Blood and Rubles ir-10

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “I must speak to the arresting officer,” Lermonov insisted.

  “Inspector Tkach does not wish to speak to you,” said Pokov. “We leave.”

  “But …” Lermonov said.

  Pokov pointed at the armed policeman.

  “My orders are to return these prisoners to custody and to comply with the wishes of Inspector Tkach. He does not wish to speak to you.”

  “So it shall be,” said Lermonov with a shrug, motioning for the three boys to follow the others. “So it shall be.”

  Sasha had a string of visitors during the day, some of whom he vaguely remembered the next day. He was sure Maya came and kissed him and said something as she held his hand. He was sure she cried. He was absolutely sure his mother came but did not say a word. That was impossible, but Sasha was certain that it was true. Rostnikov seemed to have suddenly appeared, looking down at him. When Sasha opened his eyes, Rostnikov said nothing. He only smiled. Sasha awakened sometime after dark to find Zelach sitting on a chair next to his bed, hands folded on his lap, looking at him.

  “Go home, Zelach. Get some sleep. I’ll be fine,” Sasha muttered dryly.

  Zelach stood.

  “I could use a drink of water,” Sasha said, and Zelach gratefully accepted the job. He left the room and came back with a pitcher of water and a glass.

  Sometime later, when the lights were dim and the other patients in the small ward were asleep, Elena Timofeyeva came to his side. He looked up at her. In her hand was a single flower. She placed it in the glass of water.

  “Rostnikov gave it to me,” she said. “It came from the bush in the courtyard. He said he admires its ability to continue to bloom when other trees and bushes have gone winter bare and gray.”

  Sasha nodded.

  Elena felt uneasy. She and Sasha had been partners, but they had never really worked well together. He was too volatile, ready to take offense, brooding over domestic problems, certainly more than a bit of what the Americans called sexist. She did not dislike him. On the contrary, she felt something for him and his constant struggle to find ways to accept the world in which he had found himself. He was boyishly good-looking, even as he lay pale with a white bandage wrapped awkwardly around his head.

  “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

  Sasha indicated no.

  “The doctor says you are improving rapidly.”

  Sasha tried to smile. It came out as a pained grimace.

  At that moment the door opened and another visitor entered, moved through the shadows, and stood next to the bed a foot from Elena. The new visitor looked at her, but Elena looked away.

  “I’ll tell you the truth, Tkach,” Iosef Rostnikov said, leaning over to whisper. “You look like a dolt with a dunce cap.”

  Sasha grinned.

  Iosef was taller than his father and built like a soccer player, with strong legs, a lean body, and good, broad shoulders. From his mother he had a handsome face and reddish-brown hair. He was wearing a scarf and jacket over his jeans and a red and black flannel shirt.

  Iosef held Sasha’s arm with his right hand. His grip was firm. Sasha reached over to touch the reassuring hand of his boss’s son.

  “Your show?” asked Sasha.

  “My show,” Iosef said with a sigh, turning to look at Elena. “What can I say? It will open in three days. It will close three days after that for lack of an audience. I am cursed to be out of accord with the public taste. I write a play about Afghanistan. No one comes. I write a tragedy. No one cries. I write a comedy and I’m confident no one will laugh. I am fast becoming convinced that a life in the theater is not for me.”

  “If it’s still playing when I get out of here,” said Sasha dryly, “Maya and I will come. I promise we will laugh, at least politely.”

  “It is too late,” Iosef said. “I have already applied to join the police. No one wants to be a policeman anymore, so it’s easy to get in. Besides, I think it is in my genes.”

  Sasha smiled again and closed his eyes. Iosef loosened his grip and patted the policeman’s shoulder gently.

  “I’ll be back,” said Iosef.

  Iosef turned, looked at Elena, and invited her with a nod to leave with him. She followed him through the door and into the corridor.

  “Good night, Iosef,” she said, extending her right hand.

  He took it and held it. “Forgive me,” he said.

  “For what?”

  “For not calling,” he answered.

  “You owed me no call,” she said.

  He was looking directly down into her eyes. In the light of the corridor she could see that he had lost weight.

  “I have little excuse for not making the call I did not owe you,” he said with a smile. “I’ve been working long hours on the play-writing, directing, building sets, begging for props and money, learning my lines, making decisions.”

  “You owed me no call,” she said. “You owe me no apology.”

  “You are definitely upset with me and uneasy in my presence,” he said.

  “No,” she said.

  “You hide it well,” he said. “But I know acting when I see it. I know two things. First, how to shoot all kinds of weapons, because I was a soldier, and second, I know when people are acting, because I have been an actor. I have three great hopes. Would you like to hear them?”

  Elena shrugged. They had stopped walking and were facing each other not far from the elevator. Their voices were low. A man pushing an empty gurney and softly humming something that sounded like Mozart moved past them.

  “I hope that I make a better policeman than I did a soldier, playwright, or actor,” he said. “That’s one. Two, I hope my parents stay well and safe.”

  “And third?” she asked, pushing aside a strand of hair that had fallen across her cheek.

  “Third,” he said, “and most difficult to achieve, I hope that you will marry me.”

  Elena shook her head as if she were dealing with a comic who had told one too many for the evening.

  “We went out three times,” she said.

  “Four,” he corrected. “I’m counting the birthday party.”

  “Four,” she conceded. “We went out four times. We got … close. And then for almost a month I hear nothing from you. And now a marriage proposal?”

  “It is odd, isn’t it?” Iosef said. “But that doesn’t make it any the less sincere.”

  “You need a shave,” Elena responded.

  Iosef touched his cheek and said, “I loved you from the second I saw you at the birthday party at my parents’ apartment. You walked across the room, ate a cracker, pushed a strand of hair from your face the way you did just now, and I loved you.”

  “Are you mad, Iosef?”

  “No,” he said. “I have gone without sleep for two days and I am probably a bit strange, but that does not alter the fact that I wish to marry you.”

  “Get some sleep,” she said, stepping into the elevator, which had finally arrived and opened its doors.

  A fat woman carrying a tray of medicine stepped out, and Elena moved around her to enter the elevator. Iosef jumped into the elevator just as the doors began to close. They both faced forward, not looking at each other.

  “Will you come to the opening of the show Friday?” he asked.

  “Perhaps,” she said. “Perhaps not.”

  “We can go out afterward for some coffee,” he said. “If you like, I promise not to propose again that night.”

  “Iosef,” she said as the elevator slowly descended. “You do not know enough about me. I don’t know enough about you. If it weren’t that I know your parents, I would think you a lunatic.”

  “I spent three long years in the army being quite mad and killing people who struck me as being equally mad,” he said. “Sanity is gradually coming back to me. Slowly, yes, but coming back. Come to the show.”

  The elevator door opened. A man and two women got on. They were arguing about someone named Eichen.

  “I’ll c
ome,” Elena said.

  Iosef and Elena got off the elevator. She started to move across the small lobby of the hospital. A formidable-looking woman in her fifties sat behind the reception desk watching. Iosef took Elena’s hand and stopped her. She turned and looked at him.

  “My approach may be ill advised, coming as it does from an exhausted fool,” he said, “but my words are sincere. My feelings are sincere. The only thing standing in the way of all this is what you think of me.”

  “I’m still considering that,” Elena said, aware of the eyes of the receptionist.

  “Good,” he said. “How are you getting home?”

  “Metro,” she answered.

  “I have a friend’s car,” he said.

  Elena nodded her acceptance. There was much for her to think about. She had been depressed at his long period of inattention. Now his approach was bold and he spoke of marriage. Elena didn’t know what she thought of marriage. She was fairly certain she didn’t want it, not now. There was much for her to think about.

  FOURTEEN

  Justice

  The man who had been following Karpo for two days was very good. There were many reasons why Karpo might be followed, but the most likely one was that the man was connected to the information on the computer disk Karpo carried in his pocket and the printout of that disk he carried in his hand. Karpo guessed that the man had been in military intelligence, the KGB, or the Ministry of the Interior central office. He also guessed that the man was now working for the mafia that had been responsible for the death of Mathilde Verson.

  The man had been waiting when Karpo came out of Petrovka early in the morning. He was across Petrovka Street talking to a street vendor and drinking something from a paper cup. The man was wearing a blue pea jacket and a dark knit cap. He did not look at Karpo. When Karpo got to the metro station, he did not see the man, but he was certain that he was there.

  When Karpo got off at the Oktyabrskaya station, he spotted the man among the throng of morning workers hurrying to jobs in the district. Karpo walked down Dmitrov Street past the French Embassy at Number 43. The French had kept the original Igumnov House, a late eighteenth-century red-brick building, and in the 1980s erected a modern building beside it. Moscow, like the French Embassy, is a bizarre contrast of periods, a splatter of old architecture, new construction, and crumbling Soviet concrete. Karpo knew every street.

  He walked slowly to the statue of Georgi Dmitrov, a hero of the Bulgarian workers’ union. Dmitrov stood above him, supposedly calling on his audience to join the now-dead Revolution. When he was a young policeman, in his early twenties, Karpo had been at the unveiling of this statue. It had been one of the many affirmations in his life that the Revolution, in spite of its failures and the corruption of its bureaucrats, would succeed-tall, passionate, solid. No one but tourists paid any attention to the statue now.

  Karpo turned down Ulitsa Bolshaya Polyank, Big Plank Street, and crossed the Maly Kamenniy Most, the Small Stone Bridge, over the Obvodny Canal, the twisting canal. The man had to be well behind Karpo now, and there were few people crossing the bridge. The man had no choice, if he were not to lose his quarry, but to cross the bridge as well.

  Karpo looked toward the Udarnik Cinema, the hard worker cinema, on his left and then entered the square on his right, moving directly to a garden facing Lavrushinsky Lane. There was a bench under the statue of the artist Ilya Repin. Karpo sat and for the first time looked directly at the man who was following him. The man was a good fifty yards away, pretending to read a book after he checked his watch and looked down the street for an imaginary ride. When the man did glance in Karpo’s direction, he saw the pale policeman in black staring at him. The man pretended not to notice and returned to his book. When next he glanced at the man on the bench, Karpo was motioning for him to come.

  The man’s confusion was brief. He was a professional. He had been in the KGB and had spent hundreds of hours following people. He tucked the book under his arm and walked over to Karpo on the bench. The man paused in front of the detective and then sat.

  “What are you reading?” Karpo asked.

  “A bad book about some fools who hijack a train in Germany,” said the man. He was at least fifty and had a stocky build and a flat, blocky face.

  “You have something to say to me?” the man said, standing in front of Karpo.

  “I have something to say to the man or men who employ your services,” said Karpo. “I wish to make a trade with them.”

  Karpo took the printout of the disk out of his cloth bag and handed it to the man, who took it and read the first page. When he was done, he handed it back to Karpo.

  “It was prepared by Igor Kuzen, who was murdered yesterday,” Karpo said.

  The man nodded in understanding and left in search of a phone. He returned five minutes later and sat next to Karpo.

  “A car will be here in about five minutes,” he said.

  Karpo nodded. No more was said even after a black Buick with darkly tinted windows pulled up to the curb. Karpo followed the man and got into the backseat. The driver did not turn around. He had a tattoo of a green snake encircling his neck.

  The car pulled up in front of the Sofia Restaurant across from the Pekin Hotel. On the sidewalk, in spite of the temperature, a man was playing the accordion while another man joined him with a violin. They had a single cap laid out for contributions. Karpo and the man who had followed him got out of the car. The car pulled away.

  The musical duo was playing an old Russian dance. Six people stood around watching and listening. The man who had followed Karpo went to the restaurant, opened the door, and stood back so that Karpo could enter. There were no waiters, no settings on the tables. The restaurant would not open for hours. At the rear of the room, lighted at the moment by one small track of lights, a man sat at a table smoking and looking at Karpo.

  The man who had followed him motioned for Karpo to go to the rear of the restaurant. Karpo walked toward the man at the table. The man who had followed him did not go with the detective.

  When he approached the table, the seated man pointed to the chair across from him. Karpo sat and placed the printout on the table.

  “Drink?” asked the man, leaning forward. “Coffee, tea, juice, a little Baileys?”

  “No,” said Karpo.

  The man across from him was dressed like a businessman-well-pressed suit with a colorful Italian tie. He was a big man, a broad man, with a pleasant, slightly pink face and long hair that was tied in a ponytail. He smoked assiduously, pausing only to drink from what looked like a large mug of tea. When the man reached for the mug, Karpo saw the tattoos that crept down his arms and the backs of both hands.

  “Do you know who I am?” the man asked.

  “I presume you are Lev Semionov,” said Karpo.

  “And how did you arrive at this assumption?” asked Semionov.

  Karpo looked at the thick computer printout. Semionov reached for it, placed it before him on the table, and began to read. His name was at the top. He stopped reading after a page and began to flip through the rest of the pages. He did this quickly and then pushed the printout back to Karpo.

  “I’ve read it,” said Semionov. “It seems that Igor Kuzen, the late Igor Kuzen, fooled me after all. He said that he had this disk and that he had sent a copy to a friend with instructions to mail it to the minister of the interior himself if Kuzen didn’t call for three days. He did not, of course, give us the name of this friend. It took us five days to find everyone Kuzen had been close to since he was a boy. On the fifth day we found Katerina Molensaya, a cousin of Kuzen’s in Minsk. She confessed almost immediately and turned over her disk. She died of the shock and a bullet.”

  “We also erased Kuzen’s file on his hard drive,” Semionov said. “But it appears there was still another copy. There may even be more.”

  “What happened three days ago-the killing on the street?” asked Karpo.

  “Well,” said the man, “as yo
u know from reading this report of Kuzen’s, we have no nuclear weapons or material. We have already received vast amounts of money from North Korea to deliver weapons and material we do not have and do not yet know if we can get.”

  “What happened Tuesday morning?” asked Karpo.

  Semionov laughed, a small, bitter laugh. “The German worked for the North Koreans. Actually, he was a middleman, a counterpart of our Igor Kuzen, but much, much better. I could see on his face after he met with Kuzen that the German knew we had nothing. We followed him to the café where he met the prostitute, and we killed him before he could pass on information about the inadequacies of our famous scientist. I regret that your friend was killed, but … look, it’s early. I’ve ordered a little something to eat.”

  “The bullets that killed Mathilde Verson did not come from the gun found near the body of Mikhail Sivak,” Karpo said.

  “The other gun,” Semionov said with a shrug.

  “There was no other weapon found at the scene except that of the dead German,” said Karpo.

  A man came to the table bearing a tray of rolls, butter, a coffeepot, and two cups. He placed the tray on the table and left immediately.

  “I have no explanation,” said Semionov.

  “One more question,” Karpo said as Semionov poured a cup of coffee. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Ah,” said Semionov, putting down his cigarette. “I am confident that you did make copies of the disk, which includes information not only on our nuclear deception but on the crimes of all but a few of our more important members. Killing a policeman at this point will accomplish nothing. You have a list of names. A list of names means nothing.”

  Semionov handed a full cup to Karpo, who took it. Semionov’s hand remained out. Karpo gave him the copy of the disk.

  “See?” said Semionov, pocketing the disk. “If this were your only copy, you would not have handed it over so readily.”

  “And now?” asked Karpo.

  “And now?” Semionov poured himself coffee. “We will have to find ways to neutralize this information.”