certain, still he hoped that it might mean that the feeling was gone for good. He liked his job, liked the two-room apartment he shared with Nikolai. He enjoyed filing. It took little thought and gave him a feeling of accomplishment and plenty of time to think. These were his filesneat, not a report sticking up, not a file frayedand soon, within months perhaps, he and the others would have everything fully transferred to the computers. Though he had a limited supply of new file
It was with this thought that Pon froze and stared at the file in his hand. Number 1265–0987. It was the only file number in the whole system he had memorized, because he felt it was his, the file detailing all of his dispositions of prostitutes. He had kept it even more orderly than the rest. He wanted it to remain untouched, perfect, safe.
And now, almost a year after anyone had looked at it, someone had come, probably during the overnight shift, and pulled the file. Yuri had mixed feelings. Fear and excitement made his hands tremble, and he had a shiver of something almost mystical. He had thought little about that file, about those feelings, about what he had had to do, for months. But this morning he had come in sensing, feeling, the echo of it all again. The reason was clear.
He had somehow known that someone was thinking about him. It was uncanny and frustrating, for there was no one he could tell about this.
Nikolai had once said that when he had the pains in his side he had awakened during the night and had seen a huge, clear letter C embossed on his skin at the point of the greatest pain. The C had been formed by a pebbly ridge of flesh. 'I was sure, I knew, that in spite of the impossibility,' Nikolai had said, leaning forward as if he were telling a great secret, 'my body was informing me that I had cancer. Only it was stranger than that. I did not have cancer, only dyspepsia. I had told myself 'and with this Nikolai pointed a dark finger at his head' that I had cancer. My mind had been strong enough to generate a change in my skin. Amazing.'
Perhaps, somehow, this was what had happened to Yuri Pon this morning, but he could never tell Nikolai or his mother or anyone. Then a horrible half image came to him, a half image of himself telling not only of this uncanny incident but of everything he thought and felt, telling all this to a gaunt man who looked like a dark priest.
Yuri blinked his eyes, put down the files, and adjusted his glasses before he felt strong enough to open his file. The name of the person who had checked it out this very morning was written in a tall, firm hand that kept the letters neat and within the lines: Emil Karpo. Yuri Pon knew the name. Karpo had checked the file out sixteen times in the past eight years, far more than any other investigator, though Karpo was not even the principal investigator on the case.
Perhaps, thought Yuri the file clerk, Yuri the killer of prostitutes, there is some new piece of evidence, but what could there be that was new? What could Karpo know?
Yuri knew who Karpo was, had seen him frequently, had seen his name on hundreds of files. Karpo the Vampire, that was what he had heard an investigator named Zelach call him. Yuri Pon tried not to think about the image of a vampire. He tried to force himself to review everything that was in the file. He had done it a thousand times and never had he been able to follow any trail that would lead to him. He had been too careful. Knowing how the investigators worked, he had avoided mistakes, controlled his emotions each time. He was proud of that, proud of that control.
Coincidence, just a coincidence. Karpo was reviewing files, randomly reviewing files. Yuri would check, see what other files the Vam, no, what other files Inspector Karpo had recently pulled out. There was nothing to worry about, nothing. Yuri put his file and the others away and spent the next two hours before lunch neatly typing new file numbers into the computer for the cases that would come in. Thought almost disappeared as he typed, and when his watch told him that he could stop and eat he smiled. It was under control. And then as he sat at his desk and lifted the small round bread from the sack in the drawer, a horrible thought sickened him.
What, he thought, if Karpo knows? What if he knows and is playing a game with me? What if he was watching when the file was returned, is watching right now? Yuri turned quickly from this corner to that, down the row of files, toward the stairway leading up to the next level, to the ceiling where, perhaps, someone had planted a camera.
Yuri Pon couldn't swallow. He was afraid he would choke. He clutched for the bottle of kvass in his sack, unscrewed it, and drank deeply, almost choking.
Madness, he thought. No one is watching me. No one. But that was not the problem. A new one had come. He was sure now. Absolutely sure that the feeling was back, that this very night it would begin again, that the memory of the prostitute in the restaurant would be with him, driving him mad until he dealt with it. Karpo couldn't be watching him. No, but Yuri Pon would certainly be watching Emil Karpo. He finished the small bottle of kvass, let out a small burp, and wondered how he would get through the rest of the day.
The rain had almost stopped when Rostnikov arrived and stood across the street in front of the building to which he had been ordered. The four-story building had no sign on its door to mark its function or purpose. It looked like a small factory, perhaps a complex of offices. There were eleven windows on the street side, each covered so that no one could see in. The concrete facade was smooth, gray, and very common. If one stood across the street where Rostnikov then stood one could see on the roof of the third floor a patio and a series of canopies that looked as if they belonged at the beach in Yalta.
Officially, this building had no name. It didn't exist. Unofficially, and to almost every Muscovite who passed it, it was the Kremlin Polyclinic, where the nation's 'special' people went for medical care. Rostnikov crossed the street slowly, glanced at a man with a thick shiny leather briefcase who was reading the copy of Pravda posted on the corner bulletin board, and walked past the single car parked at the curb. It was a long, black four-door Zil, a monster of a car that needed only teeth. Only members of the Politburo were issued Zils. It was estimated that no more than fifteen of the custom automobiles were made each year.
Rostnikov glanced at the car and at the man behind the wheel in the front seat, a young man in a dark suit and a firmly knotted tie, a young man who looked as if his nose had been smashed with a hammer. The young man glanced at Rostnikov and then looked resolutely out the car's front window.
Rostnikov entered the building and found himself facing a pair of burly men in identical blue suits. Both men were in their forties and had close-cropped hair. Beyond them in the small lobby was a desk at which a man and a woman sat. The man was talking quietly on the phone. The woman was looking over her glasses and appeared to be copying something. Only their heads were visible over the level of the desk. Rostnikov imagined for an instant that both of them had been beheaded and were on display at the Poly-clinic to prove how capable and experimental the staff was. Perhaps, he thought, the two heads will even sing a folk song in unison. The image brought a small smile to Rostnikov's face, which, hi turn, brought a look of suspicion to the face of the slightly older of the two burly men, who stepped in Rostnikov's path.
'You have business here, Comrade?' the burly man asked.
Rostnikov gauged the two. Certainly KGB. Both were younger, bigger, more agile than Rostnikov, and both, as evidenced by their slightly bulky jackets, had weapons hidden but handy. Still, Rostnikov was sure that if they attempted to throw him out, he would probably have little trouble getting past them. It was only whimsy, however, for Porfiry Petrovich had no real urge to force his way past the KGB. He didn't even want to be here. Rostnikov reached into his pocket and handed the older of the two men the note Snitkonoy had given him less than an hour earlier. The KGB man ran his right palm over the top of his bristly hair before taking the offering. Rostnikov and the second man looked at each other silently while the first man read the note quickly.
'This way,' the reader said, handing the note back to Rostnikov and turning toward the desk. Rostnikov followed him slowly, sandwiched between him and the other burly men. Rostnikov had followed the KGB before. His leg didn't permit him to keep up the pace of these younger men eager to show that everything was urgent. Rostnikov was in no hurry. He had nowhere he wanted to go other than the circus and home. So he walked slowly past the desk where the decapitated head of the woman whose hair was tied back in a bun looked up at him over her glasses.
The parade of three went through a darkly stained wooden door and into an elevator that stood open. They entered silently and faced front, and the younger man pressed a button that closed the doors. He then pressed a button for the third floor and they rode up smoothly. At three, the elevator stopped with a small bounce, the doors opened, and the older KGB officer stepped out. Rostnikov followed, with the younger man behind him.
To the right was a corridor with closed doors. At the far end of the corridor was a desk behind which stood a pair of men clad in white. Talking, they paid no attention to the three men who moved about twenty feet down the
