“My brother is dead,” the man said.
The older woman began to cry. She was comforted by a pleasant-looking woman at her side.
“You are certain?” asked Rostnikov.
“We talked on the phone last week. I spoke to my brother,” the man said. “He said he was dying. I asked for information. He gave me none. He asked me to take care of our parents, our family. I told him I would. My brother is dead.”
There was a certainty and sadness in the voice of the bearded man that convinced Rostnikov of his sincerity. But though Tsimion Vladovka may have been convincing on the telephone, he may not have been telling the truth.
Rostnikov looked at the faces of those before him. They sat in clear anticipation, waiting to be questioned, waiting for the eyes of the detectives from Moscow to fall on them. Rostnikov looked at his son and it was clear that Iosef had seen the same look.
“I must do my job,” said Rostnikov with a sigh. “Boris Vladovka, if we can have a few minutes with you and your family, and perhaps a word or two with some of your neighbors, I think we will be able to leave quickly and file our report. My mission, however, is to find your son, to find him alive or dead. You understand?”
“I understand,” said Boris, looking down.
Rostnikov turned his eyes to Boris’s surviving son.
“I understand,” said Konstantin.
Podgorny rose now, not sure of what he should say or do.
“A meal has been prepared in my house,” he said. “If the Vladovkas would join us…”
“We will,” said Konstantin, putting his hand on his fathers shoulder.
“Then …” Podgorny began as the door at the back of the room opened and a small boy came in, looking around. He spotted Boris and ran to him. Everyone in the room waited while the boy whispered to the farmer, who bent over to listen. The boy stopped and Boris stood and said, “We have another visitor.”
“A man with an umbrella,” said Rostnikov.
“Yes,” said Boris suspiciously.
“Perhaps we should all go out and give him the greeting you were all kind enough to give to me and my son,” said Rostnikov, getting up a bit awkwardly.
Iosef had not strapped on his holster. His gun lay in the suitcase in the back of the Mustang. He expected no trouble, but he would cut short the greeting and get Ivan to open the trunk as soon as possible.
Chapter Eight
Valery Grachev was halfway home when the boy in the park began to signal that there was no money in the gym bag in front of Elena Timofeyeva. He knew the bag contained paper and nothing else. Vera had confirmed it. The wooded areas, he was sure, were streaming with police moments after the boy signaled. While Sasha Tkach was rushing madly through the park searching for him, Valery was on the metro going to work, where he had parked his motor scooter very early in the morning. Valery smiled at a woman across from him. She was well dressed, a black suit, short hair, made-up, and carrying a black handbag. She was reasonably pretty but not nearly a match for Vera Kriskov.
Valery was under no illusions. Well, perhaps he was under one illusion. He knew Vera did not love him for his looks, but he thought she did because he was both smart and a satisfying lover who was eager to do what she wished done.
What she wished done now was to have him kill her husband, a task he had been quite willing to accept. He had even purchased a weapon through someone he had met in the same park from which he was now traveling. The man, a very bad chess player with very bad teeth and a smoker’s cough, though he was no more than thirty, had bragged that he “had connections.” He knew Valery only by his nickname, Kon, and when Kon had expressed an interest in purchasing a particular kind of weapon, a rifle he could fire accurately from a distance of two hundred yards, the man with bad teeth had confidently and confidentially said that it could be arranged for the right price.
Valery, with money given to him by Vera, had paid that price, and the weapon was now in the rented closet of a bicycle shop, alongside the two sets of negatives he had taken, plus a pistol he had also purchased from the man in the park with bad teeth. The pistol was clean but it looked a bit old to Valery, who knew little about firearms.
“It’s a classic,” the man had confided, using his back to shield the weapon from the view of anyone who might be approaching. “Put it in your pocket. Here’s a box of ammunition. It’s a nine-millimeter Makarov. Powerful. Simple to fire. Effective. I won’t lie to you. It is not the perfect weapon for long distance, but you have the rifle for that, complete with the best scope that can be had.”
Valery had learned to distrust anyone who said, “I won’t lie to you” or “trust me.”
The train was full. It was rush hour, but through the standing bodies, Valery’s eyes met those of the woman in black. She glared at him. He smiled back.
Vera had left to him how Yuri Kriskov was to be killed. She didn’t care, as long as it was soon.
She had urged him to be careful. He wanted to think that she was concerned about him. He knew that, at least in part, she was afraid that if he were caught, she too would be caught. It was understandable. The queen had to be protected. The game would end when the black king was dead.
It was hot in the metro car. Valery was standing, holding a metal pole, crunched between people. An old man with bad breath was almost staring him in the face. A woman pressing into his side made grunting sounds whenever the train jostled or stopped. He felt warm, very warm. Perhaps he was coming down with a fever.
He suddenly decided to get off at the next stop and forced his way through the crowd. He was short and powerful and well equipped for entrance to and from train cars.
On the platform of the Novoslobodskaya station he stood on the floor of black-and-green marble rectangles, breathing deeply. It was cool deep underground on the platform, but he was perspiring. People jostled past him as he stood looking without seeing at the familiar stained-glass illuminated panels depicting traditional themes and life rather than the revolutionary artwork that decorated many of the other familiar platforms. He didn’t know quite why but he felt an impulse to run up the stairs. He paused for an instant in front of the panels where a stained- glass man in a stained-glass black suit, wearing a red tie, sat at a desk looking at a large document in his hands. A globe with Russia in the center stood on the man’s desk. Rows of books faced him. The man’s stained-glass brown wooden chair supported him, and squares of windows floated in an eerie green-white light. The man’s office was neat, permanent. Valery was fascinated. The man reminded him of Kriskov. In fact, Kriskov could have been the model for this encircled depiction.
It was like being in a church.
Valery had to get somewhere, do something. Was he doubting his enterprise? Was the promise of Vera Kriskov an illusion? No. He turned from the panel. A feeling of power, almost of flight, ran through him. He pushed past people, slowed, still moving, to drop a few kopeks into the hand of a begging old woman sitting cross-legged at the entrance, and then ran to the phone.
He dropped in a coin and dialed.
“Yes?” answered Yuri Kriskov tentatively.
“You made a wrong move,” said Valery in his disguised voice. “You are now in check. End game.”
“Look,” said Yuri. “I can …”
“Say nothing or I call checkmate,” said Valery, hanging up.
He didn’t run, but he did move quickly past people heading away from the metro entrance. The police would be converging on the phone within a few minutes. He wanted to draw no attention by hurrying. He walked past the begging woman and reentered the station, now able to breathe. He got on the first train and by the time he got to work he was ten minutes late.
“Do we have the negative back?” he asked Nikita Kolodny as he entered the door of the editing room and breathed in the celluloid smell.
“I don’t know,” said Nikita. “Svetlana Gorchinova is looking for you. She is more crazy than usual. Be
