The man sat back, his umbrella between his legs. The umbrella was upright on the floor. The man had both hands on the curved handle. He said nothing. Stoltz would say what he had to say and the man with the umbrella would do what he had to do.
Stoltz sighed. “How many will we have to eliminate before this is ended?” he asked.
Since the question was not really being asked to the man with the umbrella, he did not answer.
“There are some secrets too big to conceal forever,” said Stoltz. “For such secrets there is only the possibility of delay.”
The man with the umbrella nodded in agreement.
“The two in America?” Stoltz asked.
“It is being taken care of,” said the umbrella man.
“The one in China?”
“Done,” said the umbrella man.
“Then …”
“There is just Vladovka,” said the man with the umbrella. “And I will find him.”
“Rostnikov.”
“Rostnikov.”
Chapter Six
“It flew through the air?” asked Laura with the skepticism of both a twelve year old and a Russian.
“Yes,” said Rostnikov, examining the weights he had laid out for the nightly ritual.
“A green bench?” said Nina with the desire of an eight year old to fix on a fact.
“Green,” said Rostnikov. “It flew down Petrovka Street about three feet higher than a car, flew like a spaceship, zing-zing-zip.” He reached over to turn on the Dinah Washington tape he had set up.
“Why didn’t you fly?” asked Nina.
“I clung to a tree,” he said as Dinah Washington began to sing “Nothing Ever Changes My Love for You.”
“Did you stick straight out like in cartoons?” asked Nina.
“Straight out,” said Rostnikov, sitting on the bench which he kept stored in the cabinet in the corner of the living room along with his bars and weights.
“And you didn’t fly away?” said Nina.
“Porfiry Petrovich is very strong,” said Laura.
Sarah was in the bedroom, reading and listening to her own music. She preferred Mozart, chamber music. Porfiry Petrovich was not fond of chamber music, though he now took them all regularly to the concerts put on by Sarah’s cousin Leon and three of his friends. Leon was a doctor who catered to the well-to-do and well connected and was probably quite wealthy, but his passion was the piano.
Rostnikov began to do curls with his fifty-pound dumbbells. He did twelve with each hand and then twelve more with each hand and then a final dozen with each hand while the girls stood watching and, perhaps, listening to the sadness of Dinah Washington.
“Porfiry Petrovich,” Laura said, and then puffed out her cheeks like a balloon. “Nina and I took one of those out yesterday. It took both of us to lift it just a little.”
Rostnikov adjusted the weights on the bar, tightening the lock, being sure that all three hundred pounds were secure. “I know,” he said.
“How?” asked Laura. “We put it back exactly.”
“I’m a detective,” he said, lying down awkwardly, his gray sweat suit already showing patches of perspiration under the arms and at the stomach. “I’m obsessive about details.”
“What is
“It means,” said Laura to her sister, “that he weighs too much and it makes him watch his stomach and other things carefully.”
Rostnikov dried his hands on the towel beside him on the floor and reached up to grip the weight. Since he had no spotters, he could not push himself to the maximum, but he came close, very close, painfully close. The senior competitions were coming up in less than two months. Rostnikov was looking forward to them. He imagined Mikhail Stoltz in some gym at this very moment with five pounds more on each end of the bar or maybe even working on five hundred pounds.
“That’s not right,” said Nina. “About
Rostnikov had learned to count on his new leg in a way he had been unable to count on the sickly old one. If he managed to place the leg just so, it could actually help him lift, but he still had much to learn about adjusting the leg. He was concerned that there would be some protest this year, claims that the leg was helping him. Rostnikov was prepared for that. He would simply volunteer to participate in all the events for which he had registered on one leg. Since he was only doing what he could with his arms and lying on his back, it might cost him a few pounds, but he would still be very competitive.
“Sarah says that lifting weights is your only vice,” said Laura.
Porfiry Petrovich could not talk. His face was red, and he was doing his breathing as he went to five presses with the enormous weight.
“What’s a
“A bad thing. Like sucking your thumb or taking drugs,” Laura explained.
“What’s wrong with lifting weights?” asked Nina, who had only recently stopped sucking her thumb.
“I don’t know everything,” said Laura.
For the first two months the girls had lived with them, they had said almost nothing, trusted no one, and never asked to watch anything on television or go anywhere. Only gradually had they taken to watching Rostnikov lift his weights and listen to American music. And little by little they had come closer and begun to talk.
The girls’ grandmother was still at work at the bakery but would be home soon. She spent all her free time with her grandchildren, listening to their day’s adventures, telling what she had done. Every night she came home with something for each of them, an éclair they could share, their own cookies in the shape of stars, different things.
The girls’ parents had long since left the scene. And it was very likely, though they did not know it, that each girl had a different father. They did look somewhat alike, thin of face and body with clear skin, a small nose, short brown hair, and pink cheeks. They might well turn out to be pretty.
The time when their grandmother had been in prison had been the worst, but they had taken it as just another blow that was their lot in life.
But things were getting better now.
One more, Rostnikov thought, just one more.
The phone was ringing. Laura hurried across the room to where it sat on a table near the sofa.
Rostnikov and Dinah Washington finished at the same time. The weight went back on the rack over “head. He lay there exhausted, breathing deeply.
“When you breathe like that, it looks like there is a melon in your belly,” said Nina, pointing to “abdomen. “And your face turns red like a crayon.”
“I’m pleased that the display provokes your imagination,” said Rostnikov, sitting up and reaching for his towel. His hands were wet now. His palms were red. He still had more to do, and Dinah Washington was well ahead of him.
“It’s Iosef,” said the older girl, holding the phone out. “He says lots of things were flying today, like horses and pots of flowers and balloons.”
“Balloons fly every day,” said Nina.
“Iosef Rostnikov was making a joke,” Laura said with an exaggerated sigh.
Rostnikov reached out his hand for the phone. He had a fifteen-foot extension that could reach anywhere in the room and just far enough into the bedroom so that one could close the door for some privacy.
“Iosef,” he said, taking the phone. “You called me to say that you are packed, ready, and will meet me at
