The car started. The officer in the front seat who was not driving made a note on the pad snapped to his clipboard. Elvira Chazova appeared at the window of the police car and screamed over the sound of her infant, “Where are you taking my babies? Tell me. I have a right to know. This is a democracy now.”
“This is a lunatic asylum now,” the young policeman in the passenger seat said.
The police car pulled into the street. Elvira looked around. The widow had gone back inside. No faces were at the windows. No one came out and no one called down to her.
She stopped screaming and patted the baby gently on the head as she moved to the sidewalk across from her apartment building. The street lamps were not bright, but she could see the blood of the policeman on the stone wall and the concrete sidewalk. There was quite a bit of blood.
Elvira shook her head. The baby was crying much more quietly now. She had picked up the almost naked child and run with her into the cold night. Elvira moved back across the street whispering to the child to be quiet. She would put the baby to bed and then sleep for a few hours. The coming days and nights would be a hell for her. She needed her rest, if only a few hours.
This was a new world, she thought. There was always hope.
Yevgeniy Porvinovich lay on his brother’s bed while his brother’s wife went through the ritual of massaging and petting him to climax even though he was not capable of erection. Yevgeniy was especially unresponsive. Anna rubbed her bare breasts against his legs, moving upward, barely tickling. Yevgeniy, who had pronounced himself unable even to consider sex, groaned.
Anna Porvinovich was especially patient. It was a small enough price to pay, and it was something she could stop doing completely when she was a grieving widow. Yevgeniy’s principal interest in the plot to kill his brother was the business. He had a reasonable grasp of that business and, propped up by Anna, he was confident that he could handle it. Maybe he wouldn’t be quite as successful as Alexei, but everything was already going, the deals were already in place with both the police and the mafia. There wouldn’t be that much to do.
“You like that?” she asked in the darkness.
“Yes,” he said.
Her breasts were hanging between his open legs now, and she felt a distinct firmness beginning in her brother-in-law.
“The police know,” he said.
“They don’t,” she whispered. “Shhh.”
“They know,” he insisted, sitting up.
She sighed, turned on the lamp that was on the table next to the bed, and reached for her cigarettes. She patted his shoulder. Yevgeniy was terrible in the dark. In the light he was much worse. Now that he was beginning to whine, she began to alter her plans slightly. Yevgeniy would have to die. Perhaps an accident. Perhaps suicide because he could not consider living without his dear only brother. It would have to be soon. She couldn’t tolerate him much longer.
She lit her cigarette with the gold lighter and looked at Yevgeniy, who looked quite frightened.
“It will be fine,” she reassured him, but her thoughts were elsewhere.
She needed a man to run the business or to appear to do so. After a decent interval following the death of her husband and Yevgeniy, she would pick out a worthy successor, a younger successor, a younger, good-looking, not particularly bright successor, such as Artiom, who would be long dead by then. It would be preferable if the successor was married, so that she would not have to spend too much time with him playing games. She was growing tired of playing games.
“Sleep, Yevgeniy,” she said, gently easing him back. “You’ll feel better. I’ll be right at your side.”
He lay back and closed his eyes. To Anna he looked dead. She assumed that her husband was already dead. Her choice of men had been most unfortunate. Artiom Solovyov had proved less determined and capable than she had expected. He had certainly killed Alexei by now. She hoped that he was not fool enough to call her again.
She rose from her bed, put the cigarette between her teeth, slipped into her art deco green silk robe, and turned off the light. There was a bed in the next room. She would sleep there, with a door between her and Yevgeniy’s inevitable snoring.
ELEVEN
Rostnikov had taken a cold shower well after midnight. It was not cold by choice. First he had undressed and dropped his clothes on a chair, being careful not to wake the girls. The water was no more than a halfhearted trickle, but Rostnikov was accustomed to that and to the hard, abrasive Chinese soap that did wonders for getting rid of grease, rust, and dirt but did nothing for the condition of one’s skin.
Naked, leg aching, and not in one of his better moods after being dressed down by Colonel Snitkonoy, Porfiry Petrovich had crept as quietly as he could through the darkness and into bed. The blanket was cool, almost cold, the way he liked it. Sarah turned and asked dreamily, “What time is it?”
Rostnikov turned his head to look at the illuminated dial of the bedside clock and answered, “Nearly two.”
“What did he want?” she asked, just barely awake. She moved into his arms.
“To tell me I had been a bad child, that I had kept secrets from my superior.”
“Did you?” she asked.
“Keep secrets? Frequently. Gregorovich is an open microphone to Klamkin in the Ministry of the Interior. And who knows what our Wolfhound tells those to whom he must report and retain the illusion of comradeship?”
“The girls were afraid you were being taken away like their grandmother,” Sarah said.
“I’ll talk to them. I’ll tell them I’m the police, the plumbing policeman, that no one takes me away, that I take people away, that … I must get some sleep.”
“I was waiting for you,” she said.
“I knew you would be,” he said, hugging her to him. Her hair brushed his face. It had grown completely back since the surgery, which had almost taken her life and her wits.
“Tomorrow night,” he said, gently rubbing her back in the darkness. “Tomorrow night we will make love. Disappointed?”
“Tomorrow night,” she said, kissing his cheek. “You shaved.”
“In the shower.”
“Tomorrow night you may be more tired,” she said, running a hand over his chest. “And why waste a perfectly good shave and a freshly scrubbed body?”
It had been months since Sarah had initiated any sexual contact-months of recovery. Twice over the past few weeks Rostnikov had touched her in the ways she knew meant that he wanted her. She had responded lovingly. But this was the first time she had initiated it. He could not refuse.
When he looked up at the clock later, it was nearly three. Then he slept until the phone woke him slightly after five. It was still dark. Rostnikov sat up and grabbed the receiver before the second ring. He listened, whispered, “Yes,” and hung up. Ten minutes later he was dressed, his hair combed. The hardest part about dressing was getting a sock and shoe onto his left foot. Bending the deformed leg was agony. Usually Sarah did it for him, but during her long illness he had grown accustomed to the pain. By the dim bulb of a night-light near the bed the two girls shared, he found a jar of cold coffee and half of a large loaf of bread. He drank the coffee directly from the jar, finishing it. He ate some of the bread as he wrote a note to Sarah.
“You are back,” came the voice of a little girl from the bed.
“Shhh,” whispered Rostnikov. “Your sister is asleep.”
“Did they take you where they took my grandmother?”
“No,” he whispered. “My colonel had an urgent plumbing problem. He needed the plumbing policeman.”
The girl giggled.
