A bud dropped at her feet. The man stooped for it but the bouquet made the action too awkward to complete. Saskia, grunting, snagged the carnation with a trembling hand and replaced it in the bouquet. The man tilted his hat forward in thanks, then continued his journey down the street. He was one man among hundreds once more.
Saskia swayed. Her eyes looked at nothing as a policeman passed with a dog. When a minute had passed, she limped into a block of shadow and read the message on the paper that had been concealed in the folds of the flower. Then she ate it.
It tasted like carnation.
Follow me, the note had read.
She looked down the Nevsky Avenue and saw the flower man. He was almost one hundred metres away, opposite the Kazan Cathedral. Saskia watched as he entered the great, granite block of Singer House.
With her limp, she took long minutes to reach the building. Its door reminded her of a golden clock in a glass jar. An elderly clerk was walking down its steps. Saskia passed through the door before it had closed.
The foyer was thick with sprays of flowers, palm trees, and wicker screens, behind which she could hear the low voices of a dozen conversations. She crossed the empty floor. Black and white chequerboard. Her limp had gone. There were seven carnations in the sand of the ash tray next to the elevator. Saskia stepped into the car. The attendant was a boy of sixteen, not older. He wore his hat at a severe angle and his chin strap was frayed, but his black uniform was otherwise impeccable.
‘Don’t worry, madam,’ he said. His accent placed him somewhere in the northern peninsula, perhaps Murmansk. ‘It’s as safe as a fine old horse.’
Saskia smiled. The boy had detected discomfort as she stepped into the elevator. She did not like them. The technology was still experimental. This car was new, like the building, and like the boy.
‘The top floor, please. I’m expected.’
‘Right away, madam.’
As he closed the door and turned the winch handle clockwise, Saskia sat on the velvet couch and inspected herself in the mirror. She licked a thumb and removed the dirt beneath her eyes. Again, she wondered who she was. She undid her neckerchief. She scratched her hair and shook her head. When she looked away from the mirror, she noticed that the boy was studying her with the attitude of a man who has cracked the simple code of a prostitute’s apparel.
‘Chocolate?’ he asked, offering a brown paper bag.
‘No, thank you.’
She felt the moment die within him.
The floors passed. Their doors were dull, frosted glass, and each pane read “Singer”.
The car stopped. The boy opened the door on a large room. Saskia stepped out.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
She heard the doors close behind her, and the slow descent of the car. Her senses keened for the smallest warning note: man whispering to man; a cork leaving the end of a knife; a light switch twisted.
The floor was an immaculate rink of red, white and black tiles. Potted palms softened the corners and arched windows looked onto the Nevsky Avenue. Electric chandeliers buzzed with the intensity of twilight. Elegant tables and chairs were arranged throughout the room. A silver service had been placed on the table in the centre. Saskia’s bloodstained handkerchief was on one of the plates. At the table, lounging over a chair in adolescent, bored repose was the man Saskia had recently murdered before the eyes of Kamo.
Alexei Draganov saw her and stood up. He wore a long fur coat, which opened as he moved. Saskia noticed the details: the bouncing chain of his watch; the blue-gold tie beneath his red beard; a comma of ash on his lapel from a recent cigar. Her eyes lifted to his as he gripped her cheeks, hard, and kissed her three times. And he hugged her like a big brother. Her heels rose in her felt boots.
‘I got your message,’ he said.
‘Evidently.’
‘Did it work? Was it worth it?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think so. We can go ahead.’
Draganov released her from the hug but held her elbows. His eyes were Baltic blue.
‘We can talk of current matters here, but not about the name I first used for you in Sukham. Do you follow?’
‘Perfectly.’
‘You understand too, I hope, that being dead puts me in a difficult position. Silences must be purchased. The simple-minded people need to be told stories. But they talk. They always do. And there are good relations with the theatre management that our organisation must maintain. That was put in jeopardy.’
Saskia said, teasingly, ‘If you won’t help me get into the Summer Place, I need someone who will. That man is Kamo.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I take it that you do not wish to publicise your death?’
‘No more than I wish to publicise Kamo’s daring escape yesterday. With colleagues, I have taken the decision to erase these incidents from the troubled public mind. Kamo is convinced? You will go ahead with the retrieval?’
‘He is. We will.’
Draganov strode towards the table. ‘I demand that you eat something. I have ice-cold roe and bread and butter. And vodka, for your health. Come.’
He settled her into a padded chair. ‘Eat this.’ He placed a cracker filled with roe on her tongue. She shuddered as the eggs burst. ‘And for goodness’ sake, put this on.’ He removed his coat and threw it across her like a sleigh fur. ‘Then tell me why you look like a panda, and why you wear your hair down. Are you sad? It means sadness where I come from.’
‘Let me look at your back. Did I hurt you?’
‘As for my health, there was a tickle. Nothing at all to worry about.’
Saskia replaced her half-eaten bread on its plate.
‘I don’t consider it attended to unless the person doing the attending is me.’
Draganov glared at her. Then he sighed and leaned forward. Saskia took the vodka and, with a practiced action, tipped some over her palm. Draganov groaned between his knees. ‘It’s not worth spilling vodka, as my father used to say.’
‘Come closer. Put your waistcoat up further. I can’t see.’
She tugged up the waistcoat, the shirt and the vest. For a large man, Draganov had little fat. Saskia located the puncture wound and let the vodka dribble across it. Draganov hissed.
‘You are unusually trim,’ she said.
‘I run. It is the English habit. Have you finished filling my trousers with vodka? I remind you that, only hours ago, you poured sheep’s blood down my back.’
She touched the skin around the wound. There was no redness or swelling.
‘I’ve finished. The wound is clean for now.’
Draganov sat up. His stomach, though muscled, expanded as he tried to pull down the waistcoat, and Saskia, reaching for her cracker, noticed more puncture wounds on his abdomen. ‘You’ve been living dangerously.’
‘I am living. It amounts to the same. The important things for us is that Kamo believes I am dead.’
‘That he does. And he is prepared to make a second attempt on the money.’
‘Where is he?’
‘With me.’
‘And where is that?’
‘Where do you think?’
‘How much does he know?’
‘Less than me. Not as much as you.’
‘Has he made contact with his boss, Ulyanov?’
‘Ah.’
Saskia remembered Lenin as a short man with an unusually feminine voice. He was, perhaps, the most gifted orator she had ever heard. Lenin held men in thrall. It was difficult to find a worker who had not read Lenin’s pamphlets. And he was the only man to whom Soso considered himself inferior.