Not today.
Of course not today. But it wasn’t today that mattered. Today she’d have come already knowing where she was making for. She must have scouted the place out beforehand, on another day. She must have poked into corners, looked for vantage points, worked out lines of sight and ways in and out. Preparation. Planning. That meant that, wherever she was now, she’d have had to go there at least once before with plenty of time to look around. The access that mattered wasn’t today but any other day. Any normal day.
He was getting somewhere. Maybe. He could rule out offices and residential buildings. You couldn’t wander around places like that without attracting attention–not unless you worked or lived there. Well maybe she did. But if so he was defeated: he had no chance. So rule all those buildings out anyway. Which left public places: shops, hotels, museums. And say the place she’d chosen wasn’t too far from where he’d lost her. There was no reason to think that, except that when he’d noticed her she was in the open, visible and vulnerable, and he could assume she’d expose herself as little as possible. It was likely he’d lost sight of her because she’d ducked in somewhere. Not certain, but the odds were in his favour. And this was all about odds.
He looked around, scanning the buildings. There were three good possibilities: two hotels and the Great Vlast Museum. The museum was closed. She might be in there, but if so he couldn’t follow. Not quickly. Perhaps not at all. That left the two hotels. He was back to fifty-fifty.
He chose the bigger, which was also nearer to where he’d last seen her. It was a thirty-storey three-tier granite cake. The entrance was guarded by two militia men and cast iron bas-reliefs of steelworkers with bulging forearms and collective farmers brandishing ten-foot scythes.
Lom took stock of himself. When he arrived yesterday he’d had a shave and a haircut and bought himself a suit. In his pocket he had a thickish wad of rouble notes and ID papers in the name of Foma Drogashvili, which he’d been using on and off for several years. So how did you get to look around inside the New Mirgorod Hotel? You went up to the desk and asked for a room.
Elena Cornelius watched the aircraft fly past low in the brilliant early-afternoon sky. The bass rumble of slow ten-engined bombers. The screaming of new-made jets trailing coloured vapour. Parachutists spilled from a lumbering transport plane and drifted down under brilliant blossoming canopies of red and yellow, alighting with perfect precision in the space in front of the viewing platform.
Twisting, ducking fighters enacted dogfights against the warplanes of the Archipelago. One enemy bomber spouted oily smoke and flame and sank lower and lower as it limped from view. When it was out of sight behind the Rizhin Tower there was a loud flash and a white pall rose into the sky as if it had crashed. Perhaps it had. Elena remembered no such dogfights during the siege of Mirgorod. Then, the bombers had come day and night unopposed.
Gendarmes had thrown a cordon across Karolov Street. On the other side of it a battered old delivery truck was propped up on a jack at the kerb, one wheel off. Two bearded young men lay on the ground, spreadeagled, rifles pointed at their heads. The back of the truck was open, being searched. And beyond the truck was the side entrance to the New Mirgorod Hotel. Lom had a choice: wait, or retrace his steps and try the front entrance on Victory Square.
He didn’t want to keep going over the same piece of ground. If there were watchers–and there surely were–he would be noticed. He made a quick calculation. Something would be found in the truck or it would not. Either way, within five minutes the situation here would change. But for ten long edgy minutes he waited and nothing was different. He turned back the way he had come.
The dark-panelled lobby of the hotel, when he finally reached it, was almost deserted. Ornate gilt-framed mirrors. Empty leather sofas under glowing chandeliers. The doorman was settled at a low marble table, cap off, drinking tea. Lom rang the bell at the desk. Waited. Rang it again. He could feel the eyes of the doorman on his back. From the room at the back came a radio commentary on the parade unfolding outside. He wished the doorman would just step outside and take a look.
Finally the reluctant clerk appeared.
‘A room?’ he said, raising his eyebrows sceptically. It was as if no one had ever asked him for such a thing before. ‘Regrettably, that is not possible. Naturally for Victory Day all our rooms are taken.’
‘All of them?’ Lom laid a stack of roubles on the table. The clerk scowled at him.
‘Of course all of them. Tomorrow you can have a room. Today, not.’
‘Then perhaps someone could just bring me coffee.’
‘Now?’
‘Now. Yes, now. Thank you. And a newspaper.’ Lom indicated a low sofa against a pillar near the entrance to the lifts. ‘I’ll be over there.’ He went across and sat down to wait. The clerk, scowling, spoke into the telephone on the counter then returned to his back room.
Minutes passed and Lom’s coffee did not come. He knew he should get out of there. He’d drawn attention to himself. If the clerk hadn’t been calling for tea, who had he been talking to on the phone? And Elena had already had plenty of time: if anything was going to happen it would have happened by now. But he stayed and waited. Eventually the doorman stood up with a sigh from his table by the window, set his cap on his head and went out through the plate-glass doors to take up his position outside on the steps.
Lom moved.
Elena Cornelius heard a roar from the crowd twenty-two floors below. An amplified voice was crashing out across the city, carried not only by the loudspeakers in Victory Square but also by every tannoy and radio in Mirgorod. Rizhin had come to the lectern and was speaking.
The vast crowd hushed, but the hush had its own noise, like waves over shingle. Rizhin’s amplified speech bounced off the wall behind her. The echo confused sense. She could only make out fragments.
‘… life has become better, friends, life is happier now… remember yesterday’s sacrifices, yes, but look to tomorrow… a greater victory to come…’
She re-settled the rifle. Pulled back the bolt with the outside of her hand to drive the first cartridge into the breech. One should be enough, but there were nine more in the magazine. She let the cross hairs move along the line of faces on the platform. You. You. You. The graticule came to rest clear and steady in the middle of Papa Rizhin’s head.
‘… our vessels explore the cosmos, but we must master our own planet also… inevitably the Archipelago will crumble and fade… the force of history will do our work… the forest… no more dark areas of superstition and myth… this time we will not be prevented, we will take a strong grip…’
In the siege she had shot without thought or conscience. The whole city then was filled with a loud dinning noise that made everyone always deaf. Sleepwalkers. The invaders wore blank masks. This, today, was different: the face in the cross hairs the focus of all the world and more familiar than her own. A killing imagined a thousand times. Long sleepless years. Her heart beat faster. Perspiration on her forehead. In the roots of her hair.
She breathed in and breathed out slowly, emptying her lungs. Calling up calm. She reached back to wipe her hand dry on her skirt. Cocked her wrist into the firing hold she had practised till it came easy and smooth. Began to squeeze her obtuse finger gently. Taking up the slack. A breath of wind kissed her sweat-damp cheek.