Read Online Mazurka by Campbell Armstrong - Free Book Online Page A

with no windows, a table, a couple of uncomfortable chairs. He chain-smoked, tilting his chair back against the wall and blowing rings up at the ceiling. He’d undone the ponytail and now his long brown hair fell around his shoulders. He had a glum expression on his face, disturbed only by the occasional tic of a pulse beneath his right eye. Pagan’s impression was of a man whose life was a closed book which, once you opened it, would contain a drab little story of childhood neglect, lonely adolescence and fruitless adulthood, a serial of failures and pitiful vignettes.
    He glanced at the young uniformed policeman who stood, arms folded, in the corner of the room, then sat down facing Kiviranna and tossed the US passport on the table. It fell open at the photograph. Pagan wondered about the ethnic origin of the name Kiviranna.
    â€œJake or Jacob?” he asked.
    â€œI don’t care,” Kiviranna replied. He had a flat, lifeless voice, like that of a man whose verbal interplay with others has been strictly limited.
    â€œLet’s start with the biggie, Jake. Why did you kill Romanenko?”
    Kiviranna didn’t answer. He dropped a cigarette on the floor, crushed it with his ragged sneaker.
    â€œIt’s going to make my life a whole lot easier if you answer my questions, Jake,” Pagan said.
    Kiviranna shut his eyes, placed his arms on the table, then lowered his face. His mouth hung open and he made exaggerated snoring noises. Bloody comedian, Pagan thought. He glanced again at the cop who stood in the corner. The young man looked about nine years of age. Every year’s influx of new recruits seemed younger than ever and they made Pagan, at forty-one, feel old and weatherbeaten.
    â€œLet’s try another question,” Pagan said. “Where did you get the gun?”
    Kiviranna opened one eye. He smiled at Pagan but remained silent. He had brown teeth misaligned in his dark gums. Pagan studied the man’s combat jacket, the Mickey Mouse patch on one sleeve, the small US flag on the other. He gazed at the beard, which was shapeless. He had the feeling he was peering into the past, confronting a species that, if not extinct, was at the very least threatened. You rarely encountered hippies these days. Now and then an old DayGlo van would chug past you on the street and it would be plastered with faded peace signs and weathered bumper-stickers bearing mellow messages, or you’d see some clapped-out forty-year-old flower-child sliding quietly along the sidewalk – but they didn’t seem to come in bunches any more. Pagan remembered a time when he’d admired the lifestyle, before it became ugly and drugged.
    He wandered around the room, pausing when he reached the door. “I wish you’d talk to me, Jake,” he said. “If it’s something simple, if it’s just that you don’t like Russians and you think the only good Commie’s a dead one, I wish you’d say so.”
    Kiviranna sucked on a cigarette. There was some tiny response just then when Pagan had mentioned the Russians, a very slight thing, a small change in the man’s expression.
    Pagan decided to pursue the opening. “By the way, Jake, they want you. Did I mention that already? They’d like to talk to you. In the circumstances, I can’t say I blame them.”
    â€œWho wants me?”
    Pagan went back to the table and sat down. “The Soviets. They’d like me to turn you over to them. They’re being pretty persistent about it. And I’m not sure I can prevent it.”
    â€œYou’re out of your mind,” Kiviranna said. “No way would you hand me over.”
    Pagan shrugged. Sometimes when you interviewed a person you got lucky very quickly and you managed to touch a little nerve of fear. And it was apprehension that showed now on Kiviranna’s gaunt face.
    â€œI don’t know, Jake. You shot one of their own. They’re not happy