City of Thieves by David Benioff

Author:David Benioff [Benioff, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780452295292
Google: cbMongEACAAJ
Amazon: 0452295297
Publisher: Viking Books
Published: 2008-01-30T08:00:00+00:00

15

Lara brought us to a small bedroom in the back of the house, where I imagined the valets slept in the time of the emperors. She carried a brass candelabrum with two lit candles, which she rested on the little writing desk. The pine-paneled walls were unadorned, the bunk bed had no sheets on the mattresses, and I almost tripped on the warped floorboards, but the room was warm enough. The narrow windows offered a view of a moonlit toolshed and a wheelbarrow lying on its side in the snow.

I sat on the lower mattress and ran my finger over a name carved in the wall. ARKADIY. I wondered how long ago Arkadiy stayed in this room, and where he was now, an old man shivering somewhere in the cold night or just bones in the churchyard. He had been good with the knife, his ARKADIY was a delicate filigree in the dark wood, slants and curlicues, a strong slash underlining the name.

Lara and Kolya came up with a code—banging pots with serving spoons—that would allow her to signal to us how many Germans showed up for their late-night entertainment. When she left, Kolya pulled out his pistol and began taking it apart, neatly arranging the various parts on the writing desk, checking them for damage and wiping them off with the sleeve of his shirt before reassembling the weapon.

“Have you ever shot anybody?” I asked.

“Not that I know about.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I shot my rifle a hundred times, maybe a bullet hit someone, I don’t know.” He slapped the magazine back into the butt of the automatic. “When I shoot Abendroth, I’ll know it.”

“Maybe we should just leave now.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come in here.”

“We needed to rest. We needed food. I feel a lot better now.”

He turned and looked at me. I was sitting on the bed with my hands under my legs, my overcoat spread out behind me.

“There could be eight of them coming,” I said. “We’ve got one gun.”

“And one knife.”

“I can’t stop thinking about Zoya.”

“Good,” he said. “Keep thinking about her when you stick the knife in his gut.”

He threw his overcoat onto the top mattress and clambered up there, sitting cross-legged with his pistol beside him. He pulled his journal from the pocket of his overcoat. His stub of pencil had shrunk to the size of a thumbnail, but he jotted down notes with his usual speed.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I said, after a long silence. “I don’t think I can stick a knife in anyone.”

“Then I’ll have to shoot them all. What’s it been now, eleven days since I had a shit? What do you think the record is?”

“Probably a lot longer than that.”

“I wonder what it’s going to look like when it finally comes out.”

“Kolya . . . why don’t we just go now? Take the girls and go back to the city. We’d make it. They’ve got plenty of food we could bring. We’ve got our blood flowing again.

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