height would not keep him from rising in the ranks, that no one would ever say that this man with the face of a peasant and size of a large Alsatian dog could not represent state security at its highest levels.
“So, there will be some cosmetic changes, little things, temporary things,” the general had said, sitting across from him at the round conference table. “A few big ones.
“The truth,” he had continued, lowering his voice in confidence, though no one else was with them, “is that me KGB grew stronger, not weaker, with this perestroika. We withstood the attacks within our ranks, the attempts to cut our financial resources. We maintained more than two hundred and twenty thousand border guards, a volunteer militia of eighty thousand. Some of the army’s best units, including two paratroop divisions, were transferred to the KGB. We had our own planes and ships, our own army, and do you know what we provided?”
“Stability,” Colonel Lunacharski had answered, knowing that he was being prepared for some sacrifice.
“Stability,” the general had agreed. “It is we who will hold this confederacy of fighting chickens together, we who will provide hope, we to whom they will turn when they fear their Ukrainian and Georgian neighbors, we to whom they will turn when the world treats them like hulking trash. Lunacharski, these new leaders are no different from the old leaders, but they do not have the mask of communism to hold in front of them. They will change the face on that mask. They will call it democracy. And they will need us. But some surface changes are needed, temporary. There will be battles for control, power. Civilian idiots will think they are giving us orders and we will make them think we are obeying. There are those of us who will not allow the Russians to slip back into the nineteenth century.”
It was then that the colonel had been told that he would head the Office of Internal Investigative Control for the Division of Moscow. This meant that he would monitor and, when necessary, manipulate investigations of Colonel Aleksandr Snitkonoy’s special investigation unit. When the unit failed, General Karsnikov would step in, and Lunacharski, if all went well, would take over. The general made it clear that Lunacharski’s mission was informal. Such a subversive directive could not officially exist.
That meeting with the general had taken place four months ago, and Lunacharski had discovered much since. The staff of his office was twelve men and two women. In his last command he had had three hundred men and women. He could call upon resources from related divisions when necessary. The problem in calling on related divisions, as he had learned in the fifth directorate, was that other ambitious officers would then share his information, a situation not to be desired, especially in these volatile times. So be it. He would do as he was told. He would work eighteen-hour days as he had always done. He might be able to turn this demotion into an opportunity. It was not too late, given a major success or two, to move up. In fact this new Russia might well provide him with his greatest opportunity.
And so Vladimir Lunacharski turned away from the window and walked to the desk in his small Spartan office. He sat, put on his glasses, opened the file before him, which he had read before, skimmed it, running his fingers over each line, and then removed his glasses to look at the man across from him, who had been sitting patiently for more than fifteen minutes.
The man, who was dressed in a dark suit and equally dark tie, was of average height and quite ugly. His lips and mouth were very large, as were his eyes, and his skin was marked by dark blemishes. His name was Ilya Klamkin and he had, since boyhood, been known as the Frog.
“Go to Arkush in the morning,” Colonel Lunacharski said.
Klamkin nodded.
“Use our resources there to keep track of the Wolfhound’s investigation,” he continued. “Keep me informed. If any action must be taken, I want as much time as possible to consider it. You understand?”
Klamkin nodded again. “This Rostnikov,” the colonel said, tapping the file in front of him with his glasses, “was a source of some concern for the KGB in the past.”
Since this required no verbal confirmation, Klamkin nodded a third time.
“Read his file. Then watch, listen, and report, Lieutenant,” the colonel said. “As their fortunes fall ours rise. There are only so many bones to gnaw in a hungry nation.”
Klamkin rose quietly and nodded yet a fourth time. The colonel did not rise as the lieutenant left the room.
When Klamkin had gone, the colonel removed a second file from his desk. This file involved the search for a missing girl, an Arab whose father was oil minister of Syria. Like the Father Merhum investigation, it had been assigned to Snitkonoy’s unit, which would be blamed if there was failure. If success were imminent, it was Lunacharski’s responsibility to step in, file his own report, and take credit.
Fourteen more active files lay in the desk drawer, and Colonel Lunacharski knew he would go through each of them before the day was over, get reports on each case, either in person, which he preferred, or by phone. He would then review and revise, if necessary, each written report. It would be a long day, a long day in this small office with only a one-hour break for exercise in the gymnasium and a light lunch.
Footsteps tramped above his head. He was on the top floor of Lubyanka, and the roof above was where the prisoners had only months ago exercised twice each day. Now the sound signaled a stampede of tourists. The colonel shook his head and turned to his work.
There were no other distractions. His wife would not be looking for him. She had, years ago, resigned herself to a life alone, though she and her husband shared the same apartment with their two now-grown children, who at the earliest possible moment had married and moved as far from Moscow as they could. Marina Lunacharski was accustomed to spending days or even weeks without seeing her husband, which suited both of them.
The tramping overhead was nearly deafening now, and the colonel could no longer ignore the fact that he had been given the worst office in the building.
FIVE
“An Arab girl?” the woman behind the bar asked as she dried a series of glasses.
They were in the Nikolai Café on Gorky Street, which was no longer officially Gorky Street. The city leaders had changed the name of one of the busiest streets in Moscow back to its prerevolutionary name of Teverskaya Street, the street that leads to the town of Tver. It wasn’t that the leaders disliked Gorky but that Gorky had been Stalin’s favorite author.
The decision to change the name had been made almost two years before, but few street signs reflected the change, and it would be difficult to locate a Muscovite who referred to it as anything but Gorky Street.
The woman had been answering the questions of the policewoman with questions of her own while the good-looking young policeman used the telephone in the corner.
“How many Arab girls do you get in here?” asked Elena Timofeyeva.
Tatyana, the woman behind the bar, was in her forties, wearing a bright yellow blouse with puffy sleeves and a blue skirt much too young for her. Her artificially blond hair was straight and her loose skin was overly made up, but her sultry look was enhanced by the dim light of the bar. When they entered, she had, looked at Sasha with some interest, but it was clear that his thoughts were somewhere else.
“Lots of Arab girls come here. It’s a mecca for Arabs,” Tatyana said, smiling at her own joke.
“We’re looking for this one,” Elena said. She handed a photograph to the woman, who stopped cleaning glasses long enough to look at it.
“Pretty,” she said, “but she looks like lots of girls who come in here. What did she do?”
“Nothing,” said Elena. “She’s missing.”
“Arabs go other places besides here,” the woman said. “The Mahal on Kalinin and across the river-”
“She came here,” said Sasha Tkach, returning from his phone call.
“She told a few people that she liked to come here,” said Elena. “She didn’t mention the other places, but we will be checking them.”
Tatyana shrugged. “I can’t help you.”
“Her name is Amira Durahaman,” said Elena. “Her family is concerned.”
“Her family is rich and important?” asked Tatyana.
