Rostnikov vacation ir-6

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Behind her, near the window across the room, sat a yellow-bearded man with long hair, one of the two men Tkach had seen the night before, one of the two men who, he was sure, had humiliated him, taken his honor and self-respect, and beaten Zelach. The man wore dark pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The shirt was not tucked in, and the man wore no shoes or sox. He dropped the newspaper he was reading and stood up as the little girl hurried to him and buried her face against his leg.

  "Who are you? What do you want?" the man asked indignantly, but Sasha could see that the man recognized him.

  Tkach aimed the gun at the man's chest and looked around the crowded room. There were two beds in it and, against one wall, a crib.

  "Tamara sent me," Sasha said.

  The child was sobbing now and holding both her father's leg and the rabbit crushed against her chest.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," said the man, patting the head of the little girl gently. "You're frightening Alanya. Put the gun away."

  "I'm a police officer," said Tkach, moving into the room and kicking the door shut behind him.

  He scanned the room, his gun in front of him. Satisfied that only the three of them were there, he leveled the barrel once again at the bearded man.

  "I've done nothing that-" the man began.

  "No lies," said Tkach, holding up the palm of his left hand to stop him as the child wept on. "If you lie, even a small lie, I will shoot you dead before your child."

  Even as he said it, Tkach knew that his moment had passed, that he could not kill the man while his daughter clung to him, could probably not even do it if she released him and went running out of the apartment. The child had changed things, brought confusion where mere had been such simplicity.

  The door flew open behind him, and Tkach whirled and went into a crouch, his gun in two hands, ready to shoot the second man, anxious to shoot the second man, but there was no second man.

  ' 'Maht. Mother,'' cried the little girl, releasing her father's leg and running past Sasha to Tamara, who stood in the doorway, panting-Tamara, who had taken the time to finish putting on her makeup.

  The girl ran into the arms of Tamara, who picked her up and kissed her face and nose, leaving splashes of lipstick that looked like smears of blood.

  "Sit down," said Tkach, motioning to a sofa against the wall with his gun.

  Tamara hurried to the sofa.

  "You, too," said Tkach to the bearded man.

  The man moved to join his wife and daughter. Once again, Tkach kicked the door closed.

  "Where's the other one?" he demanded. "And don't tell me he's your son or brother or father.'' "He's my friend," said the bearded man as he sat next to his wife, who put her head on his shoulder and continued to hold the child, who sobbed uncontrollably.

  "Where?" Tkach demanded.

  "Let me explain," the man said. "Please put the gun away. You are frightening Alanya. I have no gun. Please."

  "Where is he?" Tkach demanded.

  The bearded man sighed and stood again.

  "Shoot me," he said. "Take me in the hall and shoot me.

  I don't care. I can't tell you where he is, who he is. I cannot tell you. I will not tell you. You know what I have?"

  With this he pointed to his chest and continued.

  "I have two apartments, one where I have a daughter, one where my wife prostitutes herself so we can make a living. You know why I can't make a living?

  I was a political prisoner. I cannot get work. I can only go through life waiting to die and not working or do what I do."

  Tkach was in complete confusion as the man began to pace back and forth before him. And then, from the crib against the wall, came the waking cry of a baby.

  ' 'You know what else a man like me has? You know?'' he went on as he walked, his angry eyes on Tkach. "I have my word. If I tell you where… where the person is you seek, I'll have nothing. Better to die now, here, in dignity."

  "Sit down," cried Tkach.

  "You're frightening Alanya," the bearded man said. "Your face is all bloody." '' Sit down,'' Tkach shouted, and the man sat and the child cried and the woman named Tamara closed her eyes and began to rock her little girl.

  Now the cries from the crib grew louder.

  "You almost killed my partner," Tkach screamed. "He will lose an eye."

  "We didn't know he was there," said the bearded man. "We thought you were the only one and you were with-"

  The bearded man looked at Tamara, whose eyes were still closed.

  "He took us by surprise," the man continued. "We fought, tried to hold him down.

  We wanted the computer, not trouble. Do we have to talk about this in here? The child.'' "Here, now," insisted Tkach.

  "We've never hurt anyone before," said the man, putting his head in his hands as if he were very tired. Then his head came up, and Tkach could see that the man's eyes were red.

  "You want the truth? We've taken eleven computers, and we're not the only ones. That's the truth. This is the only time we have taken one in these buildings, where we live. It was just too… too… tempting.

  And you want to know where… the other man is. He is home, in pain. Your friend broke his ribs, cracked a bone in his face. My friend is home with his family, spitting blood into the toilet. Your computer is there, inside that cabinet. Now, will you please take me out of here, away from them?"

  The woman named Tamara opened her eyes and looked at Tkach. The baby in the crib was wailing now.

  "Get the child," Tkach said, and the man moved to the crib and lifted out an infant that could not have been more than a few months old.

  ' 'We took them only from Jews,'' Tamara said with a sniffle, accepting the infant from her husband. "We thought you were a Jew."

  Tkach laughed. He had not expected it, but he laughed.

  "You're not a Jew, are you?" she asked, cuddling the sobbing baby while the child called Alanya continued to immerse herself in her mother's right breast.

  "The Jews are responsible for all our troubles," said the man. "They started the whole damn Revolution. Trotsky, the Jews, and now they're destroying the Revolution with their computers, their conspiracy with Israel."

  "We take computers only from the Jews," Tamara repeated.

  Tkach had controlled his laughter now, and through his tears he looked at the family on the sofa, the family that thought it was acceptable to steal computers as long as the computers belonged to Jews.

  "Jews have money," said the man. "They can get more computers."

  "But," said Tkach, "I am a Jew."

  "Then," said the man softly, "we are dead."

  The man sat erect, flared his nostrils, and urged his wife and daughter to assume the dignity he sought.

  "Then shoot us, Jew, as you've shot thousands before us."

  The baby had grown silent in her mother's rocking arms, but the child called Alanya had turned her terrified wide eyes back on the bloody-faced madman who had invaded their apartment. This, Tkach could see in her eyes, was what she had been taught to fear, the monstrous Jew.

  Tkach put his gun into his pocket and stood looking down at them.

  "Give me your wallet," he said.

  The man tilted his head to the side, expecting some torture, some trick, and then he reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet, and held it up.

  "Throw it," said Tkach.

  And the man threw it. Tkach caught it, removed the identification card, and threw the wallet back.

  "You have a pencil?"

  "Yes," said the man.

  "Get it out."

  The man reached into his pocket and came up with the yellow stub of a gnawed pencil.

  Tkach gave the man a telephone number and told him to write. The man wrote the number and looked up.

  "Pack your things and get out of Moscow with your family," Tkach said. "It is the same offer I gave your wife. Call your friend and tell him to get out, too.

  I will keep your card,
and you will tell me where you are going. If you do not inform me of where you are within ten days, I will send out a bulletin, and you will be caught and returned to me. When you call me, I will inform the local police, and they will watch you. If you commit a crime, even a small crime, we will come for you.''

  The man gave a nasty, knowing grunt.

  ' 'You have one hour to be out of here,'' Tkach said, crossing the room to the cabinet and opening the door. "Two hours to be out of Moscow.'' "But where can we…?" Tamara began.

  "Two hours," Tkach repeated. "And after the phone call to me when you get wherever you decide to go, I want to hear nothing of you or from you ever again.''

  Tkach retrieved the computer, which had been placed back in its carrying case.

  He lifted it in one hand and turned to face the family. There was no gratitude in the face of the bearded man, but there was something there that made Tkach sure that he would have his family at least fifty miles from Moscow within hours.

  It took Sasha Tkach less than an hour to get back to the office where he had worked as Yon Mandelstem. He had washed the worst of the blood from his face in a fountain in the park, but he still looked sufficiently forbidding that no one in the Metro had come near him and no one in the office questioned him when he came through the door, strode to the corner desk, placed the computer down, and walked back through the row of desks and out the door to the stairway.

  In another twenty minutes he was home, in front of his own door, hands trembling as he took out his key. He had wanted to think of something to say, something to tell Maya, but he could not plan, could not anticipate. Whatever came when he saw her would come. She would see his face and know. There was no doubt about that, but he had to see her.

  He opened the door, prepared and unprepared. He imagined that he looked very much like the bearded man when the man had thought Sasha was about to shoot him.

  Maya wasn't there.

  His first reaction was relief. He would be able to sit, ease into the furniture, the familiarity, prepare, but he could not sit. He could wait no longer. He went back through the door and down the stairs. He had to find them.

  He hurried into the street, unsure of which way to go, and then he ran toward the series of small shops two blocks away. He found them almost immediately standing in a line outside a cheese shop, though they did not see him. His need was enormous as he rushed forward and called his wife's name.

  The people in line turned to him and watched as he ran forward and embraced Maya, who had turned, surprised to see him, her little smile showing concern.

  Pulcharia was standing at her side, holding her mother's leg, much as the child Alanya had held her father's leg.

  "Sasha?" she asked.

  He found the similarity of the scenes so painful that when he tried to speak he could not. Maya stepped out of line and cupped his face in her hands. Pulcharia followed her mother and continued to cling.

  "Shh, Sasha, shh," she said to him, avoiding the eyes of those in line who watched.

  Whatever it was that had done this to her husband, Maya was not sure she wanted to hear it. Emil Karpo had been trying to reach Sasha for hours, had called many times. Perhaps he had talked to Sasha. Perhaps he had told her husband some awful thing.

  "Is it Porfiry Petrovich?" she asked. "Has something happened to him, his wife?"

  Tkach could not speak. He shook his head no.

  "Is it your mother? My mother?"

  Again, no.

  "Are you…do you have something, something I…?"

  He managed to say, "No."

  "Then it can't be so terrible. Let's go home," she said, picking up Pulcharia.

  "We have enough to eat for tonight."

  "Yes," he said. "Let's go home."

  The little man with the glass eye and neatly trimmed beard took a step toward Porfiry Petrovich on the narrow path and held out his hand. He seemed to be addressing both a nearby tree and Rostnikov when he said, "The book."

  Rostnikov considered the situation-the little man with his outstretched arm, the huge, expressionless man behind him, the impossibility of retreat, and the likelihood that these were the men who had killed Georgi Vasilievich.

  "We saw you pick something up under the planks of the rotunda," the little man continued as he moved forward. "Vasilievich's book."

  Rostnikov stood his ground.

  ' 'I am an inspector in the Moscow MVD,'' said Rostnikov as the small man moved the hand at his side to his pocket and the huge man behind him took three steps forward.

  "We are impressed," said the little man. "Are we impressed, Pato?"

  Pato advanced four more steps toward Rostnikov in answer to the question.

  The little man with the wild eye went on. "You want to see what's in my pocket?

  I'll make an exchange. What's in my pocket for what's in your pocket."

  "I think not," said Rostnikov.

  The huge man was no more than a yard away now. He blocked the sun and sent a shadow over Porfiry Petrovich.

  "He thinks not," said the little man. "Pato, he thinks not. Well, I'll show him, anyway."

  The little man pulled out a little gun.

  "Know what this is?" the little man said, one eye looking down at the gun, the other toward Rostnikov.

  "A Pieper 6.35 mm, badly in need of oil," answered Rostnikov. "At least fifty years old. It is as likely to kill you as me if you are foolish enough to fire it."

  The big man took over. He brushed past the suddenly deflated little man with the wild eye and said, "Enough."

  And then the big man held out his hand, and it was a very big hand. Rostnikov looked at the hand and then the face of the man who blocked out the sun.

  "No," said Rostnikov.

  The big man, Pato, nodded in understanding. This was business. Pato put his hand on Rostnikov's shoulder.

  "Death can be much easier than life," the little man said. "You could have given me the book and had a moment to pray before Pato broke your neck. But maybe you are not a

  religious man? Maybe you are not one of those new Christians who jump to religion and away from Marxist-Leninism like dirty fleas."

  The massive hand was squeezing Rostnikov's shoulder now, pushing the policeman down. Rostnikov reached up, put his hands on the wrist behind the hand, and watched the man's face break into a smile that made it quite clear he was amused by the pathetic effort by the aging little barrel of a man with a lame leg.

  The smile lasted for less than the blinking of the eye of a night owl in a birch tree. Rostnikov put his good leg back to support him and wrenched the oifending arm from his shoulder. The huge man stepped back one pace, letting the sun hit Rostnikov's face. He looked at his hand and at Rostnikov. Rostnikov could see the little man, now that Pato had backed away.

  "Just kill him, then, and take the book," the little man said, looking back over his shoulder. "Someone might come and we'd have to kill them, too."

  Pato moved forward, one hand grabbing Rostnikov's hair, the other going to Rostnikov's throat. Rostnikov drove forward off his right leg and threw his shoulder into Pato's stomach. Rostnikov was off balance for the instant he had to put his weight on his bad leg, but he was accustomed to that instant, had experienced it many times when working with his beloved weights. His right leg found the ground beneath him, and he lifted the massive Pato off the ground. The man's hand released Rostnikov's neck. The creature called Pato growled like an animal and clawed at the back of the washtub of a man for the instant before Porfiry Petrovich threw him to the ground. Pato tumbled awkwardly on his shoulder and landed on his back with a great woosh of air.

  There was a crack like the breaking of a dry tree branch, and something sizzled past Rostnikov, who moved to the fallen man, who was trying to rise. He knew.

  The Pieper had not exploded. The little man with one eye was firing. But he only fired once before a voice from somewhere close by very calmly called,

  "Stop."

  The little man turned
toward the woods, aiming his pistol but seeing nothing.

  "Stop," came the voice again. "Put the gun down or see what it is like to try to plug a very large bullet hole in your chest with one of your scrawny little fingers."

  Pato was on one knee now, trying to catch his breath. Rostnikov took hold of his arm and helped him rise. The man swung awkwardly with his free arm and hit Rostnikov solidly in the shoulder. Rostnikov released Pato's arm but immediately drove forward and locked his arms around the man's midsection in a bear hug.

  Pato struggled to free himself, grunting, churning, cursing, but Rostnikov held tight, lifted him once again from the ground, and squeezed. When he had stopped struggling, Rostnikov let loose, and the huge man fell backward to the ground, his head striking the ground with a thud.

  "I would not have thought you could do that," Misha Ivanov said, stepping out of the trees, a pistol aimed at the little man, who had dropped his gun. The deep red light of the sun through the trees glinted on Ivanov's bald head. "I mean, I know you lift weights. You won the Sokolniki Recreation Championship last year.''

  ' 'The year before,'' Rostnikov corrected, once more helping the fallen Pato to his feet. The fight was definitely out of the huge man.

  "So," said Misha Ivanov with a shrug, "once again the records of the KGB are less than perfect. But in Odessa, in all of the Ukraine for that matter, we do not have priority and our computer network-"

  "Pato, I have disdain for you," said the one-eyed man, but Pato was too dazed to register the criticism.

  "Do you know who these two are?" asked Misha Ivanov.

  "They are the ones who killed Georgi Vasilievich," said Rostnikov, guiding Pato to the little man's side.

  "Did you?" Misha Ivanov asked, casually glancing at the little man.

  "No," said the little man. "We don't even know who you are talking about. We were just out for a walk when this man attacked us and-"

  The bullet from Ivanov's gun made a loud noise, a deep, echoing belch that woke the huge man from his daze and sent the little wild-eyed man spinning.

  "You shot me," cried the little man, reaching up to his bleeding shoulder. "You might have killed me." ' 'I tried to kill you,'' said Misha, shaking his head.' 'I haven't had much practice. Our ration of bullets is pitiful. You'd think the KGB had an endless supply. Maybe in Moscow, but in Odessa, Tbilisi? No. I'm sorry. I won't miss this time."