Hard Currency

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Still she did not look around the cabin.

  “One of two,” she whispered. “The thin man on the aisle four rows back or the woman in front of us, the one who keeps trying to listen to us over the noise. She is doing her best to keep from showing her frustration.”

  “Good,” said Rostnikov. “Which one?”

  “Perhaps both,” she said.

  “One,” he repeated, shifting his left leg. He decided he would have to stand up again soon in spite of the bobbing airplane, to bring the leg back to some semblance of painful life.

  “The man,” Elena concluded.

  “Reasons?” asked Rostnikov.

  “He did not look at either of us when he went past to his seat,” she said. “Every other passenger gave us some kind of glance. We are an odd pair. He worked too hard at not noticing.”

  “Perhaps he is preoccupied,” said Rostnikov.

  “He finds some reason to turn away or engage in conversation each time I go to the rest room,” she continued. “He does not want to make eye contact.”

  “Conclusion?” Rostnikov said, grasping the railings of his chair with white-knuckled despair.

  “He does not want to be remembered,” Elena said, her words coming in rattling leaps as the plane jerked up and down.

  “But he draws attention to himself with his studied indifference,” said Rostnikov. “I’m afraid we did not merit a star of the KGB staff. The man’s unenviable task will be to stay close to us without our knowing he is there. The less we see of him the less likely he is to be remembered. It is a hopeless task. We will probably end up feeling sorry for him and inviting him to have coffee with us. I am looking forward to Cuban coffee. I understand it is very good. The man following us is Povlevich or Powelish,” said Rostnikov. “Karpo would know the date of his birth and which of his teeth is most in need of dental attention. It is enough that I know he works for a man named Klamkin, also known as the Frog. Klamkin reports to a Colonel Lunacharski, who covets the office of our Gray Wolfhound.”

  “I see,” said Elena seriously.

  “We live in a world of unnecessary complexity,” Rostnikov said as he rose. “It is the curse of being Russian. We don’t believe that the mad world is sufficiently mad so we create even greater madness and then point to the chaos we have created as proof of our theory.”

  “We have a tragic history,” Elena said.

  “The greatest comedy is tragedy,” he said. “Do you know who said that?”

  “Lenin?”

  The plane suddenly stopped rocking and began a smooth, steady rise.

  “Gogol,” he answered, and began to make his way down the aisle to the distant rest room.

  As Rostnikov limped past him, the KGB man lazily and naturally turned his head away and closed his eyes.

  TWO

  “I WAS JUST WALKING my dog,” the old man said, pointing at his dog. “I walk Petya every morning. Here. There. Everywhere. I’m a veteran.”

  They were standing next to a thick tree in Sokolniki Park. The bark of the tree was peeling with age or some blight. Tkach didn’t know which, but he did notice that the tree was dying. As he had conducted the interview, Sasha had turned the old man, whose knees buckled with arthritis, away from the police laboratory crew and Emil Karpo, who were going over the area and examining the mutilated body of the girl.

  “Citizen Blanshevski,” Sasha said. “Did you see anyone in the park this morning? Any people you usually see? People you have never seen before?”

  “Comrade,” said Blanshevski. “I prefer to be called Comrade. I don’t mind saying I am a veteran. My brother died fighting the Germans.” The old man spat. “Whenever I think of the Germans, I spit. I have given my life to the Party. You should know that. So call me Comrade or I have nothing to say.”

  Sasha gently bit his lower lip. He said nothing for a moment. For the three weeks since his thirtieth birthday he had, with the help of his wife, Maya, managed to pull himself from the thick pool of self-pitying misery in which he had been immersed for months.

  Thirty was not as bad as he had feared, and there had been a great compensation. Their second child had come, a boy whom they named for Sasha’s father, Ilya, much to the joy of Sasha’s mother, Lydia, who was still temporarily living with Sasha, Maya, and their two-year-old, Pulcharia. Ilya was healthy, and he slept reasonably well. Maya had begun to get her figure back and with it the health that had seemed to ebb away in pregnancy.

  Sasha felt that he was looking like himself once more. The mirror showed him a face that looked no more than twenty-three. He was, he knew, reasonably good-looking if a bit thin. His straight blond hair tended to fall over his eyes and he had to throw his head back to clear his vision. There was a large space between his front upper teeth, which seemed to bring out the maternal instinct in many women, and this had gotten Sasha into trouble on more than a single occasion.

  But now things were looking better. Elena Timofeyeva, with whom he had been teamed for almost four months, had gone to Cuba with Rostnikov. Elena’s cheerful sense of the future had been almost unbearable. Sasha preferred, at least for now, the company of Emil Karpo. At his worst moments of depression, Sasha knew that he was a dynamo of good cheer compared to the man known throughout the MVD as the Vampire.

  “Comrade Blanshevski,” Sasha Tkach tried again, “did you see … ?”

  “A man,” Blanshevski said, adjusting the blue cap on his head. “Petya, wait. The police don’t want your crap around here. Dog is really my wife’s.” Blanshevski leaned toward Sasha; he whispered now in case his wife might be hiding in the tree. “Hate the dog. Hate it. I’m a prisoner of the dog. The Nazis …” He spat again. “The Nazis couldn’t have tortured me more if they had captured me. If I believed in God, I would pray for the dog to die.”

  “Then why don’t you kill it?” Sasha whispered back.

  The old man looked down at the whimpering little dog and shook his head.

  “Can’t,” said Blanshevski. “I’m not a violent man. Besides, I’m used to him.”

  Something shuffled where the search was taking place, and Tkach found himself looking over the old man’s shoulder. Karpo was kneeling next to the body. The amount of blood was …

  “You saw a man,” Tkach said.

  “I saw Comrade Aloyon, who sits on the bench way over there and reads the paper when it’s warm, cold, hot, who cares,” said the old man. “I saw the woman with the fat baby. I don’t know her name. See her maybe twice, three times every week. Saw her even before the baby. Never even said hello. She’s always in a rush. Me, I’m not in a rush. Where have I to go? I walk a dog I don’t like in the morning. I have some tea or something for lunch. I look at my wife and out the window. I …”

  “A man,” Tkach said. “You saw a man.”

  “Businessman,” said Blanshevski. “I forgot. I shave. I shave twice a day. I strop my own straight razor. Skin is still smooth. Almost nothing left of the blade. I try to keep busy but …”

  He shrugged and looked at Sasha for sympathy. Sasha shrugged back thinking that a month ago, before his thirtieth birthday, he would probably have considered strangling the old man.

  “Businessman,” said Sasha.

  “Maybe forty, fifty,” said Blanshevski. “Bald, glasses. Carried a briefcase. Gray suit. Looked a little like that one on the television. The game show where they spin that wheel. I’ll think of it. Oleg something.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “There,” he said, pointing. “Petya has to do his stuff.”

  “He can do it here,” said Sasha. “We’re far enough away.”

  “I don’t want them to think it’s evidence,” said the man. “I heard they can do things. Go through a toilet and get DRA.”

  “DNA,” Tkach corrected.

  “Because of this damned dog, I could get involved here,” said the man.

  “You are not a suspect, Comrade Blanshevski. You are a witness. The bald man.”

  “It’s
all right, Petya,” Blanshevski said, and Petya bleated with gratitude and relieved himself. “The man came out of the park and got in a car. I was this close to him. Not like you and me. Like we are to the dead girl. I’ve seen people torn like that. The war. You’re too young to remember the war.”

  “What kind of car?”

  Over the man’s shoulder Tkach saw Karpo get up, look around, and begin to move toward them.

  “I don’t know. A little car. Dark. I don’t know kinds of cars. I’ve never had a car. A car is a car. Tin, wheels, things that go wrong. Inefficient. My daughter’s husband has a car. I don’t know what kind. They told me.”

  Karpo was now next to them. Blanshevski looked up at him nervously.

  “Could you recognize him if you saw him again?”

  “He’s my daughter’s husband. You think I’m a fossil.”

  “Not your daughter’s husband. The bald man.”

  “I know. I know that’s who you meant. I was … I don’t know. A bald man. My eyes are not perfect. Watch where you’re standing.”

  The last was directed at Karpo, who looked down to avoid Petya’s dropping.

  “Bald?” said Karpo.

  The old man nodded uncomfortably.

  “How big was he? My size? Inspector Tkach’s?”

  “Not as tall as you,” said Blanshevski, reaching down to pick up the dog, who was whimpering again. “More weight. Not heavy really, but … more weight.”

  Karpo reached into the pocket of his black suit, removed a notebook with a dark cover, and pulled out a drawing. He handed the drawing to the old man.

  Tkach knew the drawing well. He watched the old man’s face as he put the dog down and squinted at the drawing.

  “This man has hair,” said the old man, pointing at the hair of the man in the drawing.

  “I know,” said Karpo.

  “No glasses,” the man said, shaking his head. “No glasses and hair. It’s not a photograph.”

  “I am aware of that,” said Karpo.

  “Still …” Blanshevski said. “It could be the man. I can’t be sure.”

  Karpo took the drawing back and put it into his notebook.

  “I have Comrade Blanshevski’s address,” said Tkach.

  “You can go home,” Karpo said to the old man.

  “Remember Petya just …”

  “I remember,” Tkach assured him.

  The old man adjusted his cap once more and looked back at the bloody body. He seemed about to say something but changed his mind when he looked at Karpo’s pale face and unblinking eyes. Then he scurried away.

  When the man and dog were out of earshot, Tkach said, “You think it’s him again?”

  “The liver is missing. So is the right eye. The victim is young. We’ll wait for the laboratory report.”

  During the past five years, forty people, all young men and women, had been found dead in parks and wooded areas ranging from central Moscow to Istra, over thirty kilometers outside the city. Almost half of the murders had taken place during the day. In fact, the only pattern anyone had been able to find in the killings was that the killer alternated the times, daytime for a month, then nighttime for a month, with the exception of September of the past two years, when the killings seemed to be randomly divided between day and night. Almost all the murders had involved sexual violation and mutilation.

  In spite of the great number of almost certainly related murders, until recently only a few in the MVD and KGB had known of the crimes. When they were listed in the files they had not been officially linked until the new power of the Special Affairs Office had permitted Karpo to go into the restricted files of the Procurator’s Office. When he reviewed the files, he found that some of them had been removed by direct order of the Minister of the Interior, but there was enough to track down and enough to begin a profile. Less than two days after Karpo had shown interest in the files of the serial killer, the existence of what was certainly the single worst killer in Russia since Joseph Stalin suddenly became common knowledge. Other criminal investigation branches were only too willing to allow the Special Affairs Office to take over. Journalists from other countries, obviously tipped by Russians who were afraid to ask for themselves, had begun to push and prod, to write of cover-ups, and to hint at even greater horror than the great horror itself.

  Rostnikov had concluded that it was the enormity of the horror that had kept the killings a secret until now. In the midst of political turmoil, coups, ethnic riots, and gang warfare, no one wanted to accept the fact that a monster was loose in Moscow, killing, mutilating, and cannibalizing. A KGB defector named Mishionoko had told the Italian newspaper La Republica of the monster in 1989 but no one had taken him seriously. Now it was widely believed that every unsolved killing in Russia was being blamed on the monster so that when a suitable scapegoat was found dozens of political murders could be suddenly and conveniently solved.

  Tkach moved past Karpo and walked toward the body, passing one of the three men who were on their knees going through the leaves and grass. Though the body was blood-soaked, twisted, and mutilated there was something about it that seemed familiar to Sasha.

  Twenty yards away, one of the grass searchers stood up.

  “Here,” he said. “Knife. No blood.”

  Karpo moved toward where the man was pointing. Tkach kept looking at the body. Suddenly he knew what was disturbing him and he shuddered. In spite of its distance from human form, the young woman’s body bore a clear resemblance to Sasha’s little daughter, Pulcharia. The corpse with the bloody black hole where an eye had been could have been his daughter.

  “I remember,” a voice came through the trees.

  Sasha forced himself to turn from the body, willing himself not to shake. Karpo stood next to the investigator hovering over the knife. Everyone had stopped at the sound of the voice.

  “I remember,” Blanshevski repeated as he came through the trees. “The car. The bald man’s car. It had a sticker on the bumper. One of those stickers, you know. It said something about blood.”

  The old man stopped and looked at the policemen.

  “‘Give blood,’ it said. I’m sure. ‘Give blood.’ It was white with red letters. ‘Give blood.’”

  No one spoke and the old man’s eyes turned to the dog in his arms. He stroked the dog and repeated, “I’m sure.”

  One of the lab technicians whose name Karpo did not know motioned to the deputy inspector.

  “I’m sure,” the old man repeated yet again as Karpo and Sasha approached the body and the kneeling technician.

  The technician lifted a pale bare leg of the dead girl and twisted it so that the bottom of her foot faced Karpo.

  “A tattoo,” the man said. “On the bottom of the foot. I think it’s a hammer.”

  “It’s a gun,” said Karpo.

  “Capones,” said Sasha with a sigh. Behind them the old man said, “Yes, Petya, I am absolutely sure.”

  They landed in Havana in darkness. Rostnikov had tried to sleep on the plane for the final few hours when the turbulence had stopped, but each time he dozed he had the sensation of falling and nausea. He woke up to the groaning of the plane, the sound of his own rapid breathing, and the aching of his withered leg.

  He was happy to land and anxious to get to a bath where he could read for half an hour before settling into a bed. He planned to sleep for at least a solid day.

  The airport in Havana was smaller than Rostnikov had imagined. In fact, it was small by any international standard and far from the vast empty echoing of the Sheremetyevo in Moscow.

  Their luggage, one bag each, was lined up and waiting as they entered the terminal. A line was forming for each item to be checked on metal platforms. The stone-faced customs clerks reminded Rostnikov of pathologists about to examine the stomachs of the recently dead, certain they would find nothing they had not encountered before.

  The thin KGB man, four people ahead of them, was doing his best to focus on the contents of his
leather suitcase, which had been opened on the table before him.

  Suddenly a large man in a faded but neatly ironed blue uniform approached, smiled at Elena Timofeyeva, and said in slightly accented Russian, “You don’t have to wait in line. Please follow me.”

  Without waiting for a reply, the man picked up their luggage, turned, and walked slowly through the crowd. Rostnikov nodded to Elena and followed the man, who nodded at the weary customs inspector who was violating the packed undergarments of the thin KGB man.

  The uniformed man with their luggage pushed open a double door marked “Oficiales Solamente” and reached back to hold it open so Elena and Rostnikov could follow.

  “Am I moving too quickly?” the man asked as they entered an almost empty waiting area about the size of a tennis court.

  “We are fine,” said Rostnikov.

  “Yes,” said Elena.

  “As you wish,” said the man. “This way. I have a car.”

  Three children, the oldest no more than five, were playing on the chrome-and-plastic seats of the waiting room. A heavy woman in a pink flower-print dress watched the children, trying not to doze off.

  “Air-conditioning is off again in the airport,” said the big man, looking back at them. “I don’t know if it is intentional to save power or a parts breakdown.”

  He strode onto the sidewalk in front of the airport. Three Russian-made buses were lined up, their doors open, their drivers talking to each other. Two cars also stood at the sidewalk. One was a recent-vintage white Lada with blue lights mounted on its roof and the other an old rust-and-blue American Chevrolet. The large man went to the Lada and opened its trunk.

  He threw Rostnikov’s and Elena’s cases into the trunk, slammed it shut, and turned to Rostnikov with a smile. He held out his hand.

  “I am Major Sanchez, Havana Police.”

  Rostnikov took the man’s hand.

  “Your Russian is perfect.”

  “You flatter me,” said Sanchez, taking Elena’s hand. “I spent four years in your country. My wife is Russian.”

  Elena withdrew her hand from his.

  Sanchez’s hair was dark, thin, and receding. His skin was light brown and his teeth remarkably white. His forearms and neck were powerfully muscled.