old, had a Jewish wife, and was quite content to be an investigator. If anything would prod him into extra effort, it would be pride.
“I have no doubt that you will do your best,” she said.
“I will do better if you allow me to take Karpo and Tkach off the cases they are working on and assign them to this,” he said, standing at the door.
The Procurator looked at the pile of reports on her desk. Five of them belonged to the two junior investigators in question.
“Take them,” she said.
“Thank you,” replied Rostnikov respectfully and left the cold office to search for something to drink before he called the two men who would be helping him find what appeared to be a very mad or very clever murderer.
CHAPTER TWO
At three o’clock in the morning, New York City is vibrating with neon, pulsating with bodies in doorways, and even the most remote streets of Queens are not surprised by a scream or laughter. At three in the morning, Paris streets are alive with casual strollers, policemen, and drunks. But at three in the morning, Moscow is a city of echoes and shadows, its streets deserted and silent. In Moscow the liquor stores close early, the restaurants at midnight, and the metros at one. A few taxis prowl the streets with three or four bottles of vodka under the front seat to sell at double the store price to thirsty insomniacs. Moscow begins work at five in the morning. The few hours before are for the criminals, the police, taxi drivers, government officials at parties, and party officials working on government.
At three o’clock this morning Viktor Shishko sat at his German-made typewriter in the office of Moscow
At three o’clock that morning three very young men in black leather jackets and jeans were clearing out the back of a small truck. All three wore their hair long and brushed back like American pictures they had seen of James Dean or Polish pictures of Zbigniew Cybulski. Both Dean and Cybulski had died violently and young. At least two of the three young Muscovites half-longed for the same fate and imagined an underground reputation that they would not be around to experience. All three had taken American nicknames, “Jimmy,” “Coop,” and “Bobby,” all three had guns, all three wore fixed smiles, all three were frightened by what they had been doing and were about to do.
At three o’clock that morning, Rudolt Kroft was cleaning his police uniform, which was odd. It was odd not because it was three o’clock in the morning, but because Rudolt Kroft was not a policeman. He lived in a four-story wooden building that sagged dangerously to the left, which may have been politically valid as a metaphor, but held no meaning other than structural for Kroft and the other tenants. Kroft, in contrast to his building, sagged to the right as a result of a circus accident many years before. He was still agile and a capable actor as evidenced by his successful role as policeman for the last few months, but he was also cold, very cold in his sagging building of outcasts and foreigners. It pleased him to stay warm by cleaning the uniform and thinking of his role for the coming day.
At three o’clock that morning Ivan Sharikov dropped his fare on Lenin Avenue and accepted the eighty kopeks fare, knowing he would get no tip. Party officials gave no tips and Ivan expected none. The fare, heavily bundled and in bad humor, had slipped getting out of the cab as he walked to his apartment door. Ivan, whose neck was fat and slow, turned away hiding a satisfied grin, and flipped on the green light in his windshield to show he was free to take another fare. He slowly put his taxi into gear and backed into the street slipping as the thin, nearly bald tires tried to grab the street and clawed only at ice.
Ivan’s prospect of making any real money that night was slim, but he owed too much and knew he could not sleep anyway with the pain in his back. When the pain got really bad, he considered going to the clinic, but the clinic wait might be hours, and the doctor, if he even got to see one, would send him back to work with meaningless pills or worse, he would be sent to the hospital ward and lose his chance to make up some of the money he owed his brother-in-law. In the old days, even a dozen years ago, he could have told his brother-in-law what to do with his loan, but time had reversed their positions. Ivan had grown fat, old, and tired and Misha had grown lean, hard, and resentful from his years at the packing house.
Ivan’s plan was to go back to the center of town in the hope of picking up another late-working middle-level government official. The really big officials would have their own cars. The little officials could not afford a taxi. The middle officials who lived on the fringes of Tolstoy Street could pay the price but were never good for conversation or a tip. As his tires caught ice and turned slowly, easing the taxi into the street, Ivan spotted a lone dark figure standing at the curb fifty feet away. The figure seemed to be waiting and swayed a little, perhaps drunk. Ivan’s dull eyes squinted with the possibility of an easy fare and he drove forward toward the figure.
At three o’clock Porfiry Rostnikov made two phone calls and said ten words to each of the men he called:
“Rostnikov here, come to three-forty-four Dmitri Ulyanov Street. Apartment six-hundred-twelve.”
Although he had been fully asleep when the phone rang, Emil Karpo had answered before the first short ring had finished bouncing off the walls of his small room. He said nothing when he heard Rostnikov’s brief message followed by a click ending the connection. Karpo looked at his clock in the dim street light from his undraped and unshaded window. It was three exactly and he would remember it if a report were called for later. Karpo remembered everything, every detail. This recall had started more than twenty years earlier to protect himself and it soon became so much a part of him that it was no longer conscious. His mind was filled with data, and his one bookcase was lined with notebooks full of observations which would probably never be called for or used. He stood up from his mattress, his dark body catching the dim light from the window. He dressed quickly, without looking. All his clothes were the same. He had two suits, both grey-black, both neatly pressed, both quite old. He had five shirts, all a dull white, all starched. He had three ties, all dark and unstylishly thin even for a Moscow which perversely prided itself on being five years behind the rest of the world in fashion, and he had the uniform of the male Muscovite, a long black coat and black fur hat.
Karpo knew who lived at 344 Dmitri Ulyanov Street, but he did no more than register the fact and feel the reinforcement of something like pride at having the information. He refused to conjecture or guess about what it might mean. Guessing was a waste of time and if anyone were to ask him what he thought was happening, he could honestly say he had no idea, at least no idea anywhere near the conscious level. Karpo was a man who kept his thoughts and his body to himself. He lived for his duty, coolly, and without humor. When he had started with the old M.V.B., he had quickly earned the nickname of “The Tatar” because of his slightly slanted eyes, high cheekbones, tight skin, and expressionless dark face. That was twenty years ago. Now, the younger men had taken to calling him “The Vampire” for many of the same reasons and his preference for working nights. He was, at six-foot-three, tall for a Tatar and not pale enough to be a vampire. Karpo had not a single friend, which suited him. He would tolerate no slackness in others and radiated cold, silent fury toward those who did not devote themselves fully to their tasks, particularly the seemingly endless task of cleansing Moscow. He also had many enemies among the continued offenders of what passed for an underworld in Moscow. And that too suited him.
Karpo had only one conscious secret, the savage headaches that came for no apparent reason and stayed for periods of an hour to half a day. The pills he had been given years earlier helped to control the pain to the point where he could work in spite of it. There were times he even welcomed the pain as a test of his body and
