Black Knight in Red Square (7 page)

Karpo pretended to ignore the talking couple as he strode past them to a newspaper stand in the corner. In spite of the bustle of sounds around him, he caught a bit of the conversation.

“In about an hour,” said the man. He had a boyish face and graying temples, and he looked like a professor.

“Plenty of time,” said Natasha. “There's a place…”

And Karpo was out of earshot. He turned and saw the professor hesitate, heard Natasha coax, though he couldn't make out her words. The professor shook his head slowly, and Natasha grabbed his arm, smiling. Karpo felt confident of his quarry now. He stepped forward behind the couple, dodging a young man with a huge suitcase held closed by rope, and touched Natasha's shoulder. She turned suddenly, surprised.

“I'd like to talk to you,” he said.

The professor didn't bother to excuse himself. He simply disappeared in the crowd.

One lost, one gained, she seemed to be thinking as her smile returned. Karpo didn't like the false smile, but he understood it.

“We can't talk very well here,” she said, looking around.

With that she lifted her left arm so he could see the number 20 clearly written on her flesh. Karpo knew that street prostitutes put their prices on the soles of their shoes, on their arms, or on the palms of their hands. Her price was high for a railway station prostitute, but that was only the initial asking price.

“I'm a policeman,” Karpo said softly.

Natasha's pale face went ghostly white.

“I've done nothing,” she gasped. “I've broken no laws.”

It was true, for there were no laws against prostitution. Since it doesn't exist, the argument goes, there need be no laws against it. However, as both Natasha and Karpo well knew, there were many sexual crimes in the nation's criminal code, including infecting with venereal disease, illegal abortion, sexual relations with a minor, and depraved actions. Natasha could be charged with several of the crimes, and the penalties could include a number of years in a penal colony.

“If you answer quickly and honestly,” he said now, holding her arm, “I will turn in a minute or two and walk away. If you do not, I arrest you.”

Natasha didn't respond.

“Last night at the Metropole. You were there?”

Natasha was about to tell a lie, but Karpo's face was inches from her own, and what she wanted most was to escape from this man.

“Yes,” she said.

“There was an American. His name was Aubrey. He was looking for a woman. He found you.”

Karpo was not at all sure that Aubrey had been with Natasha. If it turned out that he had not, Karpo would pressure her for another name, follow another lead.

“Yes,” she said.

“Where did you go with him?”

“In a taxi,” she said. “My husband is a taxi driver.”

“What did the American say to you?” Karpo went on. A couple passing by looked at Karpo and the transfixed and frightened Natasha, considered intervening, and changed their minds.

“Nothing,” she said. “He just got in. We…he couldn't do it so I helped him. He said nothing.”

“Nothing?” asked Karpo. “A drunk who had minutes before been babbling?”

Natasha's eyes darted back and forth. Then, suddenly remembering, she cried, “Oh! He did say something. It was nonsense. Something about having them now, having the biggest story, having the liars. My English is not good, but something like that. He kept saying he had them now, and he would show them. But he didn't seem happy about it. More, you know, angry. Spiteful.”

“Names?” Karpo went on.

“He mentioned no names,” she said. “I swear. No names. He did say something strange, though. Something about a frog bitch. It is drunk talk. Dogs are bitches in English, I think. Frogs are not spoken of that way. He was drunk.”

Karpo let her go, and she almost fell. Natasha's automatic reaction was to offer herself to the policeman for nothing, but Karpo was gone before she had a chance to speak the words.

The normal waiting time at the stone pyramid of the Lenin Mausoleum is half an hour, unless it is a holiday, in which case the wait is four times that. The line stretches several hundred yards across Red Square outside the Kremlin, but the people waiting are patient and respectful. Guides from Intourist usher foreigners and soldiers to the head of the line.

The one with dark eyes was a foreigner but chose not to seek help from Intourist, instead preferring to stand at the end of the line, facing resolutely forward. There was plenty of time, the day was pleasant, and the line was moving. There were a number of foreign visitors in line speaking languages the dark-eyed one understood but pretended not to. A young man directly ahead in the line was playing chess with a companion, a young girl, on a small board he held in his palm. An old man in front of the couple kept frowning at them as if they were committing an act of blasphemy in the sacred line. He looked over at the dark-eyed one for support but got none.

A guard stepped forward to tell a Japanese man to put his camera away. He told another man to remove his hands from his pockets. The crowd moved slowly, single file, down the steps and into the crypt. The temperature dropped with each step. No pausing, no talking. Hats off as the line passed the rigid soldiers standing a yard apart.

And then the dark-eyed one stood before the crystal sarcophagus containing the body of Vladimir Ilich Lenin. In the pinkish light, the seemingly perfectly preserved face was peaceful and calm. The dark-eyed one leaned toward the sarcophagus as the line shuffled forward and then stumbled.

The young man who had been playing chess with his girlfriend picked the stumbling visitor up. A guard moved forward to help, but the dark-eyed visitor waved him away with a nod of thanks and moved on into the daylight. There was no pausing on the tree-lined walk at the base of the Kremlin Wall. The crowd moved past the Mausoleum of Joseph Stalin; past those of Sverdlov; Dzerzhinsky; Irene Armand, the Frenchwoman who was Lenin's close friend; Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov; John Reed; Lenin's wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya; and Maxim Gorky. It was 2:00
P.M.
The dark-eyed one held back a smile. It had been quite easy. The compact bomb, encased in soft plastic, now clung to the underlip of the tomb no more than two feet from Lenin's head. Provided the public transportation ran smoothly, the other two bombs would be in place by 5:00
P.M.

W
HEN PORFIRY PETROVICH ROSTNIKOV ENTERED HIS APARTMENT SHORTLY AFTER EIGHT THAT NIGHT, HIS THOUGHTS WERE A RANDOM BOMBARDMENT OF FRAGMENTS. HE KNEW HE WOULD HAVE TO PUT THEM IN ORDER, AND HE COULD THINK OF ONLY ONE THING THAT WOULD HELP HIM. HE GREETED SARAH WHO, HE COULD TELL, HAD SOMETHING ON HER MIND. HE COULD TELL FROM THE HAND SHE PLACED ON HIS RIGHT CHEEK WHEN SHE KISSED HIS LEFT CHEEK. HE COULD TELL BY THE BUSTLE AND LIGHT TALK AS SHE PREPARED DINNER. SHE TOLD HIM ABOUT THE LETTER FROM THEIR SON IOSEF, WHICH DESCRIBED A WEEKEND IN KIEV WITH TWO FRIENDS. IOSEF WOULD SAY NOTHING IN A LETTER ABOUT HIS THREE MONTHS IN AFGHANISTAN. THAT WOULD HAVE TO WAIT TILL HE CAME TO MOSCOW ON LEAVE.

Rostnikov grunted appreciatively as he changed into his sweatshirt and pants, leaving the bedroom door open so he could hear Sarah continue her chatter. Sarah was not a chatterer. The bomb, Rostnikov knew, would eventually fall. He glanced into the kitchen to see what she was cooking. It was his favorite dish, chicken tabaka, a Georgian specialty, which Sarah prepared to perfection when she could buy chicken.

She carefully removed the backbone, flattened the bird and fried it under a heavy metal plate weighted down still further by a hand iron. She would then serve it with a prune sauce and pickled cabbage. At that point he would be most vulnerable, and that's when she would speak.

Rostnikov moved to the weights, and Sarah stopped talking, knowing that she would not get through his concentration. Rostnikov turned on the radio, opened the cupboard, rolled out the thin mat, carefully removed the heavy weights, and, enjoying the music of Rimsky-Korsakov and the smell of chicken tabaka, began his routine. He had one more day to prepare. No one but Sarah knew that he had entered the annual weightlifting competition in Sokolniki Recreation Park. The competition was for men and women over fifty, and the participants, he well knew, were often remarkable. He had seen the competition every year for the past seven years, with the exception of 1977 when he was being held at gunpoint by a pyromaniac in the basement of the Moscow Art Theater.

This year, Alexiev was to give out the trophies. Rostnikov imagined standing next to his idol, accepting a trophy from him, clasping his huge hairy hand. The fantasy was overpowering. Rostnikov had never entered the competition before, because his leg would make it nearly impossible for him to participate in many of the events. To clean and jerk 200 pounds, he had to move in a strange swoop, and this put him at an immediate disadvantage. To win the event, he would have to do far better than the other competitors. Even the dead lift would be a problem, since he could bend only one knee. He would have to do on one leg what others did on two.

In moments, Rostnikov was happily sweating and straining. The music danced around him. He counted without having to think about counting. His body, arms, legs, and chest told him how close he was to exhaustion, and when that exhaustion came he would strain through it, his face turning red, his veins mapped along his furry arms, his breath coming in short puffs. Sarah always turned away from him at this point. In spite of his assurance that this was natural, she was convinced that he was doing terrible things to his body. She never tried to talk him out of it, for she realized how much he needed those weights. But still, she would not look.

Rostnikov had spoken on the phone to the partner of the dead Japanese filmmaker. The partner had spoken no Russian but could get along in English, so Rostnikov had conducted the interview in a language that was awkward for both of them.

The dead Japanese, Yushiro Nakayama, knew no one in Moscow. He had been in town only two days when he died. His film production company was small and produced soft-core pornography as well as one general release film each year. This year's film,
Green Days in Kyoto
, was an entry in the film festival. Nakayama and his partner, however, were less interested in the chances of winning a prize than in finding markets for their other films.

The partner might have been lying, but Rostnikov didn't think so. Like most Russians over forty, Rostnikov harbored a deep suspicion of the Japanese. The Japanese had been one of the few nations to clearly defeat Russia in a war. Of course that had been under the czarist regime, but it was a crushing defeat nonetheless. The Russians had done their best to avoid conflict with the Japanese during the Second World War, Rostnikov's war, leaving them to the Americans and the British. Rostnikov didn't trust the Japanese, though he grudgingly admired them. In fact, from his reading he had decided that the Japanese were clearly the most intelligent people in the world, which made him even more suspicious. Thus, though he felt confident that the dead Japanese film producer was the victim of an accident, still he decided to assign a junior officer to continue investigating his death.

He was waiting for reports on the two dead Russians. Neither one seemed likely to have been the intended victim. But, just in case, Rostnikov had called the home towns of both men and asked for a local inquiry and investigation.

No, he thought, transferring a weight to his right hand, the American journalist was the most likely target. Karpo's report had led him to that conclusion. Karpo's prostitute had said that Aubrey, the American, spoke of a frog bitch. Rostnikov remembered that Americans and Englishmen used the word “frog” in a pejorative sense to mean French. He had read that in one of his American detective novels. So the drunk and dying American in the back seat of a Moscow taxi had referred to a Frenchwoman. According to Aubrey's notebook, he had interviewed a Frenchwoman the day before his death. After the encounter outside the elevator, Rostnikov had dispatched Tkach to interview this Frenchwoman, Monique Freneau.

Yes, Rostnikov thought, he had done the right thing. Now the investigation could wait till morning when he would talk to Tkach, interview the German, and have Tkach interview the Englishman.

Rimsky-Korsakov and Rostnikov finished at almost the same time. Rostnikov reached over, panting, turned off the radio, put his weights away, and went to the kitchen table.

The food was excellent. They drank the borscht slowly, dug into the chicken with gusto, drank the wine with approval. Then it came.

“Porfiry,” Sarah said, playing with a piece of chicken on her plate. “What do you think about France?”

The question was startling since he had, in fact, just been thinking about France. Her blue eyes suddenly met his.

“I am not overly fond of the French,” he said, pouring the last of the wine from the small bottle. “In their assumed superiority they have little tolerance for any other people. They find Russians particularly barbaric. I think it has something to do with Napoleon's inability to—”

“No,” Sarah interrupted. “I mean what would you think about living in France. Or England, or Israel, or even America or Canada.”

That was it, then, Rostnikov thought. The idea had remained unspoken for so long, but now it was out. Sarah was a Jew. She could apply for immigration. It would not be easy, but it could be done, and Porfiry, as her husband, could apply with her. The problem, as they both knew, was that as soon as they applied, they would become objects of abuse. Their lives would be made miserable. They might well lose their jobs and be given tasks of no responsibility or merit. Their son Iosef would suffer, and, worst of all, they probably would never be given permission to leave. But it was something Rostnikov had been considering seriously since his job had grown more political and since his knowledge had become a potential danger to the state.