Bugged? By who?'
The KGB, Colonel. Or the Russian Security Service, or whatever it is that the Department is calling itself these days. Who else?' He grinned at Grushko as if he didn't quite believe that the detective could not have known about it.
You look surprised,' he said. I would have thought.'
Grushko shook his head irritably. He hated it when people assumed that the Central Board was still party to the Department's dirty tricks.
How did he know he was being bugged?'
Well, I think he was able to guess. I mean, they're hardly very subtle about it. Clicks on the line and all that kind of thing.'
But why?'
The Department is reformed only of its Communists, not its anti-Semites. There are factions in the KGB who would like to see every Jew in Russia on a plane to Israel.
And that's why Mikhail Mikhailovich thought that they were operating a surveillance?'
Yes.'
I didn't even know that he was Jewish.'
Oh, Milyukin wasn't his real name. His real name was Berdichevksi. When he came to live in Leningrad, in 1979, he changed it to avoid discrimination. It was hard for a Jew to write anything then. The Russian press especially the Russian Literary Gazette is still quite anti-Semitic. Even now, more than ten years later. They're even saying that Lenin was a Jew. Or don't you notice these things?'
I notice them.'
And?'
Grushko shrugged. This is Russia. This is the home of conspiracy theories. He didn't much like being pressed for his opinion. He felt he knew what was right and what was wrong but that it was a matter between himself and his own conscience. He concealed his irritated frown with a strong-tasting puff on the last millimetre of his cigarette.
How well do you know Mrs Milyukin?' he asked.
Hardly at all. Why?'
Oh, I was just wondering why she didn't think to tell me any of this herself.' He shook his head. The last puff had been stronger than he had expected. It's sad, really. When I read his letters last night I thought I'd encountered just about every possible shade of hatred for the man. And now I find one, in my own backyard, that I didn't even know about: the Department.'
Petrakov raised his toothbrush-shaped eyebrows.
Yes, well, while you're busy compiling a grudge list against Mikhail, don't forget the army. His early stand against the war in Afghanistan won him a lot of enemies. A lot of friends too, it's fair to say. But nobody ever hunts you down just to shake you by the hand and clap you on the back. Not in Russia.'
He glanced at his watch and stood up. We'd better go,' he said.
Grushko followed Petrakov out of the door.
When the make-up people had done their best to soften Grushko's fist of a face, he waited in the hospitality suite until Zverkov came to talk to him.
He was a handsome man in an unshaven, macho sort of way and, wearing a smart leather jacket and a pair of jeans, he looked like nothing so much as one of the businessmen' who might have been found over at Deviatkino Market. But worse than this Zverkov was also arrogant in the way that only so-called creative people' can be. If he had been Nijinsky he could not have thought more of himself. He did not offer to shake Grushko's hand and the studio's hospitality only ran as far as a glass of tea. Zverkov was of the opinion that the militia needed his programme more than he needed the militia.
It had not always been that way. It had been Grushko who first asked Zverkov to film at the scene of a crime in the hope of soliciting information from the public. He had hardly realised that this would be the basis on which Zverkov would create a whole style of television journalism. Most commonly this involved getting as close to the perpetrators and their victims as quickly as possible. Nothing was hidden from the lens of Zverkov's outside- broadcast team, with Zverkov's microphone there to record the sound of their complaints, their confessions, their cries of pain and, quite often, their last breaths as well. Realism, they called it. Pornography, some said. Either way Grushko cared even less for Zverkov's work than he did for his manners.
We'll show some clips of Milyukin's documentaries,' he explained smoothly. And then I'll ask you to say something about the circumstances of his death, appeal for information. Do you know the kind of thing I mean?'
I should do,' said Grushko. He was starting to have a bad feeling about this interview. It was me who got you started doing this kind of thing.'
Zverkov nodded sullenly. A few minutes later Grushko took his place on the set next to Zverkov and watched the short videotape which had been made about Milyukin: there were shots of him interviewing black-marketeers, prostitutes and the generally disaffected; shots of the Chernobyl nuclear-reactor accident; shots of Milyukin walking through a hospital ward containing firemen with fatal radiation burns with tears streaming down his face; shots of Milyukin speaking to citizens queuing for meat outside a state meat market; and, lastly, Milyukin speaking directly to the camera in the assembly hall at the Smolny Building where the victory of the socialist Revolution was announced on the night of 25-26 October 1917.
In life Mikhail Milyukin had been a small, intense-looking man with curly black hair, a rodent-like face and, it seemed to Grushko, a rather purplish, boozer's nose. To look at, a quite unprepossessing sort of character, as might have worked pushing paper around some forgotten government department. But it was for his dry humour and his consistent honesty, not his appearance, that he had been much beloved. As Grushko watched the tape, Milyukin's usual candour was tinged with such obvious pessimism that he was almost inclined to consider the possibility that Milyukin had known he was about to be killed.
The urgent need for foreign capital seems obvious,' said Milyukin, but what is there that's actually worth investing in? Our factories are hopelessly antiquated. The rudiments of political stability are missing. Individually we lack something as ordinary as a work ethic: everyone knows the saying They pretend to pay us, and we pretend to work.a__ But even the most basic human instinct of all the profit motive seems to be missing from all but a small and not always law-abiding section of society. After seventy years of this' here Milyukin waved his hand at the enormous portrait of Lenin that dominated the empty assembly hall many people are coming to realise that the task of redeveloping Russia may not just be difficult. It might actually be impossible.'
The film sequence concluded with the black Volga in the forest and several of the gory close-ups of the two dead bodies that were the hallmark of Zverkov's veracious style.
Grushko's interrogator fixed a sober look to his designer-stubbled face and looked away from the monitor to the camera.
The murder of Mikhail Mikhailovich Milyukin is being investigated by Colonel Yevgeni Grushko of the Criminal Services Department of the Central Board of Internal Affairs.' Zverkov turned to face Grushko.
The other man found dead with Mikhail Milyukin, Vaja Ordzhonikidze: he was a Georgian Mafioso, wasn't he?'
That's correct,' said Grushko, shifting uncomfortably in his swivel chair.
And I believe it has been suggested that the two men were shot because Ordzhonikidze was giving information to Mikhail?'
Well, that's one possibility,' Grushko allowed, but it's still too early to treat it as anything more than that. Obviously we would like anyone who saw or had contact with either of these two men recently to come forward as quickly as possible. For that matter we would like to speak to anyone who might be able to shed some light on the nature of the connection between them.'
Zverkov nodded. His expensive leather jacket creaked as he glanced down at the notes on his lap.
I'm sure people will do everything they can to help bring these murderers to justice,' he said quietly.
But now let me ask you this.' His tone became harder, more aggressive even. What are St Petersburg's militia doing to help the people? When are you going to put a stop to the Mafia in this city?'
