“Come,” he said. He walked past Karpo and the lieutenant and headed directly for the mausoleum. Karpo turned and followed with the lieutenant behind, watching him.
“No one can enter the mausoleum carrying anything,” the major said, “not a briefcase, flight bag, camera, anything.”
“The detonator would be quite small,” said Karpo.
The major grunted, pushed aside a startled Asian tourist and strode to the bronze door.
“With a dozen men we could do this in one minute,” the major said impatiently, “but I suppose…”
“It would be rather conspicuous,” finished Karpo, “and the terrorist might simply decide to detonate if she is watching. She might do so anyway.”
“She,” grunted the major, waiting for the guard to open the bronze door.
“Yes,” said Karpo.
They entered and picked up an echo in the near darkness.
“And what we have already done might be sufficient to set her off,” the major observed, nodding at the lieutenant to move. The major did not take his eyes off Karpo. The lieutenant moved swiftly, clearly knowing every inch of the interior, every place a bomb could conceivably be placed. Karpo watched, wanting to help and knowing that he would not be allowed to. The slight hum of the air conditioning played above the rapid movements of the lieutenant as they moved down the stone staircase. The light around the sealed case was dim, but the young officer’s hands were swift. Karpo watched with fascination as the young man moved behind the glass-covered face of the corpse of Lenin.
“Here,” cried the lieutenant, emerging from the far side of the casket holding up the small black box. “Plastic on the outside held it in place. No way to judge how powerful it is.”
“One of her bombs went off a few hours ago at the Zaryadye Cinema,” said Karpo.
“That was a bomb?” asked the major. “We heard…”
Karpo nodded.
“Out with it,” the major said, and the lieutenant moved swiftly to the stairs.
“I suggest you put that in your pocket,” Karpo said, hearing his voice echo back. “If she is out here and…”
The young man looked at the major who shrugged and said, “The important thing is to get out of here with it. Let’s go.”
“I’ll take it,” said Karpo, moving forward as the lieutenant passed him. He grabbed the small box and heard both men respond almost immediately with drawn guns.
“If I were the one, I wouldn’t have waited till I was in here,” he said.
“What do you-” began the major, holding his pistol aimed at Karpo’s chest. “Forget it. We’ll deal with this outside. Move.” He motioned with his gun as Karpo plunged the box into his pocket and moved quickly up the stairs through the cool tomb.
Beyond the bronze doors, the sun nearly blinded them. Karpo had been ready for this, and he dashed forward into a crowd of sailors and began to run across the square. He was heading toward an open area not far from the Lobnoye Mesto, the Place of Execution, the Skull Platform of white stone more than four centuries old where the czar’s edicts had been proclaimed and public executions carried out.
There was no place to dispose of the bomb. Whichever way he turned he would be heading toward a national monument. The major and the lieutenant would have followed whatever procedure had been established for bomb disposal. It would have been impossible to impress the urgency on them, because they did not have his understanding of the woman.
Knowing the sailors were behind him, he ran on, pushing through the crowds and dashing across the open spaces, trying to figure out the least damaging place to put the bomb in case she was nearby. And then luck intervened. Standing in front of him, perhaps fifty yards away in front of the Place of Execution was a blond tourist in a blue suit. She was carrying a camera and wearing dark glasses. Karpo headed toward her and glanced up at the Spassky clock, which showed that it was only a few minutes to eight.
At first the woman ignored him, but when it became clear that he was coming directly at her, she turned to face him. Behind her a young couple examined the Place of Execution.
When he was no more than twenty yards from her, the woman removed her dark glasses and fixed him with a look of black hatred.
“Stop,” she commanded, and Karpo stopped. Behind him the soldiers brushed people aside and moved toward him.
Karpo turned his head in the direction of the running boots and saw the lieutenant in advance of the major and another armed soldier.
“That is the woman,” Karpo shouted back to the young man who, panting, looked beyond him and stopped.
The lieutenant glanced at the woman and then at Karpo and saw the same look on both faces that he would never be able to describe adequately, though at the inquiry that night he would make an attempt at it. But whatever it was he saw convinced him, and he turned, still panting, and intercepted the major and the soldier with the rifle.
Karpo turned back to the woman, who held her camera in front of her. He hoped that the soldiers would back away, keep their distance, and clear the area.
“I said stop,” said the woman, in almost unaccented Russian, but Karpo did not stop. “Do you know what this is?” She held up the camera.
In response, Karpo took another step toward her. He was now no more man a dozen paces away, surely well within the destructive range of the small device he now removed from his pocket and held in front of him.
“You’ve failed,” he said.
“I’ll try again,” she said, her eyes looking beyond Karpo at the soldiers. “If you don’t want me to press this button, you will give me assurance that the soldiers will remain where they are until I am gone.”
“I can give no such assurance for the soldiers,” he said, taking another step toward her.
The young couple who had been examining the Place of Execution moved past the woman, talking to each other, ignoring the conversation between her and the tall, cadaverous man.
“There is no place for you to run, Louise Rich,” he said.
His use of the name stung, and the woman shook her blond hair out of her eyes.
“That’s not my name,” she said.
“I didn’t think it was,” said Karpo.
“But you know about my flight reservation,” she said, “and the identity I’ve been using.”
“And so,” Karpo said softly, since he was close enough, “your options are gone.”
“Limited,” she corrected, “but not gone.”
“Perhaps,” he said with a shrug.
A draft of wind came across Red Square behind Karpo, blowing the woman’s hair back and creating an image of her against the background of the Cathedral of Saint Basil the Blessed that drilled itself into Karpo’s mind. At this moment, bomb in hand, facing this enemy of the state, he felt an emotion he wanted to deny but couldn’t. Determined in the face of certain defeat, she looked quite beautiful.
“How did you find me?” she said quietly in a voice that matched his own as she looked over at the soldiers.
“Reason, a process of elimination, and a little luck,” he admitted.
Her eyes were on him, her lips pale. He considered turning away, recalling a faint childhood image of Medusa, but he kept his gaze steady.
“We are alike,” she said through clenched white teeth.
And Karpo realized that in some way she was correct and that he stood here now looking at an important aspect of himself which, until this moment, he had denied. The realization shocked him.
“In some ways,” he said.
“You won’t back away, will you?” she said with admiration.
“I can’t,” he said.
“In a moment or two that soldier will raise his rifle and shoot me,” she said, nodding beyond Karpo. “You know that.”
“Yes,” he said.
“And what would you do in my place?” she asked.
Karpo was silent.
“What is your name?”
“Karpo, Emil Karpo. And yours?”
“That,” she said with a grin, “you will never know.”
Karpo felt a surge within and about him, an explosion of love, regret, and death as he leapt toward the stone platform.