“Yes,” she said.
“Good,” he said. He touched her arm and whispered, “Do your best not to show them you are frightened. Can you do that?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Good,” said Rostnikov, opening his door.
Elena slid across the seat and followed him out. On the sidewalk, people hurried away, not wanting to see what would happen next.
There were five large men, all wearing suits. None of them carried a weapon. As the men advanced, Rostnikov went to meet them, Elena at his side.
One of the men came over to take Elena’s arm. Rostnikov reached across her and removed the man’s hand.
“Tell them we will cause no trouble,” Rostnikov said in Russian.
Elena was afraid her voice would crack, but before she could speak, one of the men spoke in Russian.
“We do not expect any trouble. That car.”
The man pointed to the second car and Elena and Rostnikov walked to it and entered the darkness of the back seat.
SIXTEEN
Anatoli was up before Ginka reached him. There had been a mistake, she reported breathlessly. Teddi at the Arabatskaya Station had gone to the toilet. When he came back to his position, he had found …
“Phone,” he said. “Tell the others. Everyone to Arabatskaya.”
Arabatskaya Station was on one of the six lines of the Metro system that crossed each other at the center of Moscow. A circle line, the Koltsevaya, circled the intersecting lines. Arabatskaya was on the red line not far from the center of Moscow.
Karpo had received the call from a boy who did not identify himself.
“Arabatskaya Station,” the boy had said as a train pulled in. “A mistake. Another dead.”
Karpo was two stops from Arabatskaya on the Studencheskaya platform. He dropped the phone and got through the doors as they were closing. As the train pulled out, he stood rigid, next to the door, willing himself not to imagine. Imagination had never come easily to Emil Karpo and he did not welcome it now.
He focused on a small screw on the door before him. The only other passengers on the car, three men in work clothes, stopped talking.
When the train pulled into Arabatskaya, Karpo got off and looked down the platform at a small crowd gathered in a rough circle. As he hurried forward he could see that three of the people were Capones. One person was a Metro motorman. There was a great deal of blood on the platform, and just beyond the gathering was something he recognized. Sasha Tkach’s bag, lying on its side, open, a book half out.
“Shit,” cried a girl.
Karpo pushed his way past the uniformed motorman and looked down at Sasha Tkach.
Tkach was on one knee, trying to find life in the body whose dress made it clear it was a girl but whose head was a bloody meaningless mass.
A girl wept. A boy with pink hair wailed.
“Sasha,” said Karpo.
Tkach, covered in blood, looked up and shook his head.
“Witnesses,” asked Karpo, looking around the crowd.
A woman, three Capones, the motorman. All looked blank and frightened.
All shook their heads.
“No one came up the stairs,” said a boy. “I had to take a leak, but it was quick. No one came up. I think I heard her, but … I don’t know.” The boy shrugged. “Anatoli will kill me,” he said.
Karpo turned to the Metro man.
“Did you see …?”
Then, after five years and now forty-two deaths, it was over.
“Nothing,” said the Metro man. “I got off the train with these people and-”
He stopped.
Karpo was looking at him unblinking. He was certain he recognized the voice.
“Your bag,” Karpo said. “Hand it to me.”
“My bag?”
Sasha was at Karpo’s side now, and the woman who was standing next to Odom began to move away. The boy, anxious to redeem himself, stepped toward Yevgeny Odom with a shout and slipped in the blood of the murdered girl. He fell backward as Yevgeny, bag in hand, leaped down onto the track and began running.
“Call ahead, next station,” said Karpo. “Tell them to be ready.”
Karpo ran to the edge of the platform and jumped down.
“What if a train …?” Sasha called, but Karpo had already plunged into the darkness beyond the edge of the station.
Ahead of him, Karpo could hear the running footsteps of Yevgeny Odom, but Karpo did not run. In the dim guide lights of the tunnel he could see a shape moving away with nowhere to go.
From somewhere distant, the grinding of a train touched Karpo’s senses. Behind him, on the platform of the station he had just left, there was a new rush of voices, noise, curses.
Karpo stopped. He was breathing heavily.
“There is no place to go,” he said, and his voice echoed through the tunnel, repeating “Go. Go.”
“We’ve called ahead to the next station. They’ll be waiting for you.”
The footsteps raced on for a dozen yards. The dim figure swayed and then stopped.
As Karpo moved toward the figure he thought he heard a new presence behind him in the tunnel.
“Walk toward me,” Karpo called out. “Hold your hands up.”
“You will kill me, Karpo. I know you will kill me.”
The man did not sound frightened, though he was breathing heavily.
“I will not kill you,” Karpo said.
“Maybe, maybe not. I have to think.”
“There is no time.”
“No time,” came the voice from the darkness. “I’ve done what I had to do. If I didn’t help Kola, he would have torn through my chest. You understand?”
“There is no time,” Karpo repeated, still moving forward slowly.
“It’s always been like that. Don’t you see? Always. You should understand. I could tell it in your voice. You’re like me. You have a Kola inside you.”
“I am nothing like you,” said Karpo, whose head suddenly went mad with the explosion of a migraine. Always he had warning. Always he had an hour, or at least minutes.
The beating in his head had never come like this. Karpo’s eyes closed with the pain. He was twenty yards from the man now and-yes, maybe it was the sudden headache-the figure before him was a mirror image.
“We must leave,” said Karpo. “We must find a safe place before a train comes.”
“There is no place safe on earth, or in heaven or hell,” said Odom. “And there is no heaven or hell. Perhaps there is not even an earth.”
Karpo was within a few yards of the man now.
“Hands out,” he said softly. “Turn and hurry to the next station.”
The black outline ahead shook its head and stepped toward Karpo. It was only when Odom stepped into the
