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

our demonstration was about more than Tatiana. It was about all journalists who have been attacked. There’s a pattern. A journalist is murdered; an unlikely suspect is arrested, tried and found not guilty. And that’s the end of it, except we get the message. Soon there will be no news but their news. They sayit’s better than a free press, it’s a free but ‘responsible’ press.” He poured a sloppy glass and raised it high. “So the nation moves on, blindfolded.”
    “What about Tatiana?”
    “Tatiana was fearless. Independent. In other words, I couldn’t stop her. She did what she wanted. She went to America once for a big humanitarian prize, and all she could talk about when she came back was bumper stickers. She said if she had a car, she’d have a sticker that said, ‘So Much Corruption, So Little Time.’ I think she knew her time was up. Why else would she live in a building next to skinheads?”
    “Did they ever attack her?”
    “No.”
    “Is it possible they respected her?”
    “Why not? They’re monsters but they’re still human. She was always for the underdog.” Obolensky hunched closer. “The official line is that Tatiana jumped and there will be no investigation. So, what are you doing? The war is over.”
    Arkady said, “People don’t know about the demonstration.”
    “And they won’t. The television news that night showed Putin petting a tiger cub and Medvedev arranging flowers. Anyway, Tatiana is missing again.”
    “Again?”
    “First she was in the wrong drawer.” Obolensky refilled the glasses. To the brim. “Now she’s totally disappeared.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “They can’t find her. They say they’ve looked everywhere. They’re just twisting our dicks. Apparently, the authorities are concerned that wherever our Tatiana is buried will become some sort of shrine. They’re juggling her until they come up with an answer.”
    “Why not cremate her?”
    “Maybe they have, who knows? But you’re supposed to ask the family first.”
    “Did she have any family?”
    “A sister in Kaliningrad that no one can locate. I tried. I went to Kaliningrad myself and knocked on her door, because if the sister doesn’t claim her or they hide Tatiana long enough, she might end up in a grave for the unclaimed. A double disappearance.”
    “Was she secretive by nature?”
    “She had a personal life. She would disappear for a week at a time and never say where she’d been. An unpredictable lady. I think it was her unpredictability that kept her alive. And she never revealed her sources, but we were watching the news and saw this body wash up on the beach in Kaliningrad. She insisted on going to the scene.”
    “What was his name?”
    “She wouldn’t tell me.”
    “How did she know him?”
    “According to Tatiana, they met at a book event in Zurich. He was interpreting for one of the other authors. Of course, once he knew who she was, he tried to impress her and let her know that he had inside information about criminal activities in Moscow and Kaliningrad. The police didn’t even make a pretense of an investigation of his death. They just hauled him off. It was local kids that found his notebook in the sea grass. The little ghouls sold it to Tatiana. Five hundred rubles for a notebook of puzzles. Only the joke’s on us. It’s completely useless.” Obolensky unlocked a desk drawer and took out a reporter’s spiral notebook.
    “What is it?”
    “Tatiana said they were the interpreter’s notes.”
    “Notes about what?”
    “You tell me. Tatiana kept it secret. It was going to be the capper of her career. She was headed for sainthood. Instead, here comes the Kremlin’s smear campaign. She was a subverter of youth, an agent of the West, a wanton woman. They throw mud at you even as they kill you; that’s the way they work.”
    “Who is ‘they’?”
    “ ‘They’ are those persons in the Kremlin who determine whether a journalist is digging too deep or