A bundled young man with a hip holster and no machine gun hurried over to the two detectives and eagerly reported, clearly relieved to have the responsibility taken from his shoulders, which were a few years younger than Tkach’s.
“Sergeant Petrov,” the young man said. His face was cold and freckled. “There are three of them,” he said, addressing Karpo. “They seem to be in their twenties. They are armed and have fired on us. We have waited for orders before returning fire.”
“Where are they in the building?” Tkach asked.
Sergeant Petrov turned his head to the younger detective.
“We’re not sure, comrade. They were in the store itself, but they may have gone anywhere in the building. They did not get away. We have all windows and the back door covered. Their car is in the rear, parked.”
“What we can-” Tkach began, but was interrupted by the cracking of the window of the police Volga at his side. The window had been no more than a foot from his stomach and he wondered what structural weakness had caused such an accident. Something inside him answered before his mind could accommodate the information. Sasha Tkach went flat in the snow next to Emil Karpo and Sergeant Petrov. They scrambled behind the car and waited for another shot.
“Shall we open fire?” asked the sergeant to Karpo.
Karpo raised an eyebrow and looked at Tkach.
“It’s your case,” said Karpo.
“Is there a way into the building with some cover?” Tkach asked.
“Yes,” said the young sergeant, pointing into the gloom. “Over the roof. The store manager says there is a skylight and a short drop to the floor. It would be possible to get to the roof from the building next door. We can stretch something, and some of my men can go across.”
“I’ll go,” Tkach said decisively, pulling out his gun to check it. He had never fired at a man before, though he had been outstanding on targets at the academy. “Karpo?”
Karpo nodded.
“We’ll need one man with an automatic weapon,” Tkach added.
“I’ll get one and go with you,” said Petrov.
“You needn’t…” Tkach said, looking into the freckled face.
“It offends me to be shot at,” the sergeant said seriously.
By working their way down the street, the trio managed to cross in five minutes. Petrov commandeered a Tete gun from one of the police, and the three made their way along the buildings on Zvenigorod. In the distance, not too far away, came a sound like a young girl laughing.
Five minutes later, the three men were on the roof piled high with snow. Their goal was a flat room, which made it easier to extend the ladder they had brought with them from the fire truck which waited below. If the hijackers were on the other roof, the three officers could be picked off as they crossed the small chasm between the buildings. Across the street an officer on the roof signaled to them with a flashlight that the roof of the building looked clear.
Sergeant Petrov and Tkach held the ladder while Karpo began to cross.
Neither Jimmy, Coop, or Bobby knew what had happened. Jimmy was sure there had been a burglar alarm in the liquor store. Although they had heard nothing ring, it must have been connected to a local police office or something. Coop was equally sure they had been spotted. The store was supposedly closed for repairs, but someone must have come back and seen them, then run to the nearest cop. Bobby didn’t know or care what had happened. He thought only that it had been a bad idea to rob the store during the day, even a dark day like this. Jimmy, who was the wildest of the trio, had seen it as a special challenge, and Coop had never allowed Jimmy to appear more brave than he, so they had ventured out.
They had one case of vodka into the car when they saw the first Volga with the flashing light. Coop had run for the back door, but a warning shot from outside drove him back in. They had huddled in the rear room, breathing heavily, when the voice from outside came, telling them to throw out any guns they had and come out the rear door slowly with their hands up.
Jimmy had responded by shooting out the front window and taking a shot at the Volga parked across the street. Return fire had been brief, and the three had scrambled up a stairway through broken glass and dripping bottles of alcohol.
Ten minutes later they had no plan.
“Maybe we should give up,” Bobby said.
“They’ll shoot us down when we go out the door,” said Jimmy.
“Why would they do that?” Bobby said. “We haven’t killed anybody.”
“We shot at the police,” Coop explained, his voice shaking.
“I don’t think they’ll kill us,” Bobby said.
“They’ll kill us,” Jimmy said with confidence.
They could barely make out each other’s faces in the daylight darkness. For minutes they sat waiting.
“Maybe we could get out over the roof,” Coop suggested.
“They’re up there,” Jimmy countered.
Silence again.
They didn’t know how much longer it had been before the new car had come and the two men without uniforms had jumped out. The three had watched the arrival from the second floor. One of the two new ones, even through the snow, looked like a skeleton.
“They called that one to kill us,” said Jimmy, pointing at Karpo. “But I’ll get him first.”
He had fired and jumped back, unsure of whether or not he had hit the man or hit anything at all. The sound of shattering glass suggested he had missed.
“So,” whispered Bobby.
“So, we wait,” said Jimmy. “It’s their move.”
“It’s just like the American movies,” said Coop.
No, thought Bobby, it’s not like that. It’s happening.
“I’m scared,” confessed Bobby to the darkness. “Let’s give up. They won’t kill us.”
“Shut up, shut up,” Jimmy shouted. Bobby thought there was a sob in Jimmy’s voice, but he had never heard such a thing from Jimmy.
“It’s happening,” shouted Bobby. “If we don’t give up, they’ll kill us, kill us.”
Jimmy swung out in the darkness at Bobby and missed him.
“Shut up, I said.”
Jimmy stood and was ready to find Bobby and beat him, hit him, shut him up. Bobby was confusing things, making him frightened. He didn’t want to die frightened.
The door through which the three young men had come burst open, and a flashlight struck them like a cold ball of snow.
“Don’t move!” came a deep voice behind the light, and Jimmy fired at the voice. The room was small and the explosion of fire resounded against the eardrums of the men who were firing at vague impressions between the flashes of shots.
Then the shots stopped, and someone sobbed.
Karpo turned on the lights and kept his pistol pointed toward the place where he had first seen the three figures standing. Two thin young men stood shivering, wide-eyed with their hands in the air. One of the two had clearly wet his pants. On the ground in front of them lay a third young man with a gun in his hand. All three were wearing black leather jackets with something written on them in French or English.
“Are you all right?” Karpo asked Tkach, whose gun was leveled at the two standing young men.
“Yes. Petrov is hit.”
Karpo knelt near the young sergeant.
“Stomach wound. He is alive. I’ll get help.”
Karpo went out the door, and Tkach moved forward across the small room, his gun leveled at the two young men, who backed away. Tkach kicked the body on the floor. He knew his first shot had hit him. It had been automatic, like hitting the targets at the range, but this one had been so much easier to hit, so much closer. He kicked the body over and looked down at the face.
“How old is he?” he asked the trembling boys. They said nothing.
“How old?” Tkach repeated.
“Fifteen, I think,” said Ivan Belinkin, who would never be called Bobby again.
“No,” corrected Ilya Nikolaev, who would never ag
ain be called Coop. “He was fourteen. Sasha was fourteen.”
CHAPTER SIX
There were many things on the mind of Chief Inspector Porfiry Rostnikov. Though he might have denied this to others, they were, in order of priority: the safety of Iosef Rostnikov; the possibility that the killer of Granovsky and the cab driver might strike again; the chances of getting in good enough shape to participate in the weight lifting competition in June; repairing the broken toilet in his apartment.
Rostnikov brushed the hair from his eyes and fingered the scratch in his desk he had made with the sickle. He would simply lie about the broken point of the tool. There was no point in dealing with Procurator Timofeyeva on this point. Outside his office’s thin pressboard walls he could hear the phone calls, the raised voices, the whispers, the movement of furniture that signaled police activity. He knew he should move, act, but unseen heavy hands kept him at his desk. To prove his activity to himself and anyone who might walk in, Rostnikov pulled out a sheet of paper and a pencil and wrote the number one.
“What is one?” he asked himself aloud. Then he wrote, “K.G.B. following Granovsky.” In twenty minutes, he had a list he was rather proud of:
One-K.G.B. following Granovsky. Agent less than brilliant. On night of murder, Granovsky made several stops, according to agent Khrapenko, at home of Simon Lvov and apartment of Ilya and Marie Malenko. Both Lvov and the Malenkos were known dissidents on Tkach’s primary list.
Two-Killer apparently man (woman?) in black, who killed the taxi driver about an hour after Granovsky murder, using broken vodka bottle. Both murders very bloody, very personal, unconventional weapons.
Three-Killer last seen running down Petro Street.
Conclusions: Murderer known to Granovsky? Murderer mad or very angry and so uses personal (phallic?) weapons on men? Too soon for that observation. Not politically acceptable anyway.
The part about psychology could not be discussed with others. Freud was not a popular mentor in Petrovka. That was the extent of the writing on Rostnikov’s sheet except for a doodle of barbells.
Rostnikov was considering what to do next, whether to tell his wife about Iosef in Afghanistan and whether to do another doodle, when his office door opened and Karpo and Tkach stepped in. Tkach looked almost as white as Karpo.
“What happened?”
The two men sat.
“We got them,” said Karpo evenly. “Three young boys. Sasha had to kill one of them who shot a police sergeant.”
“And?” Rostnikov went on looking at the younger officer, who seemed to be trying to gather words.
Karpo shrugged.
“The sergeant was shot in the stomach,” he said. “Lost blood, possibly punctured kidney, broken rib, but he should survive.”
“Tkach?” Rostnikov said with concern, putting his sheet aside.
“I don’t know. He was a fourteen-year-old boy named Sasha, and I killed him.”
“He was an enemy of the state,” Karpo said, with just a touch of irritation. “Boys of his age fought and died in the revolution and in the wars against the Japanese and the Germans. The choice was to let him kill us, and that was certainly not reasonable.”
“True,” said Rostnikov, “but logic, political logic, the logic of the expedient present does not necessarily account for the emotion built into our bodies. We are, as you know, imperfect creatures, Emil Karpo, and some of us will never get used to killing. It is sad, but something we must face.”
“I am not immune to sarcasm, inspector,” Karpo answered, removing his coat.
“I would hope not,” said Rostnikov. “I was not engaged in self-indulgence but in irony, which requires our mutual cooperation and understanding.”
“Your point is taken,” said Karpo.
“And respected?” said Rostnikov.
“Yes.”
“An observation, Karpo. One I have wanted to make for some time. How is it that you never blink? Is it hereditary or something you have cultivated?”
“Blinking is functionless,” said Karpo. “I have learned to control what appears to be a reflex but what is in fact a weakness.”
Rostnikov put up his hands and looked again at Tkach. The discussion had been indulged in to give the young officer time to recover. If he did not recover, Rostnikov was prepared to dismiss him and get someone to replace him, which would create problems, both for Tkach and the investigation.
“Shall we get back to the Granovsky murder, inspector?” Tkach said, looking up.
Rostnikov was tempted to talk about the men he had killed, from the first when he was a soldier to the most recent, a drunk who had beaten his wife and then turned on Rostnikov with a chair when he was brought in for questioning. The first had happened so fast that it always seemed to Rostnikov as if he had imagined it. He had a captured German rifle and he had walked into a bombed-out building, a farmhouse on the road from Kiev. Other members of his squad had gone past, and he had been told by his sergeant to look inside. No one expected anything to be there, certainly not the German soldier, who had been cut off from his troops, and lunged at Rostnikov with a bayonet in his hand. Rostnikov had turned and fired at the man and plunged his own bayonet forward so quickly that it required no thought. It wasn’t an act of consciousness. But there was no point in telling this to Tkach. One either accepted and learned, or one was a victim.
“Very well,” said Rostnikov, forcing himself up from the desk. He had sat too long and the leg had, as always, begun to stiffen. There wasn’t really anyplace to pace in the small room, but he could stand and flex his joints. He could also exchange looks with Karpo, who had obviously observed the deep scratch on the desk. “You must get back to the friends or acquaintances of Granovsky, Tkach. Prepare your report on this shooting and then resume your investigation, Emil. Go to Granovsky’s apartment and talk to people in the building. Maybe someone saw or heard something. Maybe someone knows of a local enemy, a non-political enemy. Unlikely, but…who knows. Any other suggestions?”
The two men had none.
“I’m going home after I report to Procurator Timofeyeva. Call me if anything happens. Be sure to get something to eat. Now, go.”
The two men left, and Rostnikov gathered up his single sheet with the doodle, placed it in a file with rough notes on his interview with the K.G.B. officer and reports from Karpo on the sickle and from Tkach on his interviews, and left to report to Comrade Timofeyeva.
At that moment, the man who had killed twice within a day sat on the floor of a small apartment, shifting a heavy iron-headed hammer from one hand to the other. Early evening darkness had come. He knew that if he moved to the window he could see only the old crumbling one-story wooden house next to his apartment building and another concrete apartment building exactly like his own no more than thirty feet away.
He had been disturbed only once during the long day. At first he had ignored the knocking at the door, but the knocking had continued with persistence and he had hidden the hammer and opened the door. The caller was a young policeman, who looked not like a policeman but a ballet dancer, asking about the murder of Aleksander Granovsky.
The game began and the killer felt no fear. He acted. He acted with subtlety, courage, conviction. He nearly wept when told of Granovsky’s death and said he had been at home with his wife at the time of the murder, which was not at all true, but he was prepared to add details, little details so vivid that they would build a picture of truth.
“Terrible,” he had said. “We had a quiet evening at home. We’re painting the walls, as you can see. We worked. I had some newspaper gathered to back up the paint. She kept saying ‘Ilyusha, we are going to run out of paint and end with three grey walls and one blue.’ I told her that would be a modern look and maybe we should leave it. I’m sorry. I’m forgetting about Aleksander. Maybe I’m just trying not to face it.”
“I can understand that,” the young policeman had said sympathetically, but then the policeman was acting too. “It’s important to fin
d out if Aleksander Granovsky had any enemies, people who might want to do this, perhaps someone particularly volatile, emotional?”
He shook his head sadly.
“Aleksander had many enemies. Some of them were going to put him on trial this day. The enemies of Aleksander Granovsky are in the millions. He has been depicted as an enemy of the state and as you know, many fools believe in such propaganda and get carried away. You are the most likely suspect. Oh, not you personally, but the police, the K.G.B.
“You’ll probably try to blame it on one of us,” the killer had continued. He was leaning against the table in which he had hidden the hammer. “It will make things easier for you. I’m as good a scapegoat as you can get. Do you want to arrest me?”
“No,” the young officer had said, looking quite warm and uncomfortable. “I don’t want to arrest you. I simply want to know if he had any enemies. Any who might have some personal reason for wanting to kill him.”
“None that I know,” said the killer. “Aleksander was a good man, one who we shall miss. Another will have to be found to replace him. His voice is stilled, but there are other voices, will be other voices.”
“Such as yours?” the policeman had asked, with some irritation finally showing.
The killer had shrugged. “Perhaps, but I don’t think so. I think my destiny lies elsewhere. Now, if you will excuse me, I have some preparation to do before my wife comes home for dinner.”
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