People Who Walk In Darkness

Paulinin turned and patted the arm of the other dead man reassuringly.

“His friend here had no rubles either, no notes or bills or receipts in Russian. He relied on his friend for all necessary conversation and transactions with Russians. He was not tortured, only murdered, which shows that a knowledge of the Russian language is not always a blessing.”

Paulinin seemed to be waiting for confirmation.

“It is not,” agreed Iosef.

Zelach wanted to get out of the alcoholic and chemical smell, the dark corners, the glaring specimens enlarged by the glass bottles that surrounded them, the two dead men to whom Paulinin spoke.

“Can you imagine what it would be like to have a tube forced down your nose, rubbing the lining raw and bloody all the way to your stomach, and have food forced down the tube?”

He was looking at Zelach.

“No I cannot,” said Zelach.

Paulinin shook his head and scratched his neck.

“Old KGB torture,” he explained. “Many are the afflicted who were feasted so inside Lubyanka, but a long walk or a short Metro ride from where we now stand.”

“Our torturer is former KGB?” asked Iosef.

“Perhaps still secret police,” Zelach tried.

“No, they know how to rid themselves of bodies.”

“Anything else?” asked Iosef.

“Small, very sharp knife. The torturer was not tall, maybe five feet and eight inches. The tortured man was seated. See his ankles, the rope burn around his groin. The highest wounds indicate the man’s height. Other wounds indicate that our man with the knife was nervous, attention deficit disorder or something like that. He kneels, stands upright, crouches, keeps moving. His hair is dark brown and long. He is alcoholic.”

“How. .?”

Zelach again.

“Hair samples on both bodies. Not the victims. DNA,” explained Paulinin. “I called in favors. The men and women in the DNA laboratory owe me. There is a faint but detectable smell of alcohol on both of my guests, though neither of them has the slightest trace of alcohol in his stomach.”

“Did your guest talk to the Russian?” asked Iosef.

“Oh yes. The torture stopped abruptly. The tale was told, but not the end. The end depends, I think, on the third man.”

“The third man,” Iosef repeated.

“What third man?” asked Zelach.

“Two blood types on the body of my guests are Type B. So, I believe, is the man who tortured them. Ironic. Torturer and victims are blood brothers. But there is a third blood type, AB, on the skin of these two men. My guess is that all three men struggled, were beaten, bled on each other. We are fortunate. The third man carries the virus for narcolepsy. The man was bitten by a tsetse fly. It is, therefore, likely that he is from somewhere in the south of Africa.”

“Because tsetse flies are only found in Africa?” said Zelach.

“No, because my two friends here bear tattoos on the backs of warriors from the same Southern African tribe, a Botswanan tribe.”

“Warriors?”

This from Iosef.

“Yes,” said Paulinin. “Perhaps, but modern ones. These tattoos are only an homage to the past. They are like the tattoos prisoners wear to mark them as being from a particular gang.”

“Anything else?” asked Iosef.

“One moment,” said Paulinin, moving back into darkness, changing the CD. When he returned he looked at Iosef.

“Rachmaninov,” said Iosef.

Paulinin smiled.

“There is one more thing. Pa’smatril. Look.”

He turned the tortured dead man on his side and said, “You have to look very carefully.”

Paulinin pressed his finger into a red spot on the dead man’s back. His finger disappeared into the body.

“They both have them. The other one’s is on his thigh, like little pockets.”

“Drugs,” said Zelach.

“Diamonds,” said Iosef.

“Possibly,” said Paulinin.

Iosef did not press the issue. He was certain. The meeting in Porfiry Petrovich’s office made it clear that they were all in search of diamonds.

“Now,” said Iosef, “if you can only tell us where to begin looking for this third man. .”

“Four-seven-two-four Kropotkin Street,” said Paulinin.

“You cannot know. .” Zelach could not stop himself.

“Rent receipt in my friend’s pocket,” said Paulinin, touching the nearest corpse.

“Spa’siba. Thank you,” said Iosef.

“Yes,” added Zelach resisting the urge to run out of the laboratory.

“Zelach wants to know if it is true that you have Stalin’s head and Lenin’s teeth and eyes,” said Iosef.

No, no, no, thought Zelach looking at Paulinin.

“I have treasures pathological, historical, and cultural,” said Paulinin who was looking over his glasses at Zelach. “It would be unwise to share treasure. Let yourselves out.”

Rachmaninov bloomed in the garden of glass, wood, and metal at their backs as Iosef and Zelach moved toward the door to the corridor.

A voice spoke cheerily behind them.

Paulinin was talking to the dead men. The scientist seemed certain that the dead men also talked to him.

And in some sense, he was right.

“Bedraggled,” Lydia Tkach said, looking at her son.

Sasha was at the mirror in the tiny bathroom adjusting the white shirt under his tan zippered jacket. She had followed him before he could close the door.

Sasha, examining his face, had to agree. The unruly line of hair still came down to cover his forehead, only the hair was no longer really the color of corn. He was handsome still, but the appealing boyishness was missing. Undercover assignments were still his lot, but he could no longer pass himself off as a student or an innocent. His blue eyes betrayed him.

“Look at you.”

Sasha looked at his reflection and saw sympathy in the eyes that met his. Lydia was retired, no longer the tyrant who held together a gaggle of functionaries in a government office. Lydia, long hard of hearing, tended to shout when she was displeased. She tended to shout when she was happy. Shouting was her conversational currency and Sasha had endured it for more than thirty years.

“I’m looking,” he said. “What am I supposed to see?”

It was the wrong thing to say. He knew it as soon as the words had been spat from his lips, but he could not give up the small vestige of childish defiance.

“You are supposed to see a husband,” she said. “You are supposed to see a father with two children, one of whom is ill in an awful, dirty city of murderers.”

“The children are not ill and Kiev is neither dirty nor full of murderers.”

Why could he not silence himself?

“What was I saying?” she asked, looking at the dull green painted wall of the bathroom.

“You were telling me what I am supposed to see in the mirror.”

He turned to face her. She was small, lean, strong, and reluctant to wear the perfectly satisfactory hearing