Fall of a Cosmonaut

“Where is he?” Elena asked gently.

“Where? Upstairs. In the bedroom,” Vera said.

“No, not your husband. The man who shot him, Valery Grachev.”

Vera Kriskov stopped rocking and looked up at Elena. “Where is he?”

Vera Kriskov’s eyes showed panic. She was thinking, thinking quickly. No matter what she said, Elena was now certain of the woman’s guilt.

“I don’t know any Valery Grostov,” she said. “What are you talking about?”

She was good, but Elena was now certain that she was watching a combination of shock, grief, and performance.

“Grachev. My partner shot him,” Elena said. “He will be caught soon. But he might hurt more people. He might destroy the negatives.”

“I don’t care about negatives,” shouted Vera. “My husband is dead. Find the man who killed him. Shoot him down like a rabid rat in the street.”

The two security guards in the room and Sasha at the phone looked over at the shouting woman.

Vera looked at the head security guard, the one who had rushed into the bedroom. “You hear me,” Vera shouted, standing, her hair tumbling across her face. “I’ll pay ten thousand new rubles to the person who kills the man who murdered my husband. Twenty thousand.”

Elena folded her arms and waited as Vera looked at Sasha and the two security officers. Then the two women faced each other.

“If we find the negatives,” Elena said softly. “If Grachev kills no one else, I will ask my superior to do what he can for you. But first you must tell me where Grachev is.”

“I don’t know any Grachev,” Vera said.

Sasha was standing next to Elena now. He heard the widow’s words and paused till he was sure there was an impasse.

“The roads are being watched,” he said. “A helicopter is circling the Outer Ring and another is following the road from here back to the center of the city. A wounded man on a motor scooter carrying a rifle will be easy to spot.”

“My husband is dead,” Vera moaned, her eyes now meeting Sasha’s, searching for sympathy. “How do I tell the children? My two precious children.”

“My wife has left me,” he answered. “With my two children.”

Elena looked at him. It was definitely not the thing to say in the situation. Sasha’s eyes were moist. His hair had fallen over his forehead.

“I’m sorry,” said Vera, reaching out to touch Sasha’s arm. “There is so much I’m sorry for.”

“And,” said Elena, “if we don’t find Grachev soon, there may be much more for you to be sorry for.”

As soon as he had been sure that there was no one directly behind, following him, Valery had pulled off the Outer Ring onto Tverska, down Tverska a mile, and into a stand of trees to his right. He had hidden the motor scooter, buried the rifle with leaves and dirt, and headed toward the complex of tall gray apartment buildings a few hundred yards on the other side of the trees.

The wound was bleeding and his shoulder throbbing. He took off his thin jacket and pressed it against his left shoulder. Was the bullet still in there? Was he bleeding to death? Valery did not know. He moved on, searching for something, someone. The game should have been over. He had killed the king but he had then been shot by a pawn. The queen was back in that house. She was waiting for him to claim her. Valery was sweating, feverish. From the wound? From whatever illness had entered him the day before? From both? He had been feverish before he had broken into that house when the people who lived there had driven away just after dawn. He had been feverish looking out the window, waiting for Kriskov to step out or appear at the window.

The security guards didn’t bother him. He would be gone before they had time to react. He had planned this well. Move by move. But somehow that young one, probably about Valery’s age, had been there almost immediately, outside the rear door, shooting at him. It made no sense. The policeman’s appearance had been a move he had not anticipated by whatever fate was playing against him, a fate that told him the game was not over even though the king was dead.

There were children playing outside the nearest tall building. These were not the homes of the wealthy but of those who worked and those who did not or could not. Laundry hung on lines from many of the windows, hung from one window to the next. He moved toward the children and saw a group of women, one with a baby carriage in front of her, sitting on a bench and talking. On another bench an old man sat, eyes closed, a workman’s cap on his head, an unlit pipe in his mouth. He appeared to be dozing.

The woman didn’t pay much attention to Valery, who had slung his jacket over his shoulder to hide the wound and forced his legs to move normally. He approached the old man on the bench and sat next to him, biting back the pain and fever.

For the women across the concrete square where small boys had moved to kick a sickly-looking soccer ball, Valery smiled as he spoke to the old man, trying to give the impression that they knew each other.

The old man, startled, opened his eyes and looked at Valery.

“I need something from you,” Valery said, still smiling, putting his arm around the old man. “I’ll pay.”

“I have nothing,” the old man said, looking at Valery as if he were mad, which, Valery admitted to himself, he might at this point be. “I have only a corner in my son’s apartment and this bench when the weather permits and no one comes to sit next to me.”

“One hundred and fifty new rubles,” Valery said. “You bring me a shirt, two shirts, and tell me how I get back to the city, and I give you one hundred and fifty new rubles.”

“You killed someone,” the old man said.

“What?”

“If you didn’t kill someone, why are you offering me all that money for two shirts?”

“I killed no one,” Valery said with a laugh. “I’m playing a game. Like a game of chess with some friends of mine. They are trying to find me.”

“I worked on the railroad,” said the old man, spitting on a crack in the concrete in front of him and looking up to watch the soccer game before him. “You are lying. But I need two hundred rubles.”

“I said … yes, two hundred rubles, when you get back with the shirts and tell me where I can catch a bus or find a metro station or a train.”

The old man nodded and said, “Wait.”

“Skahryehyeh, ‘be quick,’” said Valery.

The old man rose and walked toward the nearest apartment building.

Valery did his best to look like a man who had nothing to do but smile, spread his arms along the back of the bench, and watch the children play. He wiped his brow. It was drenched and hot. He would use one shirt to cover the wound as best he could and the other to wear over … The man who had shot him.

He knew the man who had shot him. It was the one Yuri Kriskov had brought to the editing room, the French producer. It made no sense. Why had a French producer been behind that building with a gun? Because he was not a French producer. He was the police. If he was the police, he knew that Valery had shot Yuri Kriskov and he would then know that Valery had the negative.

Valery could not go home.

Valery could not go anywhere.

But there had to be a move. Bargain with the negative? Vera, could she help? No, she would be surrounded by the police. He would have to protect her. He was her protector, Kon. They were attacking. He was, yes, now he was the king.

A helicopter spun overhead against the sun. Valery and the women and some of the children looked up, shading their eyes, and watched it follow the road beyond the trees.

Were they looking for him? Probably.

Valery closed his eyes. When he opened them, the old man had returned with two shirts. The women beyond the soccer game looked at the two men and wondered about the shirts. Was this a relative? It really didn’t matter.

The old man handed him the shirts and sat exactly where he had before.

The shirts were old, frayed, both a faded blue. They looked as if they might fit, but Valery wouldn’t know