Fall of a Cosmonaut

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  He quickly discovered, however, that the task was beyond monumental. The people who ruled were corrupt. The people who were supposed to contain crime and prosecute criminals were corrupt. Soviet Communism had turned into a grotesque distortion of what his father, his readings, and the speeches of many had promised, but it had been replaced by an even more corrupt system.

  Emil Karpo was still a Communist, not a member of the party any longer. Those who said they were Communists now were opportunists preying on the memories of the poor who had forgotten the corruption and remembered only safe streets and having just enough to eat without worrying about making a living. Perhaps there was only one true Communist and his name was Emil Karpo.

  He moved the cursor and found the file he sought on the computer screen.

  Outside of the table, bookshelves, and chair, Emil Karpo’s room was, intentionally, as bare as a prison cell or a monk’s chamber. The wooden floor was dark and uncovered. There was a cot in the corner near the single window covered by a shade. Next to the cot was a small square table with a telephone, a clock, and a lamp on it. Under the single drawer of the table was space for about a dozen books. The space was filled. There was a wardrobe, a tall rectangle in a corner that could have been a large standing coffin. Next to the wardrobe was a modest, dark chest of drawers upon which stood nothing. Above the chest of drawers was a painting, a painting of a smiling red-haired woman in a field with a barn in the distance behind her. The painting was of the dead Mathilde Verson. It was the only sign of life in the room.

  Emil Karpo kept his room scrubbed and clean. Each morning, before dawn, he awoke without needing to check the small electric clock. It took him exactly twenty-eight minutes to exercise by the light of his lamp. His motions were without sound and without the accompaniment of music or the news. He owned no television set.

  After he exercised, Karpo would don a robe, a blue one Mathilde had given him for a birthday, and he would go down the hall with a towel to take a shower in the bathroom he shared with the other tenants on the floor. Everyone knew when the ghost got up to take a shower. No one left his apartment till he had finished.

  Karpo could have afforded much better. He spent almost no money and ate little. He cut his own thin hair the infrequent times that it was necessary, and he did not use a bank. His room was a vault, rigged to shock an intruder and detect any attempt to enter without the specially machined two keys of which only he and Porfiry Petrovich had a set.

  Now Emil Karpo worked not for a cause but to punish. The law was under siege, had always been. The law was ridiculous, but it was law. Those who challenged it had to be stopped if even the semblance of sanity was to be maintained.

  Karpo was relentless. To be otherwise was to invite madness. Karpo, who had decades earlier accepted that he was devoid of emotion, had discovered when he was past the age of forty—with the help of Mathilde—that he did have emotions, had covered and protected them. When she had gotten him to let some of those emotions out, she had left a hole big enough for madness to slink in.

  Mathilde had given him a gift and a curse.

  Very early that evening, Karpo had talked to Porfiry Petrovich by phone. The conversation had been brief.

  “Paulinin is examining all of the shoes tonight,” Karpo had said. “He will work through the night if necessary, and he believes it will be necessary.”

  “So?” asked Porfiry Petrovich.

  “We may know by morning who killed Sergei Bolskanov.”

  “And your thoughts about psychic happenings?” asked Rostnikov.

  “I have brought some books to my room,” said Karpo. “I will read. However, I believe some psychic phenomena may well exist. They are not mysterious in any way other than that we do not yet understand them scientifically.”

  “Then,” Porfiry Petrovich had said, “they do not lead us to gods, demons, or ghosts?”

  “No,” said Karpo.

  “But perhaps people can move objects with their thoughts, and dreams can tell us of the past and the future, and unidentified flying objects may exist?”

  “You are being provocative, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

  “Yes.”

  “It is likely at some point in the future there will be only identified flying objects, as there may be dreams which contain the possibility of alternative future events,” said Karpo. “The dreamer remembers only those aspects of the dream which prove to be more-or-less prophetic and forgets those which are not.”

  “Emil, it might help if you tried using your imagination.”

  “You have suggested this frequently in the past. I have little or no imagination. I do not wish one. I am reading books and examining theories,” said Karpo. “I continue to believe that there is but one life, that magic does not exist, and that which we have called magic is simply phenomena not yet explained by science.”

  “I don’t believe you are as dispassionate as you claim,” said Rostnikov. “I have seen you when … but that is yours to do with as you will. Iosef and I will be gone a day or two or three, no more than that. Pankov will know how to reach me.”

  “Very good,” said Karpo.

  “And, Emil, I think that if you could allow yourself to do so, you should find someone you could trust with your secrets.”

  “I have no secrets.”

  “You have secrets, Emil Karpo. I have known no one without secrets. Even apes, even dogs and crows have secrets, places where they have things. We have places like that within ourselves.”

  “And the person I could trust is you?”

  “No, Emil, the person you can trust is you.”

  “You are feeling very philosophical tonight.”

  “Yes, I think it is storms that make buses and benches fly and the vastness of the universe in which tiny machines carry men beyond our sight that has put me in this mood. When we come back, you will come to dinner. I will be less pensive. The girls miss you. Laura thinks you are cute.”

  “I am not cute,” said Karpo.

  “You can explain that to Laura. She doesn’t believe me. Be good to yourself, Emil Karpo.”

  And then the conversation had ended.

  Emil Karpo had gone to see Mathilde regularly once a week for years. He had paid her the price she asked till the last year or so when she had refused to take his money. He had told himself that going to a prostitute was essential, that he was a man, that man was an animal. He was satisfying a need. But his relationship had changed and he had been about to give that change a name when Mathilde had been murdered in the crossfire of a Mafia war. Her death had given him a determination, a new meaning, to destroy the gangs, the gangs that slaughtered the innocent and destroyed hope. He had made clear to Rostnikov that he wished to be assigned to Mafia-related crimes that came to the Office of Special Investigation. Sometimes Rostnikov listened to his wishes. Sometimes he did not.

  Karpo had not wished to go to a prostitute since Mathilde had died. He had briefly thought that Mathilde’s sister, who had come to Moscow from Odessa for the funeral, might … but she had left. It was better to be alone. Feeling was less likely to enter the portal Mathilde had created in him if he was alone.

  Enough. He knew it was two in the morning. He required a full four hours’ sleep. He turned off the computer, rose, moved to the cot, turned off the light, and was asleep in less than thirty seconds.

  Chapter Seven

  A SLEEPY DAWN OF DARK CLOUDS was just coming when the phone in Yuri Kriskov’s living room rattled. It was sitting on a table before the three of them—Kriskov, his wife, Vera, and Elena Timofeyeva—who had been drinking coffee and waiting with little to say.

  The house was large, not a mansion but complete with large living room, three bedrooms, two baths, full kitchen, separate dining room, and a garage. The view from the front windows was of other recently built houses that looked much the same.

  “Wait,” said Elena, touching Yuri’s hand as he reached for it.

  The line had been tapped, and in
the small blue van parked outside two men were going to record the conversation and find the location where the call was coming from. Elena knew that the new technology was such that they needed less than a minute to locate the caller. A few extra rings would give the men in the van more time to trace the call.

  After three rings, Elena said, “Now.”

  Yuri Kriskov was fully if casually dressed, dark slacks, light-blue silk shirt open at the collar. Vera Kriskov wore only a robe and slippers, though she had taken time to brush her hair and put on makeup. Elena and Yuri Kriskov sat next to each other on a white sofa. Vera Kriskov sat across from them, legs crossed, on a matching chair.

  Just before the call came, Yuri had lit his fourth cigarette of the brief morning.

  “Yes,” he said, after Elena nodded to him to pick up the phone.

  Elena had told him not to drag out the call, not to cause suspicion. In fact, if he could, he was to ask reasonable questions of clarification, ask them quickly, and not provoke the caller.

  “You have the money?” Valery Grachev said in the high-pitched voice he had been practicing with Vera’s coaching.

  “I have it. It wasn’t easy to …”

  Elena shook her head no.

  “I have it,” he said. “In a large gymnasium bag, blue.”

  “American dollars? No rubles. Rubles are worth shit.”

  “American dollars.”

  “When we hang up,” Valery said, “you get in your car and drive as quickly as you can to Timiryazevsky Park.”

  “I can’t,” said Yuri, looking at Elena, who was now nodding yes.

  “What?” asked Valery, sounding suspicious, though Vera had told him exactly what to expect.

  “I broke my leg,” said Yuri. “Actually, you broke it.”

  Yuri was improvising now and Elena shook her head no quite decisively, but Yuri turned away from her.

  “You broke it because you made me so nervous with your threats and the horror you are committing that I fell and broke my leg. I have a wife, children. If you do this …”

  “Stop, now,” shouted Valery, checking his watch. “Who is coming with the money? Your wife?”

  “No,” said Yuri. “She is too frightened. My niece, Elena, will bring it.”

  “No, hobble to your car,” Valery said. “Or I destroy the negative and kill you as I promised.”

  “I can’t,” said Yuri mournfully. “I …”

  “Stop,” shouted Valery. “All right, have your niece bring the bag to Timiryazevsky Park. You know where the chess tables are?”

  “The chess tables in Timiryazevsky Park,” Yuri repeated for Elena’s benefit.

  Now Elena was nodding yes.

  “I know where they are,” Yuri went on.

  “Have her go now,” said Valery. “Have her go quickly. She should stand by the chess tables with the bag. If she hurries, she will get there before any players arrive.”

  “And what? …” Yuri began, but Valery Grachev had already hung up the phone.

  Yuri did the same.

  The unlocked front door suddenly opened. A large man in blue jeans and a denim shirt stepped in.

  “Stop,” shouted Vera Kriskov, rising.

  The man stopped suddenly.

  “If you are coming in here,” Vera said, “take off your shoes. You have mud on your shoes.”

  The large man looked at Vera and then at Elena. He did not move.

  Yuri was up now. Vera had moved to his side and taken his hand reassuringly.

  “A public phone near the entrance of the Kuznetski Most metro station,” the big man said. “Two teams will be there within a minute.”

  Elena nodded and reached for the gym bag filled with rectangles of cut-up newspaper.

  Within the coming minute, she was sure, the caller, along with thousands of people going to work, would be on a crowded metro train, going in any of eight directions. The man had chosen wisely. The metro station was at the center of the train system.

  “Be careful with my negatives,” said Yuri as Elena went to join the big man with the muddy shoes, who seemed nailed to the floor.

  “Be careful,” Vera Kriskov said with concern, taking her husband’s left hand in both of hers.

  “We will be careful,” said Elena.

  Elena picked up the bag and nodded to Sasha, who rose. There was something about Vera Kriskov that Elena didn’t like. She had been watching the woman who looked with loving concern at her husband and touched him frequently. Elena sensed the woman was acting. It probably meant nothing. Perhaps she didn’t really love or even like her husband. There was nothing unusual in that. Perhaps it was what happened to people when they were married, most people. She tried to banish such thoughts and concentrate on what she now had to do.

  The big policeman with the muddy shoes followed Elena and Sasha into the dark dawn, closing the door behind him. Sasha moved to the small truck. Elena got into the car.

  Elena was not used to the Volga she had been given. The car had almost eighty thousand miles on it and handled sluggishly, with a willful tendency to veer to the left. There was also a stale smell on the seats, probably years of food eaten by detectives on stakeouts.

  Traffic was worse than she had expected, but she was a good driver who gauged well just how much space she needed to make a move. In twenty minutes she was at the park. Even at this hour she would have had trouble finding a place to park had she been a civilian. She parked quite illegally on a concrete driveway expressly labeled for use by park personnel only.

  Elena slung her pouch-purse over her shoulder. Inside the purse was her pistol, in a pocket that came close to being a holster. She grabbed the blue gymnasium bag, got out of the car, and walked to a path that would lead her through the trees to the chess tables.

  There was a wind this morning. It played a leafy morning song through the leaves as she walked. It would rain again. The full gym bag was heavy. It had to look as if it contained two million dollars.

  When she reached the clearing she sought, there were already two men seated at one of the chessboards. They were at one end of three boards on a table. The men sat on opposite sides of the board, examining the pieces before them. Both men were over seventy. One of the men looked up as Elena approached. He watched as she moved to the end of the table away from them and placed the blue bag on the bench.

  “Play,” said the man who had not looked up.

  “Look,” said the man watching Elena.

  “I see her. Look at the board. You’ll see that you are already in enough trouble.”

  The man reluctantly turned his eyes from Elena to the problem before him.

  She stood holding the strap of her purse, knowing that somewhere Sasha Tkach was watching her through binoculars and scanning the places where someone could hide.

  Elena checked her watch and waited. Almost fifteen minutes later, two burly men moved through the trees and headed directly toward her. They looked determined. Both wore lightweight jackets. Both had their hands plunged into the pockets of their jackets. When they were close enough, Elena could see that they had the tough, lined faces of Russian males who had not gone through life lightly.

  Elena felt with her fingers through the unzipped top of her purse. Her hand moved toward the gun.

  The men came toward her, one on each side. They looked directly at her as she put her hand on the gun. The man on her right looked at the blue gym bag and then at Elena.

  “The bag,” he said.

  His voice was as lined as his pink-white face.

  “Yes,” she said.

  He picked up the bag and faced her.

  “Move it,” he said. “This is our place.”

  The other man, almost a twin of the man who had spoken, moved past Elena and sat on the bench. Elena took the gym bag, and the first man sat where it had rested.

  Elena moved away from the table with the bag. The first man to sit removed a bag from his pocket, opened it, and began to set up the chess pieces. Elena pl
aced the blue bag on a more-or-less dry patch of grass before her.

  About two minutes later a boy of about twelve came through the trees not far from where the two new players had come. He wore dark pants, an oversized orange T-shirt, and a school bag over his shoulders. When he was closer, Elena could see that the boy had a smooth, pink face, dark straight hair, and an angry, defensive scowl. He was thin and short and in a hurry.

  He came directly at Elena but did not look at her. His eyes were on the bag. Without a word or acknowledgment of her presence, the boy unzipped the bag and looked inside. He moved the newspaper pieces around and then stood up and turned away from Elena. The boy began crossing his arms in front of him and shaking his head no.

  Elena moved next to the boy to see where he was looking, but the boy’s eyes were looking upward, over the trees, toward the sky. Elena scanned the path, the trees on all sides, even looked back at the men playing chess. The first old man at the far end of the bench, the one who had watched Elena, now watched the boy.

  “Stop,” said Elena to the boy.

  He didn’t stop.

  “I am a police officer,” she said. “Stop now.”

  She reached into her purse and removed the stiff leather square that held her identification. She held it in front of the boy with one hand and stayed one of his arms with the other. The boy stopped and looked at her.

  “Who are you signaling?”

  “The man,” he said.

  “Quickly, tell me what man and what he told you to do. I am the police,” she said, knowing that Sasha had seen the boy, watched him signal, and was now scurrying to find someone else who might be watching and waiting. But Sasha would have no idea of the direction in which he should look. There were two uniformed police with Sasha. They would spread out as best they could, but Elena knew the task was close to hopeless.