think it’s some kind of jamming from your government. The microphone and recorder were a backup for the video in case this room was destroyed, very similar to the black boxes on airplanes.”
“You knew it was a fake bomb when I opened the box?” asked Paulinin incredulously. “Before I knew?”
“No,” said Hamilton. “I didn’t know. I suspected only when you opened it. I told you I know a little about bombs. Something about it seemed off, wrong, too intricate. Most bombs, even those sent by madmen, are simple. The simpler they are, the more effective they tend to be.”
This, too, was a humiliation for Paulinin, but not as bad as it would have been if the FBI had wound up with the videotape that was now in his briefcase or if Hamilton had not turned off his microphone.
The FBI agent held out his hand. Karpo shook it. Paulinin hesitated, but then he shook it, too. He knew he should thank the American, but he didn’t know how.
“We’d appreciate being kept informed about the bomber and his trial if it comes to one,” said Hamilton, smiling. “Thank you for your assistance.”
With that the agent went back into the building.
Karpo and Paulinin walked slowly away.
“Humiliation,” Paulinin muttered. “I will remain in my laboratory from now on.”
“Embarrassment,” said Karpo. “Not humiliation. Shall we walk back?”
“It’s far,” said Paulinin.
“Yes,” said Karpo. “And it’s cold.”
“Let’s walk,” said Paulinin.
“Good,” said Emil Karpo. “That will give me ample time to tell you of one of the major embarrassments of my career, one that has remained with me for years. A woman outwitted me and almost killed me with a bomb.”
They passed a parked American Buick. Three men were inside. They pretended not to look at the strange pair of Russians who passed them.
“And, if we have time, I will tell you other embarrassments and failures I have experienced,” said Karpo.
“Perhaps we can stop for some tea or coffee and a sweet,” said Paulinin. He held his hat in his hand, and the cold wind blew his wild hair in a winter dance.
“I see no reason not to,” said Karpo, moving far more slowly than his usual pace so the smaller man could keep up with him.
ELEVEN
Sarah Rostnikov sat in a modest dark maroon armchair in the apartment of her cousin Leon, the doctor. He sat across from her in an identical chair. Leon had not asked her but had made and poured coffee. He knew she liked hers with only a touch of sugar. He drank his black.
He was taller and leaner than most of Sarah’s family and was given to wearing suits and ties even when he was not working. He did not like wearing clinical whites, though he did wear blue gowns and caps and a mask when he performed or assisted at surgery.
Sarah had come from the clinic her cousin used. Leon kept himself and his patients away from Moscow hospitals whenever possible. Unlike most doctors in Russia, and in the Soviet Union before, Leon prospered. He was younger than Sarah, no more than forty-five. He had managed to get into a Soviet medical school in spite of being Jewish, though it had taken a substantial bribe. After medical school he had supplemented the outdated medical education he had received by apprenticing under Cuban doctors, then had opened his own practice.
Leon was aware that he was known as the Jew doctor on Herzen Street. People with money came to him- government officials, businessmen, criminals-and, because of his connection to Porfiry Petrovich, an increasing number of ranking officers from the various law enforcement agencies. Leon treated them all, charged them according to their ability to pay, and, in turn, worked for nothing at the clinic to which he had sent Sarah. His patients at the clinic, in contrast to his private patients, tended to be abominably poor.
“You have the clinic report?” Sarah asked as calmly as she could.
Leon thought, as he had since he was a boy, that his cousin was a beautiful woman of great dignity. At first Leon, like the others in the family, wondered why she had married the Gentile policeman who walked with a limp and looked like a file cabinet. But Leon and the others were gradually won over. They had come to accept Porfiry Petrovich and, of course, Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich’s son.
“They called about ten minutes before you got here,” he said, not touching his own cup of coffee. “The X rays are being delivered here now.”
“It’s back,” Sarah said.
“The tumor? I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t know, but I don’t think so. That is not my specialty, but I will look and I will consult with the woman who operated on you. I think, at this point, something was touched, cut, perhaps even severed during the initial surgery. Or perhaps the tumor itself caused some minor damage before it was removed. None of this is uncommon.”
Sarah knew her cousin as if he were her brother. They had grown up together. Their families had lived in the same apartment building, a building that was about half Jewish. Leon was not lying. He would not lie to her.
“And so?” she said.
“And so,” he repeated, “if I am right, this is something that we may be able to treat with medication, perhaps antiseizure pills. If we can’t find a good way to treat it, we may simply have to tell you to live with it unless it gets worse.”
“And if you are wrong, Leon Moiseyevitch?”
“Perhaps surgery again to see if we can find and take care of the problem, but I don’t think that will be necessary.”
The room was warm and comfortable. Leon had made the two-bedroom apartment so. It was not filled with expensive furniture or antiques or anything that would suggest to the visitor that he was well-off. But there was an Oriental rug on the floor, a warm maroon-and-purple motif in the furniture, and contemporary Russian art on his walls. The art was all representational and non-political. There were separate entrances to the apartment and to his office and examining room next door. Leon could go to work or back home in seconds.
“Finish your coffee and we’ll go take another look at you,” he said. “Someone should be delivering the laboratory reports and X rays from the clinic any moment.”
“You will let me know if I am going to die, Leon,” she said. “I would have a great deal to do to prepare.”
“You are not going to die,” he said. “Not till you’re as old as Grandma Rebecca. Ninety-one years. That’s a promise. I will not permit another woman I love to be taken before her time.”
Leon’s wife had died almost seven years earlier of stomach cancer. They had one child, Itzhak, whom they called Ivan. Ivan was now nine. The woman who took care of him, Masha, a Hungarian, would pick the boy up at school and bring him home. The boy bore an uncanny resemblance to his mother, a resemblance, Sarah knew, that constantly reminded her cousin of his loss and caused him to have a protectiveness of the boy that Sarah understood, though she often thought it would not serve Leon or the child well as the boy grew.
“Shall we go?” Leon asked with a smile as he stood.
Sarah put down her cup and took his offered hand. On the way to the door to the office and through the examination room, Sarah asked about Itzhak, and Leon talked with pride about his son’s accomplishments.
Sarah did not have nor did she want anyone to look after the two girls who would be waiting for her. They were old enough to make their own way home from school and find something to eat. She had left a note telling them to do their homework and then to read the books they had begun. After an early dinner she would let them watch some television.
As she lay talking and thinking, a deep part of her prayed that she would never have a seizure in front of the girls or Iosef or Porfiry Petrovich, though she knew she would soon have to tell her husband what was happening.
