"Smith, Martin Cruz - Red Square" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

'He's leading us to the market. There are some people there, if they recognize you, you're dead.' Jaak laughed. 'Of course then we'll know we're in the right place.'

'Good point.' God forbid anyone should exercise sanity, Arkady thought. Anyway, if anyone recognizes me it means I'm still alive.

All the traffic squeezed off the same exit ramp. Jaak tried to follow the Audi, but a line of 'rockers' Ц bikers Ц swarmed in between. Swastikas and tsarist eagles decorated their backs, all wreathed in the rising smoke of the exhaust pipes stripped of silencers.

At the end of the ramp, construction barriers had been pushed to one side. The car bounced as if they were crossing a potato field and yet Arkady saw silhouettes that loomed high against the faint northern sky. A Moskvitch went by, its windows crammed with swaying rugs. The roof of an ancient Renault wore a living-room suite. Ahead, brake lights spread into a pool of red.

The rockers drew their bikes into a circle, announcing their stop with a chorus of roars. Cars and lorries spaced themselves roughly on a knoll here, in a trough there. Jaak killed the Zhiguli in first; the car had no neutral or parking gear. He emerged from the car with the smile of a crocodile who has found monkeys at play. Arkady got out wearing a padded jacket and cloth cap. He had black eyes and an expression of bemusement, as if he had recently returned from a long stay in a deep hole to observe changes on the surface, which wasn't far from the truth.

This was the new Moscow.

The silhouettes were towers, red lights at the top to warn off planes. At their bases were the chalky forms of earthmovers, cement mixers, stacks of good bricks and mounds of bad, metal-reinforced bars sinking into mud. Figures moved around the cars and more were still arriving, an apparent convention of insomniacs. No sleepwalking here, though; instead, the swarming, purposeful hum of a black market.

In a way it was like walking through a dream, Arkady thought. Here were cartons of Marlboros, Winstons, Rothmans, even despised Cuban cigarettes stacked as high as walls. Videotapes of American action or Swedish porn sold by the gross for distribution. Polish glassware glittered in factory crates. Two men in tracksuits arranged not windscreen wipers, but whole windscreens, and not merely carved out of some poor sod's car but new, straight from the assembly line. And food! Not blue chickens dead of malnutrition, but whole sides of marbled beef hanging in a butcher's lorry. Gypsies lit kerosene lamps beside attachщ cases to display gold tsarist rubles in mint condition, sealed and sold in plastic strips. Jaak pointed out a moon-white Mercedes. Further lamps appeared, spreading the aura of a bazaar; there might be camels browsing among the cars, Arkady thought, or Chinese merchants unrolling bolts of silk. An encampment to themselves was the Chechen mafia, men with pasty, pocked complexions and black hair who sprawled in their cars like pashas at their ease. Even in this setting, the Chechens enforced a space of fear.

Rudy Rosen's Audi was in a choice central location near a lorry unloading radios and VCRs. A well-behaved queue had formed outside the car under the gaze of Kim, who stood, one foot on his helmet, about ten metres away. He had long hair that he pushed away from small, almost delicate features. His jacket was padded like armour and open to a compact model of the Kalashnikov called Malysh, 'Little Boy'.

'I'm getting in line,' Arkady told Jaak.

'Why is Rudy doing this?'

'I'll ask.'

'He's guarded by a Korean vampire who'll be watching every move you make.'

'Make a note of numberplates, then watch Kim.'

Arkady joined the queue while Jaak loitered by the lorry. From a distance, the VCRs seemed solid Soviet goods. Miniaturization was a virtue for consumers of other societies; generally, Russians wanted to show what they bought, not to hide it. But were they new? Jaak ran his hand along the edges, searching for the telltale cigarette burns of a used machine.

There was no sign of the golden-haired woman who had come with Rudy. Arkady felt himself being scrutinized and turned towards a face whose nose had been broken so many times it had developed an elbow. 'What's the rate tonight?' the man asked.

'I don't know,' Arkady admitted.

'They twist your prick here if you have anything but dollars. Or tourist coupons. Do I look like a fucking tourist?' He dug into his pockets and came out with crumpled notes. He held up one fist. 'Zlotys.' He held up the other. 'Forints. Can you believe it? I followed these two from the Savoy. I thought they were Italian and they turned out to be a Hungarian and a Pole.'

'It must have been pretty dark,' Arkady said.

'When I found out, I almost killed them. I should have killed them to spare them the pain of trying to live on rucking forints and zlotys.'

Rudy rolled down the window on the passenger side and called to Arkady, 'Next!' To the man waiting with zlotys, he added, 'This will take a while.'

Arkady got in. Rudy was well wrapped in a double-breasted suit, an open cashbox on his lap. He had thinning hair combed diagonally across his scalp, moist eyes with long lashes, a blue cast to his jowls. A garnet ring was on the hand that held a calculator. The back seat was an office of neatly arrayed file boxes, laptop computer, computer battery, and cases of software, manuals and computer disks.

'This is a thoroughly mobile bank,' Rudy said. 'An illegal bank.'

'On my disks I can hold the complete savings records of the Russian Republic. I could do a spreadsheet for you some other time.'

'Thanks. Rudy, a rolling computer centre does not make for a satisfying life.'