Gorky Park

  Finally they came to a palisade of burned trees. ‘There’s no place left to go, the smoke is everywhere.’ Pribluda watched the encircling darkness. ‘Why did you lead us here? See, the trees are burning again.’

  ‘That’s not smoke, it’s night. Those are stars,’ Arkady said. ‘We’re safe.’

  The house was untouched by the fire. In a few days rains came, violent storms that drowned the fire, and afterward the guards played volleyball again and the plane brought fresh supplies, even ice cream. The plane also brought the prosecutor general, who never removed his raincoat and talked with his head down, his hands clasped behind his back.

  ‘You want the entire system of justice to bend to you. You’re only one man, one investigator, and not even an important one. Yet reason and persuasion have no effect on you at all. We know the full scope of the complicity of the woman Asanova with the foreign agent Osborne and the traitors Borodin and Davidova. We know that you are withholding information about the Asanova woman, and about your relationship with her. An investigator who does that deliberately spits in the face of his country. At the end of patience, you will learn, is a great anger.’

  The next week the doctor from the Serbsky Clinic returned. He made no effort to analyze Arkady but went off with Pribluda to what had been the vegetable garden. Arkady watched from an upstairs window. The doctor spoke to Pribluda, argued and finally insisted. He opened a briefcase to show Pribluda a needle the size used for horses, placed the briefcase in his hands and returned at once to the airstrip. The major walked off out of sight.

  In the afternoon Pribluda rapped on the door of Arkady’s room and invited him to go mushroom hunting. In spite of the heat he was wearing his jacket, and he had two large bandannas for the mushrooms.

  Less than a half hour’s walk was a copse that had escaped the fire and where rain had magically brought from dry ground new grass, flowers and, almost overnight, mushrooms. Many of the trees were great oaks over a hundred years old and arching high over a mossy floor. A mushroom hunt always focused the eyes on the twist of a leaf, the discolored bark of a tree, freshets of wildflowers, the industry of beetles. Mushrooms themselves took on the aspect of animals; camouflaged, still as rabbits, they waited for the hunter to pass. They popped into view and then seemed to vanish. They were best seen at the corner of the eye, a homely brown one here, among the leaves a stationary herd of orange mushrooms, another with the ruffed gill of a small dinosaur, yet another trying to hide a scarlet head. They were called not so much by name as whether they were best picked, salted, dried over a stove, fried, eaten plain, with bread, with sour cream, washed down with vodka – but what kind of vodka, clear, anise-flavored, caraway, cherry pit? A man hunting mushrooms had a whole year ahead to think of.

  As Pribluda happily rooted, Arkady studied his low forehead, the fringe of brown hair turning gray, his Russian thumb of a nose, warty jowls, butcher-block body, the badly cut jacket over his holster. The woods were deep in shadow before Arkady realized that they had missed dinner.

  ‘That’s all right,’ Pribluda said, ‘we’ll have a feast of mushrooms tomorrow. Here, see what I found.’ He held his bandanna open to display the varied collection inside, told Arkady in detail how each would be prepared, and at what holiday they would be served. ‘Let me see yours.’

  Arkady opened his bandanna and let his day’s pickings – all slender greenish-white mushrooms, sickly bright in the shadow – spill to the ground.

  Pribluda jumped back. ‘They’re all poison! Are you crazy?’

  ‘The doctor told you to kill me,’ Arkady said. ‘You didn’t do it on the way here, so will you do it on the way back? Are you waiting for the dark? Will it be a shot in the head or a needle in the arm? Why not mushrooms?’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘There won’t be any feast tomorrow, Major. I’ll be dead.’

  ‘He didn’t have orders, he just suggested it.’

  ‘Is he a KGB officer?’

  ‘Just a major, same as me.’

  ‘He gave you a briefcase.’

  ‘I buried it. That’s not the way I kill a man.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what way; a suggestion like that is an order.’

  ‘I’ve demanded a written order.’

  ‘You!’

  ‘Yes, me,’ Pribluda said defiantly. ‘You don’t believe me?’

  ‘So a written order will come tomorrow and then you’ll kill me. What difference does it make?’

  ‘I have a sense that there was some conflict over the decision. The doctor is too rash. I want definite written instructions. I’m not a killer. I’m as human as you are.’ Pribluda kicked the pale mushrooms away from his feet. ‘I am.’

  On the way back, Pribluda was more forlorn than Arkady. Arkady breathed deeply, as if he could drink the night down. He thought of the old enemy trudging alongside. Pribluda would shoot him when the written order came, but he had taken a chance by not doing it at the first word. It was a very small thing to a condemned man, but it was something to Pribluda, the sort of mark that stayed on one’s record.

  ‘Venus.’ Arkady pointed out a brilliant star on the horizon. ‘You’re from the country, Major, you must know the stars.’

  ‘This is no time for stargazing.’

  ‘Pleiades over there.’ Arkady pointed. ‘There’s Cepheus, Pisces above him, Aquarius over there. What a fantastic night. Except for the fire, this is the first night I’ve been out of the house since I got here. The tail of Taurus way over there.’

  ‘You should have been an astronomer.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  They walked for a while in silence, except for the sound of their tread, crackling when they crossed burned fields, rustling through grass. The house appeared, bright in its own yellow haze. Arkady made out men running from the house with flashlights and rifles. He stepped away from the brightness the better to see the night.

  ‘We’re all going out of orbit, Major. We’re all together. Someone pulls me, I pull you, who will you pull?’

  ‘There’s something I have to know,’ Pribluda said. ‘If we’d known each other a year ago, would you still have gone after me?’

  ‘For the two men you killed on the Kliazma River?’

  ‘Yes.’ Pribluda’s eyes fixed earnestly on Arkady.

  Arkady heard shouts, though the voices were too far off to be understood. His own long silence became embarrassing to him, and it was unbearable to Pribluda. ‘Maybe,’ Pribluda answered his own question, ‘if we’d been friends then, I wouldn’t have done it.’

  Arkady turned to the footsteps approaching and the flashlights’ glare sweeping over his face. ‘Anything’s possible,’ he said.

  From the remembered habit, one of the guards knocked Arkady to the ground with a rifle butt.

  ‘You have new visitors,’ another told Pribluda. ‘There’s been a change.’

  Chapter Three

  In October Arkady was flown to Leningrad and taken to what looked like an enormous museum but was in fact the Fur Palace. He was led to an amphitheater of tiers of desks surrounded by a white colonnade. On the stage five uniformed KGB officers – a general and four colonels – sat at a dais. The Palace smelled of dead meat.

  The general had an ironic tone. ‘Now, they tell me this is a love story.’ He sighed. ‘I would have preferred a simple tale of national interest.

  ‘Every year, Arkady Vasilevich, men come from all the nations of the world to sit at these desks and spend seventy million dollars for Soviet furs. The Soviet Union is the world’s leading exporter of furs. We always have been. The reason is not our minks, which are inferior to the Americans’, or lynx, which are too few, or karakul, which, after all, is sheepskin; the reason is Soviet sable. Gram for gram, sable is worth more than gold. How do you think the Soviet government reacts to losing its monopoly on sable?’

  ‘Osborne has only six sables,’ Arkady said.

  ‘I’m amazed, I’ve been amazed for months by how little you know. How ca
n so many men – the Moscow town prosecutor, the German Unmann, officers of State Security and the Militia – be dead, thanks to you, and you know so little?’ The general thoughtfully pulled on an eyelash. ‘Six sables? With the aid of Assistant Deputy Minister of Trade Mendel we have determined that with the collusion of his dead father, the Deputy Minister of Trade, the American Osborne spirited away seven other sables about five years ago. They were ordinary sables from production collectives around Moscow. The Mendels thought that Osborne could not breed high-quality animals. The young Mendel never would have dared help the American acquire Barguzins. That’s what he said, and I believed him.’

  ‘Where is Yevgeny Mendel now?’

  ‘He killed himself. He was a weak man. The point, however, is that Osborne had seven ordinary-quality sables five years ago. We estimate conservatively an average increase of fifty percent a year, giving him now about fifty sables. His conspiracy with the Siberian Kostia Borodin has gained him six more. Barguzin male sables. Using the same estimate, Osborne will have over two hundred high-quality sables in five years, over two thousand in ten. At that point I think we can forget about the historic Soviet monopoly on sable. Citizen Renko, why do you think you are still alive?’

  ‘Is Irina Asanova alive?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Comprehension spread through Arkady. He wasn’t going back to the house in the country, and he wasn’t going to be killed. ‘Then you can use us,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Now we need you.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Do you like to travel?’ the general asked gently, as if he were causing pain. ‘Have you ever wanted to see America?’

  Part Three

  NEW YORK

  Chapter One

  The first sight of America was of the running lights of a tanker, the night-fishing lights of trawlers.

  Wesley was tall, young and balding, smooth-featured as if rolled like a pebble, with a faint and meaningless expression of affability. He wore a three-piece suit of blue material. Scents of lime and mint came from Wesley’s mouth, cheeks and armpits. For the entire flight he had crossed his legs and smoked a pipe and answered Arkady’s questions with grunts. There was something awkward and milk-fed about Wesley, like a calf.

  The two men had a section of the plane to themselves. Most of the other passengers were ‘meritorious artists,’ musicians on tour who argued about the watches and perfumes they’d already bought at the Orly stopover. Arkady had not been allowed off the plane there.

  ‘You understand the word “responsibility”?’ Wesley asked in English.

  The passengers crowded to one side of the plane as they approached farmland, faint lines between the fields of dark.

  ‘That means you’re going to help me?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘It means that this is an FBI operation. It means,’ Wesley said earnestly, as if he were selling Arkady something, ‘that we are responsible for you.’

  ‘Who are you responsible to?’

  A childish excitement filled the plane as it flew over the first American community. It seemed to be a community of cars. Cars filled the streets and nestled close to houses that seemed too outsized for people.

  ‘I’m glad you asked that question.’ Wesley tapped his pipe into the ashtray in his armrest. ‘Extradition is a complicated matter, especially between the United States and the Soviet Union. We don’t need any more complications than we already have. You understand “complication”?’

  A steeper descent created the illusion of gathering speed. A great expressway would appear – an infinite track of colored signals – and then vanish into a maze of highways. It seemed impossible there could be so many paved roads. Where could they all go to? How many cars could there be? It looked as if the whole population below was driving or moving or evacuating.

  ‘In the Soviet Union a complication is anything you don’t want,’ Arkady said.

  ‘Exactly!’

  Seams of light merged into shopping centers, main streets, boatyards. THANKSGIVING SALE, said a billboard. The plane slipped even lower over a residential area. Lit playing fields of brilliant grass appeared. The blue of backyards was empty swimming pools. The first distinct American stood in the glow of a house door, looking up.

  ‘Let me tell you a complication we’re not going to have,’ Wesley said. ‘You’re not going to defect. If this were a KGB operation, then you could defect. You could come to us and we’d be happy to give you asylum. Anyone else on this plane, for example, can defect.’

  ‘What if they don’t want to defect and I do?’

  ‘Well, they can and you can’t,’ Wesley said.

  Arkady felt the shudder of the wheel bays opening. He searched for a trace of humor in Wesley’s smile. ‘You’re making a joke,’ he suggested.

  ‘I certainly hope not,’ Wesley said. ‘It’s the law. Before any defector is allowed to stay in the United States, his or her case is determined by the bureau. We’ve already made a determination in your case, and we’ve determined that you can’t stay.’

  Arkady thought he might be having a problem with the language. ‘But I haven’t tried to defect yet.’

  ‘Then the bureau will be happy to be responsible for you,’ Wesley said. ‘Until you try to defect.’

  Arkady studied the agent. This was a kind of man he’d never encountered before. The face was human enough – the brows, lids and lips moved when appropriate – but Arkady suspected that inside the skull on the cortex of the brain lay a uniform pattern of spirals.

  ‘You can defect, but you’d have to defect to us,’ Wesley said. ‘Anyone you run to will hand you over to us. Of course, we’ll send you right back to the Soviet Union. So when you’re in our hands there’s really very little point in defecting to us, is there?’

  The airliner passed over drab row houses bathed in a fearful public light. The streets rolled away and the plane was on a long run over a bay, and then an island of lights reared into the sky. A thousand towers of light as profligate as stars rose from the water, and a wonderful sound of relief and appreciation went through the passengers at this effect.

  ‘Then you won’t help me,’ Arkady said.

  ‘Absolutely, any way I can,’ Wesley said.

  Landing lights skidded by the windows. The airliner touched down and reversed thrust.

  By the time the plane taxied to the Pan Am terminal the aisle was full of musicians, musical instruments, bundles of gifts and string bags of food. Now the Russians were preparing their faces of boredom-with-American-technology, and though everyone had to pass by Arkady and Wesley, no one looked at them; no one wanted to be contaminated when they were so close, only a few steps from a remarkable walk-through tube that attached the plane directly to the terminal. Instead they all watched each other.

  When all the other passengers were gone, service attendants bounded into the plane through a door in the rear and Wesley led Arkady down the service ladder to the tarmac under the Ilyushin’s rear engines. The engines whined and the red light on the tail blinked. Was the plane going right back to Moscow? Arkady wondered. Wesley tapped his shoulder and pointed to a car maneuvering over the runway towards them.

  They didn’t pass through American customs. The car took them directly to an access gate, and then onto a high-speed expressway.

  ‘We have an understanding with your people.’ Wesley settled comfortably into the shadow of the rear seat with Arkady.

  ‘My people?’

  ‘The KGB.’

  ‘I’m not with the KGB.’

  ‘The KGB says you’re not with them, too. That’s what we’d expect them to say.’

  There were abandoned cars by the side of the road. Not recently abandoned cars; they looked like the wrecks of ancient wars. ‘Free Puerto Rico’ was written on the side of one. The cars moving on the road were of a hundred makes and colors. The drivers were of all colors too. Ahead was the same startling skyline he had seen from the plane.

  ‘What is the und
erstanding you have with the KGB?’ Arkady asked.

  ‘The understanding is that this will be a bureau operation as long as you can’t defect to the bureau,’ Wesley said. ‘And since you can only defect to us, you can’t defect.’

  ‘I understand. And you think I’m with the KGB because they say I’m not.’

  ‘What else would they say?’

  ‘But if you believed I was not with the KGB, that would change everything?’

  ‘Absolutely! Then what the KGB says would be true.’

  ‘What do they say?’

  ‘They say you were convicted of murder.’

  ‘There wasn’t any trial.’

  ‘They didn’t say there was. Did you kill someone?’ Wesley asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘There you are. It’s against the immigration laws of the United States to admit a criminal. The laws are very strict unless you’re an illegal alien. But we could hardly allow in someone who comes right up to the bureau and announces he’s a murderer.’

  Wesley’s head bobbed affably in the shadow while he waited for more questions, but Arkady was silent. The car dipped into a tunnel for Manhattan. Police watched through the smeared glass booths in the tunnel’s greenish light. Then the car emerged on the other side into streets that were narrower than Arkady had expected, and so far below the bright haze of the skyline that they had a disorienting underwater quality. The streetlights had a lighter tungsten pallor.

  ‘I just wanted you to know exactly where you stood,’ Wesley said at last. ‘You’re not here legally. You’re not here illegally either, because then you’d have a leg to stand on. You’re simply not here at all, and there’s no way you can prove otherwise. I know it’s insane, but that’s the law for you. Also, it’s what your people wanted. If you have any complaints, you should take them up with the KGB.’