Free Penguin Lost by Andrey Kurkov Page B

official-looking folder, and undoing the tapes, passed it to Viktor.
    It contained drawings, yes, but not the sort he’d been expecting. All were of the same little black and white penguin, and headed in Sonya’s uncertain hand:
    Lost! penguin misha
reward 5000 hryvnas
Phone …
    “There really is a reward – Auntie Nina’s paying it,” Sonya insisted, seeing how sad he suddenly looked. “All we have to do is stick them on lampposts. We’ll get five penguins straight away for that money, Nina says, and from as far away as Moscow. The main thing will be to tell which is him. But I’ll know at once. Will you help me put them up?”
    “Of course.”
    Nina said little that evening, but looked at him with a sad sort of warmth, as if to convey that here was still home, that Pasha, Andrey Pavlovich and the Goloseyevo villa no longer existed, and that the only problem was Misha’s disappearance.
    “Can’t you stay?” Nina asked warily, when the time came for him to go.
    He stiffened and sighed.
    “But you were the one who disappeared. You were the one whowent away. It was terrible for Sonya and me on our own.”
    “It wasn’t terrible for me,” Sonya broke in. “It was terrible for her. Yesterday she cried!”
    A betrayal that earned her a look of dislike and regret.

26
    Polling Day minus 5
    It was a night of thunderstorms. Every so often Viktor got up and watched the lightning from his attic window, thinking of Sonya and Nina, of Nina crying, of the thirty Penguin Lost notices, and of the image makers’ computer. He’d mentioned the specialist’s strange behaviour to Pasha, but not of having himself accessed one of the files. Should he tell Andrey Pavlovich that he had? When he woke next morning there was no thunder, but the sound of some disturbance downstairs, which, turning to face the wall, he chose to ignore.
    When at last he went in search of breakfast, he found Andrey Pavlovich sitting, pale with fatigue, in the lounge.
    “Wonderful night, then this bloody lot!” he said moodily, motioning Viktor to a chair. “That damned computer! State Security, hordes of them, down on us like a ton of bricks. And nothing to do with me! Never touched the thing! Sodding image makers! I’ll shove the prat who put me onto them headfirst down the boghole! And the way they talk, those State Security buggers! ‘Just one finger-print, and that’s your lot!’ Let’s have a whisky.”
    Viktor fetched tumblers and a bottle of Black Horse.
    “Ice?”
    “Just pour. Another bloody thing: Security demands a list ofevery visitor in the last three weeks. Still, five more days and I’ll be elected, and sod the lot of them.”
    “But I’m afraid I did touch the computer,” Viktor confessed, and told Andrey Pavlovich what he’d seen on it.
    “Silly man! Still, you weren’t to know, any more than I was. I’ll have to see what our lot can do to put the lid on this.”

27
    Polling Day minus 4
    Although Andrey Pavlovich was away touring Kiev in the 4 × 4 with Pasha in an effort to smoothe things over, indications were not promising. Two taciturn minders were now patrolling and keeping watch outside the house. Viktor, who came in for their indifferent gaze as often as he made coffee in the kitchen, noted that they were in mobile contact with someone, probably Pasha.
    At four in the afternoon a silver Chrysler hooted at the gates and drove in followed by a Mercedes 4 × 4. Observing the seven newcomers from the kitchen window, Viktor had no difficulty telling who was who. The four with earphone attachments were bodyguards, the soberly suited pair – the drivers, and the well-groomed Baby Face in long raincoat and stylish square-toed shoes was the big man. Baby Face addressed Andrey Pavlovich’s men, who listened dutifully. The one with the mobile made as if to make a call, but experiencing some difficulty, hurried in to the phone in the hall. Viktor in the kitchen heard every word.
    “Pasha, tell the boss to come back