Tarnished Icons

“You will all, including Citizen Pankov, receive a raise of ten percent effective immediately,” he said. “I expect a fifty percent greater effort from you in return. Next, these morning meetings will end. They are a waste of time you could be spending at work. We will meet infrequently as needed. Meanwhile, I am officially naming Inspector Rostnikov assistant director of this office. He will move into the office formerly occupied by Major Gregorovich. You will report to him, all of you except Pankov, who will report to me only. Chief Inspector Rostnikov will meet with me on a regular basis to report on your progress and to receive new cases that come to my desk. You will come to me directly only if I send for you. You all understand?”

A few said da while others, including Elena, nodded their heads.

“Good,” he said. “You all have work. You are all dismissed with the exception of Chief Inspector Rostnikov. Pankov has already prepared all the necessary papers for your salary increases and I have signed them. The money for these raises will come out of the office’s annual budget. The salary of the director will be reduced to cover this fiscal charge.”

Slowly, one by one, a bit dazed, they all stood up, Karpo first, followed by Sasha and Elena. Iosef looked at his father and then at Yakovlev, who hovered over Porfiry Petrovich. The new director’s hands were now folded behind his back. He continued to stand tall.

Iosef got up and a confused Zelach followed him. Pankov took up the rear and closed the door behind them. When they were gone. Yakovlev said, “Well, Washtub?”

“Well, Yak?”

Yakovlev smiled, his bushy eyebrows rising. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses, which he carefully placed over nose and ears.

“I need you,” said Yakovlev.

Rostnikov shrugged.

“I need a one-legged troublemaker whose sarcasm matches Gogol’s,” the Yak said. “I need an honest man. I need the loyalty you get from those who will now be working for you. I am not simply flattering you. I need you, Porfiry Petrovich.”

“I know,” said Rostnikov. “But you are giving me more credit than I deserve.”

“I reserve the right as your superior to maintain a small pocket of doubt on all these counts.”

“It would be foolish to do otherwise,” said Rostnikov. “And you are no fool.”

“We have been on opposite sides on more than one occasion,” said Yakovlev, moving to the end of the table and taking the seat Iosef had vacated.

Rostnikov nodded. He turned his head to face the director at eye level. The turn was awkward with his artificial leg, but it was not painful. Rostnikov knew the man before him as a ruthless member of the KGB. He had served under a general who committed suicide when the coup against Gorbachev failed. The suicide had been announced officially as a heart attack. Yakovlev had not been promoted. Nor had he been dismissed or demoted. He still had his protectors. Since the fall of the Soviet Union Yakovlev had moved into the shadows till this moment. He was smart, but more important, he was khitry, cunning. Rostnikov knew he had killed on more than one occasion at the order of the now deceased general and probably others as well. There were stories of interrogation sessions conducted by the Yak in Lubyanka, sessions that the subject did not survive.

“Everyone who was at this table, with the possible exception of Pankov and Zelach,” said the Yak, “knows that the Wolfhound is a fool. He is, however, a threat to no one, and he looks good in uniform. I expect he will be a great success in Saint Petersburg and consider himself fortunate to have gotten what he considers to be a promotion.”

“You may underestimate him,” said Rostnikov.

“You contradict me?” said Yakovlev, suddenly standing. “That is precisely what I need from you. Honesty, intelligent assessments of people and situations, and loyalty. Do I have them?”

“May I expect the same from you?” said Rostnikov, putting an X through two of his birds in flight.

“Would you believe me if I simply said yes?”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “With the knowledge that a situation might well arise in the future. If that were to happen, I would hope that you would give me some advance indication that I could no longer rely on your loyalty.”

“The answer to your question,” said Yakovlev, “is yes.”

“And my answer, too, is yes,” said Rostnikov.

“And now we can get to work,” said the Yak. “I want a briefing on the murder of the four Jews last night.”

Yakovlev moved behind the desk that had a day or two ago belonged to Colonel Snitkonoy. He folded his hands before him and waited. From behind the table where he sat, Rostnikov opened the file he had brought with him.

He had been honest with Yakovlev, though he had not revealed that he had learned of his appointment four days earlier from Anna Timofeyeva, who had gotten the information from an old friend in the procurator general’s office. Anna had told no one else, not even her niece. In part her motivation was to suggest to him that he protect Elena, but she knew he would do so to the best of his ability in any case. In part it was to prepare him for a man who could not readily be trusted. It was, in fact, likely that Rostnikov was aware of the change before Colonel Snitkonoy himself.

Yakovlev, Rostnikov decided, had been reasonably honest with him. However, Anna had also suggested to Porfiry Petrovich that it had been Yak’s idea to leak the news of his appointment through the unwitting dupe in the procurator general’s office. Yakovlev would have wanted nothing unexpected from his new second in command at this meeting. He would have wanted Rostnikov to have some time to come to a conclusion about the abrupt change.

Rostnikov looked at the open file, closed it, and did what he knew Yakovlev wanted. He told him what had happened in simple terms and gave some of his ideas on how he planned to follow up.

Outside the office on the top floor of Petrovka, there came the sudden barking of dozens of dogs, the National Police dogs. With the rise in gang activity and street crime, there should have been more police, but police were expensive compared to dogs, so there were now more dogs, and they were louder when something upset them or it was time to eat. Occasionally a dog would disappear, and the rumor ran through the building that some patrol officers were taking the dogs home for food.

Rostnikov finished his presentation over the sounds of the yowling animals.

“It is my understanding that the foreign press already knows about the murder of the four Jews and the two others,” said Yakovlev. “The New York Times and CNN will have the story. It was given to their correspondents by a very angry rabbi whose phone was wired, a rabbi who is probably also an Israeli informant.”

“I have met the man,” said Rostnikov.

“I can keep some of the circumstances under cover,” said the Yak. “For a while. But an outburst of overt and violent anti-Semitism at this point in the history of our country could be a political bombshell.”

“I understand,” said Rostnikov.

“Good,” said Yakovlev. “Find me this killer or killers. Find them quickly. Do not arrest them. Find them and report to me with a concise single-page report. Find them before they kill another Jew.”

Rostnikov nodded.

There were three men in Moscow whose lives were very much involved in the report Rostnikov gave to his new director. At the moment Porfiry Petrovich began his report, the first man, who lived in one of the concrete- and-granite apartment towers built under Stalin in the 1950s, was just arriving at work. The building where the man lived was beyond the Outer Ring Circle. It took him nearly forty minutes from the Rechnoi Vokzal metro station each morning to get to Moscow and forty minutes when he left his work to go home. The man lived with his wife and seven-year-old daughter, who excelled at mathematics to the point where she was frequently singled out in her school for special honors, and the man and his wife were told that the girl had a very bright future.

He knew his assignment for the day. It seldom varied since his promotion, and he seldom had to think about what he was doing. Intelligence was not called for. Through much of that day as he worked, this man with a wife and brilliant daughter went over his plan: where he would find his next victim, when he would do it, where he would take her. From time to time, he would ask himself why he was doing this. Why had this obsession gradually