Tatiana: An Arkady Renko Novel (Arkady Renko Novels) Read Online Free

point, advanced his or her career by pulling an article that Tatiana Petrovna had written at the risk of her neck. At the same time, they recalled, she knew what her end would be. She didn’t own a car because, as she said, it would only be blown up, and what a waste of aperfectly good car. She could have moved to a larger flat—could have blackmailed her way to material luxury—but was content with her dead-end apartment, its rickety lift and insubstantial doors.
    “Every snail prefers its own shell,” Tatiana had said. But she knew. One way or another, it was just a matter of time.
    Afternoon faded into twilight and the television news team had gone before the poet Maxim Dal stepped forward. Maxim was instantly recognizable, taller than anyone else, with a yellow-white ponytail and sheepskin coat and so heroically ugly that he was kind of beautiful. As soon as he got his hands on the megaphone, he condemned the investigation’s lack of progress.
    “Tolstoy wrote, ‘God knows the truth, but waits.’ ” Maxim repeated, “God knows the truth, but waits to rectify the evil that men do. Tatiana Petrovna did not have that kind of patience. She did not have the patience of God. She wanted the evil that men do to be rectified now. Today. She was an impatient woman and for that reason she knew this day might come. She knew she was a marked woman. She was small but so dangerous to certain elements in the state that she had to be silenced, just as so many other Russian journalists have been intimidated, assaulted and murdered. She knew she was next on the list of martyrs and for that reason, too, she was an impatient woman.”
    One of the demonstrators fell to his knees. Arkady thought the man had tripped until a streetlight shattered. A general intake of breath was followed by cries of alarm.
    From the edge of the crowd, Arkady had a clear view of the skinheads scaling the chain-link fences like Vikings boarding a ship. Just a handful, no more than twenty, wielding iron rods like broadswords.
    Sedentary editors were no match for young thugs whose days were spent lifting weights and practicing karate blows to the kidney or the back of the knees. Professors backpedaled, taking their dignity with them, trying to fend off blows. Placards toppled into chaos as appeals were answered with kicks. A whack to the back took the air away. A brick to the head peeled back the scalp. Rescue seemed imminent when a police bus arrived and unloaded riot police. Arkady expected them to come to the aid of the demonstrators; instead, they waded into the marchers with batons.
    Arkady was challenged by a mountainous policeman. Overmatched, he hit the man in the windpipe, more a cheap shot than a knockout blow, but the policeman staggered in circles searching for air. Anya was in the middle of the fray taking photographs while Maxim protected her, swinging the megaphone like a club. Arkady glimpsed the editor, Obolensky, also holding his own.
    Arkady, however, went down. In a street fight the worst place to be was on the ground and that was where he was headed. Whose foot tripped him he did not know, but two riot police began dancing on his ribs. Well, he thought, in Victor’s words, this was truly fucked.
    He got to his feet, how he didn’t know, and displayed his investigator’s ID.
    “He’s with us?” A policeman dropped his fist. “He fooled me.”
    In minutes the battle was over. Skinheads slipped over the fence and disappeared. Police circulated among the casualties, gathering IDs. Arkady saw split lips and bloody noses, but the real damage had been to the spirits of the demonstrators. All afternoon they had relived and rekindled the passion of their youth, stood again with Yeltsin on a tank, again defied the apparatus of theKGB. Those heady days were gone, deflated, and all they had reaped was bruises.
    Arkady’s eye was swollen shut and from Anya’s reaction he was glad he couldn’t see himself. She, on the other hand, looked as