People Who Walk In Darkness (Inspector Rostnikov)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Viktor Panin closed his eyes, clearing his mind, took a deep breath, held it, and pushed upward, lifting the bar from the cradle and slowly bringing the crushing weight down toward his body. He stopped just short of his chest and exhaled. Then he lifted again, his arms steady, locking over his head.

  Rostnikov had not seen anything quite like this before, though he had experienced something like the much younger man was feeling. It was a universal experience that Porfiry Petrovich was certain all who reached a certain level of truly heavy weights must feel.

  Instead of resting the bar back on the cradles, Viktor Panin took another deep breath and brought the bar to his chest once more, still without a quiver in his arms. Then he slowly pushed the bar back to a locked arm position, exhaled, and placed the bar on the cradles.

  “I’ve never done two repetitions with this much weight before,” Panin said between short breaths, sitting upon the bench. “Your understanding inspires me, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. Your turn now. I’ll change the weights.”

  Viktor Panin got off the bench.

  Rostnikov chalked his hands, beginning his necessary ritual of appeasing and praising his plastic and metal leg as he laid back on the bench.

  “How much weight?” Viktor asked, moving to the bar.

  “I think I will try this weight.”

  Viktor touched Porfiry Petrovich’s arm.

  “Good,” the young man said.

  “You have inspired me,” said Rostnikov.

  “Trust me.”

  “I will,” said Rostnikov.

  This the detective said knowing that Viktor could slip at a crucial moment, letting the four hundred pounds of steel drop, crushing Porfiry Petrovich’s chest.

  This the detective said knowing that he was putting his trust in a man who was still, in spite of an alibi for one of the two murders, a distinct suspect as diamond thief, smuggler, murderer, and keeper of the secret of the ghost girl.

  Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, Chief Inspector in the Moscow Police Office of Special Investigations, had seen far stronger alibis crumble to dust.

  Viktor Panin looked down at him, a smile of encouragement and confidence on the perspiring face of the younger man.

  “When you are ready, Porfiry Petrovich.”

  Rostnikov closed his eyes and imagined the fleeting voice of Dinah Washington singing the first words of “What A Difference A Day Makes.”

  There were two days remaining until the Yak’s deadline and the possible end of the Office of Special Investigations.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Six-year-old Pulcharia Tkach stood next to the sofa holding her four-year-old brother’s hand. They were dressed in their school clothes, she in a blue blouse and skirt and knee-length white socks, he in a brown shirt and trousers that were slipping. Maya stood behind them protectively. The scene looked posed. It was posed.

  Sasha was immediately depressed. He smiled as broadly and sincerely as he could and stepped forward to embrace his children.

  Pulcharia looked up at her mother to be sure it was all right to hug her father. Maya smiled. Pulcharia let go of her brother’s hand and rushed into the arms of Sasha, who bent to take her in. He could instantly feel the rapid beating of her heart against his chest, and, at least for an instant, his depression was replaced by a deep, painful sadness.

  “Who is he?” asked Sasha’s son, looking up at his mother.

  “Your father,” Maya said.

  “I have a bug bite on my leg,” Pulcharia said, still hugging.

  “Where?” asked Sasha, reluctantly putting her down so she could show him.

  He looked at her as she rolled down the sock on her left leg. She looked painfully like her mother.

  “Here.”

  She pointed at a red bump.

  “It itches,” she said.

  “Who?” the little boy insisted, now pulling at his mother’s skirt.

  “Your father,” Maya repeated patiently.

  “Oh. What does a father do?”

  “What have you put on it?” Sasha asked his daughter.

  “Mother put something on it that Erik gave her,” said Pulcharia.

  The Swede. Sasha could not stop himself from looking at his wife. Did her lips tighten? Yes.

  “Erik is a sweet dish,” said the boy, turning in a circle.

  “Swedish,” Pulcharia corrected.

  “Your father cannot stay,” said Maya. “He has to work, and you must go to school.”

  “School is cruel,” the little boy said, continuing to turn. “I have a new name.”

  “What is that?” asked Sasha.

  “Taras. Taras. Taras.”

  The boy spun around madly.

  “It is a Ukrainian name,” Maya said. “He will get over it.”

  “He need not on my account,” said Sasha.

  “It was my sister’s husband’s idea,” said Maya. “He thought it was funny. It is a Montagnard tribal name.”

  “I like it,” Sasha lied.

  “I told my friend Tula that you are a policeman and that you catch fish thieves and people who drink too much vodka and pee in the street,” said Pulcharia.

  “Your father catches people who do very bad things,” Maya said. “He protects the good people of Moscow from the bad people of Moscow.”

  “Good peeeeeeeople,” the little boy said. “Bad peeeeeople. Taras. Taras. Taras.”

  “Your father will come back and see you again before he has to go back to Moscow and catch more bad people,” Maya said.

  Was this a sign of hope?

  “I will be back tonight?” he said, making it a question and not a statement.

  “Tonight,” Maya said.

  “For dinner?” asked Pulcharia.

  “For dinner,” Maya said.

  Pulcharia smiled broadly.

  “Will Erik be here too?” the girl asked.

  “No, not tonight.”

  Pulcharia leaned toward her father and puckered her lips to be kissed. Sasha obliged.

  “Taras too,” said the little boy, who ran forward, perfectly balanced in spite of his spinning.

  “Seven o’clock,” said Maya.

  “You are all very beautiful,” Sasha said.

  “Seven,” Maya repeated.

  The map which Gennadi Ivanov had drawn for Karpo lay flattened on the small table in Porfiry Petrovich’s room.

  Neither man had told anyone of the map drawn by the very old man who held a very old grudge against the Japanese. The two policemen could not trust the map or anyone in Devochka.

  Rostnikov was sitting. Karpo stood.

  “One of the many ironies of an artificial leg is that it is lighter than a real one,” said Rostnikov. “I am unbalanced and have had to learn to compensate. Of course, I could ask the man who made my leg to add weight to it, but then he might add too much, and the surgeon would have to remove some of my right leg to get the balance right again.”

  “You are making a joke,” said Karpo.

  “I am,” said Rostnikov, “but I am also making a point. Maintain your balance. Adjust to change. Do not seek perfection. There is no perfection.”

  “And you believe I seek perfection?” said Karpo.

  “I know you do, Emil. Please sit. It is a strain to look up in a conversation and it destroys the illusion of intimacy.”

  Karpo moved to the bed and sat, his back upright. Rostnikov turned his chair to face him.

  “There are those who believe you had no mother,” said Rostnikov.

  “Everyone has a mother,” said Karpo.

  “Well, the belief is not grounded in reality, but in perception.”

  “I find it difficult to believe that there are those who would engage in such curious perceptions.”

  “You may not know it, but there are those who find you a fascinating enigma. They do not know you as I do, Emil Karpo. I often think of you as my second son.”

  “I . . . thank you.”

  Rostnikov could not recall hearin
g even a touch of emotion in his associate’s voice since the death of Mathilde. Only two events had shaken Emil Karpo’s steel self-image: the fall of the Soviet Union and the death of Mathilde Verson. He had been devoted to both, and with their deaths had encased what little emotion he had previously displayed.

  “Is there some reason we are discussing this now?” asked Karpo.

  “Yes. I will tell you in a moment. My father was a good man.”

  Karpo had no response.

  “What about your father, Emil Karpo?”

  “You have read my file. You know the few facts of my history.”

  “This makes you uncomfortable.”

  “Perplexed.”

  “You never knew your father. Your mother and aunt raised you.”

  “That is correct.”

  “I think when we return to Moscow you might consider an attempt to locate your father.”

  “Why?”

  “Closure,” said Rostnikov. “You have a brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you last talk to him?”

  “Twenty-two years ago, on June four.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Twenty-two years ago, on June four.”

  “And the reason for the events of that momentous day in the history of the family, Karpo?”

  “I believe you are mocking,” said Karpo.

  “Forgive me,” said Rostnikov. “You are right. Mockery and irony are protective Russian responses that often prevail over consideration for others.”

  “On that day I told my brother, mother, and aunt that I could no longer see or talk to them because of their anti-Communist feelings and remarks. I told them that I would not issue a report on them.”

  “What do you think made you what you are, Emil my friend?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Perhaps a meeting with your father, if he is still alive, would answer that question.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Are you not curious?”

  The pause was slight, but Rostnikov perceived it.

  “No.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “You said this conversation had a particular point.”

  “It does,” said Rostnikov. “In two hours, Boris will take us into the mine armed with this map. I am confident we will see the ghost girl and that someone will try to kill us to keep us from finding what is in at least one of the small caves on the map of our Japanese-obsessed friend.”

  “And you know who the person who will try to kill us is,” said Karpo.

  “Oh yes, and that is the point of my exploration of your familial relationships. I am very much afraid that the person who will attempt to kill us is my brother.”

  Each night the Yak allowed himself a single, full glass of a deep red Italian table wine before he went to sleep. He had one glass, and only one, a day unless he was with someone higher on the scale of politics or the law. If that person drank, so did Yaklovev. And that was the situation at the moment.

  He was in the Taiga Restaurant, not far from the Bolshoi Opera. Across from him was a very smug General Peotor Frankovich in a blue suit and tie. The general’s fat pink neck usually hung over the stiff collar of the uniform he liked to wear. The blue suit accented the roll of fat. Someone should tell him. That someone would not be Igor Yaklovev.

  “We should be arranging for the transition,” said Frankovich, holding his glass of wine, twisting it by the stem with thumb and finger.

  They sat in a corner away from others. Privacy.

  “Drink,” said the general.

  Yaklovev drank.

  “There are still two days remaining,” he said.

  “If you insist,” said Frankovich with a shrug. “I just thought a friendly dinner would be a good start to what is necessary. Of course the details will be worked out by yourself and your Chief Inspector . . .”

  “Rostnikov, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

  “Hmm,” said the general, sipping his wine and then looking at it as if for imperfections. “We serve the same government for the good of the Russian people.”

  The last was said with no hint of sincerity.

  “We do,” said the Yak.

  “There really is nothing that can alter what is inevitable,” said Frankovich, reaching up to tug at his collar.

  “Two days,” the Yak said.

  “There are no miracles, my friend,” the general said.

  The Yak was not hoping for miracles. There was a great deal Yaklovev had done and was still doing. Now, if only Rostnikov and his people could come through, the Yak would be ready to act. For now, he sat silently and drank his wine.

  Stepan Orlov, the microbiologist, looked up when Rostnikov entered his small laboratory. Orlov, a man of average height with wild, curly gray-brown hair, had unlocked and opened the door when Rostnikov had identified himself as a Moscow policeman.

  The laboratory was spotless and neat. There were twelve small cages against one wall. Inside, animals scurried, trying to climb the metal walls or hide under wood shavings. One of the animals was making a squealing sound Rostnikov had never before heard.

  Against one wall, on which there was the only window in the room, was a cot made military taut with a rough khaki blanket and a thin pillow. Three broad-topped metal tables forming a U sat in the center of the room with one wooden chair on rollers within the U. The table to the right of where Orlov now sat held a binocular microscope. The table on the left held a computer whose screen seemed to be pulsing between gray and white. On the center table was a large metal tray holding the second-largest rat Rostnikov had ever seen.

  “You are admiring Rhazumi,” Orlov said, cleaning his glasses on his wrinkled white shirt.

  “The rat.”

  “Big, is he not,” said Orlov, reaching out to touch the nose of the dead animal that lay with its front legs together as if in prayer.

  “I have seen only one bigger,” said Rostnikov. “At the edge of the Moscow River. It was as big as a small dog.”

  “Yes,” said Orlov, “but Rhazumi was blind. He lived for at least six years in the total darkness of the depths of the mine. And there are others. Their ancestors crawled down there when the mine was first opened and bred and adapted and consumed other small creatures and the detritus of humans. And at some point, they went blind. Survival of the fittest, in this case the blind. I think this species is unique in the world.”

  He looked with admiration at the dead animal. So did Rostnikov. Then he looked up at the window. The day was overcast.

  “Is it cold out there today?”

  “I have not been outside today,” said Rostnikov.

  “The temperature makes no difference to creatures who live and walk in darkness,” said Orlov.

  “Even the people?”

  “Humans adapt by changing the environment, not by changing their bodies.”

  “I would like you to look at this map.”

  Rostnikov took out the rough map. Orlov took it.

  “Gennadi Ivanov drew this,” he said. “I recognize his mad scribbling.”

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov.

  “You want to sit? Oh, manners. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

  He nodded toward a table near the window behind him. On the table was a coffee maker that belonged to antiquity. The liquid beyond the glass was the color of a raven.

  “No. Thank you.”

  “I avoid Ivanov,” the scientist said. “Have not spoken to him in years. I used to talk to him about animal life he claimed to have seen in the mines, but he always brought the conversation back to the damned Japanese invasion.”

  “He still does.”

  “This map is not accurate,” Orlov said. “I have better ones.”

  He reached into a drawer under the computer and came up with a folder, which he opened on top of Ivanov’s map.

  “Here.”

  He handed Rostnikov a sheet on which there was drawn a clear three-dimensional representati
on of the mine, complete with distances in meters in the same dark black ink used to draw the map.

  “I understand there are small caves.”

  “They are marked with red dots. I have found some of my most interesting specimens in those tiny caves—insects, worms, bacteria. In one of those caves I made the discovery that will make me . . . a great discovery.”

  “May I ask what . . . ?”

  “I lost my wife because of my work, because I have lived in this room, this cell of discovery. I eat in here, sleep in here. Through that door is a shower, sink, refrigerator, and toilet. I keep in shape. One hundred sit-ups, seventy-five push-ups. Look at my arms.”

  Orlov rolled up his sleeves to reveal truly massive biceps.

  “I was told you beat Panin arm wrestling.”

  “Of course. Would you like to try me?”

  “May I stand? I have an artificial leg and . . .”

  “Yes,” said Orlov. “Right hand or left?”

  “Right,” said Rostnikov, leaning over the table and positioning his elbow next to Stepan Orlov’s.

  “We do it only once,” said Rostnikov.

  “Once,” Orlov agreed. “We begin when you say ‘ready.’ ”

  “Ready,” said Rostnikov, putting all he had into his thrust.

  Orlov had not been ready for the instant “ready,” but he did pull himself together and managed to stop his hand from touching the table, though there was no more than half an inch between the back of his hand and the shining metal. Before he could fully recover, Rostnikov, who had the advantage of leverage because he was standing, put his full weight into his arm and Orlov’s hand hit the table.

  Orlov began to laugh.

  “No one has beaten me before,” he said. “Now you . . .”

  “You inadvertently allowed me an advantage.”

  “And that is how you work as a detective?”

  “Whenever possible.”

  “I like you, Inspector . . .”

  “Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

  “Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov,” Orlov repeated. “I will tell you my secret.”

  Rostnikov folded the map he had just been given and put it in his pocket. Orlov pursed his lips and touched the front paws of the dead rat.