People Who Walk In Darkness ir-15

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “What is that?” asked Sasha.

  “Taras. Taras. Taras.”

  The boy spun around madly.

  “It is a Ukrainian name,” Maya said. “He will get over it.”

  “He need not on my account,” said Sasha.

  “It was my sister’s husband’s idea,” said Maya. “He thought it was funny. It is a Montagnard tribal name.”

  “I like it,” Sasha lied.

  “I told my friend Tula that you are a policeman and that you catch fish thieves and people who drink too much vodka and pee in the street,” said Pulcharia.

  “Your father catches people who do very bad things,” Maya said. “He protects the good people of Moscow from the bad people of Moscow.”

  “Good peeeeeeeople,” the little boy said. “Bad peeeeeople. Taras. Taras. Taras.”

  “Your father will come back and see you again before he has to go back to Moscow and catch more bad people,” Maya said.

  Was this a sign of hope?

  “I will be back tonight?” he said, making it a question and not a statement.

  “Tonight,” Maya said.

  “For dinner?” asked Pulcharia.

  “For dinner,” Maya said.

  Pulcharia smiled broadly.

  “Will Erik be here too?” the girl asked.

  “No, not tonight.”

  Pulcharia leaned toward her father and puckered her lips to be kissed. Sasha obliged.

  “Taras too,” said the little boy, who ran forward, perfectly balanced in spite of his spinning.

  “Seven o’clock,” said Maya.

  “You are all very beautiful,” Sasha said.

  “Seven,” Maya repeated.

  The map which Gennadi Ivanov had drawn for Karpo lay flattened on the small table in Porfiry Petrovich’s room.

  Neither man had told anyone of the map drawn by the very old man who held a very old grudge against the Japanese. The two policemen could not trust the map or anyone in Devochka.

  Rostnikov was sitting. Karpo stood.

  “One of the many ironies of an artificial leg is that it is lighter than a real one,” said Rostnikov. “I am unbalanced and have had to learn to compensate. Of course, I could ask the man who made my leg to add weight to it, but then he might add too much, and the surgeon would have to remove some of my right leg to get the balance right again.”

  “You are making a joke,” said Karpo.

  “I am,” said Rostnikov, “but I am also making a point. Maintain your balance. Adjust to change. Do not seek perfection. There is no perfection.”

  “And you believe I seek perfection?” said Karpo.

  “I know you do, Emil. Please sit. It is a strain to look up in a conversation and it destroys the illusion of intimacy.”

  Karpo moved to the bed and sat, his back upright. Rostnikov turned his chair to face him.

  “There are those who believe you had no mother,” said Rostnikov.

  “Everyone has a mother,” said Karpo.

  “Well, the belief is not grounded in reality, but in perception.”

  “I find it difficult to believe that there are those who would engage in such curious perceptions.”

  “You may not know it, but there are those who find you a fascinating enigma. They do not know you as I do, Emil Karpo. I often think of you as my second son.”

  “I. . thank you.”

  Rostnikov could not recall hearing even a touch of emotion in his associate’s voice since the death of Mathilde. Only two events had shaken Emil Karpo’s steel self-image: the fall of the Soviet Union and the death of Mathilde Verson. He had been devoted to both, and with their deaths had encased what little emotion he had previously displayed.

  “Is there some reason we are discussing this now?” asked Karpo.

  “Yes. I will tell you in a moment. My father was a good man.”

  Karpo had no response.

  “What about your father, Emil Karpo?”

  “You have read my file. You know the few facts of my history.”

  “This makes you uncomfortable.”

  “Perplexed.”

  “You never knew your father. Your mother and aunt raised you.”

  “That is correct.”

  “I think when we return to Moscow you might consider an attempt to locate your father.”

  “Why?”

  “Closure,” said Rostnikov. “You have a brother.”

  “Yes.”

  “When did you last talk to him?”

  “Twenty-two years ago, on June four.”

  “And your mother?”

  “Twenty-two years ago, on June four.”

  “And the reason for the events of that momentous day in the history of the family, Karpo?”

  “I believe you are mocking,” said Karpo.

  “Forgive me,” said Rostnikov. “You are right. Mockery and irony are protective Russian responses that often prevail over consideration for others.”

  “On that day I told my brother, mother, and aunt that I could no longer see or talk to them because of their anti-Communist feelings and remarks. I told them that I would not issue a report on them.”

  “What do you think made you what you are, Emil my friend?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Perhaps a meeting with your father, if he is still alive, would answer that question.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Are you not curious?”

  The pause was slight, but Rostnikov perceived it.

  “No.”

  “Well, I am.”

  “You said this conversation had a particular point.”

  “It does,” said Rostnikov. “In two hours, Boris will take us into the mine armed with this map. I am confident we will see the ghost girl and that someone will try to kill us to keep us from finding what is in at least one of the small caves on the map of our Japanese-obsessed friend.”

  “And you know who the person who will try to kill us is,” said Karpo.

  “Oh yes, and that is the point of my exploration of your familial relationships. I am very much afraid that the person who will attempt to kill us is my brother.”

  Each night the Yak allowed himself a single, full glass of a deep red Italian table wine before he went to sleep. He had one glass, and only one, a day unless he was with someone higher on the scale of politics or the law. If that person drank, so did Yaklovev. And that was the situation at the moment.

  He was in the Taiga Restaurant, not far from the Bolshoi Opera. Across from him was a very smug General Peotor Frankovich in a blue suit and tie. The general’s fat pink neck usually hung over the stiff collar of the uniform he liked to wear. The blue suit accented the roll of fat. Someone should tell him. That someone would not be Igor Yaklovev.

  “We should be arranging for the transition,” said Frankovich, holding his glass of wine, twisting it by the stem with thumb and finger.

  They sat in a corner away from others. Privacy.

  “Drink,” said the general.

  Yaklovev drank.

  “There are still two days remaining,” he said.

  “If you insist,” said Frankovich with a shrug. “I just thought a friendly dinner would be a good start to what is necessary. Of course the details will be worked out by yourself and your Chief Inspector. .”

  “Rostnikov, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

  “Hmm,” said the general, sipping his wine and then looking at it as if for imperfections. “We serve the same government for the good of the Russian people.”

  The last was said with no hint of sincerity.

  “We do,” said the Yak.

  “There really is nothing that can alter what is inevitable,” said Frankovich, reaching up to tug at his collar.

  “Two days,” the Yak said.

  “There are no miracles, my friend,” the general said.

  The Yak was not hoping for miracles. There was a great deal Yaklovev had done and was still doing. Now, if only Rostnikov and his people coul
d come through, the Yak would be ready to act. For now, he sat silently and drank his wine.

  Stepan Orlov, the microbiologist, looked up when Rostnikov entered his small laboratory. Orlov, a man of average height with wild, curly gray-brown hair, had unlocked and opened the door when Rostnikov had identified himself as a Moscow policeman.

  The laboratory was spotless and neat. There were twelve small cages against one wall. Inside, animals scurried, trying to climb the metal walls or hide under wood shavings. One of the animals was making a squealing sound Rostnikov had never before heard.

  Against one wall, on which there was the only window in the room, was a cot made military taut with a rough khaki blanket and a thin pillow. Three broad-topped metal tables forming a U sat in the center of the room with one wooden chair on rollers within the U. The table to the right of where Orlov now sat held a binocular microscope. The table on the left held a computer whose screen seemed to be pulsing between gray and white. On the center table was a large metal tray holding the second-largest rat Rostnikov had ever seen.

  “You are admiring Rhazumi,” Orlov said, cleaning his glasses on his wrinkled white shirt.

  “The rat.”

  “Big, is he not,” said Orlov, reaching out to touch the nose of the dead animal that lay with its front legs together as if in prayer.

  “I have seen only one bigger,” said Rostnikov. “At the edge of the Moscow River. It was as big as a small dog.”

  “Yes,” said Orlov, “but Rhazumi was blind. He lived for at least six years in the total darkness of the depths of the mine. And there are others. Their ancestors crawled down there when the mine was first opened and bred and adapted and consumed other small creatures and the detritus of humans. And at some point, they went blind. Survival of the fittest, in this case the blind. I think this species is unique in the world.”

  He looked with admiration at the dead animal. So did Rostnikov. Then he looked up at the window. The day was overcast.

  “Is it cold out there today?”

  “I have not been outside today,” said Rostnikov.

  “The temperature makes no difference to creatures who live and walk in darkness,” said Orlov.

  “Even the people?”

  “Humans adapt by changing the environment, not by changing their bodies.”

  “I would like you to look at this map.”

  Rostnikov took out the rough map. Orlov took it.

  “Gennadi Ivanov drew this,” he said. “I recognize his mad scribbling.”

  “Yes,” said Rostnikov.

  “You want to sit? Oh, manners. Would you like a cup of coffee or tea?”

  He nodded toward a table near the window behind him. On the table was a coffee maker that belonged to antiquity. The liquid beyond the glass was the color of a raven.

  “No. Thank you.”

  “I avoid Ivanov,” the scientist said. “Have not spoken to him in years. I used to talk to him about animal life he claimed to have seen in the mines, but he always brought the conversation back to the damned Japanese invasion.”

  “He still does.”

  “This map is not accurate,” Orlov said. “I have better ones.”

  He reached into a drawer under the computer and came up with a folder, which he opened on top of Ivanov’s map.

  “Here.”

  He handed Rostnikov a sheet on which there was drawn a clear three-dimensional representation of the mine, complete with distances in meters in the same dark black ink used to draw the map.

  “I understand there are small caves.”

  “They are marked with red dots. I have found some of my most interesting specimens in those tiny caves-insects, worms, bacteria. In one of those caves I made the discovery that will make me. . a great discovery.”

  “May I ask what. .?”

  “I lost my wife because of my work, because I have lived in this room, this cell of discovery. I eat in here, sleep in here. Through that door is a shower, sink, refrigerator, and toilet. I keep in shape. One hundred sit-ups, seventy-five push-ups. Look at my arms.”

  Orlov rolled up his sleeves to reveal truly massive biceps.

  “I was told you beat Panin arm wrestling.”

  “Of course. Would you like to try me?”

  “May I stand? I have an artificial leg and. .”

  “Yes,” said Orlov. “Right hand or left?”

  “Right,” said Rostnikov, leaning over the table and positioning his elbow next to Stepan Orlov’s.

  “We do it only once,” said Rostnikov.

  “Once,” Orlov agreed. “We begin when you say ‘ready.’ ”

  “Ready,” said Rostnikov, putting all he had into his thrust.

  Orlov had not been ready for the instant “ready,” but he did pull himself together and managed to stop his hand from touching the table, though there was no more than half an inch between the back of his hand and the shining metal. Before he could fully recover, Rostnikov, who had the advantage of leverage because he was standing, put his full weight into his arm and Orlov’s hand hit the table.

  Orlov began to laugh.

  “No one has beaten me before,” he said. “Now you. .”

  “You inadvertently allowed me an advantage.”

  “And that is how you work as a detective?”

  “Whenever possible.”

  “I like you, Inspector. .”

  “Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.”

  “Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov,” Orlov repeated. “I will tell you my secret.”

  Rostnikov folded the map he had just been given and put it in his pocket. Orlov pursed his lips and touched the front paws of the dead rat.

  “In the mouth of this creature,” Orlov said softly, “there resides a bacteria, and that bacteria can do the supposedly impossible.”

  Rostnikov considered the possibility that the scientist might be every bit as mad about his bacteria as Gennadi Ivanov was about the Japanese invasion and his guns. Were there more who had been driven into small rooms of delusion in Devochka? Solzhenitsyn had written of such a Gulag phenomenon.

  Orlov looked up.

  “You are sworn to silence?” he asked. “I am still two years from publishing my findings.”

  “I swear to silence,” said Rostnikov.

  “I believe you. The bacteria can eat carbon. It can even eat diamonds.”

  With this Orlov folded his arms, adjusted his glasses, and smiled.

  “Fascinating,” said Rostnikov. “And what function can such a bacteria serve?”

  “At this point,” said Orlov, “it does not matter. It is not my task to find function. We came naked to the earth and converted what we found to all you see around you. We did it from nothing, from trial and error. A bacteria that consumes diamonds is a wondrous and amazing thing.”

  “It is,” said Rostnikov.

  “Even if the remaining diamond pipes run out, the mine must remain. I must remain. The bacteria and their hosts must be preserved, protected, and studied.”

  “That seems reasonable.”

  “You think me mad?”

  “The dividing line between sanity and madness is not as clear as the lines on your map. In fact, I do not believe there is a line, only a vast area that, at least at its edges, touches us all.”

  “Gogol?” asked Orlov.

  “Rostnikov,” replied Rostnikov.

  “We should wait till the night,” said Pau Montez.

  He had a square gauze pad taped to the back of his head. A tiny spot of blood had eked through it.

  Kolokov was concentrating on the chessboard which James Harumbaki could see only dimly through his swollen right eye. His left eye was completely closed.

  “I will consider your suggestion, but right now I am playing chess,” Kolokov said, lighting his third cigarette since sitting across from his hostage.

  James had decided not to beat the Russian in eight moves, though he could have. Kolokov played chess the way he played at
being a gang leader: He was recklessly mediocre. James decided to stretch the game out and find a way to make his opponent think he was going to win. Then James Harumbaki would spring his trap and softly utter “checkmate.”

  “We will go when this game ends,” Kolokov decided. “They won’t be expecting us.”

  There was only one other gang member, Alek, in the room. He stood silently in the corner. He had survived by standing silently in corners out of Vladimir Kolokov’s line of sight.

  The other member of the gang, Bogdan, was standing in the doorway of an old apartment building that smelled of onions and people. He was watching the cafe in case the two Africans came out. Kolokov had sent him with the cell phone. He was to call if the Africans left the cafe and to follow them wherever they might be going.

  Kolokov smiled at the chessboard and then at James Harumbaki. He was certain now to trap the African with his next move. He sat back, hands folded behind his head. He reeked of satisfaction with a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.

  “Checkmate,” said James Harumbaki, moving his knight slowly and placing it neatly in the center of a black square.

  The smile remained on Kolokov’s face for a beat and then his hands came down and he leaned forward to look at the chessboard. It was indeed checkmate. James Harumbaki sat silently. Even had he wished to smile or display a look of satisfaction or regret, he would never make it evident on his battered face.

  “Luck,” said Kolokov.

  “No,” said James Harumbaki, thinking of his two comrades who had been brutalized and murdered by the fool across from him.

  Kolokov’s fists clenched.

  “Do not kill him, Vladimir,” the bald man said. “We need him. The diamonds.”

  Kolokov struck his captive with a closed fist. James Harumbaki’s head spun to the side. He spit blood and a tooth on the floor. Even with his now further diminished eyesight, James Harumbaki was reasonably sure he could leap across the table, take Kolokov’s gun, and shoot him. It was likely the bald man would have his own gun out by then, and James Harumbaki would be a dead man. It was tempting to consider making the move, but the likely result would be his widow and two orphans.

  “Let us go now,” said Kolokov, picking up his white queen and throwing it at James Harumbaki.