Hard Currency

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Elena was about to speak again when the children in the pool shrieked and Rostnikov turned his head to look at them.

  Five minutes later Elena was in the bath with the water running. Twenty minutes later she was asleep in her bed. Five floors below children were still squealing in the swimming pool.

  Had he arrived five minutes earlier or later, Emil Karpo would have missed the boy with the red Mohawk and the slender blue-haired girl in black leather. The sky was dark with the threat of rain or early snow, and people were hurrying in and out of Petrovka to beat the weather.

  They were at the sentry gate, arguing with the uniformed guard, who was repeating that they could not see Inspector Rostnikov, that he was unavailable, that they could leave a message, that they were holding up the line. The line consisted of a short, fat, shivering man carrying a briefcase and looking at his watch with impatience.

  “Capones?” Karpo said, stepping around to the sentry station.

  The red-haired boy looked up at him, and the girl, whose eyes were made up with dark circles so she looked like an owl, smiled.

  “Yes,” the boy said. “We need to see the Washtub.”

  “Come,” Karpo said, motioning them to follow him into the street. The uniformed young officer motioned for the short businessman to step forward.

  Karpo crossed Petrovka Street with the two Capones at his side. A low fence and some trees faced the Petrovka station. Karpo stopped beneath the trees near the bus stop and turned to the Capones.

  “We want to see the Washtub,” the boy said defiantly.

  “What is your name?” Karpo asked.

  “I’m called Matches.”

  “Why do you want to see Inspector Rostnikov?’ asked Karpo. He was aware of the owl girl looking at him with something that appeared to be fascination.

  “We want Yellow Angel’s body,” said the boy.

  “Her name was Iliana Ivanova,” said Karpo.

  “She hated her name,” said the girl. “She didn’t want to be buried with that name over her. She wanted a headstone with a yellow angel.”

  “We are trying to find her family,” said Karpo. He felt the first drops of slushy rain begin to fall.

  “You found it,” said Matches. “The Capones are her family.”

  “When the examiners are finished with the body, I’ll see what can be done,” Karpo said, looking at the girl.

  “You’re the Vampire,” she said. “The one they call the Vampire.”

  Karpo pulled the leather notebook from his pocket.

  “When?” asked Matches, nervously pulling up the collar of his jacket to keep the sleet from his neck. “When can we get her?”

  “Have Xeromen call me at this number in an hour, at nine-thirty,” Karpo said, handing the boy the sheet of paper.

  Matches looked at the sheet and then at the girl, who was still admiring Karpo.

  “Take it,” she said.

  Matches put the paper in his jacket pocket.

  In the red treetops of Matches’s hair, beads of gray sleet clung, slipped, and melted.

  The girl smiled at Karpo again and shifted her weight from foot to foot. Her dress was short and her legs covered with thin tights. Karpo was sure she was no more than fifteen or sixteen. The cheeks and thighs of childhood gave her away, even though her eyes revealed experience that added five years to her heavily made-up face.

  “Well?” said Matches, reaching up to brush the sleet from his hair.

  “Nine-thirty,” said Karpo. He now looked directly into the girl’s eyes.

  Her grin disappeared. She blinked and turned away.

  “Let’s go,” said Matches, touching her arm. “Ginka, let’s go.”

  The sleet was falling harder now. Matches pulled at the girl’s arm, and finally, reluctantly she followed him. As they hurried down the street she looked back at the motionless pale policeman in black, whose eyes followed them as they reached the waiting black Volga and got in.

  EIGHT

  THE MOSCOW METROPOLITAN RAILWAY, with more than 100 stations, 160 miles of track, 8,000 trains, and over 2 million passengers a day, is—in terms of layout, efficiency, extent, and even beauty—the best subway system in the world. It is probably the highest lasting achievement of the Soviet Union in Moscow.

  Stations are scrubbed and polished constantly. Air is changed four to eight times an hour depending on the traffic. Smoking is forbidden in stations and on all trains, which run until one in the morning and arrive every ninety seconds at all stations during the rush hour.

  There are seven lines, each color coded, with convenient transfer stops in the center of the city and along the Koltsevaya Line, which runs in an almost perfect circle around the central city. A map of the system looks like the wheel of a cart with its spokes extended well beyond the rim.

  The cost of travel on the Moscow Metro is one ruble, the equivalent of an American penny.

  The system is semiautomatic, operated by computer, monitored by uniformed drivers who check the control settings.

  When plans for an underground railway were considered before the revolution, in 1902, the newspaper Russkoye Slovo called the proposal “a staggeringly impudent encroachment on everything Russian people hold dear in the city of Moscow. As the tunnel of the metropolitan railway will pass in places only a few feet beneath churches, the peace and quiet of these sacred places will be disturbed.” The Moscow City Council, the Duma, rejected the proposal.

  The first shaft of the Moscow Metro was finally sunk in 1931. When the first train ran on May 15, 1935, there were thirteen stations. Even when the war with Hitler began, construction continued.

  Stone and wood from all over the Soviet Union were used to construct each station. Architects, sculptors, painters, and designers considered it a great honor to be assigned to a Metro station. Many of the stations in the center of the city look more like cavernous museum galleries than train stations.

  Each stop on the Metro line is different from all the others. The Mayakovskaya Station is known for its massive red marble columns and its mosaics created from the cartoons of Alexander Deineka. The lighting system in the Kropotkinskaya Station was designed to give the impression that the station is on the surface and that sunshine is beaming in on a bright summer morning. Supported by seventy-two pillars, the Komsomolskaya Station, with its eight massive mosaics depicting the struggle for independence, is more than two hundred yards long.

  In the winter, Gypsies and the wandering homeless ride the trains for warmth and the opportunity to beg from captive travelers.

  The Metro police division, a branch of the Moscow police with almost one thousand uniformed and plainclothed men and women, patrols the vast system, dealing with a range of crimes that includes purse-snatching, pocket-picking, and the recent outbreak of American-style muggings by youth gangs.

  “And so,” said Sasha Tkach, sipping tepid tea, “what does this tell us about Tahpor? Is he a Metro employee? A frequent rider? A lunatic who loves or hates the Metro? This could also be a coincidence.”

  Karpo stood next to him in the office of Inspector Rostnikov looking at the Metro map he had brought from his room and carefully laid out on the desk.

  “I have considered this,” said Karpo. “The odds are approximately two hundred to one against the selection of forty murder sites in close proximity to Metro stations being random.”

  Sasha poured himself some more tea from the thermos Maya had prepared for him. Some time during the night, Sasha had begun to develop a slight cough and when he got up in the morning he thought he might have a temperature.

  “Why didn’t anyone notice this connection to Metro stations before?” asked Sasha.

  “Perhaps,” said Karpo, “because there is no overt connection, only a proximity that becomes remarkable when the sample becomes large enough. Coincidence would have had at least one of the murders taking place farther than five minutes from a station, or one or more of the murders even closer to a Metro station. It would appear,
therefore, that 341 does not want to act too near a station and is afraid of getting too far from one.”

  “I’m catching a cold again and I distrust such statistics,” said Tkach.

  “I have noticed that you are remarkably prone to viral attack. I suggest large doses of citrus and aspirin and I share your skepticism, but I think the possibility that I may be correct is worth pursuit unless you have a potentially more promising conjecture.”

  “I have a cold.”

  “I’m sorry, but you have colds with increasing frequency.”

  “Pulcharia asked about you,” said Tkach, stifling a sneeze. “She likes you.”

  Karpo allowed himself a smile, though no one, with the possible exception of Rostnikov, would have recognized it as such. He looked up at the clock on the wall of Rostnikov’s office. It was a few minutes before four.

  “I read,” said Tkach, returning to his skepticism, “that a researcher for the American Encyclopedia Britannica determined the square footage of forest in the Soviet Union by calling a forest ranger and asking how many trees grew on an average square acre of forest. The researcher then looked at a map, added up all the area marked in green in the Soviet Union, divided it by acres, and multiplied it by the number the forest ranger had given her. That figure then appeared in the encyclopedia and has subsequently been picked up by almanacs and even used by Izvestia.”

  “And you find a relationship between this anecdote and my conclusions about 341?” asked Karpo.

  “You see spots on a map and draw a conclusion.” Tkach sniffled. “You see a pattern. You connect the dots to make the picture you want to see.”

  The tinkling fluorescent light from the single fixture above Rostnikov’s desk sent long shadows down Karpo’s pale face.

  “I see no other reasonable conclusion,” said Karpo. “I think 341 will realize this too,” he said.

  “Realize what?” asked Sasha, holding back a sneeze that confounded him by emerging as a cough.

  “Perhaps soon, or perhaps after more killing, he will become aware of his pattern.”

  “And perhaps never,” said Tkach. “But, assuming you are right, what will he do?”

  “Force himself to kill a great distance from a Metro station, if he is capable of doing so. Or commit a murder in a Metro station, if he is capable of doing so.”

  “Or,” said Sasha, “simply go right on the way he has been. We can search far from a Metro station, inside a station, or near a station. The circle is closing around our killer, Karpo. We have him trapped within the confines of greater Moscow.”

  “I assume that was sarcasm. I do not find sarcasm productive,” said Karpo.

  Someone tapped at the door and Sasha called for whoever it was to enter. A female clerk with very short hair stuck her head in and announced that Sasha had a call.

  Karpo responded by looking down at the map.

  “Deputy Inspector Tkach,” Sasha said into the phone.

  “You sound worse,” said Maya. “Did you drink the tea?”

  “I’m drinking,” he said. “I’ll get an orange or some pills.”

  “Pulcharia has a cough too.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “If it gets worse, I’m calling that doctor, Sarah Rostnikov’s cousin, the one we met at the party. The clinic lines are getting longer and the nurses always take your temperature and give you the same bottle of red syrup.”

  “Good idea,” said Tkach. Karpo, standing pale and still, reminded Sasha of the statue of Lenin in October Square. Then Sasha remembered that the statue of Lenin was no longer in October Square.

  “Try to come home and get some rest,” Maya said.

  “I’ll try,” Sasha said, aware that home and rest were antagonistic concepts. His greatest chance at recuperation would probably be to remain right here in Rostnikov’s overly warm office pondering the Metro theory of Emil Karpo.

  When Sasha hung up the phone, Karpo spoke.

  “We have a profile of victims. Central Computer indicates that they are sixty-four percent males and thirty-six percent females. The median age of victims is twenty-one, with the range from fifteen to thirty. An examination of the victims suggests that the younger ones looked a bit older and the older ones looked younger than their age. All of the victims were approached while traveling alone.”

  “So,” said Tkach, leaning back dreamily, “the odds are approximately three to one that Tahpor will next attack a male traveling alone who is in his early twenties or seems to be. The odds are perhaps eighty to one that this attack will take place near a Metro station.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Ah,” said Tkach, fighting a strong urge to close his eyes and lean far back in Rostnikov’s desk chair. “And when?”

  “Soon perhaps,” said Karpo, still staring at the map. “He killed two days ago. He has killed on consecutive days. He has waited months to kill. What he has not done is strike three days after a murder.”

  “But he might go back to an old pattern,” said Tkach, resisting the urge to touch his own forehead to check his temperature.

  “All things are possible,” said Karpo. “We are dealing with a madman. Like all mad people, he has a set of needs, a pattern that compels him.”

  “Like killing always five minutes from the Metro. So, what is your plan?”

  “My plan,” said Karpo, “is to find as many young people as we can who fit 341’s victim profile, and place them where they can be watched if they are approached by anyone.

  “And how many decoys and watchers would that take to have any statistical chance of finding 341?” asked Tkach.

  “Several hundred,” said Karpo.

  “We’ll need the Wolfhound to get the Metro police to cooperate,” said Tkach. “You are talking about one hundred police.”

  “Then we shall ask him for that. We shall convince him that it is imperative.”

  “And the decoys? Even if we get enough police, which is not likely, where are we going to get a hundred decoys who fit the victim profile?”

  Karpo simply looked at Sasha and said nothing.

  “You have at least one in mind,” said Sasha.

  “Yes,” replied Emil Karpo.

  “So, you have me. All you need are about fifty more.”

  “I think I may know where to get them,” said Karpo. The phone on Rostnikov’s desk rang. It was precisely nine-thirty.

  Yevgeny Odom was a hardworking man. Not only did he carefully plan murders and protect Kola, he also worked two jobs.

  Since his full-time job did not start till early in the afternoon, he put in two or three hours each day in the blood bank at the hospital. His army service as a medical assistant had taught him how to draw blood, and his pleasant disposition had earned him his civilian position. Donors frequently reported to doctors and nurses that the tall man with the small smile drew their blood with almost no pain and great good humor, both characteristics that were traditionally in short supply in Russia.

  When he went to the hospital in the mornings, he always carried his flat, compact, blue carry-on bag, an imitation Delsey he had purchased at a street market. It contained, among other things, hundreds of rubles. It had become a necessity with insane inflation to carry a bag of money to buy even the most mundane of things. Street vendors sold cans of Pepsi, jars of pickles, postcards, and political sketches at one stand, pathetic onions, fur hats, religious icons, and cans of olives at the next. Food was suddenly plentiful and the lines were short in stores. The problem was that very few Russians had enough money to buy anything.

  Yevgeny’s needs were limited, but one had to be prepared.

  This day should be no different from all the rest. He placed the bag behind the table at which he drew the blood and entered into the morning routine with enthusiasm, offering support and sympathy to each person who dutifully made a fist while he prepared the needle.

  During the previous night he had made his decision. It had come partly from logic and cunning, partly from this
faint sense of separation he had begun to feel. He would double-check before locking the plan into place, but he could see no great problem with it.

  “Fist please,” he said to the heavy, dark man in the chair. The man was frightened and trying not to show it. There was the look of a drinker in the man’s skin and eyes; his blood would probably be rejected, but that was not Yevgeny Odom’s concern.

  The man cringed as Yevgeny tightened the yellow elastic band around his bicep. The man tried to look away as the needle approached skin but he could not resist and turned at the last instant. Into his arm went the needle, smoothly, easily. The man let out the breath of air he had been holding.

  “Hurt?” asked Yevgeny.

  “No,” said the man with a smile.

  “Good, it’s over.”

  The man moved away quickly, and Yevgeny smiled in amusement. He hoped that there was a policeman or a team of policemen assigned to him. It was reasonable that there would be. He preferred to imagine real human beings rather than a computer and a set of standard Ministry of the Interior guidelines for identifying and apprehending serial killers.

  Yevgeny had considered his options carefully. He contemplated a faceless, androgynous victim along a riverbank in Klin, but rejected the distant riverbank as somehow unsatisfying even though it would make sense to strike next far from the city. He chose not to explore the reasons for this decision, but something inside told him that the decision to remain in the city was correct.

  A thin, thirtyish woman with an aggressive look on her face was the next donor. Her washed-out blond hair was tied back with a band, making her face even more taut and tense than the situation merited.

  “Sit, please,” Yevgeny said, holding his large hands open to show they were empty and harmless.

  The thin woman sat cautiously.

  “This will not hurt. I promise you.”

  She watched him aggressively and he smiled at her. He preferred the aggressive ones like this to the ones who chatted, seeking contact and kinship in an effort to obtain more gentle treatment. They always walked away thinking that their transparent efforts had been the cause of his care. He preferred ones like this, who had no choice but to credit him for the ease of these few moments.