His voice was now a soothing whisper.
'I saw that look hi your eyes. I've seen it before in the eyes of black marketers, government bureaucrats, scientists, and even a KGB man. I can get you out, policeman. All you have to do is take my hand on it and it will cost you nothing, nothing at all.'
Mazaraki's right hand was stretched out. Rostnikov for the first time stepped back, not wanting to touch or be touched by that hand, as if the touch would give him a disease of thought that he could not overcome, a disease he might welcome. Mazaraki stepped forward, leering now, and Rostnikov's good leg kicked the upturned light, sending out a crack of leather heel on metal, and with the crack Mazaraki stopped, a startled look on his face. He stopped, opened his mouth to speak, and whispered, 'Nothing at…all.'
And then the big man in red fell on his face. In the center of the back of the fallen man's red jacket Rostnikov could see an uneven wet pattern of an even darker red. Rostnikov looked up into the dark arena.
'Karya?' he said.
'Yes,' came the woman's voice.
There really wasn't anything else to say. If he had been a younger man with a good leg, Rostnikov could have leaped over the lamp into the protection of darkness, but a leap was out of the question and a shuffling roll would be ludicrous and undignified. He felt the dull heat of the light directly behind his good leg. His weak leg could take no more man a pained instant of weight. He gave it that instant and kicked back at the light with his heel. The glass shattered and the bullet from the darkness hummed past him as he turned to his right and moved as quickly as he could into the darkness. She fired again. Three more shots. All three to Rostnikov's right. And then a pause. The body of Mazaraki lay silently. A thin wisp of smoke rose from the dead lamp, and a shuffling rush of footsteps came closer.
Something moved at the far reaches of the remaining light. He pressed himself against the wall behind him and waited for Katya Rashkovskaya to run across the ring, gun in hand, and find him. 'Nichevo,' he said to himself. If it were to be like this, then it would be like this.
She stepped into the light slowly, her hands at her side. She was dressed in white and, Rostnikov thought, looked quite darkly beautiful. And then someone appeared behind her and then someone else.
'Porfiry!' came Sarah's voice.
And into the light behind Katya Rashkovskaya stepped Sarah and Sasha Tkach. Sasha was holding a gun. Katya was empty-handed.
'I'm all right,' Rostnikov said, stepping forward.
'I called,' Sarah said, looking down at the dead man.
'I see,' said Rostnikov, moving forward toward her.
Sasha pushed his unruly hair from his face and smiled at Rostnikov, who nodded. Katya didn't smile. She looked emotionlessly at Mazaraki's body and leaned over to pick up the red hat.
As Sarah put her head against his chest, Rostnikov wondered if he should wait till morning to retrieve the plumbing books he had loaned to Katya Rashkovskaya.
Deputy Procurator Khabolov was dreaming about Helsinki, which, even in his sleep, he found quite odd, for he had never been to Helsinki nor did he have any interest in going to Helsinki. He found himself walking the streets of Helsinki certain that he was getting lost, unable to retrace his steps because he did not know where he had begun, unable to ask anyone who passed him for directions because they all spoke to each other in a language that must have been Finnish. Suddenly, behind him, came a pounding noise. In his dream he turned as the noise came closer, became louder, more insistent. Fear pressed him against the brick wall of a building while he waited for the massive ball of iron that pounded toward him, would surely, suddenly, come around a corner to crush him. He looked for help at the Finns around him who did not stop but kept walking, smiling.
'Answer the door,' one of the Finns said without moving his mouth, and Khabolov sat up in bed, awake, panting in fear. 'The door,' his wife repeated. 'Someone's at the door.'
Khabolov looked at his wife, who had turned her huge freckled back on him and was clutching a pillow to her head.
The knock came again. 'Can you dream that people are speaking Finnish if you can't understand Finnish?' he asked.
'Answer the door,' his wife replied, and Khabolov pushed back the covers, checked the buttons on his pajamas, smoothed down his hair with two hands, and looked at the clock on the dresser. Six o'clock in the morning. The knock came again, and he padded quickly out of the bedroom and toward the door. The knock came again.
'Who is it?' he called.
'Rostnikov' was the reply.
Khabolov checked himself in the mirror next to the door, didn't like what he saw, and shouted 'One moment' as he hurried back to get the blue-and-white and too-warm-for-this-weather flannel robe in the closet. His wife said something half in sleep. He ignored her and closed the bedroom door on his way out.
When he opened the apartment door, Deputy Procurator Khabolov saw that Inspector Rostnikov was not alone. Tkach stood at his side, a bit pale, almost at attention.
'What is it?' Khabolov asked, assuming a terrible emergency. Rostnikov was not even working for the Procurator's Office any longer, and no inspector had ever visited, ever been invited to visit, Khabolov's apartment. Khabolov had no desire for anyone outside of his family and his few friends to see what he had accumulated in appliances and the minor luxuries that made life tolerable.
'May we come in for a moment, Comrade?' Rostnikov asked politely. Both were quite sober and serious, yet neither gave the impression that an emergency was in progress.
'I'd like to know…' Khabolov began and stopped when Rostnikov reached into his pocket and pulled out an oblong package wrapped in a brown paper bag. The object looked like a small book. Khabolov looked at both policemen sternly, discerned nothing, and took the package. He opened it and extracted something he recognized, a videotape.
'What is this?'
'A videotape,' Rostnikov said.
Khabolov could see that it was a videotape. For a moment he thought he might still be dreaming. The scene made as much sense as his dream about Helsinki.
'We think,' Rostnikov continued, 'that you should look at it.'
'Now?' Khabolov asked them.
'Now would be a very good time, or you could wait till later,' said Rostnikov, letting his eyes focus beyond Khabolov on the interior of the room.
'What is it? Some murder evidence? Inspector Karpo included in his report on the apprehension of the prostitute killer that you had been instrumental in… It has nothing to do with that case?'
Rostnikov shook his head no, and Tkach remained at near-attention.
'I'm running out of patience,' said Khabolov, bouncing the videotape in his hand as if it were growing warm. 'Very well. Come in, but mark you, this had better be important.'
Rostnikov and Tkach entered the room, and Khabolov closed the door quietly behind them.
'Come and be quiet. My wife is sleeping in there.'
Neither man had known Khabolov had a wife, but mat did not surprise or interest them as much as the brown carpeting on the floor. Not a rug in the center of the room, but real carpeting. Sasha Tkach wondered if the apartment had more than one bedroom.
Khabolov led them across the room to a sofa facing a television set with a video machine on a table next to it.
'Better be important,' Khabolov warned, turning on his machines and inserting the tape. A static-filled image came on with a flamelike sound and Khabolov plopped on the sofa to watch. He did not invite the two policemen to sit. They stood and watched the screen.
'It had better be important,' Khabolov said again. 'Murder evidence or'
'Profiteering,' Rostnikov supplied. 'Black market, probably. We think it important enough to consider turning over to the KGB. We thought you might be the one to do it.'
'I see,' said Khabolov, and for an instant he thought he did see. These two wanted to get on his good side.
