Music was of no interest to Chazia. She waited for it to end.
Someone edged across the platform towards her, taking advantage of the dimness that hid them from the hall. It was Iliodor. Ignoring Fohn’s ostentatious disapproval, he crouched behind Chazia and whispered in her ear.
She smiled.
‘Good,’ she said when he had finished. ‘Good. When you have her, bring her to me.’
21
Lom pulled the envelope from the back of the bloody couch and ripped it open. It contained a sheaf of glossy monochrome photographic prints. He shuffled through them quickly. He knew what they were. Vishnik’s Pollandore moments, the photographs taken with his beloved Kono on his long wanderings around Mirgorod. Photographs of moments when the world broke open and new things were possible. He’d kept them safe at the cost of his life.
Lom sat back, flooded with disappointment.
‘There’s nothing new here,’ he said. ‘We’ve seen all this before.’
‘Maybe he saw something else in them,’ said Maroussia. ‘Something specific. Something we missed.’
‘It’s possible,’ said Lom. ‘I guess.’
‘So let’s have another look.’
Maroussia spread the photographs out on the floor and they went through them together. Most were gentle, beautiful images, full of an oblique magic: sunlight on a street corner, ripples in a pool of rain, the way light caught the moss on a tree. Some were passionate, dramatic, apocalyptic even: the curtain torn aside, the whole of the city ripping open at the seams. The people in them knew what was happening to them. They looked into Vishnik’s lens, their mouths open as if they were laughing, their faces filled with ecstatic joy.
Sorting through the pictures, Lom felt a sharp pang of loss. He felt the loss of Vishnik, and also of the city as Vishnik had seen it. Vishnik’s Mirgorod was beautifuclass="underline" these things happened and were perhaps still happening, somewhere in the city, but Lom had never seen them. For him too the city had opened to show him glimpses, possibilities, but he saw blank-faced buildings, a tower half a mile high crowned with an immense brutal statue of Josef Kantor, the Square of the Piteous Angel crowded with grey withdrawn people, their downturned faces, their drab whispering voices. A future crushed under the weight of its own fear, far heavier even than the weight of the Vlast today. Kantor’s future. Chazia’s future. It had to be stopped, and if he could stop it he would. Maroussia’s way, or his way.
Maroussia picked up a handful of photographs from the pile.
‘These are new,’ she said. ‘I haven’t seen these before.’
‘Show me,’ said Lom.
He went through them one by one. A couple walked naked on the surface of a river, the river glowing with an inward radiant light. A giant stood on a harbour side, silhouetted against the sky, his hair rising in a cloud around his head. A parade marched down a street towards the lens, only the street was above the rooftops and wrapped in chimney smoke and the people carried blazing candelabras and some of them were only heads and had no bodies at all. They were exhilarating, uncanny pictures, but they added nothing. No help at all.
‘Maybe if we knew where they were taken?’ said Lom. ‘Vishnik had notes, but without them… It would take us days to find all these places. Weeks.’
Maroussia slipped her hand inside the couch, feeling around towards the top of the backrest.
‘Wait,’ she said. ‘There’s something else in here. Hang on… yes!’
She pulled it out and held it up. A large map, printed on thin paper and folded to make a compact packet, the creases strengthened with strips of glued linen.
‘That’s more like it,’ said Lom.
Lom cleared a space on the floor and they laid it out flat. The map was a standard large-scale street plan of Mirgorod, but Vishnik had made marks all over it. Hundreds of small circles in black pencil. The pattern was instantly discernible: a few outliers in the outer quarters, growing denser towards the centre of the city. The marks clustered most thickly at a point on the River Mir where it made an elbow-bend southwards and the Yekaterina Canal joined it.
‘It’s the Lodka,’ said Maroussia. ‘The Pollandore is in the Lodka.’
The Lodka. The stone heart and cerebral cortex of the Vlast. The immense island building, the thousand-windowed palace of bureaucracy, the labyrinth of linoleum-floored corridors, entranceless courtyards, stairwells without stairs. The offices of uncountable clerks and archivists and diplomats and secret police. The basement cells, the killing rooms, the mortuary. Vishnik had traced the Pollandore to there.
Lom refolded the map, scooped up the photographs, stuffed the whole lot back into the envelope and gave it to Maroussia.
‘Take it,’ he said. ‘We need to get moving. We’ve been here too long.’
She pushed the envelope into her carpet bag and they hurried out of the apartment, Maroussia first, then Lom hustling the dvornik ahead of him. At the bottom of the stairs they turned left into the narrow entrance hall and walked straight into two militia men coming the other way, 9mm Blok 15 parabellums in their hands.
22
The men confronting Lom and Maroussia were officers, a captain and a lieutenant. Crisply turned out uniforms, neat haircuts under their caps, pale steady eyes. Their cap badges said SV. Spetsyalnaya Voyska. Political Police operating within the armed forces. The militia picked the best from the army and the gendarmes, and then the SV picked the best of the militia. The SV were supremely competent, tough and absolutely ideologically loyal.
‘We’ll do this step by step,’ the captain said. He pointed at Lom. ‘You. Four steps back and face the wall. Put your hands against it, high, and shuffle your feet back.’
Lom did as he said.
‘You–’ the captain pointed to the dvornik ‘–come past me on the left, go into the office and stay there. Keep back from the door. Don’t come out.’
The dvornik looked back at Lom. A leer of triumph. Arsehole.
Maroussia was still standing in the centre of the corridor.
‘Now you,’ the captain said to her. ‘On the floor.’
Maroussia didn’t move. Lom couldn’t see her face.
‘Maroussia,’ he said over his shoulder. ‘You need to do what he says.’
She put her bag on the floor and lay face down, hands on her head. The captain stepped forward and took the envelope out of her hand. The lieutenant came up behind Lom and patted him down, keeping the muzzle of the Blok 15 pressed hard against the base of his spine. He patted down Lom’s pockets. Took out the empty gun and the razor.
‘OK,’ the captain said. ‘Now let’s get out into the street.’
A covered truck waited outside, an unmarked GPV in generic military olive, the tailgate open. The driver saw them coming and started the engine. Lom and Maroussia got in the back and sat side by side on the bench. The lieutenant sat opposite. Covered them with his gun. The captain came last, carrying Maroussia’s bag. He closed the tailgate and sat at the far end of the truck, away from them. Nobody spoke. It was all measured, practised, competent. The lieutenant slapped the back of the cab and the truck moved away.
‘Where are we going?’ said Lom. He had to speak loudly above the noise of the engine. The SV men ignored him. Maroussia sat ramrod straight. Expressionless.