scalding his tongue. If it were the K.G.B., he might well be in for a night of harassment, and it would be good to have something warm in the stomach. The knocking grew louder.
Holding the law book in his hand, Granovsky strode to the door, fixing his most defiant expression, which would suffice for the K.G.B. or complaining neighbors. When Granovsky opened the door and recognized the person before him, the glare turned to a sardonic smile.
“This is a busy night for me,” Granovsky said without any attempt to hide his impatience. “What do you want?”
The answer came before Granovsky could really register it. Something flashed from behind the back of his darkly dressed visitor. The flashing thing looked brown and alien and heavy, and it struck Granovsky in the chest. As a youth, a soccer ball had once struck him in the chest during a game at Sokolniki Recreation Park, taking his breath as this did. Granovsky opened his mouth and looked down at what had struck him and was now protruding from his chest. He could see his own blood forming on it, and he wanted to cast it away.
Granovsky could not scream. Something sweet and wet filled his throat. Still clutching the book in his hand, Granovsky staggered backward, wondering what to do about the thing in his chest. He had a vision of the Golem. If he were to remove the thing from his chest like the star of the Golem, he was sure he would cease to be alive. Yet the thing in his chest was making it difficult to breathe and he had so much to do-a speech to write, tea to drink. He looked toward his visitor for help but realized quite logically as he backed into the kitchen table that his visitor would surely not go through the trouble of killing him only to turn around and help. It would not be reasonable.
Khrapenko had not been looking up at Granovsky’s window when it broke, but he heard the crisp tinkle of shattering glass and turned his head upward to see bits of light falling toward the street. In the midst of the shards of glass flew a white bird, its wings fluttering. Khrapenko was fascinated. A bird in Granovsky’s apartment had apparently crashed through the window and was flying to the earth. Just before the object struck the snow, however, Khrapenko realized that it wasn’t a bird, but a book. He looked up at the light in Granovsky’s window before hurrying to the book, which had landed open in the snow. The book was covered with blood. Khrapenko ran for the entrance of the Granovsky building, wondering what madness Granovsky was engaged in.
Khrapenko was twenty-eight years old and had been in the K.G.B. for four years. His father before him had been in the K.G.B. and had known Beria. The elder Khrapenko had a reputation for loyalty and little intellect and had never risen very high above the lowest rank. His son was credited with carrying on the family tradition. The assignment to follow and watch Granovsky had been neither welcome nor unwelcome. It had been puzzling, but as always, he had questioned nothing and had taken the assignment as a possible sign of growing responsibility. Khrapenko did wonder why Granovsky had been allowed to go on the streets in spite of his impending trial, and he had been told that surveillance might lead to further evidence, and that letting Granovsky out would be a sign to the world of the fairness of Soviet justice. Besides, his superior had told him Granovsky welcomed the trial and would certainly not think of running away.
Khrapenko had followed Granovsky through the day and taken up his position opposite the apartment building a few hours earlier. He knew Granovsky was aware of his presence, had actually mocked him from the window, but that did not matter. Until the window broke, Khrapenko’s single conscious thought had been the passage of the forty-five minutes until he would be relieved for the night. Now Khrapenko was running through the small lobby of an apartment building and up six flights of stairs to confront a dissident he had no desire to know.
Granovsky might simply have gone mad in fear over his trial. Khrapenko was not sure of how to deal with a bleeding madman. The K.G.B. man’s only recourse would be to arrest him at gunpoint. If he had to shoot Granovsky, he was sure his K.G.B. career would be at an end.
Coming down the stairs was a figure in black who Khrapenko pushed past without looking. He hurried up the concrete steps two at a time, using the railing more with each flight and listening to the echo of his own footfall.
The hall on the sixth floor was empty. Either the neighbors had heard nothing or were too afraid to come out. The door to apartment 612 stood open, and Khrapenko approached it, panting and reaching for his gun. A distinct and broad trail of blood pointed along the wooden floor to Granovsky’s body. The eyes were open, the mouth was angry and red, as if he had spat blood in wild fury. Cold air blew in through the broken window, but Khrapenko did not notice. His eyes fixed on the thing sticking out of Granovsky’s chest.
Khrapenko knew he had to act quickly, efficiently, that his career might well be on the line. He put his pistol away and reached down to touch the body, to confirm to himself that the man was dead, and his hand came away covered with blood. He was convinced. His next step was to call headquarters, though his impulse was to dial 02, the police. He was on one knee near the body, looking around the room for a phone, when he heard the steps behind him and drew his gun again. He came within the thickness of a fly’s wing of shooting Sonya and Natasha Granovsky. The older woman looked first at the gun, then at the stranger and finally at the body of her husband. Then she began to scream, and the girl at her side, little more than a child the age of Khrapenko’s own sister, began to cry hysterically. Khrapenko rose from the floor and put out a bloody hand to calm the women, but they screamed even louder, a series of shrieks that sent ice through his brain. It was only then that he realized the two women probably thought he had killed Granovsky.
“I just found him like this,” Khrapenko said, trying to keep composed, remembering his career, his father. “I’m a government officer. Please sit down and I’ll call for help.”
The two women turned their eyes from him, and the younger one stopped screaming. They were looking at the ugly, rusty sickle that someone had plunged deeply into the chest of Aleksander Granovsky.
In Moscow, the investigation of crime is a question of jurisdiction, and the investigation of important crimes is an important question of jurisdiction. Minor crimes, and no one is quite sure what a minor crime is, are handled at the inquiry stage by the M.V.D., the national police with headquarters in Moscow. Moscow itself is divided into twenty police districts, each responsible for crime within its area. However, if a case is considered important enough, a police inspector from central headquarters will be assigned. The
All police officers in the system work for the procurator’s office. The Procurator General is appointed to his office for seven years, the longest term of any Soviet officer. Working under him or her are subordinate procurators, who are appointed for five years at a time. The job of the procurator’s office is enormous: to sanction arrests, supervise investigations, appear at trials, handle execution of sentences, and supervise detention. The Procurator General’s office is police, district attorney, warden and if necessary, executioner. The procurators of Moscow are very busy.
Which is why Procurator Anna Timofeyeva was still at her desk in the huge central police complex called Petrovka, on Petrovka Street. Petrovka consists of two ten-story L-shaped buildings which most Muscovites regard with a combination of awe and fear. Procurator Timofeyeva’s office was a small, sparsely furnished room on the second floor of Building #1. Below her were the kennels where the German shepherds stalked and sometimes barked restlessly when they were not on patrol. At two in the morning, most of the dogs were out, but Procurator Timofeyeva did not notice the time nor the absence of the dogs she could hear during the daylight hours. She was a thick box of a woman, about fifty, officious and hard working. She knew that she looked formidable in her striped shirt and dark blue procurator’s uniform, and she wished to look formidable. Therefore she wore the uniform most of the time, though it was not required. On her desk, as she drank cold tea, was a pile of reports from investigators on various crimes which were her responsibility. The top report, #30241, was on a case of hooliganism in which a group of drunks in a café had refused to leave at the 11:30 closing time. Procurator Timofeyeva knew from the report that one of the drunks was a Party member. She would try to shame him before
