"Three Stations" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smith Martin Cruz)

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So far as Zhenya was concerned, Yaroslavl Station offered just about everything: buffets, bookstore, kiddy corner, shops selling cigarette lighters, CDs and DVDs. A lounge for soldiers; men on leave traveled free. An escalator led to an upper waiting hall that featured a concert piano behind a red velvet rope.

He started on the main floor and watched for anyone willing to play a friendly game of chess on the folding board he had in his backpack. He was cautious; he always carried his ID and a commuter pass in case he was stopped. Although he was half hidden in a sweatshirt and hood, he stayed in the blind spots of ceiling cameras focused on him.

When he didn't see a likely opponent, Zhenya retreated to a bench on a quiet corridor off the upper hall and studied a pocket English-Russian dictionary. Bobby Fischer had learned Russian to read proper chess analysis; Zhenya was returning the favor. Zhenya concentrated on the talented word "draw," which described the inconclusive ending of a chess match. Or pulling, pouring, sketching, attracting, earning, opening or closing drapes and more.

With a click the door across from Zhenya opened. Inside, two militia officers and a girl sat at a metal table with a plastic pitcher of water, paper cups and a tape recorder. The senior officer was a woman, a major by the stars on her shoulder boards. A lieutenant tipped back in his chair.

The girl was about fifteen, Zhenya's age. Her eyes were blurred by tears, and since she had dyed her hair a neon red, she was exactly the type the militia liked to harass, but the major used a motherly tone.

"First necessary information and then the search. Everything will turn out fine. Maybe someone will find your lost baby before we're even done."

"I didn't lose her, she was stolen."

"So you said. We'll get into that."

"We're wasting time. Why aren't you looking for her?"

"My dear, we have a systematic approach that works well. This is a problematic case. You say that you don't have any photographs of the baby."

"A baby is a baby."

"Still it is a shame. A photograph is crucial in finding someone."

"Did you find them?" The girl pointed to the faces pinned to the wall, black-and-white photocopies of snapshots grainy from enlargement, taken indoors or out, of different ages and either sex but the people in them had one thing in common: they had disappeared.

"Sadly, no. But you have to help us."

"We can't hand over a baby to just anyone," the lieutenant said.

"Lieutenant…" As if to a naughty boy.

"Just playing with her head."

The major said, "Your train arrived more than an hour ago. You should have come to us then. Time is critical in finding a child alive."

"We're wasting time now."

"Your full name?"

"Maya."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"Are you married, Maya?"

"No."

"I see. Who is the father?"

"Someone I met, I suppose."

The lieutenant said, "Someone she met."

"I don't know." Still, woman-to-woman, the major seemed sympathetic.

"You're very young to have a baby. What grade are you in?"

"I graduated."

"You don't look it. Show me your ticket and papers, please."

"They were in my basket. I had two baskets, one for the baby and one for her things. She has a special blue blanket with yellow ducklings. All gone."

"A birth certificate?"

"Gone. I know the color of her eyes and her hair and birthmark. Things only a mother would know."

"Do you have any papers at all for you or the baby?"

"Stolen."

"Can your parents supply this information?"

"They're dead."

"So on paper this baby does not exist and on the train it was invisible. Is that what you're saying?"

The girl was silent.

"At what station did you board? Come now. You must know at what station you got on the train."

"Or when she disappeared."

"I told you. She was stolen while I was asleep. She was in a basket."

"And you blame this so-called Auntie Lena?"

"Have you heard of her? She said everyone knew her."

"No, I have never heard of such a person. Did you talk to anyone besides Auntie Lena?"

"No."

"Did anyone else see the baby?"

"No."

"Were you hiding the baby?"

The girl said nothing, although she felt the questions accelerate.

"What about the soldier?" the major asked.

"Sorry?"

"In your first version there was a soldier. You said you took your baby to the end of the car."

"For fresh air."

"For fresh air and out of view of the rest of the passengers?"

"Yes."

"And very private."

"I guess."

"And there you were joined by the soldier."

"Yes."

"You and the soldier and the invisible baby."

"Yes."

The girl saw where they were headed. It was like suddenly finding herself being dragged down a snake hole. She spaced out, and when she tuned back in, the major was speaking with an air of conclusion. "…a false alarm. Taking her age into account, her fantasy might not have malicious intent, but a dangerous fantasy it is because the terrorist threat is real. A full-bore hunt would have demanded scores of militia chasing the chimera of a stolen baby. There is no stolen baby because there was no baby to steal. No further action will be taken by the Search Department, except to remand for observation the juvenile who identifies herself only as Maya." The major turned off the recorder and added, "Sorry, dear. I never believed it from the start. No one would."

"Just tell me," the lieutenant said. "When you and the soldier went to the end of the car, did you give him a hand job or a blow job?"

Zhenya couldn't see what happened in the interview room. He heard shouts and the sound of water mixed with breaking glass. The door flew open as the lieutenant, soaked through, rushed the girl through the corridor, past the velvet rope and piano and down the escalator, holding her by the collar of her jacket so that her feet barely touched the floor. One moment he was lifting her into the air and the next she slipped clean out of her jacket and bolted through the waiting room.

The lieutenant pursued her, his knees pumping, suddenly a track star. In the lingering twilight the pavement was still active despite the hour. The lieutenant was nearly within reach when she darted behind a stack of parcels, between pensioners in wheelchairs, under a table of souvenirs and finally through an extended family of Chechens. Some devious shit, Zhenya thought. People cheered and applauded the girl's wild dash. Zhenya watched in awe.

"Cunt!" The officer pulled up lame and threw the girl's jacket. He limped in a circle to catch his breath, and by the time the cramp in his leg began to ease, the girl had disappeared. He didn't even know in which direction. Would it have been so hard for a citizen to stick out a foot and trip the little bitch? The arrogant shits of Moscow had, as usual, given the militia no help at all. For example, he went to collect the girl's jacket and it was gone.

It wasn't difficult for Zhenya to find the girl. Her red hair was hard to hide, and although she had found the underground connection to the Metro, he didn't think she was going far. He went through the contents of her jacket: reading glasses, a butane lighter, half a pack of "Russian Style" cigarettes and an envelope containing 1,500 rubles, the rough equivalent of sixty dollars, which Zhenya suspected was all the money she had in the world. No cell phone and no ID. Internal passports were issued at sixteen years. She was no older than he was.

The Metro was a grandiose Stalin-era hole in the ground a hundred meters deep, an air-raid shelter with ballroom chandeliers and escalators that clacked like wooden teeth. The girl was ten steps below him.

How crazy was she? The lieutenant aside, wouldn't a real mother have supplied all the information the major demanded? There would have been a proper search with bulletins, television appeals, adequate manpower and search dogs. Probably she was mentally unbalanced and "Baby" would turn out to be a lost pet.

Riders divided onto the platform or to the escalator to another, deeper subway line. Alone, the girl went to the far end of the platform and slipped down behind an octagonal column of limestone. Zhenya followed at a distance in a self-appointed, vaguely protective way. Over the train tunnel a digital clock began counting down from five minutes until the next train.

A mural in gilded tiles celebrated Soviet labor, and on the ceiling-for those with rubber necks-spread a gallery of patriots. The rush of air through tunnels seen and unseen and around the columns sounded like a respiratory system beneath the earth.

She was peeved as he came around the last column, as if her concentration had been broken. Or a private moment violated. To himself he said, "This is fucked."

Sitting cross-legged, the girl pressed a razor against her wrist but not hard enough yet to pop the vein. Double-edged. She might have outraced the lieutenant minutes before. Now she looked catatonic. As she raised her eyes he understood that at any moment he could be standing in blood.

"Do you have my baby?"

"I can help," Zhenya said. He drew her leather jacket out of his backpack and showed her that the money and other contents were still in the jacket pockets, but she wouldn't take her eyes off his.

"You don't have my baby?"

"But I can help you. No one knows Three Stations better than me. I'm here all the time. Every day." He talked fast with his eye on the blade. "I'm just saying if you want, you know, I can help."

"You'll help me?"

"I think so."

"In exchange for what?"

"What do you mean?"

She let a pause build. "You know what I mean."

"No." Zhenya's face went red.

"It doesn't matter." Keeping the razor poised became tiresome and she let her arms relax. "Where are we?"

"The Metro under Three Stations. You've never been here before?"

"No. Why aren't you in school?"

"Bobby Fischer used to say school was a waste of time, that he never learned anything in school."

"Who is Bobby Fischer?"

"The greatest chess player in history."

She gave him a blank look. Zhenya had no experience with girls. They treated him as if he were invisible and he returned the favor. He didn't modulate his voice in public and he was a disaster at conversation, yet he thought he must have said something right, because she slid the razor into a cardboard sleeve and got to her feet. With the tinkling of chandeliers and a buffeting of air, a train entered the station along the near side of the platform. If she had asked, he could have told her to avoid cars marked with a red stripe because of cracks in the undercarriage. He knew all sorts of stuff.

She asked, "How old are you?"

"Sixteen." He added a year.

"Sure."

"My name is Zhenya Lysenko."

"Zhenya Lysenko, Zhenya Lysenko." She found the name uninspiring.

"What's yours?"

"Maya."

"Just Maya?"

"Maya."

"I saw you outrun the lieutenant. That's typical. You go to them for help and almost get arrested."

"I don't need them."

"Do you have family in Moscow?"

"No."

"Friends?"

"No."

A train arrived on the other side of the platform and the din of passengers made speech impossible. By the time the train closed its doors and drew away from the platform, Zhenya had added it up. All she had was him.

Zhenya and Maya pushed through the amorphous mass that was a Russian queue, past biznesmen whose business fit into a suitcase, Uzbek women swathed in color, babushkas draped in gray, soldiers on leave sucking their last beer dry. Most of the trains were elektrichkas, locals with overhead cables, but some were destined to cross mountains and deserts to exotic locales thousands of kilometers away. An express left Platform 3. Halfway across the station yard the train met heat waves, entered a lagoon of semaphores and signals, sank and disappeared. The Platform 3 conductor, an energetic woman in a blue uniform and running shoes, fanned herself with her signal paddle and thought that if the two teenagers coming her way had missed their train there was nothing she could do about it now.

Zhenya and Maya had switched. She wore his sweatshirt open but with the hood up to conceal her red hair and he, in turn, had pulled on her leather jacket, even though the sleeves rode high on his skinny forearms. Out the corner of his eye he admired the way Maya boldly marched up to the conductor.

"You're not the conductor who was here this morning."

"Of course not. Her shift is over."

"And this morning's trains?"

"Back in service. Why? Did you lose something?"

"Yes."

The conductor was sympathetic. "I'm sorry, dear. Anything you leave on a train is probably gone for good. I hope it had no sentimental value."

"I lost my baby."

The conductor looked from Maya to Zhenya and back.

"Are you serious? Have you been to the Search Department?"

"Yes. They don't believe me."

The conductor lost her breath all at once. "Good Lord, why not?"

"They want to know too much. I just want my baby. A girl three weeks old."

"Is this true?" the conductor asked Zhenya.

"She thinks it was stolen by someone called Auntie Lena."

"I never heard of her. What is your name, dear?"

"Maya."

"Are you married, Maya?"

"No."

"I understand. Who is the father?" The conductor gave Zhenya a significant glance.

Maya said, "Not a chance. I just met him."

The conductor thought for a moment before asking Zhenya, "Have you seen the baby?"

"No."

"Then I'm so sorry. It's a criminal matter if a baby has been abducted. The Search Department is the proper authority. I wish I could help."

"She has a faint birthmark on the back of her neck. Almost like a question mark. You have to lift her hair to see it."

Zhenya thrust a piece of paper into the conductor's hand. "This is my cell-phone number. Please call if you hear anything."

A man with a suitcase in one hand and a toddler in the other arrived at the platform to find that their train was gone. As the man slowed to a standstill the toddler slipped to the ground and cried.

Tears escaped from Maya's eyes. Worse, to her fury, was how her breasts ached.

Zhenya steered her off the platform. Now that the crying had begun, she couldn't stop, as if at that moment her baby were being wrested from her hands. Not sobbing but bent over and racked. Zhenya prided himself on his lack of emotion and it was frightening how her crying knotted his throat.

He said, "This is fucked, this is really fucked."

"My baby."

"I know an investigator in the prosecutor's office. He's a decent guy."

"No prosecutors, no police."

"Just talk to him. Whoever took the baby could have gone a hundred different ways. Two people can't cover them all."

"No police."

"He'll help privately."

The suggestion mystified her. "Why would he do that?"

"He's got nothing else to do."