“I am a party member,” said Karpo.
“I don’t care. Boris Yeltsin, our president, quit the party,” Elena Kusnitsov said.
The knee. The damnable knee. When would it stop? When would he leave? The noise of ambulances, police cars, curious people outside looking at the body the policeman told her was there, those noises had not stopped. They came through the open window and contributed to both Elena’s fear and defiance.
Karpo leaned over and reached down toward Elena with his left hand.
Elena released a tiny whimper and cringed, almost falling backward in her chair.
“No,” she said.
There was no point in Emil Karpo explaining that he simply wanted to reassure the woman, calm her down so that he could get information from her. Rostnikov would have had her quiet long ago, would have had her eager to cooperate, but Rostnikov was not here, and Karpo had a criminal to pursue.
Elena’s knee had stopped dancing. She smiled up at Karpo, her makeup a smear, her hair wild, and then the tears came.
Karpo waited patiently while she sobbed.
“Ask,” she said through her tears.
“I can wait,” said Karpo.
“I want to answer, and I want you to leave,” Elena said through her sobs. “My father was construction foreman on the Moskva Swimming Pool. This should not happen to me.”
“Did the two men speak?” Karpo asked, taking out his notebook.
“Yes,” she said, brushing back her hair with her right hand. “I look terrible.”
“What did they say?”
“They didn’t know I understood them,” said Elena. “I speak three languages in addition to Russian.”
She looked up at Karpo to see if he would challenge her.
“What language did they speak?”
“English,” she said. “The young one with the orange hair spoke very bad English. The other one, the older one with a beard, he was American.”
“What did they say?”
“Nonsense, they said. They are crazy people. Crazy people speak nonsense. The one with orange hair put his face right in front of mine. He wanted to kill me. He told the other one to get him a Madonna.”
“What else?” asked Karpo.
“Jerold,” she said. “The American one with the beard was Jerold.”
Karpo didn’t bother to say, “What else?” He simply stood, pen poised, and waited while Elena wiped her eyes with the back of her left hand and looked around.
“Thursday,” she said. “The American one, Jerold, told the other one to take it easy, that he had to be ready for Thursday. And the one with the orange spikes said he would be ready. That Walther would be ready.”
“Walther?” asked Karpo.
“Yes. You know who Walther is?” she asked.
“Walther is a gun,” Emil Karpo said.
The door to Elena Kusnitsov’s apartment suddenly burst open. She screamed, and her knee began to dance again. A young man in a brown policeman’s uniform, carrying a black weapon that he held in two hands, entered.
“What are you doing?” she screamed. “This is my apartment. It may not be much, but it is mine. Just because two lunatics broke in doesn’t give everyone the right to break in.”
The young policeman looked at Karpo, who gave him no help, and then at the woman.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“I’ve been violated,” she screamed.
The young policeman took a step backward.
“What is it?” Karpo asked the young man.
“You are to report to Colonel Snitkonoy at Petrovka immediately, Comrade Inspector,” the policeman said.
“Violated,” Elena repeated.
The policeman backed out of the room quickly and disappeared. Karpo tore a sheet from his notebook and handed it to Elena Kusnitsov, who took it carefully, as if it were extended bait and he might suddenly reach out and grab her.
“It’s the name of a lock for your door and window,” he said, putting his notebook away. “I’ve written where you can buy them and the name of a woman who will install them for you. No one will be able to pick or break the locks.”
Karpo didn’t add that a determined assailant could break down the door or smash the window. The lock could not keep someone out, but the need to make noise might be sufficient to make a burglar consider another door.
“Thank you,” Elena said, carefully placing the sheet of paper in her lap as if it were a fragile wineglass.
“A policeman will remain in the building all night,” he said. “The two men will not be coming back.”
“But others might,” she added quickly.
“Statistics do not support that likelihood,” he answered, moving toward the door.
“But they exist,” she said triumphantly.
“They exist,” he admitted, and went into the hall.
FIVE
“WE CAN GO TO YOUR apartment if you prefer,” Tamara whispered, holding Sasha’s arm tightly as they went up the stairs, breathing in his ear. “I can get my bottle and bring it.”
“No,” said Sasha, wondering what Zelach and Tamara might think and say if they suddenly raced each other in the small apartment.
He had a very simple plan. He would go with Tamara to her apartment, remember something he had to work on, make his excuses, and depart. Maybe he would have one drink. How could it hurt? The men who he thought were watching him were probably just muggers, not the computer thieves. Moscow was filled with muggers who roamed confident that the police were too busy with more important crimes occasioned by Gorbachev’s reforms to deal with a little mayhem and the loss of a few rubles here and there.
Sasha deserved a drink, a moment to relax. He seldom drank and didn’t intend to now, but the idea of one drink, a few moments watching Tamara, having her hold his arm, was appealing. It could cause no harm. Zelach was sitting behind the door ready if someone came while Sasha was out.
I could even argue that I had left intentionally, he told himself. Left to lure the thieves into breaking in so Zelach could catch them.
“This is the door,” Tamara said with a big grin, showing her teeth. The center tooth had just a spot of lipstick on it.
“I’ve got to get back to my apartment,” Sasha said, trying to remove the woman’s hand from his arm. She held fast.
“One drink,” she said, searching for her key in the little purse she carried with her free hand. “A moment. I’m afraid to go in by myself. Just go in with me. I’ll turn on the lights, and then you can go if you want.”
“I can stand in the hall,” said Sasha, adjusting his glasses.
“You’re cute,” she said. “My shy little Jew.”
Tamara opened the door with one hand, the other still holding tightly to Sasha, tugging at him as she entered. He told himself that he had no choice but to follow.
“The light’s here,” Tamara said, kicking the door shut behind them.
For an instant she released Sasha’s arm and left him standing in the darkness, penetrated only by a faint light through the window from the street below. Then the light came on. The room was bright, a room of yellows and reds, the furniture modern and colorful, with flowers, and the rug a large yellow rectangle with a red rose the size of Maya’s favorite mixing bowl in the center.
“I must go now,” Sasha said.
Tamara smiled at him from where she stood across the room near a floor lamp.
“If you have to work, you have to work,” she said with a shrug, kicking off her shoes and moving toward him with her right hand held out. As she neared, he held out his hand to take hers, to shake it quickly, to make a hurried departure and get back to Zelach, who was probably asleep and snoring in the chair behind the door.
Tamara ignored his extended hand, moved in, and put her arms around his neck and her open mouth on his; Sasha took her arms to remove her, but she had her hands locked behind his neck. He opened his mouth to tell her he really had to leave, but her tongue entered, licking
his lower teeth before he could speak.
She tasted of warmth and alcohol, a sweet, different taste from Maya.
“Maybe another night,” he said as she released her grip and stood back to look at him with a knowing smile. “Tomorrow.”
Her right hand moved forward suddenly between his legs. He backed away but had only a half step to the door. Her hand pressed forward.
“Tonight,” she said, moving in, releasing his belt.
Sasha wanted to speak, opened his mouth again, but Tamara said, “Shhh,” and unbuttoned his pants.
This must stop. Now. He must halt her firmly, his mind ordered, but his mesmerized body would not obey. Her fingernails rubbed against the flesh at his waist, not quite gently, promising, threatening. He said no more as she dropped his pants to the floor and put her thumbs inside his underwear. It was too late. There was no point in issuing orders to his body. His underwear came down to his knees, and Tamara stepped back to look at him.
Her hands went to her hips, and she asked, “Are you sure you’re a Jew?”
Colonel Snitkonoy had exhausted his complete array of poses, and none of them had worked on Emil Karpo, who sat impassively alone at the conference table and looked up at him. Had it been daylight, the colonel could have set this meeting with Karpo for the precise moment the sun hit the window. Then, the Gray Wolfhound knew, he would be outlined in light, a tall figure with bright filaments of red and yellow stabbing into the room. His voice, carefully nurtured, would resonate in baritones off the walls. It would have been a concert of light and sound to which few failed to respond.
But this was very early in the morning, before five, before the sun. Before Karpo had arrived, the Wolfhound had turned on the two floor lamps in the corners of the office and the one lamp that reflected upward from the well-polished top of his oak desk to create deep shadows around the eyes and below the lips. Aware of every crease and button on his perfectly pressed uniform, the colonel had moved from one light to the other since Karpo had entered the room. Erect, hands clasped behind his back, the Wolfhound found the right nuance of light for the right phrase. Nothing. But it was difficult to discourage Colonel Snitkonoy. Some said it was impossible. He had too much confidence. Others had suggested that he did not have the intellect to merit such confidence.
It was the great confidence and lack of intellect of Colonel Snitkonoy that had sustained him in the MVD for over thirty years while others fell or were trampled. It was the sense of the theatrical and the imposing figure he presented that had moved him to his present position as director of special projects. He was until recently, it was generally agreed, no threat to anyone.
The irony of Colonel Snitkonoy’s current rise in party circles was that his department, a repository of largely ceremonial duties no other branch wanted, had met with singular success. During what appeared to be a routine investigation of a minor problem at a shoe factory, Rostnikov had uncovered a high-ranking KGB officer engaged in extortion. And then Rostnikov and Tkach, while on a routine check of parade security, had foiled a terrorist attempt to destroy Lenin’s tomb. Colonel Snitkonoy’s star had risen, and now there were some who said that he had been a brilliant survivor who waited for years to build a superior staff and to seize the moment when it was safe to become dangerous.
Whatever the truth, greater autonomy and responsibility had come to the colonel’s staff and with it possible enemies. Colonel Snitkonoy was learning what it was like to be vulnerable. He was also reaping the rewards of success, and in just two days he would, as the guest of Gorbachev himself, attend a ceremony in Soviet Square followed by a dinner to honor those who were contributing selflessly to the success of perestroika and peaceful transition.
“Inspector Karpo, Comrade Karpo,” he said, deciding to try compassion, “a young woman is dead. I grant that. I lament that.” The loss of any Soviet citizen, especially a youthful citizen who holds promise for the future, is of great concern to Colonel Ivan Snitkonoy.”
“There is nothing to lament, Colonel,” said Karpo, looking up. “The young woman was Carla Wasboniak, a user and seller of drugs, a probable accessory to several murders, an enemy of the state.”
“Yet you feel compelled to find the young man who killed her,” said the Wolf hound tolerantly, a wiser figure with perfectly groomed silver hair who was sure, now, that the pale figure seated before him would see the weakness in his position.
“His name is Yakov Krivonos,” said Karpo. “We have sufficient evidence to believe he has murdered three people, possibly more. He is quite mad, quite dangerous. Inspector Rostnikov and I believe that he was involved in the murder of the visiting German businessman last month.”
“Bittermunder?” said the Wolfhound, perplexed but not showing it in the least as he nodded as if he knew where this conversation was going. “Senseless, very brutal.”
“Yes,” said Karpo.
“Why?”
“Why was he murdered, or why does Inspector Rostnikov believe Krivonos is involved?” asked Karpo without a trace of sarcasm.
The colonel, like most people, had avoided conversation with Emil Karpo as much as possible. He had always been confident that when the time came he could deal with this creature of the night if necessary. He had always told himself, however, that it was easier to allow Rostnikov to deal with the man. After all, Karpo had worked for years with Rostnikov when they were in the Procurator General’s Office, and Rostnikov did not seem to mind the man, even seemed to have some genuine affection for him, which was a mystery to the Gray Wolfhound.
“Answer both if you can,” the colonel said with a tiny smile that suggested superior amusement and masked a confusion.
“The weapon,” said Karpo. “The bullets taken from the German’s body were 76.2-millimeter Winchester Magnum cartridges fired from a high-powered West German sniper rifle, a Walther WA2000. Such a rifle was stolen from the collection of the deputy director of Social Mobilization for the Russias a week earlier. An informant told Inspector Rostnikov that a young man named Yakov Krivonos was making the rounds of underground bars where American music is played, bragging that he had such a weapon, that he had killed a German with it. We attempted to find Yakov Krivonos but were unable to do so. He was in hiding, but I persuaded a bartender in the Billy Joel—”
“Billy Joel?” the colonel repeated, shaking his head.
“A rock-music establishment,” Karpo explained. “Named for the American singer who came here last year.”
“Yes,” said the colonel. “Go on.”
“I persuaded a bartender to tell me that Yakov Krivonos was known to have a companion named Carla. I waited until she showed up at the bar last night and then followed her to the apartment from which she was thrown.”
“Or fell,” Colonel Snitkonoy amended.
“She landed on the rear streetside fender of an automobile approximately fifteen feet from the building,” Karpo said. “I watched her descent and—”
“I have been informed,” said the colonel, looking toward the window in the vain hope that the sun was finally rising. A childhood memory came back, and he thought that perhaps the first rays of the sun would destroy this vampire. The colonel admitted to himself that he was quite tired.
“The rifle Krivonos fired at me this night was a Walther 2000, the same make as that which was stolen,” Karpo went on. “It is likely that the bullets I retrieved and have given to the laboratory will verify that it is the same weapon that killed Bittermunder.”
“I see,” said the Gray Wolfhound, resuming his pacing, since intimacy had no effect.
“We do not know,” Karpo went on.
“Know? Know what?”
“The answer to your second question. Why Yakov Krivonos murdered Bittermunder.”
“Ahh,” said the colonel. “But really, it doesn’t matter. This is murder, a foreign visitor. It is a case for the Murder Squad and not Special Projects.”
“On Thursday, Yakov Krivonos will kill again,” said Karpo witho
ut emotion. “A witness heard him say this to his companion, a man with a beard whom he called Jerold. I saw this Jerold for an instant when he shot at me.”
It was more than the colonel cared to keep track of.
“I will try to find Yakov Krivonos before Thursday and stop him from committing this murder,” said Karpo.
“You are, as you may remember, on vacation as of tomorrow,” the Wolfhound said softly, with just the slightest studied tone of warning.
“I am the only police officer who can identify Yakov Krivonos,” Karpo said.
“A young man with orange spiked hair and wild clothing is not difficult to describe to others,” the colonel tried.
“He will change his appearance,” said Karpo.
“He will change his appearance,” the colonel repeated, as if humoring a dense child. “How do you know this?”
“I saw the face of the man with the beard,” he said. “The man called Jerold will tell him to do it, and he will do it.”
“It is late, Comrade Karpo,” the colonel said, taking out the 1920 pocket railroad watch that had been given to him in 1972 by the workers of the Kirov Locomotive Assembly Plant after a particularly inspiring speech on the need for maintaining domestic security. “With the increase in crime since … certain political events, too many hours have been put in by all branches. We must all be alert, ready, refreshed for the arduous task of maintaining the peace and controlling crime. You will take a vacation beginning tomorrow. This is a directive from the General Staff. When you and Porfiry Petrovich return, Tkach and Zelach will also be directed to take vacations. You will visit your relatives in Kiev. You will return in three weeks and not before then. You will return with renewed vitality. You understand my words?”
“Yes, Comrade Colonel,” Karpo said, noting that the offer to use the colonel’s dacha was no longer in evidence.
“Prepare a report on your findings, a detailed description of this Krivonos and the other man, and leave it with Pankov so I can forward it to the proper parties,” said the colonel, clasping his hands before him to show that the conversation and Emil Karpo’s investigation had ended.
Rostnikov’s Vacation Page 7