Rostnikov grunted and looked at Karpo.
“I believe Yuri Vostoyavek and a young girl are planning to murder Andrei Morchov,” Karpo said.
Zelach shuffled in his corner and Rostnikov picked up Karpo’s report. There was nothing about a conspiracy to commit murder in the report because, as Karpo had just said, he “believed” but did not know. He would not put his beliefs in a report, only his certainties. Besides, if his beliefs seemed to be well founded, the case would be taken from the Wolfhound’s investigative team. As it was, Karpo was only investigating the probable hysterical reaction of a mother to her son’s almost certainly innocent comment. By the same token, Tkach was investigating the disappearance of a bus, not an unrelated murder. The bus was probably, according to the report that would be filed, taken by an alcoholic bus driver who would soon be found asleep in some field.
“And what shall we do about our young would-be assassins?” Rostnikov asked Karpo.
“We can bring them in for questioning,” said Karpo. “But I do not think they will confess. It will simply make them bide their time and make a greater effort to have the crime look like an accident. Nor do I think it will do any good to confront Comrade Morchov again. We can watch, be alert, and catch them in the act or just before the act.”
“Just before the act would be far better,” suggested Rostnikov. “Let us try that. And let us find out why this young man may wish to kill a member of the Politburo and who the young woman is who may share his goal.”
Karpo nodded and left me room.
“Very good,” said Rostnikov with a deep sigh. “I am pursuing the possibility of petty theft in the Lentaka Shoe Factory. There is an office in the factory that I would like to examine tonight, but it is of vital importance that no one know in advance what I will be doing. I should like two volunteers to aid me in this.”
Tkach nodded in agreement, and Karpo simply blinked his eyes in acceptance. Both knew that there must be something more to this assignment man catching a petty thief, but neither man would think of asking what it might be. They were better off not knowing, or Rostnikov would now be explaining.
“Good. Pursue your work and meet me at eleven-thirty tonight in front of the Tass building,” Rostnikov said. “Zelach, would you please go process an order for level two computer access? I will get Colonel Snitkonoy to approve it. Sasha, remain a moment.”
Karpo left the room and moved to his desk.
“Sasha Tkach,” Rostnikov said gently, “if you do not sleep nights, you cannot work days, and ours is a job where being alert may mean staying alive. You have much to live for.”
Tkach looked up but slouched back in his chair.
“My mother is making me feel guilty about the move,” he explained. “She weeps, she complains, she goes silent, she threatens, she casts looks. She wakes the baby. Pulcharia is a good child, but … And Maya, Maya who has always been so gentle, so quiet and loving, is becoming … I’m caught between.”
“I can’t have you caught between or feeling caught between,” said Rostnikov. “There is a murdered man, a missing bus and driver, more crimes taking place every day.”
“I know,” Tkach said with exhaustion before he nodded and left the room.
When Tkach was back at his desk, Rostnikov reached for the phone and checked his watch. He had ten minutes before his morning meeting with the Wolfhound. Rostnikov got the operator and asked for the Ministry of Information. Moments later he asked for and got Lydia Tkach on the line.
“You remember me?” he asked when she shouted
“Yes!” she screamed. “What do you want? I’m very busy!”
Rostnikov moved the phone a foot away from his ear and returned it only when she was not speaking.
“Children,” he said, “are ungrateful creatures. Your son is an ungrateful creature.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she said with a bitter laugh. “I needed you to call me from my work to tell me what I already know.”
“Sasha, my son Iosef, all of them ungrateful,” Rostnikov said.
“Tell
“He is beyond reason,” Rostnikov said with a sigh. “I can’t get him to do a decent day’s work. All he thinks about, talks about, is you, his poor mother for whom he is trying to do his best. I’ve done much for him, Lydia Tkach. I’ve treated him like my own son, but if he doesn’t start working, doesn’t start showing some gratitude for all I’ve done, doesn’t stop putting your feelings and welfare above his duty to the State, I’ll have to consider asking him to leave the service.”
“Leave the-” she began.
“For his own good,” said Rostnikov, sighing. “I must leave now. Your son is sitting at his desk with his head in his hands and not getting his work done.”
“I’m deaf, Rostnikov, not stupid!” she shouted. “My son would not sit at his desk like a whipped child. Don’t call and play games with me.”
“He is a good man and I need him,” said Rostnikov. “And he is a good son. And you need him. Think about it, Lydia Tkach, and we’ll talk about it at lunch. I’ll come for you at two.”
“You can’t bribe me out of my apartment with a bowl of soup and a blini!” she bellowed.
“Think about it,” he repeated.
“I can get off for lunch at one, not two,” she said in a nearly normal tone.
“Good-bye,” he said.
When he hung up the receiver, Rostnikov knew he would have to hurry to make the Wolfhound’s morning meeting. He hoped the meeting would be brief.
The computer came up with several names and places for Zelach and Sasha Tkach. There was the new Center for Turkistani Culture. There was a prisoner in Lubyanka who was suspected of robbing a couple on the Metro. When arrested he claimed to be liberating the money to make bombs to demonstrate the seriousness of Turkistani cultural identity. Of course, the young man was drunk when arrested, but he was being held nonetheless. There were other names. Tkach made a printout and signed for it. He gave Zelach half the names and took half for himself. It would be faster this way, though Sasha had no confidence in Zelach asking the right questions. If Sasha turned up no leads, he would have to go back and check Zelach’s list himself. He was not particularly sure of his own ability to do his own job, let alone Zelach’s, without a bit of undisturbed sleep, but he felt a sense of urgency. What would Turkistani separatists want with a bus? Why would they want it so much that they would kill for it? And why would they want a bus driver?
Three hours later, he had talked to the young man in prison, who proved to be a braggart, a drunk, and a fool. Three other leads proved to be useless and, what is worse, quite distant from each other.
By one in the afternoon, Sasha wanted to think, to wake up. The afternoon was brisk, cool, and threatening, once again, to rain. He walked down to Petrovka Street past the Bolshoi Theater’s eight tall stuccoed columns, atop which stood four rearing horses harnessed to the chariot of Apollo. He crossed Marx Prospekt to the garden in front of the 220-ton monument to Karl Marx, which had been officially completed and shown on Sasha’s sixth birthday. Lydia, he remembered, had brought him down for the unveiling of the great man, who leaned eternally against a stone rostrum as if in midspeech, while below him were engraved his words of revolution, “Workers of the world, unite.”
Beyond Sverdlov Square he glanced at the old Central Lenin Museum and moved down into the huge underground connection to the Revolution Square, Sverdlov Square, and Prospekt Marksa Metro Stations. Ten minutes later he stepped out of the Volgograd Prospekt Station, found a small café when he had two coffees in the hope that they would wake him up, and made his way to the run-down concrete building that housed the Center for Turkistani Culture and dozens of other offices, causes, and businesses that awaited a moment of respect or recognition that might never come.
The Center for Turkistani Culture, as it turned out, consisted of two mismatched desks, one of metal with rust creeping through the thin layer of paint, the other of battered wood. A quartet of wooden chairs stood in the corner of the room, with a table in the middle where two very old men, one of whom was turning out billows of gray smoke from an ancient and foul-smelling pipe, were playing a game of chess.
Behind one of the desks sat a very dark woman who was neither young nor old nor very interested in the visitor. She wore a serious dark dress that came up to her collar and a more serious, short, no-nonsense hair style.
