Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express ir-14

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

With his usual difficulty Rostnikov sat next to the old man, checking his watch quickly. In less than an hour they would be arriving at the Sverdlovsk-Pass station, Ekaterinburg.

  “You a religious man?” asked Susman, looking out the window again.

  “I have a respect for the mystical,” said Rostnikov. “The wonders of existence.”

  “Me, too,” said the American. “But can’t say I understand it. Life. Hell, I’m feeling small today. You know what I mean?”

  “I do,” said Rostnikov.

  “Overcast,” said the American. “Sometimes I wonder …”

  “The sun,” said Rostnikov.

  The man turned to the Russian with a smile. “Yes, the sun. It looks big to us but it’s just a pip-squeak of a star.”

  “You are intrigued by the heavens?” Rostnikov asked.

  “I’m an astronomer,” said the American. “Retired. Professor emeritus, Ohio State University.”

  Rostnikov nodded and they went silent for a moment before the detective asked, “Is the sun shrinking?”

  The American smiled and said, “Follow this. The solar radius is four hundred and forty-one thousand miles and is ninety-three million miles away. It subtends an angle of thirty arc minutes at this distance, so … you’re not following?”

  “No.”

  “The sun’s not shrinking. If the sun were shrinking by three percent it would be a two-hundred-mile-a-year loss. If it were shrinking at one hundred times smaller than this, astronomers would have noticed a long time ago. The size of the sun hasn’t changed over the last one hundred million years. If it had changed, even a minute part of a fraction, we would have gone into a global heat wave or ice age. In fact, the sun is expanding.”

  “Expanding?”

  “In five or six billion years, the sun will become a red giant star, swell to be the size of the entire orbit of the earth,” Susman said with enthusiasm, turning fully to face Rostnikov. “In a few hundred million years, there won’t be much life on earth, maybe thermophilic bacteria that can live in nearly boiling water.”

  “I see,” said Rostnikov.

  “I’m sorry. This kind of information seems to scare lay people.”

  “It has implications,” said Rostnikov.

  “Yes,” said the American, sitting back. “But, hell, within a few-dozen centuries, we should have the technology to pack everyone up and move them to another galaxy. No more America,” said Susman.

  “No more Russia,” said Rostnikov.

  “We’ll probably start the battle for new nations the day the first colonists reach a reasonably inhabitable planet near Alpha Centuri,” said Susman.

  Rostnikov sat silently for a beat and looked past Susman at the sky before asking, “How long have you known Mr. Allberry?”

  “Bob? Met him in the railroad station in Moscow. Came right up and introduced himself, said he’d been told there was a fellow American in his compartment. We hit it off right away. Never know where or when you’ll make friends.”

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov. “Do you know where Mr. Allberry is now?”

  “Back in the compartment, I’d guess.”

  “No, I just came from there. I was looking for him.”

  Susman looked at Rostnikov with curiosity.

  “I was in Rostov during the war,” Rostnikov said. “The same area where Mr. Allberry was an intelligence liaison.”

  “That where? …”

  “I lost my leg, yes.”

  “You’re too young,” said Susman.

  “Some of us were as young as nine years old,” Rostnikov said.

  Susman shook his head.

  “Nine years old,” he said. “Some of the German soldier kids I saw in Italy, dead ones, live ones, weren’t much older than that.”

  Rostnikov rose with minimal awkwardness.

  “Perhaps he is in one of the cars farther back,” said Rostnikov. “I will look.”

  “See you back in the compartment,” Susman said, his attention now fully focused outsider

  Rostnikov started, bracing himself on the seats and the walls of the car, heading back. Eventually he would meet with Allberry.

  Eventually came very quickly. When he got to the end of the next car, the door of the WC shot open and Allberry stepped out.

  “You looking for me?” he asked.

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov. “If I am not mistaken, you invited me to find you.”

  “You are not mistaken,” Allberry said in perfect Russian. “Which of my invitations did you accept?”

  A woman inched past them, a scowl on her face, and entered the WC, slamming the door behind her.

  “You mentioned a dish you had when you were working with Russian intelligence near Rostov during the war,” said Rostnikov. “You knew I had been in Rostov. You knew that I would know that a delicacy with three different meats would not have been available, not even to a general. Even the officers were chewing on leather, drinking snow, and nearly starving.”

  “And you said nothing when I mentioned this meal,” Allberry said.

  “You could have simply been lying about your past, bragging about being in the intelligence service, about being in Russia.”

  “So, you filed my error away and …”

  “You killed Pavel Cherkasov, and I saw the boy with a large bag. You transferred the money to that bag and gave it to the boy’s family to carry off for you for a few rubles. That family had only two cases. Now they have three. So, I am here.”

  “You know there is a gun in my pocket,” Allberry said.

  “It would make sense.”

  “We go into the WC when the woman comes out,” Allberry said. “We both go in. We lock the door and wait till we get to the station. At the last possible moment, I get out and jam the door, leaving you inside. I will get what it is that the late comedian had come for.”

  “And?”

  “And I will eliminate the person who bears the gift. It is what I do. So, you will go quietly into the rest room.”

  “Or …”

  “Or I shoot you now, here,” the old man said. “No one is looking. I start shouting that you have fallen, had a heart attack. I will look confused, dazed, call for help, a confused old man.”

  “Risky,” said Rostnikov.

  Allberry shrugged. “I have taken greater risks,” he said. “It really is not that difficult. Forty years of this teaches one a great deal about human reaction.”

  “Including the conviction that I will simply enter the rest room with you and be shot.”

  “You do not believe that I will let you live?”

  “No,” said Rostnikov.

  “Then I shall have to shoot you now,” the old man said, looking beyond Rostnikov and starting to remove his gun from his pocket.

  Allberry was an assassin, a confident, experienced one, but an old one with slower reflexes. He was overconfident. Rostnikov threw himself at the old man, his entire weight behind the move, all of his strength coming off his good leg. They fell to the floor, Rostnikov on top, the air going out of the old man. Rostnikov thought he heard something break in the man under him.

  The door to the rest room came open and the scowling woman looked down at the fallen men.

  “I think he has had a heart attack,” Rostnikov said. “I am a police officer. I am giving him artificial respiration. Quick, go to compartment two-fourteen, two cars that way. There is a doctor in there. Dr. Tkach. Tell him Inspector Rostnikov needs him.”

  Allberry gasped beneath the weight of the policeman, trying to catch his breath.

  The woman stood with her mouth open. People in the car heard the commotion and were emptying into the corridor.

  “Run, hurry,” said Rostnikov to the woman. “Seconds count. Run. You do not want to be responsible for the death of this man, do you?”

  The woman came out of her momentary stupor and hurried in the direction Rostnikov had indicated.

  Twenty minutes later the Trans-Siberian Express pulled into the station and th
e doors opened. First those departing or getting off the train to stretch their legs, take in the frigid air, or buy trinkets and snacks got off. The platform was crowded. Many of the bundled people selling furiously had an Asian look. Cacophony reigned.

  Through the crowd a boy no more than twelve years old made his way, hands deep in his coat pockets. He had already developed signs of the regional face: flat, rugged, serious. He was looking for someone in the crowd, someone who had stepped off of the train. He saw the person he was looking for or thought he was looking for. He was carrying a blue bulging duffel bag.

  The boy pushed his way through the crowd toward the man who was standing still, waiting patiently.

  He approached the man and began to remove his right hand from his pocket.

  “For you,” he said nervously, looking at the nearby faces and handing the man a folded sheet of paper.

  Rostnikov unfolded the sheet and looked at the boy, who was already elbowing his way quickly through the crowd.

  Sasha Tkach and Svetlana Britchevna suddenly appeared at Rostnikov’s side.

  “Shall I catch him?” Sasha asked.

  “No,” said Rostnikov. “It is a brief stop. Sasha, please hurry and remove our bags from the train before it resumes its journey.”

  Sasha moved quickly toward the train.

  As Svetlana turned toward the train, Rostnikov put out his arm to stop her.

  “You have the money,” Rostnikov said. “You have the assassin. It is here we say good-bye.”

  Svetlana held up her hands. “You have not made your exchange,” she said. “Our courier has panicked.”

  Rostnikov shrugged. “Sasha and I will try to pick up the trail. If not …”

  “I had better arrange for the removal of our assassin and the body,” she said. “As you say, there is not much time.”

  Sasha was back at their side, a suitcase in each hand.

  “Good-bye, Sasha Tkach,” she said. “Perhaps I will look you up in Moscow.”

  “It would be better if you did not,” Sasha said.

  “For whom?” she asked, picking up her suitcases. Then she turned to Rostnikov and added, “If you find the package, will you open it? To satisfy your curiosity?”

  “My orders are to turn it over to my director without examining the contents.”

  “And,” she said, “you always do what your director says?”

  “Except when I feel that to obey an order might compromise me or one of my associates.”

  She nodded in understanding. “Wish me good fortune, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

  “I do,” he said. “May I provide some small advice?”

  “Of course,” she said.

  “Be wary of your own ambition,” he said. “Temper your vision with an understanding of the value of survival.”

  “Philosophy,” she said, stepping back.

  “I read it somewhere,” he said. “Something like that. Take care of yourself, Svetlana Britchevna.”

  “And you too, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

  She moved between a small man moving from foot to foot and bargaining with a very fat woman over a heavy-looking necklace of thick white beads. Before she faded into the crowd, Svetlana gave Sasha a long, lingering smile.

  When she had disappeared, Rostnikov said, “Beautiful woman.”

  “Yes,” said Sasha.

  “Very clever too.”

  “Yes,” said Sasha.

  “And? …”

  Rostnikov handed the sheet of paper the boy had given him to Sasha. On it, in neat letters, were the words “Sverdlovsk statue. Come alone.”

  “We may or may not be watched,” said Rostnikov. “Our courier is being very cautious. I will find a taxi and go to the Sverdlovsk statue, wherever it may be. You take the suitcases and come in another taxi. Simply tell the driver to take you to the statue. Be ready. I shall …”

  “Cold,” came a voice from behind Rostnikov, who watched Sasha move toward the station in search of a taxi.

  “Cold, like heat, is relative,” Rostnikov said, as Jim Susman moved to his side swathed in a thick down parka and a hat with flaps that covered his ears. “We are not really into winter yet.”

  “Cold enough for me,” said the little man. “You seen Bob?”

  “A while ago,” said Rostnikov. “I think he said something about getting off the train here for a few days.”

  The little man looked around. “Off, here? Why?”

  “Interesting things to see,” said Rostnikov. “Churches, museum, countryside, mountains. Industrial. Very much like your Pittsburgh.”

  “He didn’t say anything to me.”

  “Sudden impulse,” said Rostnikov. “I am debarking here also. Business.”

  “Guess it’ll be just me and the comic with the appetite,” said Susman, rocking from one foot to the other. “Tell you the truth, I don’t care much for his jokes.”

  “If you are fortunate, you will not have to hear any more of them. Perhaps he too is getting off here. The regional food is unusual and Mr. Drovny has expressed a keen interest in fine cuisine.”

  “I should be so lucky,” said Susman. “Say, listen, I’m getting back on the train.”

  “One last question,” said Rostnikov.

  Susman looked at the detective.

  “Does the sun make a sound?”

  “As a matter of fact,” Susman said, “it does.”

  “I would like to hear that sound.”

  “You can if you have an internet connection. Search for the Michelson Doppler Imager. There are sound files in something called AU format. The sun rings like a bell in a lot of frequencies and with distinct harmonics. Music.”

  The little man took off his right glove with his teeth and extended his hand to Rostnikov, who took it.

  “Good to meet you,” the American said through clenched teeth.

  “And you,” said Rostnikov. “Enjoy your trip.” Susman put the glove back on and looked up. “Sun’s coming back out.”

  Rostnikov looked up at the huge glowing orange sphere and nodded. Yes, there it was.

  Holding the blue bag in front of him, Rostnikov made his way to the front of the train station, pushing through the crowd. Almost half the faces were Asian.

  There was no real taxi line, just a scattering of cars facing in various directions with cabs of different drab greens and browns inching their way, miraculously avoiding a collision of fenders.

  Sasha was nowhere in sight. Rostnikov did not bother to try to discover if he was being watched. He found a particularly faded brown cab with the virtue of being empty and opened the door.

  “Hotel?” asked the driver, a short, bulldog-faced man wearing a Cleveland Indians baseball cap. The cartoon Indian on the cap grinned at the chief inspector.

  “The Sverdlovsk statue,” Rostnikov said, shoving the duffel into the back seat and carefully getting in next to it.

  “You do not want a hotel?” the driver said, looking back at his passenger,

  “No, I wish to see the sights of your wondrous city.”

  The driver gave him a look that conveyed serious doubts about his passenger’s intelligence or sanity.

  “We can drive past the statue,” the driver tried. “Then out to the memorial, the one over the cellar where the czar and his family were murdered. Nice little wooden churchlike thing. For very little I can sell you a complete list of the items taken from the royal family before they were killed. Long list. I can, for a small extra charge, get you an exact copy of the crucifix one of the daughters wore around her neck. And if …”

  A car horn was blaring behind the cab, demanding that he move.

  “Sverdlovsk statue,” said Rostnikov.

  The driver shrugged, turned around, adjusted his baseball cap, and began to make his way skillfully through the morass of vehicles.

  “You like American baseball?” asked Rostnikov as they broke through the jam and onto a wide street.

  “No,” said the driver. “Why
? Oh, the hat? An American gave this to me last year. I drove him to the airport. Spoke terrible Russian but he was happy. He had just made a big deal and was going back to this Clevylund place where they have laughing Indians. He gave me a good tip and the hat. Why don’t I just drive around the statue and take you to …”

  “The statue,” Rostnikov said.

  That ended conversation. The ride through the town, which seemed to be engulfed in a low fog, took more than fifteen minutes. Rostnikov had once been to Frankfurt, Germany. Ekaterinburg reminded him of Frankfurt. Large office buildings of no distinction, apartment buildings huddled close together. Beyond the city, through the patches of fog or smog, he could see distant mountains and the hint of the sun.

  “There it is,” said the driver, pulling into a large square.

  The dark figure of a man stood atop what looked like a boulder mounted on a pedestal. Across the square stood an old, official-looking two-story building with a row of pillars before its entrance. There were people hurrying through the square, their breath clear as they moved, their hands plunged into their pockets, their heads and sometimes faces covered.

  “Winter coming,” said the driver.

  “Wait for me,” Rostnikov said, opening the door.

  “Do not try to run away,” the driver said. “I will be watching.”

  “I have one leg,” said Rostnikov. “Running for me is a distant childhood memory.”

  “I will be watching,” said the driver, adjusting his cap.

  Rostnikov made his way out of the cab and slowly, duffel in hand, moved toward the statue.

  It was not that the chief inspector was impervious to the weather, but only the most extreme of temperatures, hot or cold, seemed to affect him. He did not see Sasha but he was sure he was somewhere nearby, watching.

  Rostnikov moved toward the statue. A vendor s cart stood before the looming form of the assassin. Rostnikov moved to it and ordered a slice of pizza. The bearded man behind the cart, only his eyes showing behind his scarf, nodded, opened a metal lid, and came up with a round piece of baked dough covered with a thin layer of white cheese.

  Rostnikov put the duffel between his legs and said, “Can you bring a slice to the cab driver over there?”

  “Da” said the man.

  Rostnikov paid him and began to eat as he watched the man hurriedly shuffle, small pizza in hand on a sheet of brown paper, toward the cab.