There wasn’t one person in Moscow who knew whom Arbat was. And yet everybody knew Arbat Street was the oldest and most storied in the city.
It was a patchwork of buildings as old as the torching by Napoleon standing alongside new residences put up by our motherland. And because it had so graciously been reserved for pedestrians, there wasn’t a single car anywhere in sight.
At times like this, I couldn’t be more grateful for exactly that. Long live the Communist Party.
The address I was looking for was burned into my memory—a high-class apartment for military types. Specifically, the penthouse on the top floor.
“Halt! Show me your identification!”
“I’ve got my identification right here!” I said, and whacked the security guard (did military folks need a security guard? Hmm.) with the butt of my PPSh, putting him down.
Sadly, I didn’t have a passport. The PPSh would have to do.
I spotted the elevator. It was coin-operated, nice and clean. I dropped in some kopecks and hit the button.
Or, I should say, the buttons. As in, all of them.
Then I hopped out and headed for the stairs, huffing and puffing my way up.
I pondered whether soldiers took the stairs, or if they were lazy bastards and always used the elevator.
Probably the second one. I based my guess on the fact that I didn’t see anyone else the whole time I was climbing.
I went right past the uppermost floor and arrived at the roof, shoving open the metal door without even taking time to catch my breath.
—It’s empty.
Just the sky, gray and flecked with snow and piercingly cold. It seemed so much closer than it did from the ground.
My breath escaped my mouth and fogged in the air despite my balaclava. My heart continued to threaten to explode, but I kept running.
The penthouse. I looked at the nameplate on the door. Adrova. Okay. At least I wasn’t going to break into the wrong place.
I could sort of see the point of building a house on top of a roof. It probably felt good. In fact, I was sure it did. But no matter where you lived in our motherland, on the roof or in a penthouse, the kind of lock on the door was always the same.
I pulled some keys from my pocket and tried two or three different ones before I hit the jackpot and waltzed inside.
“Damn! Look at this…”
The penthouse didn’t have many rooms, but this didn’t look like a lieutenant’s home. It could have belonged to a general. There was a thick Turkish rug. Ebony furniture. Alcohol and—there—a record collection that spanned every corner of the globe, East and West and everything else. No underground copies or rib bootlegs, either. He’d imported these things or smuggled them in.
He even had records of the woman named Jazz. He must, because they said JAZZ right on them. I sniffed when I saw those on the shelf. Maybe I would take a few home with me.
I wasn’t keen to judge the tastes of a dead man like Lieutenant Adam, but if I had to say one way or the other, I’d say they were questionable. Everything was real high-class and obviously expensive, but that’s all it was.
He was like the polar opposite of Stasia. The guiding principle of this house seemed to be that if it was luxurious and showy, it fit.
Look, not like I’m saying I have such great taste. Maybe I’d decorate the same way if I had the money for it.
“Point is, I don’t see a shadow of MI6 anywhere.”
If I survived, then I could debate the question of my discernment in interior decorating.
I took a quick look around the room, then started with the shoe shelves. I found pairs of black leather shoes, polished so bright that I could see myself in them. I went down the row, smashing the heel of each shoe with the butt of my gun.
Once I’d done that, I went into the living room and smashed the clock, then the radio cassette player. The fact that it was a radio seemed like a bad joke.
Same for the phonograph, which was nicer than anything I could have gotten my hands on. I would have liked to take it home with me, but it was too big.
When I got to the imported-leather sofa, I pulled out my knife and started slashing so I could check what was inside.
Then the bookcase. I took every one of the records out of their paper sleeves and threw them aside, then tossed away the foreign books.
There was something else on the bookshelf, too—a frame with a picture of the most beautiful woman in Moscow smiling gently.
That I took, carefully removed the photo, then flung the frame on the floor, where it shattered and twisted.
You could hide microfilm just about anywhere—that was what made it such a pain in the ass.
“Goddamn these fucking spies!” I muttered, glowering at the Nixie tubes of the clock, still plugged in, that lay on the floor.
I didn’t have time for this. I’d only managed to steal a moment’s initiative—or maybe I was already playing defense.
Maybe the spies had already worked this house over and made off with whatever they wanted. The thought sent a shiver down my spine. I had the sense that every second I spent here, the end was getting nearer.
What was I doing? There was no reason for me to get involved with them directly. I could just run. I should just run. If I wanted to stay alive, that was the master plan. Nothing to worry about. And yet somehow…
“…”
I took a deep breath and let it out. Then I asked myself again: What was I doing there?
The very fact that I was checking his house was the first problem. Where had I hidden my Tokarev? I sure hadn’t brought it right into my damn living room. Did I believe Lieutenant Adam wouldn’t do something that even an orphan with no professional training, living in a manhole, had thought of on his own?
“Hmm…”
I tossed the record I was holding and made a beeline for the front door, the neat little thing I’d just opened a few minutes earlier. The nameplate: Adrova.
Without a second thought, I slammed the butt of my gun into it. There was a hollow crack, and the nameplate broke clean in two. Poor thing.
I scooped the pieces up and nodded in satisfaction: There was black microfilm taped to the back side.
Now it was over. I just had to get this to Organ, and they would take care of the rest.
“Hope everything stays quiet…”
Of course, it was never going to.
The next second, I was literally blown backward, me and the battered door flung into the penthouse by a gale-force wind.
I felt like I’d been hit by a car. But this was a damn rooftop! I hit the ground and bounced.
“Chyort vozmi!”
I hurt like I’d been torn to pieces. But if I didn’t move, I really would be.
I put a hand down on the carpet, the one I’d trampled over so carelessly, and rolled to my feet.
“Stoi.”
“…?!”
A red light burned soundlessly, right through the palm of my hand. I thought I did a pretty good job of not screaming.
I did groan and reflexively jump backward, but the owner of the voice had the decency not to shoot me on the spot.
A man stood there, reeking of scorched gunpowder and metal and gasoline. What had once been a very impressive military uniform was shredded and blackened until it hardly bore looking at.
He fixed me with chrome eyes, a cruel smile playing around the corners of his lips. He looked like an executioner. And gleaming silver in his hand was a ray gun.
I’d seen them in science-adventure magazines lots of times, ever since I was little, but never in real life.
The man must have noticed me looking at his gun, because he said, “It’s a cosmonaut self-defense piece. Uses a combination of zirconium and metallic salt ignited with electricity.” He sounded as proud as a child bragging about his toy.
Certainly a world apart from a PPSh or Tokarev.
“Nice,” I spat. “And how much did that cost?”
“About six million, give or take.”
“Dollars?”
“Pounds sterling.”
With that, the man opened up the weapon and removed the spent cartridge. Then he clicked it back into place and pulled the bolt, loading a new one.
But of course, the ray gun wasn’t the most dangerous thing in the room.
That would be Air Force Lieutenant Adam Adrova. The immortal man, standing there with his artificial skin half melted, exposing the steel body underneath.
I finally understood what secret he was trying to abscond with—and why MI6 wasn’t there.
—The lieutenant himself was the prize.