“Knowing you from our many pleasant exchanges,” said Rostnikov, drinking more tea, “I would doubt if you ever spoke indiscreetly. I, on the other hand, am on occasion given to utterances that might well be considered indiscreet, though I can recall no specific instances. Would you care to tell me what we are talking about?”
“I have reason to believe,” said Pankov softly as he now leaned toward Rostnikov, “that there is a microphone in my office and that the director can hear everything that goes on, everything that is said.”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov.
“Yes? All you have to say is
“Yes,” Rostnikov repeated, putting the mug aside, pulling his pad of paper toward him, and writing something in pencil.
Pankov assumed Porfiry Petrovich was simply making one of his cryptic drawings. After meetings in the director’s office, Pankov had many times examined the pads left behind on the table. There were seldom any words on Rostnikov’s pad, and the words that were rarely there made little sense and seemed to have no relevance to anything that had gone on at the meeting. Pankov had saved all the notes and drawings left behind by all the inspectors. He remembered one of Rostnikov’s notes in particular. It contained two drawings of birds in three- dimensional squares. One bird was black. The other white. And the words “monks, monks, monks”
were neatly printed below the birds.
“Porfiry Petrovich. .” Pankov had begun when Rostnikov tore off the sheet on which he had written and held it up for the little man to read. The letters were large but Pankov’s eyesight left much to be desired. He leaned closer, adjusted his glasses, and silently read: “ALL OF OUR OFFICES ARE WIRED.”
Pankov sat back in his chair. Actually, he fell back and began to look around the room.
“Pankov, you may well be wrong.”
“Yes, yes, yes. I may be wrong. Probably am. I’ve been working hard.” Pankov rose in confusion and turned toward the door.
“Wait,” said Rostnikov.
“What?”
He held up the now-empty mug and handed it to the little man.
“It was very good. Thank you.”
Pankov nodded and headed in dazed confusion out of the office. He had trouble closing the door behind him and came very close to dropping the mug. But he managed to juggle and catch it before it fell to the floor.
Yaklovev was many things. Corrupt, self-serving, ambitious. He was also loyal to those under him upon whom he depended for his success. Yaklovev was smart, very smart. He was not a man to un-derestimate, and Rostnikov did not intend to do so. Porfiry Petrovich had known his office was monitored two days after the Yak had become director, given Rostnikov a promotion, and assigned him this private office. The microphone was well hidden behind a panel in the ceiling almost directly over the desk. It had taken Rostnikov almost half an hour to locate it. He could have done so faster, but climbing atop the desk with one good leg was an invitation to disaster.
Since Rostnikov respected the director’s intelligence, he doubted if the conversation he just had with Pankov would fool him for an instant. The director would know, when he listened to the tapes, which must now be rolling to record silence, that Rostnikov knew about the microphone.
“Like the old days,” Rostnikov said aloud for the ears of the Yak.
Fifteen minutes later, after he had spoken with Sarah on the phone, Rostnikov and Emil Karpo were on their way to pick up a murderer.
“It’s early,” said Sasha with a yawn, his mind moving quickly to adjust to the unexpected appearance of Boris Osipov. “I thought you were coming at seven tonight.”
“Meeting is earlier,” said Boris. “We’ll pick up the dog now.”
“He may not be ready,” said Sasha. “He needs his rest.”
“Dmitri, let us get your dog. Hurry.”
Sasha had been looking out the hotel room window when Boris had arrived. There was nothing he wanted to do, nothing he wanted to read, nothing he wanted to see, though the television set was on.
When the knock had come, Sasha had picked up a magazine and opened the door. Now he slowly prepared to go with the older man, wondering how he could leave word that he had been forced to leave early.
What is the worst that can happen? he asked himself. Rostnikov and a dozen armed men would simply show up at the dog arena.
Nimitsov and the others would be arrested, and Sasha would hand over the small tape recorder in his pocket which should then have the entire conversation of the meeting he was about to attend. If he was searched, which he doubted he would be, he would simply and readily admit that he was planning to tape the meeting for his own protection. It would be reasonable, coming from the criminal he was supposed to be. For further protection, a gun had been hidden in a sliding tray under the portable dog cage in which he would transport Tchaikovsky. Sasha hoped he would not need the weapon.
And then again, he hoped he would. This man waiting for him and Nimitsov had tried to kill Elena. And for some reason, Sasha was sure they had killed Illya Skatesholkov. They would certainly kill Sasha with very little provocation.
Sasha Tkach had left the room earlier, had an expensive lunch in the hotel, and called Maya at work from a phone booth. In case someone was watching him, Sasha smiled a lot when he spoke and tried his best to suggest that he was speaking to a woman, which he was, but not the kind of woman a watcher might assume. The clerk at Maya’s office said she was not in. He called her at home.
“It’s me,” he said. “Why didn’t you go to work?”
“Because your mother couldn’t stay with the children,” she said.
“She said she had to go see Porfiry Petrovich. Do you know why she had to see him, Sasha?”
The baby started to cry in the background.
“No,” he said, but he knew.
“Are you enjoying your assignment, Sasha?”
“No,” he lied.
“Are you doing dangerous things, suicidal things?”
“No,” he repeated.
“I love you, Sasha.”
“I love you, Maya.”
“I’m leaving you, Sasha,” she said. “I’m taking the children and going back to my family in Kiev.”
“No,” he said finding it difficult to hold his smile and keep his voice down. “Please wait till this assignment is over. We should at least talk before you do something like this.”
“If you change, can prove that you have changed, we will come back. My brother is doing very well in the automobile business. He wants us. He has a job for me. Don’t follow us. I’ll call you. When, and if, I think you have changed, we can talk about our returning.”
It was growing ever more difficult to keep smiling, but Sasha managed. “Wait till I get home,” he said. “I should be finished late tonight.”
“We will be gone by late tonight,” she said. “You feel trapped by us. You will no longer be trapped. Maybe you will find it unsatisfying. Maybe you will feel liberated. We’ll see.”
“Maya,” he said, “have you been with another man?”
“No,” she said.
He believed her. She pointedly did not ask him if he had been with another woman.
“Wait till I get home,” he said, “please. We’ll talk. I can change.”
“Maybe you can, but I don’t think so. I do not want to talk.
Good-bye, Sasha. I do love you.”
“Maya. .”
She hung up.
That was less than an hour ago, and now Boris stood waiting for him in the hotel room. Sasha adjusted his jacket and tie and nodded that he was ready.
Boris drove. Sasha sat in the seat next to him and tried not to look for backup that might be behind him but
