Black Knight in Red Square

At first when he opened the door, he didn’t recognize the man before him.

“Yes?” said Rostnikov, wiping his moist brow with the hem of his shirt.

“I’m from upstairs,” said the thin Bulgarian.

“The toilet,” Rostnikov suddenly remembered. He had dismantled the toilet early in the morning, and the Bulgarians had been waiting for his return.

“Ah,” sighed Rostnikov, “I have consulted an expert, the chief plumber at the Metropole Hotel. I’ll have it fixed in a few minutes. Never fear.”

He pushed the Bulgarian gently into the hall.

“I’ll just get my tools and be right there,” he said softly, not wanting a neighbor to overhear and call the dreaded Samsanov.

Sarah looked up at him when he closed the door. In her eyes was the unspoken question, Would this happen in Paris or Montreal or Chicago?

Rostnikov shrugged, believing that it would, but thinking it unwise to raise the issue again.

“I’ll be right back,” he said. “This will take me no more than fifteen minutes.”

It was, in fact, nearly two hours before Rostnikov returned. There had been unforeseen complications. The tools had been inadequate, and the book he had been using was far out of date. He had eventually managed to get the pipe repaired, but he feared that the repair was temporary.

“Toilet is now fixed,” he told Sarah, who was sitting at the table writing a letter, probably to her sister or Iosef.

“That’s good,” she said, looking over the top of her glasses and smiling, her mind in Odessa or Kiev or San Diego.

Rostnikov was washing at the sink when the phone rang. Sarah answered it and held it out to him.

“I don’t know who it is,” she said with a shrug.

He crossed the room and took the phone. “Rostnikov,” he said.

“In the morning,” came the man’s voice, “at precisely seven, you are to be at the office of Colonel Drozhkin.”

Rostnikov said nothing.

“Do you understand?” came the voice.

Rostnikov recognized the man as Zhenya, Colonel Drozhkin’s assistant.

“I understand,” Rostnikov said evenly. “I will be there at seven.”

They hung up, and Rostnikov turned to his wife. “Business,” he said. “I have an appointment early in the morning.”

That was all he said. He reread a mystery by Lawrence Block and went to bed wondering what the KGB wanted from him this time.

In the evening right after the incident with the gang of rapists, Sasha Tkach took a bus to the Rossyia Hotel. He went through the huge glass doors and across the vast lobby whose walls were covered with film posters and blowups of movie stars, mostly Bulgarians, and advanced to the desk. He gave the name of the woman he was seeking, Monique Freneau, identified himself, and waited while the clerk at the long desk looked up the name. He couldn’t find it. Normally, the clerk would have given up, but this was a policeman with a determined look in his eyes, so the clerk tried the rosters for the other towers and eventually found the Frenchwoman’s name.

The Hotel Rossyia is a sharp contrast to the Metropole. It is massive and new and official comments in tourist books and publicity call it “the Palace.” Muscovites, looking up at the gigantic structure on the Moskva River, refer to it as “the box.” The twelve-story hotel has thirty-two hundred rooms, nine restaurants, two of which can seat a thousand diners each, six bars, fifteen snack bars, and the world’s largest ballroom. It also houses two movie theaters for eight hundred spectators and one larger cinema hall, the Zaryadye, which can comfortably accommodate three thousand people.

Sasha found Monique Freneau’s room with no difficulty. He knocked, and the door opened on a woman who quite dazzled him. He was sure he had seen her before. She wore a thin pink blouse made of some silky material; her jeans were tight and certainly Western. But it was her face and hair…Yes, she looked like the French actress Brigitte Bardot, but Bardot must be older than this woman. Perhaps this was a younger sister.

“Yes?” the woman said in Russian.

Tkach didn’t know that many young women in France capitalized on their resemblance to the famous star and adopted the Bardot look.

“You are Monique Freneau?” he said in French.

She smiled. Tkach wasn’t sure whether she was pleased that he was speaking to her in her native language or amused because he was doing it so poorly. Either way, her smile made him uncomfortable. In fact, Monique Freneau made him quite uncomfortable as she gestured for him to enter the room, but gave him little space to get through the doorway without brushing against her.

He glanced around the room. It was far bigger than the apartment he and Maya shared with his mother.

“I am from the police,” he said immediately.

“I’m surprised,” she said, sitting in one of the two chairs in the room and crossing her legs. “I thought a requirement of nonuniformed Russian policemen was that they be over fifty, solid, sober, and shaped either like a lamppost or like an American mailbox.”

Her description fit Rostnikov quite well, Tkach thought. He also was aware that the woman, who might be anywhere from twenty-five to forty, was looking at him with amusement and employing what must have been her formidable sexuality.

“I have, I am sorry to say, another appointment,” Sasha lied. “So, I will have to ask you some questions rather quickly. You probably have much to do, too.”

“No, not really,” she said, putting a finger to her chin.

“You are a maker of films?” he asked, taking out his notebook.

“I am a producer of films,” she said. “There is quite a difference. Actually, I am the assistant to a producer, and I’m representing him at the festival.”

“I would have thought you were an actress,” he said, and immediately regretted it.

“I was,” she said. “But I found it more…rewarding to be the assistant to Pierre Maxitte. You’ve heard of him?”

“I’m afraid not,” Tkach said seriously.

“You have a name,” she added disarmingly.

“Inspector Tkach,” he said. “On Monday-”

“A first name?” she cut in.

“Sasha,” he said.

“That is a nice name,” she mused. “Fun to say. Sasha. Sasha.”

“Warren Harding Aubrey,” Sasha threw in. It stopped her, but didn’t seem to disturb or upset her.

“The writer?” she asked.

“I imagine there would be few with such a name,” he said seriously, “though I must admit I know little about American names.”

“Aubrey interviewed me a few days ago,” she said.

“Monday,” Sasha said. “What did you talk about?”

“Why?” she asked. “What has he done?”

“He has gotten himself killed,” explained Tkach. “It may well be an accident, but we are trying to trace his movements up to the time of his death yesterday morning.”

“Dead,” she said, looking at Tkach more seriously.

“Quite dead,” he said. “Why did he interview you?”

“About Pierre,” she said. “The movie we’re showing at the festival, The Devil in the Wind. I had the impression that it was not a serious interview, that he was looking for gossip, perhaps about Pierre. Who knows? He even hinted that he might look favorably on our film if I was friendly to him. You understand?”

“Yes,” said Tkach, writing down far more than he needed in order to keep from looking at her. Now he thought perhaps he understood why Aubrey had referred to her as the frog bitch. But as a lead, this looked like a