People Who Walk In Darkness (Inspector Rostnikov)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Someone help him,” Iosef shouted as he ran toward the door to the kitchen.

  The kitchen was small, almost nonexistent. There was no one in it. The rear door was open. Iosef moved toward it, gun held level, gripped in both hands. They could be waiting. They could count as well as he. Two policemen. Two men with tattoos who had something to hide. They could be waiting.

  Iosef stepped into the sunlight, looked to his right and then to his left, where Zelach stood and shrugged.

  “Look for them,” Iosef shouted and ran back through the kitchen and into the shop where a man was kneeling over Mr. Maticonay.

  Iosef went to his knees, holstered his gun, and examined the wounded man.

  “It’s not bad,” said Iosef. “Just bloody. I’m sorry.”

  Mr. Maticonay gurgled something. Iosef leaned close to hear what he was saying. The man’s eyes were closed.

  “Cowboys,” he said.

  Iosef understood.

  “Too many guns,” the man said.

  “Black,” said Georgi Danielovich, “from Africa.”

  “Where in Africa?” asked Sasha.

  They were sitting in a coffee shop, dim and dark and dusty, but far better than the horror which was Georgi’s one-room apartment.

  Georgi needed a shower, a shave, a haircut, and a change of clothes, but most of all he needed whatever his drug of choice might be.

  “I don’t know,” said Georgi, reaching for the cup of something tepid and brown.

  “Two of them approached you,” said Elena.

  “Two, that’s right.”

  “Their names?” asked Sasha.

  Georgi shrugged and said, “Who remembers?”

  “And this was the first time?” asked Elena.

  The shop was empty except for the two detectives and the addict, head in his hands, who was very quickly coming apart.

  “Could you identify these two men?” asked Elena.

  Georgi looked up with what was supposed to be a smile but looked more like a pained grimace, which, perhaps, it was.

  “They were black,” he said. “They could walk through that door right now and I would not know them. My head hurts. I need a doctor.”

  “You do not need a doctor,” said Sasha, leaning toward him. “But you will if you do not start remembering things right now. We are in a hurry. We have nine days.”

  “Nine days?” asked Georgi in confusion. “We have nine days for what?”

  “No,” corrected Sasha. “We have nine days, but you have only a few minutes. You need to drink your coffee, maybe have something to eat, use the toilet, and you also need another clump on the head.”

  Georgi didn’t have time to protect himself. Sasha’s knuckles came down on the same spot where the gun had raised a throbbing welt.

  “Sasha,” Elena warned as Georgi screamed.

  The man behind the bar watched with interest but no sympathy.

  “You are boring me,” Sasha whispered.

  “My head,” cried Georgi. “Brain damage. You’re giving me brain damage. A doctor.”

  “You don’t use your brain anyway,” said Sasha. “If you did, you’d be helping us find out who killed your girlfriend.”

  “I just wanted to make a few rubles,” said Georgi. “Is that so bad?”

  The question was addressed to Elena.

  “Just tell us everything,” she said.

  Georgi tried drinking the dark liquid.

  “This is terrible. Can I get . . .”

  “Talk,” Sasha warned. “I’m not only bored and impatient, I’m in a hurry. Maybe you’re like one of those butchka toys. You tap it and it runs in circles.”

  To Georgi, the good-looking policeman definitely looked insane. The plump pretty policewoman looked sane, but it was unlikely she would intervene.

  “My luck,” sighed Georgi. “The first chance I get to make real kapusta, money, and this happens.”

  “Christiana Verovona’s luck was worse.”

  Georgi shrugged and brushed back his dirty straight hair.

  “I should have kept the diamonds,” he said. “Run with them, but where do you sell diamonds?”

  “I don’t know,” said Sasha.

  “You see?” said Georgi. “You see? And one of those blacks looked even crazier than . . .”

  He stopped and looked nowhere.

  “Talk now,” said Sasha, placing the gun he had taken from Georgi on the table.

  “They gave me the diamonds in a briefcase,” Georgi said, “told me not to open it, not to take a single diamond. They said I was to take the train to Kiev, go into the lobby of the station, stand by some palm trees there, and give the briefcase to a woman, who would give me an identical briefcase.”

  “But you sent Christiana,” said Elena. “Why?”

  “He was afraid,” said Sasha.

  Georgi gave a shrug that said what’s-the-difference-now.

  “The woman in Kiev?” asked Elena.

  “They told me she would be white, young, very beautiful. They said I would probably recognize her.”

  “You would recognize her?” asked Sasha.

  “Yes. He said she’s a model. Television ad. He mentioned a television ad for soap. Clover Soap I think. No, something else.”

  “After you made the exchange with this woman, then what?” asked Elena.

  “I was to get back on the train to Moscow. There would be just enough time. They gave me a ticket to a compartment. They said when I delivered the briefcase with the money, I would be given a very generous amount of it.”

  “You believed them?” asked Elena.

  Georgi tried to laugh. It came out as a throaty gargle.

  “We were to make the exchange at four o’clock today in front of the toy store across from Lubyanka Prison.”

  “Your idea?” asked Sasha.

  “Yes. They would not do anything to me there, and I planned to take whatever money they gave me and go immediately to Odessa in case they were planning to kill me. They said they would use me again if all went well, and I told them that would be fine, but I did not believe them for a second. Georgi Danielovich is no fool.”

  Both detectives thought quite the opposite.

  “Do you have some way of reaching them?” asked Elena.

  “No. Lubyanka. Four o’clock.”

  “And you were planning to go there and try to explain?”

  “I do not know. They would not believe me. And I have no money to run. I do not even have a gun anymore, to rob a drug dealer with.”

  “We feel for your plight,” said Sasha. “You will be in front of the toy store at four today with a briefcase that you will be given. We will all go buy it. When the Africans come to make the exchange, we will arrest them and you can walk away. You might try walking to Odessa. The weather should be good this time of year.”

  “You will let me go?” he asked, looking at them both.

  “You are paperwork, and a very bad odor,” said Sasha.

  Chapter Seven

  It was a warm night in Moscow, more than forty years ago. A warm night. The policeman, burly and resigned, sat on a rock tented by two slabs of concrete which might well have given way to crush him. Unfortunately, this was the only reasonable cover while he watched the truck.

  The building was going up slowly, typical of projects in the Soviet Union, where no incentive existed for workers to put in a full day of hard work. Appeals to the abstract love of a nation that needed more buildings were to no avail. The workers did not define themselves as Soviets. They considered themselves Russians, Georgians, Chechens, Lithuanians, or whatever.

  And so they had no reservations about stealing from the State as the State had no reservations about taking from them. At least, that was the way most of them thought. It was something the policeman understood.

  An inventory by the project director and the Communist Party representative at the site had revealed a serious loss of valued equipment and wiring. The conclusion was theft by employ
ees. The solution was the placement of a policeman in the shadows.

  And so he sat as he had for the past two nights, a cheese sandwich in his pocket, his holstered gun resting familiarly against his right thigh, the flashlight on his belt pressing against his left leg.

  He was hungry. He slowly, quietly unwrapped his sandwich and took a large, satisfying bite.

  And then he heard them coming.

  He did not know what time it was, could not read the face of his watch in the darkness, but it was definitely past midnight.

  They came, three of them, whispering, climbing on the rear of the truck, opening it with a key, their shoes producing a metallic echo as the door swung open. Two of the men stepped into the truck. The third remained on the ground to receive the equipment handed to him. It looked as if they had planned to take no more than they could carry.

  The policeman set aside his sandwich and slowly eased his way out of the concrete tent.

  The man on the ground was leaning over to place a metal box near his feet when the policeman approached.

  As the man got up to receive something else from the two in the truck, the policeman stepped to the rear of the truck, slammed the door closed, and threw the bolt to lock them in.

  The thief on the outside took it all in and began to run. He was much younger than the policeman, and much lighter. He would have gotten away had he not tripped on a coil of wire he had taken from the truck.

  The policeman had his gun out and pointed at the man on the ground, who realized that it was all over. The two in the truck obviously realized the same thing. They were making no noise, not crying to be let out. They sat and waited.

  An hour later, the policeman led all three of his prisoners into the stone shack that served as the local police station. The shack, with temporary cells in the rear, was at least a century old. Not a single renovation had ever been done.

  It was not the policeman’s job to talk to the prisoners. He was just there to catch them, turn them in, and go home while the KGB decided what to do with traitors to the Revolution.

  And then, within an hour after he had caught the thieves, she appeared.

  The policeman did not know how the woman found it. Somehow people knew. Someone would see an arrest taking place or hear a name mentioned by a clerk who worked in Petrovka, or a talkative young jail guard. No matter. She found out.

  She was pretty, with healthy country skin and corn blond hair. She had been sitting, waiting, worried about her husband, the man who had tripped over the coil of wire, when she had found out what happened.

  Relatives were not allowed into the police station. This was a place of little hope and the province of those who had learned indifference.

  She confronted him when he stepped out of the police station into the early morning light. “What has happened to my husband?”

  And that was how it had begun.

  The policeman never denied to himself, and he could not hide it from his wife, that if ever he were to suffer a downfall, it would be because of a woman or women. He could not help it. In spite of his less-than-handsome features and bulky frame, there was something comforting about him, something sad and peaceful. He recognized this and let it happen.

  And that was how it had happened this time.

  Her name was Klara. She was a Pole. She did not love her husband, never had, but he had promised the pretty young girl security and love. He had delivered neither. It was not that he did not want to. He was simply incapable of doing more than being a full-time laborer and a part-time thief.

  Klara worked in a glass factory, in terrible heat, for little pay. Now her husband was in jail. That would end his income. She might have to go back to Poland, to a family that did not want her and could not afford to have her.

  So the policeman and the factory girl became lovers. It lasted for five months. Her husband went to a Gulag. The policeman helped her even though he had little money and a family of his own.

  And then she became pregnant.

  And that was how Fyodor Andreiovich Rostnikov, half brother of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, was born.

  James sat at the table, a blue metal cup of stale, cold coffee in front of him with a dent in its lip. On the side of the cup was an emblem. It looked a little like a coat of arms. He was curious, but not enough to ask Vladimir Kolokov, who sat across from him.

  The table was planked wood with rickety legs. Every time James lifted his heavy arms or dropped them back on the planks, the legs of the table rattled against the uncovered concrete of the floor.

  “Tell me,” said Kolokov, examining him, “are you smart?”

  Wanting to stay alive and hoping for an opportunity to escape before the day of the exchange, James calculated and easily came to the conclusion that he should say, “I’m very smart.”

  Kolokov grinned. It was the right answer. A moderately clever man would have said that he was dumb, stupid, perhaps the most densely stupid creature that ever placed foot inside of Russia. A truly smart man would realize, as James did, that the possible path to some hope of survival lay in pretending to be a fool who thought himself smart. James had learned well from his six years working with these strange people, the Russians.

  “Very smart,” Kolokov repeated, looking at the bald man, named Pau, who was the only other person in the very dark, windowless room.

  An incongruous floor lamp, heavy wrought iron with elaborate glass panels, provided illumination and something at which to glance.

  “The clothes fit you,” said Kolokov.

  James looked down at the shirt he was wearing. One of the other Kolokov men, Bogdan or Alek, had given James these clothes, told him to strip and dress. The rough, warm, long-sleeved khaki shirt did fit, as did the badly faded jeans whose legs had to be rolled up. He had been given no belt.

  James ached. His face, neck, head, arms, body, and legs all ached in various degrees of pain that worsened when he moved. James used two hands to drink from the blue metal cup.

  “You understand that I had to kill your friends?”

  James nodded.

  “And I’ll have to kill you if you lie to me?”

  James didn’t respond.

  “That was a question.”

  James nodded. And then he decided. There was really no hope in playing the fool. There might be something for him in engaging the man in conversation, flattering him. What he would really have liked to do was throw the remaining coffee in the Russian’s white, smirking face and then shove the cup in a sharp thrust against his nose. That would have been suicidal, but that’s what he wanted to do. Instead, he said, “Why did you need to kill them?”

  Kolokov’s mouth opened slightly, and then closed as he smiled. The black man had said this in perfect Russian, and had said it without a trace of the fool.

  “I need two things,” said Kolokov. “I need to feel danger, physical, immediate danger, for me or for others created by me.”

  “It’s a need?” asked James calmly.

  “A need,” Kolokov said. “I am definitely a borderline psychopath. At least that is what the psychiatrist at the prison said before I gouged her eyes out.”

  “You didn’t gouge her eyes out,” said James.

  Kolokov regarded his prisoner very seriously now.

  “No, I did not, but I wanted to. The way you want to gouge my eyes out right now. Calling me a psychopath gives my actions a name, but a label explains nothing.”

  Kolokov leaned back, reached into his shirt pocket, removed a package of American cigarettes, put them on the table, and didn’t open them.

  “You smoke?”

  “No,” said James.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Kolokov opened the package, removed a cigarette, and lit it.

  “You need money,” James said.

  “I’ll amend that. I want money. I want to be rich. I want things. I want people to do things to, to do things for. I want a very big bathtub with constant hot water, steaming water, clear, clean w
ater.”

  “Women?” asked James.

  “When I want them.”

  “Yes.”

  “You understand all this?”

  “Yes,” said James, forcing a smile with bruised puffed lips.

  James was thinking of a home and family he would probably never see again. Well, that was premature. Kolokov leaned forward across the table and whispered, “I’m surrounded by fools. That doesn’t mean I’d want someone like you with me. Too smart. Can’t trust people like you, but I do like matching wits with them.”

  “Honduras,” came the voice of the bald man.

  Kolokov turned toward him and said, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

  “Honduras,” the man repeated.

  “Does something go with that observation?” asked Kolokov.

  “Remember Honduras,” said the bald man.

  “Honduras?” repeated Kolokov, looking at James for a possible answer to the question.

  James had no answer.

  “The man from Honduras,” said the bald man. “Three years ago.”

  “Hon—” Kolokov repeated. “I don’t remember any—Guatemala. He was from Guatemala. How did you come up with Honduras?”

  “I got it wrong.”

  Kolokov looked at James and sat back, smoking and remembering. The Guatemalan had been a tiny man, the color of a pecan shell. He was no more than thirty-five and had fallen under Kolokov’s umbra during a street robbery. On little more than a whim, Kolokov had brought the man, Sanchez, to an apartment, and was about to do something particularly painful to him under the guise of getting him to tell how he might provide ransom money.

  Sanchez had worked him perfectly, claimed to be a member of the Guatemalan mission in Moscow, talked Kolokov into a partnership to steal ancient artifacts from Central America and sell them to dealers in Turkey. Kolokov let the man go after they shook hands on a partnership that promised to make both men rich.

  The problem was that Sanchez had lied. He was not a diplomat. He was a visiting poet. He knew nothing about artifacts. He knew much about making up stories.

  “You really know where there will be a delivery of diamonds?”

  “Yes,” said James. “They will be delivered to three Russians who will take them to various cities, where they will be exchanged for cash.”