The Man Who Walked Like a Bear

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Emil Karpo was sure that he did not need her specifically, that he exercised only animal needs, needs he accepted as a limitation of the human species, and yet there were moments when Mathilde … The young girl and Yuri Vostoyavek walked onto the Arbat and looked around, seeing small crowds, people passing, and moved to their left, heading again toward Arbat Square.

  Without looking back at the woman in the shop, Karpo stepped into the street half a block behind the couple and followed them at a safe distance. He repressed the feelings he had. When the aftermath of the migraine was gone in a few hours, it would be no problem. Then he could think and not feel. Emil Karpo was a police inspector. He had his duty, and his duty was clear, as clear as the law. If others evaded the law, moved around it, teased its corners, corrupted it, it would not deter him from his duty. Compassion would lead to destruction. The law was all there was, the law and the State, which created the law. There was no morality, only law. He thought it, almost said it to himself, but deep within him a vague face he could not identify was smiling.

  The man in the suit stood for only a few moments at his window in the KGB’s building at Lubyanka. He had spent an uneventful evening and night with his wife and a cousin from Kiev who was in Moscow for a trade union assembly. The cousin had suggested, when the children were not present, that the effects of the Chernobyl disaster were still being felt, that fruit was checked in the Kiev markets, that the nuclear power generators were actually back on but that workers remained only two weeks before being rotated.

  “The radiation levels are beyond the minimum even two hundred miles away, but they’re letting old people return,” the cousin had whispered.

  “They shrug and say ‘What difference does it make?’ It takes twenty years for the radiation to kill them and they’ll be gone from something else long before that, but they’ll outlive their dogs.”

  The KGB man had said nothing, nodded, leaving the conversation to his wife, thinking about other things.

  “And,” the cousin went on softly, leaning across the table as if bugs were planted in the walls, which the KGB man knew was not the case because he checked at least twice each month, “and, the reports are coming in from Yugoslavia. People are dying of cancer. Statistics are far beyond the normal. They won’t be able to keep it under wraps for long, I tell you. I’m doing what I can to get Yana and the children out. That’s why I’m here for the trade union meeting. I was hoping …” He paused.

  The KGB man knew what was coming. He looked up from his thoughts into the eyes of his cousin and waited.

  “I was hoping you might use … some influence to get us, the children, me transferred,” the cousin said, a trail of sweat on his brow from the extra glass of cognac he had needed to gain the courage to make the request.

  The KGB’s man’s wife kept her head down and ate as if she had heard nothing. The cousin’s wife bit her lower lip.

  “I have no influence with the trade unions,” the KGB man said evenly.

  “Well, not directly,” said the cousin with a small laugh. “Of course not. Not directly. I know that, but if you wanted to—”

  “I’ll see,” the KGB man said.

  “It’s not as if—” the cousin’s wife said, her voice a tremulo.

  “I’ll see,” the KGB man repeated, making it clear that the conversation was over.

  They had finished their drinks with small talk from the KGB man’s wife about the availability of Siberian fruit. The evening had been interminable, but the children had remained quiet and distant, obviously having been told that important things were going on and their father’s cousin should not be disturbed in any way.

  And now the KGB man stood in his office, the only place where he felt at peace, and considered whether he would help his cousin. It might be a good idea and it would cost him little beyond a phone call. Then the cousin, who was a ranking member of his trade union, the district power and utilities union, would owe him more than a favor. He would owe him a great debt and possibly be in position to repay it in the future. But that was the future. He moved to his phone, lifted the receiver, pressed a series of buttons, and gave his rank and name to Vadim, who had reported to him the day before.

  “It proceeds,” Vadim said.

  “Good.”

  “He is going ahead with the investigation as we planned,” Vadim reported.

  “Keep him interested,” the KGB man went on.

  Both men knew well enough not to give details, names over the phone. Later, if questioned about the conversation, they had another case they could claim to be the subject. If it came to that, however, there would probably be no opportunity for further deception.

  “Report as you get additional information,” the KGB man said, and hung up the receiver.

  There was other work to be done. He moved to the desk, arranged the reports in front of him, and reached for his pen and a white pad of paper. He removed the glasses from his pocket and put them on his nose and around his ears. There was a computer in the room, but anyone could gain access to what he put on the computer. Someone could be sitting in another room of the vast building reading his words, his numbers, even as he considered them on the screen. No, he had learned long ago to put everything on paper first, work out what he could share and was willing to share. His own notes he shredded and each night he took the shreds home to burn even when the notes were innocent.

  A bad habit could destroy a man.

  As he wrote, he wondered where the policeman was at the moment. If a smile were within him, he would have smiled now, imagining the puppet going through the motions the KGB man was dictating.

  EIGHT

  THE HOSPITAL ADMINISTRATOR looked nervous, a nervousness he attempted to hide behind a mask of bureaucratic overwork.

  “Transfers,” said Schroeder with a sigh, brushing back his hair, pulling down the lapels on his jacket, adjusting his tie and glasses. “Do you know how many transfers we get in a week? Six, seven. The forms, paperwork. It doesn’t end. My father wanted me to be a career soldier. Perhaps I should have listened to him.”

  “Perhaps,” Rostnikov agreed.

  They were standing in the record room down the corridor from Schroeder’s office. Two people worked in the room, which held dozens of file cabinets and a single computer in the corner. The two people, a man and a woman, did their best not to pay attention to the new administrator and the box of a man who walked with a limp.

  “It was his family’s idea,” Schroeder said, going through the files furiously and then turning to face the detective. “Not here. It was only yesterday. They get a copy. We keep a copy. It’s probably still somewhere. It’s not my fault. In the few months I’ve been here, the bookkeeping system has improved two hundredfold, but there’s still so much … the papers could be anywhere.”

  The man’s arms went up to indicate that, indeed, anywhere meant anywhere in the universe.

  “But it will turn up. It should be on my desk. It will be on my desk.”

  “Ivan Bulgarin was transferred to another facility at the request of his family,” Rostnikov said evenly.

  “That’s what I said,” Schroeder said, looking at the two record clerks, who seemed to be absorbed completely in their work.

  “And you don’t remember where he was transferred?”

  “It’s in the records if I can just—”

  “Who would remember?” Rostnikov went on. “A nurse, doctor?”

  “I’ll ask,” said Schroeder. “I wasn’t here, you remember. And the night nurse doesn’t—”

  “Let’s ask,” said Rostnikov gently.

  “It wouldn’t do—”

  “Let’s try,” Rostnikov insisted gently.

  Schroeder was trapped.

  “Well, if you—”

  “I do,” said Rostnikov, touching Schroeder’s shoulder.

  And they went in search of someone who might be able to tell them what had become of Ivan Bulgarin, the man who walked like a bear.

  Boris
Trush nodded his head in complete understanding of everything that was being told to him. He nodded his head and began to make a plan.

  “We will drive slowly past the Alexander Gardens,” Peotor Kotsis explained as they walked through the dried-out field behind the wooden house and barn where Boris’s bus was parked. Boris had been given a torn pair of cloth pants and a rough sweater so his uniform could be kept neat and clean for the big day.

  “Past the Alexander Gardens,” Boris repeated.

  Peotor Kotsis had long since removed his coat and now wore a pair of blue pants, a white shirt, and a sweater. The madman looked like a distinguished professor with dark hair and scholarly gray sideburns. But there was no doubt the man was mad, not as mad as his killer son, but quite mad nonetheless.

  “Across Fiftieth Anniversary of the October Revolution Square behind the State History Museum,” Kotsis went on.

  “Behind the State History Museum,” Boris parroted. Across the field, Vasily, his weapon slung over his back, was talking earnestly to three young men and a young Oriental-looking woman. Vasily seemed to be upset with them. Boris did not want Vasily upset with him. It took very little to upset Vasily, and the result of upsetting Vasily could be fatal.

  “Then,” Peotor went on, “past Twenty-fifth of October Street in front of the State Universal Stores.” He paused as they walked.

  “Past GUM,” Boris acknowledged.

  Across the field, Vasily laughed and began kissing each of the young people in turn, ending with the young woman, who got an especially long kiss.

  “And then into the square,” Peotor said. “We move slowly, a busful of visitors, lost, cameras in hand, past the marble stands by the Senate Tower, right up to the Lenin Mausoleum. When the guards move forward to stop us, we will rush out of the doors of the bus, we will eliminate them, destroy the tomb, and be gone before they can react. We’ll all go in different directions. The crowds will be wild. Confusion. They’ve never faced a real threat. They won’t know what happened till we call the foreign press and tell them. You’ll get lost in the crowd, too, Boris. Lost with our gratitude. I’m sure you won’t give us away.”

  “I won’t,” said Boris earnestly. “You have my promise.”

  The lie was evident. Boris knew that they would kill him the moment he got them to the tomb. They couldn’t let him get away.

  Peotor suddenly stopped.

  “My people have asked to be heard for almost a thousand years,” Peotor said, looking south in the direction of the province from which he had come. “We have not been allowed to speak until now. Now voices are being raised throughout the land and we are allowed to speak, but Boris, the irony is that no one will listen. Georgians, Armenians, even Mongol mongrels are being heard, but we are considered to be too small and too weak. The world will notice us after this, Boris Trush. The world will notice and we will be part of history.”

  “They’ll hate you,” Boris said, knowing he had no chance of prevailing.

  “Yes,” said Peotor. “At first they will. There will be days, weeks of shock, but our cause will be explored in magazines, newspapers all over the world. We will no longer be ignored. We must be heard, Boris. We must be heard or the lives of our fathers and mothers and theirs before them for a dozen generations will be meaningless. Do you understand?”

  “Perfectly,” said Boris. You are insane, Boris thought. That is what I understand. You are insane. I need a drink and I have to hope I have enough nerve to do what I must to save my life.

  Vasily was now trotting across the field toward them with a smile on his face. The gun strapped around the young man’s back jostled. Thunder cracked in the distance, and Boris hoped that he would neither step back nor cringe when the young and smiling lunatic came upon him.

  “You know what this is?”

  Kostnitsov spoke as if he were addressing a severely retarded child. Kostnitsov was somewhere in his fifties, of medium height, with a little belly, straight white hair, poorly cared for teeth, and a red face more the result of his Georgian heritage than his intake of alcohol, which was moderate. He was an assistant director of the MVD laboratory but he had little or no contact with the director and had no one working under him. Kostnitsov wanted no assistants, and it was clear to everyone that none would be able to tolerate him. Boris Kostnitsov was left alone in his unnumbered laboratory two levels below the ground in Petrovka.

  Now, standing in his lab and wearing a blue laboratory coat and a scowl, he held out his hand to display to the two policemen something formless and quite bloody.

  Zelach looked at Sasha Tkach for an answer, but Sasha’s thoughts were elsewhere.

  “A heart?” Zelach guessed.

  Kostnitsov looked disgusted.

  “A heart? This little thing looks like a heart to you? Does your little finger look like your penis? In your case, possibly. A penguin has a heart this size, not a human. Tkach, what do you say?”

  Kostnitsov held the bloody blob under Sasha Tkach’s nose. Tkach looked down at it emotionlessly.

  “A liver,” he guessed.

  “A liver,” Kostnitsov repeated incredulously. “This bright-red organ looks like a liver to you? This is a human organ. A human liver is dark, firm, unless, of course, it is diseased.”

  Kostnitsov began to pace between his cluttered laboratory tables and his even more cluttered desk, which held, somewhere beneath the books and papers, a bottle in which it was rumored Josef Stalin’s spleen resided.

  Zelach looked at the desk and blurted out, “Spleen.”

  Kostnitsov stopped pacing, dropped the slithery organ in a metal bowl, placed the bowl on the lab table, and turned to Zelach with a grin.

  “There’s hope for you,” he said, advancing to Zelach and patting him on the cheek with a still-bloody hand. Zelach stepped back and looked around frantically for something reasonably clean with which to wipe his face. Seeing nothing he would be willing to use, Zelach moved to the sink, turned on the water, and washed, while Kostnitsov turned his attention to Tkach.

  “The spleen,” Kostnitsov explained as if to an avid student, which Tkach was not, “is one of the largest lymphoid structures, a visceral organ composed of a white pulp of lymphatic nodules and tissues and a red pulp of venous sinusoids in a framework of fibrous partitions lying on the left side below the diaphragm, functioning as a blood filter and to store blood. It is said to be either the seat of melancholy or mirth. An underappreciated and quiet poetic organ.”

  “Quite poetic,” Tkach agreed.

  “The bullet went through the heart,” Kostnitsov said, weaving his bloody hand as if following the trajectory of the missile through an imaginary body. “It moved down through the left lung and heart, shattering a rib, and ending its journey in the spleen. Remarkably little damage to the spleen, but man cannot live on a spleen alone. Are you listening, Comrade Tkach, or am I boring you? Are your thoughts of university girls on the grassy Lenin Hills?”

  “I’m listening,” said Tkach, who stood, arms folded, as Kostnitsov pushed his face forward in front of the detective.

  “You want to know about the bullet? What?”

  “I want to know whatever you know that could help us find who shot Tolvenovov,” said Tkach. Zelach had finished washing his face and was drying his hands on his rumpled trousers.

  “You want some tea, coffee?” Kostnitsov asked.

  “Information, opinion,” said Tkach, who knew, as did every other MVD investigator and uniformed police officer, that Kostnitsov was probably a bit mad, certainly offensive, and possibly the best forensic scientist in the Soviet Union.

  “Information. You have the man’s name, the make of the weapon that killed him,” said Kostnitsov, moving to his desk, pushing away some papers, and picking up a cup of tepid liquid, which he put to his lips. There was a bright glow in the scientist’s eyes as he looked at the two detectives.

  “The victim was about to struggle when he was shot,” Kostnitsov said. “His right hand was still in a fist, an
d judging from the calluses on his hands, he was right-handed. From the path of the bullet, it is clear that he was just rising from a sitting position when the bullet struck. The shot surprised him. He didn’t turn away.”

  “Go on,” said Tkach when Kostnitsov paused and looked at Zelach, who was standing near the door, as far from the scientist as he could get.

  “The man was shot on a bus,” said Kostnitsov.

  Tkach was suddenly quite alert.

  “How … ?”

  Kostnitsov opened his mouth and pointed to his teeth before he spoke.

  “When he died he pitched forward, hitting his teeth on chrome. I have a small piece of chrome I took from his tooth. The report said this might have something to do with a stolen bus, so I got a sliver of chrome from a bus seat this morning. Same. But more. Our victim slumped or was pushed down after he was shot, and the open wound in his chest scraped along the bus seat picked up bits of plastic, inferior quality. That, too, I checked by getting a sample from a bus this morning.”

  Kostnitsov paused and looked at both detectives, waiting.

  “Karpo should have this case,” Kostnitsov finally said when he had no response, no applause. He finished his drink and put the cup down on a pile of precariously balanced books and papers. “He knows how to appreciate professionalism.”

  “Your conclusions are remarkable and quite helpful, Comrade,” said Tkach.

  “I know that. I know that. I know that. You know how small the particles are that I had to work with? And do I have decent equipment?”

  He looked around the laboratory, as did the two policemen.

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Tkach.

  “No,” said Kostnitsov. “I do not. Can you imagine the miracles I could perform with an electron microscope? Not that I can’t do almost impossible things now.”

  “Can you tell me who killed the man on the bus?” Tkach asked.

  “Yes,” said Kostnitsov with a grin, showing most of his ill-treated teeth.

  “Then make our jobs easy. Give us his or her name and we’ll get a nice commendation from the party secretary,” said Tkach.