Mitch Silver - The Bookworm

Lara said, “You left the radio on.”

“I meant to.” Gerasimov hurried away, leaving her there.

The light on the motorcycle had been going up and down the Poklannoya’s narrow paths. Lara saw it hesitate when the radio came on. Almost immediately, the headlight flicked off. In the dark, Lara could hear the machine start up again, coming toward them, an unseen mosquito getting closer in the night.

The sound stopped on the far side of the car park. What was the stalker doing? And where was Grisha?

There was a security floodlight high up on the corner of the synagogue. It picked out the cyclist in dark leathers and full-face Uvex helmet, making his way on foot across the lot, slightly bent over, trying not to be seen from inside the parked car.

The man was now right behind the Alfa, keeping low and creeping around to the passenger side just as the tiny voice of the program’s host on the car’s radio came on. “Next up on our program of stormy music, Modest Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain, the original 1867 version performed by…”

The figure had stopped at the sound. Now he moved again, all the way around to stand beside the passenger window, Lara’s window. Something in his hand glinted in the strengthening floodlight.

The explosion rocked the parking lot, throwing Lara to her knees twenty meters away. She looked back to see the car window gone and the man with the gun leaning inside.

Before Lara could do or say anything, a second shot rang out. The man wasn’t standing there anymore. He was smeared across the door and slowly, slowly falling to the ground.

From the still-working radio came the sound of kettledrums. Gerasimov was running out of the dark into the circle of light near the building. He bent down and prodded the man on the ground with the gun in his hand, Nikki’s gun, and then with his foot. The figure didn’t move.

By the time Lara reached him, Gerasimov had turned the body face up and was trying to get the helmet off. The strap under the chin was caught somehow. Then it came free.

“Isn’t that…?”

“Yes,” said Lara. “It’s Pavel. Pavel Samsonov.”

Gerasimov handed her the cup. She could taste the brandy or whatever it was in the hot black tea as it coursed through her, defrosting her. Her mind had been frozen too, locked on the horror of what had happened. Now that they were finally out of the rain, she could see the man sitting across from her was going over the same two questions in his mind that she was. Why? And why Pavel?

They had loaded the body into what was left of the Alfa Romeo and discovered there was no room for both of them, so Gerasimov fished around in the dead man’s leather pockets and found the motorcycle key. It was hard to start the massive 750cc bike in the rain, but he’d finally fired it up on the third try.

“I don’t think you should stay at your place tonight, those guys might still be around,” he’d said. His apartment was out, too—no place to park the vehicles without being seen. So they came here, to his office.

On the fourteenth floor of the Gosteleradio offices at Ostankino, eight floors up from where the Midnight in Moscow staff was getting ready to put on the last program of the day, the executive level was deserted. Even the babushkas had come and gone. The brass nameplate next to the door of the corner office said, “Grigoriy Aleksandrovich.” He smiled as he ushered her in. “No last names. I think it’s friendlier.”

There was the standard desk and the standard chairs and lamps and bookcases. The view, though, was incomparable. St. Basil’s and the Kremlin were dead ahead in the distance, putting on their light show for the drunks and the insomniacs, which meant practically the entire city. “Through here,” he said.

“Here” was the executive washroom, as the little brass plaque on the door put it. Another door on the far side, past the sinks and a shower stall, opened on a sitting room. It too had the amazing view of nighttime Moscow. It was furnished with a couch, a coffee table, and a couple of club chairs, one of which enveloped Lara almost entirely when she sank down in it, exhausted. You don’t appreciate the importance of adrenaline until you use it all up.

“Finish your tea and let’s get you out of those wet clothes.”

Their little two-vehicle convoy had driven just a few kilometers from the Holocaust Synagogue to the Broadcast Center, but with the passenger-side window blown away, the rain had soaked Pavel’s body and, to only a slightly lesser extent, Lara’s. (She didn’t know which was worse—Pavel’s unseeing eyes or his indifference to the rain.) She left him in the car downstairs, next to where Grisha had parked his motorcycle.

He was saying, “I’m going to see about Pavel. I’ll be a while.”

Lara wasn’t listening. “I didn’t know he had that motorcycle. Isn’t that funny?”

Gerasimov frowned. “Lara, you’re still in shock. While I’m gone, why don’t you take a shower? You look like you could use it.”

Lara did as she was told. The washroom had shower gel, shampoo, conditioner, the works. But most of all there was warm water cascading down her body. For the first time, Lara dared to look at her injured right arm. The black-and-blue mark was already coming up. She couldn’t raise that hand high enough to wash her upper back and breasts, so she made do with her left.

There was a little built-in seat in the shower stall and Lara sat down on it, rinsing away the shampoo. She tried to make her brain function, but it wouldn’t. After a while, and with the soapy residue long gone, she stayed that way, surrendering to the warmth of the water and giving up thinking altogether.

Wrapped in the white terrycloth robe that had been hanging behind the door, and with a towel wrapped around her hair, she was a caterpillar snug in its cocoon. Who wants to be a butterfly anyway?

Finally, Gerasimov was back, knocking on the door from his office. He had brought her suitcase up from the car. There was a little puddle under it. He said, “I’m afraid your stuff got soaked. When the window was shot out…” and then he saw her in the robe and towel. “Mmm, Larissa Mendelova… what have you done with Dr. Klimt?”

Back in the sitting room he said, “Look, you’re about the same size… my wife’s things are in that wardrobe over there. She kept them here for when I was… working late.”

Lara turned toward the armoire in the corner and immediately turned back. “Your wife… can you tell me what happened?”

Gerasimov was slumped over the back of one of the club chairs. Lara went over to him. “Grisha, what is it? What’s wrong?”

His eyes were wet. “She left me.”

Lara reached out with her hand to touch his cheek. When she did, the sleeve of the robe revealed the bruise on her arm.

“Lara, you’re really injured! Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have found some ice and made you a compress.”

He was holding her arm with both of his hands, cradling it. He leaned forward and pushed the cotton sleeve up so he could give the black-and-blue place a tiny kiss. He murmured, “Let me make it better,” and, pushing the material a fraction higher each time, kissed her again and again and again, each one a little higher, at first still on the bruise and then kissing the soft flesh of her upper arm. No, no, she didn’t know this man, not really; she didn’t want this to be happening.

On the seventh or eighth kiss, he hesitated. There was something in his eyes, some sadness. Shocked, she realized she did want this, and lowered her lips to his.