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Authors: Martin Cruz Smith
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the wheel. “I’ll drive you back to your car. You paid the whole thing? What a friend!”
“You know, with the money you’ve saved eating with me, you could buy a new car.”
“Come on, I’m worth it, getting the mobile phone and sharing my repository of knowledge. My head is a veritable Lenin Library.”
Mice and all, Arkady thought. As Victor pulled onto the highway, Arkady told him about the return call to Anton, which amused the detective immensely.
“Butyrka! Now, there’s an alibi.”
4
T he address on Butyrka Street was a five-story building of aluminum windows, busted shades and dead geraniums, ordinary in every way except for the line that snaked along the sidewalk: Gypsies in brilliant scarves, Chechens in black and Russians in thin leather jackets, mutually hostile as groups but alike in their forlorn bearing and the parcels that, one by one, they dutifully submitted at a steel door for the thousands of souls hidden on the other side.
Arkady showed his ID at the door and passed through a barred gate to the underbelly of the building, a tunnel where guards in military fatigues lounged with their dogs, Alsatians that constantly referred to their handlers for orders. Let this one pass. Take this one down. The far end opened onto the morning light and—totally hidden from the street—a fairy-tale fortress with red walls and towers surrounded by a whitewashed courtyard; all that was missing was a moat. Not quite a fairy tale, more a nightmare. Butyrka Prison had been built by Catherine the Great, and for over two hundred years since, every ruler of Russia, every tsar, Party secretary and president had fed it enemies of the state. A guard carrying an elongated sniper rifle watched Arkady from a turret and could have been a fusilier. The satellite dishes lining the battlements could have been heads on pikes. In Stalin’s era, black vans delivered fresh victims every night to this same courtyard and these same blood-red walls, and questions about someone’s health, whereabouts and fate could be answered in a single whispered word: Butyrka.
Since Butyrka was a pretrial prison, investigators were a common sight. Arkady followed a guard through a receiving hall where new arrivals, boys as pale as plucked chickens, were stripped and thrown their prison clothes. Wide eyes fixed on the hall’s ancient coffin cells, barely deep enough to sit in, a good place for a monk’s mortification and an excellent way to introduce the horror of being buried alive.
Arkady climbed marble stairs swaybacked from wear. Nets stretched between railings to discourage jumping and passing notes. On the second floor, light crept from low windows and gave the impression of sinking, or eyelids shutting. The guard led Arkady along a row of ancient black doors with iron patchwork, each with a panel for food and a peephole for observation.
“I’m new here. I think it’s this one,” the guard said. “I think.”
Arkady swung a peephole tag out of the way. On the other side of the door were fifty men in a cell designed for twenty. They were sniffers, lifters, petty thieves. They slept in shifts in the murk of a caged lightbulb and a barred window. There was no circulation, no fresh air, only the stench of sweat, pearl porridge, cigarettes and shit in the single toilet. In the heat they generated, everyone stripped to the waist, young ones virginally white, veterans blue with tattoos. A tubercular cough and a whisper hung in the air. A few heads turned to the blink of the peephole, but most simply waited. A man could wait nine months in Butyrka before he saw a judge.
“No? This one?” The guard motioned Arkady to the next door.
Arkady peeked into the cell. It was the same size as the other but held a single occupant, a bodybuilder with short bleached-blond hair and a taut black T-shirt. He was exercising with elastic bands that were attached to a bunk bed bolted to the wall, and every time he curled a bicep, the bed
“You know, with the money you’ve saved eating with me, you could buy a new car.”
“Come on, I’m worth it, getting the mobile phone and sharing my repository of knowledge. My head is a veritable Lenin Library.”
Mice and all, Arkady thought. As Victor pulled onto the highway, Arkady told him about the return call to Anton, which amused the detective immensely.
“Butyrka! Now, there’s an alibi.”
4
T he address on Butyrka Street was a five-story building of aluminum windows, busted shades and dead geraniums, ordinary in every way except for the line that snaked along the sidewalk: Gypsies in brilliant scarves, Chechens in black and Russians in thin leather jackets, mutually hostile as groups but alike in their forlorn bearing and the parcels that, one by one, they dutifully submitted at a steel door for the thousands of souls hidden on the other side.
Arkady showed his ID at the door and passed through a barred gate to the underbelly of the building, a tunnel where guards in military fatigues lounged with their dogs, Alsatians that constantly referred to their handlers for orders. Let this one pass. Take this one down. The far end opened onto the morning light and—totally hidden from the street—a fairy-tale fortress with red walls and towers surrounded by a whitewashed courtyard; all that was missing was a moat. Not quite a fairy tale, more a nightmare. Butyrka Prison had been built by Catherine the Great, and for over two hundred years since, every ruler of Russia, every tsar, Party secretary and president had fed it enemies of the state. A guard carrying an elongated sniper rifle watched Arkady from a turret and could have been a fusilier. The satellite dishes lining the battlements could have been heads on pikes. In Stalin’s era, black vans delivered fresh victims every night to this same courtyard and these same blood-red walls, and questions about someone’s health, whereabouts and fate could be answered in a single whispered word: Butyrka.
Since Butyrka was a pretrial prison, investigators were a common sight. Arkady followed a guard through a receiving hall where new arrivals, boys as pale as plucked chickens, were stripped and thrown their prison clothes. Wide eyes fixed on the hall’s ancient coffin cells, barely deep enough to sit in, a good place for a monk’s mortification and an excellent way to introduce the horror of being buried alive.
Arkady climbed marble stairs swaybacked from wear. Nets stretched between railings to discourage jumping and passing notes. On the second floor, light crept from low windows and gave the impression of sinking, or eyelids shutting. The guard led Arkady along a row of ancient black doors with iron patchwork, each with a panel for food and a peephole for observation.
“I’m new here. I think it’s this one,” the guard said. “I think.”
Arkady swung a peephole tag out of the way. On the other side of the door were fifty men in a cell designed for twenty. They were sniffers, lifters, petty thieves. They slept in shifts in the murk of a caged lightbulb and a barred window. There was no circulation, no fresh air, only the stench of sweat, pearl porridge, cigarettes and shit in the single toilet. In the heat they generated, everyone stripped to the waist, young ones virginally white, veterans blue with tattoos. A tubercular cough and a whisper hung in the air. A few heads turned to the blink of the peephole, but most simply waited. A man could wait nine months in Butyrka before he saw a judge.
“No? This one?” The guard motioned Arkady to the next door.
Arkady peeked into the cell. It was the same size as the other but held a single occupant, a bodybuilder with short bleached-blond hair and a taut black T-shirt. He was exercising with elastic bands that were attached to a bunk bed bolted to the wall, and every time he curled a bicep, the bed
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