Black Knight in Red Square

Second, she wanted to do it. This was what she lived for, and she did it better, perhaps, than anyone else in the world. She knew how to destroy, and destroy she would.

A taxi would have taken her to the Rossyia Hotel faster than the metro, but she preferred the crowds. Instead of heading for the hotel, she crossed to the white-walled Church of Saint Anne and looked over at the glass monster. There was a risk, but risks had to be taken and controlled. She crossed Razin Street and headed for one of the doors to the hotel. The lobby looked safe enough, but she took no chances. She moved quickly to the lobby of the first tower though she knew the person she wanted was in the central tower.

No one in the lobby paid any attention as she walked past a group of Americans talking about a movie they had just seen.

“But,” said a thin, silver-haired man with a Yale accent, “must they make us pay by boring us?”

The dark-eyed one found the house phone and called the proper room.

“Oui?” came the voice of Monique Freneau.

“It’s me.” Monique Freneau said nothing, so she continued, “It will be necessary to make the purchase we discussed in France.”

The pause was long, and the dark-eyed woman looked around the lobby. She could not afford to stay long.

“I cannot,” said Monique in French.

“Tomorrow. Precisely at seven in the evening. There is nothing more to discuss.”

“I’m sorry, but that will be impossible,” Monique said, her voice breaking.

She had talked long enough. The phone might be tapped. The call could easily be traced to the lobby. The Frenchwoman’s refusal to cooperate had not come as a surprise. There were those who claimed commitment but who could not carry out that claim. In fact, this had been true of all but a handful of people she had encountered. Either the German or the Englishman might have said the same thing, but the lesson had to be taught somewhere.

She hung up, and strode across the lobby toward the restaurant, pretending to look for something in her large cloth purse. In fact, she was watching the phone she had just left. If the police or the KGB appeared there, she would hurry into the dining room, join someone at dinner, and make up a story drawn from the thread of a dozen tales that had served her in similar situations in the past. But no one pounced on the phone.

It took her ten minutes to make her way carefully to the central tower and up the stairway to the right floor. It took her another minute to assure herself that Monique was alone in her room. It took only a knock to get Monique to open the door, and it took only a pair of blows with the fist to kill her. The dark-eyed woman stepped back into the hall, closed the door, and hurried away.

Word of the killing would have to reach the other two, and they would have to be, made to understand what it meant. But even if they did their part, one-third of the task would remain undone. She would have to do that herself.

She would make two phone calls, and then she would simply hide, go back to the apartment of the student she had made it her business to meet. She would feign ecstasy at his touch and thus keep him busy for the remainder of that day and much of the next. He was relatively stupid, totally inept sexually, and probably harmless. If he did nothing to change her mind, she probably wouldn’t have to kill him before she left.

Rostnikov left the room of the German, Wolfgang Bintz, at the Rossyia Hotel and went to the lobby, missing the dark-eyed woman by more than half an hour. A high-ranking assistant to the hotel manager stopped Rostnikov as he emerged from the elevator. He told the chief inspector that an urgent message had arrived at the desk: Rostnikov was to call his office at once.

Karpo’s voice came as evenly and calmly as ever over the phone. “Inspector, there are several developments you should know about. A KGB inspector who was following one of the terrorists has been killed. Four members of World Liberation also have been killed in a KGB raid. And the Frenchwoman Tkach questioned yesterday has just been found dead there in the hotel.”

Rostnikov sighed mightily. “Emil Karpo, even with all this killing, Moscow is one of the safest cities in the world. One of the safest. Can you imagine what it must be like to live in London or Tokyo or Rome…?” Then his voice trailed off, for he was indeed beginning to imagine what those places might be like.

“Are you all right, Chief Inspector?” Karpo asked with something like concern.

“I am all right,” Rostnikov replied, looking at the eavesdropping assistant manager, a porky man who hovered nearby pretending to read some mail. “Since I am here, I will go look at the body. Perhaps I will be lucky. Who knows? Perhaps I will make it all the way from the lobby to the room without discovering another body. How are you doing on finding the woman?”

“I am following procedure,” said Karpo, relieved to get back to routine. “We checked the hotels and-”

“Do you have any leads at all?” Rostnikov threw in, glaring at the hotel assistant.

“Nothing yet,” admitted Karpo.

Rostnikov grunted and hung up.

“Please get someone to take me to the hotel room of Monique Freneau, who has been murdered in your hotel,” Rostnikov said maliciously. The man made a perfect target for Rostnikov’s frustration.

“The hotel is not mine,” the red-faced man said with a trained smile. “It belongs to the state. It is as much yours as mine, Comrade.”

“Very well,” said Rostnikov, letting out a long sigh. “Then let us proceed through our hotel while there are still guests alive to answer our questions.”

The man smiled, unsure whether the policeman was slightly mad or trying to make some kind of joke. The all-purpose smile of the hotel official would cover either contingency, but in spite of his curiosity the assistant manager decided to get away from this strange, limping barrel of a man as soon as possible.

Had Rostnikov, at that moment, gone back to the German’s room and listened at the door, he would have heard something that would have saved much time and at least one life, but he did not hear Wolfgang Bintz answer the ringing phone with a very tentative “Guten tag?”

EIGHT

The interview with the German director, Wolfgang Bintz, had not gone quite as Rostnikov had anticipated. Bintz had been sitting in a chair in the center of the room when a dark young woman from intourist led the chief inspector in. She looked quite calm, but the calmness, Rostnikov could see, was as thin as the first film of ice on the Moskva River. A very slight pressure would crack it.

“Chief Inspector Rostnikov,” he had introduced himself.

“Ludmilla Konvisser,” the young woman said in a businesslike way. “I am from Intourist and will translate for you as needed. This is Herr Bintz.”

Bintz’s robe was partly open to reveal a gold chain and crucifix lying against the wiry gray hairs of his chest. His hair was gray and bushy and his eyes gray and riveting. His face was clean shaven and pleasant, but what struck Rostnikov was the man’s massive bulk.

“Do’briy d’en,” said the German seriously without rising.

“Guten tag” replied Rostnikov as Bintz waved a massive hand at the chair opposite him.

Since they had both exhausted their vocabulary in the other’s language, they looked at Ludmilla Konvisser. Bintz was accustomed to translators and spoke quickly in German.

“Herr Bintz,” she translated for Rostnikov, “wants to know if you speak any language besides Russian.”

“English,” said Rostnikov, taking the chair across from Bintz.

“Good,” replied Bintz in English, “then we need not a translator.”

In German he said something to the young woman. Rostnikov was sure it was a dismissal. She turned almost apologetically to Rostnikov and was about to speak when he said, “It’s all right. We’ll be done in less than an hour.”

With that, Ludmilla picked up her blue bag, said something in German, and left the room.