Rostnikov’s Vacation

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  And then the big man held out his hand, and it was a very big hand. Rostnikov looked at the hand and then the face of the man who blocked out the sun.

  “No,” said Rostnikov.

  The big man, Pato, nodded in understanding. This was business. Pato put his hand on Rostnikov’s shoulder.

  “Death can be much easier than life,” the little man said. “You could have given me the book and had a moment to pray before Pato broke your neck. But maybe you are not a religious man? Maybe you are not one of those new Christians who jump to religion and away from Marxist-Leninism like dirty fleas.”

  The massive hand was squeezing Rostnikov’s shoulder now, pushing the policeman down. Rostnikov reached up, put his hands on the wrist behind the hand, and watched the man’s face break into a smile that made it quite clear he was amused by the pathetic effort by the aging little barrel of a man with a lame leg.

  The smile lasted for less than the blinking of the eye of a night owl in a birch tree. Rostnikov put his good leg back to support him and wrenched the offending arm from his shoulder. The huge man stepped back one pace, letting the sun hit Rostnikov’s face. He looked at his hand and at Rostnikov. Rostnikov could see the little man, now that Pato had backed away.

  “Just kill him, then, and take the book,” the little man said, looking back over his shoulder. “Someone might come and we’d have to kill them, too.”

  Pato moved forward, one hand grabbing Rostnikov’s hair, the other going to Rostnikov’s throat. Rostnikov drove forward off his right leg and threw his shoulder into Pato’s stomach. Rostnikov was off balance for the instant he had to put his weight on his bad leg, but he was accustomed to that instant, had experienced it many times when working with his beloved weights. His right leg found the ground beneath him, and he lifted the massive Pato off the ground. The man’s hand released Rostnikov’s neck. The creature called Pato growled like an animal and clawed at the back of the washtub of a man for the instant before Porfiry Petrovich threw him to the ground. Pato tumbled awkwardly on his shoulder and landed on his back with a great woosh of air.

  There was a crack like the breaking of a dry tree branch, and something sizzled past Rostnikov, who moved to the fallen man, who was trying to rise. He knew. The Pieper had not exploded. The little man with one eye was firing. But he only fired once before a voice from somewhere close by very calmly called, “Stop.”

  The little man turned toward the woods, aiming his pistol but seeing nothing.

  “Stop,” came the voice again. “Put the gun down or see what it is like to try to plug a very large bullet hole in your chest with one of your scrawny little fingers.”

  Pato was on one knee now, trying to catch his breath. Rostnikov took hold of his arm and helped him rise. The man swung awkwardly with his free arm and hit Rostnikov solidly in the shoulder. Rostnikov released Pato’s arm but immediately drove forward and locked his arms around the man’s midsection in a bear hug. Pato struggled to free himself, grunting, churning, cursing, but Rostnikov held tight, lifted him once again from the ground, and squeezed. When he had stopped struggling, Rostnikov let loose, and the huge man fell backward to the ground, his head striking the ground with a thud.

  “I would not have thought you could do that,” Misha Ivanov said, stepping out of the trees, a pistol aimed at the little man, who had dropped his gun. The deep red light of the sun through the trees glinted on Ivanov’s bald head. “I mean, I know you lift weights. You won the Sokolniki Recreation Championship last year.”

  “The year before,” Rostnikov corrected, once more helping the fallen Pato to his feet. The fight was definitely out of the huge man.

  “So,” said Misha Ivanov with a shrug, “once again the records of the KGB are less than perfect. But in Odessa, in all of the Ukraine for that matter, we do not have priority and our computer network—”

  “Pato, I have disdain for you,” said the one-eyed man, but Pato was too dazed to register the criticism.

  “Do you know who these two are?” asked Misha Ivanov.

  “They are the ones who killed Georgi Vasilievich,” said Rostnikov, guiding Pato to the little man’s side.

  “Did you?” Misha Ivanov asked, casually glancing at the little man.

  “No,” said the little man. “We don’t even know who you are talking about. We were just out for a walk when this man attacked us and—”

  The bullet from Ivanov’s gun made a loud noise, a deep, echoing belch that woke the huge man from his daze and sent the little wild-eyed man spinning.

  “You shot me,” cried the little man, reaching up to his bleeding shoulder. “You might have killed me.”

  “I tried to kill you,” said Misha, shaking his head. “I haven’t had much practice. Our ration of bullets is pitiful. You’d think the KGB had an endless supply. Maybe in Moscow, but in Odessa, Tbilisi? No. I’m sorry. I won’t miss this time.”

  He raised his weapon. The little man looked at Pato for help, but there was none coming from him or from Rostnikov, who knew better than to interfere.

  “You want to answer questions, either of you?” asked Ivanov.

  “No,” said Pato.

  Ivanov’s gun was now aimed squarely at the little man’s chest.

  “Yes,” cried the little man.

  “Be quiet, Yuri,” Pato said.

  “I’m going to shoot you now,” said Ivanov. “I am a very impatient man.”

  “We killed him,” the little man said. “We were told to kill him. We were hired. Actually it was Pato who—”

  “Yuri,” Pato warned.

  “Shut up, bear,” Misha said. “Let the man speak and live. Who hired you?”

  “My arm is bleeding,” bleated Yuri, removing his hand from his arm to show the flow of blood.

  “Thank you for informing me,” said Misha, stepping forward. “Talk or die.”

  “This is not fair,” cried the little man. “Why aren’t you threatening Pato? Why does everyone think I’m the weak one? Is this fair? I lost an eye. I lost a finger. Look. See. Here. They sewed it back on. I can’t bend it. Why shoot me?”

  “Who hired you?” asked Ivanov.

  “The man at the hotel,” said Yuri. “At the Lermontov.”

  Before either Rostnikov or Ivanov could react, the huge man had grabbed the neck of the wild-eyed little man and twisted it with a terrible crack. Ivanov fired three times. The first bullet hit Pato in the neck. The second tore into the right side of his forehead as he spun around, and the third hit him low in the stomach. He dropped the little man, pitched forward on his face silently, and died.

  Ivanov and Rostnikov moved forward to the fallen little man, who looked very much like a scrawny dying bird as he lay on his back.

  Ivanov kicked the dead Pato once and lifted his head to be sure he was dead. Rostnikov knelt at the side of the little man.

  “Don’t move,” said Rostnikov.

  “Can’t move,” the man whispered, a trail of blood coming out of the corner of his mouth. “Can’t feel.”

  “Who hired you, Yuri?” said Rostnikov gently.

  Ivanov, who had joined Rostnikov, hovered over the dying man, his weapon leveled at Yuri’s head.

  “Answer the man,” he said.

  “Shoot me,” whispered Yuri, his voice fluttering.

  “Pato has killed you, Yuri,” said Rostnikov. “He has betrayed you.”

  “Pato was always my friend till he killed me,” Yuri breathed, his eyes closing.

  “Was it the waiter?” asked Ivanov. “Anton, the waiter?”

  “No,” said Rostnikov. “It was McQuinton.”

  “The American. Yes,” said Yuri, opening his eyes. The good one found Rostnikov. The glass one looked into forever, and Yuri died.

  TEN

  THERE HAD BEEN NO time to confess to Maya.

  When they reached the apartment, she had put Pulcharia in her crib for a nap and then helped Sasha cleanse the wound on his head.

  “You should go to the clinic,�
�� she said. “I think it needs stitches.”

  But she made it a suggestion, not a demand. There was something more important going on than concern over a physical scar.

  “Zelach is in the hospital,” he said as she cut away a small patch of his hair so she could close and tape the wound. “He may lose an eye.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maya said with more concern for her husband’s anguish than for what had happened to his partner. Maya had met Zelach only twice, and both times very briefly. What little her husband had said about the man had not been particularly complimentary, but the effect of what had happened was clear in the vacant pain in her husband’s face. For the first time since she had met him, he looked every day of his age and perhaps even more.

  “I must tell you, Maya,” he said. “It was my fault.”

  Maya considered asking him to take his clothes off and get into bed with her. Pulcharia was sleeping. He obviously had some time, and they had not been together for days. Maya was in her fourth month, and the roundness of her tummy was just beginning. When she was carrying Pulcharia, she and Sasha had made love right to the final month, the few times they were able, when Sasha’s mother was not in the next room.

  Now that they had their own apartment they made love about as frequently as they had when Lydia was around, but they did it with a sense of freedom. But Maya was certain that if she suggested that they now take off their clothes and get in bed, he would reject the idea.

  The phone rang. There were two small rooms in the apartment. One was the bedroom with their bed and Pulcharia’s. The other was the combination living room and kitchen in which they now sat near the small sink. In the next room the baby stirred, and Maya dashed across the room to answer the phone before it rang again.

  Something in her dash, the swish of her dress, stirred a memory within Sasha and made him want to weep.

  “It’s Karpo,” Maya said, holding out the phone to him.

  Sasha’s knees felt weak beneath him, but he rose and took the phone.

  “Yes,” said Sasha, looking at Maya, who had crossed back to the sink to clean up.

  “Can you be in front of your apartment in three minutes?”

  “Three … but …”

  “I am unable to call anyone else,” said Karpo. “I am not supposed to be in Moscow. I will explain if you can come. If you cannot, let us terminate this conversation.”

  “I’ll be down in three minutes,” Sasha said, and hung up the phone.

  Maya looked at him. She was framed against the window. She looked soft, round, and her voice was gentle, with that’ slight touch of Georgia that always stirred him.

  “You are in no condition to do anything or go anywhere, Sasha,” she said. But she spoke knowing that he was going, even considering that it might be best for him to go rather than say what he planned to say, for surely now, though he felt the need to speak, she did not feel the need to hear.

  “I … it will be. I’ll be back as soon as I can,” he said.

  She stepped forward and put her arms around him, her belly against his, and he felt or imagined he felt the baby kick.

  “Have you eaten anything today?” she asked, stepping back to look at his face.

  “No,” he said.

  Maya went to the cabinet and took a piece of bread from the enamel bread box with the little flowers, a wedding gift from her mother.

  “Thank you,” he said, holding the bread in two hands as if it were a precious gift.

  “Sasha, it’s just a piece of bread.”

  “I’ll stop and see Arkady before I come home,” he said, moving to the door.

  For a moment she didn’t know who her husband was talking about, but then she realized it must be Zelach. She had never before heard his first name.

  It was the city of Chekhov, so Rostnikov decided to stage the scene as if it were the end of the second act of one of the master’s plays. Misha Ivanov had arranged for the quiet removal from the woods of the bodies of both Pato and Yuri and, after they examined the contents of the notebook Rostnikov had removed from under the rotunda, had agreed to Rostnikov’s proposal to stage the scene.

  The notebook had contained a list of names and notations. Some of the names had lines through them, others had notes after them, and neatly penned speculations were at the bottom of almost every sheet.

  “How many do you count?” Ivanov had said as they sat on a bench near the entrance to the woods. From the bench they could watch the nearby traffic on the road and look up the hill toward the Lermontov Hotel. A gray van was parked no more than ten feet from them, partly blocking their view of the road toward town.

  “In Yalta?” Rostnikov answered. “Seventeen. That includes both you, me, and Georgi himself.”

  “Conspiracy?” asked Ivanov, pulling his jacket around him, though Rostnikov felt no surge of cold air.

  “That was clearly Vasilievich’s belief,” said Rostnikov.

  “Confirmed by his death and the interest of those two to obtain this book,” said Ivanov.

  As he said “those two,” the body of Pato was being carried past them on a stretcher by two men, who strained under the weight.

  “Something is going to happen in Moscow,” said Rostnikov.

  Ivanov sighed deeply in answer.

  “If Vasilievich was correct, the senior investigators from all branches, KGB, MVD, GRU, who would be most likely to uncover and disrupt this thing, were sent on vacation away from Moscow at the same time.”

  “Or,” added Ivanov, “sent on the pretext of watching one of the investigators. And who knows how many were sent places other than Yalta. When will it happen?”

  Rostnikov looked at the notebook.

  “Soon, very soon. According to Vasilievich, five of these vacations end the day after tomorrow.”

  “All right,” said Ivanov, standing and brushing fallen leaves from his lap. “The American.”

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov, also rising as the two men took their now empty stretcher back into the woods for the second body.

  And that had led them to the scene that Porfiry Petrovich was now playing out with the American. Rostnikov had gone to his room and knocked, and McQuinton had answered, a book in his hand, fully dressed. His white hair was brushed back, but he needed a shave. Little white bristles caught the dim light of the hall.

  “Have the women returned?” Rostnikov said.

  “Haven’t seen them,” said McQuinton. “You all right? You look a little—”

  “I am, a bit, what is the word? Is it ‘disgruntled’?”

  “Probably not,” said McQuinton. “You want to come in?”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  McQuinton stepped back. Rostnikov entered, and the American closed the door behind him.

  “Not much room,” said McQuinton, looking at the bed, wooden cabinet, and single straight-backed chair. “Take the chair. Mind if I shave?”

  “Thank you,” said Rostnikov, “but I would prefer to stand. My leg is misbehaving a bit.”

  “Suit yourself,” said McQuinton, moving to the washroom.

  Rostnikov followed him and watched from outside the door. There wasn’t enough room inside for two people.

  McQuinton ran the water and found his razors in a leather case.

  “Damned water never gets warm,” he said, wrapping a towel around his neck and patting his face.

  “What are those?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Disposable razors. Here, take a couple. I brought plenty from the States.”

  He handed three blue-handled plastic razors to Rostnikov, who put them in his jacket pocket.

  “Thank you,” he said. “And I have something for you, but it is less in the form of a gift than a burden.”

  McQuinton was examining himself in the small mirror over the sink as he shaved. Rostnikov removed Vasilievich’s notebook from his pocket and held it up where McQuinton could see it in the mirror. The American’s hand did not waver. The stroke from neck to chin was smooth.

>   “What is it?” he asked.

  “A notebook,” said Rostnikov.

  “What do you want me to do with this burden?” asked McQuinton, turning his head to one side to inspect the progress of his effort. He seemed satisfied.

  “Take it with you,” said Rostnikov. “Turn it over to the CIA when your plane refuels in Paris.”

  McQuinton removed the towel from his neck, wiped the remaining soap from his face with it, examined himself in the mirror once more, and turned to face Rostnikov.

  “What is it?”

  “It contains a list of names of senior Soviet investigators,” said Rostnikov. “It documents their ordered departure from Moscow and includes speculation by the senior investigator who compiled the list that all of these men were ordered to take vacations at the same time. It was his belief that something was about to take place in Moscow, something that some high-ranking figures do not want to be stopped by anyone who might be capable of determining what was taking place.”

  McQuinton looked at Rostnikov and the book and moved out of the small bathroom and to the bed, where he propped up the two pillows and sat against them.

  “I don’t follow,” said the American.

  “If something does take place within that period,” Rostnikov went on, facing the lounging but attentive American, “this notebook will be evidence that a conspiracy exists.”

  “And you want me to smuggle the notebook out of the country and turn it over to the CIA? Why?”

  “You are leaving. It is possible the CIA will be able to use channels to stop the event, to expose it. If not, they can reveal that the event, which might be made to look like an individual—”

  “Rostnikov,” said the American. “Spit it out.”

  “I don’t—”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I think an attempt will be made to kill Mikhail Gorbachev within the next two days,” said Rostnikov, looking at the notebook. “I think it will be made to look not like a coup from within but a random mad act, probably from a foreigner.”

  “Holy Christ,” said McQuinton, sitting up. “You’re not kidding.”

  “I am not kidding,” said Rostnikov.