Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express ir-14

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  There was a lack of funds for metro repairs and cleaning, though the stations were more cosmetically acceptable than the interior of most of the city’s hotels. The metro system was a symbol of Russian accomplishment, a source of pride along with the space program and the Trans-Siberian Railroad system. The mayor of Moscow was a man who built his career on the image of the city, and he saw to it that the metro stations were clean and well-maintained. Efficient, sometimes magnificent, each station-all built during the Stalin era-was in a different style.

  Guidebooks told tourists that they should not miss a tour of the metro stations, and few of them did.

  One of the most opulent examples of the old Soviet system was the Komsomolskaya station, dedicated to the Komsomol, the Young Communist League, whose members provided labor during construction of the metro.

  Many metro stations had undergone name changes after the fall of the Soviet Union. If the Komsomolskaya had undergone such a change, few Moscovites who rode it were aware of this rejection of Communism. It was still and would probably remain the Komsomol station to all who rode it.

  One of the regular riders was Toomas Vana. Toomas, born in Tallinn in Estonia, had come to Moscow to work in the office of the state gas company when he was fourteen. His father had been an unpopular and very corrupt commissar in Estonia, who thought the way for his son to achieve political position at a high level in the Soviet Union was to move the boy to Moscow. Toomas had, indeed, moved up, but not politically. He earned his university degree and developed a passion for gas. He wanted, not political power, but to be the world’s foremost authority on natural gas and its uses. At the age of forty-six he was certainly among the elite of the world in that knowledge.

  And Toomas had a very valuable skill which added to his stature. Tallinn, Estonia, is sixty miles across the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki. The Estonians of the region spoke a language almost identical to that of Finland, and until the age of fourteen when he was sent off to Moscow he had regularly listened to and watched Finnish television, a link to the Western world available to few in the Soviet Union.

  Toomas traveled frequently to Finland to consult on that country’s attempts to expand its use of natural gas.

  This morning Toomas did not have the correct change. He stopped at the change machine and then proceeded to the automatic gate and dropped in his coins.

  The platform was crowded. It always was around lunchtime. Toomas stood against a pillar, briefcase in one hand, a report on the cost of pipeline repairs in the other. Moscow was heated and cooled by natural gas. The gas company was still a great government bureaucracy to be reckoned with, the largest natural-gas company in the world.

  Had he not stood on this same platform at this same pillar thousands of times before he would certainly have looked up at the decorated arched ceiling with its massive, ornate, and multilamped chandeliers running the length of the platform longer than a soccer field and nearly as wide. He would have noted the arches above the pillars echoing the elegant medieval theme of the station. He might have looked straight up, as he had many years earlier, at the huge, multicolored mosaic of a warrior with shield and lance upon a prancing white horse and admired the elaborate design of curlicues and flowers that framed it.

  But this was today and his mind was on rusting gas pipes.

  He barely noticed the woman walking slowly in his direction. People were moving. She would pass him and move to the edge of the platform to look for an incoming train. Toomas never bothered to move for the train until he heard it coming with a roar down the tunnel. Then he would make a slow turn, always to the right, and place himself exactly where the train door would slide open. He knew the spot. He didn’t have to think about it. Now he heard the first distant rumble of the approaching train.

  The woman stood in front of him. She was probably going to ask him a question about the train schedule, or perhaps she was going to ask him for some coins, which he would not give her. To encourage one is to encourage all, he thought. He read the report.

  And then the report exploded in his hands, split in two, and he felt a sudden pain, saw a flash of bright light. The world turned into a sparkling light show. Fireworks. Strobe lights. A bomb, he thought. Terrorists. Chechins. A bomb. They had bombed underpasses and now a metro station. It made sense.

  He knew he had slumped back against the flat pillar. Toomas did not panic. Someone or something was punching him in the stomach. An aftershock from a bomb? Wait. Was there a gas main under this station? A gas explosion? It had happened before, many times before, but there was no gas main under the platform or nearby.

  His head ached. The fireworks stopped. The punching ceased, leaving nausea. Toomas felt himself passing out. At least he thought he was passing out. In fact, he was dying.

  Inna Dalipovna stepped back and turned away from the falling man in the dark suit. She tucked the knife into her deep coat pocket. She would wash it when she got home. She would sharpen it with oil on the rectangular stone when she got home. She would use the knife to make dinner for her father tonight. She would use it to slice the sausage into the thin, almost transparent slices he liked to heap upon his bread.

  The attack had been quick. Some people thought it was probably a husband and wife quarreling. Some people pretended to see nothing. Most on the crowded platform did not notice. When it was over, however, a woman screamed. Inna, now at the end of the platform, nearing the escalator steps, heard the scream above the noise of the crowd and the approaching train.

  The screaming woman, who stood hand in hand with her six-year-old granddaughter, looked down at the man who lay before her, his right eye socket a small pool of blood, his neck pulsing red, and spots of darkness quickly forming and spreading on his white shirt and dark suit.

  “Don’t be afraid, Grandma,” the child said. “It’s just a dead man.

  Inna did not look back. Her wrist felt numb. She had used her right hand, had taped it thickly and tightly with white adhesive. She had planned to thrust without turning her hand, but when she had seen the man standing there, had known it would be him, she had forgotten everything, had gone into some kind of automatic state, had let it take over. And now she felt both pain and satisfaction. Only when she reached the street and stepped into the falling snow did she examine herself for bloodstains. She could see none. No one had looked at her strangely so she assumed that her face and neck were untouched, but she paused at a window to be sure.

  The woman looking back at her was the one she saw each morning in the mirror. It was not her own face but the face of her mother.

  No policeman had appeared during or immediately after Inna’s attack on Toomas Vana. There had been no policeman on the platform for a very good reason. None had been assigned to this station.

  The Komsomolskaya station was on the red line, the Kirovsko-Frunzenskaya line, not on the line where Inna had attacked before.

  Five minutes later when Elena and Iosef were informed of the murder they realized that there were now more than ninety stations where their killer might strike. To patrol the stations in two shifts would require about two hundred officers. The chances of their getting two hundred officers assigned to the case were nonexistent.

  They would have to find another way to the woman or wait for her to make a mistake.

  Sasha had tried to pack. It was useless. The scuffed but serviceable dark-leather suitcase that had once been his father’s lay open on the bed. His mother, who had been in the apartment uninvited when he arrived, had criticized him as he placed the first item, a pair of trousers, at the bottom of the case.

  “You will squash it,” Lydia had shouted.

  She was a wiry wraith who denied her near deafness, loved Sasha and her grandchildren to the point where she would die for them, and drove her son nearly to madness each time they spoke.

  “It will be fine,” he said.

  “You will pile things on it. It will wrinkle. You will not have a pair of decent pants. Where can you get pants clean
ed and pressed on a train?”

  He flattened the pants with the palms of his hands and reached for the first of the three shirts he had placed on the bed.

  “That is not the way to fold them,” Lydia said, arms folded.

  “It will be fine,” Sasha said, the first sign of impending defeat in his tone.

  “You fold along the seam, sleeves back,” she said. “The way you are doing it …”

  “Would you like to pack for me?” he asked, closing his eyes.

  “Yes, why don’t I pack for you?” his mother said, stepping to his side.

  Sasha stepped out of the way and watched her fold, invade his drawers, select items from the bathroom and closet, and keep up a running commentary on each item.

  “This is worn at the cuffs. See? Frayed. You need a new jacket. I will get you a new jacket.”

  He did not argue.

  “What size are you now? You’ve lost weight. You do not know,” she said with a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sigh. “I used to know. Don’t worry. I will figure it out. Shirts, you need shirts. Who ironed this shirt? Maya?”

  “You did,” he said, leaning against the wall, defeated.

  “I will iron it again. When you have worn a shirt all day on the train, do not try to clean it. Do not wear it again. Put it in a plastic bag.”

  “There will be no room in the suitcase for clothes in a bag. You are stuffing it full of things I don’t need.”

  “Change your socks every morning,” she said.

  “You are packing enough for a month,” he said. “It will weigh as much as I do.”

  “In the other room, on the table. I brought you a book to read so you don’t get bored.”

  “I will be working,” he said before he could stop himself.

  “It is about learning to relax,” she said. “I read it. It has done wonderful things for me.”

  She scurried around, looking for more to do, taking one thing out and replacing it with another.

  “I look forward to reading the book,” he said.

  “We have forgotten something,” Lydia said. “I know! A small plastic bag to keep your toothpaste in so it doesn’t squish out and ruin your clothes.”

  “I will get one,” he said.

  “Go see if you have one,” his mother ordered.

  He escaped from the bedroom and took his time bringing the plastic bag back. He had called Maya, told her what had happened. She had asked if he could find some way to keep his mother away from the apartment for the first few days while he was gone. He said he would try.

  “I do not dislike her, Sasha,” she said.

  Sasha was not sure he felt the same way about his mother.

  “She wants to see the children,” he said. “How can I? …”

  “Tell her I will call her soon, that, that I have had a breakdown … no, she will come with doctors. I do not know what you can tell her.”

  “I can tell her anything,” Sasha had said. “The problem is that she will not listen.”

  “I know,” Maya said.

  They had spoken a few minutes longer, holding back, putting away till they had face-to-face time together the important things that had to be dealt with, the important things other than the omnipresence of Sasha’s mother.

  And now Sasha stood watching his mother stuff the suitcase beyond its reasonable capacity.

  “And this is last,” she said, holding up a pair of binoculars. “They were your father’s. You can look out the train window with them.”

  “Thank you,” said Sasha, having no intention of using the binoculars. Were she returning to her own apartment that night he would have considered removing half of what she had packed and hiding it. But that would probably not work. His mother was certain to search the two rooms to be sure he had not done just that.

  This was madness. He was thirty-five years old.

  “Mother,” he said as she struggled to zip the bag closed. “For the first few days, when Maya and the children come back …”

  “Tomorrow,” Lydia said, standing back to examine her handiwork.

  “Yes.” He had promised Maya he would try and so he would.

  “I won’t be here,” his mother said, turning to Sasha. “I have to go to Istra for a while.”

  “Istra?”

  “You do not know where Istra is?” she asked, looking at her son as if he might be feverish.

  “I know exactly where it is,” he said. “About forty kilometers from here off the Volokolamsk Highway.”

  “On the bank of the Istra River,” she said. “That is right.”

  “Why are you going there?” he asked, his curiosity replacing for the moment his pleasure at having achieved instant success.

  “To spend some time with Matvei,” she said, walking past him into the room that served as living room, dining area, and kitchen.

  Sasha followed her quickly.

  “Matvei? Who is Matvei?”

  “Matvei Labroadovnik, the famous painter,” she said, looking around the room for something to straighten or at least change.

  “The famous … I’ve never heard of … why are you going to spend time with this Matvei La …”

  “Labroadovnik,” she supplied. “He is very famous. We are considering marriage.”

  Sasha felt slightly dizzy. He reached back for the arm of the couch, found it, and sat heavily.

  “He is living in a dacha in Istra while he helps with the restoration of the Cathedral of the Resurrection,” she said, finding a chair that had to be moved a few inches to satisfy her sense of decor.

  Sasha’s mother had retired from her government job four years earlier. She was now nearly sixty years old, and as far as Sasha knew she had had nothing to do with men since his father had died when he was a boy.

  “How did you meet him? How old is he?” asked Sasha, bewildered.

  “You want some tea? Pepsi-Cola?” she asked.

  “Water,” he said.

  She nodded, moved into the kitchen area, and got him a glass of water from the noisy tap.

  “Matvei is fifty-six years old. His mother lives in the building where I have my apartment. We have met frequently. We have much in common.”

  “Like what?” asked Sasha.

  “Art,” she said.

  “You have never shown the slightest interest in art,” he said.

  “You haven’t noticed,” she said, sitting across from him, continuing to scan the room for imperfection.

  “Art?”

  “And movies.”

  “You don’t like to go to movies. You can’t hear them.”

  “You are wrong,” she said. “I love movies.”

  Sasha had an insight, or thought he did.

  “And he is famous?”

  “Very.”

  “And he is well paid?”

  “He has a great deal of money. He is in great demand.”

  Sasha sought desperately for a reason why this man might be interested in his mother. If it wasn’t for her money, then what? Lydia was no beauty. Lydia was no aesthete. Lydia was a meddler and a tyrant.

  “He is healthy?”

  “Like a swine,” she said with a small smile. “Tall, robust. When we get back, you can meet him. I’ll see that he dresses up.”

  There was a mystery here for which Sasha did not have the time, energy, or proper source of information. He recognized the possible blessings of seeing far less of his mother, but he was a detective and the evidence sat before him.

  “Does he know I am a policeman?” he asked.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. She stood up suddenly and said, “I will go shopping, get food, some new clothes for the children for when Maya gets back … Sasha,” she said, picking up her oversized black purse. “You must promise me something.”

  “What?” he asked.

  “On the train, you will stay away from women.”

  “I will be working with Porfiry Petrovich,” he said.

  “That has not stopped you before.�
��

  She walked over to her seated son and touched his cheek. “You are too much like your father,” she said.

  “My father? My father? …”

  “Had a weakness.” She sighed. “For the ladies. He was handsome, weak, but he had a bad heart.”

  “You’ve never told me this before,” he said.

  “You knew he had a bad heart. It killed him.”

  “No,” he said, “about the women.”

  “I must have,” she said. “How could you not know after all this time? I had best go do some shopping now. You should eat before you go.”

  “Yes,” he said, not wanting to hear any more surprises from his mother. “I should eat.”

  “Is there anything you would like special for dinner?”

  His mother never asked such questions. She simply made what she wished and expected anyone at the table to enjoy it, though she was a terrible cook.

  “No,” he said. “Whatever you choose.”

  She nodded as if he had made a very wise decision, and marched out the door.

  When the door closed, it struck him. He had carried on an entire conversation with his nearly deaf mother without having her fail to understand him.

  His mother had changed in what appeared to be an instant. Had it been gradual? Had he been too preoccupied to notice? He took out his notebook and pen and wrote the name Matvei Labroadovnik in it. He would make some calls, ask some questions.

  The building on Brjanskaya Street was about half a hundred paces from the entrance to the Kievski Market, across the Moscow River from the heart of the city. There was no name on the building, just an address, and the building itself was no more than a few years old; it was a relatively simple, clean, yellow-brick six-story structure.

  It was not the kind of building in which one might expect to find one of the wealthiest men in all of Russia. The truly wealthy new capitalists and those who aspired to be and lived on the edge of success were in the prestigious buildings in the center of the city.