Death Of A Russian Priest

“We are sorry,” said Rostnikov, handing her a clean handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He never used a handkerchief himself, but he had discovered it was very useful to a policeman when dealing with a weeping suspect or witness. “My young colleague is about to become a father for the second time.”

“Well, why didn’t he say so?” said Tatyana, turning with the handkerchief in hand to examine herself in the mirror. But there was no longer much of a mirror behind the bar.

“He has a lot on his mind,” said Rostnikov. “May I sit?”

“If you can find an unbroken chair,” said Tatyana.

“I have a bad leg,” explained Rostnikov, finding a chair and sitting.

“I am sorry,” said Tatyana, “but I can’t pay for this damage. Mirrors, chairs. Do you know what they cost? If you can even find them.”

Rostnikov looked around. The two injured men were now gone and there was quite a bit of damage.

“And the business I just lost,” she said. “I’m not a wealthy woman.”

“Where is the Arab girl? Amira Durahaman?” asked Elena. “Her father will give you the reward if you know.”

“You didn’t have to hurt me because I made you feel something you never felt before,” Tatyana said.

“I made love to two women when I was in college,” Elena said. “It was mildly interesting. You think too highly of yourself.”

Sasha Tkach pulled out a chair and sat next to Sasha. Both men looked at the two women.

“I’ll get the reward?” Tatyana asked.

“If there is a reward,” said Elena.

“I would like,” said Sasha, “a mineral water with no gas. Is that possible?”

Tatyana shrugged and moved behind the bar.

“Inspector,” Elena said. “I would like your permission to find a basin and wash myself.”

“Wash,” said Rostnikov. Elena moved toward the beaded curtains.

“I’m sorry,” said Tkach, feeling his tender ribs. “I made a serious mistake. “

“Not if you wished to commit suicide in the line of duty. If that was your goal, then there was no mistake, just the accident of my arrival. It is very strange, Sasha Tkach. I have never seen a fight in a bar before. In all my years as a policeman, never a fight until tonight. It was like a John Wayne movie.”

“The Spoilers,” said Tatyana, coming around the bar. “Dietrich and John Wayne.” She placed a glass of mineral water in front of Rostnikov.

“Thank you,” he said. “Please sit. I gather from what I have heard that you may know where to find the Syrian girl.”

“A reward would help pay for the damage your crazy policeman has caused,” she said.

“We can talk to the girl’s father about a reward,” said Rostnikov. “I will suggest he not pay. I will suggest to you that your reward for telling us about the girl will be our departure. Life is hard and getting no easier. But there are exceptions, moments of, if not hope, at least relief. A child is born healthy. A book absorbs us. A friend laughs. Unwanted guests depart and never return.”

“I know nothing of the girl,” Tatyana said, folding her arms. “But if I-”

“Look at me,” Rostnikov said. And she looked at the homely face of a man with large, very sympathetic brown eyes. “My son wrote a play. I saw it tonight. I did not like the play. Not because it was a bad play, but because I saw in it what others may not have seen. The pain of my only son.” He looked at Sasha Tkach, who ran his hand through his hair and turned away. Against the far wall the rattle of beads announced Elena’s return.

“In the play my son’s character is killed. He rose when the curtain went down and men came out to greet us. A boy who knew the missing Syrian girl died this morning. He had a father and a mother. He will not rise and greet his parents. Amira Durahaman has a father. You will tell us where to find the girl. Otherwise I will take you with us, and you will, I am sorry to say, be very unhappy.”

“The girl came in here sometimes,” Tatyana said, looking around at the three policemen. “She came in with a young Jew, sometimes others. I don’t know their names, so don’t ask me. I don’t know names. I give customers nicknames-the Barstool, Hands, the Siberian, Phil Collins. They like that.”

“And the girl?” asked Sasha. “Did you have a name for her?”

“Bright Eyes,” said Tatyana. “I know no more, but I’ll try to-”

“Lock your doors and come with us,” said Rostnikov.

“Please,” Tatyana said, almost in tears.

“Officer Timofeyeva, will you please take-” he began, and the woman crumbled.

“No prison. People are getting lost in prisons. They’re not being fed. Names. Names. I’ll give you names if you promise no prison.”

Porfiry Petrovich nodded at Elena, who took out her pen and notebook and began writing the names that came from Tatyana.

When she was finished, Rostnikov turned to Elena and said, “Go home, sleep.”

Elena Timofeyeva opened her mouth to say something, glanced at Tatyana, who was not looking at her, and decided to say nothing.

“Sasha Tkach, we’ll stop at the hospital, have you looked at, sewn, and patched before we send you home.”

“I can clean up at home,” Tkach said.

“If you go home looking like that,” said Rostnikov, “you will frighten your wife and child and bring the wrath of your mother down on my head. No, my own peace depends on the ability of some tired nurse to put you in acceptable surface condition. On the way we can talk.”

“Her,” said Elena, nodding at Tatyana. “She might run away.”

“She will not run,” said Rostnikov. “She is a woman of property.”

Tatyana looked around the wreck of a room. “I won’t run,” she answered, so softly that Elena wasn’t sure she had heard her. “This street, this city, this café. I won’t run.”

Something vibrated through Tatyana and her voice suddenly rose. “I will survive,” she said. “I will prosper.”

Rostnikov stood, moved the toes of his left foot, and found them still functional. “It has been a busy day,” he said. “And tomorrow promises to be no easier.”

Colonel Lunacharski was not hungry, but he sat alone in the almost empty cafeteria at two in the morning drinking a glass of coffee into which he had stirred three spoons of sugar. Colonel Lunacharski was not hungry, but he was tired. Getting out of his office was essential, and there was no place to go at two in the morning but the small cafeteria for night-duty officers in Lubyanka.

Only weeks before he had been among the elite stationed at Yasenevo, the headquarters of the KGB’s intelligence-and-espionage arm, outside the city. From his office on the twentieth floor, Lunacharski had been able to look down at a lush les, the forest that had given the headquarters the name by which it was known to him and the others who were insiders.

The dining room in Yasenevo had been one of the principal perks of power. But that was gone, at least for him, at least for now.

Since Lunacharski disliked coffee, which he drank to help him stay awake, he could tolerate it only with massive doses of sugar. He was well aware from experience that the sugar and coffee would charge him with energy now, but that the artificial charge would not last. In half an hour he would have to remove his coat and stand outside in the cold air till he felt revitalized enough to go back to his office and take a pill, which would get him through till late in the afternoon.

Vladimir Lunacharski made it a rule to exercise vigorously and never to take more than two pills a week. He was well aware of the dangers of addiction and confident that he could walk the line between his need for wakefulness and his dependency on the orange pills.

Colonel Lunacharski knew well why he disliked coffee. His father, a man of terrible temper, had drunk massive quantities of both tea and coffee. His father’s long, fine fingers had been stained by his addiction to the beans themselves, which, when he could get them, he chewed like candy.

His father, an army sergeant, had died in 1968 of a stroke after a screaming rage over his wife’s having overcooked a ham.

Vladimir thought he remembered when he was an infant and his mother’s breasts gave him sour milk after