“So will you when they lay you out on an autopsy slab.”
“I should dismiss you!” shouted the doctor, rising up on the tips of her toes. Her voice echoed around the pillars. “And if I could find anyone else who would do this work, I certainly would!”
“But you won’t dismiss me,” smirked Zalka, “because you can’t find anyone else.”
Dr. Dobriakova’s mouth was open, ready to carry on the fight, when Pekkala interrupted.
“Professor Zalka,” he said, “we have a serious matter to discuss with you.”
“By all means,” replied Zalka.
Pekkala turned to see the nurse holding out a tangle of metal hoops and leather straps, which he realized was a leg brace.
“That’s yours?” asked Kirov.
“Unfortunately, yes,” replied Zalka. “The only time I don’t think about it is when I’m floating in this pool.”
“How long have you worn a brace?” asked Pekkala.
“Since July 10, 1914,” replied Zalka. “So long ago that I can’t even remember what it feels like to walk without it.”
Pekkala and Kirov looked at each other. Whoever they had chased through the forest on the day Nagorski died, it wasn’t Lev Zalka.
“How do you remember the date so precisely?” asked Pekkala.
“Because the day I strapped on that contraption was exactly one month after a car lost control in the French Grand Prix, then skidded off the track and right into the side of me.”
“The 1914 Grand Prix,” said Pekkala. “Nagorski won that race.”
“Of course he did,” replied Zalka. “I was his chief mechanic. I was standing at our pit stop when the car slammed into me.”
Now Pekkala remembered that Nagorski had mentioned the accident in which his chief mechanic had been badly hurt.
“If you wouldn’t mind helping,” said Zalka, his arms still raised towards them.
While Pekkala and Kirov supported him, the nurse handed Zalka a towel, which the crippled man wrapped around his waist. Then, with Zalka’s arms around their shoulders, they walked him to a chair. Once he was seated, the nurse gave him the brace, and he went through the process of strapping it to his left leg. Where the leather straps crossed over, the hair on Zalka’s leg had been worn away, leaving pale stripes in the flesh. The muscles of his withered thigh and calf were barely half the size of those on his right leg.
Dobriakova stood back and watched, arms folded. Her face was set in a frown which seemed permanently carved into the corners of her mouth and eyes.
Where the leeches had been on Zalka’s arms and chest, his skin showed grape-sized bull’s-eye welts. In the center of each one was a tiny red dot, where the leech had been attached. All over his body, like freckles, were the marks where other leeches had dug into his skin.
“Are you ready for your meal now?” asked the nurse.
Zalka looked up at her and smiled. “Marry me,” he pleaded.
She gave him a swat on the head and went out through the blue doors.
“Inspectors,” said Dobriakova, scowling at Zalka, “I’ll leave you to question this criminal!”
When she had gone, Zalka sighed with relief. “Better you with your guns than that woman with her moods.”
“Zalka,” asked Kirov, his voice a mixture of awe and disgust, “how can you do this?”
“Do what, Inspector?” replied Zalka.
Kirov pointed at the dingy water. “There! That!”
“Healthy leeches require a living host,” explained Zalka, “although preferably one who’s not intoxicated. As I tend to be these days.”
“I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about you!”
“I don’t have many options for employment, Inspector, but for one hour a day in the pool I make as much as I would in a nine-hour shift at a factory. That is, if I could get work at a factory. What I make here gives me enough time to carry on with my own research, a line of work for which I am, at the moment, tragically undercompensated.”
“Aren’t you worried about catching some kind of disease?”
“Unlike humans,” said Zalka, “leeches don’t carry disease.” He reached around to the back of his head, where he discovered another leech buried in his hair. As he slid his thumbnail under the place where the leech had attached itself to his skin, the leech curled around his thumb. He held it up admiringly. “They are very deliberate creatures. They drink blood and they have sex. You have to admire their sense of purpose.” Now his face became suddenly tense. “But you did not come to talk about leeches. You came to talk about Nagorski.”
“That is correct,” said Pekkala, “and until two minutes ago, you were our prime suspect for his murder.”
“I heard about what happened. I’d be lying if I told you I was sad to hear he’s gone. After all, it’s because of Nagorski that I have to bleed for a living, instead of designing engines, which is what I should be doing. But I’m better off now. The way Nagorski treated me was worse than anything those leeches ever did.”
“Why were you kicked off the Konstantin Project?” Pekkala asked. “What happened between you and Nagorski?”
“We used to be friends,” he began. “In our days of racing cars, we were together all the time. But then I was injured, and the war came along. After the armistice, Nagorski tracked me down in Paris. He told me about his idea, which eventually became the Konstantin Project. He said he needed help designing the engine. For a long time, we were a team. Designing the V2 engine was the best work I’ve ever done.”
“What went wrong?”
“What went wrong,” explained Zalka, “is that Nagorski’s facility had become like an island. There were bunkhouses for us to sleep in, a mess hall, a machine shop so well equipped that there were tools in there which none of us could even identify. The idea was that we would be able to get on with the project undisturbed by government inspections, meddling bureaucrats, or any of the daily concerns which might have eaten up our time. Nagorski dealt with the outside world, while we were left alone to work. What we didn’t realize was that out there in the world, Nagorski was taking credit not only for his work but for ours as well.”
“Was he always like that?” asked Pekkala.
Zalka shook his head. “Nagorski was a good man before the Konstantin Project took over his life. He was generous. He loved his family. He didn’t wrap himself in secrets. But once the project had begun, he turned into something else. I barely recognized him anymore, and neither did his wife and son.”
“So what happened between you was an argument over the engine?” Pekkala was trying to understand.
“No,” replied Zalka. “What happened was that Nagorski’s design virtually guaranteed that the tank crew would be burnt alive if any kind of fire broke out in the main compartment or the engine.”
“I heard,” said Pekkala.
“I wanted to change that, even if it did weaken the hull by a small margin. But Nagorski would not even discuss it.” In frustration, Zalka raised his hands, then let them fall again. “How perfectly Russian—that the machine we build to defend ourselves becomes as dangerous to us as it is for our enemies!”
“Is this why Nagorski fired you from the project?”
“I wasn’t fired. I quit. And there were other reasons, too.”
“Such as?”
“I discovered that Nagorski was intending to steal the plans for the T-34 suspension system.”
“Steal them?”
“Yes.” Zalka nodded. “From the Americans. The design for the suspension is known as a Christie mechanism. The wheels are fitted onto trailing suspension arms with concentric double coil springs for the leading bogies —”
Pekkala held up his hand. “I will take your word for it, Professor Zalka.”
“We had been working on a design of our own,” continued Zalka, “but Nagorski’s meddling had put us so far behind schedule that we weren’t going to meet our deadline for going into production. Nagorski panicked. He decided we would go with the Christie mechanism. He also decided we would say nothing about this to Stalin. He figured that by the time the design was approved, nobody would care, as long as it worked.”
