It was at that moment that he saw her, or thought he saw her, emerging from the surf like Venus lifted on her gleaming pink shell. The red sun was in his eyes and he was obliged to squint, to shade his eyes with one hand, but the woman he saw emerging was Tracy Atherton: long and sleek, blond and blue-eyed with the widest smile he’d ever seen. And yet it couldn’t be Tracy, because she was dead.
He watched her coming toward him. At one point she turned and looked directly at him and the resemblance fell apart. He turned away into the last of the canted sunlight.
Arkadin had met Tracy in St. Petersburg, at the Hermitage Museum. He had been in Moscow two years, working for Maslov. She was there to view the czarist treasures, while he was there for an onerous rendezvous with Oserov. But then all his meetings with Oserov were onerous, often ending in violence. Maslov’s chief assassin at the time had killed a child-a little boy no more than six years old-in cold blood. For this obscenity, Arkadin had beaten his face to a pulp and dislocated his shoulder. He would have killed him outright if his friend Tarkanian hadn’t intervened. Ever since that incident the resentment between the two men continued to build until most recently igniting in Bangalore. But Oserov, like a vampire, could not be easily killed. With an ironic laugh, Arkadin decided that next time he’d pound a wooden stake through Oserov’s heart. That Dimitri Maslov had continually forced them to work together, Arkadin was convinced, was a deliberate act of sadism for which Maslov would one day pay.
That icy winter’s morning in St. Petersburg he had arrived early to ensure that Oserov hadn’t set up some arcane form of trap. Instead he found a tall slim blonde with huge cornflower-blue eyes and an even wider smile contemplating a portrait of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna. The blonde wore an ankle-length deerskin coat with a high collar dyed an improbable sky blue, beneath which, just peeking out, was a blood-red silk shirt. Without preamble she asked him what he thought of the portrait.
Arkadin, who had taken absolutely no notice of the painting or of anything else of a decorative nature in the vast rooms, peered at the portrait and said, “That was painted in 1758. What possible meaning could it have for me?”
The blonde turned, contemplating him with the same disarming intensity she had given to the painting. “This is the history of your country.” She pointed with a slim, long-fingered hand. “Louis Tocque, the man who painted this, was one of the leading artists of the day. He traveled all the way from Paris to Russia at the behest of Elizabeth Petrovna to paint her.”
Arkadin, ignoramus that he was, shrugged. “So?”
The blonde’s smile widened even more. “It’s a measure of Russia’s world status and power that he came. In those days France was quite enamored with Russia and vice versa. This painting should make all Russians proud.”
Arkadin, about to make an acerbic retort, instead bit his tongue and returned his gaze to the regal woman in the painting.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” the blonde said.
“Well, I’ve never met anyone remotely like her. She doesn’t seem real.”
“And yet she was.” The blonde made a gesture as if to guide his eyes back to the empress. “Imagine yourself in the past, imagine yourself in the painting standing next to her.”
And now, as if looking at the empress for the first time, or through the blonde’s eyes, Arkadin heard himself agree. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I suppose she is beautiful.”
“Ah, then my time here has been a success.” The blonde’s smile hadn’t faded one iota. She extended her hand toward him. “I’m Tracy Atherton, by the way.”
For a moment Arkadin considered giving a false name, which he did almost by rote. Instead he’d said, “Leonid Danilovich Arkadin.”
The air had suddenly been perfumed with the tincture of history, a spicy, mysterious scent of rose and cedar. Much later he’d worked out what it was that drew him as well as shamed him. He felt like a student, too ignorant or truant to have learned his lessons. Around her he’d always felt his lack of formal education, like a nakedness. And yet, even from that first meeting, he sensed a use for her, that he could absorb what she had learned. He learned from her the value of knowledge, but part of him never forgave her for the way she made him feel, and he used her mercilessly, treated her cruelly, as he bound her ever closer to him.
This clarity came later, of course. At the moment all he felt was an onrush of anger and, without a word, he whirled away from her, stalking off to find Oserov, whose company, for the moment, seemed preferable to this creature’s.
But finding Oserov did nothing to allay his sudden discomfort, so he insisted on changing protocol, removing them from the Hermitage altogether. They walked out onto Millionnaya Street, where he found a café before their lips and cheeks grew too chapped from the icy wind.
Snow had begun to fall with an odd dry rustle like predators snuffling in the underbrush, and Arkadin would never forget how Tracy Atherton had materialized out of it. Her deerskin coat swayed about her ankles like icy surf.
In those days, directly after Dimitri Maslov had sent Oserov and Mischa Tarkanian to liberate him from the prison of his hometown of Nizhny Tagil, Oserov was his superior, a fact that Oserov lorded over him. Oserov was in the middle of lecturing him on how to properly kill a politician, the reason for their trip to St. Petersburg. This particular politician had stupidly aligned himself against Maslov, and so had to be eliminated as quickly and efficiently as possible. Arkadin knew this, and Oserov knew he knew it. Nevertheless, the shit gleefully drove home his points with mind-numbing repetitiveness, as if Arkadin were a backward and insolent five-year-old.
Not many people would have dared interrupt Oserov, but Tracy did. Entering the café, she spotted Arkadin, strode confidently up to their table, and said, “Why, hello, fancy meeting you here,” in her soft British accent.
Oserov, pausing in mid-rant, looked up at her with a glare that would turn most people to stone. Tracy merely widened her smile and, pulling up a chair from a nearby table, said, “You don’t mind if I join you, do you?” She sat down and ordered a coffee before either of them uttered a word.
The moment the waiter left, Oserov’s face darkened ominously. “Listen, I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but we’re in the middle of important business.”
“I saw that,” Tracy said blandly, waving a hand. “Go ahead, don’t mind me.”
Oserov pushed his chair back with a teeth-grinding scrape. “Hey, fuck off, lady.”
“Calm down,” Arkadin began.
“And you, shut the fuck up.” Oserov stood, leaning over the table. “If you don’t leave now-right this fucking second-I’m going to throw you out on your pretty little ass.”
Tracy stared up at him without blinking. “There’s no need for that kind of language.”
“She’s right, Oserov. I’ll escort her-”
But just at that moment Tracy took hold of the end of Oserov’s tie, which was threatening to dip into her coffee, and Oserov lunged at her, grabbing at the collar of her coat and hauling her to her feet. Her silk shirt ripped, the violent action bringing them unwanted attention from the café’s patrons and staff. Their mission was supposed to be under the radar, and Oserov was ruining that.
Arkadin, on his feet, said softly, “Let her go.” When Oserov maintained his grip, he added, even more quietly, “Let her go, or I’ll knife you right here.”
Oserov looked down at the point of a switchblade that Arkadin had aimed at his liver. His face darkened further, and something malefic bloomed in his hard, glinting eyes.
“I won’t forget this,” he said in an eerie tone as he released her.
Since he was still staring into Tracy’s face it was unclear to whom Oserov was speaking, but Arkadin suspected he was addressing both of them. Before anything worse happened Arkadin came around the table and, taking Tracy by the elbow, walked her out of the café.