“I had not considered it quite that way,” said the old man, turning again to face Vanga, “but it makes sense. It is a hypothesis. And what do you do with a reasonable hypothesis? You test it. We will test your hypothesis.”
“Inspector, I do not wish to stand here and be insulted,” Vanga said to Karpo, who stood close by his side.
“Then you may leave,” said Karpo.
“Or,” said Tayumvat, flipping through another book of notes which had been on top of a teetering pile, “you may sit.”
“But I can’t leave. I may be needed. I can check the computer.”
Vanga moved to the computer. Leaning forward he slipped the disk he had brought with him into the hard drive, hoping neither of the other two men had seen him. It was a desperate act but one he could not avoid.
“Do not turn that on,” Karpo commanded, taking Vanga’s arm.
Vanga straightened up immediately. “Yes, if you wish. I won’t turn it on. But … I just want to help.”
Tayumvat dropped the notebook in his hand on the floor and wove through the debris toward the desk. “Yes,” he said. “By all means. If this is so important to our friend, let us open it now.”
Karpo guided Vanga a few steps back while the old man sat and turned on the computer. The black screen went blue and then a series of icons began to appear, but the appearance was brief. The icons began to lose their clarity and fade.
“A virus,” said Tayumvat. “It is destroying all the information, all the files on the hard disk.”
“Can you stop it?”
“No. What is this? What is this?”
He moved the mouse to the words
“Don’t touch it,” said Karpo.
The old man’s hand stopped inches from the protruding disk.
“It’s not a booby trap,” Tayumvat said.
“But it may have fingerprints,” said Karpo.
Vanga had not really considered that.
Ivan Laminski drove the tan Mustang down the bumpy dirt road in the direction he had been given by the shopkeeper Podgorny. Next to Ivan sat the younger Moscow detective. Ivan wanted to talk, but it was clear that the man next to him did not. There was nothing on the radio. They were too far from any station to be able to pick one up on the Mustang’s radio.
In the back, the one-legged older Moscow detective sat looking out the window at the fields that extended back into forever.
“In the field is standing a birch tree,” Rostnikov said. “You know that song? The birch tree song?”
“No,” said Iosef.
“I think that’s it,” said Ivan, pointing to a house in a field in front of them and to the right.
Neither detective responded. Porfiry Petrovich was thinking of birch trees. Iosef was wondering what they were searching for and why.
Ivan found a smaller road to the right that seemed to head toward the house. He took it and drove slowly. When they pulled up next to the one-story wooden house, five people were standing in wait.
“Podgorny called to tell us you were coming,” said Boris Vladovka as Iosef and Porfiry Petrovich got out of the car.
“You are friends,” said Rostnikov. “I assumed he would do so if you had a telephone.”
“There are only two telephones in our town. Podgorny has one. We have one. If people wish to call outside, they know they are welcome at either of our houses.”
Rostnikov smiled at Boris Vladovka and his wife. A handsome dark woman, whose face showed the hard life she had lived, stood to the right, her hand clasping that of a small girl, no more than three, blond hair, clear skin. All were dressed cleanly but ready for a day’s work.
“Your son?” asked Rostnikov.
“Konstantin is there,” Boris said, pointing to a tractor in the distance. “We have work to do, but I understand you want to see a farm. We are happy to show you ours.”
Ivan, the driver, got out of the car, said hello to the Vladovka family, and declined an invitation to see the farm. He had seen many farms. He had no need of another.
Iosef and Porfiry Petrovich followed the family into the house and politely moved into the large living room, which held surreal-looking paintings.
“Tsimion’s work,” explained Boris. “I don’t understand what it means. Tsimion always said that it didn’t have to be put into words, explanations. The paintings, his poems, were just there to be felt. What was it he said?”
“True meaning comes from feeling, not from words,” Boris’s wife said, looking at one small painting that suggested to Rostnikov a sky on fire.
The room was spare but comfortable, the furniture basic and wood with one old, patterned and upholstered sofa. There was a large radio on a table near the window but no television. Television stations were too far away.
They moved through the rooms and Boris explained that they had originally built two bedrooms. A third had been added. Everything was on one floor, so adding rooms was not a problem. Boris and his wife had one bedroom, which was small and neat with a free-standing wooden closet in one corner, the bed, covered by a colorful quilt, next to the window, and what Boris described as his wife’s pride, a dresser with a mirror on top. The dresser was dark wood and elaborate, covered with carved flowers and leaves.
“It is an antique,” Boris said. “Two, three hundred years old.”
“Tsimion loved it,” his wife said. “He liked to run his fingers over the flowers.”
The room of Konstantin and his wife was the same size as the first bedroom. This room was furnished with a bed, closet, and a rocking chair. A trunk stood in the corner. It was open and filled with toys. On the walls were scribble drawings of a small child. The dresser was plain and large with six drawers. A small bookcase stood next to the dresser. It was filled with children’s books.
The final bedroom was a duplicate of the other two except this had only a single-size bed. A desk stood at the window with a wooden chair before it. A dresser, almost a duplicate of the one in the last bedroom, stood in the corner. A large simple bookcase filled with books and magazines took up most of one wall.
“This was Tsimion’s room,” said Boris. “It was here if he ever wanted to return. Now it belongs to my granddaughter, Petya, my little one.”
He reached down to touch the head of the little blond girl who was clinging to his leg.
“Now,” Boris said, gently prying his granddaughter loose and guiding her toward his wife, “the barn and some of the fields. The tour, I’m afraid, is short because there really is not much to see.
“We can forgo the barn,” said Rostnikov, “and I would like to look at the fields myself. I want to know what it feels like to be alone in such a vast sea of green and yellow.”
“It feels … comforting,” said Boris solemnly. “And when there is a breeze, the vines and leaves sound as if they are talking a soft, foreign tongue.”
“I see where your son got his sense of poetry,” said Rostnikov.
“No,” said Boris. “He listened to his own silence in the darkness of the skies.”
Outside the house in which they left the family, Iosef said, “You want to go for a walk in a potato field?”
“I must,” Rostnikov said, looking around. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”
“I thought we were here to get some answers,” said Iosef, following his father’s gaze.
“We are,” said Rostnikov. “Go back inside. Ask about farming. Tell them of your life and mine, of your engagement to Elena. Talk to them of dead czars and dark, silent skies.”
“Now you are trying to be a poet.”
“It’s an infection,” said Rostnikov. “Highly communicable.”
With that, Porfiry Petrovich set off into the field.
The rows were even, but navigating them with one healthy and one independent leg was difficult. After a hundred yards, Rostnikov knew that what Boris had told him of the fields was true. There was a rustling calm. But growing potatoes was certainly not always romantic. In fact, Rostnikov was sure, such idyllic moments were
