in. I was afraid they would see him too.'
'Yes,' sighed Rostnikov. 'Zelach is a bit conspicuous.'
Sasha looked at Kola's leg while Rostnikov lifted Yuri from the floor after pocketing the gun that had landed on the chair. Rostnikov propped Yuri against the wall as Zelach and a uniformed MVD officer burst into the apartment, breaking the lock. Zelach and the young officer both held weapons. Zelach's was a pistol. The young man held an automatic weapon that could have dispatched a regiment with a touch.
Rostnikov sighed and motioned with his hand for the two to put the weapons away.
Zelach, his mouth open as usual, looked around the room as Rostnikov went back to the closet to retrieve his coat and hat.
'Call an ambulance for the one on the floor,' Rostnikov said. 'Take the other one too. Have someone fix them up and bring the one with the broken nose to my office. Watch them both. Inspector Tkach will fill out the report. And find a jewelry store operator named Volovkatin on Arbat Street. Arrest him for dealing in stolen goods.'
Zelach stood, mouth open.
'Do you understand, Zelach? Are you here, Zelach?'
'Yes, Inspector. Volovkatchky on Lenin Prospekt.'
'Sasha,' Rostnikov said. 'Go with him. Get Volovkatin.'
'Yes,' said Sasha, moving toward the door.
'There's no phone here,' said Zelach looking around the room.
'That is correct. There is no phone,' Rostnikov confirmed. 'Why don't you send Officer'
'… Karamasov,' the young man said.
Rostnikov looked at the brown-uniformed young man with interest but saw nothing to be particularly interested in other than a literary name and shrugged.
'Karamasov can call the ambulance and you can wait here and then accompany these two to the hospital. Sasha, you and Zelach go to Arbat Street. You understand?'
'Perfectly,' said Zelach, blinking. 'Oh, they called.'
'They did. Who are they?' said Rostnikov, buttoning his coat, thinking about dinner, deciding to make another attempt tonight to reach his son Josef by phone.
'Colonel Snitkonoy,' said Zelach, trying to remember an approximate message. 'You are to report back to him immediately. Someone has died.'
'Someone?' asked Rostnikov.
Kola groaned on the floor and reached for his wounded leg. Yuri, his face bloody, looked as if he were going to say something, ask something, but changed his mind and moaned once. Karamasov looked around once more and hurried out of the apartment to make his call.
'Someone,' Zelach repeated.
It was late, but there might be time to get to MVD headquarters, meet with Snitkonoy and still get back home at a reasonable hour. It was annoying. He was no more than a five-minute walk from his apartment, but Rostnikov was accustomed to annoyances. He would walk to the Profsojuznaja Metro Station on Krasikov and finish his paperback novel on the train.
'Anything else, Inspector?' Zelach asked.
'Yes, don't break down doors if you don't have to. It is very dramatic but it makes unnecessary work for some carpenter.'
'I'll remember, Inspector,' Zelach said seriously, moving to stand over Kola who was now definitely waking up.
Rostnikov clapped Tkach on the arm to indicate that he had done a good job. The inspector surveyed the room one last time, returned to the closet, retrieved the small stool and put it back in the corner near the sink where he had found it.
He stepped past the broken table and broken robbers and headed into the hall on his way back for what he feared would be a long lecture from the Gray Wolfhound.
One hour later, Rostnikov was uncomfortably seated at the conference table in the office of Colonel Snitkonoy, the Gray Wolfhound, who headed the MVD Bureau of Special Projects. Rostnikov had drawn a coffee cup in his notebook and was now thoughtfully shading it in to give the impression that some light source was hitting it from the left. He had been drawing variations on this coffee cup for several years and was getting quite competent at it. From time to time, he would look up, nod, grunt and indicate that he was pensively listening to the wisdom being dispensed by Colonel Snitkonoy who paced slowly about the room, hands folded behind his back, brown uniform perfectly pressed, medals glinting and colorful.
The Gray Wolfhound believed that Rostnikov was taking careful notes on his superior's advice and thought. This caused the white-maned MVD officer to speak more slowly, more deliberately, his deep voice suggesting an importance unsupported by the depth of his words.
Rostnikov had recently been transferred 'on temporary but open-ended duty' to the MVD, the police, uniformed and nonuniformed, who directed traffic, faced the public, and were the front line of defense against crime and for the maintenance of order. It had been a demotion, the result of Rostnikov's frequent clashes with the Komityet Gospudarstvennoy Besapasnosti, the State Security Agency, the KGB. Before the demotion, Rostnikov had been a senior inspector in the office of the Procurator General in Moscow. The Procurator General, appointed for a seven-year-term, the longest term of any Soviet official, is responsible for sanctioning arrests, supervising investigations, executing sentences, and supervising trials. Too often, Rostnikov's path had crossed into the territory of the KGB which is responsible for all political investigations and security. The KGB, however, could label anything from drunkenness to robbery as political.
Now Rostnikov worked for the Gray Wolfhound whose bureau, everyone but the Wolfhound knew, existed because the Colonel looked like the ideal MVD officer. Colonel Snitkonoy was trotted out for all manner of ceremonial events from greeting and dining with visiting foreigners to presenting medals for heroism to workers at Soviet factories. Colonel Snitkonoy's bureau was also given a limited number of criminal investigations, usually minor crimes or crimes about which no one really cared. Rostnikov and the three other investigators who worked for the Wolfhound would conduct their investigations, and if the doznaniye or inquiry merited it, the case might be turned over to the Procurator's Office for further investigation and possible prosecution.
'Surprise, yes. Oh, yes,' said the Wolfhound, pausing at the window of his office and turning suddenly on Rostnikov who sat at the table across the room in the Petrovka headquarters.
Rostnikov was not surprised, but he did look up from his drawing to make contact with Snitkonoy's metallic blue eyes.
'We will surprise them, Porfiry Petrovich,' the Wolfhound said. 'We will conduct the investigation with dispatch, identify those responsible, file a report of such clarity that it will be a model for others to follow for years.'
Rostnikov adopted a knowing smile and nodded wisely in agreement though he had no idea of what this performance was all about. Snitkonoy began to stride toward Rostnikov who turned over the page of his notebook with the unfinished drawing. Snitkonoy approached, polished brown boots clicking against the polished wooden floor. He stood over Rostnikov with a sad, knowing smile.
'I have in this past month you have been with us come to rely upon you, Porfiry Petrovich. You and I have the same attitude, the same outlook on dealing with the criminal mind, coping with those who pose a threat to the ongoing struggle of the Revolution.'
Rostnikov's deep brown eyes met the Wolfhound's soberly and he nodded in agreement, though he agreed with almost nothing the handsome military figure in front of him had said. Rostnikov had been with the MVD for more than four months. He was certain that his and the Colonel's views of the criminal mind were not at all similar, partly because Rostnikov did not believe in a criminal mind. There were evil people, truestupid, selfish, brutish peopleeven a good number of quite insane people, but few who thought themselves so. Mostly there were people who considered themselves quite decent, quite compassionate, quite reasonable. They got carried away with their emotions, beliefs or assumed needs and broke the law, sometimes quite violently. The only minds that Rostnikov thought might reasonably be identified as criminal belonged to certain kinds of bureaucrats who had the opportunity and desire to engage in ongoing illegal activities.
As for the Revolution, Rostnikov had struggled with a nearly useless left leg for over forty years as a reminder of the Revolution that never ended. When he was fifteen in 1942, Rostnikov had lost most of the use of the leg in
