The Domino Conspiracy

by Joseph Heywood

  “Did you see Zia?” Trubkin unbuttoned his overcoat and loosened his tie.

  The old man rubbed his chin. “Zia?”

  “She’s blond and beautiful.”

  The old man smiled. “They’re all blond and beautiful. Even the boys.” He had several missing teeth and dark eyebrows connected over a bulbous nose.

  “She has a unique voice.”

  The old man nodded several times. “That one? She broke her leg, I think.”

  Trubkin tried to imagine one of Zia’s perfectly shaped legs askew. “Is she all right?”

  “She’ll live, but not as a dancer. Perhaps she can teach now. That’s what most of them do. A few whore for the KGB, but there’s no future in that. She was too tall, I think. The tall ones always get hurt. Too much twisting on too-long legs. A dancer should be short and compact.”

  “Is she in Moscow?”

  The watchman shrugged. “I’m not her father.”

  Circling back to the front of the theater, Trubkin encountered a young man in a red overcoat who fell in step with him and tried to hold his hand. The former cosmonaut backhanded him across the ear, sending him sprawling, then stomped him several times between his legs, leaving the man writhing and whimpering in the snow. “Degenerate,” he said, then spat on the figure in a final expression of disgust. Stalin knew how to deal with homos; Khrushchev was too lenient.

  It had been hot and steamy in the Praga, nearly as stuffy as the public baths, and though he had felt drunk as he chugged vodka after vodka, the effect seemed worse in the cold air. Oxygen-starved blood, he told himself, and bad vodka. There had been an officer there, an ugly Asian who said he recognized him from his cosmonaut days and kept bringing him tall glasses filled with vodka. He had been glad for the recognition and accepted the drinks even though the man was repulsive. At one point the moron had fallen and driven Trubkin backward, his ass striking something sharp. It hurt like hell for a while but now all he had was the pain in his gut. It was this Lumbas thing that was fucking him up, he told himself. Flying was the only thing in his life he had ever done well, and now fate and a substandard constitution had taken that away. To be human was to face losing those things you wanted most. To be Russian was an added burden. He could live with not being the first starman, but not to be able to fly added insult to injury.

  Stopping to get his bearings, Trubkin chided himself for his self-pity. Whining pilots augured their machines into the ground. A pilot had only himself to depend on, and now, just as when he was in the cockpit, he was alone. Zia understood this. He hoped she still had her flat. Where was it? Arbat Street? No, but near there in a puke-green building.

  Though he had once been a heavy drinker, Trubkin had modified his habits; this was the first time in months he had gone over the edge, and it felt uncomfortable and unfamiliar at the same time. Vodka had never given him a pain in his stomach before. Maybe he was falling apart. He had gone to the Praga because it was a favorite hangout for officers, because there was a red-haired Estonian girl there and because Katya had ignored all his calls. Previously the Estonian had eagerly entertained him no matter when he showed up, but tonight she had been cool. “I’ve got my period,” she announced.

  “I don’t mind,” he said.

  “I do,” she snapped.

  So he had settled for the vodkas the crazy Asian kept sending over. Now he was confused; though he seldom remembered street names, he navigated well by landmarks, and right now he needed to find the metro because he didn’t have enough left to pay for a cab. Maybe Zia would be at her place so he could kiss her broken leg and tell her not to worry.

  “Hey, you!” a voice called out.

  The man was in the shadows, and though Trubkin could not focus he saw that he had a uniform. “Fuck off,” he snapped instinctively.

  “You’re weaving. The snake’s got hold of you.”

  “I’m exercising,” Trubkin said. When faced with a uniform it was best to fend it off with brashness.

  “You should get yourself to a sobering station,” the man said, keeping his distance.

  “And you should mind your own damned business.”

  “I wash my hands of you,” the man muttered. “A drunkard gets his due.”

  Trubkin grimaced and stepped into the street, the pains in his stomach stabbing now and coming in fast waves. After a few steps he doubled over to try to relieve the pressure.

  Seconds later the uniformed man heard a sickening crunch and turned to see Trubkin crumpled in the street and a small dark truck racing away with its lights out. The policeman knew before he felt for a pulse that he had a stiff on his hands. A hit-and-run, maybe; it more or less depended upon who did the hitting before a crime could be attributed to the event.

  There was no pulse. The policeman exhaled and gave the body a kick. “Drunkard.” Now the rest of his night would be spent making out reports. Why did deaths require so much more paperwork than births? He was trying to light a cigarette with his frozen hand when he heard a sound, looked up and saw the grille of a truck nearly on top of him. His last thought was, Are Asians allowed to drive in the Chaika lane?

  23 FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 1961, 8:45 A.M.Moscow

  Though his days as a full-time pathologist had long since passed, Dr. Mikhail Gnedin used the dingy mortuary in the Heart Institute’s basement as his personal laboratory. The Heart Institute included a large hospital, some of whose beds were inappropriately filled by Party officials and other notables needing routine care, but mostly it was the central receiving point for interesting, difficult and perplexing cases from all over the Soviet Union and its satellites. Hanging over the entrance to the laboratory was a piece of parchment in a glassed frame whose Latin words meant little to most of those who saw them. “Taceat colloquia. Effugiat resis. Hic locus est ubi mors guadet succurrere vitale” Gnedin not only understood the words but lived by them. “Let conversation cease. Let laughter flee. This is the place where death delights to help the living.” It had been this that had first attracted him to pathology, and now as a heart specialist he found that he still learned more from cold bodies than from warm ones.

  Gnedin’s status entitled him to ultramodern facilities in one of the new wings, but he chose to remain in the old basement; surroundings didn’t count for much with him. His colleagues considered him a genius, not merely because of his hands during surgery, but, more important, because of his intellectual capacity. Currently he was studying the hypothesis that an unknown chemical fraction of blood regulated the clotting process. His less able colleagues considered the theory far-fetched to the point of foolishness, but they also knew better than to doubt his oft-proven scientific instincts. The man had the nose of a bloodhound. What the others didn’t know was that Gnedin had learned that two scientists, one English and the other American, were close to determining the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA; this discovery, he believed, would open the door to the eventual delineation of a complete “map” of human genes. Through this, scientists would be able to isolate and identify substances now unknown, and with these, or modifications of them, they would be able to conquer diseases in dramatic ways. As yet he had no evidence that his theoretical clotting factor existed; rather, he deduced its existence. Eventually, he was certain, such a substance, or even a family of them, would be revealed, and then it would be possible to reduce the high mortality associated with heart disease in the U.S.S.R. His countrymen had the worst dietary habits imaginable, and were paying the ultimate price for it.

  Gnedin had been looking forward to this morning. For the first time in weeks there were no meetings to attend; originally the entire day had been committed, but inexplicably all appointments had been canceled and he found himself with the rare gift of free time. Before starting work, he boiled water in a glass beaker over a Bunsen burner; with a fresh cup of tea in front of him, he opened a journal to read, then heard a woman’s high heels in the hall.

  His secretary came stumbling in. Her straight skirt was so tight t
hat she had to hike it above her knees in order to walk. Her face was flushed, there was sweat on her forehead, and she was wild-eyed. Normally Frumkina was a nonstop talker, but now she appeared tongue-tied and flustered. Gnedin liked the change. “What do you want?”

  She pointed down the hall, then burst into tears and ran out of the laboratory. Gnedin was long past the point of being surprised by her antics; nothing his harebrained secretary did surprised him. Still, something or someone had addled her.

  Soon there were more sounds in the hall indicating the approach of more than one person. Two large men in black leather overcoats and fur shapkas strode purposefully through the entrance together and stepped apart. A short, fat man wearing a heavy overcoat and carrying a gray fedora entered between them. “Good morning, Comrade Doctor. Your secretary said you were hibernating in your laboratory. She’s much more emotional than the sort I would expect a noted scientist to select.”

  Gnedin had known Nikita Khrushchev for several years. At one point he had done an evaluation of the health benefits of corn oil for the Soviet leader. A countrywide plan to install corn in previously untilled areas had been prepared, but Khrushchev had been concerned that the Soviet people would not accept corn and its by-products as staples. He asked Gnedin to evaluate the nutritional value of the oil; with this he could herald the products and ensure their use. Gnedin’s report showed that fats in corn oil would contribute to atherosclerotic and cardiovascular disease. Khrushchev’s people did not alter the report; instead it simply disappeared. Such was the expedience of politics.

  “She wasn’t my choice,” Gnedin answered.

  Khrushchev sat on a stool; he had short, wide feet hidden in brown oxfords buffed to a bright sheen. “That is as it should be. Our scientists shouldn’t be bothered with such mundane tasks as hiring office personnel.”

  “Poor choices reduce productivity.”

  Khrushchev shook a stubby finger at the doctor. “But you are one of the most productive scientists we have.”

  “I would be even more efficient with competent support.”

  “She has beautiful legs.”

  “And a brain the size of an almond.”

  “Don’t complain,” Khrushchev scolded. “I need your services again.”

  “Another report to be ignored?” Gnedin asked sarcastically.

  Khrushchev brushed the remark aside. “I’m told that before you got interested in hearts you were a first-rate pathologist.”

  “The two interests often intersect.” Petrov had once told Gnedin that he had become a pathologist in order to defeat death, but that if he wanted to truly serve mankind he would do better to focus on life. In part it was this that had turned Gnedin’s interest to cardiovascular circuitry. The Latin saying had been a gift from his former leader and mentor.

  “Two bodies are being brought in. I want autopsies.”

  “The city medical examiner is better qualified.”

  “But I want you to personally take care of it. I want the truth.”

  “So it can be ignored again?”

  Khrushchev stepped toward the door and lowered his voice. “Self-righteousness is a luxury, comrade. It’s one thing to know the truth and disregard it for a higher purpose; it’s yet another to be ignorant of the truth. Just give me the facts. That’s your job, and it’s enough for any man.”

  Gnedin was in no mood to argue; in any event, if the General Secretary wanted him to do autopsies, he would do them. “To do it correctly will require time.”

  “Do what is necessary,” Khrushchev said. “The men were struck by a vehicle.”

  “When?”

  “Sometime last night. They were found this morning by a snow-removal crew.”

  “If you know that much, then autopsies are unnecessary,” Gnedin said.

  “I’ll decide what’s necessary. You give them your best professional attention.” Perhaps the death of Trubkin was a simple accident, but a lifetime of intrigue had created an innate sense of caution in the General Secretary. To stay alive you learned to question everything. Trubkin had been his man in the Lumbas investigation. There had been virtually no progress in uncovering the identity of the person who had forged his signature; now his man was dead, and Trubkin was not the sort to get run down in a snowy street. An autopsy would either put his mind at ease or confirm his suspicions.

  The corpses were in a mortuary room down the hall from Gnedin’s laboratory. Their clothes had been removed and they rested side by side on marble tables. A man in a dark gray militia uniform was standing between the tables, his arms crossed. “This is not according to procedure,” he whined to Gnedin. He had oily black hair and a thick mustache.

  “You found the deceased?”

  “I’d just gone off duty. Can you imagine? They called me back. My girlfriend and I had the flat to ourselves for the first time since Stalin was a Catholic. This was to be a day off. Her parents are on a retreat. So what happens? I get called back to baby-sit stiffs. The one on the left is one of ours. A real horse’s ass, holier-than-thou, probably a damned closet Baptist. Couldn’t get along with anyone. Better dead than Red,” he added, quoting a joke that was said to be in vogue in the West.

  “And the other one?”

  The militiaman shrugged. “We have his identity card. A major in the air force. A pilot. Looks like he flew a bit too low this time.” He waited in vain for a reaction to his joke.

  “Site photos?”

  “In the envelope.” The man pointed to a brown packet on a wooden desk in the corner.

  “Was the medical examiner called?”

  “The names were called in to the station. Later we were told to bring them down here.” The militiaman had known enough not to question such departures from established procedure.

  Gnedin looked briefly at the photographs, then turned to the bodies. Massive trauma was obvious, and it was equally evident that a vehicle not only had struck them but had run over each of them.

  “Any idea why they were together?”

  “None,” the militiaman said. Probably Dimitri was being his usual interfering self, putting his nose where it didn’t belong, but he had no intention of offering this opinion. His job was to deliver the bodies and he had done so; now all he wanted was to get back to Galya, who had taken the interruption personally and screamed at him. If this took much longer she would lose patience and find company with one of her other boyfriends. There were lots of them; Galya was not much to look at, but she knew how to please men.

  Gnedin dismissed the militiaman, then put on a full-length rubber apron, pulled on his rubber gloves, made sure that the recording system was on and began the autopsies by describing the obvious facts about the condition, size and appearance of the two bodies. At first he found nothing unusual, but then he noticed something about one of the bodies. The flesh was splotched and slightly blue. Instinct took over. The external examination was complete; it was time to look inside and take blood and tissue specimens for analysis, but something told him to be cautious and call for assistance. Another set of eyes always helped. A phone call brought Boris Topolar shuffling into the laboratory twenty minutes later.

  Topolar was a toxicologist whose professional skills Gnedin respected. He was nearly seventy years old, an obese man who had survived a stroke and ten years in a psychiatric clinic, not because of mental disease but because the Stalin regime had ruled him politically unreliable. He used two sturdy oak canes to help move his bulk around. His face was always red and the slightest exertion left him gasping for breath. A diabetic, he had lost a toe to gangrene, and now he wore canvas shoes with the tips cut away.

  Topolar lowered himself onto a stool and breathed hard. “This had better be interesting,” he said. “I nearly killed myself getting down here.”

  “With all your problems you should have been dead long ago.”

  “Attitude, my dear Gnedin, attitude. I live because I have will. What little puzzle do you have for me? Have you killed another of your patients?
”

  Gnedin pointed to the taller of the corpses. “What do you see?”

  “An immovable object that encountered the proverbial irresistible force. Messy. Truck or bus?”

  Gnedin ignored the question. “Is that all?”

  Topolar pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and blew his nose loudly. “Epidermal cyanosis.”

  “What would you guess?”

  “I make it a practice not to guess,” the toxicologist said testily. “I leave hypotheses to the young. My world is analysis. Chemistry tells all.” He used his canes to stand, then bent close to the body and sniffed like a dog. “Ethyl alcohol. I’d guess high blood levels. Our cold friend here was no doubt soused. Alcohol-induced cyanosis. The color of the flesh suggests it.”

  “That’s your professional opinion?”

  “Urn,” Topolar said. “I’m thinking aloud. When I have a conclusion, I’ll label it so.” He moved to the other side of the table. “Can we roll our friend onto his stomach?”

  Gnedin turned the corpse over and Topolar poked the buttocks with his finger. “Um,” he said again. “Fetch me a scalpel.”

  The instrument looked like a butter knife in Topolar’s fat hands, but he deftly scraped the flesh in several places. As he worked, he muttered unintelligibly to himself from time to time, until finally he smiled, took off his glasses, blotted at the lenses with the same handkerchief he had blown his nose into, replaced the eyeglasses and looked up at his colleague. “Voilà, my dear Gnedin.”

  “What do you see?”

  “An injection site, I would think, but your hands are steadier than mine. If you will kindly come over and cut here, I believe we can make short work of your little mystery.”

  Gnedin made a vertical incision into the gluteal tissue and peeled back the muscle with forceps. Topolar was correct. There was a clearly marked needle path.

  “Aminazine,” the toxicologist declared. “Intramuscular injection. The skin discoloration is typical. An overly generous dose, no doubt. Our friend here must have been in agony. The tissue should be tested, but I’m certain it’s aminazine.”