For Hentzau, there was no clearer proof that humans were a thoroughly absurd species than their graveyards. Burying their rotting bodies in wooden boxes that would then rot along with them, while erecting stones and statues on top to bemoan the transience of all flesh, truly was absurd. The Goyl had so much more dignity in death. The boulevards beneath the earth, lined with the heads of their heroes, unchanged, stone in death as in life. The rest of their bodies left behind wherever death had found them, so they could again become one with the rocks and the earth that had borne them… Now, that was how to end it.
Hentzau saw his own uneasiness reflected on the faces of his soldiers as they entered the cemetery from where, according to the icon painter, Brunel’s liberators were planning to sneak him out of Moskva. Why this cemetery of all places, Tchiourak hadn’t been able to explain, but he’d sworn that the Wolfling, who was in charge of the whole operation, had mentioned this cemetery several times.
Hentzau suspected an underground escape route—a natural assumption for a Goyl—or a carriage sent by the Albian secret service. An automobile would have been too conspicuous. Yet all they’d found were graves.
They’d already been hiding for two hours behind the amateurishly hewn stones and sentimental statues that would’ve made every Goyl sculptor destroy them in shame. Finally, a white dove settled on one of the gravestones. Tied to her leg was one of the gold capsules the Moskovites used to invite each other to balls and dinners.
Nesser caught the dove and brought the capsule to Hentzau.
The message inside was written in Goyl:
The painter didnt know better. He is a gullible man and as clumsy in his spycraft as he is with his brushes. Leave him alive. Better luck next time, Lieutenant Hentzau.
L. A.
The basement workshop was, of course, empty, except for the trembling, useless icon painter.
Hentzau left him alive, though Ashamed Tchiourak couldn’t even tell him who L.A. was.