Fall of a Cosmonaut Read online

  “Yes,” said Boris. “In my sixtieth year, I have become a murderer and will now commit further crimes by concealing that murder like … like a criminal in some French movie.”

  “You have seen many French movies?” asked Rostnikov.

  “Actually, no, and it has been many years since the last, but I have a good memory.”

  “Remember then that Primazon came here to see me. I talked to him and left. Then our very-much-alive man left. In fact, he and I left at the same time. It would be best if many people saw him leaving the district.”

  “Many people will swear that they saw him drive away,” said Boris, looking far more alive than when Rostnikov had entered the room.

  “Good. Then I will finish my coffee, meet privately with your son, and go home.”

  “More will come, won’t they?”

  “I will act so that no one will follow,” said Rostnikov. “I cannot guarantee it, but I believe you and your family will be left in peace.”

  “And why do you do this?”

  “Why? I believe it is what should be done.”

  “But you are a policeman and I am a murderer.”

  “And I must wake up every morning and say to myself, Porfiry Petrovich, can you live with what you have done with your life so far? Can you live with what you did yesterday? And I wish to be able to answer yes. Now I must talk to your son. As soon as we leave, I suggest you put your dead visitor in the trunk of his car and keep him there till it is dark. I think it best if the women and the child do not see him.”

  “They are strong,” said Boris.

  “I have seen many dead people,” said Rostnikov. “I would be quite content to see no more and to have never seen the first.”

  They stood up yet again. They shook hands, and Rostnikov went in search of Tsimion Vladovka.

  Tayumvat rode with Karpo and Vanga to Petrovka. The three sat in the back of the car, Vanga in the middle. The driver whistled a nonsong, and Vanga struggled to find another, better lie. He could think of none.

  “This is a mistake,” he said.

  “It is not,” said Tayumvat.

  The pale policeman looked straight ahead and said, “Before we went to Bolskanov’s apartment, I asked Dr. Tayumvat to look at the files in your computer.”

  “You had no right …” Vanga said with indignation.

  “I had the right and the obligation, but you may dispute that with the courts and my superiors if you wish,” Karpo replied calmly. “He asked me to look at your paper on dream research. It meant nothing to me. He said he did not believe you had written it, though he could not prove it.”

  “That’s—”

  “Ah, there was one curiosity I have not yet mentioned,” said the old man. “At my age, my memory. The cover page, dedication, and cover letter to a journal meant a great deal. The article itself has two spaces after each period. That is standard. The cover page, dedication, and letter are different. In each of those, and in all of your correspondence and memos, the period is followed by a single space. I would say that the text was written by one person and the cover page with your name on it was written by another, by you. I quickly examined the files of Bolskanov. They all contain documents with two spaces following the period.”

  “Dr. Tayumvat also says that the style of the article in question bears little resemblance to your style in other documents in your computer,” said Karpo. “I believe his professional opinion will carry great weight, and I believe others who know of such things will agree with him.”

  “I know important people,” said Vanga.

  “I knew Einstein,” said Tayumvat. “Met him twice. The first time he smelled of pipe tobacco and asked where he could get good food. That was in Vienna. Why he asked me, I don’t know. What do I know of Vienna?”

  Vanga went silent. A lawyer. Yes, he would get a lawyer. A very good lawyer. He would make calls. He would ask for favors. He was a respected scientist, the director of a major research institute.

  “It doesn’t matter,” said the old man, looking out the window.

  “What doesn’t matter?”

  “That you are the director of a respected research institute,” said the old man.

  Vanga stared at the old man.

  “You read my mind. I thought you didn’t believe in such things.”

  “I didn’t read your mind,” said Tikon Tayumvat. “It was the logical thing to think under the circumstances.”

  And the logical thing to think now, thought Andrei Vanga, is that I wish you were dead.

  “I soon will be,” said the old man, still looking out the window. “But there is a very real chance that you will go first.”

  “Try again,” Nadia Spectorski said, sitting across from Zelach in her laboratory, a stack of photographs, facedown, in front of her. “Or, rather, don’t try, just close your eyes and tell me what you see.”

  “I would prefer to keep my eyes open,” he said.

  “Then open. Do you see anything?”

  “You. This room. No more.”

  She picked up a photograph and looked at it. It was a white telephone on a black table.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “A photograph.”

  “Of what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She adjusted her glasses and Zelach did the same. He would not survive a battle of wits with this woman. I am, he told himself, going to become a test mouse or a monkey doing tricks. No, Porfiry Petrovich will save me from this. He must save me.

  “You are supposed to cooperate,” she said evenly.

  “I am,” said Zelach, slouching in the chair as best he could.

  “Then what is …”

  She stopped. It was she who saw two quick, very quick, almost subliminal images. The first was of Andrei Vanga sitting next to Emil Karpo. Vanga was definitely frightened. The second was of her sitting in the office of the director, behind the desk, talking to … someone.

  “Are you all right?” asked Zelach.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “You saw something?”

  “Yes. Did you see it?”

  “No. Dr. Spectorski, I do not want to do this.”

  She sat back, took off her glasses, rubbed her forehead with one finger, and closed her eyes.

  “Then,” she said, “it will end.”

  When she opened her eyes, Zelach was looking at her in a way few men had done in the past.

  “End?” asked Zelach.

  “My—if you don’t want to proceed, you should not have to do so. I think you are a good man who doesn’t want to or have to be turned into a research phenomenon.”

  “Why have you changed your mind?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, removing her glasses and placing them on the table. “May I ask you a question?”

  “What?”

  “Would you … I’ve never done anything like this before … would you go out for some coffee and cake with me? I will pay. If you say no, I will understand.”

  “I say yes,” said Akardy Zelach. “And can we not talk about … this?” he asked, looking around the room and at the photographs.

  “We will talk of other things,” she said with a smile.

  Zelach thought she had a most wonderful smile.

  Valery Grachev existed no longer. There was only Kon. He had changed his mind after talking to the old man from whom he bought the shirts. He would only truly become a king if he were to survive to claim victory. An attack doomed to defeat had its compensations, but it did not create a king.

  The bus, green and slow, made many stops. Each stop was painful. A sudden jerk and stoy, “stop.” And it also hurt when the bus moved again. The bullet, he was sure, was still inside him. He was sure he could feel it. He could certainly imagine it, a small distortion of metal making its way through his blood, finding and jabbing into a pulsing organ.

  The bus was not crowded, but it was far from empty. He had moved to the rear, covered his bleeding wound as well as he c
ould, and gripped the top of the empty seat in front of him.

  When he finally got off the bus, arms folded in front of him as if he had a chill, he staggered. Soon, he feared, fevered hallucinations would come. They would have to wait. The bus door closed and he knew the driver and the passengers on this side were looking at this young drunk as he moved down the street.

  Will yourself to keep moving, he told himself. Your will can carry you through. Your will power. It can be done. You cannot quit before the game is ended.

  He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t go to work. He did not have enough money left to buy bandages or a fresh jacket or shirt to cover his wound. And he certainly could not go to a hospital. He went the only place he could.

  “You want to buy a bicycle?” the shopkeeper said.

  “Yes,” said Valery Grachev.

  “I think you’re sick,” said the man, one hand on the wheel of the upside-down bicycle in front of him. “I think you have a fever and should go to the hospital.”

  “You want to sell a bicycle?”

  “Yes, but I don’t think you can drive one.”

  “That is the concern of Kon, not yours.”

  “Kon?”

  “Yes, will you sell me a bicycle, now?”

  The shopkeeper had a weak heart and no stomach for trouble. “How much can you afford?”

  Kon shook his head and smiled.

  “Price is no concern,” he said. “Something simple, no gears.”

  The man moved down the aisle and selected a bicycle from the many lined up on both sides.

  “This?” he asked, pointing to a bicycle.

  “Fine, perfect. I’ll take it.”

  “It will cost you …”

  “I don’t care. I told you, Kon doesn’t care.”

  The shopkeeper shrugged. “You need to know so you can pay me,” he said.

  “I have no money with me. When I return, I’ll pay you double whatever you ask.”

  “I don’t think …”

  “You do not have to think. Kon is thinking. I’ve been renting that closet from you for months. You have overcharged me. Have I ever missed a payment? Ever?”

  “No, but …”

  “I’m taking the bicycle. I have no time to argue.”

  “Take it. You’ll pay today?”

  “And for the rest of my life,” said Valery Grachev.

  The shopkeeper returned to his work. The man was drunk, in a fever, or crazy, or all of these, but he was surely trouble. He heard the man go to the closet, open it, make some noise. Then the man moved slowly to the bicycle, pulled it out of the line, and wheeled it past the shopkeeper. There was now a very large and clearly very heavy backpack strapped over the shoulders of the man who was now calling himself Kon.

  The shopkeeper watched as the man struggled to get on the bicycle, the pack on his back heavy and awkward. Finally, he succeeded and managed to drive away down the street.

  Fortunately, the bike he had given his customer was one he had been trying to get rid of for two years. It was fortunate because the shopkeeper had a feeling that he would not be seeing this young man again.

  A man fitting the description of the one who had shot at Sasha and killed Yuri Kriskov had been reported to a policeman on the embankment of the Moscow River, across from the Kremlin. The policeman had been directing traffic when a man and woman approached him and said that a bleeding man was weaving back and forth on his bicycle and talking to himself. The policeman had nodded professionally, checked the traffic, and moved to the police phone station across the street to call in the report and then go back to directing traffic. The policeman thought little of the report, but he had learned that he should cover his back if he were to survive and possibly some day escape dodging maniacs in red cars. He had reported. He was done.

  The report had been taken by a desk clerk who had just received a copy of the description of a Valery Grachev. Grachev, the report said, was dangerous, armed, and probably wounded. The clerk, like the policeman directing traffic, did not wish to lose his job should anything come of this coincidence, should it be but a coincidence, which was likely. The clerk had a wife, a grown daughter, and a gambling habit that required his small but steady salary. He picked up the phone and called the sighting of the wounded bicyclist in to Petrovka, suggesting that it be passed on immediately to the officers investigating the man named Grachev.

  It was this that sent the helicopter allocated to the Kriskov murder down the embankment of the river where the pilot saw a man sitting on the narrow line of rocks along the water. The pilot dropped lower and reported over his radio that there was a child on one side of the man and a large cloth bag that looked like a backpack on the other. It was then that the man raised his arm and fired a shot at the helicopter.

  The pilot heard the bullet hit not far from his window. He took the helicopter up two hundred feet quickly and noisily and reported in again, trying to keep his voice calm as he told of the shot fired. The pilot was a veteran of the Afghan war. He had been shot at before, but it had been a long time ago, and now that it had happened again the knowledge of how close he had come to dying in that distant rocky wasteland rushed into his consciousness. He was afraid, but he would not show it.

  “Man and boy on the embankment of the Moscow River almost directly across from the Kremlin,” he said. “Man fits the description of Valery Grachev. There is a bag at his side. When I approached, he fired one shot from a handgun, hitting but, I believe, not causing serious injury to the craft. I could not determine if he might be wounded or the extent of any wounds.”

  “Very good,” came the voice of the pilot’s supervisor. “Remain in place until you see police vehicles at the scene and then return to base for a damage assessment.”

  The supervisor ended the transmission and the pilot allowed himself to take some serious deep breaths.

  Grachev was still sitting in the same position that the pilot had reported, when Sasha Tkach and Elena Timofeyeva arrived at the embankment in the police car they had been in for the past hour and a half. By this time, other marked cars with flashing lights had converged and a pair of uniformed policemen were directing traffic away from the site, creating a lengthy traffic jam and drawing camera-armed tourists.

  Sasha had said little during the ride. Elena had only repeated that she was certain that Vera Kriskov was involved in her husband’s death. Sasha’s mind was elsewhere. Once again he had almost died. He had imagined Maya and the children crying at his grave site. He imagined his mother shouting at Porfiry Petrovich, telling him how many times she had pleaded with him to give her only son a safe job behind a desk. The helicopter pilot and Sasha had a great deal in common this morning: both had almost been shot by the same man.

  When Elena and Sasha stepped out of the car, a uniformed policeman pointed to the concrete balustrade that ran along the river, keeping drunken motorists from plunging into the water. Elena reached the concrete barrier first and carefully looked over. Sasha moved to her side and looked down at Valery Grachev to their left. Grachev was holding a gun in his lap. The weapon was pointed at a boy of about eleven, no more than a foot or two from Grachev.

  “A special-division marksman is here,” the policeman said. “He says he can safely put a bullet into the man’s head. It is an easy shot, the marksman says.”

  “If one puts a bullet into a man’s head, the word safe cannot appropriately be applied,” said Elena.

  “I’m just reporting what my duty officer told me to report,” the policeman said.

  “And if Grachev, in the throes of death, pulls the trigger and puts a bullet into the head of that boy?” asked Elena.

  “I’m just reporting what my duty officer told me to report,” the policeman said.

  “Tell the marksman to be ready but to do nothing unless I hold up my right arm,” Elena said. “Then he is to safely put a bullet into Grachev’s brain.”

  The policeman nodded and moved down the balustrade toward a young man, also in
uniform, cradling a rifle in his arms.

  “Now?” asked Elena.

  “Now,” said Sasha, leaning over the rough concrete to get a better look at Grachev.

  Valery Grachev was talking to the boy, apparently ignoring the noise above and behind him.

  “Grachev,” Sasha shouted.

  The gun came out of the man’s lap and pressed into the stomach of the boy. Sasha looked at the boy, who seemed remarkably unafraid, perhaps even curious and excited. He was, obviously not feeling the same sense of mortality as Sasha Tkach and the helicopter pilot.

  “Stay away,” shouted Grachev. “It will all be over soon. Stay away. I want you to watch what I am about to do, but I want you to stay away. This is the end. Kon will not simply surrender. Kon will go with defiance like Boribyonovich in the regionals. I do not wish to harm this boy, but what does it really matter if he dies today, in twenty years, in fifty years. It’s all the same. All we have is the game.”

  “I’m coming down,” said Sasha, starting to climb over to the rocks below. “I have no weapon. I won’t get close.”

  Elena grabbed his sleeve. “What are you doing?”

  “Climbing down to talk to him,” he said calmly.

  “That is insane,” Elena said as he continued to climb. “I’m going to signal the marksman.”

  “No,” said Sasha, one leg now over the side. “I remind you that I am the senior inspector here.”

  “You are the single insane inspector here,” she said.

  “A good match,” said Sasha, now about to drop to the rocks. “A mad suspect and a mad inspector. We should have much to talk about.”

  With that, Sasha dropped, fell to his knees, and almost tumbled into the dark water.

  “Go back. Go back. Go back,” shouted Grachev.

  “Very difficult,” said Sasha, still on his knees, hands holding a jutting edge of rock. “I just want to talk.”

  “I have work to do,” said Grachev. The young man was bleeding. The front of his shirt was soaked through.

  “Perhaps I can help,” Sasha said, moving up the rocks and sitting about a dozen feet from the other man.

  “Help? You don’t know what I have to do.”