Porfiry Petrovich stood looking down at the body of a disheveled man who was probably about sixty years old. The corpse had been covered by a tangle of branches, dirt, and long dead leaves, one of which had rested in his open mouth. Rostnikov knelt awkwardly and removed the leaf.
On Rostnikov’s left when he stood was Emil Karpo. On his right stood Paulinin, wearing a heavy coat and shifting his weight from one leg to the other. Neither Rostnikov nor Karpo was the least bit cold. Paulinin did not like leaving his subbasement laboratory even to go home.
Rostnikov had discovered the body not more than a dozen feet from one of the park’s makeshift bird feeders, which had been moved from a limb next to a nearby path.
Paulinin made a puffing sound through his pursed lips. “He has been here for a few weeks,” said Paulinin. “Like the others, his skull has been crushed from behind. I will tell you more after we get him to my laboratory, where eager hands of the medical examiner’s office are going through my notes and records.”
“What can you tell us?” asked Rostnikov.
Birds were chirping away loudly, possibly in battle. The afternoon was clear. The sun was shining.
“I can tell you his name is Julian Semeyanov. He came to Moscow from Neya. He had been a soldier, a sniper. He has a wife and two grown daughters and one grandson. He abandoned them all and came to Moscow to become a zoo worker. He became alcoholic, lost his job, and has wandered the streets for about seven years. His liver was in the last throes of existence when he was struck down. He had no more than a year to live. His favorite foods were sardines and shrimp.”
“And you got this from simply looking down at him?” asked Karpo.
“No,” Paulinin said with irritation. “I made it all up. How am I supposed to know anything till I look at him on the table? Search the area around here for evidence. Bring me whatever you find. Bone fragments. Bloody leaves. Whatever you find.”
“Yes,” said Karpo.
“He was dragged here,” said Rostnikov.
“Yes,” said Paulinin.
The dead man’s arms were at his sides, shoulders up.
“From over there near the bird feeder,” said Karpo.
“You will see to it that the body is transported to Dr. Paulinin’s laboratory,” said Rostnikov.
“Yes,” said Karpo.
Rostnikov looked down at the dead man, walked slowly to the bird feeder, and looked inside it. The feeder was full of a variety of seeds. Rostnikov reached in, picked up one round yellow seed, and placed it in his mouth. It was dry and fresh tasting. Someone was keeping the feeder full. Could that be done without noticing the dead man? Possibly. Rostnikov turned to Karpo, who was talking to Paulinin, who was now down on one knee, white rubber gloves on his hands, two fingers inserted into the open wound at the back of the dead man’s head.
“Emil Karpo,” he said. “Leave the body where it is for now. See that Dr. Paulinin gets back to his laboratory; then take a position where you cannot be seen and observe who approaches the feeder. Take photographs of anyone who approaches and follow them. Get names and addresses if you can.”
“I need this man now,” said Paulinin. “It may rain. It may snow. Every hour, every minute, he is left in the open means more information lost. How can he talk to me if you take away part of his essence?”
“It will not be long,” Rostnikov said, evenly taking a handful of seeds from the feeder and heading for the path.
“Where are you going?” asked Paulinin.
“Shopping.”
With that Rostnikov continued to walk to and down the path, eating birdseed as he limped forward.
“Inspector Karpo,” Paulinin said, probing more deeply into the wound with his fingers. “Sometimes I think your Chief Inspector is a little bit mad himself.”
Since Emil Karpo thought that the scientist he was talking to was more than a little bit mad, he said nothing.
The man stood at the side of a brackish pool of green water. He was a short, bald man of no more than fifty with a substantial belly. His face was the map of a man who had seen violence. Nose broken. Right ear curled. A faded four-inch-long white scar across his forehead. He had a large white beach towel wrapped around his nonexistent waist. Both of his hands were occupied, one with what looked like a small cucumber, the other with a cell phone.
The ride that had taken Klaus Agrinkov and Ivan Medivkin forty miles outside of Moscow had been particularly uncomfortable for Ivan. The front seat of the small red BMW forced him to ride with his knees up almost to his chest.
They had stopped before a large wooden door in the wall that surrounded the Saslov Community. The young man at the door, pink faced, hair short, wearing a cap with a Molson beer logo on it, leaned down to the window and recognized Agrinkov. Then he turned and slowly pulled back the metal bar across the doors and then pushed open the doors. Agrinkov pulled in.
“You will be safe here,” said Klaus.
“I should be in Moscow finding out who killed Lena,” said Ivan. “I should be finding him and beating him to death.”
“No, you should be here waiting to hear from me,” said Klaus as they walked up a muddy road. “I will keep the police away and try to find what I can about who killed Lena and Fedot.”
“I do not care about Fedot. He and Lena were. . I do not care who killed Fedot.”
“But,” said Klaus, stepping off the path with Ivan towering over him at his side, “it is the same person.”
“Maybe,” said Ivan.
It was then that they saw the near naked man with the large belly at the side of the green-water pool. The man kept talking on the phone and eating his cucumber as he looked up and acknowledged the arrival of the two visitors with a nod.
When they were close enough, Ivan could hear the man say into the phone, “Yes, the Archbishop will be joining us. The church will be ready.”
The man looked beyond the pool and down a small, low valley where workmen were removing lumber from a large pickup truck. A few feet from the truck a small building, clearly a church, was somewhere near completion.
“It will be perfectly safe to bring our friends in the Duma. I have to go now. Visitors.”
The near naked man put the phone down, placed the cucumber in his mouth, and held out his hand to greet Klaus and Ivan.
“Good to meet you,” the man mumbled around his cucumber.
His grip was firm, not as firm as Ivan’s but definitely among the stronger and more confident that Ivan had encountered.
“Artyom will take care of you. We are old friends,” said Klaus, reaching up to place a hand on Ivan’s shoulder.
“You will be safe here,” Artyom Gorodeyov said, hitching his towel up a little higher. “Our people have already been informed that they are not to notice you. Do you know anything about us?”
Gorodeyov motioned for the two visitors to follow him up four wooden stairs to a deck of the one-story house they approached.
Ivan knew a little about the Union of the Return and a little about Artyom Gorodeyov, and what he knew from the newspapers and television was not flattering.
“No,” said Ivan.
“We were founded twenty years ago by seven former military officers, some of whom are now in important positions in the government. We are dedicated to returning to the time when Russia was respected throughout the world, a return to the order brought by Stalin, a return to the religion of our past. An expulsion of the Jews, who have been responsible for our failures since 1917. We are a peaceful fellowship of diverse but like-minded people determined to exert our political power and raise a new generation of the young who will have direction and principles.”
