Zelach fired.
The man not holding the machine gun fell to his knees but did not scream. The crowd was screaming louder, making for the exit, blocking Zelach’s vision. He could not fire again without the risk of hitting someone innocent or, given the nature of those in the building, someone who was at least innocent of what was taking place at the moment.
The man behind Nina Aronskaya ducked with her as cover and kept backing away, leaving his partner on his knees. Karpo could shoot the girl or Mitsin, but there was no point to it.
The man with the gun, Mitsin, and the girl joined the fleeing crowd and swept past Zelach through the doors and into the cold day.
Karpo followed, nodding to Zelach to deal with the fallen man. In the street, Karpo saw Mitsin entering the back seat of a black car with heavily tinted windows. The door closed and the car pulled away. Karpo hurried back into the building, where Zelach stood over the fallen man. The man’s weapon had been kicked professionally out of reach.
“He needs a doctor,” Zelach said.
The wounded man, now in a sitting position on the concrete floor, turned his head toward Karpo. Zelach’s bullet had entered his right thigh. Blood was oozing out. The pain must have been great, but the man did not show it. He calmly removed his belt and began to use it as a tourniquet around the top of his thigh.
“Get an ambulance,” Karpo said to Zelach.
Zelach said nothing. He holstered his gun and looked around for a phone. The hall was clear of people now and he saw no phone. But he did see a glass door in one corner that might well lead to an office. He hurried toward it, half expecting to hear a gunshot, half expecting to turn and see the wounded gunman on his back, dead or dying.
But there was no shot. Emil Karpo had already decided what to do with the wounded man.
Chapter Five
Frightened wolves, nowhere to go
Find winding cloths of sleet and snow
The sleeping kings of long ago
Deep beneath Ben Bulben grow
Drifts are shifted by the plough
Like waves that break against the prow
How do you like your blue-eyed boy now
Mr. Death?
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was seated in the dining car, his notebook in his lap, a mechanical pencil in one hand, a cup of tea before him. It was just before dawn and he had the car to himself except for a train attendant who sat in the rear, his head against the window, his mouth open, his eyes closed.
For some reason, probably the jostling of the train, Rostnikov found it difficult to sleep. What remained of his left leg kept waking him with a vibration he was sure no one with full limbs would understand.
Added to that he had a nightmare. No, that is not exactly right. He was filled with neither fear, horror, nor repulsion during the dream, only a morbid curiosity.
In the dream, he had opened his eyes and found himself on an operating table. Paulinin stood over him, a bloody saw in his hand. Behind Paulinin, blazing down on the helpless Rostnikov, were the bright lights of an operating room. Paulinin nodded his head to the right. Rostnikov turned his eyes in that direction and saw what certainly was his severed left leg a few feet away. There was something sad about the leg. Rostnikov felt like weeping. He turned back to look at Paulinin but the scientist was gone. Rostnikov found himself staring directly into the sun. He felt heat, thought he would go blind, and then a warmth came over him. That was when he awoke in darkness to the clanking of steel wheels. The others in his cabin were quiet except for one of the old Americans, who snored gently. Rostnikov had risen, dressed quietly, found his notebook, and gone to the dining car after picking up a cup of tea using an English tea bag and the steaming water from the samovar in the corridor.
Now Rostnikov drew the nearby mountains, very roughly, and tried to suggest the first rays of sunlight coming over them. He was dissatisfied. He tried traditional rays, almost like the paintings of a child, erased them and tried an indistinct, faint arch between two ridges. He moved up an inch and drew an even-less-distinct arch. Then, to show the contrast between light and dark, he shaded in the foreground, trees, mountains. He would have liked to suggest something dark and wild in the early shadows but he was not a good enough artist for that.
It was just after five in the morning, according to Rostnikov’s wristwatch. He knew the train would pass through many time zones before Vladivostok. He did not try to keep track by changing his watch, though he was aware of when the train would reach each stop.
While he worked on the rising sun, someone approached down the aisle. He did not look up. He did not have to. He recognized the slight perfume of the woman who had called herself Svetlana Britchevna. She sat across from him.
“You are also an artist,” she said. “A plumber and an artist. Interesting combination. There is a depth to you, Ivan Pavlov.”
Rostnikov raised his eyes but not his head. She was wearing a loose, light-blue sweater and a darker skirt. She had a cup in her hand. Rostnikov could smell the coffee.
“And to you, Svetlana Britchevna,” he said, putting the finishing touches to his drawing.
“May I ask what you are drawing?”
“The sun,” he said. “For reasons I cannot explain, I have been dreaming of the sun, the fragile sun.”
“The sun is fragile?” she asked, amused.
“All life is fragile,” he said.
“And the sun is alive?”
“Sometimes I think all life is the sun. Perhaps I should consider becoming a pagan, a sun worshiper.”
“And,” she said, taking a sip of coffee, “spending hours in the nude in worship.”
“It would not be a sight that would delight the sun god,” said Rostnikov. “He might be so offended that he would strike me with skin cancer.”
“From the metaphysical to the pragmatic,” she said. “We can add poetry to your list of accomplishments, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”
Rostnikov showed no reaction to her having used his name. Instead, he clicked his pencil, put it in his shirt pocket, closed his notebook, put it next to him, and drank the last of his tea. Then he looked at her.
“I did not expect to surprise you,” she said. “You knew something of who I was last night.”
“Your approach was designed to alert me,” he said, folding his hands. “I wonder only at why you want me to know.”
“I work for the ministry,” she said. “Not high on the ladder, but not at the bottom either. My mission on this train is to watch a certain Pavel Cherkasov. We try to keep track of certain figures who do not like to walk in your sun.”
“Pavel Cherkasov,” Rostnikov repeated.
“My mission is considered by my superiors to be very low priority, routine. Others could have been selected ahead of me but none particularly wanted to ride the Trans-Siberian Express.”
“Why?”
“They find the trip boring and the assignment the same,” she said.
“But you do not,” said Rostnikov.
“I do not,” she said. “I have some information which the ministry provided for me and some I have picked up through my own connections and bribes from my own pocket.”
“You are ambitious,” Rostnikov said.
“Very,” she answered, her smile broadening. “One of the bribes I paid was to place you in Pavel Cherkasov’s
