delicious. 'For some reason she thought I loved cold mashed potatoes. I don't know where she got the idea but she served me a plate of them one day when I came to visit herI couldn't have been more than twelve years old. It was before the warand I didn't have the heart to tell her that she was confusing me with someone else or something else I may have said. I seldom visited my cousin Leonora after that.'
'When are you going?' Sarah asked softly, delicately removing a small bone from her mouth.
Rostnikov wanted to rise, hug her to him. Perhaps later.
'Tomorrow morning, early. A car will come for me.'
'How long will you be gone?' she asked not looking at him.
'Not long, I hope,' he said looking at her. 'How did you know?'
'I don't know,' she said with a sigh. 'Perhaps it's because you acted this way two years ago when you were sent to Tbilisi on the black market business. You brought home a chicken instead of vegetables. And you told the same story about the mashed potatoes. Where are you going?'
'Siberia,' he said and she looked up, fear in her wide brown eyes magnified by the glasses.
'No,' he laughed. 'It's work. A murder. I can't say more.'
'Why you? Are there no inspectors in all of Siberia?' she said, continuing to play with her food and not eat it.
'Who knows?' Rostnikov shrugged. He picked up a piece of the cucumber thing in his fingers and took a cautious nibble. It wasn't bad.
'Who, indeed,' Sarah said. 'I'll pack with you. You always forget simple things like your toothbrush.'
They said no more during dinner and finished the entire bottle of wine. After dinner they both cleared the dishes and when Sarah had finished washing them, he motioned for her to join him on the battered sofa in the living room. She dried her hands and came to him.
'Do you want to read, talk, watch television?' she asked. 'Channel 2 has a hockey game on, I think.'
There was a tightness above her eyes that troubled him. Rostnikov touched her forehead and she closed the eyes.
'I'd like to go to bed,' he said. 'And then we'll see.'
She looked at him over her glasses and shook her head.
'You want to…?'
'Yes,' he said. 'And you?'
She smiled at him and the pain in her face faded a bit as she touched his rough cheek with her hand. It might be many days before he saw her again.
Rostnikov was ready, his Yugoslavian-made, blue-cloth zippered case at the door, when the knock came at precisely 7 a.m. the next morning. Sarah had already left for work and Rostnikov had been sitting at the window watching people on Krasikov Street shuffling to work or school or in search of a bargain.
'A moment,' Rostnikov said when the knock came. He rose, moved as quickly as his leg would allow him and opened the door where a serious-looking woman in a gray uniform faced him. She was pink-faced, about thirty and rather pretty if a bit plump.
'Inspector Rostnikov,' she said seeing his blue bag and stepping in to pick it up. 'I am your driver.'
'I was hoping you were not a particularly bold suitcase snatcher,' he said as she stood up.
'I assure you I am your driver. I should have showed you my identification,' she said, starting to put down the bag.
'That will not be necessary,' Rostnikov said reaching for his coat on a nearby chair.
She nodded, waited for him to put on his hat, coat and scarf and led the way out into the hall pausing for Rostnikov to close his door. She began by moving quickly and realized that the Inspector was limping a dozen steps behind. She stopped and waited for him.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Comrade Sokolov is waiting in the car and we have only an hour to get to Sheremetyevo Airport.'
'I too am sorry that Comrade Sokolov is waiting in the car,' Rostnikov said, catching up to her, 'but I believe they might hold the airplane till we arrive.'
'No,' the woman said, flushing healthily. 'I didn't mean I was sorry that Comrade Sokolov was in the car. I just…'
'I understand,' said Rostnikov. 'I was attempting to be amusing.'
'I see,' she said, relieved. He said nothing more till they got out on the street and into the waiting black Chaika. The woman opened the back door and Rostnikov stepped in to join a round-faced man with a thick black mustache which matched his coat and fur hat. In the front next to the driver who had placed Rostnikov's bag in the trunk and hurried back to her seat was Emil Karpo, also black-clad but hat-less. Karpo did not look back as the car pulled away from the curb.
'I am Sokolov,' the pudgy mustached man said, showing a large white-toothed grin.
Rostnikov nodded, noting that both the teeth and grin were false.
'I am in from Kiev,' he explained as they turned toward Gorky Street. 'I'm an inspector with the Procurator's Office. The Procurator's Office thought I might learn something of procedure from you. I've been with the Ail-Union Central Council of Trade Unions as an investigator for almost a dozen years and I've just moved into criminal investigation. I hope you don't mind. While I'm pleased to be joining you, I assure you it was in no way my idea.'
'I do not mind, Comrade,' Rostnikov said looking out the window as Gorky Street became Leningrad Highway. Tall apartment houses flashed past as the woman sped down the center lane of the 328-foot-wide highway.
Sokolov continued to talk and Rostnikov responded with a nod.
'I've heard much about you,' Sokolov said with a smile. 'You are much admired, Comrade.'
'I have done my best to serve the State with the abilities I have been fortunate enough to possess,' Rostnikov said as they passed Dynamo Stadium and Rostnikov had a memory flash of Josef years ago at his side at a Moscow Dynamos' soccer game. Josef was ten or twelve, his straight brown hair combed back, his eyes riveted on the field.
'You have children, Comrade?' Rostnikov said.
'Children?' Sokolov said. 'Yes.'
'You have photographs of them?'
'Of course,' said Sokolov reaching into his inner jacket pocket to remove his wallet. 'My daughter, Svetlana, is fifteen. My son, Ivan, is fourteen. See.'
Rostnikov took the wallet, looked at the picture of two smiling blond children.
'They were younger when the picture was taken,' Sokolov said taking the wallet back, glancing at the photograph with a smile and returning it to his pocket. 'I mean they were younger than they are now.'
'They are handsome children,' Rostnikov said.
'Thank you, Comrade,' Sokolov said softly. 'I've heard that it is very cold along the Yensei this time of year. I've brought extra layers.'
'A good idea,' Rostnikov said.
The Petrovsky Palace shot past them on the right. The Palace now housed the Soviet Air Force College of Engineering. It was built some time in the eighteenth century and, Rostnikov knew, Napoleon had stayed there for a few days after he was forced to abandon the burning of the Kremlin. Twenty minutes further, Rostnikov caught a glimpse of an izby, a traditional log cabin. It was one of the last of the structures which used to spot the countryside.
Sokolov went on talking. Rostnikov nodded.
In less than an hour, Rostnikov saw the twin glass buildings of the Hotel Aeroflot and the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Behind them he could see the Moscow Air Terminal. The woman driver, either out of zealousness to complete her mission or a desire to discharge her passengers, accelerated as they passed the giant sculpture in the shape of an anti-tank barrier. Rostnikov remembered when real antitank barriers circled the city and he knew that this sculpture stood at the exact spot where Hitler's armies were stopped in 1941.
The driver pulled around the main terminal building and entered a side gate after showing identification to the armed soldiers on duty. She drove directly onto the field, skirting the main runways, clearly knowing where she was going. Sokolov stopped talking as the woman headed toward a distant plane which, as they approached it,
