The Man Who Walked Like a Bear ir-6

by Stuart M. Kaminsky

  Zelach, in spite of himself, laughed, then wished he had not. Kostnitsov advanced on him.

  “DNA,” hissed the blue-smocked wraith in Zelach’s face. “Do you know what that is? It is in every cell of your less than adequate body. You identify a spleen and don’t know what DNA is. Is there hope for such an unbalanced creature?”

  The medicinal smell of the lab was beginning to make Tkach ill, that and the memory of a recent knish. He had a sudden internal flash of Kostnitsov opening his stomach and examining the contents, including the knish, to determine the precise moment of his death. Tkach wanted to flee.

  “DNA is the genetic material,” Tkach said.

  Kostnitsov nodded and turned to him.

  “Each person has his own pattern,” the scientist said, moving to his desk, pushing papers away in search of something as he spoke. “It is better than fingerprints. The odds of duplication are almost nonexistent. Every cell in the body has this print. Our dead man grasped the wrist of the man he was about to strike. He picked up a few surface cells and even a trace of hair. You bring me even a strand of hair of this man and get me into an electron microscopy laboratory and I will identify him.”

  “Amazing,” said Tkach, which was just what the scientist wanted to hear. Kostnitsov found what he was looking for on his desk, a pad with notes and numbers scratched on it. He brought the pad to Tkach, who asked, “Can you tell us anything else?”

  “Other people handled the body,” Kostnitsov said, pointing to the pad in front of Tkach’s hand. “One of them, was a woman. All of them except the first man are young, relatively young, younger even than you. At least three of them, including the first man, were Turkistani.”

  “Turkistani?” Zelach asked before he could stop himself.

  “Conjecture, conclusion, but almost certain,” Kostnitsov said, still taking his pad back from Tkach. “Tobacco bits on the victim. Someone who carried him. Turkistani tobacco. Also one small thread of a jacket made with wool dyed in Turkistan. Wool not sold in Moscow. No one would want it if it were. Inferior material. But who knows what people will wear?”

  “You are sure?” said Tkach.

  “No, I am not sure, but the weapon is one that has been linked in reports-number ten twenty-three, January last year; number four thirty-two-eleven, Kirov, April this year; four others all linking the Stechkin with clashes involving Turkistani separatists. Look at the computer. Madmen and madwomen.”

  Zelach couldn’t imagine anyone nearly as mad as Kostnitsov but he said and did nothing to betray his thoughts.

  “We are looking for a medium-height Turkistani about forty-eight years old,” said Tkach.

  Kostnitsov nodded and looked at his pad.

  “Do you read poetry, Comrade Inspector?” the scientist asked.

  “Occasionally,” Tkach said, which was true primarily because Maya thought it was romantic to be read poetry to late at night. If the conditions were right and Lydia were not snoring too loudly in the other room, and the baby wasn’t restless, Maya would …

  “Good,” said Kostnitsov. “Because facts are of no use without poetry. It is poetry that makes sense of facts. You understand. Get me an electron microscope and I’ll make real poetry. I’ll see into the very soul of a chromosome, the secret segment of a twisted thread of the very fabric of human existence. I’ll imagine myself into the smallest piece of evidence and give you the very face of criminal and victim. Is that not poetry?”

  “It is poetry,” Tkach agreed.

  “I have work,” Kostnitsov said with a sigh, turning away from the policemen. “Next time send Karpo.”

  The scientist moved to a white metallic box on his lab table. The box was marked in ink with the words “Clopniki Investigation-Foot.”

  Zelach and Tkach departed before the box was open.

  There is a point, Rostnikov knew, at which you must stop pushing or the balloon will break. When he was a small child, he had heard about balloons, thought they were the most amazing things imaginable, wanted desperately to see, touch one. Finally, one morning when he was no more than five or six, he was walking to the market on Herzen Street with his mother and saw a man with balloons, white balloons. There were slogans written on the balloons, and children were flocking around the man. There was no helium, no gas of any kind in the balloons, but they jostled upward and back in the wind.

  Porfiry Petrovich’s mother had watched her son turn his head to the balloon man as they passed, and though they were late and the lines would be so long at the market that they would have to wait many hours for whatever food, if any, was available, she let him stop, let him join the other children.

  Porfiry Petrovich had reached over the shoulder of a little girl to touch a single, stray balloon that dipped toward him. He had stretched, strained, and finally, when the balloon fluttered down over the heads of the screaming children, Porfiry Petrovich and the little girl had both touched the balloon. The little girl had grabbed the sphere and smiled at Porfiry, and the two of them had explored the soft, strange thing while the balloon man chatted, encouraged the other children, and held the balloons aloft out of their reach.

  And as Porfiry and the little girl touched the balloon that they held between them like a magical bubble, it burst. Porfiry was never sure whether it was his touch or hers that broke it. The moment of ecstasy was replaced by fear. Porfiry had looked around for his mother. She was hidden by the crowd of children who had turned to him and the little girl with the deafening pop of the balloon.

  The tall balloon man had stepped through the crowd and looked down at Porfiry, who stood close to the little girl. She had taken his hand. The man leaned down to Porfiry and the girl. Porfiry could smell his breath, the dry, distant odor of tobacco like his uncle Sergei.

  “What is your name?” the man had said.

  Porfiry held back the tears, eyes darting for his mother, hand holding tight to the little girl’s fingers.

  “Porfiry Petrovich,” he had answered. He could not remember if the little girl had given her name.

  “Remember this, Porfiry Petrovich,” the man whispered in his ear, raising his eyebrows to play to the crowd of children, who laughed. “Treat precious things gently. If you press the balloon too hard, it will break. Will you remember that?”

  “I will remember,” Porfiry had said.

  “Good!” the man had shouted, standing up. “Then here is a gift.”

  He handed Porfiry and the little girl each a balloon on a string and turned to the crowd of children who clamored around him, begging, calling, crying for a balloon of their own.

  The little girl had dropped his hand and run away, and Porfiry Petrovich had raced around the crowd and found his mother.

  “What is written on the balloon?” he asked.

  “Sacrifice for the Revolution,” she said. “There’s a free circus tonight. That is the theme.”

  The balloon had lasted almost till evening before a small leak drained and withered it.

  “Porfiry,” Sarah said gently.

  “Yes,” he answered, looking at his wife in the bed. The sun was going down and the ward lights would soon be coming on, the harsh white lights that cast the skin a sickly orange. Rostnikov wanted to be gone before that light came to his wife’s face, but he knew he would not leave till she ordered him to do so.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I was thinking about balloons,” he said. “Iosef was never interested in balloons.”

  Sarah smiled. He returned the smile, and she took his hand the way the little girl had done half a century ago. He looked at her and thought that in the evening light and shadow she looked, with her bandaged head and white gown, like a little girl playing a role, perhaps the role of a wise Gypsy fortune teller.

  “But Iosef loved the circus,” she said.

  In the next bed, the girl Petra Toverinin dozed, a book lying open on her stomach. Irinia Komistok, the old woman, was off somewhere receiving therapy. Porfiry and Sarah were as al
one as they probably ever would be in the hospital.

  “What about that man?” Sarah asked, trying to sit up a bit.

  “Bulgarin,” Rostnikov said. “Ivan Bulgarin. He is gone. His family removed him from the hospital yesterday.”

  “Where did they take him?”

  Rostnikov shrugged. “I’ll find out, but not today. I couldn’t push the balloon too hard or it might break,” he said.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Sarah said, sounding tired. “If he has a family taking care of him.”

  “I’ll find out nonetheless,” he said.

  The girl in the next bed stirred and the book slipped from her stomach to the floor in a flutter like a landing bird. The sound struck something in Rostnikov.

  “Porfiry?” Sarah said. “What is it?”

  “The American writer Edgar Allan Poe,” he said, softly squeezing her hand. “He said that melancholy is the path of beauty.”

  “I think you are tired,” said Sarah. “Why don’t you go home, lift your weights, read a little, and get something to eat.”

  “Yes,” Rostnikov agreed, both reluctant and eager to go. If she were better, would he share with her, tell her where Ivan Bulgarin, the bear who had burst into her room, was leading him? No doubt he should drop the whole thing, forget that Nahatchavanski’s name had been given to him by Lukov at the Lentaka Shoe Factory. But perhaps he could pursue it just a bit further to satisfy his curiosity. Besides, he was curious about why Bulgarin was suddenly removed from the hospital and why no record of his transfer could be found.

  Rostnikov let go of his wife’s hand and massaged his leg with both hands before standing up. Then he moved to the side of the sleeping girl’s bed, picked up the fallen book, and placed it on the small table nearby.

  “Tomorrow,” he said, turning to his wife to kiss her forehead, which felt moist and slightly feverish. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine,” she said. “It takes time. You have vegetables?”

  “Potatoes,” he said.

  “Find something green,” she said. “Eat something green. Promise.”

  “I promise,” he answered, touching her hand and moving to the door and opening it as the last light of day faded. “You want the lights on?”

  “No,” she said. “I think I’ll sleep.”

  “Tomorrow,” he said.

  “If you’re too busy …” she began, following through on the ritual they had established after his first visit.

  “I’m not too busy,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  NINE

  WHEN ROSTNIKOV ARRIVED at Petrovka the next morning, the sun was not yet up. The armed uniformed guard inside the door stood behind a plastic shield, his machine pistol at the ready. His eyes met Rostnikov’s with recognition and returned to the front door.

  The sixth floor was not exactly bustling with activity, but neither was it absolutely quiet. A trio of inspectors was using one of the glass-enclosed rooms. Their heads were close together, and they looked tired. One, a man known as Walchek the Pole, was shaking his head no while the others entreated. Walchek looked up when Rostnikov passed and nodded.

  Karpo at his desk, pen in hand preparing a report, did not turn around when Rostnikov entered his office, but Rostnikov knew he had been noticed. Tkach and Zelach arrived almost an hour later, Tkach looking tired, Zelach silent and slouching. When the four men met in Rostnikov’s small office moments later, Porfiry Petrovich was lost in thought and concentrating on a sketch he was making of neat tubes of various sizes connected in an intricate pattern.

  “Reports,” he said, putting a final touch of shading on a tube and standing up.

  Karpo and Tkach placed filled-in forms on the desk, and Rostnikov glanced at them.

  “And now,” he said, “tell me what is not in these reports.”

  “The man who was found shot, Tolvenovov,” Tkach said, “was killed on a bus, probably our missing bus, probably by Turkistani separatists, probably led by a man in his late forties. If we find the man, Kostnitsov can positively identify him through DNA. The dead man grabbed the man’s wrist.”

  “When you find him, Sasha, when, not if,” said Rostnikov, leaning forward, hands on the back of his chair. “To say if is to prepare yourself for defeat. So what will you do to catch him, Sasha?”

  “Computer,” said Tkach, holding back a yawn. “Identify and locate Turkistani separatists or those who know the Turkistani community, try to get a lead if it was Turkistanis.”

  Tkach was seated in the corner, Zelach standing behind him. Karpo stood in the other corner.

  “You had trouble sleeping, Sasha?” Rostnikov asked.

  “My mother,” he said, brushing his hair back. “She … we talked most of the night.”

  Outside the cubicle the sixth floor was coming to life. A pair of uniformed officers flanked a smiling man whom they jostled forward between the desks, and toward the room where Walchek the Pole and the other two investigators were still seated. The prisoner was ridiculously thin and looked as if he had some disease.

  Rostnikov grunted and looked at Karpo.

  “I believe Yuri Vostoyavek and a young girl are planning to murder Andrei Morchov,” Karpo said.

  Zelach shuffled in his corner and Rostnikov picked up Karpo’s report. There was nothing about a conspiracy to commit murder in the report because, as Karpo had just said, he “believed” but did not know. He would not put his beliefs in a report, only his certainties. Besides, if his beliefs seemed to be well founded, the case would be taken from the Wolfhound’s investigative team. As it was, Karpo was only investigating the probable hysterical reaction of a mother to her son’s almost certainly innocent comment. By the same token, Tkach was investigating the disappearance of a bus, not an unrelated murder. The bus was probably, according to the report that would be filed, taken by an alcoholic bus driver who would soon be found asleep in some field.

  “And what shall we do about our young would-be assassins?” Rostnikov asked Karpo.

  “We can bring them in for questioning,” said Karpo. “But I do not think they will confess. It will simply make them bide their time and make a greater effort to have the crime look like an accident. Nor do I think it will do any good to confront Comrade Morchov again. We can watch, be alert, and catch them in the act or just before the act.”

  “Just before the act would be far better,” suggested Rostnikov. “Let us try that. And let us find out why this young man may wish to kill a member of the Politburo and who the young woman is who may share his goal.”

  Karpo nodded and left me room.

  “Very good,” said Rostnikov with a deep sigh. “I am pursuing the possibility of petty theft in the Lentaka Shoe Factory. There is an office in the factory that I would like to examine tonight, but it is of vital importance that no one know in advance what I will be doing. I should like two volunteers to aid me in this.”

  Tkach nodded in agreement, and Karpo simply blinked his eyes in acceptance. Both knew that there must be something more to this assignment man catching a petty thief, but neither man would think of asking what it might be. They were better off not knowing, or Rostnikov would now be explaining.

  “Good. Pursue your work and meet me at eleven-thirty tonight in front of the Tass building,” Rostnikov said. “Zelach, would you please go process an order for level two computer access? I will get Colonel Snitkonoy to approve it. Sasha, remain a moment.”

  Karpo left the room and moved to his desk.

  “Sasha Tkach,” Rostnikov said gently, “if you do not sleep nights, you cannot work days, and ours is a job where being alert may mean staying alive. You have much to live for.”

  Tkach looked up but slouched back in his chair.

  “My mother is making me feel guilty about the move,” he explained. “She weeps, she complains, she goes silent, she threatens, she casts looks. She wakes the baby. Pulcharia is a good child, but … And Maya, Maya who has always been so gentle, so quiet and loving, is becoming … I�
�m caught between.”

  “I can’t have you caught between or feeling caught between,” said Rostnikov. “There is a murdered man, a missing bus and driver, more crimes taking place every day.”

  “I know,” Tkach said with exhaustion before he nodded and left the room.

  When Tkach was back at his desk, Rostnikov reached for the phone and checked his watch. He had ten minutes before his morning meeting with the Wolfhound. Rostnikov got the operator and asked for the Ministry of Information. Moments later he asked for and got Lydia Tkach on the line.

  “You remember me?” he asked when she shouted “Zdrah’stvooit’e,” hello, into the phone.

  “Yes!” she screamed. “What do you want? I’m very busy!”

  Rostnikov moved the phone a foot away from his ear and returned it only when she was not speaking.

  “Children,” he said, “are ungrateful creatures. Your son is an ungrateful creature.”

  “You think I don’t know that?” she said with a bitter laugh. “I needed you to call me from my work to tell me what I already know.”

  “Sasha, my son Iosef, all of them ungrateful,” Rostnikov said.

  “Tell him that,” she cried. “He won’t listen to me.”

  “He is beyond reason,” Rostnikov said with a sigh. “I can’t get him to do a decent day’s work. All he thinks about, talks about, is you, his poor mother for whom he is trying to do his best. I’ve done much for him, Lydia Tkach. I’ve treated him like my own son, but if he doesn’t start working, doesn’t start showing some gratitude for all I’ve done, doesn’t stop putting your feelings and welfare above his duty to the State, I’ll have to consider asking him to leave the service.”

  “Leave the-” she began.

  “For his own good,” said Rostnikov, sighing. “I must leave now. Your son is sitting at his desk with his head in his hands and not getting his work done.”

  “I’m deaf, Rostnikov, not stupid!” she shouted. “My son would not sit at his desk like a whipped child. Don’t call and play games with me.”