Independence Square: Arkady Renko in Ukraine by Martin Cruz Smith

Author:Martin Cruz Smith [Smith, Martin Cruz]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Flowers, cards, and candles were placed on the sidewalk where Uzeir had been shot. Elena moved among them, reading each message. Beyond the police cordon, hundreds of Crimean Tatars stood in near silence. Arkady heard some weeping and prayers.

Kravets kept Arkady abreast of the police investigation. The moped had been found abandoned five blocks away, wiped clean of fingerprints. The owner was a twenty-two-year-old chef who said it had been stolen two nights before, something his friends and colleagues confirmed. Arkady didn’t even bother asking whether he’d reported the theft to the police. Might as well tell them you had run out of dish soap. The SBU hadn’t received any fresh intelligence of threats to Uzeir or the Crimean Tatar community at large. They were also still looking for connections to the Werewolves, though surely no self-respecting Werewolf would be seen riding such a tiny and unimpressive machine. The Werewolves had chapters in several Russian cities but none in Kyiv for obvious reasons; their brand of aggressive Russian nationalism would not have been welcome.

“I’m guessing it was FSB,” Arkady said.

“Of course,” Kravets said.

“How many FSB agents are in Kyiv?”

Kravets laughed. “Declared and known agents that we can officially keep tabs on? Very few. But there are also three hundred thousand ethnic Russians living here, so take your pick. How many of those could be trained well enough to fire accurately from a moped? Lots.”

“You have informants.”

“Yes, but that’s no guarantee.”

“And the politicians—are they putting pressure on the police to find the killer?”

“Not yet.”

This was not a good sign, Arkady thought. He knew he had been spoiled by working for Zurin, whose political machinations were so transparent as to be laughable. Pressure worked in subtle ways: encouragement to pursue an unlikely line of inquiry, a promise to use a certain piece of information wisely, regret that another agency was not pulling its weight the way it should. Bureaucratic inertia could stop even the most determined and idealistic investigator. They never officially or explicitly warned you off, just wore you down until you gave up of your own accord, and then they could turn around and say it had been your choice in the first place.

“I was very fond of him,” Kravets continued. “It wasn’t an easy task, the one he had. People called it a government-in-exile, and he always laughed at that. He didn’t govern anyone, he said. He represented them. It was different.”

“He had no power,” Arkady said.

“None. And he knew it. He was a symbol. But who wants to be just a symbol? He was an old man. He should have been at home, walking on the promenade in the mornings and playing with his grandchildren in the afternoons. That’s what I want when I’m that age. He was thousands of miles from his home, and people looked to him for something he couldn’t give.”

Who would guess that such a soft heart beat under all that muscle? Arkady patted his shoulder as he said good-bye

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