Read Red Square for Free Online Page A

said. 'No one has to attack this country, just drop cigarettes.'
        Arkady changed the subject. 'What about Kim's place?'
        Jaak reported that a more complete search of the storeroom had turned up more empty cartons for German car radios and Italian running shoes, the mattress, empty cognac bottles, birdseed and Tiger Balm.
         'All the fingerprints from the storeroom matched the militia file on Kim,' Polina said. 'The prints on the fire escape were smudged.'
        'The witness identified Kim throwing a bomb into Rudy's car. You find a land mine in his room. How much doubt can there be?' Minin asked.
        'We didn't actually see Kim,' Arkady said. 'We don't know who was there.'
        'The door opened and there was a fire inside,' Jaak said. 'Remember when you were a kid? Didn't you put dog shit in a bag and set the bag on fire to see people stamp it out?'
        No, Minin shook his head; he'd never done anything like that.
        Jaak said, 'We used to do it all the time. Anyway, instead of dog shit there was a land mine. I can't believe I fell for it. Almost.' A photo in front of Jaak showed the mine's oblong case, the two raised pins. It was a small army anti-personnel mine with a trinitrotoluol charge, the kind nicknamed 'Souvenir for . . . ' The detective lifted his eyes and regained his poise. 'Maybe it's a gang war. If Kim went over to the Chechens, Borya will be looking for him. I bet the mine was left for Borya.'
        Polina had never removed her coat. She stood and buttoned the top with quick fingers that expressed both decisiveness and disgust. 'The mine in the box was left for you. The bomb in the car was probably meant for you, too,' she told Arkady.
        'No,' he said and was about to explain to Polina how backwards her reasoning was when she left, shutting the door as her last word. Arkady killed the Belomor and regarded his two detectives. 'It's late, children. That's enough for one day.'
        Minin rose reluctantly. 'I still don't see why we have to keep a militiaman at Rosen's flat.'
        Arkady said, 'We want to keep it the way it is for a while. We left valuable items there.'
         'The clothes, television, savings book?'
        'I was thinking of the food, Comrade Minin.' Minin was the only Party member on the team; Arkady fed him 'comrade' as occasional slops to a pig.
     
    Sometimes Arkady had the feeling that while he had been away, God had lifted Moscow and turned it upside down. It was a nether-Moscow he had returned to, no longer under the grey hand of the Party. The wall map showed a different, far more colorful city drawn with crayons.
        Red, for example, was for the mafia from Lyubertsy, a workers' suburb east of Moscow. Kim was unusual in that he was Korean, but otherwise he was typical of the boys who grew up there. The Lyubers were the dispossessed, the lads without elite schools, academic diplomas and Party connections, who had in the last five years emerged from the city's metro stations first to attack punks and then to offer protection to prostitutes, black markets, government offices. Red circles showed Lyubertsy spheres of influence: the tourist complex at Izmailovo Park, Domodedovo airport, video hawkers on Shabalovka Street. The racetrack was run by a Jewish clan, but they bought muscle from Lyubertsy.
        Blue was for the mafia from Long Pond, a northern dead-end suburb of barrack housing. Blue circles marked their interest in stolen cargo at Sheremetyevo airport and prostitutes at the Minsk Hotel, but their main business was car parts. The Moskvitch car factory, for example, sat in a blue circle. Borya Gubenko had not only risen to the top of Long Pond but had also brought Lyubertsy under his influence.
        Islamic green was for the Chechens, Moslems from the Caucasus Mountains. A thousand lived in Moscow, with reinforcements that arrived in motorcades, all answering to the orders of a tribal leader called Makhmud. The Chechens