People Who Walk In Darkness ir-15

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “Then why,” asked Karpo, “was he sent down to serve as a guide for the Canadian?”

  “He volunteered,” said Fyodor. “No one expected trouble.”

  “The list I requested of all girls in Devochka between the ages of six and eighteen?”

  Fyodor took off his glasses, and handed Rostnikov two sheets of paper on which were written the names of seventy-two girls. The names were numbered.

  “I’ve indicated the ages of each girl and have added lists of girls between the ages of three and five and eighteen to twenty. I’ve also indicated, as you can see, where each girl was at the time of the death of the Canadian. I’m still working on where they were last night when Anatoliy Lebedev was murdered.”

  “How many definitely could not have been in the mine when the Canadian was killed?”

  “Fifty-two are completely accounted for,” said Fyodor.

  “Still a long list. I would like to see each girl.”

  “And their parents?”

  “No, not yet.”

  “When?”

  “As soon as I finish talking to Boris Gailov. What animal do you think this is?”

  Fyodor put his glasses back on. Karpo turned his head to see.

  “None that I recognize,” said Karpo.

  “Let’s see,” said Fyodor, biting his lower lip gently, and tilting his head from side to side. “It’s a very large, hairy man with long teeth. Maybe it’s a werewolf.”

  “Maybe,” said Rostnikov. “What happens when a werewolf eats diamonds?”

  “Its throat, stomach, and bowels can be torn to pieces,” said Fyodor. “Or then again, nothing may happen.”

  “I have drawn a diamond eater,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

  “Shall we go out and search for him?” asked Fyodor.

  He wasn’t smiling. Porfiry Petrovich liked that his brother wasn’t smiling. Some jests were not meant to be smiled at.

  It was the third day, and the list was long. He would have to call Yaklovev shortly. As yet he had nothing to report. He looked at the drawing again and said, “Let us get back to work.”

  Karpo and Fyodor stood and went to the door. Porfiry Petrovich did not move. Karpo knew why-Rostnikov’s leg. It had been bothering him lately. He had been moving more slowly, rising more cautiously, climbing steps more tentatively.

  “Leave the door open, please, and send in Boris Gailov,” he requested as the two men moved off in search of a typewriter.

  Through the open door, Rostnikov could see an old man seated on a metal folding chair in the hallway. The man was pale, gray, and in need of a decision about whether to shave or grow a beard. The man, still over six feet tall in spite of his age, was lean and gnarled. His fingers were crippled by arthritis, and his back was permanently bent over.

  “Boris Gailov, please come in and close the door behind you.”

  The old man rose slowly, entered the room, and closed the door. Rostnikov motioned for the old man to take a seat across the table.

  “I am going to move to St. Petersburg,” Boris said, his voice a crisp rasp.

  “You have relatives there?” Rostnikov said, ignoring the non sequitur.

  “No, never. That is why I want to go there. Here, I have relatives. Two sons, three grandsons, a daughter, granddaughters. I don’t remember their names. I don’t even remember how many there are. In St. Petersburg I can get a little room somewhere and live on my pension, just watch television, eat sandwiches, and wash and rinse my clothes.”

  “It sounds idyllic,” said Porfiry Petrovich.

  Boris looked at Rostnikov suspiciously.

  “It sounds wonderful. Paradise,” the detective said with sincerity.

  “There is no Paradise.”

  “I know,” said Rostnikov.

  “You want me to tell you about the Canadian.”

  “And the ghost girl.”

  “There is no ghost girl,” Boris said emphatically.

  “I know, but you saw something. You saw a girl with a lantern.”

  “I did not.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “If I say I did, I go to the asylum instead of St. Petersburg.”

  “No, you do not. Tell me, what does this look like to you?”

  Rostnikov held up his drawing.

  The old man squinted at the drawing and said,

  “A large dog sitting on this table.”

  “You have trouble seeing.”

  “I have trouble picking up a spoon, but I don’t complain about it,” Boris said with pride.

  “I have one leg,” said Rostnikov.

  “When I was young, men came home without arms, legs, eyes. They also came home with the teeth and bones and weapons of dead Germans.”

  “You came here in 1949,” said Rostnikov.

  “July fifteenth, a day of rain and sorrow,” said Boris. “Do you know why I came here?”

  “Your file says you came here because you were hungry, and there was recruiting for Siberian mine workers.”

  “They said I was crazy,” said Boris. “I was seventeen. Everyone else was being sent here for political crimes. I came to get something to eat every day. And I did. I haven’t starved, and I’ve raised a large family.”

  “Which you now want to get away from,” said Rostnikov.

  “Yes.”

  “Tell me about going into the mine with the Canadian. Who picked you to go into the mine with him?”

  “I do not know. A man. I got a call. Said, ‘Boris, there is a Canadian needs a guide in the mine. Meet him in front of the mine entrance.’ I got dressed. I did what I was told. I always do what I’m told. I hate doing what I’m told. At this point in my life, I do not like anybody.”

  “The ghost girl?” asked Rostnikov.

  “They’re all afraid to talk about the ghost girl, but why should I be? I’m ninety years old. I can say what I please.”

  “You are seventy-eight,” Rostnikov corrected.

  “And you have one leg. Let me see it.”

  Rostnikov slid his chair back and pulled up his left pant leg. Boris stood and leaned over, twisted knuckles on the table, mouth open.

  “Like on television,” said Boris.

  “Just like it,” said Rostnikov, having no idea what the old man was talking about. “Would you tell me about the ghost child now?”

  “Why not?”

  “Please.”

  “I take the American. .”

  “Canadian.”

  “Canadian, yes,” said Boris. “I take this Amer. . Canadian into the mine. My English? Not good. Canada grumbled, growls all the time. All the time. I take him to the tunnel he wants and wait while he goes in. I hear a noise.”

  “Noise?”

  “You know. Something clanking, noise. Down there you can hear someone farting two hundred feet away.”

  “He farted?”

  Boris looked at the barrel-shaped detective.

  “No, he did not fart. All right if I continue? I am getting older with the passing of each minute. You want me dropping dead right in here?”

  “Please do not drop dead,” Rostnikov said politely.

  Boris had not forgotten where he was in his tale.

  “I hear the noise. Then I hear singing. Then I. . see the ghost coming toward me from the tunnel.”

  “What was the ghost singing?”

  Boris burst into gravelly song.

  “ ‘The Po ulitse mastavoi.’ Along the paved road there went a girl to fetch water, there went a girl to fetch water, to fetch the cold spring water. Behind her a young lad shouted ‘Girl, stand still. Girl, stand still. Let’s have a little talk.’ ”

  “You saw her?”

  “She hurried by me, holding her lantern at her side.”

  “She wore?”

  “A dress, a nice one buttoned at the neck. Chaste, very chaste. I think it was blue, but in the light in the mines here it is difficult to be sure of the color. Everything looks green.”

  “The two men who were i
n here when you came in, what were they wearing?”

  “Games? You’re playing games with me now?”

  “No,” said Rostnikov. “I would like to know.”

  “Tall one,” Boris said. “He was wearing black socks, black pants, black shoes, black jacket, and a black look, as if it were he who had seen the ghost.”

  “And the other man?”

  “He looked like you with a beard. That was Fyodor Rostnikov, Director of Security, your brother. Everyone knows that.”

  “The ghost girl, did she look like any child in Devochka?”

  Boris looked at Porfiry Petrovich with a compassion he usually reserved for those of limited intellect.

  “She was a ghost.”

  “Could you identify the ghost girl if you saw her again?”

  “No.”

  “No? Why?”

  “I am not a fool,” said Boris. “People take me for one, but I’m not a fool. Whoever this ghost girl is, it would not be healthy, if she is not a ghost, to identify her if I saw her.”

  “You could be arrested for refusing.”

  “And then what would you do? Send me to Siberia?”

  Rostnikov laughed, clapped his hands together noiselessly three times, and then clasped them together.

  “I guarantee nothing will happen to you if you identify the girl. I’ll arrange for you to move to St. Petersburg.”

  “Just pack a bag, get on an airplane, and get out?”

  “That can be arranged.”

  “I will identify her if I see her, but I would have to look at all the girls here to be sure. I have not memorized the face of every child in this place. I will identify her if I see her again.”

  “Good,” said Rostnikov, standing to alter the stiffening of his leg. “I will arrange for every girl in Devochka to be in the meeting room later today. Tell no one what we are doing.”

  Boris rose.

  “Be careful,” said Rostnikov.

  Boris leaned forward to whisper, “I have a gun.”

  Rostnikov held a finger to his lips to warn the old man to keep that information quiet.

  “One question,” said Boris.

  “Ask.”

  “Can you dance with only one leg?”

  “I do not know. I have never tried.”

  “Try,” said Boris.

  When he was gone, Porfiry Petrovich gathered his drawings and stood. With the door still closed, he hummed one of the peppier Sarah Vaughan songs he listened to when he worked out. As he was humming, he attempted to take a few dance-like steps. It was not bad. He tried a few more and hummed a bit louder.

  His back was to the door when it opened silently. Emil Karpo and Fyodor Rostnikov stood in the open doorway, witnessing Rostnikov’s dance. Rostnikov sensed their presence, stopped dancing, and turned to face them.

  “I was dancing,” Rostnikov said.

  “Yes,” said Karpo.

  “You should try it.”

  “I think not.”

  Rostnikov tried to imagine the man dancing. It was impossible except for a macabre shuffling of the feet that conjured up the image of a humorless zombie lurching slowly forward.

  “I agree.”

  “We found the typewriter,” said Fyodor.

  “It must not have been well hidden. It took you all of thirty minutes.”

  “It was in plain sight.”

  “Where?”

  “On my bed,” said Fyodor.

  He should not have let the Moscow policeman find the typewriter. He should not be playing games with this.

  Did he want to get caught? No. The policeman would have figured it out in any case. He was smart, this barrel of a policeman. It would not have taken him very long to figure out that the report had not only been altered, but written completely anew. Let Rostnikov wonder why the typewriter had been placed where it could so easily be found. The question was, what was in this replacement report that would provide Rostnikov with the information he needed. It was simple, clear, right in the report. One word.

  This killer had one more murder to commit and then he would stop, melt back into the community, into his work.

  He would have to go back into the mine, close and seal the small cave where he had found the vein of diamonds that he had been mining and shipping to the Botswanans in Moscow. The Canadian and Lebedev had found the cave. No one else must find it.

  Tonight. Late tonight. There would be but one guard. He hoped it would not be Misha Planck or Leo Kamikayanski. He liked them both. He did not wish to kill either man, but it might have to be done.

  One final shipment of diamonds to Moscow.

  Just one more shipment and he would tell St. James in his London tower that he would no longer steal or murder.

  Just one more.

  The teacher asked a question. The child had not been listening. Instead the child had been singing an internal song, the song of the mine.

  “Along the paved road, there went a girl to fetch water.”

  The child had no idea what the question was. Other children watched. The teacher repeated the question.

  “Who was Abraham Lincoln?”

  “An American President.”

  “What do you know about him?” asked the teacher.

  “He was responsible for a bloody suppression of a revolution by the southern states of America,” answered the child.

  “The result?”

  “Darkness. Lincoln held up a lamp and frightened faces were revealed.”

  “Imaginative,” said the teacher, “but I would prefer a more conventional answer.”

  The child had none.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Okay, let’s do it this way.”

  Kolokov was pacing around the room. With almost every step the buckled once-yellow linoleum on the floor crackled like the shell of a Botswanan click beetle.

  James was now tied to a white plastic chair. Electrical cord bound his wrists behind his back, eliminating all but minimal circulation. The faces of Kolokov and the bald man named Montez offered no sympathy.

  The room was large, the former kitchen of a dacha that had once belonged to the member of the Duma designated as Commissar of Transportation. The Commissar was dead, murdered by one of his assistants, named Rasmusen, who wished to show the newly minted Yeltsin government his hatred of the Communist regime.

  Now the dacha was abandoned, too close to the city to be considered a reasonable getaway by those who could now afford it, too expensive to restore for those who might consider it.

  The rusting pipes groaned. The wooden walls cracked. The linoleum floor buckled.

  “Do I blame you for trying to get away?” Kolokov went on, expecting no answer and getting none. “No. I would have done the same. But I must have cooperation.”

  He stopped pacing and looked at James, whose eyes were fixed straight ahead. He could endure his numb hands and the broken nose the Russian had given him. He could go without food. He had done it many times before, in Africa. What he could not tolerate was the smell of decay and cheap tobacco that came out of the mouth of Kolokov when he placed his face a few inches from James’s, as he did now.

  “Cooperation,” Kolokov continued.

  James gave no reaction.

  “Are you listening? If you are not listening, if you are not cooperating, what use are you to me? That is a real question. Answer it or you die.”

  “I am listening,” said James.

  “Good,” said Kolokov, looking at the bald man and allowing himself a small smile of success. “You will call your friends. You will tell them to be in front of the Eternal Flame by the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior at the Moscow War Memorial in Alexandrovsky Gardens at ten o’clock tonight. They will have with them either a sizable package of diamonds or an even one. .”

  He looked at the bald man who stared blankly back.

  “. . no, two million euros. Cash,” Kolokov continued. “You understand?”

  “Yes,” said James.

  James was
having trouble breathing. Kolokov had smashed his nose, blocking off all air. James could only breathe through his swollen mouth.

  “You know what happens if you try to escape again?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you hungry?”

  “No.”

  “Thirsty?”

  “No,” James lied.

  “I killed your companions because they would not tell me how to reach your friends, but you are cooperating. I have no reason to kill you. I am not a monster.”

  Kolokov lit a cigarette, pursed his lips, and added, “Now I think I will buy a bar in Zvenigorod. There is one whose bar I would gladly stand behind, within view of the monastery. Perhaps Montez and I could persuade the present owners to sell. What do you think?”

  “Yes,” said James.

  “Yes? That is not a thought.”

  “You can probably convince the owners to sell,” said James.

  The bald Montez moved. Yes, like a big, dark click beetle after an hour of dormancy, he moved the right hand at his side and came up with a cell phone.

  “Now, you make the call.”

  Montez flipped open the phone and brought it in front of James.

  “The number,” said Kolokov.

  James told him the number, and the Spaniard pressed it into the keypad. Montez placed the phone close enough to James’s face that he could speak into it. There was but one ring before the phone was answered. James gave the man who answered it a succinct message that ended with, “and bring with you either the last shipment of diamonds or two million euros.”

  “Yes,” said the man.

  “And do no try to free me,” said James. “I am all right.”

  “We will not try to free you. We will bring the money or the diamonds.”

  Both were lies. James knew there was no way two million euros could be obtained. Nor could they or would they try to raise the money. They could not deliver the diamonds. The diamonds had already been delivered to the woman in Kiev. The courier had been murdered and the murderer had stolen the payment.

  There promised to be bloodshed at the War Memorial.

  James hoped that the blood would be that of his captors.