'Pictures?' asked the inspector with a smile.
'Yes,' said Vostov, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a wallet.
Vostov's eyes did not leave those of the inspector as he opened his wallet and turned it to show to Rostnikov.
' 'May I?'' said Rostnikov, reaching for the wallet and adding, 'My name is Porfiry Petrovich. And yours?'
'Ivan,' said Vostov, letting Rostnikov take his wallet and examine the photograph.
'Boy looks strong, an athlete. Girl is very delicate.'
'Vladim is twelve, plays soccer. Irina is ten.'
'Ballet?' Rostnikov guessed, looking at the child's photo.
'Yes,' said Vostov, accepting his wallet back.
'When I looked in Vasilievich's wallet, I saw two photographs: his GRU identification and a photo of him as a young man with his arm around the shoulder of a woman. My wife and I have one son, a grown son, too, not married,' said Rostnikov, sighing deeply and looking once more around the room before ushering Vostov toward the door.
'Your son's name?'
'Iosef,' said Rostnikov. 'Just released from the army. Wants to work in the theater. Do you like working in Yalta, Comrade Vostov?'
They were walking back down the corridor now, in the same direction from which they had come.
Vostov shrugged.
'It's not Moscow,' he said.
Rostnikov nodded in understanding.
'I sleep a great deal here even when I'm not tired,' said Rostnikov as they came to the stairway and stepped out of the way to allow a pair of well-dressed, very young men to move past them.
'Some of it's the air,' explained Vostov. 'Some of it is letting down from the pressures.'
'Georgi Vasilievich, I am sure, did many things of which he should not have been very proud. He leaves no one and nothing behind him, Ivan. He will be easy to forget. Too easy. Someone murdered him and did not try very hard to hide it.
Someone murdered him and thought no one would care. And, Comrade Ivan Vostov, this offends me.'
They reached the bottom of the stairs.
'I'll order the autopsy,' said Vostov, following his own deep sigh.
The right corner of Rostnikov's mouth moved into a slightly lopsided smile, and he reached out to give the doctor an encouraging squeeze of the right arm, being careful not to cause even the slightest pain.
THREE
The grinning man with bad teeth standing in Yon Mandelstem's shower was a plainclothes policeman named Arkady Zelach, known to the other inspectors on the fourth floor of Petrovka as Zelach the Slouch.
Arkady Zelach was a hulking, out-of-shape man who lived with his mother in the same small apartment in which he had been born forty-one years earlier. He had become a policeman because his father had been a policeman. He had never considered doing anything else, nor had his parents. Since he had neither brains nor intuition, Zelach relied totally on the judgment of his superiors and his mother, which made him quite valuable to both. He was loyal to his mother, whom he understood perfectly, and to Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, whom he under-Stood not at all.
He grinned, not because he found the naked man in front of him, who was not really Yon Mandelstem, funny, but because it seemed the best face to wear when in doubt. People who didn't know him tended to think he was amused by something they had said or done. But that was only true of people who didn't know him.
' 'Why are you hiding in the shower?'' asked Sasha Tkach, motioning Zelach out.
Zelach moved to let Sasha reach in and turn on the shower.
'I didn't want anyone to know I was here,' Zelach said while Sasha waited for the water to grow tepid enough to step under.
Tkach didn't bother to respond. He simply nodded and touched his face. He needed a shave.
'Go watch the door,' Tkach said. 'If someone breaks in, shoot them.'
This Zelach understood.
The real Yon Mandelstem was a computer programmer with the Ministry of Labor in Leningrad. The apartment in Building Two of the Friedrich Engels Quartet had been obtained in the name of Mandelstem, who had been transferred to the Ministry of Labor in Moscow. However, the real Yon Mandelstem never got to Moscow, nor would he ever get there. He was in Saratov, using yet another name while he assisted for one week in the computer training of young men and women who would be operating the offices of McDonald's hamburger chain as it expanded throughout the Soviet Union. If anyone checked, they would find Sasha Tkach, with Mandelstem's identification, using Mandelstem's computer at Mandelstem's desk, though no one expected anyone to check. Following his week in Saratov, the real Mandelstem would leave the Soviet Union and immigrate to Israel. The papers had been prepared quickly and quietly, and he had been informed and told to pack within three hours for his trip to Saratov and then out of the country.
Mandelstem, who looked very little like Sasha Tkach, had been quite willing to go, had even kept an emergency suitcase packed.
This, Sasha thought as the water went from cool to cold, was not the first time he had been away from Maya and the baby. In the past, there had always been the sense of temporary respite, primarily from Sasha's mother, Lydia, who had lived with them until just a month ago. Lydia had been the guilt and burden of his life.
Now Sasha and Maya and their daughter, Pulcharia, who was almost two, had their own apartment, and there was a new baby on the way. Times were uncertain, and there were
those who still thought that a second child was foolish. Perhaps, he thought, they were right. In any case, he wanted to be home. He was thirty years old, no longer a boy, and he wanted to be home.
He scrubbed himself angrily. Rostnikov and Karpo were both on vacation, but he, he had to not only remain on duty but to stay away from his wife. The image of the woman, Tamara, in the lobby suddenly came to him, and in spite of the cool water, he found himself growing erect, which made him even angrier. He turned the metal handle all the way, but the water grew no colder nor the spray more powerful.
Think of the work, he told himself, scrubbing with the rough bar of soap he had brought with him from his and Maya's apartment. He forced himself to think about the other decoys in the field. He did not know how many there might be, but the Wolfhound had said there were others, others from different MVD branches, others with backup officers like Zelach.
There had been thirty reports of computer theft-breaking and entering apartments where people were known to have computers. Always apartments, never homes, always single men or women. And almost always Jews or people with names that might be considered Jewish. In seven cases, the break-ins had taken place while the computer owner was home. In all seven cases, the owner was beaten, beaten brutally. In not one case had a witness other than the victim been found who heard or saw anything in spite of the obvious noise. In none of the seven cases in which the victim had been present had any of them been willing to give a clear description of their assailants, for there was no way the police could protect them from retribution and all of them had been threatened with such retribution before they were beaten.
And so Sasha had been given a crash course in the computer, not enough to make him an expert but enough for him to do the work at the ministry, which he had done for almost two weeks, two weeks in which he had not seen his family, had only spoken to Maya three times by telephone, had only heard Pulcharia's voice once, saying, 'At'e'ts. Father.' Unbidden, he thought of Tamara again and grew even angrier. He shaved with the overused razor he had been using for a week and began to sing resolutely. Perhaps he would use his time to really master the computer. Perhaps he would ask to leave the MVD. There was probably no future in working for the Wolfhound. When Rostnikov had been demoted, Sasha had joined him because he wanted to continue to work with Rostnikov, but he also knew that in the end he had no choice. He was one of Rostnikov's men.
Sasha nicked his cheek. He sensed blood but ignored it, though he could not ignore the truth. He would not
