscow State University. Dependents: none. Previous visits to U.S.S.R.: none. Relatives in U.S.S.R.: none. Home residence: 109 West 78 St., New York, New York, U.S.A.

  The same photo as in the passport was pasted in a box on the right side of the visa. An almost identical signature; its fastidiousness was striking.

  Bureau of Records, State University of Mos
cow. Enrolled Sept. 1974 for graduate studies in Slavic Languages.

  Grades uniformly high. A tutorial report full of praise, but . . .

  Komsomol Report. J. M. Kirwill mixes overmuch with Russian students, displays too great interest in Soviet domestic policies, mouths anti-Soviet attitudes. Rebuked by the Komsomol cell in his dormitory, Kirwill pretended to hold anti-American attitudes as well. Clandestine searches of his room uncovered material by the religious writer called Aquinas and a Cyrillic edition of the Bible.

  Committee for State Security. The subject was sounded out in his first year by fellow students for suitability for attention and was reported not worthy. In his second year a female faculty member attempted, at our directive, intimacy with the subject and was rejected. A male student was directed likewise without success. It was decided that the subject was not suitable for any positive endeavour and that only a negative list compiled by the organs of Security and Komsomol would be established. Reported for unwarranted fraternization with the subject were the Linguistic Students T. Bondarev, S. Kogan, and the Law Student I. Asanova.

  Ministry of Health, Polyclinic of State University of Moscow. The Student J. Kirwill received the following treatments: general antibiotics for gastroenteritis for his first four months; injections of vitamins C and E and sun-lamp therapy for influenza; late in the subject’s first year a tooth was pulled and replaced by a steel prosthetic tooth.

  On a dental chart the second upper left molar was inked in. There was no note of any root-canal work.

  Ministry of Interior. J. M. Kirwill exited from U.S.S.R. 12/3/76. Having displayed a temperament unsuitable for a guest of the U.S.S.R., this subject should not be permitted reentry.

  So this suspiciously ascetic student, Arkady thought, had had no problems with the weak left leg Levin found on the corpse called Red, apparently had no American dental work and never came back to Russia. On the other hand, he was the same age, same general physique, had the same steel molar and red hair, and knew Irina Asanova.

  Arkady showed the passport photo to Golodkin. ‘Recognize this man?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He may have had brown hair or red. You don’t see a lot of skinny Americans with red hair in Moscow, Feodor.’

  ‘I don’t know him.’

  ‘What about these university students? Bondarev? Kogan?’ He didn’t ask about Irina Asanova. Fet was showing enough interest.

  Arkady looked at the second dossier.

  U.S.A. Passport. Name: William Patrick Kirwill. Birth date: 23/5/30. Height: 5’11”. Wife: XXX Minors: XXX. Birthplace: New York, U.S.A. Hair: gray. Eyes: blue. Issue date: 23/2/77.

  The photo was of a middle-aged man with curly gray hair and eyes that must have been a dark blue. The nose was short and the jaw broad. No smile. Shirt and jacket fitted over what looked like a muscular chest and shoulders. The signature was tight and large.

  Tourist Visa William Patrick Kirwill. Citizenship: U.S.A. Born same date, same place. Profession: advertising. Object of stay: tourism. Traveling dependents: none. Previous visits to U.S.S.R.: none. Relatives in U.S.S.R.: none. Home residence: 220 Barrow St., New York, New York, U.S.A.

  Same signature and same photo.

  Entry to U.S.S.R. 18/4/77. Departure 30/4/77. Travel confirmed through Pan American Airways. Reservation confirmed at Hotel Metropole.

  Arkady held up the photo of William Patrick Kirwill.

  ‘Recognize this one?’

  ‘That’s him! That’s the one I met in the park yesterday.’

  ‘You said’ – Arkady took a second look for himself – ‘some fat old guy.’

  ‘Well, big, you know.’

  ‘His clothes again?’

  ‘Russian, very ordinary. All new. The way he speaks Russian he could have bought the clothes himself, but,’ Golodkin sneered, ‘why would anyone want to?’

  ‘How exactly did you know he wasn’t Russian?’

  Golodkin leaned forward, comrade to comrade. ‘I’ve sort of made a study of it, spotting tourists on the street. Possible buyers, see. Now, your average Russian always walks with his weight sort of above his belt. Your American walks with his legs.’

  ‘Really?’ Arkady looked at the photo again. He didn’t know much about American advertising; he did see a face that expressed brute strength, a man who had taken Golodkin straight to the clearing where the bodies had been found and where Arkady had lost a fight. Arkady remembered biting his assailant’s ear. ‘You saw his ears?’

  ‘I don’t think,’ Golodkin mused, ‘that there’s any big difference between Russian ears and Western ears.’

  Arkady called Intourist, which told him that three nights before, when Arkady was being expertly beaten, the tourist W. Kirwill had tickets for the Bolshoi. Arkady asked how to reach Kirwill’s Intourist guide. Kirwill was an individual tourist, he was told, and Intourist did not supply guides for groups of less than ten people.

  As Arkady hung up to face Fet’s limpetlike attention, Pasha returned from his visit to the Foreign Ministry. ‘We now have a witness who links two probable victims directly to a foreign suspect’ – Arkady phrased his remarks to his detectives grandiosely, the better for Fet to pass on to Pribluda. ‘It was ikons in a way, after all. It is unusual for us to hold a foreign suspect. I will have to discuss this with the prosecutor. Our witness may even provide us with a second-hand link to the third victim in the park. See, boys, it’s starting to fit together. Feodor here is the key to everything.’

  ‘I said I was on your side,’ Golodkin told Pasha.

  ‘What suspect?’ Fet couldn’t hold back.

  ‘The German,’ Golodkin answered eagerly. ‘Unmann.’

  Arkady hustled Fet and the briefcase out the door. It wasn’t hard because at long last Pribluda’s canary had a song to sing.

  ‘Is it true about this Unmann?’ Pasha asked.

  ‘Close enough,’ Arkady said. ‘Let’s see what you got.’

  The detective had brought all the Soviet itineraries for Osborne and Unmann for the last sixteen months, done in Ministry shorthand that made it seem as if they’d been trapped in revolving doors:

  J. D. Osborne, President, Osborne Furs Inc.

  Entry: New York-Leningrad, 2/1/76 (Hotel Astoria); Moscow, 10/1/76 (Hotel Rossiya); Irkutsk, 15/1/76 (guest of Irkutsk Fur Center); Moscow, 20/1/76 (Rossiya).

  Exit: Moscow-New York, 28/1/76

  Entry: New York-Moscow, 11/7/76 (Astoria).

  Exit: Moscow-New York, 22/7/76.

  Entry: Paris-Grodno-Leningrad, 2/1/77 (Astoria); Moscow, 11/1/77(Rossiya).

  Interesting, Arkady thought. Grodno was a railway town on the Polish border. Instead of flying, Osborne had gone by train all the way to Leningrad.

  Exit: Moscow-Leningrad-Helsinki, 2/2/77.

  Entry: New York-Moscow, 3/4/77 (Rossiya).

  Scheduled Exit: Moscow-Leningrad, 30/4/77.

  H. Unmann, German Democratic Republic, C.P.G.D.R.

  Entry: Berlin-Moscow, 5/1/76.

  Exit: Moscow-Berlin, 27/6/76.

  Entry: Berlin-Moscow, 4/7/76.

  Exit: Moscow-Berlin, 3/8/76.

  Entry: Berlin-Leningrad, 20/12/76.

  Exit: Leningrad-Berlin, 3/2/77.

  Entry: Berlin-Moscow, 5/3/77.

  There was no information about Unmann’s interior travel in Russia, but Arkady figured that Osborne and the German could have been in immediate contact for thirteen days of January ’76 in Moscow, for eleven days of July ’76 in Moscow, then this winter with strenuous coincidence from January 2 through 10 in Leningrad, and from January 10 to February 1 in Moscow (when the murders took place). On February 2 Osborne flew to Helsinki while Unmann seemed to have gone to Leningrad. They had now been in Moscow together since April 3. Yet for the past twelve months, Osborne had called Unmann only by public phone.

  Pasha also produced a glossy photo of the Irkutsk Fur Center. It was the same drab modern building as in the photo of Kostia Borodin. Arkady would have been surprised if it wasn’t. br />
  ‘Drive our friend Feodor back to his place,’ Arkady told Pasha. ‘There’s a special chest there I’d like you to pick up and take to the Ukraina for safekeeping. Here, and take the tapes, too.’

  He took the reels of Golodkin’s confession off the machine. To make room for them in his pockets, Pasha had to shift his small, prized pineapple.

  ‘You should have got one, too,’ he told Arkady.

  ‘It would be wasted.’

  ‘I’ll be available, Comrade Chief Investigator’ – Golodkin put on his hat and coat – ‘just for you.’

  When they were gone and he was alone, Arkady felt the excitement in himself running like a motor. He’d done it. This time, with Golodkin’s testimony and the threat of detention for one of the KGB’s favorite Americans, he could stuff the case down Pribluda’s throat.

  He put on his coat, went across the street and had a vodka, already regretting he hadn’t gone with Pasha so they could have shared a celebratory drink. ‘Here’s to us!’ They weren’t such bad investigators, after all. He remembered the pineapple. Pasha obviously had other plans of an earnestly erotic nature. Arkady found himself staring at the pay phone. There just happened to be a two-kopek piece in his hand. He wondered where Zoya was.

  The Gorky Park investigation had been too strange. He’d escaped, and now he was returning to routine. The pay phone was ballast, a connection to the total gravity that was Zoya. What if she’d left Schmidt and gone back to the apartment? He hadn’t been there in days, and had been moving around so much it would have been impossible for her to reach him. He shouldn’t hide from her; at least they should talk. He cursed himself for being weak, and dialed. The apartment phone was busy; she was there.

  On the metro, everyone was going home from work. Arkady was one of them and he felt almost normal, with hardly any pain in his chest. Melodramas filled his head. Zoya was repentant and he was magnanimous. She was still angry but he was tolerant. She was in the apartment by sheer chance and he talked her out of leaving. All the variations in between, and all ending in bed. Yet he wasn’t excited. The melodramas were sodden, cheap and uninteresting; he was only determined to act them out.