Black Knight in Red Square ir-2

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Wait,” Karpo said. “Would it be possible from your study of the bacilli and the samples taken from the body to determine when it was created?”

  “When the culture was created?” asked Kostnitsov with a puzzled look, which turned to one of enlightenment. “Of course, yes. You are a clever devil, Karpo. Five days ago, six at the most.”

  “And,” said Karpo thinking aloud, “since it was cultured in the United States-”

  “Could have been recultured elsewhere,” jumped in Kostnitsov, “or perhaps someone else is working on psittacosis. Perhaps even someone in the Soviet Union. The KGB would know.”

  “But if it was taken from New Jersey and brought to the Soviet Union,” Karpo persisted, “the person who carried it would have to have arrived in Moscow on Wednesday, since the flight from New York takes a full day, with stopover and time difference, and then customs checks here.”

  Kostnitsov nodded. “Thin, thin,” he said.

  “Logical?” asked Karpo.

  “Worth trying,” agreed Kostnitsov.

  Karpo got up with his file and nodded at Kostnitsov. “You’ve been most helpful,” he said.

  “I most certainly have,” Kostnitsov agreed. “Don’t forget the empty cup.”

  Back at his desk, Karpo glanced at fat Nostavo and the uniformed policeman, who was still nodding. A new inspector, whom Karpo did not recognize, was seated at a desk across the narrow aisle. He was humming something that sounded vaguely French. Karpo had no ear for music and no interest in it. Right now he was interested only in flights from New York.

  He called Intourist and was told that he could have a list of all passengers who had arrived on Wednesday and Thursday.

  “Can I have a list of females between the ages of thirty and forty-five only, both Soviet nationals and foreigners?”

  “Yes, but it will be long, perhaps two or three hundred names,” said the man from Intourist.

  “I will come and get the list,” said Karpo. “Where will it be?”

  “The Intourist Office, sixteen Karl Marx Prospekt.”

  So far, it had been easy. Most Soviet institutions worked with painful slowness and indifference. Intourist, however, was a model of efficiency because it was on display to foreign visitors. Its efficiency carried over into its dealings with Soviet officials, including the police.

  By eight, Karpo was back at his desk. By noon, he had managed to locate many of the people whose names were on the list. Since tourists have to register, it was much easier to find them than it might have been in any other country. The indifference of hotel managers hampered him, though, as did the veiled hostility of a few younger people who answered the phones in homes and apartments.

  But it was coming. With patience and determination, of which he had much, he was confident that by early evening he would have the name the woman was using. He might also, with luck, have a photograph of her.

  Karpo considered calling Rostnikov and asking for help, but he had a hunch that time was now precious. He also admitted to himself that he did not want help. He wanted to do this by himself.

  She woke from a deep sleep with a teeth-clenched cry. Never could she recall falling so deeply into sleep. It had taken an effort as great as breaking to the surface of a deep pool to come out of the dream, and when she was out and awake, the dream was gone.

  “What is it?” asked the young man, blinking at seeing the woman as he had never seen her before.

  She couldn’t stop a look of hatred from flickering across her face, though she did avert her dark eyes in the first dull patches of morning light and reach for her watch. It was six o’clock, but even now that she was awake, the feeling of something, someone, closing in and smothering her wouldn’t go away.

  The young man’s arm went around her.

  “It’s just a nightmare,” he said with a superior little laugh.

  She held back the impulse to push him away, this weak creature who strutted his frail masculinity. She even toyed with the idea of killing him on the spot, but he might be useful for the rest of the day, and she didn’t want to be on the move again, not until it was necessary.

  “I’ll be fine,” she forced herself to say.

  “Women,” he chuckled and rolled over to his side after giving her a pat on the shoulder. He was sure that whatever he had seen on her face, that mask of stone, had been an illusion from his own dreams. He was asleep almost instantly.

  She was well aware that the Russians claimed to have achieved equality of the sexes, but she was equally aware that it was a hollow claim, that women were rarely given anything but token positions of importance, that, in fact, women were expected to work at full-time jobs and to be responsible for homemaking as well, while men complained and continued to run things, just as they had done in the past. It was the same everywhere. What she had, she had taken by her own intellect and strength. She had long since decided not to take part in the world of men like this one next to her. But her motivation was not a feminist one. No, she felt far above and outside such considerations. Any “ism” was an illusion created by individuals or groups to give false meaning and direction to essentially meaningless lives. All that counted was one’s image of oneself, not what others saw. One lived only to have the satisfaction of achievement and control. It was a game she would lose, but she would not play by false rules. She would create her own rules.

  She got up as quietly as she could. He stirred behind her but did not wake. She bent over her flight bag, unlocked it and found the small aspirin bottle. Silently, she removed two tablets, which were not aspirin, from the bottom of the bottle and tucked them into the pocket of her shirt. When the proper moment arrived later in the day, she would dissolve the pills in a beverage and be sure he drank it all. The dosage would probably not kill him, but would make him ill and dazed and keep him out of her way. If he was going to be killed, this one, she wanted to do it with her own hands. She wanted him to know what she was doing.

  Thinking about the day and the night helped ease the feeling of liquid weight. She moved to the window, pushed the grubby curtain aside, and looked out at the city. Somewhere they were looking for her, that barrel of an inspector and the lean monk of a detective she had deceived at the Metropole.

  The feeling that ran through her now was not fear, but a sensation of inevitability. Thinking about the lean one had brought on that feeling. Perhaps it had been part of her nightmare.

  The phone call they’d placed to Iosef came through at six on Sunday morning. Rostnikov heard it but dimly, wondering if it was the bells of some imagined church. Sarah roused herself quickly and picked up the telephone.

  “It’s Iosef,” she said, poking Rostnikov, who grunted and let go of the dream image of a large bottle of Czech pilsner beer.

  “Up, I’m getting up,” he said and reached out for the phone.

  “When I’m done,” she said, slapping his hand away.

  Rostnikov sat up, scratched his stomach, and held one hand to his ear as he pointed to the corner where he had discovered the tiny microphone. Sarah nodded.

  Rostnikov heard Sarah ask Iosef how he was, what he was doing. She told him about Rostnikov’s weight-lifting trophy.

  When he saw the tear in the corner of her eye, Rostnikov reached for the phone. Sarah pulled back, then sighed deeply and gave it to him.

  “Iosef,” he said.

  “Father,” replied Iosef in a voice almost forgotten in the past year. The familiar tones jolted Rostnikov’s emotions. He looked at Sarah and closed his eyes. “Yes, you are well?”

  “I’m well,” said Iosef. “Congratulations on your trophy.”

  “It’s a fine trophy,” said Rostnikov, looking across the room to where it stood on a table near the cabinet that contained the weights. “Iosef, we would like to see you. It has been a long time. Have you applied for leave?”

  “Difficult,” he said. “Those of us who have been-”

  “I know,” Rostnikov stepped in. It didn’t have to be spoke
n. Those who had been to Afghanistan were being kept under tight security, at least for the present. “Perhaps things will change. You are well?”

  “You just asked that,” Iosef laughed. “I’m well. Are you catching criminals?”

  “No criminal is safe with Rostnikov in Moscow.” He laughed, too.

  Sarah reached for the phone back, but he turned away to continue the conversation.

  What there was to say couldn’t be said on the phone.

  “Was there anything special?” Iosef asked after a brief pause.

  “Special? No, nothing special. We just hadn’t heard your voice for some time,” Rostnikov went on. “The film festival is going on here. Lots of visitors, a carnival. You remember.”

  “I remember,” said Iosef. “Do you remember when you took me to my first movie? Jane Powell.”

  “Yes.” Rostnikov remembered. “She was almost as good as Deanna Durbin.”

  “I have to go now,” said Iosef cheerily. “The officer in charge has just told me my time is up. So, good-bye and take care.”

  “And you, too,” said Rostnikov. “Say good-bye to your mother.”

  He handed the phone to Sarah who managed not to sob as she said good-bye. She listened to something Iosef said and then hung up.

  They looked at each other for a few seconds in silence.

  “I forgot to tell him Illya asked about him,” Sarah said looking at the phone.

  “Put it in a letter,” he said, standing up. He looked around the room for his pants, though he always put them in the same place, draped over a wooden chair in the corner.

  “You can go back to sleep for a while, Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said, sitting on the bed and looking up at him.

  “No, I have work to do,” he said, lifting his pants from the chair and sitting down as he wondered what time his German would get out of bed to begin what might be the most important day of both their lives.

  After Iosef Rostnikov hung up the phone, he walked slowly and correctly to the door of the small squad room without facing the lieutenant who sat behind the desk a few feet away. The officer, Galinarov, had listened openly and intently to Iosef’s side of the conversation with his hands folded in front of him. He had been instructed to do so, but he would have listened anyway because he did not like Rostnikov.

  Iosef looked far more like his mother’s side of the family than his father’s which, in the mind of Galinarov who knew the histories of every man under his command, made the younger Rostnikov a Jew. Galinarov had nothing in particular against the Jews, just as he had nothing against the Mongols and Tatars who were forming a larger and larger percentage of the militia. That worried Galinarov and others above him. There had always been a rather high percentage of Jews in the Russian army, going back to the days of the czars. The reason was simple: Jews could not buy their way out, and it was believed that an important function of the army was to control and contain the Jews.

  During the rule of the czars, soldiers would go to the Jewish villages once a year to round up their quota of boys twelve and older. The boys would serve for a period of five to forty years. The longer they served, the more likely they were either to die or to accept Christ, though the Jews had proved stubborn, and deaths had always outnumbered conversions among Hebrew soldiers.

  Since the Revolution, the goal of the military was no longer to convert the Jewish conscripts to Christianity or even to communism, since the majority of the Jews seemed to embrace socialism with the great hope that it would ease their lot in life. No, the roots of the army’s hostility to the Jews were deeply anchored in the Russian psyche, nurtured by suspicion of Jewish separateness and intellectualism.

  “Rostnikov,” said Galinarov as the young corporal reached the door.

  “Yes, Comrade,” Rostnikov answered without turning, which was a mild but obvious insult.

  “Turn around,” said Galinarov.

  Iosef turned around and faced the officer, who was almost exactly a year younger than he was.

  “Calls to this station by relatives are, as you know, discouraged except in emergencies,” said Galinarov, tapping his fingertips together.

  “I know, Comrade,” Iosef said.

  “And?” prompted Galinarov.

  “Nothing further,” Iosef said. “I did not tell my parents to call. I have informed them of the order. You can, of course, call them yourself and so inform them. You can reach my father at home now or at his office tomorrow. His number is-”

  “I know he is a policeman,” said Galinarov through his teeth.

  “A chief inspector,” Iosef amplified, adding a gentle smile.

  “Are you trying to impress me with your family’s position?” Galinarov said, standing. He was in full uniform, his collar buttoned, clean and shaved as always.

  “No, Comrade,” said Iosef. “I was simply providing you with adequate information with which you could make a decision on the proper course of action.”

  “You have a tendency to say more than is good for you, Rostnikov.”

  Iosef nodded. “A habit I acquired from my father,” he explained.

  “A racial quality,” Galinarov prodded.

  “Perhaps, Comrade,” Iosef said agreeably. “But it is my mother who is discreet, and she is the one who is Jewish. My father comes from a long line of Russian Christian peasants, like your father.”

  “You will not get very far in this army, Rostnikov,” Galinarov said, tapping his fingers nervously on the desk top.

  “I do not expect to, Comrade. My goal is to do my job, serve my time with honor, and return to civilian life where I can make my contribution to the state.”

  “You don’t really know how difficult things can be for you, Rostnikov,” Galinarov went on.

  “They were quite difficult in Afghanistan during the winter,” Rostnikov responded. “The man you replaced was killed there, as you know. I realize that you have not had the privilege of serving in combat for the nation, but-”

  Galinarov moved from the desk in three boot-clapping steps and faced Rostnikov, his nose inches from that of his subordinate.

  “To say that you will regret this conversation is an understatement to match Napoleon’s comment that he would destroy Russia in two weeks.”

  Galinarov’s breath was surprisingly minty, to cover the smell of Madeira wine, which everyone knew was the lieutenant’s constant companion. Rostnikov was also quite sure that Napoleon had said nothing of the kind. It was a typical Soviet ploy. People were forever quoting Lenin, much of the time with a great deal of creativity, knowing that even scholars had a difficult time identifying quotations from the mass of Lenin’s writing and speeches.

  Rostnikov couldn’t resist joining the game.

  “I believe it was Hitler who said that,” he said as innocently as he could, though he had no idea if Hitler had said any such thing.

  “Get out,” Galinarov said, a faint tic quivering above his right eye.

  Rostnikov turned and left as smartly as he could. He knew that Galinarov was sorely tempted to test him physically, but both Rostnikov and Galinarov knew that Iosef was stronger, faster, and a good deal smarter. And that was part of the problem, along with the fact that Rostnikov found it very difficult to conceal his superiority.

  In the hallway with the door shut behind him, Iosef looked at his hands, which were quite steady. He had to admit that he really enjoyed such confrontations. He had been honed on them over meals at home and had learned to consider such verbal jousting not only a fact of Soviet life but one of its intellectual joys. Actually, Galinarov could make his life at the barracks near Kiev quite miserable and would probably do so, but soon Iosef would inherit the secret rock, the rock that was always passed to the man with the shortest time remaining in service. The short-timers’ rock, painted red and quite smooth, would rest in the pocket of the fortunate holder, to be passed ceremoniously to the next man when it was time for the holder to go.

  The procedure had been part of Rostnikov’s compa
ny for years, and it had been a lighthearted ritual until the return from Afghanistan. The expedition had brought the men-those who survived-close together.

  As he returned to his barracks room where Misha and Rolf were waiting for him with a chess game, Iosef had two concurrent thoughts. First, he thought it might be interesting to be a policeman as his father was and spend much of the time confronting people as he had confronted Galinarov. He had never seriously considered that before, and though he was trained as a mechanical engineer, he wondered if his father could make some arrangement for him to join the MVD. The second thought was less specific but troublesome: What, in fact, had prompted his parents to call him?

  THIRTEEN

  James Willery sat silently on the floor, his legs crossed, staring at the wall. Several students came to look in on him and discuss the controversy that had arisen after the screening of To the Left. One of them managed to get a grunt out of him shortly before two o’clock. Half an hour later Alexander Platnov, who was rather enjoying the silence, felt obliged to offer his guest something to eat. Willery rejected the soup but accepted a piece of coarse white bread, which he ate slowly and silently.

  “What’s wrong with him?” asked a young woman with long dark hair when Platnov went out in the hall to use the toilet.

  “I don’t know.” Platnov shrugged, quite happy to talk to the woman who, until now, had acted as if Platnov was not a member of the human race. “He was in India a few years ago. I think he may be meditating.”

  The young woman looked toward the room. “He is a very profound filmmaker,” she said.

  He is, thought Alexander Platnov, an ass. However, he said, “Yes, yes, he is. And I’ve learned much from him in the last few days.”

  The woman, who was named Katya, looked at him seriously with intense gray eyes.

  “I’d very much like to know what he has shared with you, Comrade,” she said.

  “When he leaves,” Platnov said, “I’ll be most happy to share his thoughts with you.”