'I'm sure,' said Tkach. 'Now, if I may be excused I would like to get back to the investigation of the buyer of stolen goods.'
'Yes,' said Snitknonoy returning to his desk. 'We must all get back to work. I have a talk to give at the Likhachov Automobile Works, the Zil truck division. They have exceeded their half-year quotas.'
'I'm elated,' said Tkach, rising.
'So are we all, Comrade,' the Wolfhound said with a touch of warning in his voice. 'So are we all. Tread softly and you'll break no eggs. You may leave.'
And Tkach left. He closed the office door behind him and without looking at Pankov strode across the outer office and into the hall, being careful not to slam the door behind him.
He stood still in the hall outside the Wolfhound's office for almost half a minute. An older woman he vaguely recognized from the records office strode by him. She wore a dark suit and glasses and looked at him with motherly concern. He would have none of it and made it clear from his look. She walked on.
When Tkach felt that he was capable of moving without striking the nearest window or door with his fists, he headed for the stairway. His first thought as he walked down the stairs was that he needed to talk to Porfiry Petrovich. He would know what to do, how to deal with the Wolfhound, how to find a way to punish the Cubans, but Rostnikov was in Siberia and there was no knowing when he would be back. Sasha would have to deal with this alone and, he was beginning to realize, he would have to deal with it by putting the day behind him and — going on with his work.
CHAPTER NINE
'He's not there,' Sergei Mirasnikov shouted, removing his glasses. 'Thank God. He's not watching me anymore.'
Liana Mirasnikov shook her head and went on eating her bread in the next room.
Her husband's voice had echoed across the meeting room of the People's Hall in which she spent little time and through the door to their room where she sat. With each passing year, Liana grew more brittle, more cold, dreading the long winters of ice which came so gray and close together. She had begun to grow angry at the brief summer, talking to it, accusing it of teasing her with its brevity, of telling her that she would experience few more of such interludes before she joined her ancestors.
'Why do you keep going to the window?' she said when he came back into their room and closed the door. 'Just stay away from the window.'
'I can't,' he said, anxiously looking at her. 'I know he is there, looking. I don't want to go to the window but I can't help it. He knows I can't help it.'
Sergei paced the room and in spite of or because of his fear he seemed younger than he had for years. Worry seemed to agree with him, at least physically.
'Just so the other one doesn't come back, the ghost,' she said, popping the last crumb of bread in her mouth and looking around the room and at the frosted window before crossing herself. 'It will be hard enough to go over there and serve their meals. I think I'll just put out the food and stay away till they're finished.'
'What does he want from me?' Mirasnikov muttered, ignoring her words.
'Possibly the truth,' she said.
'Do you know what might happen to us if I told him?'
'I know,' she said. 'Don't tell him.'
Sergei straightened out as best he could and, as firmly as he could, said, 'I won't.'
And with that he strode back to the door and opened it.
'Where are you going?' Liana called.
'To see if he is back at the window, just to see, to peek. I'll just be a second. Less than a second.'
She heard his footsteps stride quickly across the hall, felt the draft from the big room because he had not closed the door behind him, and she started to get up so she would have an early start preparing dinner for the visitors.
'He's still not there,' Sergei called.
'Good,' she said, moving from her soft chair to the closet where she kept her coat. She had not removed her boots when she came in earlier. They were a bit tight from the snow and it was the devil to get them on and off. She looked forward to coming back and taking them off later.
'Still not there,' Sergei said, striding back into the room as she tied her babushka under her chin.
'Good,' she repeated.
'But he will be back,' he said, adjusting his glasses and looking at the closed door. 'He will be back.'
Rostnikov had left his post at the window reluctantly, but he had agreed to join Galich for dinner and he was hungry. The two sandwiches had not been enough nor had he expected them to be.
When he opened the door of his house for Rostnikov, the former priest looked even more like a woodsman than he had that morning. He wore the same flannel shirt and jeans but he also wore a fur vest. He had shaved and combed his hair.
'Come in,' he said heartily. 'I hope you like fish.'
Rostnikov closed the door quickly behind himself and said, 'I love fish. In fact, as my wife will affirm, I feel a certain affection for almost all foods. She sometimes accuses me of being more interested in quantity than quality.'
'And,' said Galich, taking his guest's coat, 'is she correct?'
'She is correct,' said Rostnikov with a sigh, 'but my interest in quality should not be entirely discounted.'
They ate at Galich's worktable. He had cleared a section at one end and set out a rough tablecloth. On the table was a bottle of vodka, a bowl of boiled potatoes, a roughly shaped loaf of warm, dark bread and four large fish which had been baked whole.
'Caught them in the river this afternoon,' Galich said after they had sat down. He let Rostnikov serve himself and the policeman did so generously. 'If you're here long enough, I'll take you fishing through the ice. That's about the only fishing we get to do here for months. The Yensei, at this point, is frozen more than two hundred days a year.'
'And when it isn't frozen?' asked Rostnikov.
'Ah,' said Galich, a piece of boiled potato bulging in his cheek, 'when it isn't frozen it roars north to the Arctic Ocean. Rolling waves chase one another forming great whirlpools. It's magnificent, mighty, more than 2,600 miles long. And its banks and depths hold treasures of history in spite of everything that has been swept by its force into the ocean.'
Galich paused in his chewing and seemed to be gazing into the depths of the Yensei of his imagination.
'I should like to see that,' said Rostnikov.
'Yes,' said Galich returning to the present, nodding his curly white-maned head and resuming his chewing. 'It must be experienced.'
'You love it here,' Rostnikov observed reaching for a second fish.
'Yes,' agreed Galich. 'If I weren't so old, perhaps I would become a taiozbniki, a forest dweller. There are Evenks in the taiga beyond the town who don't encounter civilization for years. No one knows how many of them there are. The government can't find them, keep track of them. The forests have been theirs since God created man. They named the river, Yensei, 'big river,' a thousand years before we came. You mind if I refer to God?'
'Not at all,' said Rostnikov. 'Do you mind if I help myself to more vodka?'
'Not at all,' said Galich, 'but you have really had very little. Are you trying to keep a cool head while you get me to talk, Inspector?'
'Perhaps a little,' Rostnikov agreed. 'But just a little. It is as difficult to stop being a policeman even for a brief time as it is to stop being a priest.'
'Sometimes more difficult than one would like,' Galich agreed, downing the last of his glass of vodka and reaching for the bottle.
'There are Evenks nearby?' asked Rostnikov.
