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

if she had been on nothing more dangerous than a roller coaster. Obolensky had slipped away. The poet Maxim was also gone. Too bad. It had been like having a yeti fight on your side.
    A police captain bellowed, “Assembly without a permit, spreading malicious rumors, obstructing officers of the law.”
    “Who were assaulting innocent civilians,” Arkady said.
    “Did they have a permit to assemble? Yes or no? See, that’s where the trouble starts, with people who think they are special and above the law.”
    “People who were being beaten,” Arkady said. Somehow, by virtue of his rank, he had become spokesman for the demonstrators.
    “Troublemakers who viciously attacked police with bricks and stones. Who did you say your chief was?”
    “Prosecutor Zurin.”
    “Good man.”
    “One in a million. I apologize, Captain. I haven’t made myself clear. The people here are the victims and they need medical care.”
    “Once we have affairs sorted out. The first thing is to gather up all the cameras. All the cameras and cell phones.”
    “In a trash bag?”
    “That way we’ll be able to view and objectively evaluate any violations. Such as—”
    Arkady winced because it hurt to laugh. “Do these people look as if they could assault anyone?”
    “They’re writers, artists, intellectual whores. Who knows what they’ll get up to.”
    The trash bag returned and the captain held it open for Anya. “Now yours.”
    Arkady knew that she wanted to drive a dagger into the captain’s heart. At the same time, she was paralyzed by the threat of losing her camera.
    “She’s with me,” Arkady said.
    “Don’t be ridiculous, she’s not an investigator or militia.”
    “On special orders from Prosecutor Zurin.”
    “Really. I tell you what, Renko, let’s call the prosecutor’s office. Let’s ask him.”
    “I doubt he’s in his office now.”
    “I know his cell phone number.”
    “You’re friends?”
    “Yes.”
    Arkady had walked into a trap of his own devising. He was light-headed and heard a fluty wheeze in his chest. None of this was good.
    A phone at the other end rang and rang until it finally produced a message. The captain clicked off. “The prosecutor is at his golf club and doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
    The issue was still undecided when a massive sedan slid out of the dark. It was a dumbfounding sight, Maxim Dal in a silver ZIL, an armored Soviet-era limousine with double headlights, tail fins and whitewall tires. It had to be at least fifty years old. In an authoritative voice Dal ordered Anya and Arkady to get in.
    It was like boarding a spaceship from the past.

3
    Anya made a terrible nurse. When she tried to cook, Arkady smelled food burning and heard her swearing at pots and pans. When she wrote in his apartment, he smelled her cigarettes and listened to her swear at her laptop. But he was surprised by Anya’s patience. He would have expected her, like a cat, to move on. Although she had assignments—a fashion shoot, a photo essay on the Mafia—she dropped in several times a day to see how he was. “You’d miss me if I didn’t. You’re a secret romantic,” she said.
    “I’m a cynic. I believe in car wrecks, airline disasters, missing children, self-immolation, suffocation with pillows.”
    “What is it you don’t believe in?”
    “I don’t believe in saints. They get people killed.”
    “It’s no big deal,” Victor said when he visited. “Seems to me that you’re making a lot of fuss for a couple of busted ribs. What the devil is the matter with you anyway?”
    “Punctured lung.” A couple of days with a valve in his chest and the lung would reinflate itself on its own.
    “It’s like visiting Our Lady of the Camellias. Do you mind?” Victor held up a pack of cigarettes.
    For once, Arkady didn’t crave one.
    “So it’s suicide.”
    “Or murder,” Arkady said.
    “No, I heard it on the radio. The prosecutor determined that Tatiana Petrovna threw herself out her