We had been following the taxi with the women for half an hour, barely covering more than one kilometer in the dense traffic jam, headed towards the western outskirts of the city. Moscow's traffic had become as crazy as its inhabitants. A lot of old cars had come to Moscow in the last five years. There was a whole group of population that held having a good western car a status symbol more important than having a home, they were able to sell their house in the country only to buy a new foreign make, they could be jobless, they could have family to feed, yet having a nice car was more important than anything else; all new car owners had to show the public those cars, and many thousands of them were getting around all day long, and nights too, creating a great transport collapse in the centre of Moscow. All of a sudden total population split into two categories: those who had a western car and those miserable fellows without one. Those who had a national make car were looked upon with contempt by foreign model owners, and the former readily admitted their inferiority, cherishing the dream of overcoming one day the latter by buying a new foreign model. The long-pursued model of Soviet education of a citizen proud of being a well-educated and thus valuable person was in few years smashed by the imported value of having a valuable thing and thus being a respectable person. Moscow became a centre of showing off, a real vanity fair. And now we were struggling through that vanity fair of old foreign cars, cursing and grudging, amid all those creaking and coughing Fords and Toyotas, Renaults and Fiats, giving out trails of black smoke from the exhaust pipes, poisoning more the already poisoned atmosphere of Moscow.
Now we were stuck somewhere on the route to the south-west outskirts of Moscow, and the situation on the road was far from improving. We stayed put for about twenty minutes, then moved slowly, then faster and faster. A kilometre away from our first stop we could see on our right a heavily smashed Mercedes with many bullet holes on its doors and windscreen. There were blood stains on the asphalt near the car.
"Another execution," I said.
"Today it's the fourth one", remarked Pavel. "I wonder, whether our lady Hewlett was inspired by this view and will kill her immediately, to make it the fifth of the day."
I saw something interesting metres ahead of them:
"Look, they're pulling up."
Their taxi stopped near a big rubbish bin. We had to proceed and stopped thirty metres ahead. Now we were keenly looking back, expecting the taxi-driver to get out first in order to pull out something like a huge sack with a body in it. "But why here, on a lively street?" we both thought. "Do they think Moscow will swallow anything, even a dead body in broad daylight being thrown away in the dustbin? But, on the other hand, all things considered, it wouldn't be such a bad idea, given Moscow's nowadays realities..."
But life once more was richer than our fancy. The back door opened and Hewlett's former secretary, safe and sound, got out of it, looked back and greeted someone in the car, then she went back some fifty metres and disappeared down an underpass. After some twenty long seconds she re-emerged on the other side, going away in the direction of a side street with elegant boutiques. She could have reached this spot much faster on foot.
"Now what?" I said. "What do you make of it all?"
Pavel thought for a moment, then shook his head:
"I tell you what. You get out and follow the girl, I shall go after the lady. At least we'll know where they live. The girl might blackmail the lady with something she had gathered on Hewlett, and her material might interest us, you see?"
"Yes", I said jumping out of the car and looking after the slim girl's figure going away with resolute and light step. "See you later".
The taxi behind them moved away from the curb with another passenger.
"I'll call you if something comes up", Pavel cried as he pulled away. I barely heard him keen as I was on not losing sight of the girl's fair head.
It took me three minutes to reach her just the moment she was entering the revolving door of Acquarel Hotel. I didn't know what I was going to do. I had to play it by ear.
"Excuse me!', I shouted to the girl as she was nearing the reception desk.
She looked back:
"Yes?"
I couldn't define her a raging beauty, but there was undoubted charm about her big grey eyes, touched with a note of sadness, which looked at me without cold alertness that would be normal in such circumstances, and her slightly elongated face with small dimples which appeared together with a shadow of a professional smile, a frame of wavy blond hair, and her high convex forehead, all her tall figure was elegant and smart, I couldn't blame Hewlett for cheating his wife with this girl.
"Excuse me," I repeated trying to gain time. "I, I'm a complete stranger for you. My name is Eric, I'm Swedish (in that moment I had a Swedish passport in my pocket with that name and my photo in it, just in case), I'm a scholar of the Russian new styles of life, you know. You must be English, as I understand, and my problem is to find somebody, absolutely unfamiliar with Russian reality here to check some my conclusions. Dealing with native Russians is practically useless, they tend to distort every aspect of their life, for the better or for the worse, they're practically all crazy now, you must have noticed that, I believe..."
I blurted all that nonsense without thinking, hoping that it would work at least as a starting point.
The girl's eyebrows raised a bit, the slight professional smile became more natural:
"I'm afraid you're turning to a wrong person for that. I've been here for only one day, and I can't..."
"That's even better!", I interrupted her with ardour. "Your freshness of perception will be of great help for me. That's all I need for now, excuse me once more for troubling you, but if I could only use a bit of your precious time I would be immensely grateful to you."
At that moment I took away the smoked glasses I wore. I knew that rare women could withstand the first impact of my eyes.
I never learned exactly what their effect on women was due to, but it had always been strikingly efficient when they happened to be at a distance of one meter and less from the victim's straight glance. I called that a killing distance. Their effect weakened as that distance grew, when the minor defects of my head – a somewhat irregular form, rather big ears, a nose of not exactly classical shape. But within that killing distance, all other things on my face were overshadowed by my magic shining eyes, the woman's eyes became unchangingly glued to them like flies on honey. The woman could remain in that state for long minutes breathing heavily or stopping breathing at all, I had her completely in my power, but as I never liked power over live persons, regarding it as sadistic cruelty, I rarely, strictly in the line of duty, had used that power. Whenever I tried to elicit from the woman the precise description of my ophthalmic influence on them, the best I could obtain was that they (my eyes) had some magnetic hypnotizing power over them that deprived them of any will and desire other than to look at them forever. I never accompanied my killing glance with any particular device, perhaps sometimes slightly squinting them, only to open them widely next moment, an innocent trick every beginning coquette knows.
Now I started with my eyes lowered and then, suddenly, raised them to strike right in the face like a lightning. I was aware I had to deal with a woman still in love with a man who matched my charming power, a woman which wasn't afraid to defy distance and danger of the new Russian reality.
Yet the power of my strike was quite visible. She gaped for a moment, then bit her lip. I almost pitied her in that moment. The immediate effect for the formerly beloved man is devastating, his image burns and shrivels like a blooming tree suddenly hit by a lightning.
Now she stood there, dumb and enchanted, she was living the first terrible seconds of the strike. I waited until she recovered from the first shock.
Then I said, putting into the question a lot more than the literal meaning of the three words it contained:
"May I hope?"
She answered whispering:
"I think so."
I took my eyes away from her, for the purely practical reason – in order to go on communicating and doing things.
"Are you living here?" I asked a superfluous question.
She nodded.
"And you?" she asked, now avidly staring at me, trying specially to catch the glimpse of my eyes whose first strike was hard to overcome. I gave her only occasional glances as I wanted now to maintain only a working contact .
"You see, in fact I'm living in Moscow by friends who left me their apartment for a month, they went away for a holiday in Turkey. Now I'm collecting evidence and experiences of someone like you, as I have been telling you, and now I have been lucky, in all senses."
"You can't say it for the moment," she said as she told the receptionist the number of her room. "If you don't mind, I'd like to have a bite, you can join me, and start to brief me on the results of your survey, or what it is you have done here."
"With immense pleasure."
The lobby was quiet, rare guests were sitting in deep armchairs, reading papers or quietly chatting.
We went to the bar, immersed in semidarkness with lamps on the ceiling like faraway stars. She took two hot sandwiches, a glass of orange juice and a coffee, I limited myself to a cup of coffee. To be efficient I had to be somewhat hungry. A hearty meal makes a weak bourgeois out of a warrior.
"Now", she said as she swallowed the first bite. "What was it you were going to ask me?"
"Right", I said, taking out my note pad from the breast pocket. "May I ask you first what you're doing here? Is it a business visit or something else? I will explain why it's important. What expectations did you have when you came here? There are always strong distortions of Russian realities in the Western media, a sort of prejudices, they're always biased in the positive o negative sense, you know."
"I'm here for personal reasons, and I had no particular ideas on what the Russian life or people are. I had to follow a person whom I care for, it's of no importance for you, and I had to talk with him, to sort out some things."
This was a fallout that had always stunned me – the woman who had undergone the first radiation from my eyes was inclined to reveal all her secrets to me, in most of which I wasn't in the least interested. But not this time.
"It's none of my business, of course, but this person you have followed here, is a businessman?"
She paused, as she bit another portion of the sandwich, and said:
"Yes, that's right."
I muttered, as if talking to myself:
"It sounds romantic. But..."
She was quick to interrupt me:
"It is a sad story. He is a man who loved me, and I have every reason to believe that he still loves me. I was his secretary, but was sacked as his wife found out about us."
I muttered:
"I can't blame his wife, and I perfectly understand the man, you're an extremely attractive woman."
She was momentarily absorbed by bitter recollections, and hardly appreciated my compliment.
I had a very delicate task in front of me: to keep that confidential mood of hers without being rudely nosy by putting too indiscreet questions.
But something of my last remark must have entered her conscience: she sighed and faintly smiled giving me a glance in which I had no difficulty to catch gratitude.
She said:
"And now, imagine, she came here to kill me but ended up offering me a position as her private secretary. Could you believe that? I can understand her. She doesn't want to lose sight of me, as she rightly suspects we can see each other."
"But why didn't she kill you?" I asked timidly showing a vivid interest in her story. "It's so easy in today's Moscow."
She wasn't surprised at my question, and said with eagerness:
"I told her I had enough documents to seriously damage her reputation and to ruin her husband's business. It's called blackmail, isn't it? You're perfectly right, Moscow today is an ideal place to murder your personal enemies without any danger of being caught and punished. I saw as I returned to the hotel a scene of murder on the road. That's their new style of life. Is it this you wanted me to ask about?"
I gave her one of my smiles from my rich arsenal, the sympathetic one mixed with sincere admiration for her beauty and courage:
"I can see you're flustered now. We can put off our interview until some better moment."
She was silent for a a minute, chewing her second sandwich.
Then she looked straight into my eyes and said:
"Has somebody ever told you that you have got mesmerizing eyes?"
The question – put so bluntly - took me somewhat unawares, if not unprepared. Yet I was pleased at that another statement of my undiminished power over women's soul. I easily depicted an image of slight confusion, even with a bit of blush. She went on:
"You know, you don't seem much of a Swedish. Those are cold, like fish. You're different, very different."
That was big news. I should have learned to behave like cold fish before assuming the role of a Swedish.
Nevertheless I had to take measures to defend my identity, even if false, making some concessions:
"I know that one my remote ancestor was Russian, or anyhow a Slav".
She gazed at me with a little smile, then said:
"Are you sure you don't want to get a bite to eat?"
"No, thank you, I'm fine."
"I'm fine too. So you can go on with your interview. Let me hear first your conclusions, then I can say it coincide with my fresh impressions as you put it. By the way, for whom do you work? I mean, a university or something? Or a government agency? Are you going to mention me as an independent informer?"
"No, if you don't want to be mentioned. Anyhow, I'm going to write a paper for a scientific publication, I can refer to you in the section devoted to the sources. And, I don't know your name."
"Am I a source? That's it?" she grinned. "My name is Ann. Ann Hargreaves. I don't mind if you mention it in your paper. " Then she shook her head:
"Ok, let's first look into your conclusions."
I opened my notepad on the page with notes referring to my previous case and said, looking keenly at it:
"The most sweeping conclusion is that the Russians have completely lost their points of reference but are stubbornly reluctant to admit it. They're inwardly regretting, feeling bitterly the loss of their past imperial grandeur, that was their sense of life, they didn't care about their personal wellbeing, at least that was their personal ideology. If you cast a general glance at their past history, its most striking feature is the utmost contempt for individual existence, they are, in this respect, more like ancient Greeks or Romans of the Republican period. But, in fact this is a trap for a researcher, it's a rather recent legend to justify their enormous waste of human resources in the course of their history, due mostly to the inaptitude of their leaders. But, from the other hand, here we run into the eternal chicken-or-egg dispute. Their chiefs through all their history didn't respect individual life not because of their inaptitude but because they were convinced of its insignificance..."
"Wait a second, wait a second," stopped me the girl. "I'm a bit confused. What all that's got to do with present day Russia?"
"I'm coming to it. The Russians have been suddenly stripped of every government protection and left to themselves, but the main point is that they, all along the Soviet period, had never stopped to be individuals with their desires, with a longing for better housing and economic condition in general, those longings had been for too long artificially repressed, and now they have come out abruptly like steam from an overheated boiler. And that's not all. They transferred their former imperial proud onto their miserable present when they are completely abandoned by the State, and now they're hurriedly catching up with this quite western hunger of individual success. You could see this flood of old cars, on the one hand, and those horrible palaces of the nouveau riches, on the other. Do you agree?"
She nodded with a sigh:
"Perhaps you're right. There's a great nervousness on the streets, it's not agitation, a sort of despare that comes before an uprising, it's more like fever..."
My cellphone started singing. I said: "Excuse me", and looked at the screen. It was Pavel. I had to take precautions, answering in Russian with a strong accent:
"Hello, how are things?"
He understood at once:
"You're engaged, ok. I'll be quick. Our lady stopped in a little private hotel. But you know what? Short time after she entered, I saw Lena coming out of it. I couldn't approach her, of course. I don't know what to make out of it. I don't run her part of the operation, and nobody knows who does. You don't know either, I suppose."
"No," I said.
"Maybe, they're not together, I mean Lena and Hewlett's wife. By the way, her name is Martha, Martha Lewis. I can't imagine Lena taking this course of action on her own, but this lack of information frightens me. I sometimes wonder for whom we're working. For our country? For ourselves?"
"It doesn't matter anymore."
"Anyhow, I don't like it. Now I'm coming back to the hotel. If you're busy with your new acquaintance, go ahead, but make sure you come back in two hours at least. If you find it necessary to stay all night, I don't know, too many women is no good. Anyhow, it's up to you. Call me, when you're free. Bye-bye."
"Bye".
Ann said:
"You're fluent in Russian, as I can hear."
"Not as much as I would like to be."
"So, where were we?"
I gave her one of my most magnetic glances and a charming smile:
"You know, Ann, I feel that I'm encroaching in the most shameless way on your personal time, and you're here on a rather dangerous mission. I wish I could help you in any way. If you think of how I could be of help to you, I'd be happy to... As for this interview, allow me to give you time to think, now that you know the main points of my paper. I'll call you later, in the evening, whenever you tell me, if you give me your number..."
"You have to go, I see", Ann said with a saddened look. "I'll think about your work. I don't know why you're so interested in my answers, anyhow you have managed to interest me, I will be more attentive in my contacts and meetings here."
"For how long are you going to stay here?" I said, sincerely wishing to see her again apart from any official mission.
"I don't know", she shook her head. "I have to sort out some things, with my man and my life. The next two days I'll be here, unless some stray bullet should hit me..."
"How many persons are obsessed with the idea of getting killed in Moscow these days", I couldn't help thinking. "As if it were a privilege or glory."
"Don't hope too much," I tried to joke.
She smiled vaguely.