A Cold Red Sunrise Page 5

  They had encountered the system often enough to know that this was generally true. And the nice thing about Rostnikov was that he did not expect a bribe. He even seemed to enjoy himself when fixing a toilet or a sink.

  Sarah had suggested to him that plumbing repair was just another form of detection with different tools.

  “Yes,” he had agreed, “but toilets are much simpler. They may complain and talk back but they don’t make you weep. And when you find out what is wrong, you fix it. It is simple lonely detection.”

  She had understood. Sarah usually understood, Rostnikov thought as the cool water beat against his hairy chest. And he usually understood her. For months they had not spoken about leaving the country. He had tried, had even engaged in an attempt to blackmail the KGB, but he had failed and endangered both them and their son Josef. And so they had stopped speaking of leaving and Sarah had remained just as supporting and loving but her smile was not as ready, her step not as hopeful. And the headaches had come.

  If Sarah were not Jewish, perhaps, she would not have thought, dreamed of leaving. It would not have entered her mind, but she was Jewish and their son Josef was, on his records, listed as being half Jewish and Rostnikov was identified as having a Jewish wife, all of which gave rise to the idea of leaving. Officially, the Soviet Union, whose Constitution, in Article 34, declares that all “Citizens of the USSR are equal before the law without distinction of origin, social or property status, race or religion,” draws a distinction between Russians and Jews or Russians and other ethnic minorities. This distinction is made quite evident on the passports of Soviet citizens, and Jews are sometimes sneeringly called pyaty punkty, fifth pointers, because it is on the fifth line of the Soviet passport that nationality is indicated and the line on which a Jew is identified as being different from the rest of his countrymen.

  Rostnikov turned slowly to let the water hit his lower back and then his leg. It would have felt better to have the water beat down, massage, but there was seldom enough water pressure for this to happen. Sometimes in the shower Rostnikov made a sound like singing or humming to tunes or near-tunes that ran through his head, but he did not feel like singing this night.

  When he turned off the shower and stepped into the bedroom to dry himself, Rostnikov considered once again how best to tell Sarah about Siberia. It struck him, as it often did, that getting through life was a minefield and one did it successfully by constant worry or by developing a sense and sensitivity.

  “Ready?” Sarah said calling to him.

  “Coming,” he replied with a sigh as he finished putting on his pants and tucked in his white pullover shirt.

  Sarah was seated. The pot was steaming in the center of the table as it rested on a block of wood. The salad stood next to his plate and there were glasses of red wine. He tasted his and smiled.

  “Saperavi,” she said sipping from her own glass.

  Like most Russian wines, Saperavi came from Georgia.

  “You said you liked it,” Sarah said, taking the lid off the pot and pointing to it, indicating that Rostnikov should eat.

  “I like it very much, but it costs …” he began as he reached forward to serve himself.

  “A celebration,” Sarah interrupted.

  “What are we celebrating?”

  Sarah shrugged and looked at her plate.

  “I don’t know. Your favorite dish. Your favorite wine.”

  “You know the story about my cousin Leonora,” he said after tasting the chicken and telling her it was delicious. “For some reason she thought I loved cold mashed potatoes. I don’t know where she got the idea but she served me a plate of them one day when I came to visit her—I couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. It was before the war—and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that she was confusing me with someone else or something else I may have said. I seldom visited my cousin Leonora after that.”

  “When are you going?” Sarah asked softly, delicately removing a small bone from her mouth.

  Rostnikov wanted to rise, hug her to him. Perhaps later.

  “Tomorrow morning, early. A car will come for me.”

  “How long will you be gone?” she asked not looking at him.

  “Not long, I hope,” he said looking at her. “How did you know?”

  “I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “Perhaps it’s because you acted this way two years ago when you were sent to Tbilisi on the black market business. You brought home a chicken instead of vegetables. And you told the same story about the mashed potatoes. Where are you going?”

  “Siberia,” he said and she looked up, fear in her wide brown eyes magnified by the glasses.

  “No,” he laughed. “It’s work. A murder. I can’t say more.”

  “Why you? Are there no inspectors in all of Siberia?” she said, continuing to play with her food and not eat it.

  “Who knows?” Rostnikov shrugged. He picked up a piece of the cucumber thing in his fingers and took a cautious nibble. It wasn’t bad.

  “Who, indeed,” Sarah said. “I’ll pack with you. You always forget simple things like your toothbrush.”

  They said no more during dinner and finished the entire bottle of wine. After dinner they both cleared the dishes and when Sarah had finished washing them, he motioned for her to join him on the battered sofa in the living room. She dried her hands and came to him.

  “Do you want to read, talk, watch television?” she asked. “Channel 2 has a hockey game on, I think.”

  There was a tightness above her eyes that troubled him. Rostnikov touched her forehead and she closed the eyes.

  “I’d like to go to bed,” he said. “And then we’ll see.”

  She looked at him over her glasses and shook her head.

  “You want to …?”

  “Yes,” he said. “And you?”

  She smiled at him and the pain in her face faded a bit as she touched his rough cheek with her hand. It might be many days before he saw her again.

  Rostnikov was ready, his Yugoslavian-made, blue-cloth zippered case at the door, when the knock came at precisely 7 a.m. the next morning. Sarah had already left for work and Rostnikov had been sitting at the window watching people on Krasikov Street shuffling to work or school or in search of a bargain.

  “A moment,” Rostnikov said when the knock came. He rose, moved as quickly as his leg would allow him and opened the door where a serious-looking woman in a gray uniform faced him. She was pink-faced, about thirty and rather pretty if a bit plump.

  “Inspector Rostnikov,” she said seeing his blue bag and stepping in to pick it up. “I am your driver.”

  “I was hoping you were not a particularly bold suitcase snatcher,” he said as she stood up.

  “I assure you I am your driver. I should have showed you my identification,” she said, starting to put down the bag.

  “That will not be necessary,” Rostnikov said reaching for his coat on a nearby chair.

  She nodded, waited for him to put on his hat, coat and scarf and led the way out into the hall pausing for Rostnikov to close his door. She began by moving quickly and realized that the Inspector was limping a dozen steps behind. She stopped and waited for him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Comrade Sokolov is waiting in the car and we have only an hour to get to Sheremetyevo Airport.”

  “I too am sorry that Comrade Sokolov is waiting in the car,” Rostnikov said, catching up to her, “but I believe they might hold the airplane till we arrive.”

  “No,” the woman said, flushing healthily. “I didn’t mean I was sorry that Comrade Sokolov was in the car. I just …”

  “I understand,” said Rostnikov. “I was attempting to be amusing.”

  “I see,” she said, relieved. He said nothing more till they got out on the street and into the waiting black Chaika. The woman opened the back door and Rostnikov stepped in to join a round-faced man with a thick black mustache which matched his coat and fur hat. In the front next to the driv
er who had placed Rostnikov’s bag in the trunk and hurried back to her seat was Emil Karpo, also black-clad but hat-less. Karpo did not look back as the car pulled away from the curb.

  “I am Sokolov,” the pudgy mustached man said, showing a large white-toothed grin.

  Rostnikov nodded, noting that both the teeth and grin were false.

  “I am in from Kiev,” he explained as they turned toward Gorky Street. “I’m an inspector with the Procurator’s Office. The Procurator’s Office thought I might learn something of procedure from you. I’ve been with the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions as an investigator for almost a dozen years and I’ve just moved into criminal investigation. I hope you don’t mind. While I’m pleased to be joining you, I assure you it was in no way my idea.”

  “I do not mind, Comrade,” Rostnikov said looking out the window as Gorky Street became Leningrad Highway. Tall apartment houses flashed past as the woman sped down the center lane of the 328-foot-wide highway.

  Sokolov continued to talk and Rostnikov responded with a nod.

  “I’ve heard much about you,” Sokolov said with a smile. “You are much admired, Comrade.”

  “I have done my best to serve the State with the abilities I have been fortunate enough to possess,” Rostnikov said as they passed Dynamo Stadium and Rostnikov had a memory flash of Josef years ago at his side at a Moscow Dynamos’ soccer game. Josef was ten or twelve, his straight brown hair combed back, his eyes riveted on the field.

  “You have children, Comrade?” Rostnikov said.

  “Children?” Sokolov said. “Yes.”

  “You have photographs of them?”

  “Of course,” said Sokolov reaching into his inner jacket pocket to remove his wallet. “My daughter, Svetlana, is fifteen. My son, Ivan, is fourteen. See.”

  Rostnikov took the wallet, looked at the picture of two smiling blond children.

  “They were younger when the picture was taken,” Sokolov said taking the wallet back, glancing at the photograph with a smile and returning it to his pocket. “I mean they were younger than they are now.”

  “They are handsome children,” Rostnikov said.

  “Thank you, Comrade,” Sokolov said softly. “I’ve heard that it is very cold along the Yensei this time of year. I’ve brought extra layers.”

  “A good idea,” Rostnikov said.

  The Petrovsky Palace shot past them on the right. The Palace now housed the Soviet Air Force College of Engineering. It was built some time in the eighteenth century and, Rostnikov knew, Napoleon had stayed there for a few days after he was forced to abandon the burning of the Kremlin. Twenty minutes further, Rostnikov caught a glimpse of an izby, a traditional log cabin. It was one of the last of the structures which used to spot the countryside.

  Sokolov went on talking. Rostnikov nodded.

  In less than an hour, Rostnikov saw the twin glass buildings of the Hotel Aeroflot and the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Behind them he could see the Moscow Air Terminal. The woman driver, either out of zealousness to complete her mission or a desire to discharge her passengers, accelerated as they passed the giant sculpture in the shape of an anti-tank barrier. Rostnikov remembered when real anti-tank barriers circled the city and he knew that this sculpture stood at the exact spot where Hitler’s armies were stopped in 1941.

  The driver pulled around the main terminal building and entered a side gate after showing identification to the armed soldiers on duty. She drove directly onto the field, skirting the main runways, clearly knowing where she was going. Sokolov stopped talking as the woman headed toward a distant plane which, as they approached it, Rostnikov identified as a YAK-40.

  The car came to a stop directly alongside the plane and the driver leaped out, closed her door and hurried to the trunk of the car. Karpo, Rostnikov and Sokolov got out of the car, closed their doors, and took their luggage from the woman who did not insist on carrying any of it.

  Sokolov lumbered ahead and Karpo slowed down to join Rostnikov as the car behind them pulled away.

  “KGB?” Karpo asked, looking at Sokolov who was mounting the aluminum steps to the plane.

  “I don’t think so,” said Rostnikov. “I believe he is from the Procurator’s Office, but I doubt if he is making the trip to learn from us. It is more likely that he is along to report on how we conduct the investigation.”

  Karpo looked away and nothing more was said till they were seated and in the air. The crew had been expecting them and had held the plane. There were other passengers but they paid no attention, or appeared to pay no attention as these important latecomers were ushered to seats in the middle of the plane.

  Rostnikov had taken the aisle seat and Sokolov had taken the window seat next to him. Karpo sat across the aisle next to a white-haired man who kept his nose in a technical book and did his best for the entire flight to avoid looking at the ghostly figure next to him.

  Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov hated airplanes, especially jet planes. There was no dealing with such an airplane, no sense of control. It either stayed up or it went down. You couldn’t land a dying one and the passengers couldn’t grab parachutes and leap to safety. He didn’t like the way the engines made strange sounds. He didn’t like the lightness in his stomach.

  Sokolov babbled for the next hours, through a sandwich dinner and later sucking on a piece of hard candy that had been passed out by a crew member. When, after stops in Kirov and Berezovo, they arrived in Igarka in near darkness, Rostnikov’s leg refused to respond to threats, pleas and will power. He had to wait while the other passengers deplaned before he finally coaxed his leg into movement.

  “War wound?” Sokolov said sympathetically.

  As you probably well know if you’ve done your work, Rostnikov thought.

  “War wound,” he acknowledged.

  Though he was well bundled, the cold hit Rostnikov as he made his way down the metal stairway that swayed in the wind. Sokolov was holding his suitcase against his chest and Karpo was standing before them in the snow, holding his travel bag at his side, showing no effect of the cold.

  “Cold,” said Sokolov as they looked across the small field at the houses with about three feet of snow on their roofs. The airport building was a wooden structure in front of which sat several small airplanes mounted on skis.

  “The air here is good,” said Karpo. “It is easy to breathe. The frost is intense, but it is much easier to bear than in Russia.”

  “Easier to bear?” Sokolov said as a man in a flowing coat moved forward to meet them and they moved toward the airport building. “You find Siberia easier to bear than Russia?”

  “I was quoting Lenin,” Karpo said as they walked. “In a letter to his mother. He was on his way to three years of exile in Novosibirsk as a political agitator.”

  “Of course,” said Sokolov as the man from the terminal came face-to-face with them and guided them to one of the small planes with skis. They scrambled into the plane, nodded at the pilot and took off following the Yensei River north into darkness toward Tumsk.

  At the moment Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was landing just beyond the town of Tumsk in Siberia, Sasha Tkach sat at his desk in Petrovka writing a report and trying not to look up at Zelach who sat across from him in pursuit of thought, an almost hopeless venture.

  “We can wait at his house, at the shop,” Zelach said.

  “You can,” Tkach said still looking down at the report.

  “Yes,” said Zelach, “at the shop and the house.”

  Zelach looked at Tkach who brushed back his hair and suddenly met Zelach’s eyes. It was not Sasha Tkach who had lost the buyer of stolen goods. He had indicated to Zelach how they should go about the arrest and it had almost come to pass. They had entered the shop on Gorkovo after looking in the window at a particular piece of jewelry which interested neither of them. Carefully, without letting his eyes appear to wander, Tkach had searched without success for their man. Finally, they found a salesperson, identified themselves
as policemen and asked for Volovkatin. The saleswoman had said that Volovkatin was at a nearby stoloviye, luncheonette, and had given a description from which they might be able to identify him.

  They had moved swiftly to the stoloviye, stepped in and looked around. In the back of the crowded shop, not far from the cafeteria line, Tkach spotted a man who fit the description of Volovkatin. He was about thirty-five, average height, with his dark hair brushed straight back. He was smoking a cigarette in a holder and nodding sagely. Working their way through the crowd would be a bit difficult and Tkach could see a rear door a few feet from their man who was talking animatedly to two women who sat with him as he ate from what looked like a bowl of cabbage soup.

  Zelach spotted the man too and said, “There he is.”

  “Quiet,” Tkach said. “Get in line. Get something to eat. Look around for a table.”

  Zelach moved to the counter, ordered a meat-filled kotleta and a side order of potatoes with a glass of kvass. Tkach, moving behind him and keeping his eyes on Volovkatin, ordered nothing, but when the waitress behind the counter reached over for payment Zelach had already begun to move away with his hands filled with food. Tkach paid the two rubles and turned to find Zelach and Volovkatin staring at each other.

  There were three tables with several standing people between the two policemen and the suspect. Zelach looked over at Tkach and Volovkatin followed the look while one of the women with him said something to which he nodded his head.