Death of a Dissident ir-1

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Sonya Granovsky collapsed back into the chair as if he had slapped her. Her head shook fiercely.

  “No, no, no,” she said, without looking up.

  “You have seen him,” Rostnikov repeated. “And you know what he has done.”

  “No,” she cried. “No.”

  “What is wrong here?” Rostnikov whispered moving away from the sofa toward the trembling woman. “Is he in there with your daughter?”

  Her head shook violently to deny it, but Rostnikov could take no more. He looked around for a weapon, settled for one of the wooden chairs, picked it up easily, and limped to the closed door.

  “No,” whimpered Sonya Granovsky, but Rostnikov did not hesitate. He threw his shoulder into the door, hoping that Malenko was right behind it listening and would be taken by surprise. The surprise was Rostnikov’s. He hurtled into the room and rolled onto the bed and against the wall. He righted himself as quickly as he could, prepared for an attack but nothing came. Sunlight came through the window, and he could see no one but himself in a wall mirror, looking foolish on the floor with a chair cradled in his arms. He pulled himself up as Sonya Granovsky entered the room.

  “Where is your daughter, Sonya Granovsky?” he demanded.

  “He took her,” she said.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Viktor Shishko sat at his German-made typewriter in the office of the Moscow Pravda, turning the bit of information given him by Comrade Ivanov into a story. It was an important story dealing with the swift apprehension of the killer of Aleksander Granovsky. Viktor Shishko had been a reporter in Moscow for more than thirty years and had covered only two murder stories. He was well aware that dozens of murders took place every day in and around Moscow, but few of them were made known to anyone but the police and the people involved. Occasionally, though, there was a purpose to be served by publicity. Viktor Shishko found it easy to guess what the purpose was in this case, but he had no intention of sharing his conjecture with anyone else. When the story was finished, he would read it to Comrade Ivanov, who in turn would read it to someone who served the Party as liaison with the several investigatory agencies. Viktor had been through it all before and knew that the story would come back with small changes, cautious wording, though he himself was doing his best to be careful and anticipate the reason for the publication of the story.

  Other writers, editors, and staff people, men and women, bustled past Viktor as he composed his short story:

  Aleksander Granovsky, 42, former professor of history at Moscow University, was murdered last night by a cab driver with whom he had frequently quarreled. The cab driver, Mikel Vonovich, 39, wounded a police officer attempting to apprehend him. Trial will be held on the sixth of the month.

  Shishko examined his brief story with satisfaction. He had omitted Granovsky’s reputation as a dissident and the fact that Granovsky was due to go on trial the morning after his death. He had also moved the date of Granovsky’s murder up one day to show how swiftly the police had caught the murderer. As an extra precaution, he had not included information about Vonovich’s black market activity. It was not his function to anticipate the political consequences of such things. Therefore, he did not include them. If the party liaison wanted those things in for good reason, then he or she could put them in.

  As for the rest-the shooting of the young man in the liquor store by Sasha Tkach; the shooting of the police officer by the dead boy; Emil Karpo’s arm; Malenko’s murder of his wife and a cab driver and the kidnapping of the dissident’s daughter-Viktor Shishko knew nothing. And neither, therefore, would the people of Moscow.

  Dark clouds had come back over Moscow, promising more snow. Through Anna Timofeyeva’s window, Rostnikov watched the clouds push their way in front of the feeble sun. Rostnikov was in a bad mood.

  “And?” asked Procurator Timofeyeva, looking particularly dyspeptic.

  “And, Ilyusha Malenko attempted to rape Sonya Granovsky,” he said.

  “Attempted?”

  “He was unable to do so.”

  “She resisted?”

  “No, she agreed to be quiet so as not to disturb her daughter sleeping in the next room, but Malenko could not consummate the action,” Rostnikov said carefully. He had no idea what Procurator Timofeyeva thought about sex as a personal act or a potentially criminal one. Surely, she had been involved in enough cases to have an opinion.

  “Then?”

  “Yes, then,” Rostnikov went on, “he got angry. He went in and got the girl and said he was taking her with him. That he would be back for the mother when he had given the daughter what justice demanded.”

  “How old is the girl?” Timofeyeva asked, looking down at her notes for an answer.

  “Fourteen,” said Rostnikov. “Sonya Granovsky was told that if she mentioned what had happened, he would kill the girl, which he probably intends to do anyway.”

  “But he might not?”

  “He might not,” Rostnikov agreed.

  There was silence in the room for a few seconds and then the distant rumbling of thunder. The room had grown quite dark, and Anna Timofeyeva rose to turn on the lights.

  “And Malenko said to her that he had killed her husband?”

  “That is what he said.”

  “He could have been lying,” she went on, moving to her desk again. “He knew Granovsky was dead. He had killed his wife.”

  “Possible, of course,” agreed Rostnikov. “Perhaps when we find him we can discover more.”

  “Awkward, very awkward,” Anna Timofeyeva said between clenched teeth. Her breathing was heavy now, troubled. “What are you doing to find him?”

  “We are trying to find out how he could get wherever he is through the streets of Moscow holding a crying young girl at the point of a scissors without anyone noticing.”

  “He had an accomplice,” tried the procurator, opening her desk drawer to search for something. She found a small bottle of pills Rostnikov had never seen.

  “Possible again, but not likely. It is more reasonable to suppose that he has also kidnapped the driver of a car, has stolen a car or has taken a cab and convinced the driver that nothing was amiss. I have some men checking on cabs, seeing if any cars have been reported missing. If he kidnapped a driver, it might be tomorrow before we find out about it if a relative calls the person in as missing.”

  “And meanwhile?” asked Timofeyeva, gulping down two white pills and ignoring Rostnikov’s look of sympathy.

  “I have a man guarding Sonya Granovsky’s apartment, another man watching the house of Malenko’s father. I’ve taken the liberty of doing all of this in your name, comrade.”

  She waved a thick hand to indicate that it was, of course, all right to do so.

  “The Procurator General is almost at the end of his term,” said Anna Timofeyeva softly. “Did you know that, Porfiry?”

  “I was aware,” he said. He wondered if the pills she had taken were for pain and, if so, if they would help to relieve the agony in his leg. The run up the stairs to the Granovsky apartment would be something to regret for days, maybe long enough to ruin his training and end any hope of the park competition.

  “He would like to be reappointed,” she went on. “It would be unprecedented to have such a second appointment. It would be very much to my advantage to have him reappointed, Porfiry. And if it is to my advantage, it is to yours. Do you understand?”

  “I am to be discreet about my investigation,” he said.

  “I needn’t tell you that my interests are not selfish,” she said, rubbing the bridge of her nose, an act which, Rostnikov noticed, she did more and more frequently. “The Procurator is a good man, a good Party member, a just man. If he remains in office, we can continue our work as we have.”

  “It will be borne in mind.”

  “Go, Porfiry, and report to me when you know anything, anything at all. I will be right here through the night. And one more thing.”

  “Yes,” grunted Rostnikov as he forced himsel
f out of the chair.

  “I would prefer that you reserve your maudlin sympathy when you come in here. Some might find it touching, but I find your concern merely burdensome. For example, I have of course noticed the extreme pain you are in from your leg. But my feeling about it must be put aside for the sake of our efficient functioning. We have tasks which must come before human weakness. We have goals for a better future.”

  “I agree,” said Rostnikov, limping to the door.

  “As soon as you hear anything,” she said, pulling a thick folder in front of her.

  Rostnikov went out the door thinking that Anna Timofeyeva and Sergei Malenko represented perfectly opposing wills. Malenko was a successful capitalist within a socialist country. He was the living evidence, an alternative, a corrupt alternative, perhaps, but one which refused to go away. Anna Timofeyeva labored for a Utopia free of Malenkos, elder and younger, free of dissent, free of poverty. In his deepest heart, Rostnikov was confident that neither her world nor the world of Sergei Malenko would ever triumph. No Utopia had ever survived; perhaps none was desirable. Man had evolved into a creature who lived in constant tension. Utopias might destroy him. And besides, in a perfect world there would be no room for the police.

  It took forever to get back to his own office, where Sasha Tkach sat, his hair disheveled, his coat open. The young man slumped in the chair across the desk and didn’t even fully turn to face Rostnikov.

  “Any news from the cab investigation?” Rostnikov asked, easing himself into his chair and feeling the pain rush through his leg as he changed position. Rostnikov wondered if the German who had shot him in 1941 was still alive somewhere and if the German was walking on two whole legs. Rostnikov did not like Germans, even East Germans. They weren’t to be trusted.

  “Nothing,” said Tkach.

  “Stolen cars, kidnappings, missing persons?”

  “Nothing,” said Tkach, looking down at his thumbs. Rostnikov leaned over to see what was so interesting about Tkach’s thumbs, but could see nothing.

  “You have something on your mind, Sasha,” Rostnikov sighed.

  “I think I should be given…I should have less responsible assignments until I can prove myself,” he said. “I’ve bungled all of this badly.”

  “You have,” agreed Rostnikov. “To use the terms of hockey, you have allowed as many goals as you have scored.”

  “Yes. Had I remembered that the cab driver had been killed near Petro Street, I could have prevented the murder of Marie Malenko. Had I not lost Simon Lvov, he would have led me to Ilyusha Malenko and he would not have kidnapped the girl.”

  “I know,” said Rostnikov. Tkach looked at him, waiting for further comment.

  “Is that all you can say?” asked Tkach more in a plea than anger.

  “What more can I say? You made mistakes. I am not your father. I can’t forgive you for your mistakes, neither will I sit here brooding on them. You have a job. You do it. Sometimes things go right. Sometimes they go wrong. If we demoted every police officer who made major mistakes, there would be no senior officers left. You have many inadequacies as an investigator, Sasha, perhaps even more than I, but I think, frankly, that we are the best available. So let’s stop worrying about the past and start considering the present and future. Let’s begin by your getting me half a dozen aspirin and a pot of tea.”

  Something approaching a smile touched Sasha Tkach’s mouth and he brushed back his hair.

  “I haven’t given you a reprieve,” said Rostnikov, rubbing his leg, “only a minor task. Please do it.”

  Gas is not easy to get in Moscow, which is one of the reasons so few Muscovites own automobiles. But there are many other reasons. Automobiles are very expensive and the laws governing their use are many. But the worst thing about owning an automobile in Moscow is the repairs. There are less than a dozen shops in Moscow authorized to repair automobiles. Working in these shops are mechanics who frequently resent the fact that they must work on these automobiles without any prospect of ever owning one themselves. Parts are difficult to get and repair work is usually done quickly and badly. The mechanics get paid the same for good or bad work, and the customers really have no choice.

  Vera Alleyenovskya, a second cellist in the Bolshoi theater orchestra, was a near tireless perfectionist; her only indulgence was the automobile. Her Volga had been repaired four times in the last month only to develop the same problem anew each time. And each time she had patiently returned it for repair. The car spent more days in the shop that month than on the road. Vera Alleyenovskya was beginning to consider getting rid of the car. This thought was connected in her mind with the possibility of accepting the offer of marriage of Igor Petschensky, the tuba player. Both would involve a radical change in self-image for which she was preparing herself.

  Vera Alleyenovskya looked at herself in the rearview mirror when she got into her car, which had now been running for two days without a breakdown. Her blond hair was tied straight back, her eyes were blue, her skin clear and pale, her face a bit chunky. At moments like this, she tended to push the sale of the car and the proposal of Petschensky deep into the recesses of her mind. After all, it was one thing to deal with a tuba as part of the total sound of the Rimsky-Korsikov, but to hear the individual rehearsal might be too much in spite of Petchensky’s admirable mustache. Vera Alleyenovskya saw something else in her mirror this evening, and it was to have a profound effect on her life.

  In the mirror was the face of a young man. Vera Alleyenovskya turned quickly with a half scream.

  “No,” said the young man, showing a long, rusty scissors and glancing out of the window to see if any passerby noticed what was happening inside the parked car. Then Vera Alleyenovskya saw the young girl. The man had one arm around her, holding her mouth. The girl’s eyes were wide and frightened.

  “What do you want?” asked Vera quietly. “What are you doing in my car? With that child?”

  “I want you to turn around and start the car,” Ilyusha Malenko said. “Now. I can easily kill you and drive myself, but then I’d have to do something with little Natasha here and I don’t want anything to happen to her, not now. So drive.”

  Vera Alleyenovskya drove. She had no idea of who the young man was. Her primary source of information was the Moscow Pravda.

  “We’re cold,” said the young man, looking over her shoulder into traffic. “We’ve been sitting in here on the floor for hours. Turn on the heat.”

  “It takes a while to work,” Vera said. “Where shall I take you?”

  “Later,” he said, tapping her on the shoulder with the scissors. “Later. And don’t think clever thoughts. I am clever too, and I have grown quite used to doing what I must. There are three dead to prove it.”

  The young man sounded proud of his accomplishment. A look in the rearview mirror at both him and the girl seemed to support what should have been a confession but sounded like a boast.

  “I do not have an inexhaustable supply of petrol,” Vera said, driving through the new falling snow.

  “Later,” he growled. “How do you come to own a car?”

  “I’m a musician,” Vera explained.

  “My father owns two cars and a woman.”

  Vera had nothing to say. She nodded and drove.

  “Drive out of the city,’’ he said a few minutes later. Then to the young girl beside him. “I’m going to let you go. My hand is tired of holding you. You are to sit back in the corner and say nothing and not whimper. You understand?”

  Vera couldn’t see if the girl nodded, but she did hear a sudden gasp for air and the young girl’s lungs taking in air loudly and quickly.

  Vera drove along the highway past apartments and houses for almost an hour.

  “Turn here,” he ordered at one point, and she skidded, almost missing the road where he told her to turn. “Now drive.”

  Vera drove down the small highway for ten minutes and then the blades of the scissors clicked in the air near her cheek.

&
nbsp; “There, there, there up ahead, turn into that road,” said the young man.

  She turned. The road was small and unpaved; the snow was piling up quickly.

  “We can’t go far,” she said. “Too much snow. I should try to turn back.”

  “Never mind,” said the young man. “Just get out. Leave the key and get out.

  “Wait,” she tried.

  “Out,” he shouted and Vera got out.

  Her hope now was that this madman would simply abandon her and take the car. It had been a long while since they passed anything that looked like a house, and it was possible that any house she found now would not have a phone, but still it would mean safety. Her hope was short-lived. The young man stepped out of the back of the car, closing it behind him.

  “You are going to leave me here?” Vera said firmly.

  “Yes,” he said, stepping toward her in the thick snow at the side of the road.

  “Then I’ll start walking,” she said, backing away.

  The white snow now mixed into the hair of the young man and stuck to his eyebrows and face. His head was nodding slowly.

  “You’ll tell the police,” he said. “I can’t have that.”

  “Why should I tell the police?” Vera said, taking another step back and almost falling.

  “Because you would be a fool not to,” he said reasonably.

  “Now, wait…” Vera began taking a step toward Ilyusha with her hands out as if she were going to plead with him. He put his hands to his sides to let her come near, and shifted the scissors in his grip. The handle was cold and solid. He was ready, but not for what happened. Vera Alleyenovskya did not plead or beg or whimper. It was simply not in her to do so. Instead she threw her one hundred thirty pounds at the young man with her hands extended. He slid in the snow and stumbled backward against the car, and she turned to run toward a clump of fir trees about fifty yards away across an open field. She could hear him get up behind her as she moved against the resistance of the accumulated snow, and after twenty yards she knew he was coming. Twenty yards further he had narrowed the gap, and just as she was about to touch the first birch tree, she could clearly hear two things: the heavy close footsteps of the man behind her and the opening of her car door.