Even a newcomer like Iosef knew the drill, which might or might not work. He pulled out his plastic identification card and slid it under the door. He knocked on the bottom of the door so the woman would look down.
They could hear her moving. Silence. Then the door opened to reveal a very frightened looking woman in her seventies wearing a long-sleeved green dress, her white hair tied in a bun atop her head. She held Iosef’s identification card in her hand.
“You really are police?” she asked, looking at Karpo in fear and then over at Iosef, who smiled.
The young detective was good-looking, amber-haired, and had a good smile with even, white teeth. He took the card from her hand and pocketed it.
“Alexi Monochov,” Karpo said, stepping in with Iosef at his side.
Karpo closed the door.
“Alexi’s in trouble, isn’t he?” she asked.
Her face was pink and her gray eyes showed a new fear.
“You are his mother?” asked Karpo.
“Yes.”
“We would like to speak to him,” said Iosef.
“Speak to …” the woman began, and seemed to lose track of what was happening.
“Some questions,” said Iosef.
The woman backed up slowly as if she were being attacked. She backed into a large living room with solid French style furniture. Lots of wood and soft cushions. There was an Oriental rug on the floor.
“Alexi isn’t here,” she said. “He’s at work.”
“He called in sick,” Iosef said.
“Maybe he went to the doctor,” she said. “He’s been complaining about a sore stomach. He doesn’t tell me everything. He is in trouble?”
“His doctor’s name?” asked Karpo.
“I don’t know. He’s never told me. He doesn’t talk to me or his sister much. My daughter’s not here. She’s at work. She helps at a school.”
“When your son left this morning,” said Karpo, “did he have anything with him?”
“His briefcase,” she said. “I don’t know why he would need his briefcase to see the doctor.”
“Did he do anything unusual?” asked Karpo.
“Yes,” she said, looking down. “He kissed my forehead. He never does that.”
“We would like to see his room,” said Karpo.
“Which one?” she asked. “The workroom is locked. Only Alexi has a key. His bedroom is open.”
“Show us the workroom,” said Iosef.
“It’s locked,” she said.
“Please,” said Iosef. “Show us.”
She sighed deeply and looked around the room before speaking again.
“Alexi won’t like this,” she said.
“We’ll talk to him,” said Iosef.
The woman turned and led them through the living room to a hallway with a polished wood floor. There were four doors. She stopped at the last one. Karpo looked at the lock, took out his tools, and went to work.
“Alexi won’t like this at all,” she said. “No one is allowed in his workroom. No one. Ever.”
The lock was good. It took Karpo almost two minutes to open it while Iosef and the woman watched. Then Karpo motioned for the others to move away. They did and so did he. He reached over, turned the handle, and the door swung open. There was no bomb triggered to the door, though there might be a delayed one. They stood back for a full minute, and then Karpo went into the room. Iosef and the woman were right behind him.
“I’ve never been in here before,” the woman said.
“Don’t touch anything,” Karpo ordered, looking around the small, windowless room. There were shelves up to the ceiling filled with neatly arranged materials. On the opposite wall was a large cabinet, its doors closed. In front of them was a table covered with carefully laid out tools, empty mailing cartons, large brown envelopes, and a box of disposable latex gloves. The two policemen had no doubt about what they were looking at.
On the wall over the worktable was the framed photograph of a somber man in profile.
“That’s my husband,” the woman said, and then she glanced at the large picture next to the photograph of the man. The second picture looked as if it had been taken from a newspaper. It showed a large mushroom cloud.
On the table directly in front of them was a handwritten note on a sheet of lined legal-size paper. It was held down by a small pliers.
Karpo and Iosef moved forward and began to read the note without touching it. It was addressed to the police and began, “There are duplicate copies of this statement in the mail to a newspaper and a television station in Moscow and to the bureaus of two newspapers, one American and one British. Since I will be dead along with many others when you read this …”
Iosef blocked the old woman from the note, but she tried to push past him.
“What is it? This is my house. Alexi is my son. Where is he?”
SEVEN
Galina Panishkoya gave each of her granddaughters a hug. The twelve-year-old began to cry. The seven- year-old held back and then ran into her grandmother’s arms. The trio stood together weeping.
Rostnikov took a seat in the small room. His choices were limited to one of four identical wooden chairs, all very old and scratched. The only other furniture in the room was a wooden dining room table that definitely did not match the chairs. There was a single window with bars. The view from the window was an empty square courtyard below and dozens of similar windows with bars around the courtyard of the square red building. The courtyard was where the prisoners were permitted to exercise twice a day.
The women’s prison was north of the city and required both a metro ride to the Outer Ring Circle and then a bus ride to the prison. Rostnikov had not told the woman that he was bringing the girls. Too many bureaucratic problems were possible-delays without explanation, excuses without substance. But Rostnikov knew a few people in the prison office and was on cordial terms with the warden.
Galina Panishkoya was sixty-six years old. She looked like she should have been wearing a babushka and warm coat, not a loose-fitting dress that served as a uniform. When Rostnikov had talked her into giving him the gun in her hand almost two years earlier in the back room of State Store 31, she had been sitting on a stool holding a frightened young employee at gunpoint and looking down from time to time at the manager, whom she had shot. It had all been a blur to Galina. There had been a food riot over cheese supplies. People had tried to grab the cheese, and Galina, after hesitating, had joined in. The manager had pulled out a gun, a 7.65mm Hege, Wlam model, the one with the Pegasus in a circle on the grip. Rostnikov knew it was quite a fickle and dangerous weapon.
Rostnikov had explained to the woman who sat on a stool that day, gun in hand, with the body of store manager Herman Koruk on the floor beside her in a pool of blood and a sobbing young girl in a white smock splattered with small drops of blood cowering against the wall, what the mythical Pegasus was.
Galina didn’t quite remember exactly how she got the gun from the manager. Perhaps she thought he was going to kill her or someone else. All the woman knew was that she had two hungry granddaughters at home she had to take care of. The girls’ mother had long ago departed, as had their father.
Now Galina was in prison for murder. The trial had been quick, coming just as the Soviet Union was about to end. The judge had been in fear of losing his job and had come down with a firm sentence, though he spared her life. Galina was to be in prison for the rest of her days. Now Rostnikov and his wife were trying to get her another trial or parole. Iosef had a friend from his army days who was one of the new lawyers. He was working on the case. It looked promising, but he offered the woman no guarantees.
When he had first met Galina in the back of State Store 31, the first thing she had asked him was about the
