Fall of a Cosmonaut

probably reserved for visitors who did not have to work the fields, or men like Boris Vladovka who held on to their dreams and passed them on to their children and grandchildren.

It took Porfiry Petrovich twelve minutes to catch up to the tractor. The bearded driver saw him coming, turned off the engine, and waited as Rostnikov approached.

“Vladovka, when we have finished talking I would be very grateful for a ride back to the car.”

Rostnikov looked up at the man and shielded his eyes from the sun.

“You have a question for me?”

“Yes, several. First, I would like to know what it feels like to be weightless and alone in the darkness of outer space.”

“How would I know?” he said with a shrug, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

“Because,” said Rostnikov, “you are not Konstantin Vladovka. He is dead and buried. You are his brother, Tsimion.”

Chapter Twelve

Valery Grachev had not arrived at work today. And, Sasha and Elena quickly discovered, he was not at home. No one was at home. They had gotten the landlady to open the door to the apartment where Valery lived with his uncle. They found no film negative, but they did find books on chess, eight of them.

“You are sure this is the man?” Elena asked as they stood outside the door of the apartment.

“I don’t have to be sure,” said Sasha. “We find him, bring him in, and let the beggar woman identify him. The man in the drawing is one of the assistant editors who works for Yuri Kriskov. I saw him when I posed as the French producer.”

The only question for Sasha now was whether they would find Grachev before he decided to destroy the negative.

At this point, they did not know that they were already too late to stop him from destroying Yuri Kriskov. When they left the apartment, Grachev was already setting himself up to fire his first shot.

They had arrived in a motor-pool Lada with bad brakes. Elena, who was by far the better driver of the two, had picked up the vehicle and now was driving it to the house of Yuri Kriskov. They were no more than half a mile from their destination when the first shot was fired.

Elena stepped on the gas as more shots were fired. Sasha opened his window and saw a glint in the window of a house two streets away from the Kriskov’s. It could have been a … another shot. The object in the window caught the early-morning sun again and jerked upward.

“Let me out here, now,” said Sasha. “You go to the house.”

Elena hit the faulty brakes and the car skidded to the side of the street, almost turning back in the direction from which they had come. Sasha was out of the car before it had quite stopped. He kicked the door closed behind him and took his gun from the holster inside his unzipped jacket as he moved.

He crouched low as Elena stepped on the gas behind him and headed for the Kriskov house. There were more shots now, and he was sure they were coming from that window.

Sasha got behind the house and made his way through a waist-high growth of wild bushes. His left hand was scratched by something sharp and he thought he might be bleeding but he didn’t look. His eyes were fixed on the back of the house and the motor scooter parked next to the rear door.

As he stepped into the clearing, gun in two hands, knees slightly bent, the back door of the house suddenly opened. They saw each other at the same moment and hesitated. Sasha fired first. Valery Grachev fired next. Grachev’s weapon was far more powerful and had great range and accuracy, but Sasha was a policeman who had been shot at before and who had shot at others.

Sasha’s bullet went into Valery Grachev’s left shoulder. Grachev’s entered the ground in front of Sasha, who dropped to his stomach and rolled to his left. When he had rolled back to his right and leveled his weapon, he saw Grachev on the motor scooter, rifle in his hand. Sasha fired again. The bullet hit the front fender of the scooter just in front of Valery. The bullet made a strange ziiiinging sound as Valery started the bike with a kick of his foot and a twist of his hand.

Sasha got to his feet and ran toward the now-moving scooter. He stopped, aimed, and fired again as Grachev started to speed away. This shot hit nothing and Grachev was gone. Sasha was certain he had hit Grachev with his first shot. He ran to the door and examined the ground quickly. Blood, yes, blood.

Sasha put his weapon back in the holster, moved quickly around the house, and headed for Kriskov’s. As he crossed the small street and ran around another house, he saw two men in front of him, two men in uniforms, both with weapons, both aiming at the panting Sasha.

“Police,” Sasha tried to shout, holding his hands in the air.

“What do we do?” one of the men asked the other.

“Shoot him,” said the second.

“But if he is the police?”

“Shit,” said the second. “He shot at us first. He’s our man. He was rushing to finish the job. Shoot.”

The first security guard was leveling his Kalishnikov rifle at Sasha, who knew what he would have to do. He would leap to one side, try to pull out his gun, and attempt to fire at the two men as he hit the ground. He knew he would fail. They were only thirty feet ahead of him. They didn’t even have to be good shots.

“Stop. Now. Or you both die,” came a calm voice.

Sasha looked beyond the two men at Elena, who held her weapon level, pointed at the backs of the two security guards.

The two guards stood, still aiming at Sasha.

“Drop your weapons or die,” said Elena. “I am the police. He is the police. Drop them.”

The two men didn’t move. They exchanged glances that told Sasha they didn’t intend to drop their weapons. The question was which one would kill Sasha and which would turn and fire blindly in the direction of Elena’s voice.

Before they could make their move, Elena fired. Her bullet struck the wooden wall of the nearby house no more than a foot from one of the two guards.

Both men dropped their weapons.

“A man we were guarding has been shot,” said one of the men. “We thought you were the shooter.”

Sasha advanced on the two men, weapon now in his hand. Elena moved forward from behind.

“He got away,” said Sasha. “That is all you need to know.”

“Kriskov’s dead,” Elena said as Sasha picked up the automatic weapons and awkwardly cradled them in his arms while still holding his own pistol.

One of the security guards shook his head.

When they were in front of the Kriskov house, Sasha dropped the guns. The two security guards turned around to pick them up. Another security guard came running out of the house, weapon ready. He recognized Elena, who had been there only minutes before, and lowered his gun.

“I hit him, Elena,” Sasha said. “He is hurt, bleeding. He’s on a motor scooter, carrying a rifle. I’ll call it in. He should be very easy to spot.”

“Are you all right, Sasha Tkach?” Elena asked as they moved through the front door.

Sasha had to think about it for a moment. He had almost been killed, twice or more in the last few minutes, and yet he felt calm. He looked at his hands. They were shaking.

“No, I am not all right.”

Sasha went to the phone, and Elena spoke briefly to one of the security guards. Then she moved to Vera Kriskov, who was seated on the white sofa, hugging herself and rocking forward and back. She was covered with blood, her face, hands, dress, hair. The white sofa was dabbed with red. Her head was down and she was sobbing.

“He’s dead,” she said, looking up at Elena.

Elena could not tell if the woman was acting or was sincere. She seemed sincere. The tears and terror seemed real.