events of the day into the promotion that would mark the successful culmination of a lifetime of service, success, and, above all, survival.
He was not quite asleep when he heard the rap on his door. The rap was followed by a louder rap, and Colonel Snitkonoy sat up and turned on the light. He automatically smoothed his hair back with his hands and straightened his pajamas.
“Come in,” he called out.
“Telephone,” came the voice of the colonel’s man. “General Lugharev. He says it is urgent.”
The Wolfhound got out of bed and picked up the phone from the bedside table. Outside the door he heard his aide padding away.
“Colonel Snitkonoy,” he said.
“Lugharev,” came the general’s tired voice. “I have good news. My men have found the killer of the Kazakhstani foreign minister. A Moslem separatist, from Kazakhstan, who was working as a waiter at the Hotel Russia the night of the reception. We have a full confession. He was given the drugs and the syringe by a radical group. We have the name of the Moslem doctor who prepared the injection and instructed the waiter.”
“I am pleased to hear it,” said the Wolfhound.
“Your information was invaluable,” said Lugharev with perhaps a hint of sarcasm. “The confession and the name of the Moslem doctor have been turned over to the Kazakhstani government with our assurances of cooperation should the man still be in Russia.”
“The waiter,” said the Wolfhound.
“Unfortunately,” said General Lugharev with a sigh, “he is dead. Threw himself through a window after he signed the confession. But do not worry. We have four witnesses to the confession.”
“Į had no fear, General. I am certain that you and your staff know what you are doing.”
“Your office will receive an official commendation from the committee,” said Lugharev. “Possibly another medal if we can ever agree about what our medals will look like from now on.”
“My staff and I need no medals,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “It is sufficient that we have contributed to the apprehension of a criminal whose crime could have embarrassed many people.”
“You have always been adept at understanding political reality, Colonel,” said the general.
“Thank you, General. About those additional men …”
“I’m sorry,” said the general. “As much as I would like to contribute to your office having two major successes in a short period, I cannot release any officers. There are needs … I hope you understand.”
“Completely,” said the Wolfhound.
“Sleep well, Colonel.”
“And you too, General.”
When he hung up the phone, Colonel Snitkonoy got back into bed, allowed himself a small smile in the dark, and went instantly to sleep.
Yevgeny Odom stood at the window of his apartment looking at the apartment building across the way. He held a pair of binoculars in his right hand as he scanned the windows, secure in the knowledge that with his lights out he would not be seen.
Since he had arrived at the perfectly logical decision to make his next attack in a Metro station, he had been uneasy. He knew he should wait at least a week, but Kola pounded in the cage of Yevgeny’s chest, urging him to go out now, find a victim, and let the beast free to attack, to feed, to gorge on a young body.
Planning was essential. The charts were essential. But it was impossible to keep track of his records with Kola in a near-constant frenzy now. Yevgeny even had difficulty remembering whether the last one had been the young man with the backpack behind the opera or the blond girl in the park.
In the past, Kola had been content between killings to be thrown chunks of imagined horror. Eva at the clinic had once asked Yevgeny what he was smiling about after he had drawn blood from a pretty young woman. He had been smiling because he had imagined plunging the needle deeply into the woman’s arm and breaking it off for Kola, letting him watch her face as the horror came to her. He would never have actually done such a thing to someone at the clinic. He would always be gentle and give the least possible pain, so that returnees would ask for the nice man who didn’t hurt them and always had something cheerful to say.
But that impulse throbbed in him so powerfully now that Yevgeny Odom considered selecting one of the people he could now see across the street. He would charm his way in, let Kola kill them, and leave a note or a clue. It would put the beast to sleep for a while and give Yevgeny at least a night of rest. In the next apartment building, a woman and baby were alone because her husband worked nights. There was the young man who came home early from work before his sister, mother, and father. There were so many.
After Kola had killed one of them he would come back here and watch from the darkness as they discovered the body. There would be no danger in an attack so near his home. After the first four or five attacks he was sure the police had wasted no more effort on the assumption that the killer might be someone who lived or worked nearby. They simply didn’t have the resources. It would have been a waste.
Yevgeny tried to focus on the chart on the wall, but it was no use. Before he could change his mind, he went to the door of his apartment, stepped out, locked the door, and hurried down the stairs whistling something from Prokofiev to drown out the cries of Kola throbbing through him.
The rain had stopped and the sky was clear, but it was growing cold and the streets were slick and icy.
Near the Metro station he found an outdoor phone that worked. They might try to trace the call, and Yevgeny knew enough from technical journals to be sure that they could do it in seconds with the proper equipment. He would make no mistake.
He put in his kopecks, dialed 02, and waited for the three rings and the voice of a woman who said, “Police.”
“I wish to speak to someone in charge of the
“One moment,” the woman answered.
Yevgeny had decided that he would wait no more than ten seconds for someone to answer. Then he would hang up. Perhaps Kola would be quiet and let Yevgeny rest. The urge would leave him by morning, and he would not feel the need to call, but …
“Special Security,” came a hollow voice.
“You are in charge of the
“I am an investigator,” the man said slowly, much too slowly for Yevgeny.
“My name is Igor Polynetsin,” said Yevgeny. “And you are …?”
“Deputy Inspector Karpo.”
Yevgeny hung up. It was enough. He had the name of an investigator. There could not be many Karpos in Moscow. It might take an hour or two to locate the right one, but when he did, he could call him at home in the middle of the night.
He stood shivering in the night wind, feeling the return of some control. The sense of exhilaration continued as he bounded away from the telephone, nodded to passersby in an un-Russian show of street goodwill, and considered what he might now eat since he was suddenly very hungry.
He also considered, and not for the very first time, that he might be mad.
TWELVE
There were two men in the front seat of the 1957 Chevrolet in which Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov rode. One was the man who had been waiting for him in the storeroom of the bar. The other man was Javier the waiter, the son of Manuel the bass player at La Floridita.
Javier looked over his shoulder at Rostnikov as they bounced over pits in the dark street and around mounds where once someone had considered repairs. Javier wore faded pants and a yellowish-white buttoned shirt with an oversize collar.
“I did not do it,” said Javier in English.
Rostnikov said nothing.
