Death of a Dissident ir-1

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  But he knew what she had done. Granovsky was smart, so smart, but he was no more and there was no heaven or hell for him. Now he, sitting there with the hammer, was in control of the world. He could kill a cab driver to verify his experience. He was not growing smaller. The room was not getting bigger. It had always passed before and would pass again. He would sit, covered with a terrible sweat, and he would feel fear and no one would help him. She had promised to help him, to stay near him, but that had been a lie. He had only the voice of his father and victims and the hammer. He cuddled the hammer, placed it under his arm, put it between his legs like a wooden erection and laughed. He had taken charge of the world. There would be no more fear or listening to others or standing in line. She would find out. She had changed all this and would get her reward, and the reward would be the hammer as Granovsky’s reward had been the sickle. There should be something beyond that, something to do. Others to be shown, taught. It would come. He knew it would come. He thought of one of his mother’s meals of sausages and dumplings and cheese and the thought held at bay the growing of the room.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The file on Aleksander Granovsky had been thick and neat. Sasha Tkach expected as much and knew that the K.G.B. must have drawers of files on Granovsky, but they were files he could not hope to get or see. He had taken the file to the large office room where he had shared a desk with another junior inspector named Zelach. The bottom drawer was supposed to be Sasha’s for records, storing tea, but Zelach kept infringing on the space with his own things. Sasha did not mind sharing the drawer. He minded Zelach’s sandwiches, which left a garlic smell on all of Sasha’s notes and papers.

  The lights in the large room were dim, and one or two other inspectors were working. Sasha thought he heard the grunt of a greeting from Klishkov, but he couldn’t be sure. The room was, even when full, a quiet place in spite of the twenty or thirty people who rambled in it at any given time. If one had to shout at a suspect or underling, one was expected to move to an investigating room. The room was also clean, almost antiseptic. One could never go back into the garbage to retrieve an inadvertently discarded note.

  Sasha had compiled a list of Granovsky’s acquaintances. The compiling had not taken long, perhaps an hour, even with corresponding addresses, but it was a bit too early to begin to act. There was nothing wrong with questioning people at four in the morning, but Rostnikov had told him to be friendly and persuasive rather than demanding. It was an easier order to give than to execute, for Sasha knew from experience that his youth and disarmingly innocent face would not carry him far in most investigations. Muscovites were too cautious. Innocence was something they distrusted in anyone and were particularly wary of in a policeman.

  Sasha pulled out his lunch and began to eat it at his desk, after looking across the room to see if the other officers were interested in his activities. Inspectors were not supposed to eat at their desks. They were supposed to go to the building cafeteria. By pretending to reach for files in his drawer, Sasha managed to sneak bites of the sandwich and wonder if he had enough money to stop at a Stolovaya for lunch or some borshcht and a sausage.

  The door opened across the room and Emil Karpo, looking like the angel of death searching for his next victim, strode in, carrying a sickle. Sasha sat up with a mouthful of sandwich, and Karpo glanced in his direction. Sasha nodded, trying to hide his bite of sandwich with a gulp that sent him into a choking gasp. Karpo paid no attention and moved to his own desk, where he placed the sickle gently in front of him and closed his eyes.

  By six, Sasha Tkach had had enough waiting. He had memorized the list of twelve names but not the addresses. He placed the list carefully in his pocket, put on his coat and hat and strode out of the office past Karpo who sat with closed eyes over the sickle. Karpo looked like a man with a headache, but Sasha knew it was more likely that he was simply deep in thought. He did not pause to ask. Like the other younger inspectors he had a fearful respect for Karpo who was known to act with cold fury in the face of violence. The younger men were afraid that they might be teamed with the Tatar one of the times he risked his life and possibly theirs.

  It was a cold dark morning promising nothing, but Sasha Tkach asked much of it as he hurried down the steps and towards the first friend of Aleksander Granovsky.

  Not far from the Kremlin is one of the busiest intersections in Moscow, Dzerzhinsky Square, where as many as half a million people come each day. Many of them come to visit the Museum of History and Reconstruction of Moscow or the Mayakovsky Museum. Others come to the Slavyansky Bazar Restaurant or the Berlin Hotel, but most come to two massive buildings. One building is the Detsky Mir or Children’s World, the biggest children’s store in Russia. The other building is a strange, hulking creature in two sections at the corner of Kirov and Dzerzhinsky Streets. One half of the building pre-dates the Revolution. The other half was completed in 1948, using the labor of captured German soldiers. When the project was completed, the German soldiers were reportedly executed so that they could not divulge information about the labyrinth of rooms they had built. The building does not show up on the official tourist books and pictures of the square. Most such pictures or drawings are presented from the point of view of this massive building, the Lubyanka, which houses the K.G.B.

  The square itself is named in honor of the man whose tall bronze statue stands in the center of the intersection, seemingly guarding the building. Felix Dzerzhinsky, who died in 1926, is described by those same guide books as an eminent Party leader, a Soviet statesman, and a close comrade of Lenin. He was, in addition, the principal draftsman of what became the Soviet secret police. The proximity of statue and building is not coincidental.

  Until the late 1950s, the organization which became the K.G.B. contented itself with political matters and allowed the regular police to go its own way in dealing with other crimes. The K.G.B. had bided its time after the liquidation of Lavrenti Beria who was executed by the others vying with him for power, Malenkov, Khrushchev, and Molotov. Beria had built a career by kissing Stalin’s hand in public and tearing arms out of sockets like the petals of a flower. When he died, the K.G.B. adopted a posture of extreme patriotism and disinterest in the petty disagreements of man-including murder. With a rash of black market crimes and capitalistic enterprises at the end of the 1950s, the K.G.B. tested its strength by asserting control over economic crimes. Since all crimes can be viewed as political and economic, the K.G.B. could take over whatever crime it chose to investigate.

  This knowledge was clear to Porfiry Rostnikov as he sat waiting on the wooden bench at K.G.B. headquarters. He had been in the building several times in the past and had noticed how quiet it was. People spoke in whispers as if in a place of worship. Even the typewriters and phones seemed to be muted. Dark wood dominated railings, benches, ceilings. Rostnikov thought it needed only religious icons, a few saints sprinkled here and there, but the K.G.B. was most careful not to elevate any secular political saints.

  Rostnikov had arrived by metro at 6:30 after a few hours of non-sleep in his bed trying to rest, thinking and not thinking. A dream came in which he had to eat a sausage pudding with a heavy iron hammer. Comrade Timofeyeva urged him on with quotations from Lenin, but he made a mess of it, trying to keep from getting his coat dirty. To get a coat cleaned in Moscow was a major effort. Finally, in the dream he had grown angry, had lifted the hammer over his head, to establish a new U. S. S. R. record for a hammer lift, and brought it down heavily on the dish, sending pudding, sausage, and shards of plate in all directions. He had awakened with a grunt and said, “Carole Lombard.”

  “What?” his wife had asked dreamily.

  “Carole Lombard,” Rostnikov grunted straining to see the time on his clock. “An American movie actress whose hair kept falling in her face in some movie.”

  “That was your dream?” asked his wife turning to him.

  “No,” he had said, sitting up to find his trousers again. “I don’t know why it came to
me. Perhaps to clear my mind.”

  “Be sure to eat,” she had replied, turning over for another hour or two of sleep.

  He had grunted again, slipped on his pants, washed, and shaved after boiling some water for the task and then spent fifteen minutes with the weights. Only with the weights could he step outside of himself and watch. Once he began, it was as if he had no real part of it, that he was just an observer. The exercise of will was not to do more or to conquer the pain of adding weight. Oh no, for Rostnikov the problem was to stop, to feel. It was too easy to simply sink into a state of forgetfulness and go on forever observing himself lift and add weights. The addition of weight had, indeed, proved a problem, but not a psychological one. It was simply hard to get weights in Moscow. He had tried improvising, but the balance was impossible. Finally, he had turned to the black market-a storekeeper he had once decided not to bring in for a minor infraction knew a man who knew a woman who knew an athlete who could get weights. There was an annual competition for men and women fifty and over in Sokolniki Recreation Park in June. Rostnikov had decided to enter and was, though he had told no one, not even himself, in training. He went over events, calculated weights, and worried about his leg.

  “Inspector Rostnikov.”

  Rostnikov looked up. He had been aware of the black suited man moving toward him, but he had been trying to decide whether to try to buy a new weight bar.

  “Yes,” Rostnikov answered.

  “Follow me,” said the man. Rostnikov rose and followed. His leg slowed him down, but he managed to keep up with the straight-backed man with curly brown hair down the corridor and up a short stairway. The man made it clear that they were not walking together, that he was a guide and not a new acquaintance. They stopped at a door without name or number, and the guide knocked once, firmly.

  “In,” came a man’s raspy voice, and the guide opened the door, stepped back and let Rostnikov move past him. The guide left, closing the door behind him, and Rostnikov found himself in an office in sharp contrast to that of Comrade Timofeyeva. This office was carpeted, a dark brown carpet, not too thick, but carpet nonetheless. The posters on the wall were familiar ones from Rostnikov’s boyhood, colorfully urging productivity and solidarity, posters with bright reds and firm faces. Each was framed. The furniture was comfortable, chairs with arms and dark nylon padded seats, and the desk itself was well polished and old, probably an antique from before the Revolution. The man behind the desk was thin, his face dark with the memory of some labors in youth. His hair was white and well groomed. He wore a dark suit and blue tie.

  “I am Colonel Drozhkin,” he said, extending an open calloused palm toward the chair on the other side of the desk. Colonel Drozhkin’s accent was that of a workingman, a holdover peasant. It had probably taken him some effort to retain it in what must have been years in Moscow. Rostnikov sat and Drozhkin did the same, a thin reed of anticipation behind the huge desk, which his fingers touched possessively and nervously.

  “I’m sorry to have kept you waiting,” Drozhkin said moving some papers on his desk and making it quite clear that he was not sorry at all. The waiting and the tone made it clear who was master and who servant in this situation of comrades.

  “I understand,” said Rostnikov, and indeed he did.

  “Good,” said Drozhkin, “yes, good. Now you are here in relation to the murder of Aleksander Granovsky. I assume you want some cooperation, ideas, eh?”

  “That would be most appreciated,” Rostnikov replied.

  “Yes, of course, we will do what we can, but it is you who must find this madman and find him quickly. It is best if we have no direct part in the investigation if at all possible. You understand?”

  “Fully,” replied Rostnikov.

  “Good, then what…?” said Drozhkin holding up his hands.

  “You were watching Granovsky,” Rostnikov plunged in, looking directly at the K.G.B. Colonel. “You had a man on him last night, a man who may be able to tell me something if I could talk to him.”

  Drozhkin’s wrinkled, worn face tightened, his jaw moved forward and Rostnikov knew that it would not be pleasant to be questioned by Colonel Drozhkin.

  “We were not there to protect him,” the colonel said, returning Rostnikov’s gaze.

  “Of course not,” Rostnikov said sincerely.

  “And we were not there to harm him,” the little colonel went on emphatically. “Nothing could look worse, would be worse than…Perhaps you wouldn’t understand. It would not be good, is not good for us that this happened.”

  “Then,” went on Rostnikov, “it would be best if I could talk to your man and get on with catching this murderer as quickly as possible. He has murdered a second time and may be about to do so again.”

  “I know,” sighed Drozhkin with a wave of his hand. “That is not my concern or interest. I don’t know if I can let you talk to the man you wish to speak to.” Drozhkin eyed Rostnikov, who did not answer and went on. “Is there something you have to say further to change my mind?”

  Rostnikov looked down at his hands and had the urge to ask this tense K.G.B. man to compare callouses and lives, but instead he said, “May I be frank?”

  A tick of a smile touched the older man’s face and hid again.

  “Is that ever wise?” he said, leaning back.

  Rostnikov shrugged and shifted his weight before responding. He did not really mean to be frank, and both men knew it.

  “I have a task, a murderer to catch and not much time to do it. Wisdom may have to be tempered with expediency. I think you planned to let me talk to your man from the moment I walked into this building or I would not be here.”

  Drozhkin stood up quickly, held a comment, and turned to speak to the wall.

  “It wasn’t wise, but I see your point,” he said.

  “Thank you, colonel.”

  The colonel turned, in control once more, looking down at the police officer.

  Drozhkin moved to one of the posters on the wall, his back still to his visitor, and straightened it, though it needed no straightening. The poster was of a hefty woman with a shovel, looking over her shoulder to urge on her fellows, who had no space in the picture.

  “I have your file, Inspector Rostnikov,” said the colonel, stepping back to assess the job he had done in lining up the poster.

  “Of course,” answered Rostnikov, realizing that any answer was treading dangerous ground.

  “For many reasons, you are lucky to have the job and responsibility which you have,” said the colonel, turning once more to face the policeman.

  “True of all of us who are fortunate enough to serve the state,” said Rostnikov folding his hands on his coat. The colonel’s remark could have meant many things from the black market weights to the fact that Rostnikov’s wife was Jewish, but the point was clear again.

  “Then we understand each other,” Drozhkin repeated.

  “Fully,” answered Rostnikov, wondering how long this would continue, whether the colonel would simply keep him here for days going in verbal circles. It was probably a habit of me old man’s, a habit of interrogation which he could not break.

  Drozhkin moved swiftly and silently across the brown carpet to his desk and picked up the phone.

  “Zhenya, get Khrapenko, send him to the interrogation room on one. Tell him he is to be interviewed by a police inspector and is to tell him everything he wants to know about last night. Yes, now.” He replaced the black phone firmly and looked at Rostnikov.

  “You are to confine your questions to last night and deal only with the particulars of your investigation,” said the colonel.

  It struck Rostnikov for the first time that the colonel himself must have someone above him to whom he would have to report, and the situation was perhaps as dangerous for the old man as it was for the police officer.

  “Of course,” said Rostnikov amiably. “In fact, I would like, if possible, to have the…”

  “Interview,” Drozhkin completed.

&
nbsp; “Yes,” Rostnikov went on, “the interview. I would like it recorded so that you can hear it.”

  “It will be,” said the colonel, sitting behind the desk and examining the policeman once again. “You knew it would be. Don’t play the fool.”

  Rostnikov shrugged.

  “Have you ever been to Kiev?” the colonel asked suddenly, and Rostnikov was bewildered for the first time since entering the room. He tried to protect himself from whatever it was that was coming.

  “My son is…”

  “1 know, I know that,” said the colonel with irritation, “I am not asking a political question.”

  “Once,” said Rostnikov, shifting uncomfortably, “I had to deliver a prisoner years ago.”

  “Did you see the interior of the Cathedral of St. Sofiya?”

  “No, I did not.”

  “Decadent, yes,” sighed the colonel, “but beautiful. The chandeliers, the recreation of the byzantine. It is without meaning, the epitome of what could be accomplished by medieval princes, a reminder of the temptation of the impractical, a reminder that we must remain strong. I have gone to that church many times to feel the temptation to fight it, to emerge strong again. Do you have such a place, comrade inspector?”

  Rostnikov shrugged. “In my head, perhaps, like most Russians.”

  Drozhkin moved from behind the desk and motioned for Rostnikov to rise. He placed a hand on the policeman’s shoulder and guided him toward the door.

  “Return to that place now, inspector, and draw strength from it. Meet the challenge, or those with stronger wills will have to take your place.”

  “Of course,” sighed Rostnikov, “that is the strength of socialism. If one falls, you or I, there is someone right behind to take up the task.”

  A knock at the door interrupted the conversation, and the man who had led Rostnikov to the room stepped in.

  “Zhenya, take Inspector Rostnikov to the interrogation room. He is to be given fifteen minutes to talk to Khrapenko. Understood?”