People Who Walk In Darkness

Karpo stopped the cart and they all stepped out. Rostnikov and his alien leg came last.

“Three tunnels,” said Boris, turning his head to each of the dark entrances.

“Which one did the Canadian go in?” asked Rostnikov.

Boris pointed to the one on the left.

“It does not go very far. There was a pipe there many, many years ago but it ran out.”

“Why is it not sealed?” asked Karpo.

“Why?” said Boris. “Why should it be? No one goes in there.”

“The Canadian went in there,” Karpo reminded him.

“I told him it was pointless. He insisted. Americans do not listen,” said Boris.

“He was not an American.”

“He was a North American,” Boris said. “The difference can be measured with the thinness of a single sheet of very fine paper.”

“The ghost girl,” Rostnikov prompted.

“Yes, that is the tunnel in which the girl died in 1936 or 1942 or 1957, depending on who tells the tale.”

“And the other day,” injected Rostnikov, “Anatoliy Lebedev, which tunnel did he go in?”

“I do not know. I found him out here. Right there, where you are standing.”

Rostnikov turned his head downward. The beam of his hard hat revealed nothing, not even a stain of blood.

“I am going in that tunnel,” Rostnikov said, nodding at the tunnel on the left into which the Canadian had walked. “You two go in the other tunnels, the middle one first. How far does that go?”

“Maybe a quarter of a mile,” said Boris. “Maybe. .”

“Forty feet short of a quarter of a mile,” said Karpo, looking at the Orlov map in his hands.

“Go in, to the end. Check the small caves marked on the map,” said Rostnikov.

Karpo nodded his understanding of the order and started into the middle tunnel with Boris shuffling behind him. Rostnikov stood watching the light from the bouncing lamps on the hats of the two men slowly grow more and more dim as they moved away.

Rostnikov moved to the tunnel on the left and stepped in. It was definitely too small for the golf cart and not as flat as the tunnel out of which he was stepping. There were no green overhead lights glowing here. Only his lamp illuminated the dark tunnel.

He walked, his bandit leg protesting.

“The cave is not far,” he told the leg softly. “Tonight I will clean you, oil you, dry you, and place you on a pillow on the bed.”

This failed to appease the leg dragging along the rocky ground.

The small cave was exactly where the Orlov map showed it. Rostnikov removed the boards that covered it and peered inside. It appeared to be an empty space big enough for someone to fit in by crouching. On the floor of the cave, in a far corner, Rostnikov could see something crumpled on the floor. Rostnikov went down and awkwardly crawled forward until he could reach what he had seen. There was barely enough room for him to turn around and sit.

He did not bother to examine the walls for traces of diamonds. He knew there was no real chance of his recognizing a pipe of diamonds or even a real diamond among the stones next to him. What did interest him were the two empty candy bags. He picked up the first and smelled the inside. This was no ancient relic. It could not have been more than a day old, if that.

Rostnikov turned to his side and folded the two empty bags into his pocket. There was nothing else to see in the tiny cave. He began to ease himself out, this time feet first. Then he stopped. A light glowed outside the cave. Rostnikov pulled himself back inside the cave as the music began. It was a child’s voice, high and plaintively sweet singing “Evening Bells.”

“ . . tam slyshal zvon. f pasledni ras. I heard this sound there for the last time.”

Rostnikov sang the next verse. His singing voice was not sweet, and he sounded not like a bell, but he could hold a tune.

“I skolkikh nyet uzhe v zhivyky, tagda vesyolykh maladykh. And how many no longer are among the living now, who were happy then, and young.”

The singing of the child had stopped and was replaced by a deep male voice singing, “I krepok ikh magilny son. Deep in their sleep, in their tombs.”

“You have a fine voice, Viktor Panin,” said Rostnikov, “as does your son.”

“How did you know?”

“That you were the killer, or that the ghost girl was a boy?”

“Both.”

Panin was on one knee now looking into the small cave.

“The report of the naked ghost girl,” said Rostnikov.

It was quite uncomfortable in the small cave. He shifted, but it did not help very much.

“Why would someone write a false report about a fifty-year-old sighting of a naked ghost girl? Answer: Because the person writing the report wanted me to look for a girl and not consider a boy. I met some very nice girls, but concluded that none of them was the girl.”

“And me?” asked Panin.

“You,” said Rostnikov. “When you killed Lebedev you left a very tiny piece of your knife blade inside him. On the blade was a faint trace of something my scientist friend Paulinin discovered. There were also faint traces of the same substance on the clothes and neck of poor Lebedev.”

“What was this substance?” asked Panin.

“Chalk. Not the blue chalk next to the pool tables in the recreation room, but the white chalk of the workout room. I am sure I still have traces of it on my sweat suit. I know it takes a very long time to be absorbed by the skin or washed away. I made inquiries and found that you have a boy who is on the Devochka Children’s Choir, a boy who, I am sorry to say, has great musical talent but is more than a bit backwards.”

“I must kill you, Porfiry Petrovich,” Panin said. “For my family.”

“Well, I must stay alive for mine. How do you propose killing me? There is not enough room for you to get in here with me, and even if your son is very small I doubt if he could overcome me.”

“I would not ask him to do that.”

“Then. .”

“I could shoot you.”

“Too much noise. Karpo and Boris would hear.”

“We would be gone by the time they got here,” said Panin.

“Perhaps, but Emil Karpo is fast, and he will quickly be on your trail through the tunnel. One question,” said Rostnikov. “You hid your son down here during the day before the gate was locked for the night.”

“It was not difficult.”

“And then he came out and opened the gate from inside.”

“Yes.”

“And the other ghost girls, over the many years before you were old enough to do this, before you had a son to do this? All the children of people, like you, who stole diamonds and smuggled them to Africans in Moscow?”

“Yes.”

“Only you had no daughters, only sons.”

“Now you know.”

“Thank you. If you would help me out. .”

“I am going to have to kill you, Porfiry Petrovich. Do you not understand?”

“It would be pointless. Emil Karpo is a very good shot and I believe he is somewhere behind you, watching, at this very moment.”

Just outside the small cave the darkness of the tunnel was illuminated by two sudden beams, one fixed on the kneeling Panin, the other on his son of no more than nine or ten, who stood in dress and wig, a thumb to his mouth.