sale of goods, making indecent suggestions to a little girl. Yes, I can see how you would forget such things. Let us have the witnesses.”
Three of the women testified, followed by Tkach, who was greeted by applause from the small gathering of relatives of the victims when he described Rostnikov’s decimation of the gang.
“We object,” cried Sarnoff, looking back at a young woman who sat near the door and was giving him a sour look.
“You object to having been humiliated?” said the judge.
“It didn’t happen that way,” insisted Sarnoff.
“I’ll decide which way it happened,” said the judge.
Normally, the detective who has made the arrest does not appear at the trial, and the judge simply reads a statement written by the detective. The detective’s deposition is normally a repetition of the charges with any comments about the defendant’s background or character that the police wish to make. In this case, however, Tkach was actually a party to one of the charges, that of attempted murder, and so was called on to testify though there had been little doubt from the moment of arrest what the conclusion would be.
“So,” the judge said, after Tkach had finished his testimony, “does anyone have any questions, anything to say? Is everything clear? No? Good, the defendants can have the last word.”
“Comrade Judge,” said Sarnoff, launching into a speech he had obviously rehearsed, “we have done a terrible thing. We are not worthy of Soviet citizenship, but we have learned from your wisdom, and we now see that what we did was wrong. We wish to accept our punishment and as soon as possible return to useful jobs to demonstrate our commitment to the state and the future.” Sarnoff paused and got prodded from behind gently by the one called Arenko.
“Oh, yes,” Sarnoff added. “We beg the court to be merciful.”
“That’s all?” the judge said. “Good. I’ll be back with the verdict in a little while.”
An armed police officer stepped forward as the judge rose and moved to the little dark closet that served as his chambers. While the judge wrote out his verdict and decision and smoked four black cigarettes, the defendants conferred, argued, and ignored as best they could their relatives and their victims.
Tkach sat down next to Marina Restovya who, now that the swelling in her face had gone down a bit, looked even more like an older version of his Maya.
“Will they be executed?” she whispered to Tkach.
“Not for a crime such as this,” he answered, “but I’m confident the punishment will be severe.” The death sentence, Tkach knew, was generally reserved for murder and political heresy.
The judge returned in about twenty minutes, sat down, and motioned for silence. By now the already stuffy room was stifling with twenty sweating bodies and poor ventilation.
“In the name of the Russian Federated Socialist Republic,” began the judge wearily, “it is found that the defendants committed the acts charged in the indictment, crimes specified in the criminal code. In determining punishment, the court has taken into consideration the past record of arrests of three of the defendants, the clear hypocrisy of their contrition, and the disgusting nature of their acts. The sentence is ten years of corrective labor with deprivation of freedom in a penal institution to be decided upon by the state.”
It was about what Tkach had expected. Everyone in the courtroom knew that ten years meant ten years, that this meant Siberia, that in ten years the men would age thirty years, and that at least one and possibly more of them would not survive. Tkach looked at Marina Restovya, who nodded solemnly in approval of the verdict. A woman of about fifty began to weep softly and was comforted by a gritty man her own age in worker’s clothes.
“Is the sentence clear to you defendants?”
“It is clear,” said Sarnoff, his voice breaking.
“Good,” said the judge rising.
The defendants were ushered out by the armed police officers and a few minutes of shuffling cleared the courtroom except for the judge, Tkach, and the court secretary.
The judge lit a cigarette and coughed.
“If I could,” said the judge to Tkach, “I’d have them executed as an example.”
“Yes,” said Tkach, thinking that examples, from his experience, didn’t seem to have much effect on the behavior of such young men.
“Ludmilla,” the judge said to the secretary, “a copy of the trial report for the police.”
With that, the judge turned his back, coughed again, and returned to his little office. Ludmilla brushed past Sasha and went into the corridor.
All in all, Tkach thought, Soviet justice was swift and clear, which was just the way he and most of the police wanted it.
TWELVE
Wolfgang Bintz had not always been a fat man. He had been thin as a young man, but then his boyhood and very early manhood had coincided with the decline and fall of Berlin, during which almost everyone was thin. If one was not thin at the end of the war, one had much to explain.
Bintz had vivid recollections of his agile former self. One particularly vivid memory was of running down a narrow street off the Wilhelmstrasse in 1945 after he and Bruno Wolfe had killed a Russian soldier. It was at night. The soldier was looking in a bakery window, and Bruno hit him with a metal bar. Wolfgang had always assumed the Russian died. He had not stopped to check, nor had there been any published report of the murder.
It was the running Bintz remembered. They ran for miles, the city blurring to their right and left, through bombed-out streets.
Then, when the war was over, Wolfgang got a speaking part in a movie. He enjoyed the work. And he enjoyed the eating. He ate and ate and soon became a fat young man. Subconsciously, he was storing food away in case another time of starvation should descend on Germany.
With the fat had come an aversion to moving quickly or walking far. He let his camera move for him. His films were full of movement and action. They were the execution of his imagination. In them, he relived that run through the streets of Berlin after the attack on the Russian soldier.
And now he was being called on to run again, or at least walk a long distance. The run might come later. He left the hotel at three o’clock Saturday afternoon after telling the girl from Intourist that he wanted to walk around and see Moscow on his own. It was not at all what he wanted to do, but she was glad to be relieved of responsibility and let him go without protest.
Bintz had a map and a vague idea of how to get where he was going. He found Sverdlov Square, looked around at the Hotel Metropole and the stretch of wall that dates back to the sixteenth century. He found 25th October Street and made his way along the walls of broken brick. Near the old Stock Exchange, he turned in Rybny Pereulok, or Fish Lane, which was little more than an alley. This took him to Razin Street with its row of government office buildings. He then found the Znamensky Monastery and, as directed, stood before it. He knew that he was a few hundred yards from the Hotel Rossyia and that he could have gotten to this spot in less time. In truth, he had been tempted to neglect the precautions, to save having to walk, but he had overcome that desire and now stood, the crowd moving past him, pretending to examine the seventeenth-century building in which he had no interest. He did imagine a werewolf atop the roof growling down in defiance at a troop of armed Russian soldiers, the moon behind him.
He almost managed to lose himself in the vision of the werewolf leaping down, the camera on a massive boom rising over him. His right hand began to rise inadvertently to simulate the smooth animal movement and, as it did so, he felt something against his side.
It was a familiar feeling, and Bintz almost shouted in German that his pocket had been picked, but he had nothing in the side pocket of his pants. His hand slapped down and now felt something small, about twice the size of a pfennig and much heavier.
Bintz looked at the figures passing by in both directions, but no one was looking at him. He had no idea which of them had dropped the object into his pocket. He turned back to the monastery without seeing it and let
