Death of a Dissident

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Death of a Dissident

  An Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov Mystery

  STUART M. KAMINSKY

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Acknowledgements

  INTRODUCTION

  THE PORFIRY PETROVICH ROSTNIKOV SERIES may never have been started had it not been for the constant rejection by publishers of a pet project of mine.

  For years I nurtured the idea that within me was a vast, long multi-generational novel based very loosely on my own family and its history. I outlined the novel, did the research, wrote over 100 pages and sent it to my agent, who tried without success to interest a publisher.

  Since the first two chapters of the rejected tome took place in the Soviet Union, I decided to use some of what I knew and had already done, pour in some things I loved and write a mystery novel. I knew a great deal about Russia and about my family. All of my grandparents were born in Russia and I had many a remembered tale to draw upon. I love Ed McBain’s 87th Precinct novels, as, you will discover, does Porfiry Petrovich. I also love Georges Simenon’s Maigret novels, and John Creasy’s Gideon novels were favorites of mine in high school. Above all, I love “classical” Russian literature, particularly Dostoevsky and, even more specifically, Crime and Punishment.

  There was no grand plan to combine all of the above when I outlined and then wrote Death of a Dissident. I knew they would come together, not by calculation but because they were a part of me.

  What surprised me a bit when I did begin to write was the realization that I had adopted the style of the Russian novels I had read and I liked what I was doing. It came naturally—like affecting an accent without realizing it. I was writing about Russians, so I wrote in the style that I remembered as Russian. I still write the Rostnikov tales in this style, which goes against the grain of much contemporary Soviet fiction which, in turn, strives to have its own modernist identity and to get away from the very style with which I feel comfortable.

  I also found that, from book to book depending on the tales told, I adopted the style of whatever specific Russian author most suited that tale. This led to a discovery. As much as I admire Dostoevsky and Chekov, I am clearly, at least in my own mind, most influenced by Gogol, who may be the least appreciated of the Russians.

  So, I had written what I thought was a Russian police procedural tale influenced by such diverse sources as McBain, Simenon, Creasy, Dostoevsky and Gogol. I liked what I had done. My agent liked what I had done. However, no hardcover publisher liked what had been done so the book came out as a paperback original.

  Death of a Dissident was submitted to the publisher and accepted almost a year before it was published. Death of a Dissident suffered the fate of most paperback originals: no reviews. It also happened that Gorky Park was published a little over a month before Death of a Dissident. Though I had enjoyed Martin Cruz Smith’s novels—and still do—I couldn’t read Gorky Park. The reviews made it clear that our books bore only a superficial resemblance to each other.

  Since I thought the series was ending, as much as I liked it, I decided to kill off a major character. In the first of several drafts of Black Knight in Red Square, Emil Karpo is killed. My editor and agent liked the character so much that they persuaded me to let him live. There’s an interesting parallel here with the 87th Precinct series. At the beginning of the series, Ed McBain tried to kill Steve Carella, his central character.

  My next brilliant idea was to let Rostnikov get out of the Soviet Union, have him move to Chicago where he would become an avuncular problem solver for the Soviet community. It wasn’t that I thought it was a great idea. The fact is that it is damned hard to write about characters living in a city I’ve never seen and about which I must do an enormous amount of research with each book. Ed McBain tried to deal with this problem by having his tales take place in the non-existent (but really New York) city of Isola. He discovered, as the series went on, that it was more difficult to do this than to do the research on a real city. Each time you create a detail, give a description, in your mythical city, you’ve got to remember it, make it part of the whole that you must repeatedly bring to life.

  In my case, once again, agent and publisher persuaded me.

  Black Knight in Red Square was nominated for an Edgar as Best Paperback Original and had a new life.

  I am now not only comfortable with my characters and comfortable writing about the Soviet Union; I’m sure I’d continue writing the novels even if I had no publisher. I simply want to know how they are doing, what they are doing, and what is going to happen to them. I guess I’m a fan of my own series.

  What do I like most about these books? The three central characters who have their roots in literature and my imagination.

  Rostnikov himself bears more than a passing resemblance to Jules Maigret. His methods are similar, but his milieu is much different. Rostnikov is, like George Gideon, a man of action. And it is no coincidence that Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov bears the name of the magistrate who drives Raskolnikov to a confession of murder. Rostnikov, finally is my fantasy of my Russian grandfather, my father’s father, who died when I was about six.

  Actually, I had two Russian grandfathers. My mother’s father was a model for the old man who is murdered in his bathtub at the beginning of Red Chameleon. Rostnikov, like my idealized grandfather, is loving, determined, whimsical, loyal, romantic and pragmatic. He is a man who loves his job, his wife, his son, his country, his co-workers. He is a man filled with contradictions who often takes chances, challenges the system because the challenge keeps him alive and gives his life meaning. He is a man with a sense of humor that is peculiar to a Russian.

  Emil Karpo, in contrast, is a tall, gaunt, loyal, humorless traditionalist who bears some resemblance to Mr. (not Dr.) Spock. Karpo is a haunted man who had devoted his life and loyalty to the religion of Communism which, as practiced in the Soviet Union, keeps letting him down. Karpo wished to deny his emotions, the needs of his body and the human loyalties which, ultimately, are more immediate than his devotion to duty.

  Sasha Tkach is, in some ways, what Burt Kling might have become in the 87th Precinct novels, had life not dealt him a monstrous love life and had he been plunked down in contemporary Russia rather than in Isola. Sasha’s concerns are domestic. Life, the complications of a changing Russia, a growing family, and his inability to cope with women threaten to overwhelm him.

  I guess, at one level, Rostnikov lives for the present. Karpo lives for the past and Tkach lives for the future in both the dream and reality that was and is the Russia about which I write.

  Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “And what if I am wrong,” he cried suddenly after a moment’s thought. “What if man is not really a scoundrel, man in general, I mean, the whole race of mankind—then all the rest is prejudice, simply artificial terrors and there are no barriers and it’s all as it should be.”

  Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

  CHAPTER ONE

  MOSCOW WINTERS ARE REALLY NO worse nor much longer than the winters of Chicago or New York. If they seem so, it is because Muscovites like to think of their winters as particularly furious. It has become a matter of pride, an expression of unnecessary stoicism somewhat peculiar to the Russian psyche.

  In truth, when the snow falls for three or four days and the temperature drop
s to thirteen degrees, the huge plows radiate down the wide streets from Red Square, clearing the way for the well-bundled pedestrians, who show no particular discomfort as they flow around the machines and past the dvornik—the teams of husbands and wives with brooms who sweep the smaller streets and sidewalks. Two hundred feet below the ground and the snow, millions of Muscovites travel in the warmth of the Metro to their jobs or to stores to wait in line for a dozen eggs or a pair of Czech shoes that look like those in American movies. At night, the same people and the more than half a million students in the city travel quietly home.

  It is the silence of winter in Moscow that most strikes a foreigner. The crowds of the day and evening are enormous, but they hum rather than shout. If one passes the Aleksander Garden at the foot of the Kremlin, however, one might hear the laughing voices of children, who have been skating through the day.

  In the evening with the coming of darkness, most of the almost eight million citizens of Moscow stay in their apartments, and the city appears almost deserted except for the bored youth, tourists, criminals and those with enough money to venture to one of the restaurants or movie theaters within walking distance.

  It was on such a night that Aleksander Granovsky paced the living room of his sixth-floor apartment on Dmitry Ulyanov Street, not far from Moscow University. Aleksander Granovsky, once a teacher, was now an enemy of the state. As he paced the wooden floor of his living room, the ceiling of the apartment below shook. Part of the fault was in the construction of the twenty-year-old building; bribes and bribe-taking had resulted in corners being cut and floors having less insulation than had been specified. However, part of the fault also belonged to Granovsky, who refused to put even an old rug on the floor to cut down the noise of his nightly pacing. The old Chernovs on the fifth floor had once complained to the manager of the building’s housing committee and they had been visited by the K.G.B., the Committee for State Security—a rather extreme reaction, they thought, to so simple a complaint. As Granovsky became more famous in the neighborhood and the world for his dissident ideas, the Chernovs learned to suffer his noise in silence rather than risk another visit from the K.G.B. man with the flat nose who made them feel guilty. Besides, their complaint had had no effect on Granovsky’s pacing.

  Misha Chernov, who cleaned the benches and walks in Pushkin Park, never considered a direct confrontation with Granovsky, a tall, dark crow of a man who never smiled.

  On this particular winter night, the Chernovs’ ceiling shook more than ever, but they consoled themselves with the knowledge that their upstairs neighbor would be going on trial in a few days, and with any luck they would finally have their peace.

  The Granovsky apartment was exactly like that of the Chernovs and the fifty other tenants in the building: two rooms and a small kitchen. The Chernovs and the Granovskys, however, were unlike most of the other tenants. There were only two Chernovs and three Granovskys. Some of the other apartments held as many as six tenants.

  Granovsky’s pacing stopped abruptly as his wife, Sonya, and his daughter, Natasha, came out of the second room of their apartment and faced him. He looked at them clinically. They were of a kind, thin and pale and frightened. Granovsky was driven to near fury by their fear, but he had learned to pretend not to notice it. It pleased him that in seventeen years of marriage his wife had no idea how much her concerned cow eyes infuriated him.

  “We thought we’d go to Kolya’s apartment for a little while,” Sonya said so softly that he barely heard her. “That is, if you don’t want us to stay and…”

  “Dress well,” he said automatically. “Ask Kolya and Anna if they are going to try to come to the trial.”

  “He’ll come,” Sonya said. “Anna cannot. It would be hard for her at work.”

  Aleksander smiled, a dark, serious smile.

  “Kolya will sit in the back and hide among the old women, the widows, and old maids who have nothing to do but watch the young lose their freedom,” he said. He looked at Sonya for an argument about her brother’s courage but as usual got none.

  “We’ll be back soon,” Sonya said, avoiding his eyes and checking Natasha’s red knit hat. Granovsky nodded, turning his back on the two women, who left, closing (he door as quietly as they could.

  “Justice,” he thought to himself, composing his trial speech as he resumed pacing, “is guaranteed us, but justice is not what we get.” He would wait to write it down. So far he didn’t like it. He moved to the kitchen and put on a kettle of water for tea and then strode to the window, where he parted the curtain and looked down into the street. He did not try to hide as he glared down with a sardonic smile at the K.G.B. man shivering in the street six floors below. Granovsky could see the winter steam freeze in front of the man’s mouth. Granovsky pushed the curtain over to be sure the man in the street would see him and then turned to find his cup.

  The trial speech had to be very brief, for he did not know how much they would let him say. He had to memorize the words and give them to his friends before the trial to be sure they would be smuggled out to the rest of the world. Pravda might give the trial no more than a few lines on the back page if it covered the event at all.

  Granovsky had no doubt that he would be found guilty of anti-Soviet activity, consisting primarily of smuggling articles on the Soviet penal system out to the West for publication. It was not the outcome of the trial Granovsky wished or expected to affect. He was concerned with a matter of principle. What was important to him was that his words be given to the Western press, that he become an international figure, a rallying point for action and protest. Considering America’s ideas of human rights, there was even the possibility that the Americans might be willing to trade his freedom for one of the Soviet spies they had. It would depend entirely on his speech and how much publicity he could generate.

  The wording of the speech had to be emotional and precise. He could buy himself time and a little attention and sympathy at the trial by provoking the judge to anger. He considered the possibility of smoking during the trial, a gesture Judge Drinyanov would regard as extreme disrespect. Granovsky would feign surprise and innocence of the affront. But that was a minor gesture he couldn’t allow himself to fantasize about. What he had to do was complete the speech.

  Drinking his tea, he began to go through his worn copy of Basic Principles of Criminal Legislation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and of the Union Republics, with the vague hope of discovering something he might quote ironically. He knew the principles too well to expect an idea simply to leap out at him, but perhaps a word or phrase might bring inspiration.

  He was dropping an extra sugar lump in his still steaming tea when someone knocked at the door. Granovsky was annoyed. He hoped it was not Sonya and Natasha back early. He had no patience for visitors and he had no time to spar with the K.G.B.

  “All right, all right,” he shouted, stirring his tea. The knocking continued. He gulped the hot liquid quickly, scalding his tongue. If it were the K.G.B., he might well be in for a night of harassment, and it would be good to have something warm in the stomach. The knocking grew louder.

  Holding the law book in his hand, Granovsky strode to the door, fixing his most defiant expression, which would suffice for the K.G.B. or complaining neighbors. When Granovsky opened the door and recognized the person before him, the glare turned to a sardonic smile.

  “This is a busy night for me,” Granovsky said without any attempt to hide his impatience. “What do you want?”

  The answer came before Granovsky could really register it. Something flashed from behind the back of his darkly dressed visitor. The flashing thing looked brown and alien and heavy, and it struck Granovsky in the chest. As a youth, a soccer ball had once struck him in the chest during a game at Sokolniki Recreation Park, taking his breath as this did. Granovsky opened his mouth and looked down at what had struck him and was now protruding from his chest. He could see his own blood forming on it, and he wanted to cast it away.


  Granovsky could not scream. Something sweet and wet filled his throat. Still clutching the book in his hand, Granovsky staggered backward, wondering what to do about the thing in his chest. He had a vision of the Golem. If he were to remove the thing from his chest like the star of the Golem, he was sure he would cease to be alive. Yet the thing in his chest was making it difficult to breathe and he had so much to do—a speech to write, tea to drink. He looked toward his visitor for help but realized quite logically as he backed into the kitchen table that his visitor would surely not go through the trouble of killing him only to turn around and help. It would not be reasonable. Nichego, he thought, using the Russian word for resignation, a word that meant a sigh. Things were not going right. Trying to hold himself erect, Granovsky’s hand touched the cup of hot tea and he pulled back, instinctively letting the book in his hand fly across the room. It hit the window he had looked out of earlier, broke it and sailed slowly into the cold darkness.

  Khrapenko had not been looking up at Granovsky’s window when it broke, but he heard the crisp tinkle of shattering glass and turned his head upward to see bits of light falling toward the street. In the midst of the shards of glass flew a white bird, its wings fluttering. Khrapenko was fascinated. A bird in Granovsky’s apartment had apparently crashed through the window and was flying to the earth. Just before the object struck the snow, however, Khrapenko realized that it wasn’t a bird, but a book. He looked up at the light in Granovsky’s window before hurrying to the book, which had landed open in the snow. The book was covered with blood. Khrapenko ran for the entrance of the Granovsky building, wondering what madness Granovsky was engaged in.

  Khrapenko was twenty-eight years old and had been in the K.G.B. for four years. His father before him had been in the K.G.B. and had known Beria. The elder Khrapenko had a reputation for loyalty and little intellect and had never risen very high above the lowest rank. His son was credited with carrying on the family tradition. The assignment to follow and watch Granovsky had been neither welcome nor unwelcome. It had been puzzling, but as always, he had questioned nothing and had taken the assignment as a possible sign of growing responsibility. Khrapenko did wonder why Granovsky had been allowed to go on the streets in spite of his impending trial, and he had been told that surveillance might lead to further evidence, and that letting Granovsky out would be a sign to the world of the fairness of Soviet justice. Besides, his superior had told him Granovsky welcomed the trial and would certainly not think of running away.