Death Of A Russian Priest

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Sasha did not want to talk. He held the pole, ignored Elena, and looked out the window at the disabled cars and sagging power lines. Billboards along the way promised foreign luxuries—Volvos, Sharp computers, Mars bars, 7UP, M&M’s—few could afford.

  As they passed the Bolshoi Opera House Sasha could see the scaffolding and boards that covered the giant sculpted horses atop the building. Work had begun on repairing the horses almost a year ago. Perhaps now it would never be completed. He had seen the horses two or three times a week for his entire life, but at the moment could not remember how many of them there were.

  He considered asking Elena, but his attention was caught by the policeman in the corner stokinglass, the glass-enclosed traffic station on the corner. The man, bundled in his gray coat, was changing the light from red to green.

  “Here,” Elena said, touching his shoulder.

  They got off the bus and emerged into the chill daylight. The dark 1905 Revolution sculpture was behind them. In front of them were the dark streets that hid the crumbling apartment buildings from the eyes of tourists.

  Tkach found himself walking very slowly.

  One block along they turned a corner and found themselves in a narrow dirty street with concrete-block buildings and cracked sidewalks. They stepped around a place where the sidewalk seemed to have erupted.

  At the next corner a group of men and women shifted from one foot to another as a scrawny man badly in need of a shave played an out-of-tune accordion.

  Sasha and Elena crossed the street and moved past a pile of dirty concrete blocks intended at one time for some now-forgotten project. They stopped just in front of the building beyond the dirty concrete. Katrina Velikanova lived in an eight-story apartment building very much like this.

  Elena started to speak, but Sasha spoke first. “Do not say it. I am not going home.”

  She closed her eyes to show that she accepted and they moved on. Katrina Velikanova’s apartment was on the eighth floor, and of course the apartment had no elevator.

  “Does he feel like this every time he walks up stairs?” Sasha asked as they moved upward.

  “He?”

  “Porfiry Petrovich. His leg.”

  When they reached the top floor and found the right door, the young woman who opened it insisted on carefully inspecting their identification. “You look nothing like your picture,” she said, examining Sasha’s battered face.

  “I’ve been ill,” he said.

  She was pretty and looked no older than sixteen. She was also very frightened but determined to hide it. “What happened to you?” she asked, letting them in.

  “Encounter with a reluctant witness,” said Elena.

  The apartment was incredibly tiny, a cell papered in bright yellow with orange flowers.

  “You want to sit?” Katrina Velikanova asked, removing her hands from her hips and folding them in front of her.

  “No,” Sasha said.

  “What do you want?” she said. On a table in the corner sat about twenty porcelain dogs of various sizes and breeds. She picked up a terrier and rubbed it with her thumb.

  “Do you work?” asked Elena.

  “Of course,” she said. “I told you when you called that I had to get to work.”

  “Where?” asked Sasha.

  “The House of Friendship with People of Other Countries,” she said. “I can speak Romanian and Czech. My mother was Romanian. You don’t believe me?”

  “We believe you,” said Elena. She realized that the girl was not terribly bright.

  “You are here about Amira,” the girl said.

  Elena and Sasha glanced at each other.

  “What makes you—” Elena began, but Katrina put down the dog and said, “The other one sent you. You are the follow-up and I—”

  “The other one?” asked Elena.

  “The cop,” she said. “This morning. I’ve seen the movies. My boyfriend has a television.”

  “Did he show you his identification, this other policeman?” asked Sasha.

  “No, I just … that’s why I wanted to see yours. He wasn’t—”

  “What did he look like?” asked Elena, taking out her notebook.

  “He wasn’t a policeman?”

  “What did he look like?” Elena repeated.

  “Big. Like this.” She formed a large rectangle with her hands. “Nose was flat like that actor.”

  “Tabakov?”

  “No, the Frenchman. It doesn’t matter,” she said, picking up another dog. “He was wearing a leather jacket like the Frenchman wears.”

  Elena remembered the man in the Nikolai. When he came through the beaded curtains, he had looked as if he were going to charge at Inspector Rostnikov. He had looked directly into Elena’s eyes.

  “What did he want?” asked Sasha.

  “He wanted to know if I knew where Amira was. I told him I didn’t know. He asked if I knew any of her friends. He said she might be in trouble and he wanted to help her.”

  “So?” asked Elena.

  “I told him what I know. It’s not much. I only saw her at the Nikolai a few times. With Grisha Zalinsky and with the Englishman.”

  “American,” Sasha said.

  “No, Englishman. I hear enough English and Americans trying to speak Russian. This was an Englishman.”

  “Paul Harbing,” said Elena.

  “Paul Harbing?” said the girl, looking up at her. “I don’t know any Paul Harbing. His name was—wait, he only said it once when we were introduced, but I have a good memory. I need it in my work. I took the memory course at the … Chesney, Peter. Peter Chesney.”

  “You are sure?” asked Elena.

  “I am sure. Peter Chesney.”

  “You know where Peter Chesney lives?” asked Sasha.

  “No, why should I know that? What’s wrong with Amira?”

  “Nothing,” said Elena.

  “Nothing. That’s why people keep knocking down my door and threatening me.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Velikanova,” said Elena.

  “Now I am Comrade Velikanova,” said the girl. “I’m glad someone knows what we can call each other now. My mother has gone back to ‘gospodin,’ friend. My boss still says ‘tovarish.’ Can Comrade Velikanova ask you to call her boss and tell him why she is late?”

  “Yes,” said Sasha. “On one condition.”

  “One condition,” said the girl, hands back on her hips.

  “Our names,” he said. “What are our names? We identified ourselves to you when we came through the door.”

  “You are Sasha Tkach. She is Elena Timofeyeva.”

  “And you are right,” said Sasha. “Where is your phone?”

  “Phone? Do I look like I can afford a phone?”

  When they got back to the street, Elena said, “Tatyana purposely gave us a false name?”

  “Perhaps. Probably.”

  “Because she thinks Chesney knows where the girl is. But someone was bound to tell us about him. Tatyana knew that someone—”

  Sasha said, “Then she could claim that she got the Englishman’s name wrong.”

  “And she gains—”

  “—time,” Sasha concluded.

  “We should find an Englishman named Peter Chesney quickly.”

  “We should,” Tkach agreed.

  “You want me to give you some help?” asked Elena. She reached out to take his arm as a quartet of arguing women hurried by on their way toward the trolley stop.

  “Get a cab,” he said. “Porfiry Petrovich will approve the fare.”

  Through a window of the Byelorussian railway station Leonid Dovnik had a clear view of Mayakovsky Square and the heavy traffic coming across the bridge on what he still thought of as Leningrad Prospekt. He had noted when he entered the station almost an hour earlier that the clock above the entrance was broken, but his cherished American Timex told him it was almost noon.

  He had found the Englishman Chesney with no difficulty. He had simply called the
British embassy, identified himself as a Russian businessman, and expressed interest in talking to a Peter Chesney about a possible import arrangement. He willingly gave a number where he could be reached and said his business was rather urgent and that he would soon have to leave for the German embassy. The British had no reason to doubt him. If Dovnik were MVD or any other branch, he would not have needed the embassy.

  The British woman had called back within ten minutes and told him the phone number and address of the trade office where Chesney could be found.

  He had called the office to be sure that Chesney was in and then had gone to wait for him, the photograph he had taken from Chesney’s room safely in the pocket of his near-leather jacket. Chesney had emerged from the office building, briefcase in hand, just before eleven.

  Leonid had followed him on the green line of the metro, looking for an opportunity to get the man alone. None had arisen, and now he stood patiently watching the traffic go by. Through breaks in the traffic he could see the Englishman standing below the statue of the poet Mayakovsky, who, with his left hand in his pocket, looked silently down at the automobiles.

  Chesney waited on the open, treeless concrete island for no more than five minutes before two men appeared. Leonid Dovnik reached into his pocket, pulled out his glasses, and put them on to get a better view.

  The two men wore dark tailored suits. They stood close to Chesney and glanced around as they spoke. One of them looked directly across at Leonid, who stepped back from the window.

  The conversation among the three took no more than three minutes and then the two men shook hands with Chesney and walked away.

  Chesney looked around, then headed across the busy street toward the metro station. Leonid decided to make his move. He would hurry ahead of the Englishman and encounter him before he went down the escalator. Using his knife, he would guide him to a delivery entrance of the Sofia Restaurant, where they could be alone. Then Leonid Dovnik would persuade Chesney to tell him where the girl could be found.

  He hurried toward the exit, trying to keep track of Chesney through the steamy windows. He did not see the man who stepped in front of him till they almost collided.

  “Out of the way,” Dovnik said, putting up a hand to push the man aside.

  Another man appeared to block the way. Leonid stopped and looked at the two men before him. They resembled the two who had just met with Chesney. Leonid’s quarry, meanwhile, was getting away.

  “We would like to discuss a business proposition with you,” one of the men said. He had a thick accent.

  It was one of the busiest railway stations in Moscow, and people were streaming past them. Leonid was about to throw the men aside and make a path for himself when he realized that the two men who had been across the square moments ago were a dozen yards away and moving toward him. Leonid put both hands in his jacket pockets and found his switchblade. He had purchased it for more rubles than it was worth, but it had been a prize he could not resist.

  “Will you please accompany us?” one of the men said, pulling his hand out of his pocket just enough to reveal a pistol.

  “You won’t shoot that here,” Leonid said.

  “You have three seconds to walk with us,” the man said. “If you are not walking, I shall shoot you.”

  And Leonid knew that it was so. “A proposition?” he asked.

  “A proposition,” the man with the pistol agreed.

  Leonid shrugged and removed his hand from his pocket. The knife eased down comfortably against his ribs.

  People were watching them. A family of four stopped arguing to glance at them, then resumed their quarrel. There were conspiracies being hatched in bars and public buildings and on the streets throughout the city these days, and the people who moved past them had their own thoughts and needs.

  When they were outside on the Garden Ring Road, a large black car pulled up to the curb. The car’s windows were dark. The backdoor swung open, and as Leonid Dovnik was guided in he wondered whether he should fight and run. The desire to fight, however, was overcome by his curiosity. He got in without a word and the car sped into the noon traffic with a blast of the horn.

  Rostnikov heard a noise outside the party hall and the door sprang open. Four men entered. Two of them were ancient, and one of them—who could have been any age from sixteen to thirty—was obviously retarded. The fourth man was sullen and bewildered. They were followed by Officer Misha Gonsk.

  “Here they are,” Gonsk announced triumphantly.

  “I see,” said Rostnikov, rising and putting Karpo’s report down on the table. “Who are they?”

  “The Olegs,” Gonsk announced. “All the Olegs in Arkush, except the children.”

  “You have done a wondrous job, tovarish,” said Rostnikov. Karpo had told him of the nun’s assurance that it was not an Oleg who had killed the priest and that none of the Olegs in Arkush was the one the dying priest had mentioned. Karpo had believed her, and Rostnikov had accepted his belief. The dying priest’s Oleg might well be important, but he was not one of the frightened men who had entered the room.

  “Would you gentlemen like tea?”

  The old men moved forward to accept a cup from the policeman. The sullen man shouted, “What is this about? I just got back to town an hour ago. I’ve been in Moscow for five days trying to sell my wife’s preserves.”

  “Is that true, Officer Gonsk?” asked Rostnikov.

  “It seems so,” said Gonsk, keeping a wary eye on the four, particularly the retarded one, who was smiling at him.

  “Seems so?” said the businessman. “You can talk to my cousins, the—look at my train tickets.”

  “Did you know Father Merhum and Sister Nina?”

  “Everyone knew them,” the man said. “I’m a religious man. My family is religious.”

  “A month ago he was a party member and an atheist,” said one of the two old men drinking tea.

  “They lie,” said the businessman. “I only pretended.”

  “Your whole life?” said the other old Oleg.

  “A great actor,” said the first Oleg.

  “A what’s-his-name, a Cary Gable.”

  “Inspector,” cried the business Oleg.

  Rostnikov put his finger to his lips to quiet the business Oleg and then motioned to the retarded Oleg, who ambled toward him, smiling. Rostnikov sat him down and poured him a cup of tea. “Gonsk,” he said. “Go in the kitchen. Find them something to eat. Cookies, something. Then take them home.”

  “You don’t understand, Inspector. These are the only Olegs in Arkush. There are no others.”

  “Then we must look in Minsk,” said Rostnikov.

  “Minsk? Why Minsk?” asked Gonsk.

  “At the moment it is as likely a place as any,” said Rostnikov.

  “Minsk?”

  “It is a joke,” said Rostnikov.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Please, get the cookies.”

  Gonsk, a befuddled look on his face, headed toward the kitchen.

  “When you come back,” Rostnikov said, “I want you to find Inspector Karpo.”

  Gonsk nodded, and Rostnikov picked up the reports Karpo had prepared for him on five men of Arkush, including the missing Peotor Merhum. He had read them once and would now read them again to be reasonably certain of the conclusion he was beginning to draw.

  “You may go,” Rostnikov said, looking up at the business Oleg, who seemed to be waiting.

  “You told Officer Gonsk to get some cookies,” he said softly. “I thought …”

  Rostnikov pointed to an open chair next to the retarded Oleg.

  Sasha and Elena entered the apartment of Peter Chesney just after one in the afternoon. They had found that he was, indeed, British and they had located the office from which he worked. The problem was that Chesney was not there, nor was he expected back.

  They had then gone to the apartment and knocked at the door. Peter Chesney opened it.

  “We would like
to ask you a few questions,” said Elena. “We are the police.”

  Chesney was dressed in a perfectly pressed dark suit, a neatly ironed white shirt, and military gloss-black shoes. His tie was striped with a pearl tie pin property centered. Unfortunately Chesney’s silver hair was a mess and his face pale. “What happened to you?” he asked, looking at Sasha and stepping back so they could enter.

  “I did not pay sufficient attention to my business,” said Sasha. “I do not intend to make the same mistake again. We have some questions for you.”

  “Look, someone has been through my apartment,” Chesney said, ignoring the policeman and waving his hand at the overturned mess on the floor. “I am a citizen of the United Kingdom. This is intolerable. Can either of you speak a civilized language? I find it difficult to express my anger in Russian. Actually I find it difficult to express anything in Russian.”

  Elena and Sasha looked around the room. It bore a marked resemblance to the mess they had seen in the apartment of Grisha Zalinsky.

  “French,” said Sasha.

  “German and English,” said Elena.

  “Good,” said Chesney in English. He sat down on the sofa.

  “I speak no English,” said Sasha. “It is best if we speak Russian. We will be tolerant.”

  “Since when?” Chesney said in English, and then, reluctantly, in Russian he said, “All right. Someone broke into my apartment. What will you do about it? At least I can say that you came promptly.”

  “We did not come in answer to your complaint,” said Elena. “We are looking for Amira Durahaman.”

  It was possible for Chesney to get a bit more pale, but just a bit. He achieved the state instantly. “I’m sorry. I don’t—”

  “You were seen with her at the Nikolai,” said Elena.

  “Many times,” said Sasha, opening his book and looking at a page of notes he could not see clearly with his one good eye. Since he was only pretending to read, it made no difference. “We have six witnesses who have given sworn testimony that you and the girl are lovers,” he lied.

  “And,” Elena added, “two of your neighbors have positively identified her as having been here overnight on three occasions at least.”

  “Well, perhaps I …So what if she did?” Chesney was recovering a bit. He got up from the sofa feigning indignation.