Black Knight in Red Square ir-2 Read online

  “Your toilet,” said Rostnikov.

  “I’m what?” said the startled man, stepping back.

  “Your toilet is broken,” explained Rostnikov. “It is causing a massive leak in our apartment below. We cannot use our toilet.”

  “You cannot use your toilet,” echoed the man dumbly.

  “We can,” Rostnikov went on, “but we are not willing to clean up the floor each time we flush.”

  “No one told us,” said the woman apologetically, putting a hand to her breast and discovering that her dress was not fully buttoned.

  They had not been told, Rostnikov knew, because a decision had been made, in spite of Rostnikov’s threats and pleas to the building manager, a thin Party member named Samsanov, to avoid telling the Bulgarians that their toilet was faulty. Apparently the local political decision was that it would not do to let the Bulgarians see how defective the plumbing was. They might go home and ridicule their Moscow hosts. Rostnikov, in spite of his position with the police, had been told to forget it till the Bulgarians left, but they showed no signs of leaving. So Rostnikov had begun reading plumbing books. For four weeks he read plumbing books. The library was filled with them. There were more books on plumbing than on plastering, cooking, radio and television repairing, automobiles, and crime. He now felt himself capable of repairing whatever the problem might be, if his tools were sufficient and his resolve to defy the local Party decision held firm.

  “No one told us,” the man repeated his wife’s word.

  “There are reasons,” Rostnikov said mysteriously. “I will repair the problem, and you must promise to tell no one I have done so. It is forbidden for one in my station to do this, but I did not want the problem to get worse and affect you, visitors to our city.”

  With this he stepped past them into the replica of his own apartment. The central room, a combination living room-dining room-kitchen, was well furnished, including a small television set. There was a foreign odor, which was not unpleasant but which Rostnikov could not place. To the left of the entrance was the even smaller bedroom. He marched toward it with the Bulgarians behind, mumbling to each other frantically.

  “I’ll take no more than a few minutes,” he said, pushing open the door. The window was open, and sunlight was pouring in on the unmade bed. Rostnikov stood before it trying to imagine the unmatched Bulgarians making love. They made little noise during the night. He knew this because his and Sarah’s bedroom was right below theirs. He moved to the bathroom, turned on the light, and removed an oversize pink slip from the toilet seat. The woman, closing in behind him, reaching over to take it from him like a nurse retrieving a scalpel during surgery.

  “I’ll not be long. Just leave me alone.”

  They backed out, mumbling again in their native language, and Rostnikov went to work. From his pocket he withdrew a long, coiled plumbing snake, unwound it, and began to force it down the toilet. He eased and worked it but struck nothing.

  Next, he turned off the water and, with the wrench that he had taken from the confiscated burglar tools in the basement of police headquarters in Petrovka, he removed the pipe behind the toilet seat. When it was removed, he found a cup on the nearby sink, filled it with water, stomped his foot on the floor and poured the water down the pipe. Almost instantly, Sarah in the apartment below pounded on the ceiling with the signal.

  “Fitting,” muttered Rostnikov on his hands and knees, peering down into the dark pipe.

  “What is?” said the Bulgarian behind him. The man was standing back in the bedroom, unwilling to intrude but equally unwilling to leave this barrel of a man alone.

  “There is a loose fitting in the pipe,” Rostnikov explained. “I’ll have to go down to my apartment, unscrew the coupling and pull it up here to fix it. If it’s just a fitting it won’t be difficult. If there is a leak in the pipe, we have a more serious problem.”

  Using the sink to steady himself, Rostnikov rose. There was a smile on his lips. He might be a bit late for work, but he would lick this. Triumphs were few in his work and even fewer in the tasks of getting through the day, but this would be a triumph.

  The knock at the door jerked him from his near triumph. He turned to face the Bulgarians, who looked at him.

  “Answer the door,” he said, stepping into the bedroom. Had someone actually called Samsanov? Did the little man have a spy on the floor? Rostnikov began to think of a lie and decided that his best chance to get through would be to bluff Samsanov, to tell him this was a police matter, that the toilet had to be fixed, that national security was at risk. That, of course, superceded even local Party decisions. The Bulgarian opened the door, and Rostnikov wondered how national security could be involved in fixing a toilet.

  “Chief Inspector Rostnikov,” came a familiar voice from the doorway.

  “In here,” said the Bulgarian, and Emil Karpo strode into the room to further confound the man and the woman.

  The man who strode into the room was about six feet three, lean, and quite hard. Because of his slanted eyes, high cheekbones, tight skin, and expressionless dark face, he had been known in his early police career as the Tatar. But twenty years of fanatical pursuit of enemies of the state had given him the pale look of the obsessed and earned him the more frequent nickname of the Vampire among his colleagues. The name seemed particularly appropriate when a peculiar look crept into Karpo’s eyes and at those moments even those who had worked with him for years avoided him. Only Rostnikov knew that the look was caused by severe migraine headaches, which Karpo refused to admit to. Rostnikov knew quite a lot about his junior colleague. Survival in the Soviet Union often depended on how many secrets you knew and could call upon. Rostnikov watched Karpo with interest, glancing at his left arm, which was stiff and still. Karpo had been shot several months earlier and then had injured the arm again while chasing a petty criminal. He had almost lost the arm that time, but a surgeon who had just had a good meal and a few hours’ sleep had worked harder than usual to save the limb. So the two men shared something-one with a bad leg, the other a bad arm-though they never spoke of their common bond.

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov.

  “You’re to come to Comrade Timofeyeva’s office. It is urgent. There’s a car downstairs waiting.”

  Rostnikov looked at the Bulgarians and back over his shoulder at the toilet.

  “Karpo, what do you know of plumbing?”

  “I’m a police investigator,” Karpo replied.

  “That does not preclude your knowing something,” Rostnikov said.

  “You are joking again, Comrade Inspector,” Karpo said expressionlessly.

  “Why is it you can recognize a joke, Emil Karpo, but you cannot engage in one?” Rostnikov said, walking past him toward the door.

  “It is not functional to engage in jokes,” Karpo said. “There is too much to do. Lenin had no sense of humor either.”

  “I know.” Rostnikov sighed, and then said to the Bulgarians. “Do not touch the toilet. Use the one at the end of the corridor. Above all do not tell anyone of this.” He put his fingers to his lips. “I’ll be back tonight to fix it.”

  “But-” the woman began. The thin man tugged at her sleeve to quiet her.

  “Security,” said Rostnikov, allowing Karpo to precede him through the door.

  “We understand,” said the Bulgarian, rushing to close the door behind the two policemen.

  As they walked down the corridor, Rostnikov said, “Are you curious about that?”

  “No,” said Karpo, and the conversation ended.

  Twenty minutes later, after getting his jacket and saying good-bye to Sarah, Rostnikov arrived with Karpo at the entrance to Petrovka in a yellow police Volga with a blue horizontal stripe.

  Petrovka consists of two ten-story L-shaped buildings on Petrovka Street. It is modern, utilitarian, and very busy. It is prominent-everyone knows where it is-and so are the thousands of gray-clad policemen who patrol the city. The ratio of police to civilians is higher in Mosc
ow than in any other major city of the world.

  In spite of this, crime, while it does not flourish, exists. Files of doznaniye or inquiries, cover the desks of the procurators working under the procurator general of the Soviet Union. The police work with the procurators in the twenty districts of Moscow and are responsible for all but political crimes, which fall within the sphere of the KGB (Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Besapanost) or State Security Agency. It is a constant puzzle to both procurators and police what qualifies as a political crime. Economic crimes are generally political because they threaten the economy of the state and thus are subversive. In fact, any crime can be considered political, even the bludgeoning of a husband by a jealous wife. Officially, the procurator general’s office is empowered by the constitution of the U.S.S.R., Article 164, to exercise “supreme power of supervision over the strict and uniform observance of laws by all ministries, state committees and departments, enterprises, institutions and organizations, executive-administrative bodies of local Soviets of People’s Deputies, collective farms, cooperatives and other public organizations, officials and citizens.”

  Which was why Procurator Anna Timofeyeva, a thick box of a woman, about fifty, spent at least fourteen hours a day, seven days a week in her office in Petrovka, trying to shorten the pile of cases on her desk. She looked quite formidable in her striped shirt and dark blue procurator’s uniform. She drank gallons of cold tea, did her best to ignore her weak and frequently complaining heart, and went on with her massive task.

  Procurator Timofeyeva was in her second ten-year term of office. Before that she had been an assistant to one of the commissars of Leningrad in charge of shipping and manufacturing quotas. She had no background in law, no training for her position, but she was dedicated, reasonably intelligent, and, above all, a zealot. She was an excellent procurator.

  She was behind her desk as always when Rostnikov entered her office after knocking and being told gruffly to enter. Then the ritual began. Rostnikov sat in the chair opposite her, glanced up at the picture of Lenin above her head, and waited. As always she offered him a glass of her room-temperature tea.

  “Murder,” she said.

  Rostnikov sipped his tea and waited.

  “Poison,” added Procurator Timofeyeva.

  Rostnikov looked down at his glass, hesitated and again sipped at the tea. He liked sugar in his tea, or at least lemon. This had neither and very little taste, but it kept his hands busy. Procurator Timofeyeva’s one vice was her taste for the dramatic in assigning cases.

  “An American,” she went on. “During the night, at the Metropole.”

  “An American,” Rostnikov repeated, shifting his left leg. Keeping it in one position for more than a few minutes always resulted in stiffening and at least minor pain.

  “And two Soviet citizens. And a Japanese.”

  “Four,” said Rostnikov.

  “Let us hope our powers of addition are not taxed beyond this number,” she said, sipping her own tea.

  “And the inquiry, I take it, is now mine?” said Rostnikov.

  “It is yours, and it is, once again, delicate. The American was a journalist here for the Moscow Film Festival. The Soviets were businessmen. The Japanese was also here for the festival, but it is the American who causes concern. It seems he was well known in his country.”

  “An accident?” tried Rostnikov.

  “According to the preliminary medical report from the hotel, this poison could hardly have been an accident. So, you must work quickly. There are several thousand visitors in Moscow for the festival from more than a hundred countries. There must be no rumors of a poisoner, no panic to spoil the festival. It is an important cultural event, a world event. The Olympics as you know were successfully sabotaged by the Americans and their puppets. Moscow cannot be the scene of another such embarrassment.”

  Comrade Timofeyeva’s knuckles were white as she clutched her glass.

  “Forgive me, Comrade Procurator, but are not such fears a bit premature? This is but-”

  “Sources have informed me that there may be those who wish to embarrass the Soviet Union during the festival and that this may be part of their scheme,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the portrait of Lenin as if to seek approval.

  “In which case, would this not be properly handled by-” Rostnikov began, but she interrupted him again.

  “The KGB wishes us to investigate this as a common crime and not a political one. I’m afraid, Comrade Rostnikov, you have gained a reputation for discretion in such matters.”

  The meaning of this, Rostnikov well knew, was that if he failed, his enemies could throw him to the dogs. He was expendable, and this precarious state was becoming part of his life with each delicate case he handled.

  “I understand,” Rostnikov said, rising. “I assume I am to go to the Metropole immediately. I am to keep you informed, and I am to work, as always, as swiftly as possible.”

  She stood and took the empty glass from his hand.

  “An American is dead, poisoned,” she said. “It is already an embarrassment.”

  “And Karpo is to work with me?”

  “If you wish,” she agreed, sitting again and already reaching for the next file on her desk. “But he must keep up with the rest of his case load.”

  Rostnikov moved toward the door.

  “If you need Tkach, yes,” she said.

  He opened the door but paused before he stepped out. The next thing he was going to say would surely be dangerous, but it was worth saying, for he both liked and admired the homely, far too serious, and officious woman who sat behind the desk in this hot office.

  “How are you feeling, Comrade Anna?” He spoke softly so that she could ignore him if she wished.

  Her reaction was to yank off her glasses and glare at him angrily for an instant. But something in his look, the way he stood, the sincerity of his tone, got through to her, and she couldn’t sustain the anger.

  “I am well, Porfiry,” she lied evenly.

  He recognized the lie and smiled ever so slightly.

  “Good,” he said and stepped into the corridor, closing the door behind him.

  He knew that she would not take his inquiry as the false solicitude of the underling who coveted his superior’s job, for the facts were clear. Rostnikov would never be more than a chief inspector in the MVD, a position higher than might be expected of him considering his inability to control his tongue, his frequent impetuousness, and his politically hazardous Jewish wife-a wife who had no interest at all in either religion or politics. Fortunately, Rostnikov had no ambition; he was politically uninterested. His job was to catch criminals and occasionally punish them at the moment of capture. Usually, however, the game-and he saw it as a game-ended when he caught the criminals and turned them over to the procurator’s office for justice. It didn’t matter to Rostnikov whether the law was reasonable or not. The criminals knew the law and knew when they were violating it.

  Beyond catching criminals, Rostnikov’s life was in his wife, his son Iosef who had recently been posted to Kiev with his army unit, weight lifting, reading American mystery novels, and, most recently, plumbing.

  Lost in thought, Rostnikov turned the corner and found himself facing Emil Karpo, a startling specter.

  “You’ll be needing me?” Karpo said.

  “For now,” answered Rostnikov, continuing to limp down the corridor. “We are going to the Metropole Hotel.”

  On Sverdlov Square facing the monument to Karl Marx stands the Metropole Hotel, which belongs to Intourist, the official Soviet tourist travel agency. The Metropole was built in 1903. In October 1917 the revolutionary workers and soldiers fought fiercely to capture it from the White army troops who had barricaded themselves inside. On the side of the hotel facing Marx Prospekt is a plaque commemorating this battle. Near the entrance to the hotel, on the square, are other memorial plaques, reminding people that the hotel for a time housed the offices of the All-Russia Central Executive Commit
tee of Soviets of Working People’s Deputies under the chairmanship of Yakov Sverdlov after whom the square had been named. Lenin often spoke in the ballroom of the Metropole.

  The Metropole has been renovated several times. The upper part of the facade is decorated with mosaic panels designed by Mikhai Vrubel on the theme of the play La Princesse Lointaine by the French playwright Edmond Rostand, who also wrote Cyrano de Bergerac. Feodor Chaliapin once sang in the hotel’s restaurant and Maxim Gorky once described the hotel in glowing terms in his novel The Life of Klim Samgin.

  That is the tourist-book description of the Metropole. In fact, the hotel is dark, dusty, and decaying. The food in the restaurant is poor, the service ridiculous even by Moscow’s standards, and the orchestra laughable. In spite of this, many foreigners prefer the Metropole because it behaves like old Moscow and there is so little of old Moscow left. In addition, the Bolshoi is across the square, and the hotel is well located for city-wide events such as the Moscow Film Festival. Another attraction for festival participants is the Stero Cinema on Sverdlov Square, which specializes in 3-D movies.

  By 11:40 that morning every room in the Metropole had been searched. Police were guarding the exits of the hotel, and a trio of pathologists from the Kremlin Hospital were examining the four bodies, which were assembled on tables in the ornate but now unused Victorian bar. The bar was decadently ornate with massive mirrors, beautiful chandeliers, and even a gilded foot rail. The door to the dining room was guarded by two uniformed policemen.

  Rostnikov looked around the room, ignoring the white-haired man who stood next to the four tables where the corpses lay. Rostnikov was absorbing the place through his pores, beyond his senses. It might be thought that this was part of his method, his secret means of detection that went beyond words, but it had nothing at all to do with the case. Being a policeman, Rostnikov occasionally entered one of the big hotels in pursuit of a criminal. Being a policeman, however, he could not afford to eat in the restaurants of any of these hotels. And being a Muscovite, he could not stay in any hotel in Moscow. It was the law. So he stood and imagined the past.