Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express ir-14

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Nikoli Lovski could have his office wherever he wished. He owned six radio stations, two newspapers, a paper company with a supporting forest in Siberia, and a piece of several banks and stock in a large number of foreign companies, not to mention considerable land, mostly in the growing suburbs of the city.

  The only real clue to Nikoli Lovski’s wealth was the quartet of armed men in the lobby of the building. Two of the men, wearing well-trimmed dark suits and ties, carried automatic weapons in their hands and stood at ease on opposite sides of the smoothly tiled lobby. Another man armed with an equally, formidable weapon stood behind a bulletproof-glass plate, ceiling-high, behind which sat a very pretty dark woman with a pie-shaped speaker’s screen directly in front of her.

  Few would have noticed the fourth man, who stood inside an open elevator in a gray uniform. He seemed to be the elevator operator. The very slight bulge under his jacket and the fact that a modern elevator would need no operator were enough to demonstrate to Emil Karpo that he was probably the most formidable member of the quartet.

  There were no other people in the lobby. Karpo and Zelach moved to the reception window, the sound of their shoes echoing.

  “We are here to see Mr. Lovski,” said Karpo.

  “Names?” the pretty dark woman asked.

  “Inspectors Karpo and Zelach. I called earlier.”

  The woman nodded and said, “May I see your identification?”

  Both men pulled out their identification cards and held them up to the window. The armed man behind the glass glanced at the cards and nodded to the woman, who shook her head.

  “Are you armed?” the woman asked.

  “Yes,” said Emil Karpo.

  She looked at Zelach.

  “Yes,” he said.

  “You will have to leave your weapons with me,” she said.

  A metal drawer slid open in front of Karpo.

  “No,” said Karpo. “We cannot.”

  In fact, Karpo could if he so chose, but he was not prepared to give in to the power of a capitalist trying to make him feel inferior. It was not Karpo’s feelings that were at issue. He had no feeling about the demand, just an understanding that to comply would put himself and Zelach into the position of accepting their capitulation.

  “Then Mr. Lovski will be unable to see you,” she said.

  “Please tell Mr. Lovski that under section fourteen of the Moscow City Criminal Investigation Law of 1992 we can insist that he accompany us to Petrovka for questioning. If he refuses, we have the duty to arrest and fine him for violation of the law.”

  “Fine him?” the woman said with the hint of a smile. She knew that money meant nothing to her employer.

  “And hold him a minimum of twenty-four hours in which we can interrogate him in addition to a fine,” said Karpo. “Call him.”

  “Are you sure you wish to antagonize Mr. Lovski?” she asked.

  Lovski was a new capitalist. Karpo was an old-line Marxist-Leninist. He had been forced by the reality of corruption in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of any true hope for a principled revival of the party to put aside the beliefs on which he had based his life. People like Lovski were the new Russia of the privileged few and wealthy who had replaced the privileged few and politically powerful. Lovski, a Jew whose media regularly attacked Vladimir Putin and his regime, had suffered several indignities, courtroom confrontations, and even nights in jail. Each time he had emerged, determined but a little closer to the edge over which Putin did not yet have the power to push him.

  The woman nodded, pushed a button that cut off sound through the screen, and picked up the phone. She hit a single number and began speaking. Karpo and Zelach could not hear her. The conversation was brief, the button to the screen was pushed, and the woman said, “The elevator will take you up.”

  “Thank you,” Zelach said.

  Karpo said nothing. He moved toward the elevator with Zelach at his side.

  “Section fourteen of the Criminal Investigation Law?” Zelach whispered.

  “Yes,” said Karpo as they neared the elevator.

  “Is there really? …”

  “Not since 1932,” said Karpo.

  They stepped into the elevator. Since there was no law, Karpo was willing to pick and choose what would serve his assignment still a law existed. When there was a coherent body of law, which there might never be in this new Russia, he would obey it to the letter. Karpo believed in the law, wanted clear rules and guidelines, but he would exist without them and think only of bringing in the guilty and putting the evidence of their guilt before Chief Inspector Rostnikov. What happened after that was something he chose not to consider.

  The elevator moved up slowly. The armed man who pushed the buttons folded his hands in front of him and stood back where he could watch the two policemen. The elevator came to a stop so smoothly that when the doors opened Zelach had the impression they had not moved.

  The entryway before them was covered in white carpet. There was a single dark wooden door in the wall with no name on or near it.

  Karpo and Zelach moved forward to the door, the armed elevator operator behind them. The door popped open. Inside was a large room with a well-polished wooden floor. At a very modern white desk sat an old man in a suit and tie. The old man had thick white hair and small, remarkably blue eyes.

  He looked up at the three men and said, “You have ten minutes, no more. Mr. Lovski has an important engagement.”

  Karpo nodded. He did not think that they would require more than ten minutes, but if they did, he would take whatever time he felt was needed.

  The old man’s eyes met Karpo’s. Karpo was accustomed to people looking away from his ghostly appearance. This old man did not. The old man nodded at the elevator operator, and a door behind the old man’s desk opened.

  Karpo and Zelach moved forward with the elevator operator at their backs. They walked through the door and it closed behind them.

  The office was as remarkably modest as the building itself. Through the large double window one could see the Hero Tower several hundred yards away and the Moscow River beyond it.

  There were four comfortable, soft black-leather chairs and a matching couch against the wall. A conference table with six chairs stood in the corner next to a low wooden table with a marble top, on which rested a large samovar and a line of cups, saucers, spoons, and a bowl of sugar cubes.

  Behind the wooden desk before them sat Nikoli Lovski. Both detectives recognized the man from both newspaper and television pictures and they knew his voice when he suggested that they be seated.

  He was a man of average height, a bit stocky and no more than fifty years old. His hair was thinning and dark and his face was full, with deep-set eyes. He wore a white shirt and an orange tie. His jacket was draped over the back of his desk chair.

  Karpo and Zelach sat. The elevator operator stood behind them near the door.

  “Tea?” asked Lovski. “Or I can get you coffee? I am particularly partial to strong tea with water brewed, as it was meant to be, in a samovar. The one over there belonged to my mother’s father and his father before that. It was the only possession the family had that was worth anything in rubles or memories.”

  “I’ll have …” Zelach began.

  “Nothing,” said Karpo.

  “I will,” said Lovski, reaching under his desk to press a button.

  The office door opened and the old man entered. Lovski held up one finger and pointed to himself. The old man moved to pour him a cup of tea.

  “Your son is missing,” Karpo said.

  “I have two sons,” Lovski said.

  “Misha,” said Karpo, knowing that the man behind the desk knew which son was missing. “We have reason to believe he has been kidnapped. Have you been contacted with a ransom demand?”

  “No,” said Lovski, accepting the cup of tea from the old man, who quickly left the room.

  Karpo was reasonably sure the man was telling the tr
uth. “You may be contacted very soon,” he said.

  Lovski nodded and drank some tea. “And I will pay any reasonable amount, providing it can be demonstrated that it is not a scheme of Misha’s to get money from me. He is not beyond that.”

  “How can that be demonstrated?” asked Karpo.

  “Simple,” said Lovski, licking his lips. “I shall demand that they deliver to me the small finger of his left hand. I will check it against his fingerprints, of which I have a set. Misha would not cut off his own finger. He needs it to play that piece of steel garbage he calls a guitar.”

  “Do you have any idea who might want to hurt your son?” asked Karpo.

  Lovski smiled and said, “Anyone in his right mind. Have you seen him, heard the filth he spews? He has even written a song about me, calls me the wealthy Jew in the steel tower, the Manipulator of Metropolis. He says I should be flattened by a female robot, my penis ripped from my body. I understand it is one of his more popular songs.”

  “It is,” said Zelach.

  “You’ve heard it?” asked Lovski with some interest.

  “Yes,” said Zelach.

  “And?”

  “It is what you say, though there is a pulse to the music that …”

  “It is possible that he has not been taken for ransom,” said Karpo.

  “You mean someone who hates him has already killed him or is torturing him somewhere?” asked Lovski, taking another sip of tea.

  “There are many possibilities,” said Karpo.

  Lovski nodded. “There is another possibility,” he said. “I am a member of the Russian Jewish Congress.”

  “I am aware, of this,” said Karpo.

  “My newspapers, television stations have been critical of Putin and his regime. This you also know.”

  It was Karpo’s turn to nod. “So, you believe he may have been taken by someone who wants to put pressure on you to stop your attacks on Vladimir Putin?” Karpo asked.

  Lovski smiled. “Nothing so simple,” he said. “A few months ago Putin attended a rededication ceremony at Marina Roscha, the Chabad Lubavich Hasidic synagogue.”

  “I remember,” said Karpo.

  “What do you know of the synagogue?” asked Lovski.

  “It was one of only two allowed in Moscow during the Soviet era,” said Karpo. “It was untouched until the fall of Communism. Since then it has been attacked three times. In 1993 it was almost destroyed by fire. It was bombed in 1996 and 1998. And it has been restored and rebuilt.”

  “Yes,” Lovski said with an approving nod. “And Mr. Putin was there to proclaim that the new Russia would not tolerate anti-Semitism. My newspapers covered it, put Putin on the front page and oh the television screen. Putin was not just making peace with a handful of Jews. He was making a peace gesture toward me.”

  Karpo nodded.

  “You think it is my inflated ego making this assumption?”

  “No,” said Karpo. “Your ego, as you call it, is clearly large, but your interpretation bears serious consideration.”

  “Meaning?” Lovski prompted.

  “Your son may have been taken by an individual or group, anti-Semitic in nature, anti-Putin in philosophy, who wants to put pressure on you to keep you from supporting Putin.”

  “Yes.”

  “But they have not yet contacted you?”

  “No, but when they do it may not be for money. It may be to tell me that Misha is safe as long as I keep up my attacks on the regime.”

  “It is a possibility,” said Karpo.

  “It is more than that,” said Lovski. “Inspector, I confess that I have been contacted. My receptionist took a message this morning. The caller said to tell me that Misha is alive for now.”

  “Was the caller a man or woman?”

  “The receptionist said it was a man, or, to be more accurate, a young man.”

  “Anything else?” asked Karpo.

  “I do not want my son to die,” he said. “I don’t want to see him or hear from him, and I would prefer it if he were somewhere far away. South America would be fine. I understand there is a second and third generation of fascists there who might like his kind of hatred, but I do not want him dead. He is young. People change. I did. Perhaps in ten years, twenty years, he will change, perhaps for the better. I’ll be an old man and far beyond wanting a reconciliation, but he will have to live with whatever that means to him. Officers, give me your number. If I am contacted I will call you, but only if I feel certain that whoever called means to kill Misha no matter what I do. I will try to keep that from happening by promising them and delivering a bonus for his safe return, if that is what they want. I will not, however, change my policy toward Putin. For now, he is relatively safe from attack by me. I have no illusions. Our president has donned a yarmulke for political reasons. He bears ho great love for Russia’s Jews. There is a price I will not pay to free my son, but the price I am willing to pay is quite high to insure that he is safe.”

  “Safe except for a finger,” said Karpo.

  “He will have to be a singer without a guitar perhaps,” said Lovski with a shrug. “I know little of such music.”

  “There is a guitarist with Dead Zombies with two fingers missing,” Zelach said.

  “That is comforting,” said Lovski. “Now, if you have no more questions …”

  Karpo rose. Zelach did the same. Lovski picked up the phone and was talking to someone before the detectives reached the door, which was opened for them by the elevator operator.

  Five minutes later they were on the street.

  “Thoughts?” asked Karpo.

  Zelach shrugged.

  “He hates his son,” said Karpo.

  “No,” said Zelach. “He loves his son. He loves him very much.”

  Karpo nodded. Karpo trusted his own sense of reason, but he had learned to trust Zelach’s feelings if not his intellect.

  Chapter Six

  "Do you think the sun will eventually burn out?” asked Rostnikov.

  He was sitting in the Paris Café a few hundred yards from his apartment on Krasikov Street. The Paris Café bore no resemblance to anything Parisian, nor was it a café. It was a small shop that was sometimes open and sometimes not, depending on the whims and health of the old couple who ran it. There were six plastic tables with four chairs at each. The decor was simple. A painting of a dark jungle that looked decidedly un-Russian, with its huge palm trees and high waterfall in the distance, was the only decoration. The menu choices were almost as limited. In fact, there was no menu. The old woman or old man simply told you what was available at that moment in time besides coffee, tea, kvas, and vodka. Today, Rostnikov and the three people at the table with him had a choice of flat almond cakes of unknown vintage or puffy, small chocolate muffins of great durability. Rostnikov had ordered two of each.

  Like most Moscow cafés, this one smelled of pungent, acrid Russian tobacco. The man and woman across from him were contributing to the smell. The four of them were the Paris Cafés only customers at the moment.

  “The sun?” asked the man, looking at Rostnikov without understanding.

  The man was large, perhaps forty, clean-shaven and rather resembling an ox. He wore a flannel shirt and solid-blue tie over his navy-blue coat. The woman at his side was a bit younger than the man. Her face was plain though her skin was smooth, unblemished. She was thin, nervous, dark, and wore a look showing that she was prepared for battle.

  The man had been introduced by the woman as Dmitri. No last name had been given. The woman was Miriana. She had given no last name. Rostnikov needed none. Miriana was the daughter of Galina Panishkoya who sat heavily to Porfiry Petrovich’s right, her hands in her lap, looking at her daughter who did not meet her eyes.

  Both Miriana and Dmitri were smoking cheap Russian cigarettes.

  “Time is perhaps infinite, but our solar system, our galaxy, and certainly our lives are not,” said Rostnikov.

  “I want my children,” Miriana said, looking d
efiantly at Rostnikov.

  “You abandoned them, Mirya,” Galina said flatly. “You left them with me and …”

  “Things have changed,” said Miriana, cutting off her mother, not looking at her. “Dmitri and I are getting married. The girls are mine.”

  “But Mirya …” the older woman tried.

  “No,” her daughter cut her off. “They are mine. The law is on my side.”

  Galina looked at Rostnikov, who pursed his lips. He considered touching the grandmother’s shoulder to reassure her, but reassurance would come from action not gesture.

  “Then you shall have the children,” Rostnikov said. “They are packed, ready. We anticipated this. My wife and I are looking forward to having the apartment to ourselves. Your mother can join you.

  “My mother …” Miriana began.

  “Or perhaps she can get a small room,” said Rostnikov. “I know someone who might help.”

  Galina sobbed.

  “Perhaps …” Dmitri began but stopped when Miriana raised her hand.

  “You are bluffing,” the younger woman said.

  Rostnikov shrugged.

  “You do not want the children to go with me,” Miriana continued.

  “I do not want the sun to burn out,” said Rostnikov, “but I believe it is as inevitable as the fact that all of us who sit at this table will die and eventually be forgotten.”

  “Dmitri and I have a great deal of traveling to do in our business,” Miriana said, stubbing out her cigarette and holding out her hand for Dmitri to give her another. He did so and lit it.

  “I see,” said Rostnikov.

  “I might consider leaving my children with you if I can be compensated for being away from them.”

  “You have been away for two years and seem to have survived,” said Rostnikov.

  “But a mother’s heart has been full of concern,” she said, with no sign of concern in her voice that Rostnikov could discern.

  “Understandable,” said Rostnikov. “What would you consider a fair compensation for our continuing to keep these children and your mother?”