Hard Currency

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Our security apparatus has suffered in prestige,” said Popolov, glancing at General Karsnikov and then back to Colonel Snitkonoy. “Failure to resolve such a loathsome string of killings could also have political and international consequences.”

  “I understand,” said the Wolfhound. “And with that foremost in mind I request additional manpower from the MVD and other services for a one-week surveillance.”

  “How many people will you need?” asked the general.

  “At least one hundred armed officers.”

  “And this is your idea, Colonel?” It was a new voice, the voice of General Lugharev of Military Investigation.

  “No,” said the Wolfhound, “it is the idea of one of my men who has been on the case for several months.”

  “Karpo,” said General Lugharev.

  “Yes.”

  “The same one who prepared the report on the alleged murder of Minister Kumad Kustan?”

  “That is correct,” said the colonel.

  “And you agree with his suggestion?”

  “I believe it has merit,” said the colonel, “and that is why I presented it to you.”

  “Given the current crisis in Moscow,” said Lugharev, “the gangs, the possibility of riots, I do not see how we can commit a small army of men and women without a stronger case for taking them from present important tasks.”

  “I am afraid,” said General Karsnikov, “that you will have to tell your staff to engage in this speculative venture with whatever help the Metro division can give.”

  “We will make do,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. It was what he had expected, no more, no less.

  “We are adjourned,” General Karsnikov said abruptly.

  Colonel Snitkonoy had waited for the members to begin rising before he got up, gathered his files, and allowed himself a moment of relief for having escaped with only a rap on the knuckles.

  Following the meeting, Olga Dimitkova and a nonuniformed captain from General Karsnikov’s staff accompanied Colonel Snitkonoy back to Petrovka. They refused his offer of tea and waited in his office for Pankov to gather the records and both the original disk of Karpo’s report and his own backup, plus original “and file copies of the autopsy report on the foreign minister and the conflicting report on vital organs.

  Conversation had been brief and Pankov had scrambled as quickly as he could to furnish the information.

  Now, in the familiarity of his bedroom five hours later, Colonel Snitkonoy assessed the events of the day and concluded that he had done well. Everyone on the committee would assume that he had another copy of the evidence. But he had gone on record as having turned everything over to the committee. He had assured the committee that he understood the stakes and was prepared to cooperate.

  The Wolfhound was confident that General Karsnikov had been a party to the death of the Kazakhstani minister, and he knew the general would appreciate his not forcing an issue that, at best, would lead to the general’s embarrassment.

  The colonel finished his tea and looked at his lamp, an ancient stained-glass and lead monstrosity that had belonged to a member of the Czar’s private guard before the revolution. The problem was no longer the committee. The problem was Emil Karpo. The Wolfhound did not relish the prospect of conveying the committee’s decision to Karpo.

  As the colonel turned off the light and climbed into bed, he considered the ways in which he might turn the events of the day into the promotion that would mark the successful culmination of a lifetime of service, success, and, above all, survival.

  He was not quite asleep when he heard the rap on his door. The rap was followed by a louder rap, and Colonel Snitkonoy sat up and turned on the light. He automatically smoothed his hair back with his hands and straightened his pajamas.

  “Come in,” he called out.

  “Telephone,” came the voice of the colonel’s man. “General Lugharev. He says it is urgent.”

  The Wolfhound got out of bed and picked up the phone from the bedside table. Outside the door he heard his aide padding away.

  “Colonel Snitkonoy,” he said.

  “Lugharev,” came the general’s tired voice. “I have good news. My men have found the killer of the Kazakhstani foreign minister. A Moslem separatist, from Kazakhstan, who was working as a waiter at the Hotel Russia the night of the reception. We have a full confession. He was given the drugs and the syringe by a radical group. We have the name of the Moslem doctor who prepared the injection and instructed the waiter.”

  “I am pleased to hear it,” said the Wolfhound.

  “Your information was invaluable,” said Lugharev with perhaps a hint of sarcasm. “The confession and the name of the Moslem doctor have been turned over to the Kazakhstani government with our assurances of cooperation should the man still be in Russia.”

  “The waiter,” said the Wolfhound.

  “Unfortunately,” said General Lugharev with a sigh, “he is dead. Threw himself through a window after he signed the confession. But do not worry. We have four witnesses to the confession.”

  “Į had no fear, General. I am certain that you and your staff know what you are doing.”

  “Your office will receive an official commendation from the committee,” said Lugharev. “Possibly another medal if we can ever agree about what our medals will look like from now on.”

  “My staff and I need no medals,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “It is sufficient that we have contributed to the apprehension of a criminal whose crime could have embarrassed many people.”

  “You have always been adept at understanding political reality, Colonel,” said the general.

  “Thank you, General. About those additional men …”

  “I’m sorry,” said the general. “As much as I would like to contribute to your office having two major successes in a short period, I cannot release any officers. There are needs … I hope you understand.”

  “Completely,” said the Wolfhound.

  “Sleep well, Colonel.”

  “And you too, General.”

  When he hung up the phone, Colonel Snitkonoy got back into bed, allowed himself a small smile in the dark, and went instantly to sleep.

  Yevgeny Odom stood at the window of his apartment looking at the apartment building across the way. He held a pair of binoculars in his right hand as he scanned the windows, secure in the knowledge that with his lights out he would not be seen.

  Since he had arrived at the perfectly logical decision to make his next attack in a Metro station, he had been uneasy. He knew he should wait at least a week, but Kola pounded in the cage of Yevgeny’s chest, urging him to go out now, find a victim, and let the beast free to attack, to feed, to gorge on a young body.

  Planning was essential. The charts were essential. But it was impossible to keep track of his records with Kola in a near-constant frenzy now. Yevgeny even had difficulty remembering whether the last one had been the young man with the backpack behind the opera or the blond girl in the park.

  In the past, Kola had been content between killings to be thrown chunks of imagined horror. Eva at the clinic had once asked Yevgeny what he was smiling about after he had drawn blood from a pretty young woman. He had been smiling because he had imagined plunging the needle deeply into the woman’s arm and breaking it off for Kola, letting him watch her face as the horror came to her. He would never have actually done such a thing to someone at the clinic. He would always be gentle and give the least possible pain, so that returnees would ask for the nice man who didn’t hurt them and always had something cheerful to say.

  But that impulse throbbed in him so powerfully now that Yevgeny Odom considered selecting one of the people he could now see across the street. He would charm his way in, let Kola kill them, and leave a note or a clue. It would put the beast to sleep for a while and give Yevgeny at least a night of rest. In the next apartment building, a woman and baby were alone because her husband worked nights. There was the young man who came home early from work before
his sister, mother, and father. There were so many.

  After Kola had killed one of them he would come back here and watch from the darkness as they discovered the body. There would be no danger in an attack so near his home. After the first four or five attacks he was sure the police had wasted no more effort on the assumption that the killer might be someone who lived or worked nearby. They simply didn’t have the resources. It would have been a waste.

  Yevgeny tried to focus on the chart on the wall, but it was no use. Before he could change his mind, he went to the door of his apartment, stepped out, locked the door, and hurried down the stairs whistling something from Prokofiev to drown out the cries of Kola throbbing through him.

  The rain had stopped and the sky was clear, but it was growing cold and the streets were slick and icy.

  Near the Metro station he found an outdoor phone that worked. They might try to trace the call, and Yevgeny knew enough from technical journals to be sure that they could do it in seconds with the proper equipment. He would make no mistake.

  He put in his kopecks, dialed 02, and waited for the three rings and the voice of a woman who said, “Police.”

  “I wish to speak to someone in charge of the Tahpor investigation,” he said, raising his voice to near falsetto.

  “One moment,” the woman answered.

  Yevgeny had decided that he would wait no more than ten seconds for someone to answer. Then he would hang up. Perhaps Kola would be quiet and let Yevgeny rest. The urge would leave him by morning, and he would not feel the need to call, but …

  “Special Security,” came a hollow voice.

  “You are in charge of the Tahpor murders?” Yevgeny asked.

  “I am an investigator,” the man said slowly, much too slowly for Yevgeny.

  “My name is Igor Polynetsin,” said Yevgeny. “And you are … ?”

  “Deputy Inspector Karpo.”

  Yevgeny hung up. It was enough. He had the name of an investigator. There could not be many Karpos in Moscow. It might take an hour or two to locate the right one, but when he did, he could call him at home in the middle of the night.

  He stood shivering in the night wind, feeling the return of some control. The sense of exhilaration continued as he bounded away from the telephone, nodded to passersby in an un-Russian show of street goodwill, and considered what he might now eat since he was suddenly very hungry.

  He also considered, and not for the very first time, that he might be mad.

  TWELVE

  THERE WERE TWO MEN in the front seat of the 1957 Chevrolet in which Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov rode. One was the man who had been waiting for him in the storeroom of the bar. The other man was Javier the waiter, the son of Manuel the bass player at La Floridita.

  Javier looked over his shoulder at Rostnikov as they bounced over pits in the dark street and around mounds where once someone had considered repairs. Javier wore faded pants and a yellowish-white buttoned shirt with an oversize collar.

  “I did not do it,” said Javier in English.

  Rostnikov said nothing.

  “Maria Fernandez,” Javier went on. “I did not kill her.”

  Rostnikov said nothing.

  “I don’t kill women because they reject me. There are many women who do not reject me, many who do not put needles in their arms and sleep with foreigners.”

  Rostnikov grunted and said, “Do you kill women for other reasons?”

  “I kill no one, not women, not men, no one,” said Javier over his shoulder.

  “Would you not say the same even if you were the killer of Maria Fernandez?” asked Rostnikov.

  “If I were the killer of Maria Fernandez, you would not be in this car. I would not be stupid enough to talk to you.”

  “You might be smart enough to talk to me because I could not imagine the killer doing so,” said Rostnikov.

  “You think like a Russian,” Javier said in exasperation, and then said something in Spanish to the driver, who answered, “Sí.”

  “May I ask you a question?”

  “Yes.”

  “How old are the houses on this street?”

  “The houses on … I don’t know. Maybe two hundred years. What has that to do with the murder of Maria Fernandez?”

  “Nothing,” said Rostnikov. “I was curious. Your city has a sad decay. Noble houses that look as if they have been crying for a hundred years. The houses of my city are heavy shoulders against the wind, most of them without distinction or nobility. What the Nazis did not destroy of the past we tore down, with notable exceptions, and built concrete tombs. I like your city. It eases the pain in my leg.”

  Javier looked at the Russian silently for a few moments and then said, “Are you making a joke?”

  “No,” answered Rostnikov. “Another question?”

  Javier nodded.

  “Are you married? Do you have children?”

  “No, but I will be married in a month if the police don’t put me in jail for killing Maria Fernandez.”

  “Last question,” said Rostnikov as they hit a particularly solid bump in the street. “What is the uniform of our driver?”

  “He is a Communist Youth leader,” said Javier.

  “And he is a Santería?”

  “Yes,” said Javier. “We are everywhere. The Catholics are everywhere, but there are far more of us. Same like in Europe, your country. No religion for thirty, fifty, seventy years and suddenly it comes back. We come back. We hide our gods behind Catholic gods and when the Catholic gods are no longer tolerated we hide our gods in flowerpots. Our religion goes back long in Africa before the thought of Christ. When Castro goes, we will be here. Those who denounce us now will embrace us, African and European alike.”

  “I have a son about your age,” said Rostnikov.

  “I think we should be talking about the dead rather than the living,” replied Javier.

  The car stopped.

  “This is the house where Hector Consequo lives,” said Javier. “Hector is the handyman in the apartment where Maria Fernandez died.”

  Rostnikov looked out on a dark, narrow street with five-or six-story buildings on either side. The buildings looked neither new nor ancient.

  “We are in the Central City,” said Javier, “the part of the city that tourists are driven around. Here there is hell. Come.”

  Rostnikov got out of the car and stood in the street. Theirs was the only car in sight.

  “George will stay with the car,” said Javier. “If he did not, it would be picked clean the minute we were out of sight.”

  As it would be in Moscow, thought Rostnikov.

  “Come,” said Javier, moving slowly toward a faded yellow wooden door on the far side of the narrow street.

  He pushed the door open and stepped through with Rostnikov behind him. A yellow glow provided the hint of light. The smell of something heavy and sweet was in the air.

  In a narrow passageway they stepped over empty jars and bottles. On both sides in little alcoves people sat huddled under light bulbs or behind burlap sheets. A hand reached out, touched Rostnikov’s arm. A man, or what was once a man and was now a wasted cord of bone, said something in Spanish.

  “Drugs,” said Javier, removing the man’s hand from Rostnikov’s arm. “He wants money or drugs. They all do. Let’s go.

  “There are hundreds of passages like this, thousands,” said Javier. “The government says they do not exist, that there are no drugs. Do you do the same in Russia?”

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov. “I must ask you to move more slowly.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Javier, “but it is not good to remain here too long. Word is already out that we are here. They probably think we are the police.”

  At the end of the passageway, Javier pushed open a door that led to total darkness.

  “We must go up,” he said. “The stairs are in need of repair and there is no light, but there is a railing. We go up three flights. At the top will be light.”

  Ro
stnikov groped for the railing, found it, and began to pull himself up. The sick sweet smell was still there, but more and more faint as they rose.

  The stairs creaked as Porfiry Petrovich’s foot touched a broken step and felt around it. The sound of Javier’s footsteps came from ahead of him and the pain of climbing was much to bear. After a floor, Rostnikov relied only minimally on his screaming leg. He would have hopped up had the railing he clung to given him a sense that it would support him.

  His eyes did not adjust to the stairwell for there was no hint of light, at least not until he neared what must have been the third flight. He found himself on a narrow walkway with windows along one side and a rotting wooden railing on the other facing into the open night.

  Javier stood waiting. Another man, a short man with a very black face and hair cropped short, stood at his side.

  Rostnikov gritted his teeth from the pain of the climb and steadied himself on the railing. The short man said something quickly in Spanish and leaped forward to remove the Russian’s hand from the wooden railing.

  “He says,” said Javier, “that you are too heavy to lean all of your weight. It will break and you will fall and die.”

  The short man said something else in Spanish and Javier nodded.

  “He says a child died that way last month. The other side of the building. This railing is very old wood and no one repairs it.”

  “Gracias,” said Rostnikov, moving to lean against the wall next to a yellow glowing window.

  “De nada,” said the short man, whom Javier introduced now as Hector Consequo.

  “Señor Consequo does some work at the building where the Carerras live, the building in which Maria Fernandez was murdered. He was there on the night of the murder.”

  A young man stepped out of the shadows and stood in front of Rostnikov.

  “This is Señor Consequo’s oldest son, José. He will stay out here and let us know if there is trouble. His father is a very respected man in this block and there should be no problems, but times have been very hard.”