Fall of a Cosmonaut

Chapter Nine

There were three rooms for guests above the shop of Alexander Podgorny. They were all small bedrooms that had belonged to the Podgorny children, who had moved to St. Petersburg and Moscow years before. In one room, the man who called himself Anatoli Ivanovich Primazon was supposedly sleeping. In the center room, Iosef lay in bed, reading the mystery his father had given him. He was not particularly enjoying it, not because he thought it bad, but because his thoughts were with Elena and the man who his father had labeled a murderer, the man in the room next to his. Iosef’s gun was on the small table next to the bed. The light was too dim and the bed too soft.

Porfiry Petrovich was not in the third room. He had quietly asked if Podgorny had a telephone. The storekeeper had said that there was one in the shop, right outside the two rooms behind the shop area where Podgorny lived with his wife.

Rostnikov paid him generously in advance for the call and volunteered to pay now for the room.

“For the phone, yes,” said Podgorny. “For the room, no. You are our guests.”

Rostnikov asked for a receipt that he could hand to Pankov for reimbursement, which might take weeks and might never come.

It took him ten minutes to complete the call to Elena and Sasha, who were in her cubicle at Petrovka. Neither had reason to go home. For Elena, Iosef was eighty miles outside of St. Petersburg. For Sasha, his family was in the Ukraine. They spoke, knowing the conversation was being recorded for later listening by the Yak.

ROSTNIKOV: I have a window in my room. There is a moon and nothing as far as I can see but flat fields and a single tractor. Melancholy and quite beautiful. And Iosef is fine.

ELENA: We did not get the negatives back. I-we, Sasha and I-think that the thief expected a trap. But he did make a mistake. He made a strange call, talked about chess. We questioned some of the players in the park by the chess bench where the exchange was to take place.

ROSTNIKOV:-A name? Description?

ELENA: Perhaps from a beggar at the metro station. An agitated man gave her some coins, the most she has ever been given. He did not wait for thanks but hurried away. Normally, she would have gone back to the business of begging, but the amount had been so much that she watched him hurry to the phone. Her description of him is quite good. That is the description we gave to the chess players in the park. Most did not want to talk. A few said they thought it was a young man they knew only as Kon, who sometimes plays in the park. They said he is a nervous type, good player but impatient. The way to beat him is to wait him out, take your time until he makes a mistake.

ROSTNIKOV: Then that is what you should do. Have you given the description to Kriskov?

ELENA: Yes. He had no idea of who it might be. Nor, apparently, does his wife.

SASHA: Porfiry Petrovich, our Elena has a few other ideas, one of which makes sense, the other … I leave to you.

ROSTNIKOV: Have you? …

SASHA: I’ll call Maya and the children tonight, when I get home. I shall probably wake them and she will probably comment on my bad timing and insensitivity.

ROSTNIKOV: You do not sound concerned, Sasha.

ELENA (in English): He is in a state of inexplicable euphoria. I don’t know which is worse. This near-Buddhist placidity or the old morose and sullen Sasha.

ROSTNIKOV (in English): This too shall pass.

SASHA: You are talking about me.

ROSTNIKOV: Yes, but it is with concern. I have learned that one can be manic and depressive at the same time. It is a paradox, but it is true. The problem is that one will eventually dominate if you do not deal with Maya.

SASHA: Perhaps Elena will tell you now, in Russian, what she feels intuitively.

ELENA: I think it possible that the money was just a ruse to deter us from the real purpose of this theft. I think it possible that the real goal was to find an excuse for murdering Yuri Kriskov and make it look as if it were being done because he failed to deliver the demanded money. The threat was always there.

ROSTNIKOV: And why would our thief want to kill Kriskov and make it look like retaliation?

ELENA: Possibly, and I add that it is only possible, to conceal the real reason for killing him.

ROSTNIKOV: And what might that be?

ELENA (after a very long pause): Yuri Kriskov is not a very pleasant man. He abuses those who work for him and keeps a mistress, about whom everyone around him knows. His wife has been at his side, consoling, attentive, holding his hand, touching his shoulder, bringing him tea. She is nearly a saint.

ROSTNIKOV: And so?

ELENA: I think she is acting. She was an actress. I don’t see love and concern in her eyes. I see someone acting.

ROSTNIKOV: You believe she is conspiring to kill her husband.

ELENA: I believe it is one possibility that should not be overlooked. I could well be wrong. I am probably wrong, but it is what I …

SASHA: If you could speak French, Porfiry Petrovich, I would say this in French so that Elena Timofeyeva would not understand, but I say it in Russian, knowing the consequences when we hang up. Vera Kriskov is a very beautiful woman. Perhaps Elena is suspicious of Kriskov’s wife because she is a bit-

ELENA: No. And, I repeat, no. I may be wrong, but it is not-

ROSTNIKOV: It will not hurt to follow her. See what happens. You are getting an artist’s sketch of the chess player, Kon?

SASHA: It is being done. I saw the first crude sketch. It is a bit, I don’t know, generic. It could be almost anyone we see on the street. He looks like a Russian. We know he is short, young, built, as the beggar put it, like a small bear.

ROSTNIKOV: Find him. Hope that he has not destroyed the negatives. It is unlikely that he will give up that possibility of wealth even if his plan is murder, but one never knows. Now, hang up, have your inevitable argument, and go home to bed.

ELENA: And how does it go with you?

ROSTNIKOV: The czar and his family were buried today in St. Petersburg. I have been told that it was a moving ceremony. I should like to have seen it. I was told that it was something to tell one’s grandchildren. Iosef is well. He may be sleeping or reading or thinking.

SASHA: I believe Inspector Timofeyeva is blushing.

ROSTNIKOV: Hang up. Fight. It will do you good, Sasha.

SASHA: I don’t feel like fighting.

ROSTNIKOV: Try it.

They hung up.

There was no problem finding Emil Karpo. Rostnikov could imagine him in his room, a room he had seen only twice, sitting in front of his computer, notebooks behind it, a single light over his shoulder.

ROSTNIKOV: Emil Karpo, how was your day?

KARPO: We have a suspect. We have evidence.

ROSTNIKOV: A suspect?

KARPO: A scientist, a specialist in dreams: Boris Adamovskovich.

ROSTNIKOV: And you have discovered why he committed this murder? Was he walking in his sleep? Did he use one of his experimental subjects to move in a somnambulistic state to commit murder, like Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

KARPO: Am I to take that as one of your humorous attempts?

ROSTNIKOV: No, only a flight of fancy and fantasy. The full moon brings it out in me. Sometimes you remind me of that somnambulist, the one in the German movie. You even look a bit like him.

KARPO: I gather that is not a compliment.

ROSTNIKOV: It is an observation. Did you do anything you enjoyed today? What about tomorrow?