Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  After the war with Japan, the czar ordered an increase in the capacity of the Trans-Siberian Railroad. To increase the speed of the trains, the earth bed was widened, light rails were replaced by heavier ones, rails were laid on metal plates instead of wood, wooden bridges were torn down and replaced by others of concrete and metal. A second track was begun in 1909 and completed in 1913. New branches were also built.

  By 1912, 3.2 million passengers traveled on the Trans-Siberian Express, but during World War I the Russian railway system, suffering from shortages, began to break down. It was further devastated by the Russian civil war. Cars and locomotives were destroyed, bridges were burned, and passenger stations bombed.

  When the czar was overthrown and the White Army defeated, rebuilding began. During the winter of 1924–1925, the badly damaged Amur Bridge was rebuilt. In March of 1925, traffic on the railroad was opened again. It has not once been interrupted in more than seventy-five years.

  Porfiry Petrovich bypassed his compartment, where the three men were drinking and laughing. He considered joining them to work on his English, but he knew there would be time for that and that his English was certainly passable.

  He found the dining car. It was almost empty. People were settling into their compartments. The dining-car seats were comfortable. Through the windows he could see the last lights of the outskirts of Moscow growing more apart and more dim and small.

  He took the Ed McBain novel out of his pocket and began to read. He would have liked to remove his leg but that would have to wait till he returned to his compartment, where he would immediately tell the others how he had lost it. The two old men with whom he shared his compartment had mentioned that they were veterans of World War II. They might want to discuss their own experiences, but then again they might not. Rostnikov’s explanation of his own participation in the war was always short and precise. It invited no conversation but discouraged no comment.

  “I was a child,” he said. “A very young boy soldier. I made a mistake and my leg was run over by a German tank. The ground was muddy. The leg would not die. Not long ago it was necessary to remove it.”

  Story done. He did not want to go into details. Most who had served in an army did not press him.

  He planted both his good and his artificial leg on the floor and opened his book. The train jostled, but he was not prone to motion sickness.

  There were a few others in the car, a couple in their late thirties or early forties talking softly in Russian, pointing out the window. A woman of about fifty, slight, thick glasses, alone, sat with her elbow bent on the train seat and her head resting upon her hand. She looked sadly and deeply into the night.

  Rostnikov was absorbed in the text of the ragged paperback. The Deaf Man was killing people again, confounding Carella and the others. Rostnikov did not wonder if he would be caught. He knew. He had read the novel three times before.

  Even absorbed in the book he was aware that someone had sat across from him. He did not take his eyes from the page but he could see the figure of a woman, sense her presence and perhaps the faint smell of perfume. When he finished the chapter, Rostnikov looked up.

  The woman was about forty, lean, wearing a tan skirt and blouse. She was quite beautiful. She was looking directly at him. She smiled. Rostnikov smiled back.

  Over the woman’s shoulder Porfiry Petrovich saw Sasha Tkach enter the car. Rostnikov blinked his eyes once without looking at Sasha. The blink was enough. Sasha understood. He backed out of the car.

  “Are you traveling alone?” the woman asked in Russian in a surprisingly deep voice.

  “Yes,” he answered. “And you?”

  “The same,” she said. “I think I know you.”

  “I think that not likely,” he said. “I know I should remember you if we had met.”

  “Thank you,” she said, widening her smile and holding out her hand. “I am Svetlana Britchevna.”

  Rostnikov leaned over somewhat awkwardly. Her skin was tender but her grip was firm.

  “I am Ivan Pavlov,” he said.

  “Forgive me,” she said. “I’m a bit forward, I know, but I anticipate a boring trip and the more interesting people with whom I can converse the more quickly the time will pass.”

  “The scenery during the day is supposed to be magnificent,” he said.

  “I know,” she answered, straightening her skirt. “I’ve seen it many times. I travel the line frequently, three or four times a year. I’m an engineer. Electrical. Safety checks on various plants throughout Siberia. There are no stops on the line of any great interest to me till we get to Novosibirsk.”

  “Nothing of interest is likely to happen before then?” asked Rostnikov.

  “I speak from experience,” she said pleasantly. “And you?”

  “I have never traveled on this train before.”

  “No,” she said with a smile. “I mean, what do you do?”

  “I am a plumbing contractor,” Rostnikov said. “Not terribly interesting to others.”

  “But you find it so,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “As I find computer programs. You know about plumbing, then?”

  He nodded.

  “My husband and I have a problem,” she said, leaning forward as if she were about to share an intimate secret. “We have cast-iron drain pipes in our basement. They are rotting. Were planning a new fixture. Do we have to, should we, use galvanized iron again?”

  “No,” Rostnikov said, putting his book in his pocket. “A no-hub fitting can get you into the stack, with minimum difficulty. With special adapter fittings, copper or plastic supply lines can take over where the galvanized leaves off. It can usually be accomplished with the right tools, some no-hub clamps, spacers, a few sanitary crosses, possibly a tee and a riser clamp, using the right tools.”

  “I think we had better get a plumber,” she said.

  “It is really not difficult,” Rostnikov said. “You live in Moscow?”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I would be happy to come to your home and examine your problem.”

  “I couldn’t …” she began.

  “No,” he said. “Plumbing is my pleasure.”

  “But it might not be simple.”

  “That would be even better,” he said.

  “We will talk again,” she said, rising and offering her hand. He took it.

  “That would be pleasant,” he said.

  The woman turned and left the car. Rostnikov turned his eyes to the window, finding the last village lights before the plunge into darkness. In the reflection from the window a few seconds later he saw Sasha Tkach, who sat where the woman had been.

  “Who was that?” Sasha asked.

  “A very beautiful woman.”

  “That I could see. What did she want?”

  “To find out if I am a plumber,” said Rostnikov.

  “If you are a plumber?”

  “Yes. I believe she knows who I am.”

  “Why would she approach you?” asked Sasha.

  “A very good question. She wants me to know that she knows.”

  “Then she doesn’t believe you are a plumber?”

  “No,” he said. “She was playing a game. Like chess. She begins the game with a small move of a pawn. She asks me about a plumbing problem she does not have. I think she was pleasantly surprised that I was able to answer her question.”

  “What does she want?” asked Sasha. “Is she the one with the suitcase?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t think so. The question is, Why does she want me to know that she knows who I am?”

  Sasha shrugged. It was the sort of problem Rostnikov relished.

  “She has something to gain by my knowing of her presence.”

  “FSB?” asked Sasha.

  “Very likely,” Rostnikov answered.

  FSB, the Federal Security Service, Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, the heir to most of the empire of the former KGB. The FSB was even headquartered in L
ubyanka, in Derzhinski Square, the former headquarters of the KGB.

  The FSB, established in April of 1995, is overseen by the procurator general of Russia and has over seventy-five thousand agents. The FSB’s primary mission is civil counter-espionage, internal Russian security, organized crime, and state secrets. Terrorism, international borders, drugs, and various other classified areas are the province of the Russian Security Ministry, MBR, Ministertvo Bezopasnosti Rushkii. The MBR has more than one hundred thousand agents. That leaves the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, whose numbers are unreported.

  “And she did tell me something which may be important,” Rostnikov said.

  “What?”

  “That the transaction will almost certainly not take place before we reach Novosibirsk.”

  “She told you that?”

  “I believe so. It will be an interesting trip. Do you want to try to sleep?”

  “Too noisy in my compartment,” said Sasha.

  “Mine too,” said Rostnikov. “Let us talk about your mother and her impending marriage.”

  Chapter Two

  Rich man leave your wealthiness

  Wanderer, your solemn dress

  Seafarer, the sea’s caress

  Beowulf, your angriness

  Time to take a second guess

  Time to make a pact with death

  Trans-Siberian Express

  “IT IS A BAD idea,” Elena Timofeyeva said. She had almost used the word stupid instead of bad but had caught herself in time. She was standing in the doorway of the apartment she shared with her Aunt Anna. Her right boot was resisting her efforts to make it take leave of her foot.

  She looked up at Iosef Rostnikov, who had both of his boots off and had entered the apartment.

  “You want help with that?” he asked.

  “No.” she said, and with an awkward effort and a mighty pull the boot came off, taking the long woollen sock with it. She almost fell. Perhaps her diet plan needed reconsideration.

  Anna Timofeyeva sat in her comfortable chair near the only window in the room. She had been looking into the snow-covered courtyard in the first light of dawn. The children bound for school had not yet made tracks across the field of white that came up to the level of the seats of the benches circling the center of the covered concrete square.

  Her cat, Baku, had been sitting on her lap. When her niece and Iosef had opened the door, the cat had lazily leaped to the floor and gone over to sniff at them.

  Anna had never been bitter over her tragedy, the heart attacks which forced her to retire as procurator of Moscow before she was fifty-five. Anna had worked her way up from assembly-line worker to Communist Party leader for her factory, to regional assistant procurator, to her final position in Moscow. She had regularly put in fifteen-hour days, frequently worked days at a time fueled by duty, coffee, thick soups, and sandwiches of fatty meat.

  The Soviet Union had prided itself on the equality of women. Movies, newspapers, posters showed women as leaders, workers, soldiers, the equal of men. The truth, as she had learned early in life, was the exact opposite. Women were considered inferior, and often those put in token positions of authority were chosen because of their party loyalty and a nonthreatening lack of intellect. Anna Timofeyeva had been a notable exception. She had taken pride in her achievement, but she had taken enormous satisfaction in her work.

  And then, so suddenly, it was all over. The brown uniform that she had worn for sixteen years was traded for bulky skirts and sweaters; the large office for a small one-bedroom apartment.

  Anna had never married, had never shown or had any interest in men as anything but people for whom she worked or who worked for her. She showed no greater interest in women as friends, companions, confidants, or lovers. She had tried sex with two men and one not particularly pretty but quite slim woman many years earlier. None of the three encounters had given her any satisfaction.

  And so Anna sat in her apartment, read, and welcomed the company of her niece, which she would soon be losing when Elena and Iosef married. From time to time Porfiry Petrovich would visit, either to ask for her advice or simply to sit with her and drink some tea. All too often she was visited by Lydia Tkach, Sasha’s mother, who had an apartment down the hallway and around the corner.

  It was Porfiry Petrovich whose idea it had been for Lydia to move into the apartment complex. Anna could still pull some strings. Lydia could have afforded much better, but she was content to move half a corridor from Anna and to knock at the door uninvited so that she could relate her woes in a very loud voice to the captive former procurator.

  Recently, however, there had been great respite from Lydia. Lydia was seeing a man, a painter named Matvei Labroadovnik. She had told Anna all about him. Anna would have bestowed a medal, one of the dozen or so she had in her drawer in the bedroom, to the man if he were to end Lydia’s daily visits. But, at the same time, she felt uneasy the single time the man had come with Lydia to be shown off. Intuition, which came from years of talking to liars on multiple sides of the law, had taught her when someone was wearing a mask. The man had been wearing a mask of satisfied contemplation. Behind the mask, Anna was certain, was a racing mind. But that was Lydia’s problem. For the moment, he was Anna’s ally.

  “Tell Aunt Anna what you want to do,” Elena said to Iosef, moving to the seat opposite her aunt.

  Elena and Iosef had been up all night, meeting with the dozen uniformed officers assigned to their case, trying to come up with an idea they could present to the Yak, talking to Paulinin, who, they discovered, was even stranger than usual after the hour of midnight.

  Paulinin had kept his right hand reassuringly on the head of the naked corpse of Toomas Vana during their entire conversation in the laboratory. From time to time Paulinin had looked down at the mutilated face of the dead man and smiled reassuringly.

  The corpse was as white as the snow falling two stories above and outside Petrovka. The multiple wounds formed an odd pattern.

  “We have had a very interesting conversation,” Paulinin said. “He has told me about his life and the woman who killed him.”

  Elena wanted to ask what the dead man had said, but she still was not sure of the proper protocol with the odd scientist in the dingy laboratory jacket. Was he waiting for her to ask a question or would he be offended by being interrupted in his musings? Iosef had been the one to speak.

  “What has he told you about the woman?”

  Paulinin, hand still on the dead man’s head, twitched his nose to push his glasses back an infinitesimal notch, and said, “The woman loved him. She loved the others she attacked too. But she was reluctant to tell him, to tell them. She always strikes her first blows someplace vulnerable, the neck, eye, scrotum, nothing consistent, shy about admitting her purpose. She jabs. Here. There.”

  Paulinin pointed at various wounds before continuing.

  “And then, she strikes hardest at the heart, always at the heart, always the hardest blow. This time it caused her enormous pain. She used her right hand again. She has trouble maintaining her attack. The blade goes this way and that. The thrusts are growing weak. She tried her left hand. Remember?”

  “Yes,” said Elena.

  “But,” Paulinin went on, “it was not natural, it did not give her satisfaction. You want to know how I know?”

  “Yes,” said Iosef.

  “Because she went back to the right hand in spite of the pain. The right hand. The heart.”

  “She wants to break his heart,” Elena said before she could stop herself.

  Paulinin pondered her comment and nodded his head in agreement.

  “Yes, something like that. She loves him. You said the little girl on the platform heard the attacker call the man Father.”

  “Yes,” said Iosef.

  “She loves her father,” said Paulinin. “I loved my father.”

  “But you didn’t kill him,” Elena said.

  “Of course not,” Paulinin said in exasperation.
“And I don’t believe she has killed her father. She is sending him a message he cannot hear. Maybe she will kill him. Meanwhile, her wrist has a very severe sprain, possibly it is broken. She is probably feeling great pain. But that will not stop her from attacking again. The same kind of man, well-dressed, possibly carrying a briefcase, tall, between the ages of forty-five or so and fifty-five or sixty, from what my friend”—and here he gently patted the dead man’s head—“has told me.”

  “Why does she attack on metro stations beginning with the letter K?” Iosef asked.

  “How should I know?” Paulinin returned with irritation. “I am not a psychiatrist. Maybe her father’s name begins with a K, or maybe something happened to her on a metro platform that began with a K, something when she was a little girl. Now she cannot remember which K station it is. Maybe her name begins with a K. Maybe a million things. When you find her, ask her and tell me.”

  They had left Petrovka and walked miles in the nearly empty streets through the snow, talking, and Iosef had come up with his plan. Now he stood in Anna Timofeyeva’s apartment. He reached down to pick up the cat, which did not complain, and said, “I will wear a suit and tie, put a little gray in my hair, carry a briefcase, and travel from station to station spending time on each K platform.”

  “He will make himself a target for a madwoman,” Elena said, looking at her aunt.

  Anna Timofeyeva was a solid, heavyset woman with a wide nose and a distinctly Russian face. Her best feature was her large brown eyes, which she fixed on whomever she spoke to, giving her full attention, or, in some cases, the semblance of full attention.