waking moment in their relationship when she had attempted to touch him tenderly, when he had permitted her to do so. And she had understood, understood that a barrier existed through which their relationship could not pass if Emil Karpo was to retain his identity. A break in that identity, that persona, might be devastating. Mathilde had respected that barrier, had treated him with a tender amusement.
Emil Karpo was sure that he did not need her specifically, that he exercised only animal needs, needs he accepted as a limitation of the human species, and yet there were moments when Mathilde … The young girl and Yuri Vostoyavek walked onto the Arbat and looked around, seeing small crowds, people passing, and moved to their left, heading again toward Arbat Square.
Without looking back at the woman in the shop, Karpo stepped into the street half a block behind the couple and followed them at a safe distance. He repressed the feelings he had. When the aftermath of the migraine was gone in a few hours, it would be no problem. Then he could think and not feel. Emil Karpo was a police inspector. He had his duty, and his duty was clear, as clear as the law. If others evaded the law, moved around it, teased its corners, corrupted it, it would not deter him from his duty. Compassion would lead to destruction. The law was all there was, the law and the State, which created the law. There was no morality, only law. He thought it, almost said it to himself, but deep within him a vague face he could not identify was smiling.
The man in the suit stood for only a few moments at his window in the KGB’s building at Lubyanka. He had spent an uneventful evening and night with his wife and a cousin from Kiev who was in Moscow for a trade union assembly. The cousin had suggested, when the children were not present, that the effects of the Chernobyl disaster were still being felt, that fruit was checked in the Kiev markets, that the nuclear power generators were actually back on but that workers remained only two weeks before being rotated.
“The radiation levels are beyond the minimum even two hundred miles away, but they’re letting old people return,” the cousin had whispered.
“They shrug and say ‘What difference does it make?’ It takes twenty years for the radiation to kill them and they’ll be gone from something else long before that, but they’ll outlive their dogs.”
The KGB man had said nothing, nodded, leaving the conversation to his wife, thinking about other things.
“And,” the cousin went on softly, leaning across the table as if bugs were planted in the walls, which the KGB man knew was not the case because he checked at least twice each month, “and, the reports are coming in from Yugoslavia. People are dying of cancer. Statistics are far beyond the normal. They won’t be able to keep it under wraps for long, I tell you. I’m doing what I can to get Yana and the children out. That’s why I’m here for the trade union meeting. I was hoping …” He paused.
The KGB man knew what was coming. He looked up from his thoughts into the eyes of his cousin and waited.
“I was hoping you might use … some influence to get us, the children, me transferred,” the cousin said, a trail of sweat on his brow from the extra glass of cognac he had needed to gain the courage to make the request.
The KGB’s man’s wife kept her head down and ate as if she had heard nothing. The cousin’s wife bit her lower lip.
“I have no influence with the trade unions,” the KGB man said evenly.
“Well, not directly,” said the cousin with a small laugh. “Of course not. Not directly. I know that, but if you wanted to-”
“I’ll see,” the KGB man said.
“It’s not as if-” the cousin’s wife said, her voice a tremulo.
“I’ll see,” the KGB man repeated, making it clear that the conversation was over.
They had finished their drinks with small talk from the KGB man’s wife about the availability of Siberian fruit. The evening had been interminable, but the children had remained quiet and distant, obviously having been told that important things were going on and their father’s cousin should not be disturbed in any way.
And now the KGB man stood in his office, the only place where he felt at peace, and considered whether he would help his cousin. It might be a good idea and it would cost him little beyond a phone call. Then the cousin, who was a ranking member of his trade union, the district power and utilities union, would owe him more than a favor. He would owe him a great debt and possibly be in position to repay it in the future. But that was the future. He moved to his phone, lifted the receiver, pressed a series of buttons, and gave his rank and name to Vadim, who had reported to him the day before.
“It proceeds,” Vadim said.
“Good.”
“He is going ahead with the investigation as we planned,” Vadim reported.
“Keep him interested,” the KGB man went on.
Both men knew well enough not to give details, names over the phone. Later, if questioned about the conversation, they had another case they could claim to be the subject. If it came to that, however, there would probably be no opportunity for further deception.
“Report as you get additional information,” the KGB man said, and hung up the receiver.
There was other work to be done. He moved to the desk, arranged the reports in front of him, and reached for his pen and a white pad of paper. He removed the glasses from his pocket and put them on his nose and around his ears. There was a computer in the room, but anyone could gain access to what he put on the computer. Someone could be sitting in another room of the vast building reading his words, his numbers, even as he considered them on the screen. No, he had learned long ago to put everything on paper first, work out what he could share and was willing to share. His own notes he shredded and each night he took the shreds home to burn even when the notes were innocent.
A bad habit could destroy a man.
As he wrote, he wondered where the policeman was at the moment. If a smile were within him, he would have smiled now, imagining the puppet going through the motions the KGB man was dictating.
EIGHT
The hospital administrator looked nervous, a nervousness he attempted to hide behind a mask of bureaucratic overwork.
“Transfers,” said Schroeder with a sigh, brushing back his hair, pulling down the lapels on his jacket, adjusting his tie and glasses. “Do you know how many transfers we get in a week? Six, seven. The forms, paperwork. It doesn’t end. My father wanted me to be a career soldier. Perhaps I should have listened to him.”
“Perhaps,” Rostnikov agreed.
They were standing in the record room down the corridor from Schroeder’s office. Two people worked in the room, which held dozens of file cabinets and a single computer in the corner. The two people, a man and a woman, did their best not to pay attention to the new administrator and the box of a man who walked with a limp.
“It was his family’s idea,” Schroeder said, going through the files furiously and then turning to face the detective. “Not here. It was only yesterday. They get a copy. We keep a copy. It’s probably still somewhere. It’s not my fault. In the few months I’ve been here, the bookkeeping system has improved two hundredfold, but there’s still so much … the papers could be anywhere.”
The man’s arms went up to indicate that, indeed, anywhere meant anywhere in the universe.
“But it will turn up. It should be on my desk. It will be on my desk.”
“Ivan Bulgarin was transferred to another facility at the request of his family,” Rostnikov said evenly.
“That’s what I said,” Schroeder said, looking at the two record clerks, who seemed to be absorbed completely in their work.
“And you don’t remember where he was transferred?”
“It’s in the records if I can just-”
“Who would remember?” Rostnikov went on. “A nurse, doctor?”
