“Eight o’clock tonight?” asked Rostnikov.
“Yes,” said Belinsky. “You’ll need help. I can get some of my congregants, and I will be there.”
“You are in no condition to help, but be there,” said Rostnikov. “I need only two of your people, the stronger the better. I’ll recruit others.”
“It will be,” said Belinsky.
The rabbi went out the door and closed it. Rostnikov began to adjust his artificial leg.
“What do you have planned for tonight?” asked Rostnikov.
“Tonight?” asked Zelach. “Dinner. Television.”
“How would you like to learn the profession of heating engineer?” Rostnikov proposed. “It will be something to fall back on in times of trouble.”
Zelach was confused but said he would be willing to learn if Inspector Rostnikov thought it a good idea.
“Eight o’clock,” said Rostnikov. “At the synagogue.”
Zelach nodded a confused yes.
“Mesanovich is a good idea,” Rostnikov said. “Let’s go.”
Zelach tried not to beam. He couldn’t remember ever having been praised for an idea before by anyone but his mother. His mother. What would she think about his working for Jews, and for nothing? He would, when he had the chance, call her and tell her he was working very late, directly with Porfiry Petrovich. She would only ask if it was dangerous and tell him she would have something for him to eat when he came home. Akardy Zelach was in a very good mood.
Legwork. The process was essentially the same for the police in every country in the world. Knock on doors of people who might but probably didn’t have information. Interview past victims who had probably told all that they knew. Reexamine any evidence that they might possess.
“A waste of time,” said Sasha to Elena as they stood waiting in the small outer office of the International Arab Export Corporation. The woman, well groomed and definitely not an Arab, had come into the office from the offices beyond a door and asked if she could help them.
Elena had asked if it might be possible to talk to Valeria Petrosyan for a moment or two. Both detectives showed their police cards. The woman examined them carefully and clasped her hands together before her.
“About what?” she said.
“We believe she witnessed an automobile accident a few weeks ago,” said Sasha: “Hit-and-run. We want to know if the man we have arrested might be the person we are looking for. Of course, we don’t know how good a look she had at him. It will only take a few minutes. We show her the photograph, ask her a few questions.”
Sasha was smiling at the woman, his best boyish smile.
“I should ask Mr. Mogabi,” she said, “but he’s in a meeting.”
Sasha and Elena knew they could simply demand to see the woman they sought, but then she would have to answer questions from her employers, questions she would probably not wish to answer.
“All right,” the woman said. “I’ll send her out.”
The room they waited in was small but spotless. There were high-quality reproductions of French impressionist paintings on the walls-a Monet on one wall, two Monets and a Renoir on the other. The floor was carpeted-gray and clean. The four chairs were gray fabric and chrome.
They had already interviewed four victims of the rapist. Since all of the crimes had occurred in the same general area, the women did not live outside of a manageable circle. Some of the victims did not have phones or did not choose to answer. The detectives had trudged to apartments, and since a number of the victims were retired, Sasha and Elena had found them at home. The first two had answered questions but had been of no help other than to confirm the method of the rapist and his strength. They had not seen him, had heard only a raspy voice, probably disguised, and had been beaten. One of the two suffered severe hearing loss from the attack, and her deafness and size reminded Sasha of his mother. The third woman they found at home simply refused to talk to the detectives. She was younger than the first two, probably about sixty. She had suffered a broken skull and had since experienced blinding headaches that forced her to lie on the floor of her small bathroom in darkness for hours at a time. This she did not tell the detectives. All she said was that she would not talk about the incident.
The fourth woman had tried to be helpful. She was the youngest of the lot, in her twenties, pretty, dark, worked in the Hotel Russia, where they tracked her down. She had been a young teen when she was attacked. Sasha had told her employer a tale similar to the one he had just told the woman at the International Arab Export Corporation. The girl’s name was Alexandra. She cleaned rooms. The most striking thing about her was her thick glasses, which she took off to speak. The rapist had hit her across the forehead. A week later her eyesight began to deteriorate. The doctors thought it would continue till she went blind, but the deterioration had suddenly stopped. The girl hoped it would not start again. She, too, had been of little help other than to confirm what the others had said. She explained that for years she had tried either to remember details of that night or to forget the event entirely. Neither effort had been successful.
“I’ll bet this place is a front,” said Sasha, looking around the little room.
“Front?”
“Weapons, drugs, something,” he said.
“Then they probably have the room bugged and are listening to what you’re saying right now,” replied Elena sarcastically.
“Probably,” said Sasha, as the inner office door opened and a woman in her late forties came out. She was tall and wore a dark suit with a white blouse. Her dark hair was brushed upward off her neck and sat stylishly on her head. Her makeup was light and she was distinctly pretty.
“Dark hair,” said Elena softly to Sasha. “They are all gray or have dark hair. I wonder if the gray ones had dark hair when they were attacked. I wonder if they were all as slender as this one and the one at the hotel.”
They knew they had to go back and check.
“Valeria Petrosyan,” the woman said warily.
“Can we go out in the corridor to talk for a moment and show you something?” asked Elena, trying to convey the need for more privacy.
“If you wish,” said Valeria.
The three moved into the broad hallway of the seven-story building, where dozens upon dozens of Communist Party offices had been vacated and converted shortly after Yeltsin came to power.
“You are not here to talk about any accident,” Valeria said, looking from one to the other of the two young people before her. “I witnessed no accident,”
“You were attacked and raped four years ago near the Kropotkinskaya metro station,” said Elena.
“I thought so,” the woman said with a sigh. “I have told the police all I know, I told them when it happened. I lost a husband because of what happened that night. That was the one good thing about it. The rest … Please make this quick. My employers are engaged in a very sensitive business and …”
Sasha looked at Elena with satisfaction and turned to Valeria.
“Please, just tell us once more what you remember of that night,” said Elena.
“You know I don’t want to remember,” the woman said, her voice deep, controlled. “But there are things one cannot forget. As I told the police, I was on my way home from working late. My husband was supposed to meet me at the metro and walk home with me. He wasn’t there. He was off somewhere getting drunk in his cab. I walked two blocks. There wasn’t much traffic. Some cars. Few people. There was a slight rain. I didn’t hear the man coming. Cars were going by when he pushed me into the doorway, holding me around the neck from behind. He warned me not to make a sound or he would kill me. He showed me a knife. He opened the door. It was a government building. The light had been unscrewed in the entry way. That’s what the police told me later. He threw me down, kissed my neck, punched me hard in my back, and kept warning me to be quiet while he lifted my dress and pulled down my panties. It was fast. It was painful. I know I whimpered. He told me not to turn around when he let me go, not to look at him or he would kill me. He made me say I understood. Then he got up and went out the door. I turned and saw him. He was taller than you.” She looked at Sasha. “Well built, wearing a blue jacket and pants, a stripe on the pants. I think his hair was dark.”
“You saw him?” asked Elena.
The tall woman nodded.
“A uniform?” asked Sasha.
