of the characters.
“No trouble with your sink or toilet?” asked Rostnikov.
Sharakov shrugged and said, “No more, no less than normal.”
He went back to his chair and his television show and let Rostnikov and the girls find their way to the sink. Rostnikov put down his toolbox and piping and turned on the water. The flow was weak. Then the work began. Rostnikov got on his back and moved awkwardly to open the little door that revealed the drain that was connected to the apartment above. Rostnikov stopped and asked Sharakov if he could have more light.
“Yes,” said the man in the armchair, but he didn’t move.
The older girl found the switch, and a hundred-watt bulb came on. Rostnikov took out his flashlight and a few tools and began to remove the metal plate under the sink. The screws were rusted. Rostnikov would replace them with new ones from his toolbox. For now he needed a careful but firm grip to turn each screw, not wanting to crack the grooves. Once he got each screw out slightly, he put a few drops of oil from a small aluminum can into the space behind the screw head. After giving the oil a few seconds to soak through, he removed the plate and searched the space behind it with his flashlight.
The coupling of the two sections of drainpipe was directly in front of him, a piece of luck since many of the joints in the building were difficult to reach. He had both the right wrench and the strength, after using more oil, to turn the coupling. It took about four minutes to loosen the ring and free the pipe. Each twist brought forth an ear- punishing squeak of rusted metal nearly locked by time and decades of polluted wastewater.
Rostnikov placed the coupling carefully on the floor, pushed the freed lower pipe gently out of the way, and called for the bucket and the flexible auger. The older girl handed him the bucket. The younger girl handed him the rolled-up metal coil.
Rostnikov, lying on his back, pushed the coil upward slowly. Gradually the coil almost disappeared, and then he paused, feeling some resistance. He reached for the bucket and held it in one hand while he twisted the handle of the auger. He paused, pushed it a second time, and then quickly pulled it out of the pipe as a trickle of dark liquid dribbled down, falling deep inside the wall of the building. Rostnikov got the bucket under the pipe just in time. The trickle suddenly turned into a torrent as the combination of hair, pieces of metal, paper, and items of unknown origin came thundering out.
He turned his head away and held the bucket tightly. The muck was almost to the top of the bucket when the flow suddenly stopped.
Rostnikov carefully removed the bucket, which gave off a foul odor that got even Sharakov’s attention.
“What is that?” he called.
“I think it best not to know,” said Rostnikov.
He wanted to replace the two sections of pipe with two of the new plastic sections he had brought, but he checked his watch. He did not have the time. He did, however, replace the rusted connecter with a new plastic one. Then he put the plate that covered the piping back in place and replaced the old screws with new plastic ones.
Sweat-drenched and dirty, Rostnikov gently eased his way out from under the sink, grabbed the countertop, and pulled himself up. The girls were looking in the bucket.
“I think I see a bug, a big bug,” the younger child said.
“It would not surprise me,” said Rostnikov, washing his hands in the sink and drying them on his sweatshirt. He would wash off thoroughly in the shower when he got back to his apartment.
“I’ll be back when I can to put in new piping,” Rostnikov said as he and the girls moved past Sharakov, who grunted and continued to watch his melodrama.
Rostnikov had to carry the bucket. It was very heavy now and dangerously near to overflowing. He let each of the girls carry two sections of the relatively lightweight plastic pipe. They managed with difficulty and dignity.
“Go tell the Hungarians that their drain is fixed,” he said to the girls, who nodded like solemn, dutiful soldiers. “Then bring the pipes back to our apartment. You have done good work.”
Both girls smiled and hurried away.
By the time he got back to the apartment after going downstairs and outside to dump the putrid mess directly into the sewer, the girls were already in their night-clothes, men’s extralarge black T-shirts with the words THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE printed in English across the front.
Sarah finished getting the girls ready for bed while Rostnikov removed his left leg, placed it nearby, and showered using the heavy-duty grainy Chinese soap that went through even the dirtiest grease. He shampooed with just the right amount of American liquid Prell and was dry, leg back on and fully dressed, in ten minutes. He said good night to each girl and thanked them for their help.
“I’m going to dream about that bug,” said the older girl.
“It wasn’t a bug,” Rostnikov lied. “It was a piece of black rubber.”
The child sighed with relief, and Rostnikov went into the living room, closing the door behind him. Sarah sat at the table, a cup of tea for her husband in front of the empty chair across from her.
Rostnikov sat, sipped some tea, and said that he had to go back to work. He didn’t know for how long. Maybe an hour or two, maybe most of the night. He told her he still had almost two hours before he had to leave. Then he waited for her to tell him what was troubling her.
Sarah spoke softly, calmly, telling him what she felt and thought and what her cousin had said.
“I’ve been having seizures,” she explained. “I have medication from Leon that should stop them, but I may have more. I go blank. I think I shake. I wet myself. I don’t want the girls to see this happen. I don’t want you to see it happen, but you should be prepared. I should tell the girls and Iosef.”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov, reaching across the table to touch his wife’s hand. “I was wondering why I got chicken tabak tonight.”
“I will survive,” Sarah said, a confident smile on her full lips and pale face.
“And we will endure,” said Rostnikov. “Surviving and enduring are what Russians do best. We have almost made an art of it.”
“If the medication doesn’t work,” Sarah said calmly, “we will try another medication. If that, too, fails, the woman who operated on me, removed the tumor, will conduct a procedure to relieve the pressure in my brain. It is not an operation in the same sense as the one I had. This is a simple procedure that is almost certain to work and poses no threat to my life.”
Rostnikov said nothing.
“Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said softly, “Leon would not lie to me.”
While Rostnikov had been lying on his back under the pipe holding the plastic bucket, Valentin Spaskov was sitting in the unmarked car across from the Moscow Television News office. The engine was off. Spaskov did not want to draw any attention. He had signed the vehicle out for surveillance of a suspected illegal arms dealer.
He watched each person exiting the building, waiting for Magda Stern. He knew she was inside. He had called from a public phone five minutes before he parked across from the building and asked if she was there. The woman who answered said she was, but she was in a meeting. Spaskov said he was Inspector Tkach and asked to leave Magda Stern a message that the new photographs would be ready for her to look at the next morning.
Valentin hardly noticed the cold. He was wearing civilian clothes and a lightweight jacket so he could move quickly when the time came. In the holster under the jacket was a fully-loaded Colt Delta 10mm Gold Cup that he had taken from the Trotsky Station evidence room. After he killed Magda Stern, he would clean the weapon and return it to the evidence room on a shelf containing dozens of weapons.
He had decided to use it because the killing might then be linked to a shooting in front of Moscow Television News almost a year ago. A popular newscaster and commentator had been shot as he exited the office. The man had, on the air, been critical of both the government and the rise of extremists. Valentin had no idea what Magda Stern’s political position might be. He simply planned to kill the woman nearby in the hope that it would be blamed on the same people who had committed the earlier murder and had never been caught.
If this were his district, he would have carefully supported such a suggestion. But this wasn’t his district, and he wasn’t at all certain whose district it was, considering the recent drawing of districts by the Ministry of the Interior. On more than one occasion, Valentin had been called upon to step in to negotiate jurisdiction over a crime because both Trotsky Station and another station claimed the territory.
