People Who Walk In Darkness ir-15

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Yes.”

  With that Kolokov pulled a small screwdriver from his pocket and shoved it deeply into the side of the man in the chair.

  James gasped.

  “Are you all right?” asked Kolokov with mock concern. “I’m sorry. I had to do it.”

  James couldn’t speak. The pain was searing, throbbing, screaming.

  “Are you all right, James?”

  James shook his head yes.

  “Good.”

  Another pat on the shoulder.

  “We’ll clean that up. It’s not deep and I rinsed the screwdriver earlier today. Fresh bandages. Pau’s mother was a nurse, is that correct, Pau?”

  “Yes,” came a voice from the blurred darkness.

  “Partners,” came Kolokov’s voice as James started to pass out.

  Chapter Four

  “You’ve come to visit your father’s leg,” Paulinin said, stepping back to let Iosef and Zelach through the reinforced door.

  Paulinin’s laboratory was two levels below ground in Petrovka. It was an anomaly. A bureaucracy bustled or shuffled in the sparsely furnished rooms above, but Paulinin’s laboratory stood alone as a testament to a time long gone if it ever existed at all.

  “Among other things,” said Iosef.

  Paulinin, dressed in a white laboratory apron spotted with something that was probably more unpleasant than blood, looked at Zelach who was decidedly uncomfortable.

  “The man who slouches,” said Paulinin, adjusting his glasses.

  Zelach immediately straightened up. There was much in the laboratory that made Zelach uncomfortable-the seemingly random jars of specimens arranged in no apparent order, the unmatched desks covered with books and towers of reports that threatened to tumble over, the laboratory and autopsy tables under bright lamps.

  But what made Zelach most uncomfortable was Paulinin himself.

  The lean, bald man was clean shaven. His ears were large, as were his teeth. He spoke quickly, softly, and often burst out loudly with a “Don’t touch that” or an “Are you paying attention?”

  But, as the scientist led the way around the desk toward the low music from a CD player or radio, Zelach saw that there were two naked black bodies on adjoining autopsy tables.

  “Over there.” Paulinin pointed with his left hand as they moved.

  “I know,” said Iosef, looking at the leg of his father floating in a large jar.

  Zelach looked too.

  “I don’t talk to it enough,” Paulinin said almost sadly. “Too much to do. Chopin.”

  He had turned his head and was looking at Zelach who was puzzled. Did the mad scientist call Rostnikov’s leg Chopin?

  “The music,” Paulinin said as they moved between the two autopsy tables. “Chopin.”

  Akardy Zelach knew little about classical music. Heavy metal, fine. Jazz, fine. Classical, no.

  Iosef, Porfiry Petrovich, and Karpo had long assured Zelach that the scientist was brilliant. Detectives and even members of military law enforcement came to him, but most police avoided him, preferring mediocrity in their investigation to the prospect of having to deal with the man who now patted the arm of the dead man on the table.

  “What has he been telling you?” asked Iosef.

  “Ah, this one does not speak Russian very well, and my other guest speaks no Russian.”

  “How do you. .?” Zelach started and then stopped himself. Too late.

  Iosef folded his arms and waited patiently.

  “This one was tortured. Slowly, slowly. His mouth, throat, lungs, vocal cords were unharmed. Someone wanted him able to speak. In his pocket were receipts, notations. No rubles. The money was taken. I know because he was well if not expensively dressed, very good serviceable English shoes. He would not be walking around without money. He was a man who didn’t have to be bereft of funds. His friend. .”

  Paulinin turned and patted the arm of the other dead man reassuringly.

  “His friend here had no rubles either, no notes or bills or receipts in Russian. He relied on his friend for all necessary conversation and transactions with Russians. He was not tortured, only murdered, which shows that a knowledge of the Russian language is not always a blessing.”

  Paulinin seemed to be waiting for confirmation.

  “It is not,” agreed Iosef.

  Zelach wanted to get out of the alcoholic and chemical smell, the dark corners, the glaring specimens enlarged by the glass bottles that surrounded them, the two dead men to whom Paulinin spoke.

  “Can you imagine what it would be like to have a tube forced down your nose, rubbing the lining raw and bloody all the way to your stomach, and have food forced down the tube?”

  He was looking at Zelach.

  “No I cannot,” said Zelach.

  Paulinin shook his head and scratched his neck.

  “Old KGB torture,” he explained. “Many are the afflicted who were feasted so inside Lubyanka, but a long walk or a short Metro ride from where we now stand.”

  “Our torturer is former KGB?” asked Iosef.

  “Perhaps still secret police,” Zelach tried.

  “No, they know how to rid themselves of bodies.”

  “Anything else?” asked Iosef.

  “Small, very sharp knife. The torturer was not tall, maybe five feet and eight inches. The tortured man was seated. See his ankles, the rope burn around his groin. The highest wounds indicate the man’s height. Other wounds indicate that our man with the knife was nervous, attention deficit disorder or something like that. He kneels, stands upright, crouches, keeps moving. His hair is dark brown and long. He is alcoholic.”

  “How. .?”

  Zelach again.

  “Hair samples on both bodies. Not the victims. DNA,” explained Paulinin. “I called in favors. The men and women in the DNA laboratory owe me. There is a faint but detectable smell of alcohol on both of my guests, though neither of them has the slightest trace of alcohol in his stomach.”

  “Did your guest talk to the Russian?” asked Iosef.

  “Oh yes. The torture stopped abruptly. The tale was told, but not the end. The end depends, I think, on the third man.”

  “The third man,” Iosef repeated.

  “What third man?” asked Zelach.

  “Two blood types on the body of my guests are Type B. So, I believe, is the man who tortured them. Ironic. Torturer and victims are blood brothers. But there is a third blood type, AB, on the skin of these two men. My guess is that all three men struggled, were beaten, bled on each other. We are fortunate. The third man carries the virus for narcolepsy. The man was bitten by a tsetse fly. It is, therefore, likely that he is from somewhere in the south of Africa.”

  “Because tsetse flies are only found in Africa?” said Zelach.

  “No, because my two friends here bear tattoos on the backs of warriors from the same Southern African tribe, a Botswanan tribe.”

  “Warriors?”

  This from Iosef.

  “Yes,” said Paulinin. “Perhaps, but modern ones. These tattoos are only an homage to the past. They are like the tattoos prisoners wear to mark them as being from a particular gang.”

  “Anything else?” asked Iosef.

  “One moment,” said Paulinin, moving back into darkness, changing the CD. When he returned he looked at Iosef.

  “Rachmaninov,” said Iosef.

  Paulinin smiled.

  “There is one more thing. Pa’smatril. Look.”

  He turned the tortured dead man on his side and said, “You have to look very carefully.”

  Paulinin pressed his finger into a red spot on the dead man’s back. His finger disappeared into the body.

  “They both have them. The other one’s is on his thigh, like little pockets.”

  “Drugs,” said Zelach.

  “Diamonds,” said Iosef.

  “Possibly,” said Paulinin.

  Iosef did not press the issue. He was certain. The meeting in Porfiry Petrovich’s office made it clea
r that they were all in search of diamonds.

  “Now,” said Iosef, “if you can only tell us where to begin looking for this third man. .”

  “Four-seven-two-four Kropotkin Street,” said Paulinin.

  “You cannot know. .” Zelach could not stop himself.

  “Rent receipt in my friend’s pocket,” said Paulinin, touching the nearest corpse.

  “Spa’siba. Thank you,” said Iosef.

  “Yes,” added Zelach resisting the urge to run out of the laboratory.

  “Zelach wants to know if it is true that you have Stalin’s head and Lenin’s teeth and eyes,” said Iosef.

  No, no, no, thought Zelach looking at Paulinin.

  “I have treasures pathological, historical, and cultural,” said Paulinin who was looking over his glasses at Zelach. “It would be unwise to share treasure. Let yourselves out.”

  Rachmaninov bloomed in the garden of glass, wood, and metal at their backs as Iosef and Zelach moved toward the door to the corridor.

  A voice spoke cheerily behind them.

  Paulinin was talking to the dead men. The scientist seemed certain that the dead men also talked to him.

  And in some sense, he was right.

  “Bedraggled,” Lydia Tkach said, looking at her son.

  Sasha was at the mirror in the tiny bathroom adjusting the white shirt under his tan zippered jacket. She had followed him before he could close the door.

  Sasha, examining his face, had to agree. The unruly line of hair still came down to cover his forehead, only the hair was no longer really the color of corn. He was handsome still, but the appealing boyishness was missing. Undercover assignments were still his lot, but he could no longer pass himself off as a student or an innocent. His blue eyes betrayed him.

  “Look at you.”

  Sasha looked at his reflection and saw sympathy in the eyes that met his. Lydia was retired, no longer the tyrant who held together a gaggle of functionaries in a government office. Lydia, long hard of hearing, tended to shout when she was displeased. She tended to shout when she was happy. Shouting was her conversational currency and Sasha had endured it for more than thirty years.

  “I’m looking,” he said. “What am I supposed to see?”

  It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it as soon as the words had been spat from his lips, but he could not give up the small vestige of childish defiance.

  “You are supposed to see a husband,” she said. “You are supposed to see a father with two children, one of whom is ill in an awful, dirty city of murderers.”

  “The children are not ill and Kiev is neither dirty nor full of murderers.”

  Why could he not silence himself?

  “What was I saying?” she asked, looking at the dull green painted wall of the bathroom.

  “You were telling me what I am supposed to see in the mirror.”

  He turned to face her. She was small, lean, strong, and reluctant to wear the perfectly satisfactory hearing aids he had bought her.

  “Yes, you are supposed to see a policeman, a policeman who could be shot or stabbed or beaten on the head or run over by a car.”

  “Don’t forget poisoned,” he said, moving past her into the living room.

  “You are not funny,” she said, following him.

  “I know. It is one of my many failings. What are you doing today?”

  “I’m working at not changing the subject when I talk to my only child. Did you see someone in the mirror who has been drinking too much, like his long-dead father?”

  “My father died in a car accident.”

  “Hah.”

  “Hah?”

  “I suspected poison at the time,” she said, trying without success to lower her voice in case some governmental agency thought enough of her to eavesdrop on her every word. “He was engaged in very sensitive government work.”

  “Yes,” said Sasha, knowing that his father had been no more than a senior file clerk in the Underministry of Vehicles.

  Now she followed him into the little kitchen where he opened the refrigerator door, removed the sliced brown bread and the last of the ham they had been nursing through meals for three days.

  “You have never said anything about poison,” Sasha said, knowing that he was lost, lost in one of those futile conversations with his mother.

  “I didn’t want to trouble you,” she said. “Put mustard on that.”

  Sasha paused, plate of butter in his hand.

  “Who doesn’t like mustard? Let’s have a show of hands,” he said, holding up his free hand.

  “You are mocking your mother,” she said loudly with mock resignation.

  “I have never liked mustard,” he said, placing the butter dish on the small table.

  “And that has been your downfall.”

  “Not liking mustard has been my downfall?”

  “Being difficult has been your downfall,” she said, reaching out to tear off an edge of the ham he had placed on the table.

  “I am not yet hopelessly fallen,” he said.

  She said nothing, watched him make a sandwich, considered giving him more culinary advice, and thought better of it.

  “You should stop being a policeman,” she said. “It is dangerous and you are no longer as alert as you once were.”

  “Which of us is?”

  Now they were into a familiar conversation they had repeated dozens of times.

  “I’ve talked to Porfiry Petrovich about my concerns for your safety,” she said, folding her arms over the green dress she mistakenly believed flattered her.

  “Many times,” Sasha said.

  “Yes, many times.”

  The sandwich was finished. It was a monument to distracted inefficiency. He took a bite.

  “You should sit when you eat. It is bad for your digestion to eat while standing.”

  He moved toward the door.

  “It is worse to eat while walking,” she said.

  She walked behind him to the door. He finished downing what he had in his mouth, paused, and turned to face her. She was a head shorter than he, which made it easier for him to lean over and kiss her head, which he did.

  “I think I’ll be going to Kiev soon,” he said. “I will talk to Maya. I will beg, plead, promise on the lives of my children to be a good and faithful husband and father. I have no great hope. I’ve made such promises before.”

  “I know,” Lydia said, taking his hand. “Tell her it is the last time you’ll ask her to come back to you.”

  “She said last time was the last. I’m late.”

  He smiled at his mother. It wasn’t much of a smile, but it was enough. She stood in the open door of the apartment as he headed for the stairs, eating his ham sandwich.

  “Beg her to come back,” she called out. “Tell her you’ll stop with the women, the drinking, the brooding.”

  “I don’t think all the neighbors heard you,” Sasha said over his shoulder.

  “They already know everything,” she said. “Be safe.”

  He waved his sandwich at her and went down the stairs.

  Sasha had twenty minutes to get to the address where he was to meet Elena Timofeyeva. There was no way he could make it.

  Chapter Five

  Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, Chief Inspector in the Office of Special Investigations, was airsick. The seat was small, the space for his legs-one real, one artificial-was restrictive, the ride bumpy, the smell of human bodies and tobacco cloying.

  Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov would be fine when they were on the ground, according to the young woman in a military uniform who seemed to be in charge of avoiding questions. She was also in charge of giving them each a bottle of water and a bar of whole grains held together by congealed honey.

  Dubious information about the nature of his illness did not soothe Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. He tried to read the slightly tattered paperback copy of his Ed McBain 87th Precinct novel.

  There were two seats on each side of the aisle. Emil
Karpo, erect as always, sat looking out the window at clouds. Rostnikov preferred the aisle. Actually, Rostnikov preferred not to be on any airplane at all.

  There was no one to whom he could complain. He was resigned. It was not unlike most things in life.

  Rostnikov closed his eyes and leaned back. Six of the other passengers on the plane were heading for Devochka. All six of them worked for the mining company. There was no one else to work for. The plane would drop them off at Devochka and then take the remaining thirty-seven passengers to Noril’sk.

  Rostnikov had read the folder the Yak had given him. The security folder for Devochka had been prepared by the Director of Security at the mine. The name of the man and his signature were on the reports in that folder. Rostnikov knew the man. He was also certain that Yaklovev was well aware of Porfiry Petrovich’s connection to the man.

  “You are ill, Porfiry Petrovich,” came Karpo’s voice through the hazy pink of Rostnikov’s closed eyes.

  “The air.”

  “Here,” said Karpo, putting something in Rostnikov’s hand.

  Rostnikov opened his eyes and looked at the pill in his palm.

  “For airsickness?” Rostnikov asked, swallowing the pill without waiting for an answer.

  “Yes.”

  “You get airsick?”

  “No,” said Karpo. “But I prepare for the contingency when I fly.”

  “Are you prepared for all contingencies, Emil?”

  “No, that would be impossible. I try to prepare for those I can anticipate.”

  “A wise life plan,” said Rostnikov. “We make a good team, Emil Karpo. You are logical and unimaginative. . no insult intended.”

  “And none perceived. I see little value in having an imagination. Besides, it is not a choice one makes.”

  “And I am intuitive,” said Rostnikov, feeling a bit better already. “Intuition can deceive.”

  “As can logic,” said Karpo.

  “You realize Emil, this is one of the longest conversations we have ever had that did not involve murder, mayhem, theft, or imminent danger.”

  Rostnikov was about to say something about Mathilde Verson, but he decided not to, maybe some time later when her ghost did not still stand so close to Karpo’s shoulder.