Tsimion Vladovka shook his head. “I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?” asked Porfiry Petrovich.
“I was in a panic. I had heard your name in relation to some political situation a few years ago, but I really wanted to call out the name of my friend Peotor Rosnishkov. In my panic …”
“… you called out my name.”
Tsimion Vladovka shrugged. Rostnikov smiled.
“You have a weapon?” Tsimion was looking at the man running toward them.
“No,” said Rostnikov. “You?”
“No.”
A moment later it was clear to Vladovka as it had been minutes ago to Rostnikov that a weapon would not be necessary, at least not at that moment. The man running toward them was Iosef. When he was a dozen paces in front of them, he stopped, breathing hard.
“The man who called himself Primazon,” Iosef said. “He came into the house. He asked where Konstantin was. Boris spoke to him. I couldn’t hear, then Boris killed him. Before I could act, he had reached up and snapped his neck.”
Tsimion Vladovka started toward the house. Rostnikov stopped him, gripping the bearded man with a solid grasp of his arm. Vladovka tried to pull away, grabbed “wrist and tried to free himself. He could not.
“We must think,” said Rostnikov. “Pause and think. You understand?”
Tsimion stopped struggling and Rostnikov released his grip before saying, “The driver, Laminski, did he see? Where was he?”
“He was outside, at the car. When I came out of the house and started running to tell you, he asked me what was happening. I told him to get inside the car and wait. I ordered him to get inside the car. He did.”
“Who else was there, in the house, when this happened?”
“We three were the only ones in the room,” said Iosef.
The three men stood for a few seconds and then Rostnikov said, “We will walk back to the house very calmly. The three of us. And on the way, we will make a plan, a very good one. I don’t know what it will be at the moment, but it will have to be a very good one.”
“Wait,” said Andrei Vanga, trying his best to think quickly. “My fingerprints are on that disk.”
Both Karpo and the old man, Tikon Tayumvat, looked at the director of the Center for the Study of Technical Parapsychology. The director looked very, very nervous.
“I can explain,” said Vanga.
“Then do so,” said Karpo, holding the disk carefully by the edges.
“I will,” said Vanga.
“Man can’t think on his feet,” Tayumvat said with derision. “No wonder it takes him so long to write a simple second-rate article.”
“I promised Bolskanov that I would not allow anyone to see his private journals,” said Vanga. “We had been working together for a long time, and from time to time he confided in me as I confided in him. You see?”
“I see nothing,” said the old man. “Is this going to take long? I’ll sit down if it’s more than five minutes. Ah, I see. You have no idea how long you are going on. I’ll sit at the desk and watch and listen.”
“Yes, yes,” Vanga went on, holding the fist of his left hand in the palm of his right. “His private diary is on the computer. It is very personal. He-he didn’t want it to be made public if he were to die. I promised that it would never happen, and in return he promised me the same.”
Karpo said nothing, simply stood at attention, disk in hand, watching and listening.
“I keep my promises,” said Vanga.
“And what was in that diary that was so terrible?” said Tayumvat.
“I cannot tell you. You can take my job, put me in prison even, but I am sworn to secrecy.”
“There may well have been something in his diary or in another file that would help us find his murderer. You have willfully destroyed potential evidence,” said Karpo.
Vanga smiled ruefully. “I didn’t think of it that way. I just thought of what I had promised my friend.”
“You are under arrest, Dr. Andrei Vanga,” said Karpo. “For possible concealment of knowledge regarding a murder, and for suspicion of murder.”
“Why? Are you joking? Why would I kill my friend, my colleague?”
Karpo handed the disk to Tayumvat, who took it carefully by the edges, and then Karpo stepped toward Vanga, who backed away.
“Wait, wait,” said Vanga. “What if I were to tell you what secrets he had in his diary, why he didn’t want it seen? What if I did that?”
Karpo paused, and Tayumvat looked up with a smile that showed he anticipated another lie.
“Bolskanov was a homosexual,” said Vanga.
“That’s it?” said Tayumvat. “You can do no better than ‘Bolskanov was a homosexual’?”
“And …” Vanga said, his voice breaking, “and he had committed crimes when he was young, terrible crimes, crimes of which he was very much ashamed. He stole other people’s work, passed it on as his own.”
“A terrible crime,” Tayumvat said with a shake of his head. “Come, Vanga, this has turned into the most interesting human contact I have had in half a century. Don’t disappoint me. Don’t disappoint Inspector Karpo. Tell us more terrible crimes.”
“What and … oh … yes, let me … he murdered someone, many years ago, in … in Lithuania, Kaunas. And in another country.”
“Much better,” said Tayumvat.
“Why?” asked Karpo.
“Why what?” said Vanga.
“Why did he kill these other people?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”
“In any case, you are guilty of concealing a murder, possibly several murders,” said Karpo.
“But that was in another country,” said Vanga. “Lithuania is no longer part of greater Russia, which may be good or bad, depending on your politics. But that is another country now and I do not know who he murdered. I think it was a cab driver. No, a-yes, it was a cab driver.”
Vanga looked at Karpo, whose face revealed nothing, and then at Tayumvat, whose face revealed everything in its myriad lines and shadows.
“You don’t believe me,” Vanga said. “You think I am lying.”
“You are under arrest,” said Karpo.
“I stand by what I have told you,” said Vanga indignantly. “I stand by the memory of my best friend and his wishes.”
“But you told us his secrets,” said Tayumvat. “In a bizarre attempt to save yourself, you told us what you had supposedly sworn to destroy. I wash my hands of you. Consistency is essential if one is to propose a scientific theory, especially one who works with the paranormal. You can’t even create a decent lie. I will but guess why you killed Bolskanov. It was you who stole something from him, an article, speech. He caught you. You killed him.”
“I don’t need to steal someone else’s ideas and work,” Vanga said.
“Yes, you do,” said Tayumvat. “You can’t come up with an original thought of your own.”
“I will get a good attorney,” said Vanga. “I will see to it that you, Inspector Karpo, are dismissed from service. I will demand an apology from the highest levels.”
“Karpo,” said Tikon Tayumvat, “at my age I don’t wish to hear rehashed speeches from old television shows. Please, the scene is over. Take me home and take him away.”
And that is just what Emil Karpo did.
Chapter Thirteen
“We will walk back rather slowly,” said Rostnikov to his son and Tsimion Vladovka. “For two reasons. First, I am incapable of moving quickly, and, second, I do not want our driver, Laminski, to think that anything is wrong. I
