A Fine Red Rain Read online

  “This hospital has all the best,” Drozhkin said, nodding over his shoulder. “There’s not a piece of equipment in here manufactured in the Soviet Union, not one piece. American, Japanese, Swedish. Even the doctors are imported. Romanians, Poles, even a Frenchman. I get the best of attention here, which means I’ll live a few days longer than I would have and I’ll not die in agony. I accept what must be.”

  “As do I,” said Rostnikov with a slight bow of his head.

  When Rostnikov hit the lobby of the hospital he did not look at the two KGB men. He did not look at the two heads on the desk. He did not look at the old woman being led through the door by two men in white. Rostnikov put down his head and limped across the floor and out the front door. On the street he breathed deeply and looked around. Nothing had changed. Of course not, nothing but his life. He would have to go home later, have to tell Sarah, have to live in fear for his son, have to do his job, have to control his frustration, his anger. And then he remembered the circus, the Old Moscow Circus. His father had taken him to the Old Circus on Tvetnoi Boulevard when he was a boy. He remembered the lights outside, the two prancing horses above the entrance, the smell of animals. Then he remembered taking Josef to the New Circus on Vernadsky Prospekt, the new round building of steel and glass topped with multicolored pennants waving through a shower of searchlights. And inside … Yes, he decided, it was definitely time to get to the circus.

  Sasha Tkach got off the train at the Universitet Metro Station almost an hour to the minute before Rostnikov would come to the same station. Rostnikov would walk one block down Vernadsky Prospekt in the direction of the Moscow River and find himself in front of the New Circus. Sasha, however, went up the escalator, left the station, and moved down Lomonosov Prospekt in the direction of the new building of Moscow State University. This massive building, completed in 1953, with its tall, thirty-two-story central spire, looked like a cathedral, standing high above any other building in the Lenin Hills area. Atop the spire was a golden star set in ears of wheat. On the flanking eighteen and twelve-story buildings alongside the central structure were a giant clock, a thermometer, and a barometer that students, faculty, workers, and visitors could glance up at as they moved down the long pathway, the Walk of Fame, to the central building, a pathway decorated with inspirational busts of Russian scientists and scholars.

  The university covered forty blocks with research facilities. There were botanical gardens, a sports stadium, and a huge park. There was a fine arts assembly hall that could seat 1,500, a student club, 19 lecture theaters, 140 auditoriums, dozens of teaching and research laboratories, the Museum of Earth Sciences, a swimming pool, sports facilities, and 6,000 rooms for students.

  To be a student at Moscow State University, Tkach knew as he hurried in the direction of the spire, was to be admitted to the elite. The trick was to do well enough to make it to the university, to pass the tests, to have the connections in the Party, to say the right things, be in the right places. The attrition rate of students entering the university was very small. The reasons were both simple and not so simple. First, the students who got in were selected carefully, though politically. They were good, well suited for the education they would receive. Second, the future of the faculty was dependent on how well students performed. Students were protected once they entered to insure that they would succeed and reflect well on their departments, their teachers, the university. Students at Moscow State University and the other major Soviet universities were well treated and had comfortable rooms, good food, and access to cultural and leisure opportunities that were paralleled only by the politically elite in the Communist Party.

  Sasha Tkach knew all this as he hurried down the street, clutching a briefcase filled not with lecture notes and textbooks but with his lunch and a war novel. He saw real students pass him, felt resentment and fear that someone, perhaps the dark, short-haired girl then in front of him, would stop and say, “That is no student. That is a fraud, an undereducated fraud.”

  On Lomonosov Prospekt, behind the university, he saw the bookstall. It looked ordinary enough, a large table in front of a fairly large white trailer in need of a painting. Sasha shifted his briefcase from his sweating right hand to his left, pushed his hair out of his eyes, and made his way through the small crowd to the table. Information on the bookstall as a possible outlet for black market video equipment had come from a small-scale dealer in black market records, Tsimion Gaidar, who claimed to have traded a supply of Beatles records for a videotape machine through the bookstall. Gaidar’s information was suspect, since he was trying to save himself from black market charges and the KGB. In addition, Gaidar had been known in the past to try to turn in anyone in his acquaintance, including his own brother, to escape prosecution.

  However, Deputy Procurator Khabolov had decided that Sasha’s mission was worth a try.

  Sasha gently elbowed his way next to a man in a blue hooded sweatshirt. The man was wearing a cap and looked like a cab driver, but he could have been a professor or just a maintenance worker at the university. The rest of the crowd was a bit easier for Sasha to place—students, smiling more than most Muscovites, smiling as if they had a secret for success.

  Tkach asked the small woman behind the table if she had anything for children. The woman, a dumpy, dour creature wearing a dark dress too warm for the weather, nodded, meaning that he should go farther down the table, and Sasha muscled and apologized his way along to follow her. The books were all covered by glass to prevent theft. Each customer had to ask to examine any of the books, guides, or maps, and the woman kept a careful eye on all to whom she granted the right to touch the precious pages.

  “That one,” Sasha said, pointing at a thin book of Lermontov fairy tales with a colorful cover. The dour woman nodded, gently pulled the book from under the glass, and handed it to Sasha. A customer farther along the table called to the woman, who paused to examine Sasha, decided to take a chance on leaving the book with him, and shuffled over to the caller.

  Tkach, clutching his briefcase, flipped through the pages but looked over them at the trailer. A pretty but unsmiling little girl of about eight years stood next to the trailer. She was dressed for school, her dress short for the summer, her dark hair tied with two yellow bows. She stood on one leg, swinging her other leg back and forth. She was looking at Sasha and the book. He held it up toward her. The girl glanced at the woman dealing with another customer and quickly shook her head no at Sasha, who nodded. Sasha pointed down at a series of books under the glass. To each one the girl shook her head no while checking to be sure the woman did not see her. As he pointed to the fifth book, the girl gave a small but emphatic nod of yes.

  When the woman moved back down to Sasha, he handed her the book of fairy tales and pointed at the book the little girl had approved. The dour woman quickly turned her head toward the little girl, but the child was looking beyond the scene toward the Lenin Hills.

  “I’ll take it,” he said. “Sko’l’ka sto’eet? How much?”

  “One ruble,” the woman said.

  Sasha had not intended to buy anything, knew he would not be reimbursed by the Procurator’s Office. He did have an advance for enough money to purchase a record album as evidence. There was a procedure for reimbursement, but it was complicated and required anticipation of one’s expenditures, the filling out of a form, and long waits. The woman took the book and wrapped it, and Sasha felt a sudden feeling of pleasure. His smile was sincere. He had purchased his first book for his daughter, for Pulcharia. He was about to tell the woman when he thought better of it. He was a student. What was a young student doing with a baby daughter? He wasn’t sure how common such a thing was. So instead of a thank you or an explanation, when he reached over to take the book he said softly to the woman, “Do you carry records?”

  The woman looked at him as he took the book and shook her head in a decided no, but she did not hide the touch of caution in the corner of her large mouth. As she started to turn away
, Tkach added conversationally, “A man from whom I purchased a record said you might have one I wanted. And I want it very badly.”

  The woman ignored him, or appeared to, and began to wait on a young woman with long blond hair and glasses. The young woman, who carried several books, glanced at Sasha and smiled, which marked her immediately as a student even if her youth and the books had not. He looked back at her but didn’t smile.

  “The man who recommended you is named Gaidar, Tsimion Gaidar,” Sasha went on. “I’ve purchased several recordings from him.”

  The dour woman behind the table moved over to him quickly, ignoring a man with a gray beard who called to her impatiently and looked at his watch. The dour woman looked at Sasha’s open, boyish face, and he did his best to look open, innocent, the Innocent.

  “Behind the trailer,” the woman said, leaning forward. “Knock at the door.”

  With this she backed away. Sasha glanced at the little girl at the trailer and held up his wrapped book. She nodded in approval, and Sasha backed through the dozen or so people at the table, opened his briefcase, and put the book inside. He hadn’t even checked to see what the book was.

  The back of the white trailer looked much like the front. There was an emergency door. A few people walked by on the street, but no one seemed to pay any attention to him. He knocked. There was no answer, though he heard a shuffling inside. He knocked again, and the door opened to reveal a short, muscular, dark, hairy man in an undershirt. The man was probably in his late thirties and definitely needed a shave and a bath. His dark hair was thinning rapidly.

  “Tsimion Gaidar sent me,” Sasha said with a smile.

  The man didn’t smile back. He examined Tkach, looked at his briefcase, paused, and then backed into the trailer. Sasha ducked his head and followed him. When he got inside, the dark little man pushed the door closed.

  The inside of the trailer was one large open space with cabinets along both walls blocking the windows. A bit of light came in from the front and rear windows of the trailer. Both windows were heavily curtained. The metal cabinets, Tkach could see, were padlocked. There was a desk at the rear of the trailer with a chair behind it so the light from outside would come over the shoulder of whoever sat at the desk.

  Behind the desk was a second man, who sat with folded hands as if that were the way he contentedly spent all his time. The man behind the desk, wearing a green turtleneck sweater far too warm for the weather, was older than the man who had let Sasha in, but they were obviously related; they had the same sagging face, the same eyes. The older one’s hair was white and there was far less of it than there was on the head of his younger relative.

  The two men looked at Tkach and waited.

  “I’m a student at the university,” Tkach said. “I’m a collector of records. Tsimion Gaidar said that you might have one of the Beatles records that went on sale a few months ago at the Melodia record store on Kalinin Prospekt, a Saturday. I waited in line all day. They said there were a hundred thousand of them, but thousands of us were turned away.”

  The two dark men exchanged glances. The younger one, standing with his arms folded over his undershirt, shrugged.

  Tkach knew far more about the records. Melodia, the Soviet Union’s only recording company, had contracted with British EMI to produce 300,000 copies of two Beatles albums originally made in the mid-1960s. Only a few thousand albums were actually made by Melodia, and more than two hundred of those were stolen by a delivery truck driver who was a distant relative of Tsimion Gaidar.

  “We might know where to get one of these albums,” the older man behind the desk said. His voice was slightly raspy, as if he had just been awakened from a long, deep sleep.

  “But,” said his younger partner, “it is not cheap.”

  “I want it very badly,” said Tkach.

  “Thirty rubles,” said the older man.

  “Or fifty dollars American,” said the younger man.

  The older man behind the desk sighed and said, “You must forgive my brother. Osip has American money on the mind. We had a customer, a student like you, a few weeks ago who had some American money. Who knows how he got it? You don’t have American money, do you?”

  “No,” said Sasha. “I don’t.”

  “See?” said the man behind the desk. “You ask dumb questions sometimes.”

  “But,” said Osip in his undershirt, “I sometimes make us a profit with these dumb questions that don’t cost us anything to ask.”

  “What am I to do with such a partner?” the older man asked Sasha, who had no answer. “He tried, my brother, but … You want the album?”

  “I want it,” said Sasha.

  “You’ve got thirty rubles with you?” asked Osip.

  “Yes,” said Sasha. Actually, he had almost fifty rubles, the price Assistant Procurator Khabolov thought the album would be.

  “Where does a student get money like that to carry around?” asked the older man.

  “My father is an architect in Tblisi. I’m studying to be an architect,” said Sasha.

  “Felix, what’s the difference where he gets the money? He’s got it,” said Osip.

  “Ignorance,” said Felix with a sigh behind the desk, looking at Sasha for understanding. “I promised our mother I would take care of him, but ignorance is hard to overcome.”

  “Ignorance,” grunted Osip. “Without my ignorance we’d still be sewing women’s handbags for a few kopecks.”

  “You hear that?” Felix asked, shaking his head and pointing a hairy finger at his brother. “You hear that? That is not gratitude.”

  “I’ve got to get to a class,” Sasha said as the brothers glared at each other. He reached into his jacket pocket, took out his wallet, stepped to the small desk, and began to count out rubles.

  The rubles sat on the desk and Sasha opened his briefcase. Felix nodded to Osip, who moved to one of the metal cabinets near the front of the trailer, took out a key chain, and opened the cabinet. Sasha couldn’t see inside the cabinet from his angle. Osip removed something from the cabinet, tucked it under his sweating arm, and locked the cabinet.

  When he returned to the back of the trailer, he handed the album to Sasha, who took it, smiled as if he had obtained a treasure, and tucked it into his briefcase, closing the clasp carefully.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Perhaps in the future you might be able to obtain other albums for me?”

  “We might,” said Felix.

  “Yes,” agreed Osip. “We might.”

  “Or videotapes. Do you know someplace where I might be able to get videotapes, or even a machine? Tsimion Gaidar thought you might have some idea.”

  “No idea,” said Felix, looking at his brother, who had seemed about to speak.

  “Well,” said Sasha with a shrug. “I’ll keep looking.”

  Sasha turned toward the emergency door through which he had come. He was sure the brothers were exchanging glances behind him, making a decision.

  “Wait,” said Felix.

  Sasha turned. Felix was standing now.

  “As it happens,” he said, “we do deal a bit in videotapes, operate a kind of videoteque, quietly, for special customers, special friends.”

  “I could use a machine,” Sasha said, looking at Felix. “My father gave me an Electrokina VM12, but it isn’t very good.”

  “The Soviet factory is, unfortunately, inferior to those of the West,” Felix sighed sympathetically. “Given a bit of time we can get a Korean machine or even American Magnavoxes.”

  “Five thousand American dollars,” Osip said quickly.

  “He doesn’t have American dollars,” Felix rasped.

  “And tapes?” Sasha asked before the brothers could launch into another argument.

  “American or Japanese blank tapes, sixty rubles,” said Felix.

  “And that’s a bargain,” added Osip. “Foreign movies, American, one hundred and twenty rubles. We’re not talking about Potemkin and Ivan the Terrible or biographie
s of admirals.”

  The trailer was hot. Sasha felt the sweat under his arms.

  “I’m very interested,” said Sasha, “but I’ve got to get to class. I can come back later.”

  “Show him,” Felix said to his brother and nodded at the metal cabinet beside him.

  Osip moved to the cabinet, took out his key, and opened the cabinet. On shelves, tightly stacked, stood hundreds of videotapes.

  “You understand English?” Osip asked Sasha. Sasha nodded that he did.

  “All English and American in this cabinet. Your choice,” said Osip proudly. “Everything from Bambi to Blue Thunder.”

  Sasha felt his smile disappear just when it should be expanding. He thought of the book in his briefcase and of the little girl near the trailer, the little girl with the two yellow ribbons who had guided him to the book, the little girl who was probably the daughter of one of these men, both of whom were about to be arrested for an economic crime considered by the Soviet Union to be punishable by death.

  THREE

  ROSTNIKOV KNOCKED AT ONE of the glass doors of the New Circus and shaded his eyes to peer into the lobby. Nothing seemed to stir. He knocked again and saw some movement. Behind him thunder cracked, but it was the thunder of a departing storm heading north. What had Duznetzov said before he leaped from the Gogol statue? Something about a man who saw thunder? A face appeared on the other side of the window, the face of an old man with sunken gray cheeks and steely gray hair that wouldn’t stay in place. He wore a shiny old blue suit that looked at least two sizes too large.

  “Zakri’ta, closed,” the old man shouted. Then he pointed a bony finger to the right. “Kah’si, ticket office.”

  Rostnikov pulled out his identification card and placed it against the glass. The old man fished out a pair of steel-rimmed glasses, donned them, and opened his mouth to read the card. Enlightenment came suddenly, and the man pushed open the door.

  “But the police have already been here,” the old man said, stepping back to let Rostnikov enter.