'Good,' said Zelach blowing a puff of air in relief as a pair of detectives moved around the desk talking about someone named Linski.
And so Sasha Tkach finished the report, read it, realizing full well that it was unconvincing. He considered their next step. He would probably do what Zelach had suggested, but he doubted that they would catch Volovkatin who probably had false identity papers and was on his way to the Ukraine. Most likely, if he were a reasonably clever and careful criminal, 'Volovkatin' was probably not his real name and he was on his way somewhere with his own quite legal identification papers. The report Tkach has just written would surely go to the KGB and there would surely be hell to pay for letting an economic criminal get away.
Tkach signed the report and handed it to Zelach to sign. Zelach read it.
'Looks good,' Zelach said with a grateful smile.
'It's terrible,' said Tkach.
As he took the signed report back, a clerk came down the aisle between the desks and paused at Tkach's desk to drop off a file and a note. He recognized the neat handwritten notes as soon as he opened the file.
The note said that Tkach was to replace Inspector Karpo in the investigation of the young men who were intimidating visitors to the USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition. Not only was he to investigate but he was to go undercover that afternoon and evening as an ice cream salesman, which meant that his daughter Pulcharia would be asleep when he got home and his wife Maya would be up to remind him that he had been promised a regular day schedule when the strong-arm case ended.
'Good news?' asked Zelach.
'Wonderful,' Tkach sighed sourly.
'I'm glad,' said Zelach. 'You want to get something to eat?'
CHAPTER FIVE
The name Siberia means 'sleeping land' and for more than a thousand years while the rest of Europe and Asia were developing a history most of Siberia slept. Beneath the sleeping giant whose five million square miles could swallow all of the countries of Western Europe and could hold almost two countries the size of the United States lay vast riches including coal, oil, iron, gold, silver and diamonds. On the sleeping giant's back grew millions of square miles of timber in the sprawling taiga, the forests which even today serve as massive havens for wolves, tigers and bears who have never experienced civilization and know nothing of its existence. Other animals, fox, mink, sable, roamed and multiplied and still roam wild.
The first known Siberians lived 40,000 years ago. For more than 32,000 years the descendants of these first aboriginal tribes spread throughout Siberia, cultivated cattle, used tools made of bronze and copper, began settlements; then, about 1,000 B.C., Mongol tribes began to move upward from China bringing iron tools, introducing agriculture and war. From the northwest the Huns began to move downward through Siberia pushing both the Mongol tribes and the aborigines into less hospitable parts of the sleeping giant.
The Huns gradually lost control and abandoned their Siberian settlements or mixed with the Mongols and aborigines. By the thirteenth century, Siberia was a storybook land of small multiracial tribes, states and small kingdoms scratching to stay alive on the back of the slowly waking sleeping giant.
And then Ghengis Khan rode into the vastness with an alliance of Mongols and Tartars who, even after Khan's death, dominated not only most of Asia including parts of China and India, but all of Siberia, all of Russia and much of Western Europe beyond Hungary right up to the gates of Vienna. But Khan's empire was too vast and eventually broke into powerful khanates, the largest of which, the Golden Horde of the Tartars, controlled both upper Russia and all of Siberia.
The Mongol/Tartar occupation united Russians for the first time. They had a common enemy, and the Russian princes who existed as Tartar puppet rulers put aside their major differences and united with Moscow as their focus. In 1380 a force of Russians marching under the banner of the principality of Moscow defeated the Tartars in the battle of Kulikovo. Russians throughout the divided land began to declare loyalty to Moscow. In 1430 the united Russians pushed the Tartars back behind the Volga. And then, in the middle of the sixteenth century, Czar Ivan IV, Ivan the Terrible, finally drove the last of the Tartars beyond the Ural mountains and into Siberia.
The Siberian Tartar Khan, Ediger, fearing a Russian invasion of his land, petitioned Ivan to make Siberia a Russian province and commit the Czar to support Ediger against his tribal enemies. In return, Ediger promised to deliver one sable skin for each of his male subjects. The Czar agreed.
In spite of the agreement, Ediger was soon overthrown by a rival, Kuchum, who hated the Russians, denied the agreement, murdered the Russian ambassador to Siberia, refused to pay taxes and moved his capital further east, away from Russia, to Kashlyk near present-day Tobolsk.
The Czar, fearing that he could not win a major war in Siberia against Kuchum, enlisted the aid of the enormously wealthy Strogonov family, a powerful, independent merchant clan whose territory covered much of the land on the broad western slopes of the Ural mountains. The Strogonovs were summoned to Moscow and given by the Czar Ivan a deed to most of Siberia. All they had to do was take it from the Tartars and hold it.
The Strogonovs found a mysterious cossack, Ermak Timofeyevich, to head the expedition against Kuchum. Ermak took seven years to raise and train an army of 540 men, mostly fellow cossacks and mercenaries. The Strogonovs ordered an additional 300 of their own men to join them and, outnumbered by more than sixty to one, Ermak and his well-armed band crossed the Urals and attacked.
The Tartar hordes who had only a few flint rifles and fought mostly with bows and arrows were driven back. In less than a year Ermak was on the Tura River sailing toward Kashlyk. In a final major battle, Kuchum's army attacked and was defeated. Kuchum and his allies fled deep into the wilderness.
Ermak occupied Kashlyk and proceeded to clear large areas of Siberia forcing the local tribes to declare loyalty to the Czar. Ivan the Terrible declared Ermak 'the Conqueror of Siberia' and sent regular Russian army troops to join him and secure the territory for the Strogonovs.
A year later, in 1854, a vengeful Kuchum ambushed Ermak who, weighed down by his heavy armor, drowned in the battle. Ivan sent further troops who routed the last of the Tartar resistance.
With the death of Ermak and the end of Tartar resistance, the vastness of Siberia opened to adventurers and Russian mercenaries who rushed in, conquering villages, towns and tribes, laying claim to territories in the name of the Czar.
The tide was halted to the south with resistance by the Chinese who fought against Russian expansion into their country. Peace was achieved and the southern Siberian border established. To the east the Russians continued to expand their territory. Under a merchant, Gregori Shelekhov, Russia developed a plan to include much of North America, the Hawaiian islands and the entire Pacific coast of America all the way to Spanish California. By 1812 Shelekhov and his partner Baranov had almost achieved their goal.
On March 30, 1867, the Czar, fearing that he could not control the vast eastern lands, decided to pull back, and sold the American territory and Alaska to the United States for $7,200,000 in gold. The Czar had even been willing to throw in a good part of Siberia for the gold but the Americans showed no interest.
And so Siberia, fed over the years by forced immigrations of peasants, criminals and political dissidents, survived as part of the Russian state in spite of rebellions, successful attacks by the Japanese in 1918, and occupation by the White Russian army under Admiral Kolchak following the Revolution. It wasn't till 1923 that Siberia was finally unified under the Soviet government.
The first person Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov met in Tumsk after the small plane landed was Miro Famfanoff, the local MVD officer, who informed his visitors proudly that the temperature was — 34 degrees centigrade and that Ermak himself, whose statue stood before them in the town square, was reported to have spent three days in the town in the summer of 1582.
Rostnikov had nodded, pulled his wool cap more tightly over his ears and tightened around his neck the red scarf Sarah had made for him two years ago. Sokolov touched his mustache which had already stiffened in the frost and Karpo looked at Famfanoff, a heavily bundled-up overweight man in his forties with a face turned red probably not as much by the frigid air as by vodka.
'You should wear a hat,' Famfanoff suggested to Karpo nervously.
Karpo nodded and looked around the town square where Famfanoff had led them. The statue of Ermak in
