Fall of a Cosmonaut

“I will find you shoes,” he said.

Defeated, she nodded.

It would take much more to convince Emil Karpo that people could move objects with their minds, see through cards, or talk to the dead, but it took no more at the moment to convince him that the woman before him might well be mad and might well be capable, in a state of excitement, of a raging murder.

Chapter Five

The good-looking young man with Yuri Kriskov had been a policeman, not a French investor. Valery Grachev was certain of that. He had expected no less. What pleased him, however, was that an attempt was being made to hide the fact that the police were involved.

Valery had been dismissed soon after Kriskov and the policeman left. There really wasn’t much to do, and so Svetlana had sent him into the city to pick up a package, a simple hand splicer to replace one that had lost its sharpness and was out of alignment. He had taken his scooter with the usual promise of reimbursement for gasoline, a promise that had led him to keep a small notebook of how much the company owed him.

He drove carefully toward the heart of the city inside the Inner Ring and planned two moves ahead. It would be what seemed like a bold gambit but would turn his opponent-no longer Yuri but the policeman who used the name Sasha-looking in the wrong direction. Already Valery had set the offense moving, very carefully.

He had kept his eyes open, planning for this day as he would for a tournament. It was never his intention to simply take the negatives, make the demand, collect the money, and walk away. That was what he wanted them to think, that it was simple, direct.

Valery had gone through the garbage for weeks, listened to phone calls, watched and mapped the house and neighborhood of Yuri Kriskov.

There was almost no chance that Kriskov could raise the two million American dollars in two days.

Valery parked, locked his scooter, and headed for the film-equipment warehouse near the Moscow Film School.

The police would begin checking the background of everyone in the company. He would not escape the scrutiny, but their search would yield nothing about him that would rouse suspicion. He had never committed a crime, never been arrested.

But they would find much to be suspicious of in Svetlana’s history. Mental illness, a massive breakdown two years earlier. A major confrontation with the producer of the last movie on which she worked. Wild shouting matches on two occasions with Yuri Kriskov. Complaints about being underpaid and even outbursts in front of Valery and others about not caring if the damn negative burned if she did not get what she deserved. Many years earlier, Valery had discovered, Svetlana had been arrested for firing a pistol in a department store. Were she not the famous editor, she would probably have been filled with drugs and sent into the streets to wander like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead.

And now the police would be watching her, certain that she had the negatives, waiting for her to make a mistake and lead them to the stolen reels. They would know from the voice of the man that Yuri had reported that she had an accomplice, but that was easy. They would deduce that the man was Svetlana’s common-law husband, a former screenwriter who had not worked in almost a decade. Even when he had worked, it had been in the days of the Soviet Union and he had made less than an old street-sweeper.

Valery picked up the new splicer, signed for it, put it in his backpack, and went back to his scooter.

He wondered if they had found the note yet. They probably had. If not, they soon would.

He wondered if the policeman would go running after Svetlana. He surely would.

The plan was nearly perfect, but the danger in a good game was overconfidence. Like the fat old man, Yuri had almost made the mistake of luring his opponent into early vulnerability by a seemingly innocuous one-space move of his bishop’s pawn. He had underestimated the fat man, though Valery had eventually won the game, but it was a lesson to be learned.

Perhaps he should not have left the note. It was a bold touch. He had twice crumpled it up and thrown it in a wastebasket. And twice he had retrieved it. It was dangerous to sneak into Kriskov’s office, but he had been unable to resist, to lure the police farther away from the truth. He had not been caught in the office or seen outside of it. He was not sure how good the police really were at tracing a note like this to a particular typewriter. He hoped they were very good. He had used the one in Svetlana’s little office.

Box under his arm, Valery moved to the nearby phone and made a call. When the phone on the other end was picked up and he recognized the voice, he gave the code, “Amlady?”

“No,” came the answer. “You have the wrong number.”

“I’m sorry,” he said and hung up.

Perfect, he thought. By this time tomorrow Yuri Kriskov would be quite dead, and Valery would be on the verge of being a very wealthy young man.

“I’m certain,” Kriskov had said, handing the sheet of notepaper to Sasha.

It had been in the middle of the conference table. No envelope. Thumbtacked and sure to leave a small scar in the polished wood.

Yuri had smoked and paced. Sasha had wanted to tell him to sit down.

The note was simple:

You have told too many people about this. This is between you and me. It must be settled tomorrow or I will do as I have told you I would. I know you have the money. Let us keep this between ourselves. I …

Sasha and Elena sat in the office of Porfiry Petrovich, who looked at the sheet of paper and ate a radish- and-tomato sandwich with butter on thick, dark bread from the bakery of Sasha’s mother. He had offered to cut the second sandwich in half and share it with them. Sasha had accepted. Elena had politely declined. There would have been a third sandwich, but Rostnikov had eaten it hours earlier.

Rostnikov had excused himself for eating while they talked and was sharing his bag of overly salty potato chips with the two detectives. Rostnikov looked at his watch, a birthday gift from his wife. The face of the watch was large and simple.

“And Kriskov is certain that the note was written by his editor, Svetlana …”

“Gorchinova,” said Elena.

Rostnikov took another bite and continued to look at the note. “Why,” he asked, “does the note appear to have been crumpled up? Is this the way you found it, open?”

“Open and flat,” said Sasha. “A thumbtack through it. Perhaps the thief had it crumpled in his pocket and flattened it when he came in.”

Rostnikov took a large satisfying bite. Elena did her best not to reach for the open bag of chips. She didn’t even like chips, but the tempting fat called out to her.

“No,” Rostnikov said, reaching down to scratch his itching artificial leg. “It is a small note. It could simply have been folded once and put in a pocket. And why does the note stop with the word I?”

“I do not know,” said Sasha. “Kriskov says that Svetlana Gorchinova has a history of mental illness.”

“Apparently an attribute that does not interfere with her ability to edit films,” said Rostnikov, eyes on the note, chewing.

“Perhaps it contributes to her creativity,” said Elena. “Freud believed that the most creative people were neurotic or even borderline psychotic.”

Rostnikov thought of the house of Lermontov and wondered if the great poet had been neurotic. He would have to get a biography.

“Was Lermontov neurotic?” he asked.

“Lermontov?” asked Elena.

She did not fully understand this washtub of a man who was going to be her father-in-law in the not-distant future. She respected him, admired him, but found it difficult to follow his leaps and musings.

“Lermontov,” he repeated. “Have you ever visited his boyhood home?”

“No,” said Elena, puzzled but trying not to show it.