before him.
“Does he know I am a policeman?” he asked.
“Yes, of course,” she said. She stood up suddenly and said, “I will go shopping, get food, some new clothes for the children for when Maya gets back … Sasha,” she said, picking up her oversized black purse. “You must promise me something.”
“What?” he asked.
“On the train, you will stay away from women.”
“I will be working with Porfiry Petrovich,” he said.
“That has not stopped you before.”
She walked over to her seated son and touched his cheek. “You are too much like your father,” she said.
“My father? My father? …”
“Had a weakness.” She sighed. “For the ladies. He was handsome, weak, but he had a bad heart.”
“You’ve never told me this before,” he said.
“You knew he had a bad heart. It killed him.”
“No,” he said, “about the women.”
“I must have,” she said. “How could you not know after all this time? I had best go do some shopping now. You should eat before you go.”
“Yes,” he said, not wanting to hear any more surprises from his mother. “I should eat.”
“Is there anything you would like special for dinner?”
His mother never asked such questions. She simply made what she wished and expected anyone at the table to enjoy it, though she was a terrible cook.
“No,” he said. “Whatever you choose.”
She nodded as if he had made a very wise decision, and marched out the door.
When the door closed, it struck him. He had carried on an entire conversation with his nearly deaf mother without having her fail to understand him.
His mother had changed in what appeared to be an instant. Had it been gradual? Had he been too preoccupied to notice? He took out his notebook and pen and wrote the name Matvei Labroadovnik in it. He would make some calls, ask some questions.
The building on Brjanskaya Street was about half a hundred paces from the entrance to the Kievski Market, across the Moscow River from the heart of the city. There was no name on the building, just an address, and the building itself was no more than a few years old; it was a relatively simple, clean, yellow-brick six-story structure.
It was not the kind of building in which one might expect to find one of the wealthiest men in all of Russia. The truly wealthy new capitalists and those who aspired to be and lived on the edge of success were in the prestigious buildings in the center of the city.
Nikoli Lovski could have his office wherever he wished. He owned six radio stations, two newspapers, a paper company with a supporting forest in Siberia, and a piece of several banks and stock in a large number of foreign companies, not to mention considerable land, mostly in the growing suburbs of the city.
The only real clue to Nikoli Lovski’s wealth was the quartet of armed men in the lobby of the building. Two of the men, wearing well-trimmed dark suits and ties, carried automatic weapons in their hands and stood at ease on opposite sides of the smoothly tiled lobby. Another man armed with an equally, formidable weapon stood behind a bulletproof-glass plate, ceiling-high, behind which sat a very pretty dark woman with a pie-shaped speaker’s screen directly in front of her.
Few would have noticed the fourth man, who stood inside an open elevator in a gray uniform. He seemed to be the elevator operator. The very slight bulge under his jacket and the fact that a modern elevator would need no operator were enough to demonstrate to Emil Karpo that he was probably the most formidable member of the quartet.
There were no other people in the lobby. Karpo and Zelach moved to the reception window, the sound of their shoes echoing.
“We are here to see Mr. Lovski,” said Karpo.
“Names?” the pretty dark woman asked.
“Inspectors Karpo and Zelach. I called earlier.”
The woman nodded and said, “May I see your identification?”
Both men pulled out their identification cards and held them up to the window. The armed man behind the glass glanced at the cards and nodded to the woman, who shook her head.
“Are you armed?” the woman asked.
“Yes,” said Emil Karpo.
She looked at Zelach.
“Yes,” he said.
“You will have to leave your weapons with me,” she said.
A metal drawer slid open in front of Karpo.
“No,” said Karpo. “We cannot.”
In fact, Karpo could if he so chose, but he was not prepared to give in to the power of a capitalist trying to make him feel inferior. It was not Karpo’s feelings that were at issue. He had no feeling about the demand, just an understanding that to comply would put himself and Zelach into the position of accepting their capitulation.
“Then Mr. Lovski will be unable to see you,” she said.
“Please tell Mr. Lovski that under section fourteen of the Moscow City Criminal Investigation Law of 1992 we can insist that he accompany us to Petrovka for questioning. If he refuses, we have the duty to arrest and fine him for violation of the law.”
“Fine him?” the woman said with the hint of a smile. She knew that money meant nothing to her employer.
“And hold him a minimum of twenty-four hours in which we can interrogate him in addition to a fine,” said Karpo. “Call him.”
“Are you sure you wish to antagonize Mr. Lovski?” she asked.
Lovski was a new capitalist. Karpo was an old-line Marxist-Leninist. He had been forced by the reality of corruption in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of any true hope for a principled revival of the party to put aside the beliefs on which he had based his life. People like Lovski were the new Russia of the privileged few and wealthy who had replaced the privileged few and politically powerful. Lovski, a Jew whose media regularly attacked Vladimir Putin and his regime, had suffered several indignities, courtroom confrontations, and even nights in jail. Each time he had emerged, determined but a little closer to the edge over which Putin did not yet have the power to push him.
The woman nodded, pushed a button that cut off sound through the screen, and picked up the phone. She hit a single number and began speaking. Karpo and Zelach could not hear her. The conversation was brief, the button to the screen was pushed, and the woman said, “The elevator will take you up.”
“Thank you,” Zelach said.
Karpo said nothing. He moved toward the elevator with Zelach at his side.
“Section fourteen of the Criminal Investigation Law?” Zelach whispered.
“Yes,” said Karpo as they neared the elevator.
“Is there really? …”
“Not since 1932,” said Karpo.
They stepped into the elevator. Since there was no law, Karpo was willing to pick and choose what would serve his assignment still a law existed. When there was a coherent body of law, which there might never be in this new Russia, he would obey it to the letter. Karpo believed in the law, wanted clear rules and guidelines, but he would exist without them and think only of bringing in the guilty and putting the evidence of their guilt before Chief Inspector Rostnikov. What happened after that was something he chose not to consider.
The elevator moved up slowly. The armed man who pushed the buttons folded his hands in front of him and stood back where he could watch the two policemen. The elevator came to a stop so smoothly that when the doors opened Zelach had the impression they had not moved.
