Sasha missed his former partner, Zelach, who had recently returned to limited desk work after almost being killed as a result of Sasha’s negligence. Karpo was reliable and professional, and he expected Tkach to be the same. Zelach was, putting it kindly, slow-witted, but with Zelach, there was no doubt that Sasha was in charge. His more recent partner, Elena Timofeyeva, was smart, efficient, ambitious, and, though he had more experience than she did, she was older than he and maddeningly confident.
When Elena was selected to accompany Porfiry Petrovich to Cuba, Sasha had been jealous. The prospect of private nights away from his family in a place where he heard there was still a reasonable supply of food was something to fight for, but the crucial issue had been a simple one. His French was nearly perfect, but Sasha spoke no Spanish.
So, at the moment, he was asking very little, as he closed the door to the living room, turned the locks without letting them click noisily, and made his way carefully across the room.
Before he had taken five steps he knew something was wrong. When he took the sixth, he knew what it was. His mother was not snoring. Her snoring had necessitated moving himself, Maya, and the children into the bedroom. Perhaps, he thought hopefully, she is dead, if she is, I’ll simply let her he there and discover the body in the morning.
“Sasha,” came his mother’s familiar loud voice.
Lydia was nearly deaf and far too proud to admit it.
In the bedroom beyond the door, Maya or one of the children stirred.
Sasha stood still.
“I see you there,” Lydia said. “What are you doing?”
Useless though it was, Sasha whispered loudly, “Shh, Mother. You’ll wake-”
“Turn on the light,” she ordered. As he obeyed he stepped on something hard.
Lydia was sitting up in bed ready for combat, her gray-black hair a wild nest, her small face pinched in the glare of sudden light.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
Another sound from the bedroom.
“No, Mother. Maya and the children are-”
“Then why are you limping?”
“I just stepped on-”
“There’s no point in lying. You’re working with that Karpo. He is mad.”
Lydia was convinced that each of her son’s colleagues had some dangerous deficiency that would result in the maiming or death of her only child. The result of this conviction was that she was almost always angry with her son. The irony of this was that Sasha was convinced that he was a constant danger to those who worked with him. It was Sasha whose passions had betrayed him and almost gotten Zelach killed. It was Sasha whose depression had gotten him into a terrible and unnecessary fight in a bar while he and Elena Timofeyeva were conducting an investigation. Elena had not been hurt, but Sasha had suffered both broken ribs and painful bruises.
“I’m well, Mother,” he said. “I just want to eat something and go to sleep. Let me turn out the light and-”
“What are you hiding?” Lydia asked suspiciously as the bedroom door opened. Sasha suddenly felt massively sorry for himself.
“Hiding? Nothing.”
Maya stepped into the room wearing a giant T-shirt with the words “Comic Relief” printed on it in red letters. With her fingers she was brushing her long auburn hair away from her sleepy face.
Sasha shrugged as Maya reached back to close the bedroom door.
“He’s been hurt,” Lydia insisted.
“No,” said Sasha.
“Come,” called Maya, motioning to her husband.
Sasha dutifully took the five steps to the door. Maya turned to Lydia and said, “I’ll deal with him.”
Lydia was on her way to turn off the light when Sasha and Maya closed the door behind them.
“Hungry?”
“Tense?”
“Tense,” he agreed.
She rubbed his cheek and chest while she unbuttoned his shirt.
“Let’s go in the bathroom,” she said.
They had been reduced to making infrequent love in the small bathroom. Sasha was excited, but the thought of the rusting toilet bolts and ceaseless dripping in the sink depressed him.
“Lydia is moving back to her apartment next week,” Maya whispered so softly that he wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly.
“Moving?” he repeated.
“Definitely,” she said. “I am well enough to take care of the baby. She can come over after work a few hours and help with Pulcharia.”
“She agreed to this?”
“She agreed.”
“That is a miracle. Miracles should be celebrated,” Sasha said. “Let’s go in the bathroom.”
At that moment Pulcharia said, “I want a drink.” Ilya awoke and began crying, and Lydia rushed into the bedroom without knocking.
Much to his wife’s relief, Sasha Tkach laughed.
After he had pulled the curtain on the single window in his one-room apartment, it took Yevgeny Odom twenty minutes to convert the space from a drab jumble of third-hand furniture into a war room that he was confident would earn the admiration and respect of Marshal Tutianovich himself had he been alive to see it.
On one wall of the small room hung the large chart that he had pulled from beneath his bed and carefully put in place. He had searched the Lucite surface carefully, as he always did, for signs of cracking or wear. There had been none, though a small patch in the lower right-hand corner would bear watching. He had checked his markers-red, black, and green with backups-and, satisfied, hung the black-and-white street map of Moscow on the opposite wall. It too was covered with Lucite and he checked it as carefully as he had the chart.
Was that a tiny crease, a shadow? He checked it again. It seemed to be all right.
He removed the ugly blue vase and the tablecloth from the metal tabletop and rolled the table from its place in the corner to the center of the room.
Next Yevgeny rolled a chair next to the table. The chair with its black metal arms and its woven green seat and back was his prize possession. He had spent a month’s wages and part of his savings on the chair four years earlier.
Then Yevgeny sat in his chair and checked the books he had placed on the metal table to be sure they were lined up and ready for use.
Then, as he always did, he swiveled first to the chart and then to the map to be sure that they needed no adjustment. His perspective seated in the center of the planning room was different from his perspective standing.
The chart, in neatly ruled columns, listed each of Yevgeny’s victims, along with age, approximate height, weight (again approximate), color of hair and eyes, description of clothing, place of birth, address (if known), place where he had killed them, details of the killing (weapon, number of wounds, etc.), date and time of killing, phase of the moon, the weather. Some of the information was missing, but not much. He had made it a matter of great importance to collect details from investigation of the victims’ possessions. There had been several times when he had been forced to travel as far as Kiev to get information and one time when he had to pose as a policeman to get data from the neighbor of a young woman Kola had killed not far from the Slavyansky Bazaar on … what was the new name of the street? Yes, Nikolskaya. Madness. It had been Twenty-fifth of October Street all his life, and now they had changed all the street names. As if changing a name changed history.
Yevgeny checked his markers again to be sure they were moist and sharp. Then he looked at the charts.
