“How old is he?” he asked the trembling boys. They said nothing.
“How old?” Tkach repeated.
“Fifteen, I think,” said Ivan Belinkin, who would never be called Bobby again.
“No,” corrected Ilya Nikolaev, who would never again be called Coop. “He was fourteen. Sasha was fourteen.”
CHAPTER SIX
There were many things on the mind of Chief Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov. Though he might have denied this to others, they were, in order of priority: the safety of Iosef Rostnikov; the possibility that the killer of Granovsky and the cab driver might strike again; the chances of getting in good enough shape to participate in the weight lifting competition in June; repairing the broken toilet in his apartment.
Rostnikov brushed the hair from his eyes and fingered the scratch in his desk he had made with the sickle. He would simply lie about the broken point of the tool. There was no point in dealing with Procurator Timofeyeva on this point. Outside his office’s thin pressboard walls he could hear the phone calls, the raised voices, the whispers, the movement of furniture that signaled police activity. He knew he should move, act, but unseen heavy hands kept him at his desk. To prove his activity to himself and anyone who might walk in, Rostnikov pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil and wrote the number one.
“What is one?” he asked himself aloud. Then he wrote, “K.G.B. following Granovsky.” In twenty minutes, he had a list he was rather proud of:
One-K.G.B. following Granovsky. Agent less than brilliant. On night of murder, Granovsky made several stops, according to agent Khrapenko, at home of Simon Lvov and apartment of Ilya and Marie Malenko. Both Lvov and the Malenkos were known dissidents on Tkach’s primary list.
Two-Killer apparently man (woman?) in black, who killed the taxi driver about an hour after Granovsky murder, using broken vodka bottle. Both murders very bloody, very personal, unconventional weapons.
Three-Killer last seen running down Petro Street.
Conclusions: Murderer known to Granovsky? Murderer mad or very angry and so uses personal (phallic?) weapons on men? Too soon for that observation. Not politically acceptable anyway.
The part about psychology could not be discussed with others. Freud was not a popular mentor in Petrovka. That was the extent of the writing on Rostnikov’s sheet except for a doodle of barbells.
Rostnikov was considering what to do next, whether to tell his wife about Iosef in Afghanistan and whether to do another doodle, when his office door opened and Karpo and Tkach stepped in. Tkach looked almost as white as Karpo.
“What happened?”
The two men sat.
“We got them,” said Karpo evenly. “Three young boys. Sasha had to kill one of them who shot a police sergeant.”
“And?” Rostnikov went on looking at the younger officer, who seemed to be trying to gather words.
Karpo shrugged.
“The sergeant was shot in the stomach,” he said. “Lost blood, possibly punctured kidney, broken rib, but he should survive.”
“Tkach?” Rostnikov said with concern, putting his sheet aside.
“I don’t know. He was a fourteen-year-old boy named Sasha, and I killed him.”
“He was an enemy of the state,” Karpo said, with just a touch of irritation. “Boys of his age fought and died in the revolution and in the wars against the Japanese and the Germans. The choice was to let him kill us, and that was certainly not reasonable.”
“True,” said Rostnikov, “but logic, political logic, the logic of the expedient present does not necessarily account for the emotion built into our bodies. We are, as you know, imperfect creatures, Emil Karpo, and some of us will never get used to killing. It is sad, but something we must face.”
“I am not immune to sarcasm, inspector,” Karpo answered, removing his coat.
“I would hope not,” said Rostnikov. “I was not engaged in self-indulgence but in irony, which requires our mutual cooperation and understanding.”
“Your point is taken,” said Karpo.
“And respected?” said Rostnikov.
“Yes.”
“An observation, Karpo. One I have wanted to make for some time. How is it that you never blink? Is it hereditary or something you have cultivated?”
“Blinking is functionless,” said Karpo. “I have learned to control what appears to be a reflex but what is in fact a weakness.”
Rostnikov put up his hands and looked again at Tkach. The discussion had been indulged in to give the young officer time to recover. If he did not recover, Rostnikov was prepared to dismiss him and get someone to replace him, which would create problems, both for Tkach and the investigation.
“Shall we get back to the Granovsky murder, inspector?” Tkach said, looking up.
Rostnikov was tempted to talk about the men he had killed, from the first when he was a soldier to the most recent, a drunk who had beaten his wife and then turned on Rostnikov with a chair when he was brought in for questioning. The first had happened so fast that it always seemed to Rostnikov as if he had imagined it. He had a captured German rifle and he had walked into a bombed-out building, a farmhouse on the road from Kiev. Other members of his squad had gone past, and he had been told by his sergeant to look inside. No one expected anything to be there, certainly not the German soldier, who had been cut off from his troops, and lunged at Rostnikov with a bayonet in his hand. Rostnikov had turned and fired at the man and plunged his own bayonet forward so quickly that it required no thought. It wasn’t an act of consciousness. But there was no point in telling this to Tkach. One either accepted and learned, or one was a victim.
“Very well,” said Rostnikov, forcing himself up from the desk. He had sat too long and the leg had, as always, begun to stiffen. There wasn’t really anyplace to pace in the small room, but he could stand and flex his joints. He could also exchange looks with Karpo, who had obviously observed the deep scratch on the desk. “You must get back to the friends or acquaintances of Granovsky, Tkach. Prepare your report on this shooting and then resume your investigation, Emil. Go to Granovsky’s apartment and talk to people in the building. Maybe someone saw or heard something. Maybe someone knows of a local enemy, a non-political enemy. Unlikely, but…who knows. Any other suggestions?”
The two men had none.
“I’m going home after I report to Procurator Timofeyeva. Call me if anything happens. Be sure to get something to eat. Now, go.”
The two men left, and Rostnikov gathered up his single sheet with the doodle, placed it in a file with rough notes on his interview with the K.G.B. officer and reports from Karpo on the sickle and from Tkach on his interviews, and left to report to Comrade Timofeyeva.
At that moment, the man who had killed twice within a day sat on the floor of a small apartment, shifting a heavy iron-headed hammer from one hand to the other. Early evening darkness had come. He knew that if he moved to the window he could see only the old crumbling one-story wooden house next to his apartment building and another concrete apartment building exactly like his own no more than thirty feet away.
He had been disturbed only once during the long day. At first he had ignored the knocking at the door, but the knocking had continued with persistence and he had hidden the hammer and opened the door. The caller was a young policeman, who looked not like a policeman but a ballet dancer, asking about the murder of Aleksander Granovsky.
The game began and the killer felt no fear. He acted. He acted with subtlety, courage, conviction. He nearly wept when told of Granovsky’s death and said he had been at home with his wife at the time of the murder, which was not at all true, but he was prepared to add details, little details so vivid that they would build a picture of truth.
