It seemed quite early to Tkach. Lvov was giving himself a full hour. The place must either be quite far, or Lvov was planning to make a stop first. It was also possible that Lvov, who had been a known dissident, was well aware of the possibility of his being followed and wanted to give himself ample time to lose his follower.
Keeping up with Lvov proved to be no great problem for Tkach, at least at first. Lvov boarded a bus and Tkach, his face covered as if to keep out the chill wind, boarded behind him. Lvov rode without looking about and got off not far from Red Square. The crowds were thick on the relatively pleasant sunny day, and Tkach had to close the distance between himself and the old man. In the crowd in front of the Lenin mausoleum, Tkach confused a pair of tall, dark clad figures before him but managed to select the right quarry with little trouble. Lvov walked slowly to the Lobnoye Mseto, the four-hundred-year-old white stone platform where the Tsars had performed their executions. From there Lvov crossed Kuibyshev Street and entered G.U.M., the State Department Store, the biggest and most crowded store in Moscow. In Stalin’s day it had been a massive office building, but in 1953, with Stalin’s departure, it had been returned to its commercial use, a huge department store with curved display windows on the main floor, many small shops and a massive press of 350,000 customers each day. Tkach muscled his way past afternoon tourists and old women with white babushkas to keep up with Lvov, who moved slowly but steadily through the crowds without really pausing to look in any windows.
It became clear to Tkach that the old man was diligently and intelligently trying to lose him. The moment of truth came at one of the first level overpasses between the store’s sections. Lvov paused at the dark metal railing to look up at the arcade’s glass ceiling several stories above. He seemed to be in no hurry. Tkach stopped and leaned against a wall on one side of the overpass. A crowd of people surged out of a store and moved onto the bridge toward Tkach, coming between himself and Lvov who remained along the rail and moved quickly to the other side. Tkach considered forcing his way over the overpass but realized that he would surely lose Lvov if he did so. The alternative was to anticipate where the old man was going. He could see Lvov’s thin figure above the crowd moving away and Tkach guessed and acted. He went back into the store behind him, found the stairway and ran to the lower level. On the main floor of the arcade he ran through the window-shopping crowds and headed to the far exit. A tall, thin figure was just touching the bottom of the steps, and the panting Tkach slowed down for an instant, but only for an instant. The figure was not Lvov.
He looked around frantically and headed for the stairs pushing people out of the way. A very fat man said something in an angry hiss that might have been English, but Sasha didn’t pause. He didn’t even care now if he ran headlong into Lvov as long as he could catch sight of him, but he could not find the thin figure he sought.
There was no help for it. He would have to return to Petrovka and report to Rostnikov. He assumed the next step would be for Rostnikov himself to pay a visit to Lvov after Lvov’s meeting with Malenko.
CHAPTER TEN
It was no more than two minutes after four when Simon Lvov returned to his apartment, the apartment where, no more than a month before, Ilyusha Malenko, quite drunk, had accidentally broken a window. Lvov had led the young policeman away, easily lost him, and had returned almost on the dot. He had left his door open and the lights off.
“Where were you?” Dyusha Malenko’s voice came from the corner near the window.
Lvov slowly took his coat off and hung it on a hook near the door.
“Ilyusha, my phone is probably monitored by both the police and the K.G.B.” He moved slowly and wearily from his recent outing and sat in his chair. “I had to get them away from here, lose them.”
“They are after me,” Malenko said, stepping away from the window.
“I advise you to remain right where you were,” said Lvov reaching for his pipe. “I shall leave the light off and we shall talk quickly. Then you shall leave. If you do not, they will surely catch you.”
“You know why I’m here?” whispered Malenko from the dark.
“You killed Aleksander,” said Lvov without looking back.
“Yes,” replied Malenko, his voice quivering. “And I killed Marie too.”
Lvov dropped his pipe and couldn’t resist turning to the voice.
“You-”
“You know why,” Malenko said. “You know why. You were part of it. Part of making a fool of me.”
“Ilyusha…” Lvov began trying to get up but finding himself trembling.
“Don’t say Ilyusha to me,” Malenko’s voice broke. “I trusted Aleksander. I trusted you, but you are no better than anyone else. No better than, than-”
“Your father?” Lvov supplied. “And Marie was no better than your mother?”
“Shut up,” Malenko hissed, taking a step away from the dark shadow of the wall.
Lvov shook his head.
“So you’ve come to kill me?”
“Yes. I’ll smash you. I’ll smash all the liars and cheats who have made me into a fool. I’ll not be a fool. You hear. I’ll not be a fool.”
“You came at the right moment,” said Lvov, his voice regaining control. “I think I have no great interest in remaining alive. Had you come an hour later I might have struggled and argued and wept, but I don’t want to argue with you. If you kill me it will be meaningless.”
“It’s not meaningless,” cried Malenko taking another step forward. In his hand he held a scissors, a heavy pair of tailor’s scissors. Lvov saw the object and choked back a sob of fear.
“No, it is not meaningless,” he agreed. “You kill me and someone else and someone else and someone else till the police catch you. You know why you are doing this? Because it is over for you and you won’t admit it to yourself. When you admit it to yourself you will stop running, stop killing, stop having meaning. You will be the nothing you fear you are.”
“Shut up,” shouted Malenko, raising his scissors.
“Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thy heart be glad when he stumbleth, lest the Lord see it and it displeases Him and He turn away His wrath from him.”
“What are you talking about?” Malenko cried, pausing.
“Proverbs 24:17–18,” said Lvov. “I’ve been sitting in this room for years with nothing to do but listen to hopeful young men and read. In the process, I remembered that I am a Jew. When you forsake one God, the God of communism, or it forsakes you, you search for another. I have read the words, but I have not accepted them. I’ve lost my belief in anything and so have you, but I am an old man who needs no father and you are a young man lost in the wilderness.”
“You’re a crazy old man,” Malenko whimpered, lowering his scissors still further.
“Maimonides said that when a man has a mean opinion of himself, that any meanness he is guilty of does not seem outrageous to him. You’ve come to this state, Ilyusha. Killing me won’t end it. I’ll tell you the truth. You’ve heard it in my voice. I’ve pretended, but I’m afraid. But at the same time, I am not wrong. You can’t get back what you lost, and you must accept that the meaning you have chosen will come to an end and leave you empty.”
“You are right,” Malenko said. “Of course. That is what I needed. I needed your advice. I can’t erase it by destroying all of the ridiculing faces. I couldn’t erase it by killing even my father. I must do to him what he did to me. I must balance the scales. His death and hers didn’t balance the scales. It brought justice but it didn’t balance the scale. Your death wouldn’t balance the scale.”