They reached the main floor and the elevator doors opened.
“I will leave understanding to you, Inspector. I prefer procedure and no distraction. Understanding makes me uncomfortable.”
The six uniformed and armed young men in the lobby glanced at the familiar figures of the Washtub and the Vampire and turned their eyes away to scan the faces of those who were entering.
There was a car waiting for them at the curb on Petrovka Street, a Moskovitch. Since the triumphant rescue of the kidnapped President Gorbachev and the alignment of the Special Projects office with the new government, the Gray Wolfhound’s men had reasonable access to motor-pool vehicles and drivers. Rostnikov had not as yet been given one of the BMWs that were being added to the police transport pool, but a cramped Moskovitch might be better than no car at all. The assignment of a car and driver was, in fact, often no great saving in time, since the metro was much faster than a car even in the privileged center lanes of the larger streets. But the Wolfhound insisted that his staff drive whenever possible.
There was an additional problem. It was also well known that in the past drivers were often KGB informers within the MVD who reported on conversations within the supposed privacy of the assigned cars. This had led to long, silent, and boring automobile rides or conversations with the drivers about safe issues. Rostnikov was not yet sure that this situation would not return and so he chose to remain uncomfortable.
“A moment,” said Rostnikov, moving past the car to a kvass cart a few yards down. There was no line, and like most Muscovites, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov could not resist the opportunity to buy something without having to wait in line.
“
“No.”
“Ask the driver.”
Karpo approached the car, leaned forward, conferred with the driver, then called out again, “No.”
The old woman filled a plastic cup with the dark liquid and handed it to Rostnikov, who drank it without haste while Karpo stood patiently at his side.
“Good,” said Rostnikov, dropping the empty cup in the tin can on top of the cart.
The old woman, whose face was very round and red, responded with the hint of a smile.
When they were seated in the rear of the car, Rostnikov said, “My father believed that kvass was like medicine, the mixture of black bread and yeast stimulated the body fluids.”
“It’s possible,” said Karpo.
“There are fewer and fewer carts in the city,” said Rostnikov with a sigh. “Do you remember the apartment in which you were a small boy?”
“Yes,” said Karpo.
“In detail? Where the chairs, beds, tables, windows were?”
“Yes.”
“About the joke. You don’t have to learn one. I was joking.”
“I see,” said Karpo, looking straight ahead and making it quite clear that he saw nothing.
There were only two people Emil Karpo trusted, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov and Mathilde Verson. He did not always understand either of them, but he had come to the conclusion that not only could they be relied upon but that they had strong feelings for him. Since he was well aware that there was no humor or warmth within him, he found their feelings inexplicable and meaningful.
For more than forty years of his life all meaning had been contained in the Soviet state and the revolution. The function of Emil Karpo had been to obey his superiors and to locate and bring to justice all criminals, all enemies of the revolution.
The union was gone. The Soviet Socialist Republics were now a commonwealth of sovereign states. Leningrad was once again St. Petersburg. They had even gotten rid of the hammer and sickle and designed a flag that seemed no flag. Next, he thought, there would be a return to the two-headed eagle of the czars. The party was underground, crying in pain, dying. The revolution was gone and there was nothing ahead but a gray imitation of the Western democracies.
Meaning was disappearing, but what little there was he clung to. His faith and loyalty had lost their certainty and there were moments when panic threatened to break through, moments that were longer each time they came. And each time the moment was accompanied by the headaches, the headaches that he still welcomed, that still tested him as they had since he was a boy. There were still the headaches and he could still welcome them. There were still criminals and they could be identified. He wondered if Porfiry Petrovich was aware of these moments of doubt.
Rostnikov was looking out the window making a sound that might have been humming and might simply have been a sound. “Were your grandparents religious, Emil Karpo? Did they believe in a god?”
“They were members of the Orthodox Church,” said Karpo. “They died long before I was born.”
They drove the rest of the way to the train station in silence.
Through a curtained window slightly parted so that he could look out onto what had recently been Dzerzhinsky Square, Colonel Vladimir Lunacharski looked down at the group of tourists gathering for a guided tour of Lubyanka, the former headquarters of the Committee for State Security, the KGB. The tour guide was pointing to the empty pedestal in the center of the square where the statue of Iron Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet Secret Police, had stood until the rabble had torn it down. There were rumors that Lubyanka, too, would either be torn down or turned into a government office building.
The tourists would pass by his office door sometime later that morning, whispering such rumors in foreign languages, looking at everything as if they were in some Byzantine church.
Cars circled the square, headed toward the heart of Moscow. A small group of people gathered in front of the toy store beyond the square.
The colonel suppressed a sigh. He had no great love for these changes, for this new Russia that brought Americans and jabbering Germans galloping past his office. Independence had resulted in a demotion for him. Well, they had not called it a demotion.
The fifth directorate, the directorate responsible for monitoring the activities of dissidents, the directorate in which Vladimir Ivanovich Lunacharski had served for thirty years, had been reorganized even before the collapse of the union. Its name had been changed first to Directorate Z, but now, for almost a year, it had been called the directorate for safeguarding the constitution. This reorganization, the tours of Lubyanka, had all come about after the KGB’s power had been transferred from the Politburo to the Supreme Soviet, implying greater scrutiny over the KGB’s activities. But that, too, had changed, and now every day there were new laws and new restrictions. Lunacharski did not even know with certainty from day to day what organization, if any, he worked for.
The KGB had, since its inception, been at the service of the Communist party. Now all security forces within the Russian borders were under the direct control of the egomaniac Yeltsin and his young idealists.
But General Karsnikov had assured him that the collegium, the highest decision-making body of the KGB, would remain strong, that the nation needed the confidence and control of the security apparatus, whatever they chose to call it. Of this, General Karsnikov had no doubts. General Karsnikov had called Colonel Lunacharski into his office on the first floor less than a month ago to tell him all of this. The office, with large, modern furnishings, sturdy chairs, and a circular conference table for six, had not changed in twenty years, and the large photograph of Lenin still hung on the wall near the door.
Others had removed their Lenin photos and paintings and replaced them with nothing, but General Karsnikov had left his where it had always been, a sign that for him the change would not come simply, that too many lives had been invested in the institution to give it up with a whimper.
“Changes will have to be made,” the general had said.
He was a heavy man who liked to wear uniforms but had ceased doing so a week before Russia declared its independence. Colonel Lunacharski had done the same.
Colonel Lunacharski was fifty-one years old. His weight, maintained by vigorous exercise and diet, was the same as it had been when he had entered the service at the age of twenty-one, the son of a hero of the revolution and the war against the Nazis. Lunacharski always stood erect and kept his still-dark hair cut military style. Lunacharski’s one regret was that he was not quite five and a half feet tall. He was determined that this lack of
