'A few, from time to time,' said Galich. 'Even a shaman, name of Kurmu, though the government thinks there aren't any shamans left. There are plenty of them. Shaman's a Evenk word. It means priest-healer, not witchdoctor. Shamans are both religious figures and healers. In some places shamanism has been wedded with Buddhism, particularly among the Buryats. It's even been merged with Christianity among the Yakuts. In this territory along the river, in the taiga and up to the Arctic Ocean it seems to have kept its base in ancient pantheism.'
'Fascinating,' said Rostnikov with a smile, holding his hand over the top of his glass as Galich reached over to try to refill it.
'I'm a bit drunk,' said the former priest. 'It's not often I get a guest who is willing to listen to my ramblings. I had the new captain at the weather station over for dinner once about four months ago. Too young. No imagination. No fire. No interests but permafrost. Who wants to spend a night talking about permafrost?'
'You speak the Evenk language?'
'A little,' Galich said with a shrug, pouring himself another glass of vodka. 'I have much time to learn, think.'
'What do you think of Samsonov?' Rostnikov said picking up a small, elusive piece of fish with his fingers.
'See,' laughed Galich, 'what did I say? I get drunk and you go to work, but I don't care. Not tonight. Samsonov is a weakling and I'm sure Kurmu is better at curing if it comes to that.'
'But he's had the nerve to become a dissident,' Rostnikov prodded. 'To ask to leave the country.'
'I don't know how much of it is his idea,' Galich said looking up at Rostnikov.
'You mean his wife wants to leave?' asked Rostnikov.
'You are an observer of men. I am an observer of details,' said Galich. 'I hear little pieces of information, see small artifacts and I put them together into a story. Then, with each piece of new information I reshape the story hoping that it comes closer to the truth. Is that the way you work?'
'Very much,' Rostnikov admitted.
'Yes,' said Galich confidentially, reaching over to pat the inspector's arm with his hand, 'but the difference is that sometimes you can have your story confirmed. Mine remains forever conjecture. I must be careful not to be too creative or I lose the truth.'
'The same is true of my work,' said Rostnikov, allowing the former priest to pour him just a bit more vodka. 'Ludmilla Samsonov?'
'A lovely woman,' said Galich raising his glass in a toast. 'A very lovely woman.'
'A very lovely woman,' Rostnikov agreed raising his glass to meet that of his host.
The glasses pinged together and the men drank.
'Are you getting what you want from me, detective?' asked Galich after he had drunk more vodka.
'Yes,' said Rostnikov, 'some information, a good meal and good vodka. Let me ask a direct question before we are both too drunk to make sense. What is the General writing?'
Galich grinned and shook his head.
'Magnificent,' he said. 'You noticed too. It took me a long time to figure it out and then it struck me.'
'He's not just writing articles on old military battles,' Rostnikov said.
'He is not,' agreed Galich. 'The desk is facing the window so he can see anyone coming and hide whatever he is working on. The desk would be better where mine is. It would catch more light, but he is afraid of being come upon suddenly. From the front you can see anyone coming and have plenty of time to hide things. And he talks too vaguely about his articles, never shows them. Not that he is uninformed. On the contrary, I'm sure he could write articles, but I think he is working at something, working even harder at it than I do at my work and he seems driven as if he still has battles to win. One would expect a military man in exile to be a bit more depressed now that he is away from that for which he has been trained. No, our little general has a secret.'
'You should have been a detective,' said Rostnikov toasting his host.
'Perhaps, if the Evenk are correct about reincarnation, it may be so in another life. I'll be a fisher of men,' Galich toasted back. 'God, I can't get rid of the religion.'
'It runs through the blood like vodka,' sighed Rostnikov feeling more than a little drunk himself though he had consumed far less than his host.
'It runs warmer than vodka and it won't wash away,' Galich said in a voice that may have betrayed some bitterness. 'Would you like to see some armor, some mesh armor I've been restoring? Found it near the rock, the great rock where…'he paused, remembering.
'Where Karla Samsonov died,' Rostnikov finished.
Galich nodded but didn't answer.
'I'd like very much to see the armor,' Rostnikov said.
Galich got up slowly, carefully, and walked toward the cabinet against the wall. Outside, through the window, Rostnikov could see the moon over the forest. The tops of the trees were silver white. Rostnikov felt quite content. Ideas were beginning to take shape. A story was starting to tell itself deep inside him.
'Definitely Russian thirteenth century,' said Galich, fumbling at the door of the cabinet, but before he could get it open someone knocked at the front door.
'Famfanoff,' said the former priest. 'Would you let him in?'
Rostnikov agreed and, with a bit of difficulty, got up from the table. He should have moved his leg around a bit more during the long meal, but he had forgotten and now it was complaining.
The knock was repeated twice before Rostnikov made it to the door, threw open the latch and opened it. It was not Famfanoff but Emil Karpo illuminated by the nearly full moon, an erect black-clad figure with a face as white as the snow behind him.
'Come in,' Rostnikov said. There was something, an urgency on the face of Karpo that was unfamiliar. Karpo stepped in.
'Ah,' called Galich from the cabinet where he now stood holding a mesh net of metal. 'Your sober friend. Bring him in for a drink.'
'I do not drink, Comrade,' Karpo said evenly, not taking his eyes from Rostnikov. 'Comrade Inspector, a message has come through at the weather station from Colonel Snitkonoy's office. You are to call your wife.'
The glow of the vodka disappeared. He had been encouraging, nursing it, but now it was gone. He had feared this call for months, feared the message that meant his son, Josef, were injured, possibly… He had feared this call.
'I must leave,' he told Galich who had been listening.
'Of course,' the former priest said. 'This,' he said, holding up the armor, 'has waited for more than five hundred years. It can wait a bit longer while you deal with the present and I get some sleep.'
Rostnikov thanked his host for dinner, hurriedly put on his coat and followed Karpo into the night.
'I can quit,' said Sasha Tkach pacing the space near the window of his apartment. He spoke quietly because, in the darkened area across the room, Pulcharia slept fitfully.
Sasha's mother was out for the evening at his aunt's and uncle's apartment near Proletarian Avenue off of Bolshiye Kamenshchiki Street. Her absence was a blessing.
Maya seemed to have recovered from the afternoon better than her husband. There was a slight bruise on her cheek, but no other injury, and she shared none of her husband's anger when she found that the two young men who had attacked her would get away without further punishment.
'You sent them both to hospital,' she had said gently, touching his arm. 'And Pulcharia and I are fine.'
'It's not enough,' he had said.
'What is it you want?' she had asked.
'I don't know. Justice. Punishment.'
The conversation had gone on like this after they ate. Maya had spent the afternoon in stores with the baby. She had wanted to return to the normalcy of daily life, to return the baby to the comfort of the usual routine and she wanted to prepare a comforting meal for Sasha who, she was sure, would be upset and need reassuring even more than his wife and child. She had never seen him like that before, never seen him as he had been when he attacked those two at the shopping center of the Economic Exhibition. Sasha, who was always so gentle, had been a raging madman. There had been something exciting about it, but also something very frightening and she was sure that the transformation would leave him shaken. And so, Maya had gone shopping. She selected cheese, butter and
