“What makes you-” Elena began, but Sasha jumped in.
“The police would not be looking for some servant girl.”
“Is there a reward for finding her?” asked Tatyana.
“I don’t know,” said Elena.
“There’s a reward,” said Sasha. “One thousand rubles.”
“One thousand only? You can’t buy two chickens for that. This is a hard-currency bar. Arabs come here, they spend a hundred American dollars a night.”
“Perhaps we can get a thousand American dollars,” Sasha said. “If she is definitely located. “
“I’ll ask around,” said Tatyana. “No guarantees, but … you know. How do I reach you?”
Elena pulled out her notebook and wrote her name and Petrovka telephone number on a sheet of paper, which she tore out. Tatyana dried her hands on a towel before taking it.
“Sasha Tkach,” she said, reading the sheet. “That’s not a policeman’s name. That’s a ballet dancer’s name.”
“He doesn’t use his real name,” Elena said. “He is Sasha Shevardnadze.”
“You mean …”
“I mean nothing,” Elena whispered. “If you find her, Sasha Tkach will be very pleased. You understand?”
“I am not a fool,” said Tatyana.
Back on the street Elena and Sasha nearly bumped into a huge man with a black plastic bag in each hand.
When they had passed the man, Elena turned to Sasha. “A thousand American dollars? We can’t pay her a thousand kopeks.”
Sasha moved ahead. “The girl’s father will pay,” he said.
“And if he won’t? If we are told not to ask him?”
“Then we lied.”
“You lied, Tkach,” Elena said angrily.
“I lied,” he said. “If we find her …”
“
“When we find her,” he amended, “you can include on the report that it was accomplished by my lying to a bar owner who is probably also a prostitute.”
“A prostitute? You are a-” Elena began.
“-son of Shevardnadze,” he finished. “We’ll come back tonight and look for someone who knows her. Let’s go.”
“Go where?”
“To the apartment of Grisha Zalinsky near the university,” he said, moving in the direction of Pushkin Square.
“Why? Slow down, Tkach,” she said.
“Are you tired?”
“No,” she answered. “I can probably outrun you in any distance over a kilometer, but I can’t understand you when you move away and turn your back. Who is Grisha Zalinsky?”
Tkach stopped suddenly and turned to her. She almost ran into him. “Grisha Zalinsky was the Arab girl’s boyfriend,” he explained.
“Was? They are no longer friends?”
“Grisha Zalinsky no longer
“And how do you know all this?”
“When I called into Petrovka five minutes ago, I was told he had been beaten to death in his apartment early this morning. Letters from her were found. The investigating officer recognized her name from the missing persons list.”
“You are not a pleasant man, Sasha Tkach,” Elena said.
“I am having a particularly difficult decade.”
“You don’t like me, do you?”
Tkach considered the question seriously. “I don’t think so. But today I do not particularly like anyone, not even myself, especially not myself.”
He turned and headed toward the metro station.
The man with the two black plastic bags was named Leonid Dovnik. He had seen Sasha and Elena enter the bar and knew they were policemen. It was not a difficult thing to recognize. So instead of entering behind them, he had waited outside till they left.
Leonid did not know why these policemen had gone into the bar, but he was sure that when they came out, he had heard them discussing the young man he had beaten to death just a few hours before.
It had been no trouble finding the young Jew. He had simply looked at the photograph of Zalinsky and the Arab girl that had been given to him and waited at the university where he knew the young man was a student. He had waited for two days till he saw him this morning and followed him home.
Following the murder, Leonid had come to Gorky Street, where he bypassed three state-owned grocery stores, not even bothering to look inside, since there were no lines. No lines meant no food.
He finally stopped at the Gastronon No. 1, the fourth state grocery store. It was crowded and warm even on a cool morning. Forty or fifty people were at the sausage counter waiting to buy kielbasa.
Leonid moved to the milk-products counter. Less than ten minutes later he had been through the line to pay and was back in the line to pick up his cheese and milk. People pushed, shoved, cursed, but given Leonid’s size and his lack of a neck, those who could avoid contact with him did so. Since the latest round of shortages and rocketing prices that were part of the so-called new freedom, people had grown even more rude than before. Leonid was never rude. He made a living being brutal, but he did it with courtesy when possible. It was a job that paid him well enough to eat and live comfortably, and since he had absolutely no moral sense, it was a job that suited him well. He could afford to be polite.
Since he had not brought a bag, Leonid stopped at a kiosk further down Gorky Street and bought two black plastic bags with gold drawings of Elvis Presley printed on them. Less than an hour later the bags were full, including a fresh loaf of bread that he had purchased for an American dollar from a black-market dealer. Leonid was pleased with his acquisitions.
When he was almost in front of the door of the Nikolai, he had seen the young policeman and woman enter. He had stood patiently for ten minutes till the pair had burst out of the door arguing. The young woman had chased the angry man down the street and Leonid had watched. They had paid no attention to him. When the name Grisha Zalinsky was mentioned, Leonid was perplexed. There was no way he could have been connected to the murder, certainly not so quickly.
Leonid waited till they were lost in the morning crowd before entering the Nikolai. He had done his job. He wanted no complications. He wanted to collect his pay, go home, have something to eat, and watch television.
Although he did not put the feeling into words, Leonid was sure that this turn of events, this appearance of two policemen, meant that he would probably have to kill someone else and quite soon. He hoped it was not the pretty Arab girl, but if it was, so be it. Tatyana would know.
A little over forty miles northwest of the Nikolai in the village of Arkush another murderer was reading a newspaper.
This murderer, unlike Leonid Dovnik, had a very strong moral sense. Killing the priest had been frightening, but necessary. It had marked a definite end. The killer’s hand had shaken as he waited in the trees. He had been afraid his legs would not carry him into the open to strike, but they had, and he had done what had to be done, and now, a day later, he trembled again.
His mother had not believed in revenge. Oleg had told him that revenge would give him no satisfaction, and he had believed and put it aside. Then Father Merhum had given him the reason.
After the murder he had gone home calmly, cleaned the ax, put it away, and sat listening to himself breathe. He wanted to spend the day at his work, but the word of Father Merhum’s death had spread quickly through the village and drawn him into the discussion, the lamenting.
