Hard Currency ir-9

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  The woman turned out to be another satisfied donor. Her anger turned to relief, and she managed to mumble a thank-you as she rolled down her sleeve and hurried away.

  At precisely 11:00 A.M., Yevgeny was relieved by Karin. He did not know her last name, nor did he want to know. She was his age perhaps, a bit plump, with dark hair and good skin. She was not terribly bright and tried to mask it with a weary Moscow cynicism. Yevgeny knew that if he wanted her she would be more than willing to come to his apartment, but he did not want her. He exchanged pleasant greetings, wished her a hearty good day, and hurried off with his carry-on bag. He had just enough time to change into his uniform and make it to his shift on the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya Metro Line.

  Two of the three young men who waited for Rostnikov outside the sports center were getting impatient and distinctly nervous.

  Their names were Juan and Martin. They were twin brothers, but not identical. Juan looked very much like their mother-thin and dark-while Martin was the image of their father, who was also named Martin. Martin was very big and looked quite as stupid as he was. People who met the brothers often mistakenly believed that the crafty-looking one, Juan, provided whatever thinking the pair could generate. In fact, Juan was every bit as stupid as his brother. Martin’s pride, what there was of it, came from his strength, which he had been born with. Juan’s pride was derived from his knife.

  Both Juan and Martin relied on the third young man who stood with them. His name was Lupe and he was younger than they. He was a brooding, good-looking young man with thick dark hair and full lips. Lupe had led the twins from failed career to failed career. They had failed in the black market trying to sell imitation American clothes. They had failed at petty extortion, almost getting caught when a shopkeeper on Calle Composteta called for the police. They had even failed at reasonably honest work, first because they had no heart for long hours and later because there was no work to be had.

  Supposedly the trio were now farmworkers on a citrus farm somewhere in the northern provinces. In fact, they were muggers with a reasonably successful two months behind them.

  Lupe chose their victims well, foreigners who would be carrying hard currency or jewelry that could be sold for hard currency. The foreigners were usually women or men who did not look as if they could defend themselves.

  The one he had chosen today seemed perfect, a washtub of a man comically dressed in a sweat suit, a towel draped around his neck, and a light jacket over his shoulders. The man walked with a decided limp. There was no way he could chase them. They would simply wait till he emerged from whatever workout he had planned, pull him behind the tin-roofed hut beyond the sports complex, grab his jacket and wallet and the wedding band on his left hand, and run while he shouted for help and limped after them.

  The only question was, how long would the lame foreigner be inside the sports complex?

  The answer was forty-five minutes.

  Inside the complex, in a vast room the size of a small airplane hangar, the sound of grunts and the echo of weights clanging on gray mats was music to the ears of Porfiry Petrovich. There were perhaps fifteen people using the old, worn weights, of which there were plenty. Rostnikov preferred to work out alone in his own apartment, on his own pull-out bench, with his own weights that he stored in the cabinet in the living room-kitchen. At home he savored his routine, but he was not at home.

  He found a relatively private corner, removed his sweatshirt, and pulled down the T-shirt that bore the fading words “Moscow Senior Championship 1983” across the back.

  The bench nearby was not as low as his own bench, but it was not bad. He arranged the weights, preparing them so that he could alter the weight on the bar. Even though there were enough weights and bars to allow him to use different ones, his familiar routine was more important than convenience.

  As he set to work, humming “Mean to Me,” he tried to recall the almost childlike trill in the voice of Dinah Washington as she sang “It must be great fun to be mean to me.”

  Soon he was almost lost in the memory of his tape and the painful comfort of the weights. He closed his eyes as he sat on the bench doing his set of forty curls with a fifty-pound weight in each hand.

  When he opened his eyes, he found himself looking at a quartet of boys all around ten years old who were leaning against a pipe railing about fifteen yards away.

  Rostnikov smiled at the boys. They smiled back and it was clear that they were not going to depart. So Rostnikov moved away from the bench to pick up the bar on which he had placed two hundred pounds. He bent over and knelt toward the bar. It would have been better if he could squat, but his damaged leg had never permitted him the proper form.

  He chalked his hands, closed his eyes, gripped the bar, and tried to think of the circle of the moon as he merged with the weight. When he was ready he stood erect, swept the mass of clanking balanced metal first to his chest and then, taking a step with his weak leg, skyward. When it was firmly overhead and in control, Rostnikov opened his eyes to the applause of the smiling boys.

  As he brought the bar down and pressed it back up, the boys counted joyfully,

  “Uno … dos … tres … cuatro … cinco … seis.”

  When he brought the weight back down to his chest and eased it to the mat with a satisfying clank, the boys again broke into applause. Rostnikov stepped over the bar and bowed formally to the quartet. This had been as much fun as when he had won the senior weight-lifting championship and met the great Alexiev.

  When he finished the entire routine, the boys approached him as he gathered his things. They jabbered, quickly in Spanish he could not understand.

  “American, Canada?” asked a thin boy.

  “Russian,” answered Rostnikov.

  “Ruskie, Ruskie,” the boys chanted.

  “Va a volver mañana?” asked another boy, pulling at the sleeve of his jacket.

  “Mañana, si,” said Rostnikov.

  They left him at the door of the building and ran back inside. He wiped himself with his drenched towel and headed down the concrete path toward the Avenida del Presidente.

  Normally, Rostnikov would have sensed the attack, but conditions were not normal. The sun was hot; he was exhausted and in a country whose sounds were unfamiliar.

  In front of him stood a good-looking young man with a smile on his face. The man’s legs were slightly apart and he clasped his hands in front of him like a soldier at ease. Suddenly an arm circled Rostnikov’s neck and a thin young man at his side held the point of a knife to his stomach.

  “Shhh,” said the good-looking young man in front of him as the young man with the knife reached for Rostnikov’s jacket pocket. The good-looking young man had stepped forward. Now he lifted Rostnikov’s left hand and put his fingers on the wedding band.

  Rostnikov took two shallow breaths. Then he threw his left hand up at the thin man’s wrist. It snapped, sending the knife flying into the air. With his left hand Rostnikov grasped the wrist of the man in front of him and pulled the man’s nose into his forehead. The nose collapsed in a crunch of bone. Then, as the grip around his neck tightened, Rostnikov tensed his neck muscles, grabbed the fingers of the man behind him, and bent the fingers back, quickly breaking three of them. Rostnikov turned and faced the startled man, who looked first at the other two, one who was howling in pain as he staggered away, and the other, whose face was a sheet of gushing blood. The man with the broken fingers turned and ran.

  Rostnikov picked up the knife and turned to the confused man with the shattered nose.

  “Don’t touch it,” Rostnikov said in English. “You understand?”

  The man nodded dumbly.

  “Good. If you know a doctor, you should go see him. Might be bone chips. But remember, don’t touch it.”

  The man seemed uncertain of which way to go for an instant. Then he hurried after the other two, leaving a trail of dripping blood behind him. Rostnikov adjusted his wedding band, mopped his face with the towel, and continued h
is walk back to the hotel.

  In Moscow, he thought, they would have had guns. In Moscow, they probably would have belonged to some extended Mafia like the Capones. They would have had backup.

  It was a relief, Rostnikov decided, crossing the avenue behind an ancient Volkswagen, to be in Cuba, where some crime was still, at least for a while, in controllable infancy.

  NINE

  Colonel Snitkonoy was dressed in mufti. This was, as his staff knew, very unusual. His perfectly fitted dark suit had been painstakingly ironed by his housekeeper only an hour before, as had his white English shirt and serious blue-and-red-striped tie. His black shoes were military shined, and his hair had been perfectly trimmed by the same housekeeper, who had been his aide-de-camp when both were spreading Soviet dominance in the days not so long gone.

  The Gray Wolfhound pulled out his antique gold pocket watch. “I have,” he said, “exactly five minutes before I must leave for my presentation on the alleged murder of the Kazakhstani foreign minister.”

  “We understand,” said Karpo, who, along with Sasha Tkach, stood in front of the colonel’s desk.

  “I am to meet with the Council of Deputies for Internal Security in the Kremlin,” the colonel went on.

  There was a long pause while the Wolfhound sat erect in his chair facing the two detectives.

  “I have your report, Emil Karpo,” he said, holding up an envelope. “I have contradictory laboratory findings. I am walking into a room of important people who want irrefutable evidence.”

  And, he thought, a room in which, if this report is correct, several of the people around the table may well be parties to the murder of Foreign Minister Kumad Kustan. Some facts were quite clear. The foreign minister had been in Moscow two days before his death. An overweight, surly man with a mop of white hair that matched Yeltsin’s, he had conducted his search for Russian support in a rumpled suit. Things seemed to have gone well, so well that an announcement had been made by both the Russian foreign minister and Kustan that a new era was about to begin. Kustan died in a lounge at the Hotel Russia following a small reception, which only a dozen members of the government, both pro- and anti-Yeltsin, had attended. Security had been tight. Kustan had died. Now it seemed he might have been murdered. The murderer was likely to have been at the highest level of government. But why kill the foreign minister? To stop the agreement and embarrass Yeltsin? Or to protect Yeltsin? But why? Had the talks fallen through? It was not impossible that the murderer of the Kazakhstani foreign minister would be sitting in the room where Colonel Snitkonoy was going to make his report.

  “We cannot be wrong, Emil Karpo,” said the Wolfhound, putting the report down in front of him and folding his hands on his shiny dark desk. “Have you noticed that there are few dogs in the police kennel? Food is scarce. Luxuries are few. Those who produce survive. Those who do not are eaten.”

  “We are not wrong,” said Karpo.

  Colonel Snitkonoy nodded. He knew he had no choice but to go to the meeting and present the evidence. He had rehearsed his presentation for forty minutes before the mirror in his bedroom. He hoped it would go well.

  It would be a difficult morning. He glanced out the window. At least the sleet had stopped and the sky held a gray hope of light.

  “Speak, Inspector Karpo,” the colonel said. The Vampire was one of the few people he knew who made him truly uncomfortable.

  “We have developed a plan,” said Karpo, “which we believe can result in the resolution of Case 341.”

  “Tahpor,” said the Wolfhound.

  “It will require the services of the Metro Railway security forces,” said Karpo.

  The Wolfhound nodded and looked at Tkach, who was doing his best to hold back a sneeze.

  “It will also require one week of round-the-clock shifts by perhaps one hundred armed officers and as many as fifty decoys who will have to look as if they are approximately twenty-two years old.”

  Employing self-control developed through four decades of service, Colonel Snitkonoy simply nodded for Karpo to begin.

  Karpo outlined his plan and the Wolfhound listened.

  Three minutes later, the colonel stood up, put the report on the Kazakhstani minister in his black Samsonite briefcase, and said, “I can ask for a day or two, perhaps three, but a week is out of the question. Can you narrow this down to a day or two with reasonable certainty that we will get 341?”

  “No,” said Karpo, “but …”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” said the colonel. “As for the decoys …”

  “That will be our responsibility,” Karpo said.

  The Wolfhound’s eyes met and held Karpo’s, which revealed nothing.

  “Very well. Go. I will let you know.”

  Karpo nodded, and he and Tkach turned to leave.

  “Attend to that cold, Deputy Inspector,” the Wolfhound said.

  “I will,” answered Tkach, anxious to escape so he could let out the cough that he had choked down.

  When the two detectives had gone, the Wolfhound considered whether he should indicate to the council that a plan had been suggested to catch the man who had murdered at least forty people in the past three years. He would then be placing not one but two distasteful decisions before them. If the council agreed to assign officers and Karpo’s plan failed, the council would know it quickly, for he would be expected to follow up with a report. If he did not report and word of it got back to any of the men in that room, he would have to explain why he had not done so. There was no help for it, he concluded, but to face the possibility of failure on two fronts of his besieged operation.

  Though he usually enjoyed being the focus of attention, Colonel Snitkonoy did not walk into his outer office with the enormous confidence he usually projected.

  When the colonel’s door opened, the startled Pankov rose quickly from behind his desk. He bumped his knee as he made a useless effort to pat down his hair.

  “I’ll be gone two hours,” said the Wolfhound. “I want Major Grigorovich in my office at three-fifteen this afternoon. Also, put in a call to Inspector Rostnikov in Cuba. I want a full report from him in writing before the end of the day. He can dictate it to you.”

  “Yes,” said Pankov, his hopes dashed for an easy day of paperwork.

  “Havana is a city of misleading surfaces, you know?” said Antonio Rodriguez, taking off his thick glasses to wipe them on his shirt.

  Rostnikov looked at the little man at his side. They were stopped at a red light on the Prado, a street whose broad median strip had benches, ornate iron railings, and stone lions at the corners. But the buildings that had once clearly been spectacular were all falling to ruin. Atlantis, thought Rostnikov. It is like Atlantis risen from the sea.

  Rodriguez squinted into the afternoon sun, put on his glasses, and looked startled, as if the world had magically changed in the time it had taken to clean his glasses.

  Rodriguez had been waiting at the hotel when Rostnikov returned from his workout, had greeted him saying, “Change your clothes quickly. I have something to show you.”

  Rostnikov had gone to his room, showered and dressed, and returned to the excited little man, who urged him out into the street and into an automobile pitted with acne.

  Rodriguez looked at the light, which was now green, and carefully changed gears on his 1954 Chevrolet. The car moved forward with a shake of metal. In a few places, the floor below Porfiry Petrovich’s feet was worn through with age and rust. It was disconcerting and fascinating to watch the brick street pass beneath him. Rodriguez talked excitedly.

  “There,” he said. “That white house was Batista’s capitol. Now it is the headquarters of the Cuban Academy of Science. See there, right there, across from the ballet? That statue? Saint Martí. I was here the night in the 1950s-it was summer-when some U.S. Marines climbed on the statue. The people tried to kill them.”

  “Have the Russians climbed any statues?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Worse,” said Rodriguez. “Th
ey piss on the statues.”

  A familiar red bus, the same kind of bus that traveled the Moscow streets, passed them quickly going in the opposite direction. Rostnikov looked up at the street signs carved into the building at the next corner. They were at the corner of Colón and Agramonte.

  “There,” said Rodriguez. “You must look. Big white building. It was the Presidential Palace. Now it is the Museum of History. And here …”

  He pulled the car over to let traffic pass and pointed to a small park surrounded by a dark iron fence. The park was cluttered with an odd assortment of gray-green trucks, jeeps, two airplanes, and a small boat.

  “This too is a museum of the revolution,” said Rodriguez. “The boat is the Gramma, the ship Fidel used to come to Cuba to begin the revolution. Nobody knew what Gramma meant. They thought it was Latin or something. It means abuela, ‘grandmother,’ in English. We have a newspaper named Gramma, lots of things named Gramma. Those vehicles were used to storm the palace, and the airplanes fought the Americans at the Bay of Pigs.”

  “Fascinating,” said Rostnikov. “But, Antonio Rodriguez, you did not snatch me from a few hours of rest to show me the sights of Havana.”

  “We are a bit early,” the little man answered, putting his finger to his nose. “I wanted to be dramatic, you know. But, let’s go.”

  He pulled the car back onto the Prado, made two left turns, and found a parking spot.

  “We are lucky,” he said, backing into the space with a grinding of worn-out gears. “Tourists-Germans, Canadians-usually take all the spaces.”

  When they got out, Rodriguez said, “This way.” Rostnikov followed him to a corner where they stood in front of a bar.