The Man Who Walked Like a Bear Read online

  “I wasn’t afraid,” Sarah said. “I … be sure he is all right.”

  “I’ll be sure,” Rostnikov said, releasing his hands gently from her grip. “I’ll be back tonight.”

  “You don’t have to come back,” she said. “I’ll probably be sleeping.”

  They had gone through this pattern for the past two weeks, and they both knew it as a ritual of reassurance.

  “I’ll see,” Rostnikov said.

  “Tell me something, Porfiry Petrovich, something of the past,” she said dreamily. “My thoughts move to the past in here, to my brother, my mother, to Iosef when he was a boy. Remember when he built that boat and it sank in the park? He was only a baby, and he jumped in after it and tried to swim.”

  Rostnikov smiled.

  “I’m not good at sentiment,” he said.

  “You are fine with it,” Sarah said. “Are you going to deny your ailing wife?”

  “The week before we married,” he said softly, “we went to Gorky Park with a loaf of bread and some herring in a bottle. You wore a blue dress and sweater and we drank kvass from a jar and you laughed at a joke I made about vegetables.”

  “I remember,” Sarah said, closing her eyes.

  “You were beautiful,” he went on, almost to himself. “I should have borrowed Mikhail Sharinskov’s camera, even if it wouldn’t have captured the fire of your hair. But I …” and he could see she was asleep.

  He leaned forward and kissed her forehead and then moved to the door, willing himself not to show the pain in his leg, knowing that he could not, ultimately, hide it from Sarah. All he could do was pretend so that she, too, could pretend.

  So much is pretense, Rostnikov thought as he glanced at the young girl and the old woman across the room. He closed the door to the ward as Dr. Yegeneva moved past him and leaned over to look into Sarah’s eyes.

  The corridor walls of the September 1947 Hospital were uniformly gray, and the windows were all decorated with white linen curtains. The individual ward doors were heavy and closed, and Rostnikov had a dreamlike feeling, a feeling that he was wandering through a maze, an endless, echoing maze. Yes, it was the echo more than the seamless, uniform walls that gave him the feeling. He turned a corner, moving slowly, bidding his leg to respond, knowing how much he could coax out of it. A man in white and a heavyset woman came toward him, talking to each other loudly about some meeting. The man barely glanced at Rostnikov as they approached and passed.

  Rostnikov found the administrator’s office on the main floor after checking with a talkative, flighty woman at the central desk in front of the entrance to the hospital. The administrator’s name, he discovered, was Schroeder, and the administrator, according to the woman at the desk, was a remarkably busy man. He had been on the job only a few days. The previous administrator had suddenly received a transfer to a very important position in the city.

  Rostnikov knocked and entered when he heard a clear male voice call, “Come in.”

  The room was bright. A large window caught the morning sun and lit the cheerfully decorated room. There was a small white rug on the floor, an efficient and not uncomfortable-looking set of chairs around a low, round table, and a wooden desk behind which sat a pink-cheeked, robust man with short-cropped hair and a smile on his large lips. His suit was neatly pressed and he looked at Rostnikov like an indulgent priest.

  “Yes?” the man asked eagerly.

  “Comrade Schroeder?”

  “Correct,” said Schroeder, waiting for more.

  “My name is Rostnikov. My wife is a patient of Dr. Yegeneva on the third floor.”

  “Sarah, brain tumor. Removed successfully. Prognosis excellent,” said Schroeder. “I know each and every patient in this hospital. Eighty-five patients at present. Learned the essential information in three days.”

  “Admirable,” said Rostnikov. “May I sit?”

  “Please,” said Schroeder.

  Rostnikov sat and felt an instant easing as the weight left his throbbing leg.

  “I want to ask you about another patient,” Rostnikov said.

  “Bulgarin, Ivan,” Schroeder supplied.

  “Yes. You’ve been informed, then, about the incident?”

  Schroeder looked pleased with himself.

  “I am responsible for all aspects of this hospital,” he said. “I am constantly informed.”

  “Admirable,” said Rostnikov.

  Schroeder reached into his desk and withdrew a folder, which he opened and flattened before him.

  “Bulgarin, Ivan, age … let me see. He will be forty-two next week. He has been here for six days. Fatigue, overwork. He is a foreman in the Lentaka Shoe Factory. Diagnosis is a bit complicated but, essentially, he suffered a mental breakdown caused by hard work, an unstable personality, and domestic difficulties. He has a wife and four children. I am assured by the staff that he will be ready for release and a productive return to society in less than a month, depending on his response to medication.”

  “You are most informative,” said Rostnikov, trying to make eye contact with the administrator.

  “You are a police officer,” Schroeder said, closing the folder and looking up. “See, I even know that. Easy enough. It was in your wife’s admission record.”

  “Who is paying for Comrade Bulgarin’s hospitalization? Why wasn’t he sent to a public hospital?”

  Schroeder again looked at Rostnikov for an instant. “I’ll be honest with you, Comrade. Bulgarin is a party member, not because of his political zeal but because he has relatives who are … well connected. I’ve said more than I should, but I expect I can trust to your discretion.”

  “Why?” Rostnikov asked again.

  “I just—” Schroeder began in some confusion.

  “Why do you expect you can trust to my discretion? You’ve never met me before, and I am a policeman.”

  “I don’t … I … am I incorrect?”

  “No,” said Rostnikov. “What is Bulgarin’s problem?”

  “A breakdown. He—”

  “No,” Rostnikov interrupted again. “He appeared to have some delusion. What is the nature of that delusion? He said something about a devil devouring the factory.”

  Schroeder shrugged nervously and adjusted his tie.

  “Who knows?” he said. “Devils, spacemen, talking animals, plots. We have a woman here who speaks to Karl Marx. Who knows with these? I can summon the physician assigned to his case.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Rostnikov, standing.

  “You are in some physical distress?” said Schroeder, rising from his chair and proving to be considerably shorter than Rostnikov had thought.

  “An ancient wound,” said Rostnikov. “I thought I hid it reasonably well.”

  “You do,” said Schroeder. “But remember, though I am not a physician, I have almost thirty years of experience with symptoms. Can I tell you anything else?”

  “Your name is German,” Rostnikov said, walking to the door.

  “Yes, my parents moved to the Soviet Union before I was born. I can’t even speak German.”

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” said Rostnikov.

  “Not at all,” said Schroeder, coming out from behind the desk. “Such incidents are rare, very rare, and, besides, Bulgarin is quite harmless. I’m assured he is quite harmless. Your wife is quite safe.”

  “I wasn’t concerned about her safety,” said Rostnikov.

  “Well, you know—”

  And with that Rostnikov departed, closing the door behind him.

  The morning was pleasant, cool, and the sky a bit threatening. Rostnikov reminded himself to take the umbrella the next day. He frequently reminded himself, but invariably forgot unless Sarah was home and caught him before he left the apartment.

  There was an MVD car, a not reliable 1974 Zhiguli, waiting for him in front of the hospital. Officially Rostnikov was a member of the MVD, the uniformed and non-uniformed police responsible for maintaining order, preventing c
rime, and pursuing lawbreakers for all but political and economic offenses. Political and economic offenses were the mission of the KGB, the Komityet Gosudarstvennoy Bezopasnosti, or State Security Agency. And Rostnikov had discovered when still a young policeman that any crime was political or economic in the Soviet Union if the KGB chose to see it as such, even the beating of a wife by her husband or the murder of the husband by a beaten wife.

  Rostnikov climbed into the back of the car. He did not drive. He knew how to do it and had done it many years ago. The skill was probably still there, but the desire had never glowed. Driving was a distraction. Rostnikov’s superior, Colonel Snitkonoy, the Gray Wolfhound, had insisted on Rostnikov’s taking the car and uniformed driver, and Rostnikov had not refused.

  “I want you back as quickly as possible,” the Wolfhound had said, standing tall, hands folded behind his back, brown uniform perfectly pressed and glowing with medals. “There is much to be done, and I can’t afford to have you wasting your time on buses. You understand.”

  “Completely,” Rostnikov had said.

  And so he sat in the backseat of the car, heading back to Moscow along the Volokolamsk Highway while the young woman driver made no conversation. Rostnikov always sat in the back of the car, though the custom was to sit in the front to keep from looking like an elitist. Rostnikov had no concern about such accusations, and the distance from the driver relieved them both of the obligation to carry on an unwanted conversation.

  Schroeder, he was sure, had been lying. Rostnikov wasn’t sure about how much lying he had done, but he had lied. The administrator had been too ready, too cooperative. The busy administrator had been sitting there waiting for Rostnikov, possibly expecting him. And Schroeder had been sweating. There was nothing wrong with sweating. Many people sweated in the presence of a policeman, even if they were guilty of no crime. In fact, it was almost impossible in the Soviet Union to be innocent of all crimes, since the definition of crime included intent. Someone could be guilty of thinking improperly. Yes, things had changed recently. People talked of demokratizatsiya, democratization, but those things could change back again with a bullet, a quiet coup. It wasn’t that Schroeder sweated but that he did not take the handkerchief out of his pocket and wipe his brow. It had been important to Schroeder to make it seem that he was not nervous. Something was being hidden. It might be anything, from illegal purchase of medical supplies to the use of banned medications, but Rostnikov didn’t think so. He was convinced that it had something to do with Bulgarin, the man who walked like a bear.

  Rostnikov pulled the worn paperback from his pocket and turned to the page where Carella had just learned about the headless magician.

  TWO

  THE WOMAN SAT looking straight ahead, her coat still buttoned, her mouth firmly set. She was somewhere in her late forties and, Sasha was sure, wanted to be thought of as a stylish modern person. He discerned this because of the woman’s short haircut, her use of makeup, and the stylish if somewhat worn imitation leather coat she wore.

  She was also a challenge. She had been sitting silently in the small interrogation room of Petrovka for more than fifteen minutes and had said nothing after informing the uniformed officer at the entrance that she had something of importance to say to a policeman. Petrovka consists of two ten-story L-shaped buildings on Petrovka Street. It is modern, imposing, utilitarian, and very busy. It is a place most Muscovites avoid. Often citizens will come through the doors determined to be heard and seen, only to change their mind at the sight of the humorless young officers carrying dark automatic weapons. But this woman, though afraid, had persisted.

  Sasha Tkach had the unfortunate luck to be seated at his desk opposite Zelach when the woman was brought up. Sasha was usually successful with reluctant witnesses. He was handsome if a bit thin and looked much younger than his twenty-nine years. His hair fell over his eyes, and he had an engaging habit of throwing his head back to clear his vision. He also had a rather large space between his upper teeth, which seemed to bring out the maternal response in most women, but this woman, whose identification confirmed that her name was Elena Vostoyavek, did not respond to Sasha’s charms and, truth be told, Sasha had other things on his mind, particularly the fight he had had that very morning with his wife, Maya, over whether Sasha’s mother, Lydia, would be moving with them and the baby to the new apartment. It had been an unusually difficult fight because Lydia, deaf as she was, had been in the next room and might hear.

  Sasha did not need this silent challenge before him. He needed a simple day of desk work, distracting, absorbing desk work without human contact. He had a pile of reports to write. He longed to write those reports, to lose himself in the routine of those reports, and so he decided to charm the reluctant woman.

  “Can I get you some tea?” Sasha said, leaning close to her and smiling.

  No answer.

  “This must be difficult for you,” he went on, speaking softly, intimately. “Whatever it is you have to tell us must be important, and we appreciate your sense of responsibility. Too many citizens walk away from their responsibility.”

  The woman did not look at him. He pulled up a chair and sat directly in her line of vision. Inspector Rostnikov had told him there would be moments like this when they moved to special assignments in the MVD. They—Rostnikov, Tkach, and Emil Karpo—had handled important cases, murders, grand theft when they were with the procurator general’s office, which under Article 164 of the Constitution of the USSR is empowered 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.” The procurator general’s office was a place of great prestige and, as long as its mission did not conflict with the KGB, great power. But Rostnikov had, once too often, incurred the wrath of the KGB and had been demoted, assigned to the staff of Colonel Snitkonoy, whose duties were largely ceremonial.

  Tkach and Karpo, already under suspicion because of their loyalty to Rostnikov, had been given the opportunity to join him. The opportunity had no alternatives, and Tkach had accepted it gladly, though at moments like this he longed for a good murder.

  “You’re married?” Tkach said. “Your ring is very interesting.”

  Elena Vostoyavek did not answer.

  “We know a little about you,” he said, patting the sheet of paper that had been handed to him just before he entered the room with the woman.

  “Your husband died several years ago after a prolonged illness. Is that correct?”

  Tkach knew it was correct. The woman did not answer.

  “You have a son, Yuri, who is … nineteen years old. He works at the Central Telegraph Office. Is that correct?”

  No response.

  “Elena, I’ll be honest with you. I need your help here. I have a lot of paperwork to do, and I’m expected to get a statement from you. If I don’t, my superiors will consider me incompetent. It will count against me. I have a wife, a child. You don’t want that to happen? You have a son. My mother would be broken if I lost my position here. You understand what I’m saying?”

  No response. Sasha sighed and threw back his head to clear his eyes. There was a challenge here, and he was not meeting it. The woman was not just being stubborn. He could sense that. She had something to say, but something was keeping her from it. He needed the key that would open her mouth.

  “All right,” he said, standing, suddenly louder than he had been. “I’ve been patient with you, but my patience has ended. We are busy here. I am busy, and you are taking valuable time from my investigative schedule. According to the law, you can now be tried for interference with police procedure. I am prepared, if I must, to bring such charges against you. You have five more of my minutes before I call an end to this and make a criminal charge.”

  A tear fo
rmed in the corner of Elena Vostoyavek’s right eye. Sasha sighed and handed her the handkerchief Maya had ironed for him that morning even as they had fought. The silent woman took the handkerchief, touched it to her eye, and delicately blew her nose before handing the handkerchief back.

  Sasha stuffed the handkerchief in his pocket, folded his arms across his chest, and sat back against the table behind him. The woman sniffled several times but didn’t seem to notice as Sasha announced the passage of each minute.

  “Five,” he said, standing. “It is time to place charges against you.”

  He had no intention of placing charges. He would usher her to the front door, inform the guard that she was not to be allowed back into the building, and then go back to his desk and write a report on the encounter. He looked forward to that report.

  It was clear the woman would not speak. She wanted magic, a miracle, for him to know what she wanted without her having to say it. At that moment, the door to the interrogation room opened and a tall figure entered. The door was at Sasha’s back, but he could tell from the silent woman’s eyes who had entered. Elena’s eyes raised to take in the figure, and then the eyes widened and the mouth opened. She composed herself almost before the door had closed, but the look on her face was familiar to Tkach.

  Emil Karpo stepped forward next to Sasha. Karpo was over six feet tall, lean, with dark, thinning hair and pale skin that contrasted with the black suit he wore. He looked corpselike, and his dark eyes were cold and unblinking. When he spoke, his voice was an emotionless monotone. He had been known in his early police career as the Tatar, but twenty years of fanatical pursuit of enemies of the state had earned him the 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, headaches that Emil Karpo never acknowledged. There was also a peculiar lilt of Karpo’s body as he moved forward, a lilt caused by a vulnerable left arm that had been repeatedly damaged in the line of duty and only recently repaired by surgery.