docile.
“My name is not Natasha, Comrade,” she wheezed.
“There is a woman who works the station-blond, thin,” he explained. “Her name is Natasha.”
“I know of no such person,” the woman said, looking around in the hope that a customer would save her from this man.
Karpo leaned forward, his eyes fixing on the woman’s. He could smell her sweat. There was no room behind the bar for her to back away. Behind her the dishwasher asked if something was wrong. The woman said nothing and gasped at the face before her. Then her voice came out in a small whisper.
“She’s here. The far corner, over by the second gate, behind the…”
But Karpo had turned and was gone. He pushed through the crowds, moving slowly, his eyes scanning the room. He spotted a prostitute almost immediately, but she was hefty and had dark hair. He went on, and in a few more minutes spotted the thin blonde. She was asking a gentleman for a light for her cigarette. At this distance, she looked rather elegant, but as Karpo pushed toward her, the look of elegance faded. Her face was hard, her hair brittle and artificially colored, her teeth uneven and a little yellow. Looking at her, Karpo thought that her nights at the Metropole were probably numbered. Soon she would be spending more time at the railroad stations, and soon after that she would only be working nights.
Karpo pretended to ignore the talking couple as he strode past them to a newspaper stand in the corner. In spite of the bustle of sounds around him, he caught a bit of the conversation.
“In about an hour,” said the man. He had a boyish face and graying temples, and he looked like a professor.
“Plenty of time,” said Natasha. “There’s a place…”
And Karpo was out of earshot. He turned and saw the professor hesitate, heard Natasha coax, though he couldn’t make out her words. The professor shook his head slowly, and Natasha grabbed his arm, smiling. Karpo felt confident of his quarry now. He stepped forward behind the couple, dodging a young man with a huge suitcase held closed by rope, and touched Natasha’s shoulder. She turned suddenly, surprised.
“I’d like to talk to you,” he said.
The professor didn’t bother to excuse himself. He simply disappeared in the crowd.
One lost, one gained, she seemed to be thinking as her smile returned. Karpo didn’t like the false smile, but he understood it.
“We can’t talk very well here,” she said, looking around.
With that she lifted her left arm so he could see the number 20 clearly written on her flesh. Karpo knew that street prostitutes put their prices on the soles of their shoes, on their arms, or on the palms of their hands. Her price was high for a railway station prostitute, but that was only the initial asking price.
“I’m a policeman,” Karpo said softly.
Natasha’s pale face went ghostly white.
“I’ve done nothing,” she gasped. “I’ve broken no laws.”
It was true, for there were no laws against prostitution. Since it doesn’t exist, the argument goes, there need be no laws against it. However, as both Natasha and Karpo well knew, there were many sexual crimes in the nation’s criminal code, including infecting with venereal disease, illegal abortion, sexual relations with a minor, and depraved actions. Natasha could be charged with several of the crimes, and the penalties could include a number of years in a penal colony.
“If you answer quickly and honestly,” he said now, holding her arm, “I will turn in a minute or two and walk away. If you do not, I arrest you.”
Natasha didn’t respond.
“Last night at the Metropole. You were there?”
Natasha was about to tell a lie, but Karpo’s face was inches from her own, and what she wanted most was to escape from this man.
“Yes,” she said.
“There was an American. His name was Aubrey. He was looking for a woman. He found you.”
Karpo was not at all sure that Aubrey had been with Natasha. If it turned out that he had not, Karpo would pressure her for another name, follow another lead.
“Yes,” she said.
“Where did you go with him?”
“In a taxi,” she said. “My husband is a taxi driver.”
“What did the American say to you?” Karpo went on. A couple passing by looked at Karpo and the transfixed and frightened Natasha, considered intervening, and changed their minds.
“Nothing,” she said. “He just got in. We…he couldn’t do it so I helped him. He said nothing.”
“Nothing?” asked Karpo. “A drunk who had minutes before been babbling?”
Natasha’s eyes darted back and forth. Then, suddenly remembering, she cried, “Oh! He did say something. It was nonsense. Something about having them now, having the biggest story, having the liars. My English is not good, but something like that. He kept saying he had them now, and he would show them. But he didn’t seem happy about it. More, you know, angry. Spiteful.”
“Names?” Karpo went on.
“He mentioned no names,” she said. “I swear. No names. He did say something strange, though. Something about a frog bitch. It is drunk talk. Dogs are bitches in English, I think. Frogs are not spoken of that way. He was drunk.”
Karpo let her go, and she almost fell. Natasha’s automatic reaction was to offer herself to the policeman for nothing, but Karpo was gone before she had a chance to speak the words.
The normal waiting time at the stone pyramid of the Lenin Mausoleum is half an hour, unless it is a holiday, in which case the wait is four times that. The line stretches several hundred yards across Red Square outside the Kremlin, but the people waiting are patient and respectful. Guides from Intourist usher foreigners and soldiers to the head of the line.
The one with dark eyes was a foreigner but chose not to seek help from Intourist, instead preferring to stand at the end of the line, facing resolutely forward. There was plenty of time, the day was pleasant, and the line was moving. There were a number of foreign visitors in line speaking languages the dark-eyed one understood but pretended not to. A young man directly ahead in the line was playing chess with a companion, a young girl, on a small board he held in his palm. An old man in front of the couple kept frowning at them as if they were committing an act of blasphemy in the sacred line. He looked over at the dark-eyed one for support but got none.
A guard stepped forward to tell a Japanese man to put his camera away. He told another man to remove his hands from his pockets. The crowd moved slowly, single file, down the steps and into the crypt. The temperature dropped with each step. No pausing, no talking. Hats off as the line passed the rigid soldiers standing a yard apart.
And then the dark-eyed one stood before the crystal sarcophagus containing the body of Vladimir Ilich Lenin. In the pinkish light, the seemingly perfectly preserved face was peaceful and calm. The dark-eyed one leaned toward the sarcophagus as the line shuffled forward and then stumbled.
The young man who had been playing chess with his girlfriend picked the stumbling visitor up. A guard moved forward to help, but the dark-eyed visitor waved him away with a nod of thanks and moved on into the daylight. There was no pausing on the tree-lined walk at the base of the Kremlin Wall. The crowd moved past the Mausoleum of Joseph Stalin; past those of Sverdlov; Dzerzhinsky; Irene Armand, the Frenchwoman who was Lenin’s close friend; Soviet cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov; John Reed; Lenin’s wife, Nadezhda Krupskaya; and Maxim Gorky. It was 2:00 P.M. The dark-eyed one held back a smile. It had been quite easy. The compact bomb, encased in soft plastic, now clung to the underlip of the tomb no more than two feet from Lenin’s head. Provided the public transportation ran smoothly, the other two bombs would be in place by 5:00 P.M.
FIVE
