Legends

Sucking on a Beedie, Martin strolled down Svobodova Street in the direction of the river. He passed a row of apartment buildings, one with the date “1902” etched over the door and a “Flat for Sale” sign in English on the inside of a ground floor window. Across the street loomed the Vyshrad Station in all its communist-era decadence. The station consisted of a central carcass and two broken wings. Dirty white stucco peeled away from the facade like sunburnt skin, exposing the dirty red bricks beneath. The windows on the Svobodova side were boarded over, though there were hints of fluorescent light seeping between the cracks in several of the second-floor windows that weren’t well jointed. The pigeons, in twos and threes, were fluttering away from the roof in search of the last rays of sun as Martin made his way back up Svobodova, this time on the station side of the street. Trolleys clattered by, causing the ground to tremble underfoot. Behind the station a commuter train sped past in the direction of Centrum. Dog-eared posters advertising Hungarian vacuum cleaners and reconditioned East German Trabants were thumb tacked to the boards covering the ground floor windows. Near the gate leading to a path around the side of the left wing of the station, someone had chalked graffiti on the wall: The Oklahoma City bomb was the first shot of World War III. Martin eased open the gate on its rusty hinges, climbed the brick steps and walked around to the back of the station. The passage was obviously in daily use because the weeds and vines on either side had been cut away from the brick footpath. Making his way along what used to be the platform when the station had been in use, Martin glanced into one of the wings through a sooty window shielded by rusting metal bars. Inside, two young men whom he took to be gypsies, wearing vests and corduroy trousers tucked into the tops of leather boots, were emptying large cartons and setting out what looked like packets of medicines on a long trestle table. Two young women dressed in long colorful skirts were repacking the items into smaller boxes and sealing them with masking tape. One of the young men caught sight of Martin and gestured with his thumb toward the main station doors further down the platform. Martin nodded and, a moment later, pushed through the double door into the station’s onceornate central hall, fallen into dilapidation and smelling of wet plaster, evidence that someone had tried to patch over the worst of the building’s wounds. A broken sign over the door read “Vychod—Exit.” The tiles on the floor, many of them cracked, shifted under his feet. A wide stairway curled up toward the second floor. Painted on the wall above the stairway were the words “Soft” and “Shoulder.” A squat dog with a blunt nose stood on the top landing, yelping in a hoarse voice at the intruder. A handsome, elegantly dressed woman in her fifties peered down from the railing. “If you are looking for Soft Shoulder, do come up,” she called. “Don’t mind the dog. His bite is worse than his bark, but I will lock him up.” Reaching for the dog’s leash, the woman pulled him, still yelping, into a room and shut the door. With the dog barking behind the door she turned back toward Martin, who was leaning on the banister to take the weight off his game leg as he climbed toward her. A half dozen thin Indian bracelets jangled on her thin wrist as she held out a slender hand. “My name is Zuzana Slánská,” she said as Martin took her hand.

He noticed that her fingers were weedy, her nails bitten to the quick, her eyes rheumy. He suspected that the wrinkled smile on her gaunt lips had been worn too many times without laundering. “Mine’s Odum,” he said. “Martin Odum.”

“What African country are you buying for?”

Figuring he had nothing to lose, Martin said the first thing that came into his head. “The Ivory Coast.”

“We don’t often deal with clients in person, Mr. Odum. Most of our business is mail order. As a matter of record, who sent you to us?”

“An associate of Samat’s named Taletbek Rabbani.” He produced the back of the envelope with Rabbani’s barely legible scrawl on it and showed it to the woman.

A shadow passed over her face. “News of Mr. Rabbani’s death reached us earlier this week. When and where did you meet him?”

“The same place you met him—at his warehouse behind the train station in the Golders Green section of London. I was probably the last person to see him alive—not counting the Chechens who murdered him.”

“The small item in the British newspaper made no mention of Chechens.”

“It may be that Scotland Yard doesn’t know this detail. It may be they know it but do not want to tip their hand.”