Rostnikov’s Vacation

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “It’s damn painful,” said Lester. “This is the nightly entertainment they promised us? Every night that poor creature comes in playing the same songs and ending with the national anthem of the day. If she tries ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ tonight, I’m walking the hell out. The woman is depressing. Every night I’ve been here I’ve gone to bed depressed.”

  “Tomorrow we go to the Nikitsky Botanical Garden,” said the wife, trying to change the subject.

  Sarah nodded politely, though she was having great difficulty picking up enough of the English to truly understand.

  “Our son lives in St. Louis, two blocks from one of the biggest botanical gardens in the United States,” said the man. “We go to St. Louis every year, and we haven’t had the slightest interest in seeing the botanical gardens once in eleven years. Now I go five thousand miles to see the same trees and flowers I could have seen at home.”

  The concertina lady stopped. While she engaged in her nightly ritual of trying to get some of the disgruntled diners to dance, Lester leaned over the table and held out his hand.

  “Lester McQuinton,” he said.

  “Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov,” Rostnikov said, taking the huge hand.

  Rostnikov was not surprised by the strength of the man’s grip. In spite of the fat, Lester McQuinton’s arms were solid, his chest large. It was clear, however, that Lester McQuinton was surprised by the grip of the compact man across from him.

  “My wife’s Andrea. We call her Andy,” said Lester, nodding at his wife but keeping his eyes on Rostnikov, for whom he had developed a sudden respect.

  “My wife is Sarah,” said Rostnikov. “She speaks very little English.”

  “Sorry about that, but hell, I don’t speak any Russian. Never had any call to. This is the only time we’ve been out of the States.”

  “We have never left the Soviet Union,” said Rostnikov.

  “I’m a police officer,” said Lester McQuinton. “New York Police Department.”

  “I, too, am a police officer,” said Rostnikov. “Moscow.”

  “I could tell. You’ve got the look. I see it in the mirror every morning. You people having a convention here or something?” asked Lester as the concertina started again.

  “I’m sorry?” said Rostnikov.

  “Ran into one of you guys on the hotel bus yesterday in the morning,” said Lester. “Lonely-looking guy. Introduced myself and Andy. He was surprised I knew he was a cop but, like I said, I can spot one whether he’s named Ivan or Al. You know what I mean?”

  “We were coming back from the Marble Palace, where Stalin, Roosevelt, and Churchill met after the war,” Andy added, addressing Sarah directly. “Beautiful collection of modern art.”

  “I’m not keen on modern art,” McQuinton said, considering another try at his food and deciding against it.

  “I, too, am not filled with affection for modern art,” said Rostnikov, “but my wife admires it.”

  “Maybe we could do something together tomorrow, go into town? I understand there’s an art museum,” Andy McQuinton said, looking at Sarah.

  Rostnikov started to translate for Sarah, but she stopped him and said she understood. Sarah smiled at Andy, who smiled back.

  “My wife says she would be happy to do something with you. Do you remember his name, the policeman on the bus?” Rostnikov asked. “Was it Vasilievich, Georgi Vasilievich?”

  He was not sure how much of the conversation Sarah understood, but she looked up from her food when she heard her husband say, “Vasilievich, Georgi Vasilievich?”

  “Don’t remember the name,” said Lester. “You, Andy?”

  “No,” she said, working on her tomatoes.

  “I don’t think it was Vaslich or anything like that,” said Lester. “I’m not coming here for dinner tomorrow night. There must be someplace better to eat. I don’t care if it is part of the damn tour package.”

  “A man of almost seventy,” Rostnikov tried. “Thin, knuckles with arthritis, and—”

  Lester was shaking his head no. Rostnikov stopped.

  “No offense, but I think you people may have nothing better to do than watch each other. Over by the pillar behind you,” said Lester. “The bald guy sitting alone. The cop from the bus.”

  Rostnikov decided at that moment that Lester McQuinton was probably a very good policeman. The American’s eyes had not betrayed his knowledge of the bald man, had not looked in his direction. Porfiry Petrovich was well aware that behind him in a far corner, sitting alone, was a pear of a man with very little hair remaining on his head. The man had a large nose, a vodka nose. His eyes, Rostnikov had observed, were quite large. And even though the man was doing a very good job of not looking directly at him, Rostnikov had observed his reflection fleetingly, though carefully, in both the dusty glass that covered a fading seascape on the lobby wall and in the large, uneven mirror just inside the door of the dining room as he had entered with Sarah.

  The man had been both observing and following Rostnikov for the past two days. It was not the first time he had been followed in his career, nor was it a surprise. Rostnikov assumed that it was the KGB again. He had run afoul of them more often than it was safe to do so, and from time to time, to remind him that his past indiscretions were not forgotten, a KGB agent would follow him for a few days and take no particular pains to remain unseen.

  Rostnikov had assumed this was one of those times, but since the death of Vasilievich and his preliminary investigation, he was no longer sure.

  “You knew he was there, didn’t you?” asked Lester McQuinton with a grin. “You didn’t bat an eye, turn your head, or twitch.”

  “I was aware of his presence, yes,” said Rostnikov, reaching for his glass of wine and taking a drink that finished the glass. “Please excuse me. I will be back shortly.”

  He touched Sarah gently on the back as he rose.

  As Rostnikov headed in the general direction of the rest rooms and the woman with the accordion made a fool out of a fat American she had coaxed out to dance, McQuinton nibbled at his food, chewed on his bread, and pretended to listen to Andy and the Russian cop’s wife trying to carry on a conversation. He watched the Russian cop make his way through the crowd and the bald guy pretend not to watch him.

  The Russian cop was interesting. He was the only truly interesting thing he had encountered since he left New York. The doctors hadn’t fooled him, and they hadn’t fooled Andy. Lester and Andy didn’t believe their words of hope because the doctors themselves didn’t and weren’t street smart enough to fool a thirty-year detective who spent too much of his time dealing with lies. Andy had half a year, maybe a little more or less. And she had wanted this trip, less because she wanted to travel than that she wanted the distraction and because she couldn’t bear staying in New York and watching him observe her. She had accepted it eagerly when he suggested it.

  He had complained since the beginning, for he wanted this to be a perfect trip for her. He complained because he was angry. He complained because it was normal to do so and he didn’t want Andy to feel that he was doing anything but being normal. None of it had worked. Until now.

  He could tell from the eyes of the Russian cop’s wife that she sensed something of what Andy and he were going through. Well, maybe not everything, but enough. For the moment, the burden of being responsible for his wife’s happiness had eased, and the game the Russian cop with the bad leg was playing focused his attention on something besides Andy.

  A cackling laugh came from a woman to McQuinton’s right. The laughter turned to choking, and someone, a man, he thought, began to scold the choking woman in Russian. The woman managed to control herself and the accordion squealed into a tune that may have been “Fascination.”

  McQuinton admired the way Rostnikov weaved through the crowd and made the turn around the corner toward the rest rooms. The bald guy didn’t follow, didn’t move. Why should he? The cop had left his wife at the table. The cop with the bad leg was obviously going
to the toilet. The man watching was good. He didn’t let up. He ate, drank, kept his head down, and let his eyes take in the entire room. But the cop with the bad leg was better. He was back in seconds, much too fast to have reached the toilet. He headed directly for the bald man and even with the bum leg got to him before he could get all the way up. The cop put his right hand on the bald guy’s shoulder like an old friend in friendly conversation, but McQuinton knew the bald guy was trying to rise and was being stopped by the pressure. Lester’s respect for the cop with the bad leg went up another notch. He was keeping the man down with one hand and almost no effort.

  “We can do that, can’t we, Lester?” Andy said.

  “Sure,” said Lester, though he had paid no serious attention to the conversation of the two women.

  The Russian cop with the bad leg was sitting next to the bald man now. They were talking like two strangers who strike up a conversation while hanging on to bus straps on the way home from work and find they have something in common. Lester smiled.

  Behind the two Russians Lester McQuinton was watching, two men appeared in the open doorway that led to the lobby. They were an odd couple—a giant and a nervous little man who looked at Lester and then at Rostnikov. The smile left Lester McQuinton’s face.

  One of the privileges of being a policeman in Moscow was having a phone in your apartment. One of the disadvantages of being a policeman in Moscow was that you were seldom at home to use it.

  Maya answered after the first ring, actually before the first ring had even ended. Sasha had been standing at the lonely booth at the corner across from the park, trying every three minutes to call his number. He had been trying for half an hour when he finally got through.

  “It’s me,” Sasha Tkach said, trying to hide his irritation.

  “The baby just feel asleep,” Maya whispered. “A few minutes ago.”

  “I wanted to say good night to her,” he said. “Your phone has been busy.”

  “Your mother, Lydia,” said Maya, and that was all that needed to be said. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Did you eat?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  He wanted to tell her that he was filled with frustration. They had spent only four nights in the apartment together. He wanted to make love to her without worrying about his mother listening in the next room. He wanted to hear her purr like a cat when he rubbed her back. He wanted to cover her wide mouth and full lips in his and lose himself in her. He wanted her to keep talking, for he loved her voice, her Georgian accent, and he dreaded the walk back to Zelach and the apartment in Engels Four. He wanted to say these things, but instead he heard her say, “Sasha?”

  “Yes.”

  “I have to work early tomorrow.”

  Maya worked in the day-care center for mothers in the Ts UM department store. She brought Pulcharia with her when she worked and put in as many hours as she could. A new baby was coming. Seven months away. Sasha had hoped for intimate months together before Maya was too large and uncomfortable.

  “I’m sorry I’m keeping you,” he said with sarcasm. “I’ll hang up and let you get some sleep.”

  “I wasn’t trying to say I wanted to go to sleep,” she said. “I was … You weren’t talking. I was just telling you.”

  The movement was slight, a change in the light dancing off the leaves of the bushes fringing the cement path. It could have been many things, but it wasn’t. It was a person. Sasha sensed it before he knew with certainty. But he had almost missed it. He had almost lost himself in the conversation with Maya, a conversation he should not be having. He had been ordered specifically to make no contact with his friends or family for the duration of the operation.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, turning his back on the movement in the bushes and holding up his wristwatch as if he were weary of the conversation and checking the time. Sasha pretended to adjust the watch and flipped the supple band so the back of the watch was facing him, the shiny back of the watch in which he could see the bush as he put his hand up to lean on the side of the phone booth.

  “Get some sleep, Sasha,” Maya said.

  “I will,” he said. “You, too. And kiss Pulcharia in her sleep.”

  The man moved carefully from behind the bush. He was large, appeared to be young, and was wearing dark slacks and a dark sweater. He ducked behind a second bush, somewhat closer to Sasha. A second man, with long blond hair and a blond beard, followed the first man. Sasha lowered his arm.

  “I’m not tired, Sasha,” Maya said. “We can talk if you like.”

  “Tomorrow, Maya,” he said. “I have to go.”

  “Good night,” she said. “I love you.”

  “And I love you,” Sasha said.

  Maya hung up the phone, but Sasha continued to talk, turning as the men worked their way closer to him. Sasha had no gun. He was supposed to carry one, but less than three years earlier he had shot a boy during a robbery of a government liquor store. The image of the moment in which Sasha’s eyes had met those of the boy, who was only sixteen, haunted Tkach. But what was worse, Sasha found that he could not remember the boy’s face. For almost a year he had searched the faces of young men he encountered on the street, hoping that a face would bring back a vivid memory, but it did not happen. Tkach carried no gun, and he knew the two men were making their way toward him.

  “No,” Tkach said aloud now so that they could hear him. “I’ve got to be at work. Why? Because I’m the only one who can handle the program. You think any fool can deal with a computer program like that?”

  Sasha rummaged through his mind to find some work phrase that would be particularly Jewish, a phrase that would be right for Yon Mandelstem, but he could come up with none. He settled for an inflection, a movement of the shoulders and arms that he had observed in his former neighbor, Eli Houseman.

  “Then you don’t, Eli,” Sasha said. “I’m sorry for you.”

  A group of women suddenly burst through the bushes not ten yards from where the two men watching Sasha Tkach were hidden. The women were laughing; two of them were holding hands. Sasha recognized the woman Tamara, whom he had met in the hall of Engels Four a few hours earlier.

  “Good-bye, Eli,” he said vehemently, and hung up the phone.

  He turned as if irritated by his call and let his eyes meet those of the woman who was looking at him. Sasha smiled and stepped onto the path so that the quartet of women would meet him.

  Tamara held out her arms to stop her companions, one of whom was very young, perhaps eighteen, and trying to look much older, which only succeeded in making her look even younger than she was.

  “Ah,” Tamara cried, “there he is, the one I told you about. Mon petit Juif.”

  The woman’s French accent was weak, much weaker than that of Sasha, who pretended that he did not know she had called him her little Jew.

  The women giggled, and Tamara stepped forward. “Out for a walk?” she asked.

  Sasha looked directly at her but saw the movement of the men in the bushes as they stepped back into deeper darkness.

  “Yes,” he said. “I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Maybe you’d like that drink?” she asked.

  Her friends giggled. She turned to them with a warning look.

  “I’d like it,” Sasha said.

  Tamara took his arm and moved out along the path.

  “Tell us about it tomorrow, Tamara,” one of the women shouted.

  “I hear they tickle,” another woman added.

  Sasha pretended not to hear as Tamara waved her friends away and led him toward the buildings. Sasha turned his head and smiled, looking back at the trio of women behind but seeing along the path, in the light of a lamp, the two men, perhaps fifty yards away. They may have been looking at the three women. At least a passerby would assume so, but Sasha knew that their eyes were on him.

  He smiled and let Tamara take him. She smelled of cheap makeup, alcohol, and woman, and she held him as if
he were a prize she had captured in the park, her little Jew, the trophy. Guilt, relief, and excitement ran through him. As the Jew he pretended to be, he despised this woman. As the man he pretended to be, he needed her protection. And as Sasha Tkach, he felt the softness of her left breast against his arm through her dress.

  “They were going to kill me,” said Elena Kusnitsov.

  She was sitting in her kitchen chair, the same chair the man named Jerold had tied her to and from which the police had released her. When the tape had been removed, Elena Kusnitsov had tried to rise, but her left knee began to dance, and she had to sit down. It had continued to bounce up and down unbidden, as if hearing a tune the rest of Elena could not appreciate. She had tried to use her hands to stop the dance and had succeeded, at least for the moment.

  It was bad enough to be frightened, to have to face killers, to have to sit here with this ghost of a policeman hovering over her, but to suffer the humiliation of this mad, frightened foot of hers was enough to bring tears to her eyes. Elena did not want to cry, certainly not in front of this policeman, who stood there patiently waiting for his witness’s leg to cease its spasms.

  Elena, who was sixty-three, quite mistakenly prided herself on her ability to appear forty. She dyed her hair, watched her weight, wore clothes she believed were fashionable, and made up her face carefully each morning, after lunch, and immediately after coming home from her job at the Beriozka, the Birch Tree, dollar shop in the Metropole Hotel. She was a woman of culture who could sell American cigarettes or Russian vodka in three languages. She talked to important people from foreign countries every day. Wearing the very dress she was now wearing, she had spoken to Armand Hammer, the wealthiest American in the world. This should not happen to her. She looked at her knee and felt her eyes fill with tears.

  “I’m not doing this on purpose,” she explained.

  “I know that,” said Emil Karpo. “We can wait.”

  Elena did not want to wait. She wanted this frightening creature out of her small apartment.

  “When you go, I will close that window, the window through which the two had climbed. I will close it and nail it shut. Never mind Popkinov. I don’t care if he is the district maintenance officer. I don’t care if he is a party member. I don’t care if you are a party member,” she said, trying to sound defiant.