A Cold Red Sunrise Page 3

  “He is dead,” the Wolfhound whispered dramatically.

  “I am sorry to hear that,” said Rostnikov shifting his left leg which threatened, as it always did when he sat too long, to lose consciousness.

  “A man destined for greater service for the State,” the Wolfhound said softly, sadly.

  “Dead,” Rostnikov repeated before the eulogy reached proportions worthy of Tolstoy.

  “Murdered,” said the Wolfhound.

  Rostnikov shifted and put his notebook in his pocket alongside the novel he had finished reading on the metro. Rostnikov’s thoughts, up to this moment, had been on dinner and on some urgency to get down to his desk for a quick interrogation of the dealer in stolen goods he had sent Tkach to arrest. Rostnikov did not like the sound of the colonel’s voice which suggested something of great moment. He did not like where the conversation was going but he could do nothing to stop it.

  “And we …?” Rostnikov began.

  “Precisely,” said Snitkonoy with satisfaction. “We have been given the task of investigating the murder of this important figure. We are responsible for the investigation and the quick resolution. There are ramifications to this case, Porfiry Petrovich.”

  Yes, Rostnikov thought, I’m sure there are, but I am not sure you know what most of them are. Murders of commissars were not usually turned over to the Wolfhound. Someone was not terribly interested in the outcome of this murder case. Rostnikov might be reacting with too much suspicion, but it was better to be suspicious and survive, as he had managed to do, then to underreact and find that it is too late. There was no help for it. It was coming and he would have to deal with it.

  “And I am to conduct the investigation,” Rostnikov said. “I’m honored.”

  “We are all honored,” said Snitkonoy. “This important investigation assigned to us indicates the high esteem in which we stand.”

  Rostnikov nodded and hoped that the case was a nice simple one, robbery or a domestic conflict that simply required a cover-up. Snitkonoy strode to his desk, boots clicking again, and reached for a brown file which he picked up and brought to Rostnikov who didn’t want to touch it but did so.

  “Bad business,” the colonel said. “He was investigating the death of a child, the death of Lev Samsonov’s child, a young girl.”

  Rostnikov did not nod, did not respond. This was getting worse and worse.

  “You know who Samsonov is?”

  “Yes,” sighed Rostnikov. “The dissident.”

  “The traitor,” hissed Snitkonoy magnificently. “He and his wife are scheduled for deportation. It was feared that without the investigation Samsonov demanded, he might go to France or whatever decadent nation would have him and cause embarrassment, imperil Premier Gorbachev’s magnificent and courageous attempts to bring world peace. And …”

  “… And in the course of his investigation of the death of Samsonov’s child, Commissar Rutkin was murdered,” Rostnikov cut in.

  The Colonel did not like to be interrupted. He fixed his fourth most penetrating glance at Rostnikov who looked back at him blandly.

  “It is all in the report. You are to investigate the murder of Commissar Rutkin. You need not address the death of the child. Another representative of Party District Leader Koveraskin’s office will be dispatched later to deal with that. However, it is possible that the two deaths are related.”

  “There are many violent subversive people in Moscow,” said Rostnikov.

  “Moscow?” the Wolfhound said, halting in his pacing as someone softly knocked at his door. “Commissar Rutkin was murdered in the town of Tumsk, where you are to go immediately to conduct your investigation and report back within three days.”

  “Tumsk?”

  “Somewhere in Siberia on the Yensei River,” the Wolfhound said, ignoring the now insistent knock. “Arrangements have been made for you. Check them with Pankov. Take the report. It is a copy. Guard it carefully. It contains information on Rutkin, Samsonov, the child. You have my support and confidence and three days.”

  “Thank you, Colonel,” Rostnikov said getting up carefully and clutching the file. “Can I have some assistance in this? Perhaps I can settle this with even greater dispatch if I have someone to do the legwork. Someone we can trust.”

  The colonel had a smile on his face which did not please Porfiry Petrovich. The colonel put his hands behind his back and rocked on his heels.

  “I’ve anticipated your request, Gospodin, Comrade,” the Wolfhound said. “Investigator Karpo will be accompanying you.”

  “As always, Comrade Colonel, you are ahead of me,” Rostnikov said.

  “Porfiry Petrovich, do not fail me. Do not fail us. Do not fail the Revolution,” Snitkonoy said from his position near the window where the setting sun could silhouette his erect form.

  “The Revolution can continue in confidence with its fate in my hands,” Rostnikov said, hand on the door. It was as close to sarcasm as Rostnikov could risk with the colonel, but the inspector’s dignity required the gesture.

  “Ah, one more thing,” said the colonel before Rostnikov could get the door open. “An investigator from the office of the procurator will be accompanying you. Someone from the Kiev district. The Procurator General himself wants him to observe your methods, learn from your vast experience.”

  Rostnikov opened the door where the colonel’s assistant, Pankov, a near-dwarf of a man, stood ready to knock again. Pankov was not incompetent but that was not why Snitkonoy had chosen him. Rostnikov was sure that Pankov owed his position in life to the striking contrast he made to the Wolfhound. Pankov’s clothes were perpetually rumpled, his few strands of hair unwilling to lie in peace against his scalp. When he stood as erect as he was able to stand, Pankov rose no higher than the Wolfhound’s chest. Rostnikov had recently decided that Pankov looked like a refugee from the pages of a novel by the Englishman Charles Dickens.

  “Is he upset?” Pankov whispered in fear to Rostnikov.

  “Not in the least,” Rostnikov whispered back.

  “Pankov,” the Wolfhound bellowed and Pankov almost shook.

  “I’ll check back with you in half an hour to make arrangements for my mission to Siberia,” Rostnikov told the frightened little man who looked at the silhouetted colonel.

  “Sometimes,” whispered Pankov, “I think I would live longer if I were in Siberia.”

  “Perhaps,” Rostnikov whispered back, “it can be arranged.”

  “Stop whispering and get in here, Pankov,” the Wolfhound shouted. “I haven’t all night, my little friend.”

  Rostnikov stepped out, closed the door, tucked the folder under his arm and slowly headed for his office. He did his best not to think, to concentrate on nothing at all, to select in his mind the novel he would take with him on the trip. Rostnikov had never been to Siberia. He had no curiosity about Siberia. He did not want to go to Siberia. But, and this was much more important, he had no choice in the matter.

  THREE

  ICE CREAM IS THE SOVIET Union’s most popular dessert. It is eaten not only in the summer but in the winter. It is eaten in enormous quantities. In Moscow alone more than 170 tons of ice cream are consumed each day and visitors report that the ice cream in Moscow runs second in taste only to that of Italy and is probably equal to that of France and the United States.

  Business, however, was not particularly good that morning at the ice cream stand in the Yamarka, the shopping center behind the Education Pavilion of the USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition, the VDNKh, in North Moscow. Boris Manizer, who had sold ice cream at the stand for four years, knew why. Visitors, who usually stood in line at the stand, would approach with an eager smile, see Boris’s new assistant and change their minds.

  Boris’s new assistant was not just sober. He was positively forbidding. The man was tall, over six feet, lean with dark thinning hair and very pale skin. He looked corpse-like and his dark eyes radiated a frost more cold than the ice cream they sold or, today, failed to sell. The whit
e sales-coat simply added contrast to his new assistant’s pale skin. The man did not serve many customers and when he did he moved his left hand a bit awkwardly, as if he had recently been injured. Boris had decided that he did not like his new assistant, but he had no choice. The man had appeared two days earlier, shown his MVD identification and informed Boris that he would be working with him “for a few days.” There was no further explanation.

  And so, this morning as every morning Boris Manizer took the metro to the VDNKh Station and walked past the massive Space Obelisk pointing into the sky to commemorate the progress of the Soviet people in mastering outer space. Five years ago on a summer day, Boris had heard two educated men in front of the Obelisk saying that religion had been replaced in modern Russia by the Soviet space program. It had struck Boris as a wonderful, secret truth. He began to notice how many space stamps, space ashtrays, space desk ornaments were being sold. Even grocery stores and beauty shops had names like Cosmos and Sputnik. It had, in the last few years, began to change a bit, but it was still evident that the people were waiting for something new to happen in space, something new to celebrate the way he heard the crazy Americans celebrated the anniversaries of rock singers like Elovis Presahley and movie stars like Marilyn Munrue.

  The wind had been blowing across the Peace Prospekt this morning and Boris had hurried beyond the Alley of Heroes, with its busts of Yuri Gargarin and the other Soviets who had been in space, and to the main entrance of the Exhibition, the biggest museum in the city including 100,000 exhibits, frequently renewed, in 300 buildings and 80 pavilions with open-air displays when weather permitted. He had tramped left, past the Central Pavilion and the stature of Lenin in front of it, avoided the frozen path lined with winter-white birch trees where skaters would soon flash back and forth laughing, their noses red. He had walked around the Education Pavilion and down the path into the shopping center.

  Boris could talk knowingly with his customers about the many exhibits and pavilions though he had actually been in only a few of them. Boris liked to talk, to suggest to his customers that they visit the Circlarama theater, the bumper cars in the fun fair, the Animal Husbandry Pavilion and the Transport Pavilion. Now Boris fleetingly considered talking to the policeman who had given him no name, but one look at the gaunt face changed his mind.

  A few weeks earlier business had been booming. People had come, in spite of the cold weather, as they always do to the annual Russian Winter Festival. The exhibits were crowded and people coming in from the troika rides were hungry. Now, standing beside the vampire of a police officer, Boris began to worry about how long the stand would stay in business. Already, he knew, the next nearest ice cream stand, the one managed by Pugachev, had almost doubled its business since the coming of the ghost. And so Boris stood glumly and watched the customers pass him by, glance at the policeman and hurry on to another stand or to one of the shashlyk grills.

  “What are you looking for?” Boris finally asked as the day wore on and the pale man stood unblinking. “Since it is destroying my livelihood and starving my wife and children, I would like to know.”

  The man looked down at Boris. Almost everyone looked down at Boris who stood slightly over five feet tall. Boris wore a clean, white linen cap with a peak to give the illusion of a few added inches to his height, but it simply made him look like a very little man with a peaked cap.

  “There is no need for you to have that information,” the man said flatly.

  “What about my business? No one will buy ice cream from us but blind people. I’m sorry to tell you you are not a welcoming figure. You know that?”

  “I can do nothing about that,” the man said.

  “You could smile,” Boris said looking hopeful at a mother and child who were headed for the ice cream stand.

  “I cannot,” the policeman said. The policeman, whose name was Emil Karpo, had attempted a smile before the mirror in the wash room at Petrovka years earlier. It had looked grotesque, reminded him of the character in a book he had been forced to read as a child, a French book called The Man Who Laughs about a man who has his face twisted into a permanent grin.

  “Maybe not, but what about my business?” wailed Boris.

  “The business of the State takes precedence over the interests of the individual,” the man said, his eyes scanning the crowd.

  “True,” sighed Boris as the mother and child saw Karpo and veered off toward a nearby restaurant, “but what is the business of the State here? If my wife and three children are to starve for the State, I would like to know why?”

  Karpo’s eyes fixed on two young men, heavily clothed, moving resolutely, hands in pockets, toward a group of Japanese tourists who were taking pictures of everything but Boris Manizer’s ice cream stand.

  “Three children is too much,” Karpo said, not looking at Boris.

  “Right, eezveenee’t’e pashah’Ista, please forgive me. I’ll kill two of them as soon as I get home. I might as well. I can’t feed them any longer,” Boris said sarcastically.

  “That won’t be necessary,” Karpo said, his eyes still on the young men. “The State will provide if they will do their share.”

  Boris had been shifting the ice cream cartons as Karpo spoke. He looked up to be sure that the man was joking but the pale face gave no indication of humor. Before Boris could pursue the issue, a customer appeared, one of the Japanese complete with camera around his neck.

  “Yah tooree’st,” said the small Japanese man who was bundled in a bulky black coat.

  “What a surprise!” Boris said with a smile. “Who would have thought you were a tourist? I would have taken you for a member of the Politboro.”

  “Mah-ro-zheh-na,” the Japanese man said, deliberately looking back at a group of his friends who admired his courage.

  “What?” said Boris.

  “He thinks he asked for ice cream,” Karpo said.

  “Da,” the man agreed.

  Boris got the ice cream and the Japanese man motioned to his friends to join him. A few seconds later the stand was surrounded by Japanese tourists holding out ruble notes. It wouldn’t be enough to make it a profitable day, but it wouldn’t hurt. He turned to the policeman for help with the crowd, but the man was gone, his white jacket and cap lying on the floor beside the stand.

  As he scooped and handed out cones, Boris looked over the heads of his Japanese customers to see the policeman moving swiftly through the crowd toward the two young men he had been watching. The young men, one of whom had removed his hat to reveal long red hair, were talking to the woman and child who had veered away from Boris’s stand only minutes before.

  “Choco-late,” said one Japanese man.

  Boris had no idea what he was saying and handed the man a vanilla cone. The man smiled and paid.

  Boris tried to concentrate on business but he couldn’t help watching the policeman who was only a few feet from the young men who were standing very close to the mother and child, both of whom looked quite frightened.

  And then something quite strange happened. Two men in black coats stepped through the crowd and stood in front of the pale policeman who stopped and reached quickly into his pocket. One of the two men in black coats had something in his hand and the pale policeman removed his hand from his jacket and spoke. The two men in black looked back over their shoulders at the young men and the mother and child and then turned back to the gaunt policeman. The two youths had now taken notice of the gaunt man and the two in black coats. They began to back away from the mother and child.

  Boris handed out ice cream after ice cream pulling in coins and paper, handing out change, not quite sure if he was doing it right.

  As Boris served his last tourist he watched the red-haired youth and his companion turn and run, coats flapping behind them, in the general direction of the Metallurgy Pavilion. The pale policeman pointed at the fleeing pair but the men in black coats did not turn to look. They remained, hands at their sides, directly in front of him while behin
d them the mother and child stood trembling, confused. Boris could stand it no longer. He hurried around his stand and moved as quickly as he could through the crowd to the mother and child as he would want someone to do if his Masha and one of his children were standing frightened, alone like that. The boy even looked a bit like his Egon.

  “Are you all right?” he asked the woman and child. Though the boy was no more than ten, he was nearly as tall as Boris, taller if Boris took off his peaked hat.

  “They threatened us, me, Alex, but …” she said looking around for the youths.

  Alex’s nearly white hair was a mass of unruly curls. His mouth hung open.

  “Come. I’ll give you both an ice cream and you’ll feel better,” Boris said, looking around the crowd for any sign of the policeman, but there was none. Boris led the mother and boy toward his stand, praying to the gods that didn’t exist that he would never see the pale man again. And the gods that didn’t exist granted the wish of Boris Manizer.

  The trip to Dzerzhinsky Square in the KGB Volga took less than twenty minutes. Karpo sat silently next to one of the black-coated men while the other drove. They took the center lane, the lane of the privileged, straight down Mira Prospekt, around the square past the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, who, under Lenin himself, headed the Cheka, the forerunner of the KGB. The car pulled up smoothly in front of Lubyanka, a massive block-square mustard yellow building. Karpo did not glance at the white-curtained windows of Lubyanka nor at the shiny brass fittings on the door as he walked up the steps flanked by the two KGB men who had left their car at curb.

  Lubyanka had begun life as a turn-of-the-century insurance office. It was converted under Lenin to a great prison and interrogation center and now it was the headquarters of the KGB.

  An armed guard in uniform inside the door scanned the three men without moving his head. At a desk about twenty paces farther on, behind which stood a duplicate of the armed man at the door, a woman in a dark suit looked up, recognized the KGB men and nodded for them to pass. People, almost all men, passed them carrying folders, papers, notebooks, briefcases. Flanked by the two, Karpo walked quickly down a corridor, past a desk where a dark-suited man sat with yet another young, uniformed soldier behind him carrying a machine pistol at the ready. The trio turned right down another corridor and one of the black-coated men motioned for Karpo to halt at an unmarked door. The second KGB man remained behind Karpo. It was more a question of routine and procedure than any thought or fear that Karpo might run or go mad and violent. It did not matter who Karpo was. There was a way of bringing someone in and that way had to be followed or the consequences could be quite severe.