She walked, then almost ran to the front desk, where the librarian directed her to the large green books of bound newspapers from the thirties. She knew Satinov had started his rise in 1939 when he joined the Central Committee. Somewhere in those old newspapers, somewhere, she told herself, there might be a clue that linked him to Roza’s family. Those yellowed newspapers were another world, written in an unnatural Bolshevik language that made her smile at its absurdities, at its news of Five Year Plans, of the achievements of collective farms and motor tractor stations and iron smelters in Magnitogorsk; of heroic pilots, proletarian comrades and Stakhanovite miners. As the light outside changed from bright blue to powdery dusk, she sat there, reading
Several times she walked around the colossal library just to stay awake and get her blood running; several times she was tempted to stop and read the Western magazines or the satirical
She was about to give up when she turned to page five of
She read it carefully twice, noted down its details and the new name: I. N. Palitsyn. She looked round the reading room: it was emptier than it had been. Half the table lights were off. The youngsters were all gone, only the old still there, those old men with so little time, like Roza with her terrifying sense of loss. Was this the name she was looking for? “There were friendships even then…”
Katinka slammed the book shut with a muffled boom that made one of the older readers jump and twitch as if he were waking from a long sleep. It was time to go. She had an appointment.
7
The motorcyclist in the leather trousers, pale brown bomber jacket and horned, Viking-style helmet skidded to a halt outside the Black Dog nightclub. It was on the Moskva Embankment a few hundred yards from the British Embassy and just across from the Kremlin. An occasional chunk of ice still floated down the Moskva River and the dark earth was edged with snow like a frill of lace, but the air held the spring tang of moist earth. It was already dusk, but the night was warm and grainy.
Katinka could hear a heavy-metal band playing the Scorpions’ song “Winds of Change” inside the nightclub. She wondered if she had come to the wrong place: she was no Muscovite and she barely knew the city center. It seemed a strange spot for a meeting of historians.
Then the biker dismounted and walked toward her, pulling off his horned helmet and extending a leather paw. “Katinka? Is it you? I’m Maxy Shubin.”