The famous Song Festival of Estonia was in full swing such as it could be in those stodgy and penurious Soviet years, but it was only a forme fruste of its original vibrant self. That accounted for the hangdog expressions worn by the populace festively dressed in their colorful national costumes. Before the Germans and before the replacement tyranny of the Soviet Union, the Song Festivals were a national institution held in July once every five years with massive choruses from all over the country, indeed from all over the Balkans. Some of those choruses had as many as 18,000 singers. It was a time of meeting kin and old friends, of starting romances, of drinking and rollicking let down of inhibitions, and of producing the best choral music and dance that a nation of enthusiastic performers could bring to the capital. The foreign authorities—the hated Soviets—determined to use the Song Festivals in their own interests. The Soviet regime tied the Song Festivals to the “red holidays,” and forced the people to produce them several times a year. Soviet Constitution Day in October was one of them. Foreign and propagandist songs had to be sung in order to preserve the chance to sing Estonian songs at all. During this three-day period–as in the past several years–the people cautiously turned the festivals into minor mass demonstrations, spontaneously singing a few national songs and hymns, both of which were strictly forbidden. Even a few intrepid Estonian rock musicians played briefly and furtively.
On the morning of October 8, Antoine and Michaele hired a lorry to take them unobtrusively to the bus station where they caught the cross-border bus to the former St. Petersburg–called Leningrad ever since the Bolshevik revolution. They had only thought the transit from Sweden into Estonia was cumbersome and tedious. They got a university-level education in what bureaucratic obfuscation and inefficiency was like when they joined a silent queue to walk across the border into Russia.
Every individual border official wore a KGB uniform with its blue insignias. Every man and woman in the border guard had a permanent frown tattoed onto his or her lower face. Every syllable was a growl, and every facial expression was one of distrust and suspicion. The visitors’ documents were scrutinized with a thoroughness of a diamond cutter, including with magnifying lenses. There were six stations to go through, and each one of them required the applicants for entry into the communist paradise to answer the same litany of mind-numbing questions. They were patted down none too gently and prodded on to the next station. Their bags were emptied six times and had to be repacked. For Antoine and Michaele, it was a very unpleasant reminder of the mind-set of the gulag where they spent their first years after the fall of Berlin.
Finally they emerged on the other side of the gauntlet and began to search for transportation to the train station. Their Russian was good, and they took every advantage they had to pass for Russians. That advantage evaporated at the Leningrad to Moscow train station, where everyone who passed through passenger check-in went through a vetting as vigorous as they had encountered at the border. Their papers identified them as foreigners which entitled them to pay double the train fare that the citizens paid. They were hungry, thirsty, tired, and out of sorts like every other prospective passenger when they finally made it to the waiting area on the dock alongside the tracks. The only thing that lightened the mini-ordeal was the fact that the train station was a work of art—art deco with heroic paintings and statuary—and as clean and shining as an operating room.
Given the difficulty of finally getting to the point that they could board the comfortable train car their tickets entitled them to, they were highly surprised and relieved to find themselves ensconced in plush comfortable seats—in Soviet gray, but newly recovered—and to be served a decent meal which was included in the fare. They had been warned to buy platform food to supplement the filling but not necessarily interesting onboard food from rows of smiling babushkas who sold everything from freshly picked raspberries to home-smoked fish. There was fragrant bread, boiled eggs, and still-hot boiled potatoes flavored with butter, salt, and pepper, and dill. They put pancakes filled with goat’s cheese into their carry bags and had a quick small bowl of strawberries and sour cream.
The train kitchen crew provided borscht, caviar, a tepid cabbage soup with meatballs, and coarse brown bread. There was the expected freely provided national drink, vodka. Most Russians did not consider the water fit to drink. As an after-dinner drink, they were each given a small glass of champanskaya [champagne], not the equivalent of the French variety, but not bad for Russia.
Precisely on time, the Russian locomotive class U-U-127, Lenin’s 4-6-0 oil-burning compound locomotive, chugged out of the station for an overnight journey to Moscow. The sounds of the locomotive’s old engine and clickety-clack of the steel wheels on the joints of the tracks was like a lullaby to the two tired men, and they slept soundly the entire way into the Moscow train station. The station was massively crowded and hectic; so, no one paid attention to the two foreigners who looked every bit like the rest of the Russians around them. No one checked their papers.
Antoine and Michaele had been warned by the British foreign office to avoid Gypsy cabs, but friends had assured them that crime was rare. They elected to take one of the nondescript Fiat 124s which circled the train station, since in Moscow any car can legally be used as a taxi. There is a long tradition of Gypsy cabs, and they comprised most of the city’s meager fleet. They stepped up to the curb and raised their hands. A dented and rusting Fiat pulled up, and the driver leaned towards the open window. The driver and the two passengers—all speaking street Russian—negotiated a price, and a handshake bargain was stuck. The driver did not talk the entire way to the Arbat Hotel in central Moscow. The hotel was midrange in price and would not be likely to attract attention to the two men. It was completed in 1960 and still had a sense of newness about it. The accomodations and in-house restaurant were decent.
Per arrangement with the Pakhan Leonid Zaslavskevich Breslava, one of his Kryshas [extremely violent russkaya mafiya enforcers, employed to protect the organization’s business from other criminal organizations] named Artur Vsevolodovich Denisov, knocked on Antoine and Michaele’s room door—a series of four quick knocks followed by a single loud knock, followed by four more. Michaele responded with two sets of three knocks then opened the door. Denisov was a huge man—six-foot seven and weighed nearly three hundred pounds. He was heavyset with muscles—not fat—and his almost neckless body looked uncomfortable in his wide-lapelled black suit that looked more like a character from 1930s Chicago mobster film than a modern 1960s businessman—the looked he hoped to convey. He had a gray shirt, black tie with an eagle tie tack, and matching cufflinks. His broad black shoes could have used a shine.
Artur Vsevolodovich’s brown hair was combed back and pomaded into a neatness that was almost waxen. The neatness did nothing to soften his face, which would have been chosen as the year’s best thug face for the movies if such a contest existed. He had several facial scars, and half of his right ear was missing. The left earlobe held a medium-sized gold ring, which gave that side of his face a piratical quality.
“Dobryy vecher, on poslal menya, chtoby pomoch [Good evening, he sent me to help],” the Mafioso said, presuming that “he” needed no further characterization.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Arkhangelskoye Military Convalescent Home, USSR, October 9, 1961
“Spasibo za to [Thank you for coming], Artur Vsevolodovich,” responded Antoine in the same language, gesturing a welcome to the formidable man.
“You have to be at the place by seven in the morning when they have the change of shifts. I will be parked at the loading dock of the Arkady at O six hundred. The traffic will get too heavy after that,” Artur said without taking a moment for greetings or a chat.
“Do you have weapons for us?”
“They will be in the car tomorrow. Too dangerous to have such things in your possession these days if you don’t have to. The ments [cops] and the KGB goons are always on the lookout.”
Antoine nodded hi
s understanding. Michaele brought a small tray holding three medium glass tumblers half-filled with vodka. The three took their glasses and chorused the traditional salute.
“Bóo-deem zda-ró-vye, [To our health]!”
The following morning, Antoine and Michaele took no chances. They stood shivering in the autumn cold and darkness at five-thirty, making sure they were as obscure as possible by standing in the shadows of a stack of packing boxes.
“There’s Artur Vsevolodovich,” said Michaele as a shiny new ZIL- 135LM slowly pulled alongside the dock.
He and Antoine slipped quietly into the backseat, and the Mafioso sped out into the growing traffic. They slowed down after going a short distance on the MKAD [Moscow Automobile Ring Road], while Artur squinted to find the road he wanted. He turned off twelve miles west of the militsya MYC in Tverskoy District, central Moscow, and into the Zrkhangelskoye Estate. The architectural center of the Arkhangelskoye Estate was the Yusupov Palace, a beautiful edifice on a sunny day. But today they were unable even to see its outlines due to fog and drizzeling rain.
“Here’s your guns. Keep them out of sight,” Artur said, and the two newcomers quickly slid the weapons under their trench coats.
They were dressed in hospital groundsmen uniforms supplied by the vory v zakone [thieves-in-law] Solntsevskaya Bratva [brothers or brotherhood]. Artur parked off the gravel parking area beneath a copse of white birch trees to wait for them.
His parting warning was, “Don’t be long. Once the body is discovered, the ments will be here in a matter of minutes.”
Antoine and Michaele walked into the entryway to the long façade of the Stalin-era Military Convalescent Home which was built in the 1940s for the Red Army elite and was closed to visitors. Its terraces overlooking the river were accessible, and its staircases were the best way to reach the riverbank, a sodden mass at the moment; but the two men navigated the terrace to the main patient area unnoticed as a fortunate result of the limited visibility. They stepped into the Palladian-style building, and Michaele found a sofa in an out-of-the-way corner and settled into it, fingering his gun. His job was to protect Antoine’s back this time. His turn would come.
Antoine made sure there was a minimum of people in the hallway where the thieves-in-law had told him he would be able to locate his quarry. He encountered a young woman dressed in the uniform of a senior nursing officer.
“Are you Sister Maria Nikolayovna Ilyushkin?” he asked using the name Pakhan Breslava had given him.
“Do you work here … outside?” she responded brusquely.
“Never mind that. Answer my question.”
The man had the air of a military officer despite his humble uniform. Maybe he was KGB.
“I am Sister Maria, the head nurse. What do you want?”
“The Pakhan sent me.”
Maria blanched. Her sister had borrowed money from the russkaya mafiya during a time of desperation and had never been able to pay off the exhorbitant interest let alone the principal of the debt. The choice she faced was prostitution or involve the entire family in a lifetime of favors for the criminal syndicate. There was no escaping, and this was hardly the first favor required of her to protect her sister.
“I will help anyway I can,” she said with dread in her voice.
“Where is General Lagounov? Be quick about it.”
“It is against the rules. I am not supposed to divulge where our important veterans live, sir, please.”
Acting on a hunch about the man, she asked in German, “Sind sie Deutsch, mein Herr. Warum Sie die Allgemeine möchten, bitte? [Are you German, sir? Why do you want the general, please?]”
Antoine let his stress and anger at the nurse’s obstructionism get the better of him.
He snarled, “Gott verdammt, wo is er?”
This was worse than she had imagined. It was bad enough for a friend of the russkaya mafiya who was owed a favor to be challenging her, but this was a German. This meant that the favor must be evil indeed. She had lived in Stalingrad during the war—during the siege—and she was well aware that Germans were the spawn of the devil. She felt faint.
Antoine calmed down, seeing that his bullying was counterproductive. It had been a terrible mistake to have seemed to be a German to the woman and to have responded when she spoke the language of the Fatherland. He tried another tack to soften his presence and to get her to cooperate without calling more attention to him.
He spoke quietly in his native language, “Je suis désolé de vous avoir inquiété, Sœur. Je suis un grand admirateur du général et souhaite qu’à lui présenter mes hommages. Aidez-moi, se il vous plait. [I am sorry to have worried you, Sister. I am a great admirer of the general and wish only to pay him my respects. Please help me.]”
Sister Maria decided he must be one of those poor souls who was interned by the Germans and had lost his gentlemanly skills. Gen. Lagounov must have liberated him. It was a fiction she needed.
She called to the nurse-apprentice who was standing nearby and listening too intently, “Ludmila Mikhailovna! Take this man to General Lagounov at once!”
The timid country girl sprang to an upright posture and strode quickly up to the man and Sister Maria.
“Yes, Sister. Follow me, please,” she asked.
The general’s hospital room was fifty yards down the long hall. The door was open, and the general was sitting slouched on his easy chair listening to the music of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake—his favorite—on his vintage gramophone. Antoine stayed behind the young nurse to obsure his presence until the last possible moment.
“What do you want now, you witch?” the old man demanded imperiously, his usual demeanor.
He looked at Antoine without recognition at first, then something from somewhere deep inside him seemed to jell.
Antoine smiled grimly. The pleasure of the moment was almost too much to contain. He turned to the rather homely young nurse.
“Get out,” he said, “now!” in a voice that came from inside a crypt.
Ludmila Mikhailovna turned quickly and walked towards the door, shivering.
She heard the unpleasant man say, “Kind of surprised to see me, no, General?” as she walked out the door.
Antoine took his time. The first thing he did was to close the door to the old man’s room. Then he picked up the general’s prize cavalry saber and admired it, stroking it lovingly.
BOOK THREE
THE HUNT
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MYC [Moscow Criminal Investigations Department] Building, Petrovka 38 Street, Moscow USSR, October 9, 1961
The on-scene investigation at the Arkhangelskoye Military Convalescent Home was finished—all leads exhausted—at eight-thirty in the evening, and lieutenant of militsiya Operativniy Rabotnik [Detective] Trushin Vasilyvich Stepanovich ordered his crew to gather at the main office for a final presentation of the progress of the day in the investigation of the murder of Lieutenant General of Cavalry Grigory Yegorivich Lagounov, Cavalier of the Order of the Red Banner, which occurred in his room at the home. While he waited for the rest of the police officers to gather, he gave his wife Katrinka a belated call to their fifth-story central Moscow apartment. In the 1960s, that was about all any Moscow cop could afford.
“Hello,” she said in the peeved voice he had come to recognize and expect at the end of a long day of doing his duty.
Her lack of enthusiasm was warranted–he knew–because she was just waiting for him to tell her that he would not be home in time to put the children to bed … if he made it home at all.
“Sorry, I couldn’t call. I was at the scene all day. This is proving to be not only difficult, but also political. I’ll make it up to you, Kat.”
“No need to be sorry. I’m not upset; but I worry that you work too hard; and I feel sad that you can’t be here to watch the children grow up every day the way I do. More than that, I worry that you may not be safe.”
“I’m fine, Kat. It’s just boots on the ground m
ent [cop] work, nothing exciting or dangerous. I have a great team; and for the moment, we are just beginning to sift through the evidence. I’ll be pretty much tied up tomorrow as well, but let’s splurge and take the children to the lake on Sunday for a big picnic. Maybe your mother and father would like to come along.”
Nothing made Katrinka feel better than having Trushin be nice to her parents. It was a great way to dispel ill will. Katrinka knew it was a ploy, but it was a well-intended one—and it worked.
“See you tomorrow, my Trushin Vasilyovich. Get something good to eat, and don’t let Lada Kornikova get you off into a little room someplace there at Petrovka 38.”
She laughed, and he joined her. It was a standard joke between the couple whose marriage was rock-solid. Lada and Katrinka were the best of friends, and she often tended the Stepanovich children when Kat and Trushin had a rare evening out together. The brief conversation with his wife led him into a few moments of nostalgic woolgathering. They had first made love on the grass by the edge of Lake Glubokoye, the deepest lake in the Ruzsky District of the Moscow oblast. She was beautiful: Scandinavian blond, striking flawless white skin, laughing eyes, small feet and hands, and a kissable mouth. Two children later and a typical Muscovite life for the past ten years notwithstanding, Katrinka was still beautiful and still the object of his dreams and fantasies.
Trushin sighed and forced himself back into the present as the rest of the team made their way into the small and cluttered conference room. Lada set about to make a pot of ersatz coffee; the men lit up their noxious Belomorkanals; and Trushin set up a blackboard and easel.
The Charlemagne Murders Page 31