“I wanted to go to the West in a hot-air balloon, I wanted to sail over the Berlin Wall. Instead I went with a business-class ticket. Return.”
“Talk to me, Tolya. What’s going on here?” I pulled my chair close to where he sat, and he leaned down and I could feel his breath, could smell the sickness.
“A man in a nice jacket from Brooks Brothers brought me. Off the rack,” he said, trying to smile. “The jacket. Old for the job.”
“What is he?”
“He told you his name?”
“Yes.”
“Fyodor Bounine. Fyodor Samuelovich Bounine. You get the joke, right? FSB, maybe he has these initials embroidered on his underpants. It’s his real name, of course, but he thinks he’s a wit. Very good English. Very good Chinese. And Arabic. And very pleasant to me. Asks me a lot about you.”
“Nobody hurt you?”
“It’s not like that. They arrested me on money-laundering charges, they say.” He snorted, trying to laugh. “Then they add murder. It happens. They just take you away, nobody knows. You can’t call, nothing.”
“We can get you a lawyer.”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“I saw Molly,” I said, not knowing if I should tell him.
He leaned forward. “Where? She’s okay?”
“I saw her at the dacha. She’s fine. She’s with her mother. I told her to go back to New York, or Boston.”
“I want her out of this fucking country. Get her out. Will you do this for me, Artyom? Please. Whatever it takes.”
“I already started on that,” I said. “I’ll do anything.”
“You don’t owe me.”
“You mean Billy,” said Tolya. “We never spoke of this.”
“Yes.”
“You want to speak about it,” said Tolya. “You want me to confess? You want to confess?” He laughed to diffuse it, and I didn’t answer. “I did for you what a friend does,” he says. “You couldn’t let them put your nephew, Billy, back into an institution. You told me that day on Staten Island, near Fresh Kills, the garbage dump. You knew he had killed and you couldn’t let him run away, or be free by himself. But you didn’t want him locked up again. There wasn’t any other way,” he said. “It was okay. You think I’m somehow immoral, don’t you Artemy?” he said softly without any anger. “You think because I am able to kill, I’m a killer.”
“No.”
“Sometimes you have to do what is right, even if it’s not moral. Sometimes it’s kinder. Revolutionaries never thought about that, they thought about their ideologies, they thought if only they had the right words, people would stop suffering. It’s ideology that kills people.”
It was this about Sverdloff I never came to terms with. I never understood how he operated in a world where he dealt with crooks and creeps and still remained himself. Remained a man full of life, happy with life, a guy who could eat and drink and laugh, who loved his kids and his friends.
Or had been. Had been that man before Valentina died. A guy who would do anything for me because we were friends. When he took Billy away a few years earlier, when he made a decision I couldn’t make, it was everything. I should have kept Val safe for him.
Say it, I thought to myself. Killed Billy. Tolya killed Billy to save him. He did it for you.
“I wish I could see Molly one more time,” said Tolya.
“What’s the ‘one more time’ thing?” I said, jaunty as I could.
“I’m dying, Artyom.”
The nurse came into the room, held out a little paper cup with some pills, Tolya took them and she offered him water. Tolya thanked her, and in a little while some color flowed back into his face.
“You’re in pain?”
“It’s not so bad.”
“Is this the polonium?”
“No,” he said.
“And Val?”
“There was never any polonium, Artie. The autopsy would have showed it. I let them believe this for a while because people paid attention. I had leverage with the press because of it, it was much more exciting for them. Everybody loves a story about crazy radioactive shit.”
“What do you need?” I said.
“Everything is finished.”
“Grisha Curtis killed Valentina.”
“Yes.”
“But not with polonium?”
“No,” said Tolya. “I made him talk to me when I found him in the woods, in the grounds of his uncle’s dacha. He made it look that way, he put the empty packages of Staticmaster around, so it would look as if somebody had poisoned her. But he just killed her, he stuffed a pillow over her face.”
“Did he mention a girl in London, Elena Gagarin?”
“Yes, he beat her up. He was afraid she was talking to you, that somehow she knew something. She was a sad girl, she didn’t know anything, but she liked to retail gossip.”
I looked at him. “You said they added murder charges to your arrest.”
“What do you think I did when I found this bastard who killed my Valentina?”
“I understand,” I said.
“That’s good.”
“What is it, if it’s not polonium?”
“My heart,” he said.
After he caught his breath-it was unbearable to watch him try to speak-he said, “I asked them to let me see you.”
“I’m happy.”
“They said what do you want, and I said, I want to see my friend. Fyodor Samuelovich said fine, where is he, and I said I didn’t know. But I knew you’d follow me to Moscow. And he said what is your friend’s name, but I could see he already knew, and when I said it, when I said your name, he smiled. But he already somehow knew it was you.”
“How?”
“Maybe they have people in New York, or London. I think maybe Fyodor Samuelovich, call me Sammy, no kidding, wants something from you. As soon as I said your name, I could see it. He’s an old guy, but he gets it, he learned from the best, he’s a hustler like the rest of us. He wants something from you,” said Tolya for the second time. “Whatever it is, don’t do it. Can you help me?” he added, trying to get out of bed and into the easy chair.
I put my arm under his. He leaned on me, and I could feel the weight and the fatigue and the sorrow. He sat down heavily.
“Tell me how to help you.” I looked at the ceiling as he had done.
“What difference does it really make? They know everything. I always wondered why people made such a fuss about bugs, when they knew it all. They didn’t hurt people to find out. They hurt them to make a point to other assholes, warn them, make sure they were afraid.”
“Go on.”
“You understand what I did? About this guy, this guy who killed Valentina? He was a monster. He killed her and he hired a thug who killed Masha Panchuk, but you knew that. The thug, this Terenti, saw Masha leave my club and thought it was Val, and he followed her to Brooklyn to the playground where you found her,” said Tolya, speaking his mix of English and Russian. “You have any cigarettes?”
“Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Asshole, if I am dying, I want to die smoking. I wish I had some cigars,” he said. “You know at first, I thought they arrested me because I told jokes.”
“What?”
“I did what I wanted in London, New York, I did bad deals, when I was mad at officials in Moscow, I made jokes, I talked too much, I said what I wanted. I laughed at them.”
“Of course.”
“I’m glad I told them what I think of all of them. I’m glad,” he said.
“You always tell great jokes,” I said, putting my hand on his. “There must be something you want. Tell me what to get you, tell me how I can help?”
“They take good care of me here, Artyom, but I think there’s a little catch.”
“What is it?”
“I think at some point, they will move me from this lovely hospital to someplace not quite so nice, you understand, to a different sort of hospital. The Russians are quite good at this, stashing people away in hospitals far from Moscow. I want to get out, but not if it costs you too much. I’d like to see Molly,” he said. “But I want you to remain this moral man I admire.”