People Who Walk In Darkness (Inspector Rostnikov)

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  He stood looking at her, feeling no great pain, only the realization that he was no longer aware of his right arm and hand.

  The second thrust, just below the ribs, made it clear to him what was happening.

  He saw Rochelle, knife in hand, lean forward to kiss him quickly and then step back to avoid being touched by his blood as she thrust the blade smoothly into his neck. He went to his knees, clutching his throat. Blood seeped through his fingers. Breathing was impossible.

  He slumped face forward to the now blood-soaked carpet as Rochelle deftly took the pouch of diamonds from his hand. Jan Pendowski made three urgent gasps for breath and died.

  And then someone knocked at the door.

  “And so we are gathered,” said Iosef, looking at the strange quartet coming down the sidewalk.

  The nervous man in a leather Mafia coat a bit too warm for the weather was smoking and clenching and unclenching his right fist. Behind him walked a very young man in a not-quite-so-fashionable coat, but a coat nonetheless. The substantial bald man they had seen on the Metro when they followed the two Africans was also wearing a leather coat, the uniform of the day for those with no imagination who wanted to hide weapons. Both Iosef and Zelach were well aware of what rested behind the leather.

  The bald man had a tight grip on the left arm of a slight black man of no more than forty who wore no coat and displayed signs of having been beaten so badly that he belonged in a hospital. All four joined the man in the doorway who was watching the cafe.

  Iosef watched the men in coats confer and talk to the man who had been hiding in the doorway.

  “I think we are about to witness the gunfight at the OK Corral,” said Iosef.

  Zelach had no idea of what he was talking about. All he could think of was that they were probably about to face four heavily armed gangsters on one side and possibly a pair of armed Africans, maybe more than a pair, on the other. The two policemen were badly in need of heavily armed support.

  “If we bring in backup at this point,” said Iosef, “many people might be killed.”

  “If we do not,” said Zelach, “maybe we will be killed.”

  “You are not afraid,” said Iosef.

  “No,” said Zelach. “I was thinking about my mother.”

  Iosef turned his head away from the gathering in the doorway down the street and looked at Zelach.

  “You are right,” Iosef said. “I should have called for support.”

  “It is too late now,” said Zelach, looking at the cafe.

  The door had opened and the Africans named Biko and Laurence had stepped out. They were not alone. Five more black men carrying pistols and revolvers of various ilk were with them.

  “Who do we shoot?” whispered Zelach.

  “No one. I think they are going to shoot each other,” answered Iosef.

  The meeting was scheduled for tomorrow.

  Yaklovev stood at the window in his office, looking down at the courtyard of Petrovka. He needed just a bit more to bargain with in the face of the potential loss of his control of the Office of Special Investigations. He was certain that with his connections he could find a reasonably prestigious and responsible position in the bureaucracy, possibly within the Kremlin itself. He was not concerned about what might happen to Rostnikov and the other detectives. But his current position and their investigative skills afforded him a perfect entree into the private lives, indiscretions, and crimes of politicians, business moguls, and even successful Mafia figures who wished for some degree of legitimacy.

  No, he did not want to lose it now.

  He went to his desk, pushed a button, and returned to the window. Below, a uniformed policeman had two German shepherds in tow and was heading for the gate beyond which stood a waiting police van.

  The door opened, and Pankov came in.

  “You rang for me?”

  “You need not say that every time I call you,” said the Yak. “Just come.”

  Yaklovev knew his statement would be ignored. The constantly frightened and nervous little man could not exist without frequent and ritualistic affirmation.

  Pankov for his part was always startled upon entering the office to see the resemblance between Director Yaklovev and Lenin.

  “I am going to get a call tonight from Chief Inspector Rostnikov. You are to be here and record it. Then you are to transcribe it so that I can, if necessary, edit it. Then you are to type it cleanly, make six copies, and have it in my hands by nine o’clock.”

  “Shall I bring it to your apartment?”

  “No. I will be here till you have it done.”

  “It may take . . .”

  “I expect it to take all night,” said Yaklovev, watching as the dogs went through the rear doors of the van, which were then closed.

  When he could no longer see the dogs, the Yak turned to Pankov, who stood, pad of paper and pen in hand, as close to the door as he could without looking ridiculous.

  “You look particularly agitated today,” Yaklovev said. “You are sweating. I would prefer that you not sweat when people come into the office.”

  “I wipe my brow and face constantly when no one is looking.”

  “I know,” said the Yak, “but often someone is looking.”

  Pankov was startled into near panic. Did Director Yaklovev have a hidden camera in the outer office? Had Pankov done something he should not have done? He knew that the office and the offices of all the detectives were wired, because he was responsible for monitoring. He also knew that all the detectives were well aware that they could be heard. From time to time they made jokes at his expense and for his ears. Actually, only Iosef Rostnikov made such jokes.

  “Pankov?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pay attention. What is bothering you?”

  “Will we all be replaced tomorrow, after your meeting?”

  “If it is to be,” Yaklovev said, “you would come with me wherever I were to be assigned. You are too valuable for me to lose.”

  Pankov was stunned. Never had he received anything resembling praise or reassurance from Director Yaklovev. Were he to be asked at that moment to get on his knees and kiss the feet of the Director, he would do so. Well, maybe not.

  “Thank you,” he said.

  “Bring me the full file of General Frankovich.”

  “Now?”

  “Now.”

  Pankov hurried out of the office and into his reception area office, where he experienced a rush of something that resembled comfort. He went to the locked cabinets in the room just to the right of his desk where files were carefully stored, updated, and indexed. The files were impressive, and Pankov kept them up to date, with every document uniformly lined up. Finding the thick file on General Frankovich took seconds.

  What Pankov did not know, what no one but Igor Yaklovev knew, was that in a vault in a German bank not fifteen minutes from Petrovka, under a quite fictitious name, were other files, including one on General Frankovich. There was even one on President Putin himself. Yaklovev fully expected that Pankov’s files were not only vulnerable but had probably been expertly penetrated. There was nothing in them that the Yak felt a need to keep from anyone with the ability and inclination to find them.

  He moved back to his desk, sat, and waited for Pankov to return with the Frankovich file.

  Later, when he grew hungry, he would send Pankov out to get him a sandwich. In the morning he would shave and change into the suit he had in the small closet behind him.

  The Yak not only intended to survive, he was confident he could do so. Whether the same could be said of the detectives of the Office of Special Investigations would be decided in the morning.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The pause was long. In the not great distance cars and trucks rambled, and the familiar construction sounds of discarded wood and rusted metal rattled down a chute and clanged onto the bed of a truck.

  A lone car, an old Lada, came obliviously down the narrow street and stopped as a
clutch of men on the left and another on the right stepped off of the narrow curb. The car came to a sudden stop. The driver, a man with many chins, pushed his head out of the window, displayed his angry pink face, and opened his mouth to shout. Then he saw the guns and the faces and registered the fact that he was being completely ignored.

  There was no room to turn around. He backed up, trying to look over his shoulder. The car veered to his right and scraped a rear fender against a lamppost before successfully fading back the way it had come.

  No one in the two groups now facing each other looked in the direction of the retreating car and the scratch of metal on metal.

  “This is not going to be easy, is it?” called out Kolokov, stepping ahead of his three men, James Harumbaki behind him.

  He was looking for someone to bargain with. No one emerged from among the six black men in front of him.

  “Come. Come. Come,” Kolokov said, pacing now. “The police will be coming and we will have to start shooting and you will not get our prisoner, who will be shot, and we will not get our diamonds and no one will be happy except Pau Montez, the bald man behind me, who likes shooting people and who has expressed a particular interest in shooting our hostage.”

  “Laurence,” James Harumbaki called out hoarsely.

  Kolokov spun around to look at his prisoner. The Russian smiled.

  A small, plump young man stepped forward into the street. He stood no more than five paces from Kolokov who turned back to face him. The Russian noted that the young man did not appear to be in the least bit frightened.

  “Die or trade?” asked Kolokov.

  Laurence adjusted his glasses and said nothing. He held up a cardboard box the size and shape of a large book. Kolokov held out a hand and Laurence took four more steps to hand the box to him.

  From inside the doorway in which they had been standing, Akardy Zelach said, “When the shooting starts, who do we shoot?”

  “If shooting is to be done,” said Iosef Rostnikov, “there will be no need for our help in doing it. What is our assignment?”

  “Diamonds,” said Zelach.

  “Diamonds,” Iosef agreed.

  Back in the street, Kolokov removed the lid from the box and reached in to pull out a small, almost round stone with a milky luster. He held it up as if he knew what he was looking at and motioned over his shoulder. Alek stepped forward. Kolokov handed him the stone. The man held it up and he too pretended that he knew what he was looking at. Then he nodded.

  “We now carefully conclude our business,” said Kolokov, backing away and putting the lid back on the box. “And no one dies.”

  The bald man pushed the stumbling James Harumbaki forward.

  Kolokov handed the box to the bald man and held up his hands in a sign that this confrontation was over.

  But it was not.

  Before he even joined the line of black men, James Harumbaki, between swollen and torn lips, said, “Kill them.”

  The Africans fired first, but the Russians were quick to respond. Weapons were whipped out from under coats. Others were simply lifted and fired. It was not the bang-bang sound of television and movies, but a steady bap-bap-bap. There were no screams.

  Iosef and Zelach watched as men flung their arms out, casting clattering weapons in the street. There was a pause, and then more firing. Neither side had moved forward or sought cover. Then James Harambuki’s voice called out hoarsely as he pointed at Vladimir Kolokov,

  “Do not kill him.”

  Two of the Russians behind Kolokov lay dead in the street. The bald man was also dead, but he sat with his back against the wall of a building. His eyes were open and he seemed to be smiling. Kolokov knelt, his right arm torn, bloody, nearly severed. He was blinking furiously.

  James Harumbaki took a gun from the hand of Laurence and stepped in front of Kolokov, who spit blood and with his remaining good arm fumbled for a cigarette in his shirt pocket. He could not manage it, gave up, and looked at James Harumbaki, who looked down at him.

  “I came very close,” said Kolokov.

  “No, you did not,” said James Harumbaki. “Those are not real diamonds. I have a question. Answer, and you live if help comes to you in time.”

  “Ask,” said Kolokov.

  “Who told you that we had diamonds? Who told you where to find us when you took me and the two others you tortured and killed? Lie and you die. Tell the truth and you live.”

  Kolokov started an instinctive shrug but the pain was unbearable.

  He was now surrounded by black faces looking down at him.

  “A woman,” Kolokov said. “I never met her. I think she was English. She called me, told me where you would be, that you would have diamonds, money.”

  “Where do I find this English woman?” asked James.

  Kolokov shook his head.

  “I do not know. I do not know her name.”

  The woman, whoever she was, had wanted to disrupt James Harumbaki’s link in the chain from Siberia to Kiev, had wanted to destroy his operation and have him and his men killed. English. Gerald St. James was English, but why would he want to destroy his own operation?

  “I believe you,” said James Harumbaki, looking over his shoulder with his one, partially functioning eye.

  Two Africans lay dead. A third was being tended to by Biko and another man.

  James Harumbaki turned back to the kneeling Russian, who smiled through his pain and said, “We had some good chess matches.”

  “No, we did not,” said James Harumbaki. “You may well be the worst chess player it has been my very bad fortune to face across a board.”

  And with that he held the gun up and put it to the head of Kolokov.

  “You said you would not kill me.”

  “I am not,” said James Harumbaki. “You are being killed by the ghosts of two good men who you tortured to death three days ago.”

  There were sirens now. Both directions. The police were coming.

  “Three days? Was it only three days?” Kolokov asked as the bullet tore into his forehead.

  Oxana Balakona could wait no longer. She was to meet Rochelle Tanquay at the airport in three hours. Jan had stalled but she was going to his apartment to demand the diamonds. It was time. If she were going to hide and transport and trade them in Paris, she would have to have them now.

  She took a taxi to his apartment. She also took a very small, flat, well polished gun in her purse. She had bought the gun for too much money from a man named Oleg, from whom she had purchased cocaine in the past.

  If Jan stalled, balked, or backed out, Oxana was prepared to kill him. If she did not kill him today, she would have to at some point soon. She felt reasonably sure that she could fire the gun. She had never fired one before, certainly never killed anyone, but the diamonds were in the apartment, and the apartment was not large. She would have two hours to search for the diamonds before she had to get to the airport, where she had checked her bags the previous night.

  This would be a successful day. She would make it a successful day.

  The elevator in Jan Pendowski’s apartment building was working. It did not always work. Oxana took this as a good sign. She went up to the fifth floor along with a very tiny, grunting woman clutching a large stuffed cloth shopping bag to her chest.

  At the door to Jan’s apartment she paused. She could not identify with certainty the sounds from within. A groan of pleasure, pain? Sex? With whom?

  Oxana unzipped her small purse, looked down at her gun, and knocked.

  “The woman in the photograph you took at the cafe,” said Sasha. “I know who it is.”

  Elena had been following Oxana who had just gotten out of the taxi in front of the apartment building of Jan Pendowski when Sasha called on her cell phone.

  “Rochelle Tanquay,” said Elena, getting out of the taxi that she had taken to follow Oxana.

  “Balta,” said Sasha.

  “Balta? Who is Balta?”

  “A female impersonator,�
�� said Sasha. “A very good one.”

  “You go to see female impersonators?”

  “Once,” he said. “I went one time. Is that really relevant?”

  “What is she . . . he doing here?” And then she answered her own question. “Diamonds.”

  “Diamonds,” said Sasha.

  “I will call you back,” Elena said.

  “Where are you?”

  “The apartment building of Jan Pendowski. Oxana just went in.”

  “Wait. I am coming. I am not far.”

  Elena closed her phone and entered the building. She had no intention of waiting for a partner who cheated on his wife and went to see female impersonators.

  “The tunnels have not been properly maintained,” said Boris. “Not for thirty, forty years.”

  “I take no delight in hearing that,” said Rostnikov, following the old man through the steel mesh gate that guarded the mine opening.

  Emil Karpo watched as Boris closed and locked the gate behind them.

  It was dark now. All three men wore yellow hard hats with mounted lights.

  “You can turn your lights on now,” Boris said.

  Karpo and Porfiry Petrovich reached up and hit the switch on the hard hats that Boris had given them.

  “The map in my head is better than Stepan Orlov’s or that crazy old fool with the guns who thinks the Japanese are coming.”

  “This time we will use Orlov’s map,” said Rostnikov, walking carefully toward an open-topped golf cart that sat in the middle of the wide tunnel. “Next time we will use yours.”

  “Next time,” said Boris with a shake of his head. “I do not trust next times. You drive.”

  He was looking at Emil Karpo who obliged and got into the driver’s seat. Boris got in next to him and Porfiry Petrovich sat in the back.

  “Straight ahead,” said Boris. “I will tell you when to stop. Lights on.”

  Karpo found the switch and turned on the single headlight, which, along with the lights from their helmet lamps, sent dancing beams ahead of them into the darkness. They started forward. Small green lights lined the ceiling of the shaft about four feet over their heads.