expected and received great but feigned sympathy, and demanded nothing more than to be seen with her at the proper clubs and restaurants. Katya was very young, a dark, slender beauty who had perfected her walk and voice. She exuded sexuality. She trafficked in it.
“It won’t be long,” he reassured her, opening the curtains just enough to look out onto the street.
The street was empty.
It then, very quickly, occurred to him that he had probably been leaning too hard against the window and that it had suddenly shattered. He let the curtains close.
“What was that?” Katya said.
“The window broke,” he said.
He didn’t move. A second bullet came through the now-shattered window. This one missed him as had the first. And yet Yuri simply stood talking on the phone, not believing what was happening.
“I think someone is shooting at me. He is shooting at me.”
The bedroom door was kicked open. Yuri turned his head as Yevgeny rushed toward him, yelling, “Get down. Get down.”
“Shooting at you?” asked Katya, hearing the noise.
Yuri didn’t get down. He held the phone, fingers and knuckles turning white. The next two bullets tore through the curtains. The first hit him solidly in the chest. The second entered just below his right eye and exited through the top rear of his skull.
He went down, still clutching the phone.
Yevgeny crawled cautiously to the body, knew immediately that the man whom he was supposed to protect was quite dead, and very carefully made his way to the window. A fifth shot entered the room and shattered something against the far wall. The gunman could see nothing through the curtains. He fired once more. And then there was silence.
Yevgeny cursed his luck but did his job. He went to the window, peeked out carefully, and scanned the street. There were not many places to hide. There was no high ground, no real cover from trees, only houses which had been checked the night before.
A second guard entered the room and Yevgeny shouted, “He’s dead.”
“Shit,” the man shouted back.
“Shot came from low, not close. Go.”
When the man had rushed out of the room, Yevgeny pulled the small rectangular cell phone from his belt and pressed a button.
“No car,” he said. “Nothing is moving. The houses across the street. There’s a sight line from two houses on the street beyond, a gray house and a white one next to it.”
He sensed someone in the doorway behind him and turned, aiming his weapon. It was Vera. She looked at her husband and began to shake. She did not have to act. It was one thing to wish him dead and quite another to see his head blown apart.
“Get down,” Yevgeny shouted. “Now. Down.”
Vera, her eyes fixed on Yuri, sank to her knees as if in prayer.
Yevgeny took another look out the window and moved to her, placing his weapon on the floor. He put his arm around her, knowing she was going into shock. He had trained for this but had never had to do it before.
She looked over her shoulder as he started to lead her from the room. His hand accidentally touched her breast. She didn’t notice, but he felt a stir and damned himself.
“Wait,” she said, pulling away from him and moving to the body of her husband. She took the phone from his reluctant fingers and spoke to the woman on the other end.
“He is dead,” Vera said.
“Dead?” asked Katya. “You killed him?”
Vera hung up the phone. Yevgeny took it from her, put it down on the bed, and led her onto the landing and down the stairs.
The suggestion by Andrei Vanga that he accompany Karpo and Zelach to the apartment of Sergei Bolskanov was noted by Karpo with interest. Karpo had no belief in intuition and little faith in his own ability to detect the underlying feelings and motives of others. He tried to deal only in evidence based on a long career as a criminal investigator.
That experience reminded him of the many other instances in which people in major cases, often involving murder, had volunteered to assist in some aspect of the investigation. The morbid, the guilty, and occasionally the few who for emotional reasons wanted the crime solved and the guilty punished were the ones who volunteered. Occasionally, a person with a vested interest in the investigation would also cooperate. In Karpo’s experience, there had been no other reasons.
The likely conclusion in this situation was that Vanga had a vested interest. It might simply be that he wanted to do what he could to find the killer and return the center to some level of normalcy so that he could return to raising money and supporting research. Karpo entertained the other possibilities and did not dismiss that Vanga might, in fact, be the murderer.
Karpo did not worry about motive. That would come if Vanga was guilty.
The conversation had taken place at the Center for the Study of Technical Parapsychology after Karpo and Zelach had returned with a dour little man named Tikon Tayumvat, who could well have been ninety years old. He grunted. He grumbled. Tayumvat was a well-known name in the field of parapsychology. Vanga had been impressed when he was introduced to the man, who simply grunted. Not only was Tikon Tayumvat, who was no more than five feet tall, an expert in the field, he also knew the technology and how to use computers. But what was of special interest to Karpo, who had found the man through Paulinin, was that Tayumvat was a skeptic. His scrutiny of the research, according to Paulinin, was well known and much feared.
Vanga had shown the little man to Bolskanov’s laboratory and office and stood watching, offering suggestions, especially when the little man had moved to the computer.
Tikon Tayumvat, in turn, had looked at the director, pursed his lips, and said, “I will accomplish more if you take him away. I am old and will die soon. I would like it to be sometime after I complete this investigation.”
And with that, Karpo and Zelach had accompanied the director back to his office.
“I thought Tikon Tayumvat was dead,” said Vanga. “Everyone thought he was dead.”
“I believe his family, though he seems to be quite estranged from them, are very aware that he is alive,” said Karpo.
“Yes, of course. I meant in the profession. What has he been doing for … what is it … what has he been doing for the past thirty years?”
“He says he has been thinking,” said Karpo.
“Well, what now? Has Boris Adamovskovich confessed? I mean, I can’t believe he is guilty of anything, but someone did it and … Has he?”
“No,” said Karpo.
“Then, what now?”
“We are going to Sergei Bolskanov’s apartment again,” said Karpo, standing next to Zelach, who would have liked very much to sit. “Dr. Tayumvat has agreed to see if there is anything there that might interest us.”
“I can’t imagine there would be,” said Vanga, standing behind his desk and looking from one detective to the other.
“Why?” asked Karpo.
“Well … because … I don’t know. This is all very, very difficult,” said Vanga, starting to sit and then standing. “You know, Bolskanov and I were involved in the same area of research, sleep studies, dream states. Perhaps if I were to come with you, I might see something you would overlook.”
“Dr. Tayumvat is knowledgeable,” said Karpo.
“Of course, of course. He is a legend. Would you like some coffee, tea, Pepsi? He is a legend. But he is old. He might miss something important, very important. You want something to drink?”
“No, thank you,” said Karpo for both of them, though Zelach would have loved a Pepsi.
Zelach kept listening for the door behind them to open. He wanted the ancient scientist to return so they could escape from the center before Nadia Spectorski found him.
“Yes, but this is new material, a new direction, don’t you see,” said Vanga. “And personal things. There
