“It was my sister’s husband’s idea,” said Maya. “He thought it was funny. It is a Montagnard tribal name.”
“I like it,” Sasha lied.
“I told my friend Tula that you are a policeman and that you catch fish thieves and people who drink too much vodka and pee in the street,” said Pulcharia.
“Your father catches people who do very bad things,” Maya said. “He protects the good people of Moscow from the bad people of Moscow.”
“Good peeeeeeeople,” the little boy said. “Bad peeeeeople. Taras. Taras. Taras.”
“Your father will come back and see you again before he has to go back to Moscow and catch more bad people,” Maya said.
“I will be back tonight?” he said, making it a question and not a statement.
“Tonight,” Maya said.
“For dinner?” asked Pulcharia.
“For dinner,” Maya said.
Pulcharia smiled broadly.
“Will Erik be here too?” the girl asked.
“No, not tonight.”
Pulcharia leaned toward her father and puckered her lips to be kissed. Sasha obliged.
“Taras too,” said the little boy, who ran forward, perfectly balanced in spite of his spinning.
“Seven o’clock,” said Maya.
“You are all very beautiful,” Sasha said.
“Seven,” Maya repeated.
The map which Gennadi Ivanov had drawn for Karpo lay flattened on the small table in Porfiry Petrovich’s room.
Neither man had told anyone of the map drawn by the very old man who held a very old grudge against the Japanese. The two policemen could not trust the map or anyone in Devochka.
Rostnikov was sitting. Karpo stood.
“One of the many ironies of an artificial leg is that it is lighter than a real one,” said Rostnikov. “I am unbalanced and have had to learn to compensate. Of course, I could ask the man who made my leg to add weight to it, but then he might add too much, and the surgeon would have to remove some of my right leg to get the balance right again.”
“You are making a joke,” said Karpo.
“I am,” said Rostnikov, “but I am also making a point. Maintain your balance. Adjust to change. Do not seek perfection. There is no perfection.”
“And you believe I seek perfection?” said Karpo.
“I know you do, Emil. Please sit. It is a strain to look up in a conversation and it destroys the illusion of intimacy.”
Karpo moved to the bed and sat, his back upright. Rostnikov turned his chair to face him.
“There are those who believe you had no mother,” said Rostnikov.
“Everyone has a mother,” said Karpo.
“Well, the belief is not grounded in reality, but in perception.”
“I find it difficult to believe that there are those who would engage in such curious perceptions.”
“You may not know it, but there are those who find you a fascinating enigma. They do not know you as I do, Emil Karpo. I often think of you as my second son.”
“I. . thank you.”
Rostnikov could not recall hearing even a touch of emotion in his associate’s voice since the death of Mathilde. Only two events had shaken Emil Karpo’s steel self-image: the fall of the Soviet Union and the death of Mathilde Verson. He had been devoted to both, and with their deaths had encased what little emotion he had previously displayed.
“Is there some reason we are discussing this now?” asked Karpo.
“Yes. I will tell you in a moment. My father was a good man.”
Karpo had no response.
“What about your father, Emil Karpo?”
“You have read my file. You know the few facts of my history.”
“This makes you uncomfortable.”
“Perplexed.”
“You never knew your father. Your mother and aunt raised you.”
“That is correct.”
“I think when we return to Moscow you might consider an attempt to locate your father.”
“Why?”
“Closure,” said Rostnikov. “You have a brother.”
“Yes.”
“When did you last talk to him?”
“Twenty-two years ago, on June four.”
“And your mother?”
“Twenty-two years ago, on June four.”
“And the reason for the events of that momentous day in the history of the family, Karpo?”
“I believe you are mocking,” said Karpo.
“Forgive me,” said Rostnikov. “You are right. Mockery and irony are protective Russian responses that often prevail over consideration for others.”
“On that day I told my brother, mother, and aunt that I could no longer see or talk to them because of their anti-Communist feelings and remarks. I told them that I would not issue a report on them.”
“What do you think made you what you are, Emil my friend?”
“I do not know.”
“Perhaps a meeting with your father, if he is still alive, would answer that question.”
“Perhaps.”
“Are you not curious?”
The pause was slight, but Rostnikov perceived it.
“No.”
“Well, I am.”
“You said this conversation had a particular point.”
“It does,” said Rostnikov. “In two hours, Boris will take us into the mine armed with this map. I am confident we will see the ghost girl and that someone will try to kill us to keep us from finding what is in at least one of the small caves on the map of our Japanese-obsessed friend.”
“And you know who the person who will try to kill us is,” said Karpo.
“Oh yes, and that is the point of my exploration of your familial relationships. I am very much afraid that the person who will attempt to kill us is my brother.”
Each night the Yak allowed himself a single, full glass of a deep red Italian table wine before he went to sleep. He had one glass, and only one, a day unless he was with someone higher on the scale of politics or the law. If that person drank, so did Yaklovev. And that was the situation at the moment.
He was in the Taiga Restaurant, not far from the Bolshoi Opera. Across from him was a very smug General Peotor Frankovich in a blue suit and tie. The general’s fat pink neck usually hung over the stiff collar of the uniform he liked to wear. The blue suit accented the roll of fat. Someone should tell him. That someone would not be Igor Yaklovev.
“We should be arranging for the transition,” said Frankovich, holding his glass of wine, twisting it by the stem with thumb and finger.
