Death Of A Russian Priest Page 13

  “Well, why didn’t he say so?” said Tatyana, turning with the handkerchief in hand to examine herself in the mirror. But there was no longer much of a mirror behind the bar.

  “He has a lot on his mind,” said Rostnikov. “May I sit?”

  “If you can find an unbroken chair,” said Tatyana.

  “I have a bad leg,” explained Rostnikov, finding a chair and sitting.

  “I am sorry,” said Tatyana, “but I can’t pay for this damage. Mirrors, chairs. Do you know what they cost? If you can even find them.”

  Rostnikov looked around. The two injured men were now gone and there was quite a bit of damage.

  “And the business I just lost,” she said. “I’m not a wealthy woman.”

  “Where is the Arab girl? Amira Durahaman?” asked Elena. “Her father will give you the reward if you know.”

  “You didn’t have to hurt me because I made you feel something you never felt before,” Tatyana said.

  “I made love to two women when I was in college,” Elena said. “It was mildly interesting. You think too highly of yourself.”

  Sasha Tkach pulled out a chair and sat next to Sasha. Both men looked at the two women.

  “I’ll get the reward?” Tatyana asked.

  “If there is a reward,” said Elena.

  “I would like,” said Sasha, “a mineral water with no gas. Is that possible?”

  Tatyana shrugged and moved behind the bar.

  “Inspector,” Elena said. “I would like your permission to find a basin and wash myself.”

  “Wash,” said Rostnikov. Elena moved toward the beaded curtains.

  “I’m sorry,” said Tkach, feeling his tender ribs. “I made a serious mistake. “

  “Not if you wished to commit suicide in the line of duty. If that was your goal, then there was no mistake, just the accident of my arrival. It is very strange, Sasha Tkach. I have never seen a fight in a bar before. In all my years as a policeman, never a fight until tonight. It was like a John Wayne movie.”

  “The Spoilers,” said Tatyana, coming around the bar. “Dietrich and John Wayne.” She placed a glass of mineral water in front of Rostnikov.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Please sit. I gather from what I have heard that you may know where to find the Syrian girl.”

  “A reward would help pay for the damage your crazy policeman has caused,” she said.

  “We can talk to the girl’s father about a reward,” said Rostnikov. “I will suggest he not pay. I will suggest to you that your reward for telling us about the girl will be our departure. Life is hard and getting no easier. But there are exceptions, moments of, if not hope, at least relief. A child is born healthy. A book absorbs us. A friend laughs. Unwanted guests depart and never return.”

  “I know nothing of the girl,” Tatyana said, folding her arms. “But if I—”

  “Look at me,” Rostnikov said. And she looked at the homely face of a man with large, very sympathetic brown eyes. “My son wrote a play. I saw it tonight. I did not like the play. Not because it was a bad play, but because I saw in it what others may not have seen. The pain of my only son.” He looked at Sasha Tkach, who ran his hand through his hair and turned away. Against the far wall the rattle of beads announced Elena’s return.

  “In the play my son’s character is killed. He rose when the curtain went down and men came out to greet us. A boy who knew the missing Syrian girl died this morning. He had a father and a mother. He will not rise and greet his parents. Amira Durahaman has a father. You will tell us where to find the girl. Otherwise I will take you with us, and you will, I am sorry to say, be very unhappy.”

  “The girl came in here sometimes,” Tatyana said, looking around at the three policemen. “She came in with a young Jew, sometimes others. I don’t know their names, so don’t ask me. I don’t know names. I give customers nicknames—the Barstool, Hands, the Siberian, Phil Collins. They like that.”

  “And the girl?” asked Sasha. “Did you have a name for her?”

  “Bright Eyes,” said Tatyana. “I know no more, but I’ll try to—”

  “Lock your doors and come with us,” said Rostnikov.

  “Please,” Tatyana said, almost in tears.

  “Officer Timofeyeva, will you please take—” he began, and the woman crumbled.

  “No prison. People are getting lost in prisons. They’re not being fed. Names. Names. I’ll give you names if you promise no prison.”

  Porfiry Petrovich nodded at Elena, who took out her pen and notebook and began writing the names that came from Tatyana.

  When she was finished, Rostnikov turned to Elena and said, “Go home, sleep.”

  Elena Timofeyeva opened her mouth to say something, glanced at Tatyana, who was not looking at her, and decided to say nothing.

  “Sasha Tkach, we’ll stop at the hospital, have you looked at, sewn, and patched before we send you home.”

  “I can clean up at home,” Tkach said.

  “If you go home looking like that,” said Rostnikov, “you will frighten your wife and child and bring the wrath of your mother down on my head. No, my own peace depends on the ability of some tired nurse to put you in acceptable surface condition. On the way we can talk.”

  “Her,” said Elena, nodding at Tatyana. “She might run away.”

  “She will not run,” said Rostnikov. “She is a woman of property.”

  Tatyana looked around the wreck of a room. “I won’t run,” she answered, so softly that Elena wasn’t sure she had heard her. “This street, this city, this café. I won’t run.”

  Something vibrated through Tatyana and her voice suddenly rose. “I will survive,” she said. “I will prosper.”

  Rostnikov stood, moved the toes of his left foot, and found them still functional. “It has been a busy day,” he said. “And tomorrow promises to be no easier.”

  Colonel Lunacharski was not hungry, but he sat alone in the almost empty cafeteria at two in the morning drinking a glass of coffee into which he had stirred three spoons of sugar. Colonel Lunacharski was not hungry, but he was tired. Getting out of his office was essential, and there was no place to go at two in the morning but the small cafeteria for night-duty officers in Lubyanka.

  Only weeks before he had been among the elite stationed at Yasenevo, the headquarters of the KGB’s intelligence-and-espionage arm, outside the city. From his office on the twentieth floor, Lunacharski had been able to look down at a lush les, the forest that had given the headquarters the name by which it was known to him and the others who were insiders.

  The dining room in Yasenevo had been one of the principal perks of power. But that was gone, at least for him, at least for now.

  Since Lunacharski disliked coffee, which he drank to help him stay awake, he could tolerate it only with massive doses of sugar. He was well aware from experience that the sugar and coffee would charge him with energy now, but that the artificial charge would not last. In half an hour he would have to remove his coat and stand outside in the cold air till he felt revitalized enough to go back to his office and take a pill, which would get him through till late in the afternoon.

  Vladimir Lunacharski made it a rule to exercise vigorously and never to take more than two pills a week. He was well aware of the dangers of addiction and confident that he could walk the line between his need for wakefulness and his dependency on the orange pills.

  Colonel Lunacharski knew well why he disliked coffee. His father, a man of terrible temper, had drunk massive quantities of both tea and coffee. His father’s long, fine fingers had been stained by his addiction to the beans themselves, which, when he could get them, he chewed like candy.

  His father, an army sergeant, had died in 1968 of a stroke after a screaming rage over his wife’s having overcooked a ham.

  Vladimir thought he remembered when he was an infant and his mother’s breasts gave him sour milk after his father, an army sergeant, had shouted, pounded, and threatened.

  The four p
eople in the cafeteria were all at least forty-five years old. Each of them was sitting alone. None of them acknowledged anyone else or looked around. One man near the door had a notebook on the table in front of him, which he thumbed through as he drank coffee. The other two simply put their heads down and ate, though the cafeteria food was no longer the best in Moscow.

  Lunacharski had given himself ten minutes, and the ten minutes were almost over. He pushed back his chair and started to rise. Then he saw Klamkin the Frog enter the cafeteria, look around, and head toward him. The colonel was not surprised at the agent’s appearance. He had left a note on the door indicating where he could be found. As Klamkin approached, Lunacharski sat down again, for the Frog was at least two inches taller than he.

  “May I?” asked Klamkin, who had brushed back his hair and recently shaved so that he could appear fresh for the meeting.

  Lunacharski pointed to the chair across from him and Klamkin sat.

  “Spokniokov and Glenin are still outside the Intourist Hotel waiting for the German,” Klamkin said. “Our agent reports that Timofeyeva and Tkach went to the Nikolai Café, where Tkach started a riot. He was beaten but not too badly. Rostnikov arrived to help him.”

  “Rostnikov?” Lunacharski thought he might not have heard Klamkin correctly.

  “Yes. He went to the theater with his wife, took her home, and then went immediately to the Nikolai.”

  “His son’s play,” said Lunacharski.

  “Yes. The play was antimilitary but well done.”

  “Well done?” asked Lunacharski. “You watched it? Our agents are now doing theatrical reviews?”

  Klamkin said nothing.

  “And where are Rostnikov and the others now?”

  “Home. In bed or at least in their apartments. If Rostnikov goes to Arkush, I will go with him. The only person not sleeping is the Syrian. The light in his apartment window is on and he is pacing. He has people looking for his daughter.”

  “Go home, Klamkin. Sleep. Be ready for tomorrow.”

  “It is too late to sleep and my apartment building is too noisy in the morning. With your permission, Colonel, I will sleep in the back of the car while Brodivov watches for Rostnikov.”

  “Fine,” said Lunacharski. “But don’t become careless. Pull Spokniokov and Glenin from the German before you go to sleep. Reassign them to the search for the Arab girl. I wish to find her before the Syrians or Snitkonoy’s people. Do you drink coffee?”

  “Yes,” said Klamkin. “But I prefer tea.”

  “Stay here and have a cup before you make the calls,” said Lunacharski. He stood and motioned for Klamkin to remain seated. Klamkin nodded.

  As Colonel Lunacharski moved down the corridor he listened to his boot steps echoing through the emptiness. Reports were piled on his desk. What he wanted to do was go into the streets and look for the Arab girl or from the dark interior of an unmarked Zil watch her father pace the floor. What he wanted to do was take the train to Arkush to see for himself, but he had to remain here to monitor the operations. There was no time for indulgence. For him there were reports and pills and a wife he would not have to see for another day.

  The world was changing quickly. General Karsnikov sought the possibilities for survival wherever they might be and one of the possibilities lay in the former MVD office of Aleksandr Snitkonoy. Lunacharski had worked out a plan, which he was now perfecting. He would try to be patient. He would watch the Wolfhound’s operation, perhaps even infiltrate it, and demonstrate that while it served a useful function, it was inefficient, ineffective, run by a blustering ass, and peopled by eccentrics who had been unable to function in other security branches.

  “The moment will come,” the general had said, “when we can place the evidence before the new Russian administration and I will be able not only to strongly suggest but to present evidence that your department is far more capable of pursuing the special cases of a new government.”

  “I understand,” Lunacharski had said.

  “I can give you little for this operation, Colonel, but if you succeed, it can mean much for us, much for you. You understand?”

  “Completely.”

  “We have lost a great deal,” General Karsnikov had said, lighting a foul-smelling Turkish cigarette. “We must work to build a new base of power.”

  Colonel Lunacharski had not asked who “we” were, because he knew. In a time when there was little to be pleased with, it was a comfort to be part of the unnamed and waiting army.

  ELEVEN

  WHEN SASHA TKACH WOKE UP at seven o’clock the next morning, he was unaware for a moment that he had a broken rib, a badly swollen eye, and a variety of abrasions. He had been given a very large injection at the hospital so he had slept. Now pain ran through him from face to stomach and he held back a groan. Maya stirred at his side. She was too heavy with the baby to sleep on her side or stomach, and though she was uncomfortable sleeping on her back, she had learned to accept the discomfort and was now gently snoring.

  Sasha had arrived home well after everyone else was asleep. He had undressed, dropped his clothes on the couch, and climbed painfully into bed next to Maya. In her sleep, sensing him, she had reached out, and he had guided her hand into his to keep her from touching his face or his taped chest.

  He slept later than he intended. His plan had been to awaken first and be gone before Maya or Lydia could see him. He still had a chance, and had the pain not been five times greater than he remembered from the night before, he probably could have hurried into his clothes and made it into the hall. Had he made it, he would have shaved with the spare often-used disposable English razor he kept in his desk at Petrovka. He knew he should have thrown it away long ago, but since his beard was so light, it would not be too painful to use the blade once more. He got his feet over the side of the bed and was wondering how he would make it through the day when the scream came. Pulcharia was sitting up in her crib in the corner, staring at the hunched-over creature with the horrible eye in her father and mother’s bed. She screamed and Sasha did not bother to whisper, since she had surely awakened both his wife and mother.

  “It’s me, Pulcharushka,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” As his wife stirred awake at his side and his mother’s footsteps shuffled to the bedroom door, Sasha felt, for no reason that made sense to him, that it would be all right, that whatever he had gone through had passed, that what had happened in the Nikolai Café had helped him to this understanding. He turned with a small smile on his face to comfort his wife. He knew she would soon be weeping.

  At seven that same morning Leonid Dovnik, who had slept soundly for five hours, stood in front of the door of an apartment on the fifth floor of a gray building on Vavilov Street.

  He had started early with two apartments near Moscow State University not far from where he had beaten Grisha Zalinsky to death the day before. Leonid had started early because he wanted to be sure to catch people before they left for work or school. It had taken him less than three minutes in the first apartment to discover that the Arab girl had visited there in the past but had not been seen for some time and had never slept there. Leonid was sure that he had been told the truth because he was a very persuasive man with a very direct manner, which let it be known that unless he received honest answers, violence would follow. He was aided by the belief of the people in both apartments that he was with the police.

  He had checked the name off in the address book he had taken from Grisha Zalinsky’s apartment and added two more names and addresses given to him by the frightened girl in the first apartment he had entered. It was slow, tedious work, but he did not mind.

  Near the university metro stop he bought a newspaper from a formerly state-run kiosk that was now a shining example of private enterprise, which meant high prices and few papers for sale, since paper was scarce. In general Leonid supported the new capitalism. After all, he told himself, he was an entrepreneur. Chaos and change tended to mean an increased need for his services.
Yuri Pepp and his money changers had found too many new competitors around the big hotels dealing with American dollars. Leonid persuaded most of them to find new fields of interest. Sophia and Kolodny Seveyuskin had a pipeline for stealing emergency food supplies coming in from the United Nations. A bureaucrat in the Office of Consumer Supplies wanted to become a partner. Leonid convinced the man to ask for a transfer to a Siberian regional office. People with ambition often found other people in their way and needed someone who could maim or even destroy for a reasonable fee. Leonid did not consider himself particularly intelligent, but he knew he was relentless, honest, and without any moral sense.

  Six months ago Leonid had bought a waffle filled with whipped cream in one of the cooperatives along the street, but there were neither waffles nor whipped cream now, and all the cooperatives were closed. He had money, plenty of it, French money, American dollars, but there was nothing to buy on the street. It almost put him in a bad mood.

  If he did not find the Arab girl at the next apartment on his list, he would go to the Cherymushinsky farm market and pick up something sweet, maybe even a cup of caramel, though the last cup had given him a toothache.

  Leonid got off of the metro and walked along the torn-up tram tracks, the piles of gravel. A bus coughed dark smoke from its exhaust and forced Leonid Dovnik against the wall of an apartment building, which turned out to be the one he was seeking.

  There was a sense of urgency to his search, which he did not wish to fully acknowledge. He was not one to panic. The sense of urgency came not from the knowledge that the Syrians and the police were also looking for the girl. It was from the sight he had witnessed when he had returned to the Nikolai last night to report on his lack of success.

  He had heard the noise from the office behind the stage where he had just reported to Tatyana. He had heard the shouts, the scrambling of bodies, the curses, and the running feet. When he stepped through the beaded curtains, he had seen a man who looked like a refrigerator hurl another man of some bulk through the air into the bar. The Nikolai had been nearly empty at that moment. Tatyana had been leaning over the bar, held there by the same policewoman he had seen in front of the Nikolai that morning. Beside them stood the young policeman. He had been beaten, not as well as Leonid would have done it, but he had been beaten.