pulled up at its door. A heavyset, short man in tight green pants and bright shirt was the first to run down the stairs, and, swinging his colorful traveling bag, he marched down the concrete hexagonal paving stones to the barrier. He kept looking around, seeking someone in the crowd of people greeting the arrivals, found him, and rushed toward him.
“You look great! What's all the rush, the 'fly out immediately' during vacation? Let me get a look at you! You're better looking than ever, even taller! That's what a year away does for your looks! Your face seems noble and I can even look upon your jaw without irritation.”
“And you, I see, have gotten fat off the graduate land.” The greeter looked him over with a critical eye. “Have you furnished yourself with socialist accumulations?”
“Val, it's not simple accumulation — it's an informational material reserve. I'll tell you all about it later, even give you a demonstration. It's a complete turnaround, Val… but let's talk about you first. Why did you summon me before it was time? No, wait!” The recent passenger pulled out a notebook from his pocket and withdrew several ten — ruble notes, “Here's the money I owe you.” “What money?”
“Please, spare me the act!” The passenger raised his hand to forestall further protests. “We know; we're touched: the absent — minded scientist who can't be bothered with prosaic minutiae. Drop it. I know you better than that: you remember debts of fifty kopecks. Take the money and cut the bull!”
“No,” he replied, smiling gently, “you don't owe me a thing. You see — “He stumbled under the direct piercing stare of his companion.
“Goddamn it! So you've started dyeing your hair? And the scar?
Where's the scar over the eyebrow?” His voice dropped to a whisper.
“Who are you?”
Meanwhile the crowd of arrivals and welcoming friends and relatives had thinned out. Five men who had met no one and were in no hurry discarded their cigarettes and quickly surrounded the two men.
“Keep quiet!” Onisimov hissed, squeezing in between the lab assistant and the passenger who was staring at him in disbelief; the second man had money in his fist. “We'll shoot if you resist.”
“Oh, boy!” the astonished passenger said, stepping back a pace; he was immediately grabbed by the elbows.
“Not 'oh, boy! but the police, citizen… Krivoshein, I believe?” The investigator smiled with maximum pleasantness. “We'll have to hold you for a while, too. Take them to the cars.”
Victor Kravets, seating himself in the back seat of a Volga between Onisimov and Gayevoy, had a tired and calm smile on his face.
“By the way, if I were you, I'd drop the smile,” Matvei Apollonovich noted. “You serve time for jokes like this.”
“Ah, what's time!” Kravets waved his arm. “The important thing is that I think I've made the right move.”
“I never thought that my return would begin with an episode from a detective story!” said the passenger as he entered the investigator's office. “Well, once in a lifetime this could prove to be interesting.” Without waiting for an invitation, he sat down and looked around. Onisimov sat down opposite him in silence. Two feelings were battling within him: self — congratulation (What an operation! What success!! Caught two at once — red — handed, it looks like!) and worry. Up until now the case had been built on the fact that Krivoshein died or was killed in the laboratory. But…. Matvei Apollonovich took a hard look at the man sitting before him: a slanted brow with a widow's peak, ridges over the eyebrows, a purplish scar over the right brow, a freckled face with full cheeks, a fat nose with a high bridge, and short red hair. There was no doubt about it; Krivoshein was sitting in his chair! “Boy, was I off. So who was bumped off in there? I'm getting to the bottom of this right now!”
“Is that a hint?” Krivoshein pointed at the barred windows. “To make even the innocent confess?”
“No, this used to be a wholesale warehouse,” the investigator explained, and remembering that the lab assistant had begun yesterday's interview the same way, chuckled at the coincidence. “It's a leftover… Well, how do you feel, Valentin Vasilyevich?”
“Thank you — I'm sorry, I don't know your name and patronymic — I can't complain. How about you?”
“Ditto. Though my condition has no direct bearing on the case.”
They smiled at each other broadly and tensely, like boxers before beating each other's faces in.
“And mine, it would appear, does? I just thought it was standard procedure to enquire about the health of passengers that you grab for no good reason at the airport. So what does my condition have to do with your case?”
“We don't grab, citizen Krivoshein. We detain,” Onisimov corrected him. “And your health interests me in a completely legal way, since I have a doctor's certificate and several witnesses who say that you are a corpse.”
“A corpse?” Krivoshein examined himself with exaggerated playfulness. “Well, if that's your information, you might as well haul me off to the autopsy room.” Suddenly he understood and his smile disappeared. He looked at Onisimov angrily and anxiously. “Listen, comrade investigator, if this is a joke, it's a lousy one! What corpse?”
“Please, who's joking?” Onisimov gestured broadly with his hands. “The day before yesterday your body was found in a laboratory — I saw it with my own eyes — I mean not your body, since you are in good health, but someone who looked very much like you. It was identified as being you.” “Damn it!” Krivoshein hunched over and rubbed his cheeks. “Can you let me see the body?”
“Well, you know that we can't, Valentin Vasilyevich. It turned into a skeleton, you know. This mischief isn't a very good idea. It could be misinterpreted.”
“Into a skeleton?!” Krivoshein looked up and confusion showed in his brown — flecked green eyes. “How? Where?”
“It happened there, at the scene, as if you needed any information on the matter from me,” Onisimov stressed. “Maybe you'd like to explain?”
“There was a body which became a skeleton,” Krivoshein muttered, frowning. “Then… oh, then it's not so bad. He wasn't wasting time; it looks as if something went wrong. Damn it, look at me!” He cheered up and carefully looked at the detective. “You're mixing me up, comrade, and I don't know why. Bodies just don't turn into skeletons like that. I know a little about it. And then, how can you prove that it's my… I mean, the body of a man who looks like me, if you have no body? Something's wrong here.”
“Perhaps. That's why I want you to shed light on this yourself. Since all this happened in the laboratory you run.”
“That I run? Hm….” Krivoshein laughed, and shook his head. “I'm afraid nothing will come of this light shedding. I need someone to explain it all to me.”
“And this one is going to go mum, too!” Matvei Apollonovich sighed glumly, took a sheet of paper, and unscrewed his pen.
“Let's do this in order. Your name is Valentin Vasilyevich Krivoshein?”
“Yes.”
“Age thirty — five? Russian? Bachelor?”
“Exactly.”
“You live in Dneprovsk and head the New Systems Laboratory at the Systemology Institute?”
“No, that's the part that's wrong. I live in Moscow, and study in the graduate biology department at Moscow State University. Here!” Krivoshein handed him his passport and documents across the desk.
The papers had a realistically weather — beaten look. Everything in them — including the three — year residence permit for Moscow — corresponded with his story.
“I see.” Onisimov put them in his desk. “These things are done quickly in Moscow, in one day!”
“What are you trying to say?!” Krivoshein stared at him, one eyebrow arched aggressively.
“Your documents are phony, that's what. Just as phony as your confederate's, to whom you were trying to pass money at the airport. Were you trying to guarantee an alibi? You needn't have bothered. We'll check it, and then what?”
“Go ahead and check!”
“We will. Whom do you work under at MSU? Who's your advisor?”
“Professor Vano Aleksandrovich Androsiashvili, department chairman in general physiology, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences.”
“I see.” The investigator dialed the phone. “Operator? This is Onisimov. Quickly connect me with Moscow. I
