Death of a Dissident ir-1

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  “And your name?” asked Rostnikov, willing to carry on the conversation because he did not look forward to the interview he was about to undertake.

  “Dolguruki. Michael Veselivitch Dolguruki.”

  That ended the conversation. Rostnikov could think of nothing further to say. Had he been sitting in the front seat, he might have found it easier. In fact, he had observed that other inspectors and even government officials and the wealthy and elite tended to sit in the front seats with their drivers as acts of social equality, as if everyone did not know that they were far from equal. Rostnikov preferred the space of the back seat and the solitude.

  Rostnikov was being silently jostled as the car moved expertly through the wide black asphalt streets jammed with late morning trucks spitting exhaust and with swarms of cars-Volgas, Muskvitches, Laplas, and tiny Zaporojetzes-jockeying for the curb as if in a race or game. They drove through old Moscow, just outside the walls of the Kremlin with houses one-hundred-fifty years old side by side with new concrete blocks with few windows that looked like untreated marble ready for a sculptor to release the imprisoned figure or figures frozen within it. They passed the ministries and went through the small side streets with wooden houses that looked ready to fall and had looked that way a dozen or more years before the Revolution.

  The driver found Leningrad Prospect and headed out to Volokolamsk Highway. The last circle one encounters in moving away from Moscow is that of the dacha suburbs where many wealthy Muscovites have their summer villas. This circle is, ironically, also shared by the poorest of the Muscovites, those who cannot afford to live closer to the city where they work and are forced to exist in shacks of one room which tourists are steered away from. So only those who can afford to travel easily to the inner city and those who are least able to do so, share this ring. It was here, on Moscow Ring Road, that they were heading now.

  Rostnikov did not enjoy this task. He had called at a suitable hour in the morning, a time that seemed not too early to wake up anyone at the house and not too late to miss the person he was trying to reach. He had gotten someone, a woman, and explained his mission and was given an appointment for the next hour. It gave him little time to prepare, but he preferred the discomfort of the encounter and the lack of preparation to the alternative, the continued freedom of a brutal killer who was most likely Ilya Malenko.

  He had taken upon himself the responsibility for tapping the phones of Malenko’s various known acquaintances in the hope that the man would try to contact one of them. In addition, Tkach would go to each of the dozen or so people on the list and inform them of the gravity of the situation if Malenko should try to reach them other than by phone. There was some hope that at least some of them would cooperate, not for political reasons or fear, but because Malenko had murdered Granovsky and Marie Malenko. Of course, he might contact no one, but that was unlikely. He could get no work without identifying himself. He would have nowhere to stay without contacting a friend or relative.

  The most likely person to contact was obvious and that, indeed, was the person with whom Rostnikov had made the appointment. Although he had been in this area of dachas in which they found themselves, Rostnikov was not really familiar with them. It was an alien world normally denied him and other policemen. When crime occurred by or to the members of this cultural elite, it was invariably handled by the K.G.B. or the militia.

  The driver found the house with little difficulty and pulled into the small driveway in front. It was a two-story home, wood and brick, freshly painted from the summer. Rostnikov got out and the driver began to follow.

  “You remain here,” said Rostnikov, motioning the man back without looking at him.

  “As you wish, Comrade Inspector,” was the reply, and Rostnikov heard the car door close behind him. He walked to the front door, anxious, apprehensive and a bit angry, angry that he should feel this way. This was the home of a rich man, not one who was rewarded for his achievements in the arts or sciences or government or even athletics, but a man who everyone knew had grown rich by black market connections, by alterations of government manufacturing contracts, by bribes-yes even massive bribes to the police. It was known and he was tolerated. No, he was not just tolerated, he was supported, one of the hidden capitalists who helped the economy and were purposefully overlooked.

  Rostnikov knocked. The door was solid and painted white. Inside he could hear footsteps on a hard floor and the door opened. A woman, a very beautiful woman somewhere in her thirties, opened the door and smiled at him with teeth Rostnikov thought impossible to maintain in Moscow. Her eyes were so blue that they seemed to be painted and her straight yellow hair was swept back like a Frenchwoman’s.

  “You are Inspector Rossof?” she said.

  “Rostnikov,” he corrected.

  “Yes,” she said, stepping back to let him in. “Sergei was on his way out of the door when you called this morning. I just caught him.”

  They stood in a small hallway with dark wooden floors.

  “I did not mean to…” Rostnikov began.

  “That’s all right,” she stopped him with a smile. “Come, he is in the parlor.”

  Rostnikov followed her a few steps. She stopped and turned around.

  “It is Ilyusha, isn’t it?” she said softly, her smile suddenly vanishing.

  “Your…” Rostnikov began not sure of the relationship of this woman and the man he was pursuing.

  “My stepson,” she said coming to his aid. “I don’t really know him. I actually only met him once and we didn’t get on.”

  “I see,” said Rostnikov sagely, though he didn’t see why she was telling him this.

  Her smile returned. “I don’t even know what he has been doing, what his interests are,” she said, and Rostnikov understood. This woman wanted to make it clear that she was no part of Malenko’s political position or anything else he might be involved in.

  “I see,” he said, and this time he did.

  “I was a clerk in my husband’s factory when Ilyusha-”

  Her statement was interrupted by the opening of the door before which she stood. She stepped back as if the sound had brought with it a terrible blast of heat.

  “Elizabeth,” said the man who now stood before them, “I must get to town for that meeting with the under-minister. I’d appreciate seeing the inspector immediately.”

  “I’m sorry,” Elizabeth Malenko said, unable to keep from looking around the hallway at all she might lose by offending the important man.

  “It’s all right,” the man said. “Perhaps the inspector would like some tea or coffee.”

  “Coffee would be fine,” said Rostnikov, wondering if a cup of coffee constituted the first step in a bribe.

  The woman disappeared through another door, and the man backed up to let Rostnikov enter the room.

  In the doorway, Sergei Malenko had simply seemed a middle-size, middle-shaped man, but inside the surprisingly large room, he reminded Rostnikov of a small actor playing a businessman. Malenko was about sixty, with bushy grey-black hair and a determined, furrowed brow. It was a hard face, one that had suffered and worked, not the soft image of the black market capitalist that had flourished in Russian movies and posters during the two decades after the war. This did not surprise Rostnikov. What little he had been able to gather on Malenko told him that the man had begun humbly enough-a farmer’s son and a farmer himself, who had gone to work in a tubing factory when he was thirty-five and made himself an expert on tubular metal construction. He used this expertise to move up in the factory at the same time as he moved up in party circles by applying himself diligently to political organization. Sergei Malenko was a clever man and not a weak one.

  The room was very much the man, with well-polished, heavy wooden furniture, dark brown walls and rug, a fireplace already crackling with burning logs in spite of the fact that the house obviously had another heat source. On the walls were painted portraits of Lenin and figures unknown to Rostnikov.


  “I’m sorry to be a bit abrupt, Inspector,” Malenko said, sitting in a dark couch and indicating to Rostnikov that he should sit across from him in a matching couch, “but I do have to get to my work.”

  “I understand fully,” said Rostnikov with an apologetic smile as he seated himself, letting his leg remain out where it would not stiffen.

  “This is about Ilyusha,” said the man, looking directly at Rostnikov, his hands folded before him. Malenko’s suit was similar to Rostnikov’s, but there were subtle differences. Malenko’s was much newer, and he wore a light green sweater of some particularly soft material.

  “It is about your son,” Rostnikov confirmed.

  “I imagine he is-” and it was Malenko’s turn to be interrupted by his wife, who pushed open the door and moved forward quickly with a tray containing two steaming cups of coffee.

  “You want sugar and milk?” Malenko asked, taking some himself.

  Rostnikov declined. He assumed the coffee would be good and he had good coffee so infrequently that he wanted it to be very hot and its taste very distinct.

  “You have some questions about Ilyusha?” Malenko asked after his wife had withdrawn from the room, closing the door behind her.

  The coffee was good and very hot and very strong. It burned the roof of Rostnikov’s mouth, and he wished he had asked for some milk.

  “My first question is perhaps a bit tactless,” he said. “If so, please forgive me.” He put up his hands and shrugged in apology. “I’m a policeman and spend much of my time asking crude questions to enemies of the state and not to respected men of production. It strikes me as curious that a policeman comes to your house, that you know it concerns your son, and that you are not upon me with curiosity demanding to know if he is all right, what he has done. Instead you calmly drink your coffee and worry about getting to work.”

  “The question is tactless,” agreed Malenko, “but reasonable. I have had little contact with my son for many years, perhaps four or five. We were never close. I think he took up with those dissenters, those social disrupters in reaction to me. And I suppose you are here to tell me that he has gotten into some trouble because of these stupid activities of his.”

  “In a sense,” said Rostnikov. “Then, I take it, if your son were in trouble, it is not likely he would come to you for help.”

  Sergei Malenko began to laugh. He laughed so hard that the cup in his hand began to shake, and he just reached the dark mahogany table just in time to set it down. His hair tumbled over, and he began to choke on his laughter.

  “You’ll have to pardon me,” he said trying to pull himself out of his reaction, “but the very idea of Ilya coming to me for anything is laughable don’t you see?”

  “Not in the least,” said Rostnikov sipping his own coffee.

  “I have a new life, a new wife, a small daughter. Ilya is not part of that life. He spent seven years making my existence miserable, causing me trouble. He lived here and went to school. He was terrible in school. He got into trouble. Drinking, girls, gambling. He more than embarrassed me. He very nearly ruined me, and you know what? I think that is what he wanted to do. I finally threw him out. That is when he became a political dissident. I am the last person he would come to for help and the last person who would help him. You understand?”

  “We want him because we have good reason to believe he murdered someone,” said Rostnikov softly.

  Sergei Malenko’s face went white.

  “No. That could ruin me,” he said almost to himself.

  “It won’t do him much good either,” added Rostnikov.

  Malenko looked up sharply.

  “You either fancy yourself a wit or are foolish,” Malenko said between his teeth. “In either case, I suggest you tread softly, Inspector. Whom is he supposed to have murdered?”

  “So far,” sighed Rostnikov, “his wife, Aleksander Granovsky, and a cab driver.”

  The information struck Malenko like the blow of a tire iron. He sank back heavily and looked suddenly much older than his years.

  “Is it possible,” he said so softly that Rostnikov could barely hear him, “that he would go so far to ruin me?”

  “It is possible,” said Rostnikov, finishing his coffee. “It is also possible that his actions have little or nothing to do with you.”

  “Then why did he do this?” demanded Malenko, his hair falling over his brow as he reached forward to pound on the table.

  “I thought you might have some idea,” Rostnikov tried, “but I gather you have not, or the only one you have is of no great use to us. Did you know your son’s wife?”

  “I met her once,” whispered Malenko, “on the street with him. She was a pretty girl who wanted to be friendly, but Ilya made a sarcastic comment and led her away.”

  “Comment?” tried Rostnikov shifting his leg weight.

  “Personal, political,” said Malenko. “Not relevant.”

  “Perhaps-”

  “Not relevant,” insisted Malenko, and Rostnikov nodded his agreement, though he could guess the content of the brief meeting between father and son on the street.

  “You have no idea of where he could be, who he could go to?”

  “None,” said Malenko. “We were never close. He no longer has the friends he had when he lived here. And before here we lived on a small farm beyond Kurkino. It has had two owners since.”

  “I see,” said Rostnikov, rising slowly. “Then I believe that is all. Your first wife, Ilya’s mother. She died?”

  “No,” said Malenko. His mind was elsewhere, planning his protection from his son’s reputation, but he answered, “We were divorced three years ago.”

  “I see,” said Rostnikov. “And where can I find her?”

  “It will do you no good to find her,” said Malenko, brushing his hair back with a broad brown hand. “She is in the Vilna Rehabilitation Institute.”

  “Perhaps I can see her there,” said Rostnikov.

  “You can see her if you insist,” said Malenko, guiding the policeman to the hall and toward the door, “but she will provide you no information. She is quite mad. She hears and sees no one but whoever might exist within her head.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Rostnikov.

  “There is reason to be,” Malenko said, opening the front door. Over his shoulder Rostnikov could see the second Mrs. Malenko looking apprehensively at them from what must have been the kitchen door. “Your records will show that she attained this ultimate escape after she murdered our infant son, Ilyusha’s brother, for no reason that anyone ever discovered.”

  “I–I’m sorry,” Rostnikov repeated.

  Malenko closed the door, and Rostnikov found himself facing his car and driver. He considered turning around and making another assault on Malenko. There was much to be said, much he might learn if he could get him to talk about his son, but it was likely he could not be goaded into such talk. Malenko was a shrewd man and one who very likely contributed to making those close to him go mad. But Rostnikov would not, could not accept the simple explanation for murder that one was mad, even madness had its own logic. Ilyusha Malenko had apparently murdered three people, and he had a reason for doing so. The reason might make little sense, but it was a reason, and if Rostnikov could figure out what that reason was, he might be able to anticipate the young man’s next move.

  “Sir,” said the driver as Rostnikov got back into the rear of the car and closed the door.

  “Back to Petrovka. Wait. No, the hospital. I want to stop by and see one of the inspectors.”

  “Sergeant Karpo,” supplied the driver, pulling away from the house.

  “You are well-informed,” said Rostnikov.

  Sasha Tkach had been sitting in Inspector Rostnikov’s office with a pad of lined paper in front of him and several sharpened pencils. He did not sit behind the desk because he did not know how Rostnikov would take it if he found a junior officer there. Sasha Tkach felt more comfortable working with Rostnikov than with any other senior
investigator, but it was wise to be cautious and not overly familiar. There was too much to lose. So while he waited for reports on the telephone taps and hoped that Malenko would be spotted by a uniformed officer or that he would make some mistake, Tkach sat on the wrong side of the desk unable to put his feet under it, made notes, and tried to complete his report on the discovery of the body of Malenko’s wife. That is what he did with the front of his consciousness. Deeper, but not much deeper, he wondered. One murder with a sickle, another with a hammer. Was the madman mocking the symbols of the Soviet Union? He was a dissident or a potential one. Was this some elaborate, ghastly joke? Then what about the cab driver? A broken vodka bottle didn’t fit. It was too much to worry about.

  Tkach had spent five hours at the desk, unwilling even to leave for a drink to have with his sandwich, afraid to tie up the phone with a call to check on Karpo’s condition. It was shortly after two when the call came. It was Maxim, the expert who was monitoring all of the phone taps through a central unit he manned alone.

  “I think we have something,” Maxim said with great excitement. “A call a few minutes ago to one of the people being monitored. A young man’s voice said only, ‘Meet me at four at the spot where I broke the window.’ ”

  “That was all?” asked Tkach.

  “That was all.”

  “Can you play that part of the tape to me over the phone?”

  “Yes,” said Maxim. “Give me just a few seconds.”

  And, in fact, in no more than thirty seconds, Tkach heard a hum and a voice repeating the words, “Meet me at four at the spot where I broke the window.” Even with the distortion of the telephone line, Sasha recognized the voice of Ilyusha Malenko. He had not been sure that he would be able to do so, but as soon as he heard the first words he saw before him the young man and before the short sentence had ended, Sasha was again seeing the dangling body of the young woman.

  “That’s him,” said Tkach. “Who was the call to?”