The Case of the General's Thumb

by Andrei Kurkov

  “Snickers.”

  “Give me four.”

  “You promised to explain,” Sakhno grumbled.

  “I will when you’re more yourself. Just now, we’ve a train to catch. Bring the cases.”

  Reluctantly, Sakhno got up, pocketed the cassette, picked up the cases, and made unsteadily for the door.

  18

  Viktor’s round of the restaurants proved unproductive.

  The Kozak waiters were reluctant to say anything beyond a “No, don’t remember”, almost before looking at his photograph of Bronitsky.

  At the Mlyn, the manager checked his receipts for May 20th and shook his head. According to a waitress, only two tables had been taken: one by prostitutes celebrating a birthday, the other by men celebrating something else. There’d been no order for caviar pancakes.

  The manager and waiters at the Moskva were more welcoming. No one recognized Bronitsky, but that, as someone said, meant nothing, given that there had been a banquet for forty that evening, and people at other tables. Caviar pancakes had indeed been ordered by the banquet party, but in celebration of a wedding anniversary, and that ruled out Bronitsky.

  Viktor went early to the funeral, intending to present the widow with white arum lilies, observe the mourners, meet the son, and Ivin, from whom to learn something of Bronitsky, the Defence Consultant – a dismissive “Bronitsky’s death has got damn all to do with his place of work!” from Georgiy notwithstanding.

  “Meaning what?” he’d demanded, but Georgiy had rung off.

  Stuck in a tailback at the turn off for Pechersk, he wondered what the hell was he really supposed to be doing.

  Who was he, this Georgiy? Security? That would be logical, but then why all this communication by phone? And why with him, a mere lieutenant concerned with petty street crime? Security had its own special agents. The militia didn’t. Too easily bribed. As he might have been, if given special status!

  At the next set of lights, he gave up pondering the imponderable, turned his thoughts to the day ahead, and visualizing a fine bronze-handled coffin, switched to the solemn mood appropriate to joining the mourners of one who had departed, or more accurately, flown, this life.

  Parking well away from the entrance of the Bronitsky residence, he took from the back seat his tribute of arum lilies.

  The door was opened by Widow Bronitsky, all in black, wearing a brooch of black malachite, and weeping as if only just apprised of her husband’s demise. The flat was a hive of female activity. An electric mixer could be heard grinding away. Mince was being wrapped in cabbage leaves for the indispensable funeral rissoles.

  Exchanging bows with an elderly man – introductions not being the custom at funerals – Viktor settled himself in a corner of the sitting room.

  The elderly man, whose shoes bore muddy signs of a journey, sidled over to the armchair next to his.

  “Would you be a colleague of Vadim’s, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’ve had more to do with his widow,” Viktor said, conscious of the ambiguity.

  “Colleague of Yelena’s, then,” he said. “I’m his Dad. Ex-miner. Donyetsk region. His Mum couldn’t come. She’s paralysed. Looks like they’re late with the body.”

  He directed his gaze to the large wall clock framed in polished wood.

  “Better see what’s happening in the kitchen,” he said, getting to his feet.

  “Has the son flown back?” Viktor asked.

  “Son?” His face took on a haggard look. “It costs a bit to fly from England. No, he hasn’t.”

  The bus with the body arrived at the entrance half an hour late. A splendid coffin of what looked like mahogany was carried from it and placed on two stools.

  Viktor stood slightly apart, observing. There were not all that many mourners – perhaps fifty in all – and the cortège was surprisingly modest: two spick-and-span coaches, a black Volga, and a few Zhigulis.

  The coffin was returned to its bus, the cortège moved off, and Viktor made for his Mazda, surprised at there being no religious ceremony.

  A half-hour crawl brought them to the Baykov Cemetery, where they were joined by a few other mourners bearing flowers and wreaths.

  With the grave filled, the mound formed, and the labourers off the scene, there was a passing round of plastic mugs of vodka and meat pirozhki. Viktor accepted a glass, which he surreptitiously poured away. As well as Bronitsky senior, two earnest-looking men in expensive suits and several women were in attendance on the widow, who, a little later, made her way from mourner to mourner inviting them to the wake.

  Again Viktor followed behind, but now at a faster pace.

  Seated at the funeral board, Viktor looked about for the two men who had been standing with the widow, but they were nowhere to be seen.

  After a few vodkas, people quietly took themselves off. Bronitsky senior alone seemed set to sit on over his cabbage rissoles, chops, sandwiches and roast chicken. Viktor felt sorry for him. It was as if he, the old Donyetsk miner, had died, not his son.

  When no more than a handful were left at table, Viktor asked gently after Ivin.

  For a moment Widow Bronitsky seemed at a loss.

  “Gone to his hotel. He’s got a train to catch.”

  “Which hotel is that?”

  “The Moskva.”

  Ivin had returned his keys an hour earlier, Viktor was told at reception, but since he’d paid for a second night, he might well be back.

  “You have, I take it, a record of everyone who has stayed here.”

  “Of course.”

  Returning with chocolates from the foyer kiosk, he asked whether a Maksim Ivin had stayed in the second half of May.

  The receptionist consulted a ledger.

  “Yes,” she said at last, “18th to the 21st.”

  “Single room?”

  “Double, but he was alone.”

  19

  Nik expended his surplus of Belarusian currency on the luxury of a sleeper for two. Sakhno, having persuaded Nik to stock up with three of vodka and three of wine, was travelling recumbent. The allowance for travellers crossing into Poland being one bottle of wine, one of spirits per person, or of three bottles per person for two travelling together, Sakhno had made the best choice. And now, having discarded an empty vodka bottle under the table and deposited two passports – his dog-eared one and another of Soviet foreign-travel vintage – on it, he was in his bunk snoring and twisting from side to side. Nik examined the red-covered newcomer. Valid for three more months, it had Czechoslovak, then simply Czech, visas adorning almost every page, the last for ten days in April. At that moment a young border guard entered in quest of passports and tourist vouchers.

  Ten minutes later, the coaches were uncoupled and lifted on jacks for the bogies to be removed, rolled away and replaced by bogies of Western gauge.

  Nik lay on his bunk trying without much success to calculate just how far Brest was from Dushanbe, then fell to thinking of his wife and son, and the great, slow-moving expanse of the Volga at Saratov. Till now the frontiers between him, Tanya and Volodya had been of the homely, knowable variety, but in less than an hour, it would be different. Belarus, the whole Soviet Union that once was, like everything else, would be behind him. From then on there would be the anticipation of returning. But where to? Saratov? Kiev? In Saratov he had his nearest and dearest; in Kiev the promise of a flat. Once he had a flat, they could come, he’d meet them at the station, take them home in a taxi. But in what sort of a block? How many floors? On which would theirs be? Third would be best. A third-floor flat with a room for Volodya was what he’d ask for. Now the boy had left school, he’d need a room of his own to bring friends and girls back to …

  The carriage began its noisy descent, connected with the new bogies, then rocked this way and that until finally reunited with them.

  Fifteen minutes later the border guard returned their passports. The train slipped from the floodlit glare westwards into the night, and Sakhno slept
on.

  Waking to his companion’s snoring and a Polish dawn, Nik saw that their passports had been dealt with while they slept, and was grateful for the consideration shown.

  Fields, villages flashed by to the accompaniment of Sakhno’s snores, and the further they travelled, the bigger and better the houses became.

  Suddenly, eyes still tight shut, Sakhno reached under the table, setting the empty vodka bottle rolling before locating his carrier of provisions for the journey. From this he took a length of smoked sausage, consumed a considerable portion, skin and all, deposited the remainder on the table beside the passports, and was soon asleep and snoring again.

  After returning the sausage to its carrier bag to prevent its falling to the floor, Nik dressed, stowed his bedding away, and sat by the window, entranced by the fleeting scene, and drinking the two cups of tea brought by the conductress.

  In Warsaw, where they stopped for twenty minutes, Sakhno woke, shook his head and listened to the loudspeaker announcements.

  “What are they saying?”

  “It’s Polish.”

  “Fat lot of use you are,” Sakhno grinned.

  As they travelled on, Sakhno proposed opening a second bottle of vodka, but when Nik demurred, didn’t argue.

  “Where are we going?” he asked.

  “Poznan.”

  “What the hell is it you want me for?”

  “A job. Do it, collect your share, and that’s it.”

  “And that’s why you got me out from under back there?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Right,” was the surprisingly limp response, followed, with a grin, by “I daresay I’ll survive, if others don’t”.

  Nik seemed suddenly to see it all. He was interpreter-factotum, Sakhno was hitman. They were an operational team. Their abstract objective having been set by Ivan Lvovich, they would now receive concrete instructions from Wozniak in Poznan.

  Phoned from the station, Wozniak said he would pick them up. They were to wait by the taxi rank. They then sat sunning themselves for a good half hour before he turned up, in an ancient Mercedes, and whisked them off to a little café on the outskirts, where they were quickly served with beer and plates of salad. Stocky, moon-faced, he inquired politely about Kiev, and Sakhno spoke animatedly of new shops and restaurants while Nik kept prudently silent. A pork and cabbage dish came, and more beer.

  “Going to give Polish vodka a try?” Wozniak asked Sakhno, who perked up visibly.

  “And would you mind savouring it over there, while Nik and I talk business.”

  “No problem,” said Sakhno getting to his feet, and moving to the corner table, to which Wozniak brought vodka and pickled cucumber from the bar.

  “Stick these away till later,” Wozniak said returning to Nik and slipping him two blue passports.

  “They’re in the names of Niko Tsensky and Ivo Sakhnich, citizens of the new Yugoslavia, with visas for Germany. There’s DM three thousand each in these envelopes. In an hour from now you take the electric train to Germany. Speak German?”

  “I studied it.”

  “In Berlin – the tickets are in the passports – you change for Koblenz. In Koblenz you stay at the Hotel Mauer. It’s cheap, good and no distance from the station. There you sit back and wait to be contacted.”

  “Who by?”

  “Don’t worry, he’ll be one of us. And how are you getting on, you two?” he asked, inclining his head to where Sakhno sat staring at an empty glass.

  Nik said nothing.

  Wozniak smiled.

  “Good luck, anyway! Though God knows what with. My part’s played. We’d better be off.”

  Wearily, reluctantly, Sakhno rose and joined them.

  20

  Viktor’s plans for the funeral had come to nothing, and but for the discovery of Ivin’s earlier stay in Kiev, the day would have been a complete loss. At least his direct or indirect involvement in Bronitsky’s death now seemed as good as proved.

  Viktor walked for an hour or so before returning to the Moskva, where he had left his car. He looked into the foyer. The receptionist was now a middle-aged brunette with hair lacquered into a balloon-like eminence.

  “Where can I get a coffee?”

  “The fourth-floor buffet, if it’s good coffee you want.”

  The coffee came with a tiny bar of chocolate. He ordered a second cup, and while waiting, moved to a window seat. There was the Coca-Cola balloon, and there, opposite the Central Post Office, the State Vehicle Inspection booth.

  As he left, he glanced at the menu. Apart from sweets, beverages and drinks, one could have chops, chips, chicken and, to his amazement, red caviar pancakes!

  Instead of going to his car, he made his way over to the little enclosure formed by red road barriers, and found that the balloon cable was attached to one of three large gas cylinders. There was no-one keeping an eye on them.

  Carrying on down to the fountains, he crossed to the SVI booth on the other side of the square, to see how conspicuous the balloon was from there. It was, very. He’d done well, he decided. Now to Moscow, to tackle Ivin.

  “Go for two days,” said Georgiy, when Viktor phoned him that evening.

  “The tickets will reach you at District tomorrow morning. But if you sense Ivin is involved, arrange to meet again, and come straight back.”

  While waiting for his tickets, Viktor sent for Zanozin, instructing him to check who, on the night of the 20th-21st, was on SVI duty, Independence Square, then interview him.

  He then phoned Ratko and invited him to coffee.

  “Very grand all of a sudden! Got sugar?”

  “Yes, Major.”

  “On my way.”

  Viktor kicked his overnight bag under the table. He had yet to break it to Ratko that he was off to Moscow that evening.

  21

  Nik was surprised how much German he remembered. At Berlin Zoo he not only managed to inquire the time of the train to Koblenz, but understood the reply.

  “Well?” asked Sakhno, standing with their cases.

  “Platform 2, Track 3, in half an hour.”

  A station cleaner in baggy overalls walked past pushing a little yellow cart. Like the man at the information desk, he was wearing a name tag.

  Watching him, Nik had the curiously detached feeling of a diver lowered into a different world, amongst fish of a fabulous order. All too soon, in a month or so at best, those above would pull on his life line and haul him up. Meanwhile, anything could happen.

  Sakhno grinned.

  “Well done. Not your first foray into foreign parts, then?”

  “No, I’ve been to Africa,” said Nik, returning to the surface. “We’d better get going.”

  The train was spotlessly clean, the seats like sofas. At half-hourly intervals a trolley came round with tea, coffee and snacks.

  “Though addicted to drink, I still have eyes to see,” Sakhno said, turning to Nik with a smile as the trolley passed. “You got two envelopes from your Polish pal as well as passports. Could they be envelopes of money, and one of them for me?”

  “Yes, and you shall have it at Koblenz,” promised Nik, thinking uneasily what Sakhno would spend his Deutschmarks on.

  In their room at the Hotel Mauer Sakhno tossed his case onto the bed better placed for the wall-mounted television, and headed for the shower.

  Five minutes later he appeared, wet-haired, carrying two glasses.

  “Wine or vodka?”

  “Wine.”

  “To our safe arrival,” he proposed. “Now where’s my envelope?”

  He counted the notes carefully.

  “It’ll do for a start. And more to come, no doubt.”

  He knocked back a second glass, and got into his denim suit, slipping the envelope into a bulging breast pocket.

  “You may as well leave your passports,” Nik suggested. “They won’t get pinched.”

  “Sod that! What’s mine goes with me! – I’m going for a stroll. See if I can’t f
ind some sausage for supper. You do as you like.”

  “Hang on, we’re expecting a visit.”

  “You are, not me. You’re duty dog,” he quipped as he went out, banging the door behind him.

  Exhausted and feeling a complete idiot, Nik finished his wine, lay down on Sakhno’s bed, and watching some pop singer, fell asleep.

  22

  After a night disturbed first by Ukrainian then by Russian customs Viktor arrived in the sweltering heat of Moscow in a somewhat jaundiced state. He’d travelled in company with a businessman intent on proving, despite small response, that life was on the upgrade, who, after two bottles of beer, passed out as if they’d been vodka, and stayed out from Kaluga on, until roused by the raucous loudspeakers of Moscow.

  Dressing, Viktor was horrified to see his automatic and holster all too obvious in the unzipped bag under the table. Customs had twice got him out of his berth to look under it, without noticing the unzipped bag.

  He checked in at the Kiev Hotel, where four hundred thousand roubles per night for a single room made a big hole in the apparent fortune of eight hundred thousand roubles received as travelling expenses. “Staying how long?”

  “One night to begin with.”

  “Extensions must be made before eleven the next day, otherwise it’s vacate and settle.”

  “Not settle in advance?”

  She smiled.

  “We have your passport. The militia registration fee of one hundred and twenty thousand is extra.”

  Deciding to start with the lesser fry on the chance of getting a line on Ivin, he rang Bronitsky’s two other colleagues, and receiving no reply from either, rang Ivin.

  “Yes?” a pleasant female voice answered.

  “Could I speak to Maksim Petrovich?”

  “He’s out at the moment. But leave your number and he’ll call you back.”

  “When do you expect him?”

  “In about half an hour.”

  “Might I come over and wait?”

  “Know where to come?”

  Before setting out he hid his automatic and holster at the bottom of his bag and shoved it under his bed.