Fall of a Cosmonaut

“The chess tables in Timiryazevsky Park,” Yuri repeated for Elena’s benefit.

Now Elena was nodding yes.

“I know where they are,” Yuri went on.

“Have her go now,” said Valery. “Have her go quickly. She should stand by the chess tables with the bag. If she hurries, she will get there before any players arrive.”

“And what? …” Yuri began, but Valery Grachev had already hung up the phone.

Yuri did the same.

The unlocked front door suddenly opened. A large man in blue jeans and a denim shirt stepped in.

“Stop,” shouted Vera Kriskov, rising.

The man stopped suddenly.

“If you are coming in here,” Vera said, “take off your shoes. You have mud on your shoes.”

The large man looked at Vera and then at Elena. He did not move.

Yuri was up now. Vera had moved to his side and taken his hand reassuringly.

“A public phone near the entrance of the Kuznetski Most metro station,” the big man said. “Two teams will be there within a minute.”

Elena nodded and reached for the gym bag filled with rectangles of cut-up newspaper.

Within the coming minute, she was sure, the caller, along with thousands of people going to work, would be on a crowded metro train, going in any of eight directions. The man had chosen wisely. The metro station was at the center of the train system.

“Be careful with my negatives,” said Yuri as Elena went to join the big man with the muddy shoes, who seemed nailed to the floor.

“Be careful,” Vera Kriskov said with concern, taking her husband’s left hand in both of hers.

“We will be careful,” said Elena.

Elena picked up the bag and nodded to Sasha, who rose. There was something about Vera Kriskov that Elena didn’t like. She had been watching the woman who looked with loving concern at her husband and touched him frequently. Elena sensed the woman was acting. It probably meant nothing. Perhaps she didn’t really love or even like her husband. There was nothing unusual in that. Perhaps it was what happened to people when they were married, most people. She tried to banish such thoughts and concentrate on what she now had to do.

The big policeman with the muddy shoes followed Elena and Sasha into the dark dawn, closing the door behind him. Sasha moved to the small truck. Elena got into the car.

Elena was not used to the Volga she had been given. The car had almost eighty thousand miles on it and handled sluggishly, with a willful tendency to veer to the left. There was also a stale smell on the seats, probably years of food eaten by detectives on stakeouts.

Traffic was worse than she had expected, but she was a good driver who gauged well just how much space she needed to make a move. In twenty minutes she was at the park. Even at this hour she would have had trouble finding a place to park had she been a civilian. She parked quite illegally on a concrete driveway expressly labeled for use by park personnel only.

Elena slung her pouch-purse over her shoulder. Inside the purse was her pistol, in a pocket that came close to being a holster. She grabbed the blue gymnasium bag, got out of the car, and walked to a path that would lead her through the trees to the chess tables.

There was a wind this morning. It played a leafy morning song through the leaves as she walked. It would rain again. The full gym bag was heavy. It had to look as if it contained two million dollars.

When she reached the clearing she sought, there were already two men seated at one of the chessboards. They were at one end of three boards on a table. The men sat on opposite sides of the board, examining the pieces before them. Both men were over seventy. One of the men looked up as Elena approached. He watched as she moved to the end of the table away from them and placed the blue bag on the bench.

“Play,” said the man who had not looked up.

“Look,” said the man watching Elena.

“I see her. Look at the board. You’ll see that you are already in enough trouble.”

The man reluctantly turned his eyes from Elena to the problem before him.

She stood holding the strap of her purse, knowing that somewhere Sasha Tkach was watching her through binoculars and scanning the places where someone could hide.

Elena checked her watch and waited. Almost fifteen minutes later, two burly men moved through the trees and headed directly toward her. They looked determined. Both wore lightweight jackets. Both had their hands plunged into the pockets of their jackets. When they were close enough, Elena could see that they had the tough, lined faces of Russian males who had not gone through life lightly.

Elena felt with her fingers through the unzipped top of her purse. Her hand moved toward the gun.

The men came toward her, one on each side. They looked directly at her as she put her hand on the gun. The man on her right looked at the blue gym bag and then at Elena.

“The bag,” he said.

His voice was as lined as his pink-white face.

“Yes,” she said.

He picked up the bag and faced her.

“Move it,” he said. “This is our place.”

The other man, almost a twin of the man who had spoken, moved past Elena and sat on the bench. Elena took the gym bag, and the first man sat where it had rested.

Elena moved away from the table with the bag. The first man to sit removed a bag from his pocket, opened it, and began to set up the chess pieces. Elena placed the blue bag on a more-or-less dry patch of grass before her.

About two minutes later a boy of about twelve came through the trees not far from where the two new players had come. He wore dark pants, an oversized orange T-shirt, and a school bag over his shoulders. When he was closer, Elena could see that the boy had a smooth, pink face, dark straight hair, and an angry, defensive scowl. He was thin and short and in a hurry.

He came directly at Elena but did not look at her. His eyes were on the bag. Without a word or acknowledgment of her presence, the boy unzipped the bag and looked inside. He moved the newspaper pieces around and then stood up and turned away from Elena. The boy began crossing his arms in front of him and shaking his head no.

Elena moved next to the boy to see where he was looking, but the boy’s eyes were looking upward, over the trees, toward the sky. Elena scanned the path, the trees on all sides, even looked back at the men playing chess. The first old man at the far end of the bench, the one who had watched Elena, now watched the boy.

“Stop,” said Elena to the boy.

He didn’t stop.

“I am a police officer,” she said. “Stop now.”

She reached into her purse and removed the stiff leather square that held her identification. She held it in front of the boy with one hand and stayed one of his arms with the other. The boy stopped and looked at her.

“Who are you signaling?”

“The man,” he said.

“Quickly, tell me what man and what he told you to do. I am the police,” she said, knowing that Sasha had seen the boy, watched him signal, and was now scurrying to find someone else who might be watching and waiting. But Sasha would have no idea of the direction in which he should look. There were two uniformed police with Sasha. They would spread out as best they could, but Elena knew the task was close to hopeless.

“He gave me this,” the boy said, reaching into his pocket. “One hundred new rubles. You’re not going to take it away, are you?”

“No,” said Elena, looking at the bills, which, in exchange, would have brought about five American dollars, probably less in a day or two. “You can keep the money.”

The boy relaxed.

“I was on the way to school,” he said. “The man came up to me. I looked around. There were other people. Not many, but a few. I thought he might be one of those dirty men. There are some who come here. My friend Gregor kicked one of them in the balls only two weeks ago.”