Death Of A Russian Priest

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Klamkin rose quietly and nodded yet a fourth time. The colonel did not rise as the lieutenant left the room.

  When Klamkin had gone, the colonel removed a second file from his desk. This file involved the search for a missing girl, an Arab whose father was oil minister of Syria. Like the Father Merhum investigation, it had been assigned to Snitkonoy’s unit, which would be blamed if there was failure. If success were imminent, it was Lunacharski’s responsibility to step in, file his own report, and take credit.

  Fourteen more active files lay in the desk drawer, and Colonel Lunacharski knew he would go through each of them before the day was over, get reports on each case, either in person, which he preferred, or by phone. He would then review and revise, if necessary, each written report. It would be a long day, a long day in this small office with only a one-hour break for exercise in the gymnasium and a light lunch.

  Footsteps tramped above his head. He was on the top floor of Lubyanka, and the roof above was where the prisoners had only months ago exercised twice each day. Now the sound signaled a stampede of tourists. The colonel shook his head and turned to his work.

  There were no other distractions. His wife would not be looking for him. She had, years ago, resigned herself to a life alone, though she and her husband shared the same apartment with their two now-grown children, who at the earliest possible moment had married and moved as far from Moscow as they could. Marina Lunacharski was accustomed to spending days or even weeks without seeing her husband, which suited both of them.

  The tramping overhead was nearly deafening now, and the colonel could no longer ignore the fact that he had been given the worst office in the building.

  FIVE

  “AN ARAB GIRL?” THE woman behind the bar asked as she dried a series of glasses.

  They were in the Nikolai Café on Gorky Street, which was no longer officially Gorky Street. The city leaders had changed the name of one of the busiest streets in Moscow back to its prerevolutionary name of Teverskaya Street, the street that leads to the town of Tver. It wasn’t that the leaders disliked Gorky but that Gorky had been Stalin’s favorite author.

  The decision to change the name had been made almost two years before, but few street signs reflected the change, and it would be difficult to locate a Muscovite who referred to it as anything but Gorky Street.

  The woman had been answering the questions of the policewoman with questions of her own while the good-looking young policeman used the telephone in the corner.

  “How many Arab girls do you get in here?” asked Elena Timofeyeva.

  Tatyana, the woman behind the bar, was in her forties, wearing a bright yellow blouse with puffy sleeves and a blue skirt much too young for her. Her artificially blond hair was straight and her loose skin was overly made up, but her sultry look was enhanced by the dim light of the bar. When they entered, she had, looked at Sasha with some interest, but it was clear that his thoughts were somewhere else.

  “Lots of Arab girls come here. It’s a mecca for Arabs,” Tatyana said, smiling at her own joke.

  “We’re looking for this one,” Elena said. She handed a photograph to the woman, who stopped cleaning glasses long enough to look at it.

  “Pretty,” she said, “but she looks like lots of girls who come in here. What did she do?”

  “Nothing,” said Elena. “She’s missing.”

  “Arabs go other places besides here,” the woman said. “The Mahal on Kalinin and across the river—”

  “She came here,” said Sasha Tkach, returning from his phone call.

  “She told a few people that she liked to come here,” said Elena. “She didn’t mention the other places, but we will be checking them.”

  Tatyana shrugged. “I can’t help you.”

  “Her name is Amira Durahaman,” said Elena. “Her family is concerned.”

  “Her family is rich and important?” asked Tatyana.

  “What makes you—” Elena began, but Sasha jumped in.

  “The police would not be looking for some servant girl.”

  “Is there a reward for finding her?” asked Tatyana.

  “I don’t know,” said Elena.

  “There’s a reward,” said Sasha. “One thousand rubles.”

  “One thousand only? You can’t buy two chickens for that. This is a hard-currency bar. Arabs come here, they spend a hundred American dollars a night.”

  “Perhaps we can get a thousand American dollars,” Sasha said. “If she is definitely located. “

  “I’ll ask around,” said Tatyana. “No guarantees, but … you know. How do I reach you?”

  Elena pulled out her notebook and wrote her name and Petrovka telephone number on a sheet of paper, which she tore out. Tatyana dried her hands on a towel before taking it.

  “Sasha Tkach,” she said, reading the sheet. “That’s not a policeman’s name. That’s a ballet dancer’s name.”

  “He doesn’t use his real name,” Elena said. “He is Sasha Shevardnadze.”

  “You mean …”

  “I mean nothing,” Elena whispered. “If you find her, Sasha Tkach will be very pleased. You understand?”

  “I am not a fool,” said Tatyana.

  Back on the street Elena and Sasha nearly bumped into a huge man with a black plastic bag in each hand.

  When they had passed the man, Elena turned to Sasha. “A thousand American dollars? We can’t pay her a thousand kopeks.”

  Sasha moved ahead. “The girl’s father will pay,” he said.

  “And if he won’t? If we are told not to ask him?”

  “Then we lied.”

  “You lied, Tkach,” Elena said angrily.

  “I lied,” he said. “If we find her …”

  “When we find her.”

  “When we find her,” he amended, “you can include on the report that it was accomplished by my lying to a bar owner who is probably also a prostitute.”

  “A prostitute? You are a—” Elena began.

  “—son of Shevardnadze,” he finished. “We’ll come back tonight and look for someone who knows her. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “To the apartment of Grisha Zalinsky near the university,” he said, moving in the direction of Pushkin Square.

  “Why? Slow down, Tkach,” she said.

  “Are you tired?”

  “No,” she answered. “I can probably outrun you in any distance over a kilometer, but I can’t understand you when you move away and turn your back. Who is Grisha Zalinsky?”

  Tkach stopped suddenly and turned to her. She almost ran into him. “Grisha Zalinsky was the Arab girl’s boyfriend,” he explained.

  “Was? They are no longer friends?”

  “Grisha Zalinsky no longer is.”

  “And how do you know all this?”

  “When I called into Petrovka five minutes ago, I was told he had been beaten to death in his apartment early this morning. Letters from her were found. The investigating officer recognized her name from the missing persons list.”

  “You are not a pleasant man, Sasha Tkach,” Elena said.

  “I am having a particularly difficult decade.”

  “You don’t like me, do you?”

  Tkach considered the question seriously. “I don’t think so. But today I do not particularly like anyone, not even myself, especially not myself.”

  He turned and headed toward the metro station.

  The man with the two black plastic bags was named Leonid Dovnik. He had seen Sasha and Elena enter the bar and knew they were policemen. It was not a difficult thing to recognize. So instead of entering behind them, he had waited outside till they left.

  Leonid did not know why these policemen had gone into the bar, but he was sure that when they came out, he had heard them discussing the young man he had beaten to death just a few hours before.

  It had been no trouble finding the young Jew. He had simply looked at the photograph of Zalinsky and the Arab girl that had been given to
him and waited at the university where he knew the young man was a student. He had waited for two days till he saw him this morning and followed him home.

  Following the murder, Leonid had come to Gorky Street, where he bypassed three state-owned grocery stores, not even bothering to look inside, since there were no lines. No lines meant no food.

  He finally stopped at the Gastronon No. 1, the fourth state grocery store. It was crowded and warm even on a cool morning. Forty or fifty people were at the sausage counter waiting to buy kielbasa.

  Leonid moved to the milk-products counter. Less than ten minutes later he had been through the line to pay and was back in the line to pick up his cheese and milk. People pushed, shoved, cursed, but given Leonid’s size and his lack of a neck, those who could avoid contact with him did so. Since the latest round of shortages and rocketing prices that were part of the so-called new freedom, people had grown even more rude than before. Leonid was never rude. He made a living being brutal, but he did it with courtesy when possible. It was a job that paid him well enough to eat and live comfortably, and since he had absolutely no moral sense, it was a job that suited him well. He could afford to be polite.

  Since he had not brought a bag, Leonid stopped at a kiosk further down Gorky Street and bought two black plastic bags with gold drawings of Elvis Presley printed on them. Less than an hour later the bags were full, including a fresh loaf of bread that he had purchased for an American dollar from a black-market dealer. Leonid was pleased with his acquisitions.

  When he was almost in front of the door of the Nikolai, he had seen the young policeman and woman enter. He had stood patiently for ten minutes till the pair had burst out of the door arguing. The young woman had chased the angry man down the street and Leonid had watched. They had paid no attention to him. When the name Grisha Zalinsky was mentioned, Leonid was perplexed. There was no way he could have been connected to the murder, certainly not so quickly.

  Leonid waited till they were lost in the morning crowd before entering the Nikolai. He had done his job. He wanted no complications. He wanted to collect his pay, go home, have something to eat, and watch television.

  Although he did not put the feeling into words, Leonid was sure that this turn of events, this appearance of two policemen, meant that he would probably have to kill someone else and quite soon. He hoped it was not the pretty Arab girl, but if it was, so be it. Tatyana would know.

  A little over forty miles northwest of the Nikolai in the village of Arkush another murderer was reading a newspaper.

  This murderer, unlike Leonid Dovnik, had a very strong moral sense. Killing the priest had been frightening, but necessary. It had marked a definite end. The killer’s hand had shaken as he waited in the trees. He had been afraid his legs would not carry him into the open to strike, but they had, and he had done what had to be done, and now, a day later, he trembled again.

  His mother had not believed in revenge. Oleg had told him that revenge would give him no satisfaction, and he had believed and put it aside. Then Father Merhum had given him the reason.

  After the murder he had gone home calmly, cleaned the ax, put it away, and sat listening to himself breathe. He wanted to spend the day at his work, but the word of Father Merhum’s death had spread quickly through the village and drawn him into the discussion, the lamenting.

  He had watched television as much as he could, waiting for the news of his deed to appear on TSN. There were no special bulletins. “Vremya,” the nine o’clock news program, did not mention it, and this disturbed him. He wanted the world to know. He wanted word of this death to reach every corner of the stupid new commonwealth.

  This morning he had attended services for the fallen martyr. The four-domed church had been jammed. People had to stand outside, dozens of people, people from as far away as Moscow, weeping, angry people.

  He had slipped away as quietly as possible to be at the train with the others to meet the policemen from Moscow. He was very curious about who they would send and what they would do. He did not fear being caught—at least not very much—but he was curious, and now he stood with the others and watched the train pull in.

  People clambered out, more people than usual, curious, mourning stupid people who had never met the dead priest. And then the ones they were waiting for; a tall pale unblinking figure in black and a squat man who looked like a small refrigerator and walked with a limp.

  He stepped forward with the others to welcome the men and was sure for an instant that the limping man had looked into his eyes and seen something. But the killer did not panic. He told himself that this was the way of a policeman, that the man had certainly looked into the eyes of each of them for that same brief time, looked into their eyes and touched a raw coil of guilt in each of them.

  He smiled sadly and assumed the others around him were looking sad, too. He smiled sadly and did his best to hide his fear of these two men who had come to expose him for a crime that was even more unspeakable than they could imagine.

  SIX

  THE FOUR MEN WHO MET ROSTNIKOV AND KARPO ON the platform of the Arkush train station were a somber lot. The little man with a smile of pain on his face, which Rostnikov soon learned was perpetual, introduced himself as Dmitri Dmitriovich, the mayor of Arkush. His white hair was parted in the middle and he wore a heavy, ancient dark gray wool suit that appeared to be at least a size too big. When Rostnikov took the extended hand, he felt a slight tremor, the first stages of some palsy or a reaction to the events of the past two days.

  Next to introduce himself was Misha Gonsk, who had been the local MVD directorate. He was an overweight man in his late forties who wore a brown uniform and struggled to hold in his ample stomach. Evidently unsure whether he should shake hands or salute, he settled for standing at attention, closing his eyes for an instant, and bowing his head almost imperceptibly to the two visitors.

  As the other two men stepped forward to be introduced, Emil Karpo made notes in his black book. The mayor was disconcerted.

  “Why … I know it is not my place to ask … but why are you taking our names? We are not … this is …”

  When Karpo did not so much as pause in his note taking, the mayor shrugged, touched his hair to be sure that it was still symmetrical, and looked at the two remaining members of the delegation. One of them, a tall man of about fifty, had the strong arms and slouched shoulders of a farmer.

  “My name is Petrov, Vadim Petrov. I was Communist party representative of the Arkush council. Now … who knows?” He faced both policemen squarely and shook hands with a firmness that impressed Rostnikov. “Our mayor is understandably nervous,” Petrov explained. “Crime is unknown in our community.”

  “Not exactly unknown, Petrov,” the policeman, Gonsk, asserted. “In the twenty years I have had the responsibility of enforcing the law in Arkush, there have been many crimes, all of which have been immediately investigated and reported to Moscow. Only last week—and our mayor will confirm this—there was a theft in the marketplace—tomatoes. And last month the toilet seats were taken from the party hall. Two seats.”

  “Grave offenses,” Petrov said dryly. “But now we have a murder. Let me finish the introductions and take you for some tea. This is Peotor Merhum, the son of Father Merhum.”

  Peotor Merhum, solid and handsome with blond hair and a fair complexion, was a sullen young man who did not offer his hand. He barely nodded.

  Petrov, who had clearly taken over leadership of the small band from the bewildered mayor, led the group past the brick ticket booth of the train station to a sidewalk. “There is no point in taking a car,” he said. “Arkush is too small. Tea is waiting for us at the party hall.”

  “From which,” Peotor Merhum added bitterly, “the infamous and important toilet seats were taken. Perhaps in your spare time you can help our town protector”—he glanced at Misha Gonsk—“to find the culprit.”

  “Peotor is our town cynic,” Petrov explained.

  “He is distraught about
his father’s—” the mayor began, but Peotor Merhum cut him off.

  “I am not distraught. Father Vasili Merhum was father to everyone but his son. It is no secret that I was less than dutiful. Why should we present a lie which the police will recognize the moment they talk to any man, woman, or child in Arkush?”

  They were moving slowly because of Rostnikov’s leg, but Peotor kept stepping out ahead. The ample-bellied Gonsk kept pace with Rostnikov. Karpo dropped back a bit to follow and observe. All of the passengers who had gotten off the train had moved ahead of them.

  “They are going to the church,” the mayor explained. “Services for Father Merhum this afternoon. A bishop is in Arkush to conduct the service. A bishop.”

  They passed small ancient houses of wood and stone along me cobbled street. It struck Rostnikov that he had gotten off me train and stepped into the past. The street curved to the right and into the town’s main square where the buildings were no more than two stories high. Behind the buildings to his right was a small forest of brown-and-gray treetops over which he could see the four golden towers of the church.

  In the center of the square stood a pedestal. There was nothing on it.

  “Lenin,” said Vadim Petrov, the party chairman. “Vandals knocked it over during the first days of madness.”

  “A crime our protector of toilets failed to mention,” Peotor Merhum said derisively.

  “I was going to; it was in my report,” Misha Gonsk said quickly, looking back at Karpo to see if he had noted this omission.

  “He isn’t sure of your politics yet,” Peotor Merhum said. “Our Misha is a survivor. He puts both hands in his mouth and holds up all ten fingers to decide which way the wind is blowing.”

  “We are a close-knit and supportive community,” said Petrov, “a big family, as you can see.”

  Peotor shrugged.

  “How old are you, Peotor Merhum?” Rostnikov asked.

  Since these were the policeman’s first words, the four men of the village studied him carefully to determine the meaning of this question.