heroes, in the square in 1945, but today his thoughts were elsewhere. Several young men wandered by selling drinks, but all were blond. Then, after about an hour, Tkach saw what he was looking for. A young man with straight dark hair, looking very much like a French or American rocker of the 1950s, strode down from Leningrad Prospekt carrying a basketful of bottled drinks. Tkach began following him at a discreet distance. It might be the wrong youth, but Tkach had a hunch. The man was easy to follow. He moved slowly through the crowd and did not seem particularly concerned with selling his wares. Then a second young man joined him. A few minutes later, a third joined them and then a fourth. They laughed, pushed one another, looked at the passing women. Then they checked their watches and headed for the metro station. They took the underground walkway across the street, and Tkach almost lost them in the crowd, but they were in no hurry, and he found them well before they entered the station.
Tkach got on the same car with them and his heart started pounding when, two stops later at Pushkin Square, they began pushing their way off the train. The pattern fit.
Out on the street they hesitated, discussing whether they should move across the square toward the Rossyia Cinema or down Gorky Street. They opted for Gorky Street, and Tkach followed. They turned off at the Stanislavsky Theater, made another turn a block farther on, and stopped. The street was narrow and almost deserted. Tkach kept walking and went right past them as if he were in a hurry to get home. They watched him, he was sure, as he turned a corner. Darkness was coming now, and Tkach started looking for a public building, an open door. It was time to get help. He was confident that he had found the attackers, even though he had no evidence. The victims could identify them. That would be proof enough. He found a small gift shop and ducked inside, watching the window for the approaching muggers.
“Yes?” said the woman behind the counter without enthusiasm, recognizing Tkach for what he was, a Russian and not a foreign tourist.
“Your phone,” he said, looking back. The young men had turned the corner and were walking toward the entrance to a building Tkach did not recognize. It was a large new office building.
“We have no phone,” the dark-haired shop owner said.
“Then find one.” He pulled out his wallet and held his identification in front of the woman’s face. “Find one and call Petrovka nine-one-one. Ask for Chief Inspector Rostnikov.” The young men had now disappeared into the building across the street. “If he’s not there, ask for Inspector Karpo. Or ask for anyone and tell them Inspector Tkach needs help in that building.”
He pointed to the building, stuffed his wallet in his pocket and turned to leave. But the woman looked unimpressed, and Tkach said angrily, “I vow to you, woman, if you do not find a phone and make the call, and do it quickly, you will be answering questions tonight instead of going home.”
He dashed out of the store and ran across the street.
He was panting lightly when he entered the building. He loosened his tie and looked around the lobby. It was the headquarters of some branch of the railway and transportation system. A guard should have been in the lobby to take names. Even though it was a bit late, some people were still leaving the building. Now, he thought, where are they? Did they spot me? Do they know of some other way out? Or have they already found a victim and pulled her into a stairwell, or…One of them was standing around a corner near an elevator door. Where were the others?
The young man pressed the button impatiently, glanced over his shoulder at Tkach, who was walking toward him, and showed no sign of recognition. Tkach waited with him at the elevator. Without looking at the man, Tkach could see that he was about twenty. He outweighed Tkach by twenty pounds, and was a few inches taller. As Tkach recalled, this was one of the smaller members of the group.
Tkach didn’t have his gun with him. He had not expected to need it. In truth, he had carried it as seldom as possible since he shot the young robber this past winter. But Tkach knew that he could subdue this one young man.
Looking at Tkach’s loosened tie, the young man smiled and said, “I think it will be a warm summer.”
“Perhaps,” said Tkach indifferently.
“You work here?” the young man asked casually.
“Sometimes,” Tkach replied, giving the man an imperious look to indicate that such a question was far too familiar for his taste.
The elevator arrived, and the two men stepped inside. The operator was a woman about fifty. Tkach didn’t want to seem reluctant to give his floor number, so he said, “Twelve.” The young man said, “Seven.”
The elevator rose slowly. The woman adjusted her glasses, and Tkach pretended to ignore the young man. When the doors opened at seven, the young man turned to Tkach and smiled slightly before getting off.
As soon as the doors closed Tkach said, “Comrade, let me off at the next floor. Then take the elevator down to the lobby and wait there for the police, who will arrive soon. Take them up to the seventh floor and tell them to be careful.”
The elevator operator looked over her shoulder at him as if he were mad and went past the eighth floor. Tkach, sweating now, whipped out his wallet and showed his identification. “MVD,” he said. “There is a gang of rapists in this building. You just let one of them out on the seventh floor. The others are probably there now looking for a victim.” They were passing the ninth floor, and she was looking at him stupidly with her mouth open. He went on. “You might be that victim. Let me out. Then go right back down without stopping and do what I said. Do you understand?”
She nodded as they passed the tenth floor. He reached over and pushed the button for eleven. She pressed herself against the wall. The door opened, and Tkach said, “Now go down. Quick.”
As soon as he was out of the car, she pushed the doors closed and was gone.
The dark hallway was quiet and deserted. Then Tkach saw a woman of about sixty with a bucket in her hand.
The cleaning women, he thought. They’re after a cleaning woman. He dashed past the woman. He ran down the narrow concrete stairs two at a time, almost stumbling.
On the seventh floor the corridor was also dark and deserted. Staying in the shadows, he moved along slowly, listening, and then he heard something, a ticking perhaps, metal hitting metal. He followed the sound, carefully listening for voices, hearing none, trying to keep his footsteps as soundless as possible. It took him a few minutes to determine that the tapping was coming from a room at the far end of the corridor. Perhaps it was a cleaning woman.
He stopped at the door, listening for a moment to the soft clanking, then pushed it open. The office was dark, but the sound was quite clear. And then the lights went on.
One of the men was tapping a knife against a metal desk. There was a man on each side of the door. The one who had been on the elevator stood in the corner, his arms folded, a smile on his face.
The one with the knife stopped tapping.
“You followed like a fish,” he said, showing a very poor set of teeth. He was the biggest of the group, quite big and clearly the leader.
“I am a police inspector,” Tkach said, trying not to show fear. “There are police downstairs by now. You don’t want trouble with the police. Just come with me and answer a few questions.”
“About what?” asked the leader, closing his knife and putting it in his pocket.
“Routine,” said Tkach, cursing himself for sweating.
“Ah,” said the leader, suddenly understanding. “You mean about my selling drinks in the square without a license.”
“Yes,” said Tkach. “That is it.”
“And you followed me all the way here for that great crime?”
“And to see if you were involved in any other criminal activity,” Tkach said. “I don’t like your looks, but I can see you’re not up to anything more than mild hooliganism.”
“Do any of you believe this baby face?” the leader asked.
There was no answer. The leader came around the desk and moved in front of Tkach.
“Those women,” he said. “That’s why you followed us. We want to know how you got on to us. You tell us. Then we push you around a little, tie you up, and run. We’ve got places in the North we can go.”
It was a lie, a poor lie, a game to give Tkach hope and then take it away. The image of the battered women came back to Tkach and he said, “There is no place you can hide in the Soviet Union. You know that. You might as
