The Case of the General's Thumb

by Andrei Kurkov

  “Like films?” he asked, his friendly self again.

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.”

  8

  Shooting lights at amber, sometimes at red, the dark blue BMW sped through the deserted streets of Kiev to a backstreet in Podol.

  Ordering his driver to wait, Ivan Lvovich hustled Nik along to where, around the corner, a minivan bearing the legend “Miller Ltd Suspended Ceilings” was parked. The driver opened the rear doors, and they climbed into something resembling a tiny television studio.

  Ivan Lvovich passed Nik a collapsible stool.

  “Sit and watch.”

  One monitor showed a corridor with coat pegs and a mirror; another, a kitchen with a round table, an enormous refrigerator and refinements seen only in such few Western magazines as reached Dushanbe. A third showed a middle-aged man bound to a rocking chair. On the corridor monitor a door – probably the bathroom – opened and a man in jeans and a T-shirt came out carrying a shoulder bag, looked at himself in the mirror, smiled, and passing out of camera view, reappeared in the room with the rocking-chair. From his bag he took an audio cassette which he inserted in a radio cassette recorder.

  Ivan Lvovich called for sound.

  “Coming,” said the young man at the control-panel.

  “Can you get it louder?”

  Background hiss broken by rhythmical beats, then, from the prisoner, a feeble “That was nothing to do with me! Nothing! I’ve been framed!”

  “Can happen to the best,” said the other man, squatting and taking from his bag an object dangling wires. These he connected to some other device, and after consulting his watch, placed both objects beneath the rocking-chair.

  “Like it louder?”

  The beat became deafening.

  “What is it?” Nik asked.

  “Human heart.”

  The man was now in the kitchen, taking sausage from the fridge, after which he cut bread and made coffee.

  The prisoner meanwhile was rocking to and fro in a vain effort to free himself.

  “Don’t we get any coffee?” asked Ivan Lvovich.

  The young engineer produced a thermos. Ivan Lvovich poured, drank, then poured for Nik.

  “Enjoying it?”

  Bewildered, Nik shrugged.

  “Take a good look at that chap. That’s Sergey Vladimirovich Sakhno. Age thirty-three. Interesting type. Eventful life. Ex-sapper officer. Invalided out following death of his pregnant girlfriend. Psychologically dodgy. His prisoner had some involvement in the death of the girl. It’s the unborn baby’s heartbeat we’re hearing, courtesy of ultrasound scan. In my day a lock of hair in an envelope was sufficient. The new technology caters for any madness. – But hang on!”

  After a last look at the prisoner, Sakhno was on his way out, half-eaten sandwich abandoned on the table.

  “Can’t we go and defuse the damned thing?”

  “No point.”

  “He’ll be killed, for God’s sake!”

  “Yes, because we’re not supposed to be here. The people who have brought this about are watching from a similar vehicle on the other side of the block. This isn’t our scene, and it’s time to be going.”

  At a gesture from him the monitors dimmed, and hiss and heartbeats gave way to an uneasy silence that was in contrast to Nik’s inner turmoil.

  “Did that have to happen?” he asked, as they sped back through the sleeping city.

  “He was framed, like he said, but didn’t actually kill the girl. He was due to die for other reasons. Sakhno’s carried out the sentence. Why I said take a good look is because you’re shortly to meet and become friends. To which end, tomorrow evening you make a promising start by saving his life.”

  “A stage-managed rescue?”

  “No, for real. With this one-off assignment, Sakhno becomes disposable. And disposability is not something I go for. The same applies to plastic forks, spoons and paper plates.”

  “So I save his life, then what?”

  “Your work really starts. You get him away, lie low, then move on. Keeping yourself out of the picture, that’s the main thing. So long as you stay an unknown quantity, you’re safe.”

  They travelled on in silence through a cold, lifeless, indifferent city, through villages and the familiar forest.

  “Sleep till eleven,” advised Ivan Lvovich as they parted.

  9

  Viktor sat in his kitchen with the light off and moon enough to locate his teacup by.

  2.30 a.m. Not a sound, beyond the tick of the wall clock. Wife, daughter, city were asleep.

  He had, thanks to Reutmann, the pathologist, learnt a little more concerning General Bronitsky. Death had occurred lateish on May 20th, Bronitsky having dined well and drunk spirits. The stomach contents: partially digested cured fillet of sturgeon, salami, red caviar pancakes, suggested hurried consumption. The rope had been attached after death, the cause of which, at variance with the clean bill of health awarded by the General’s medical board on retirement, was a massive coronary thrombosis. Aged forty-seven, he had not been a heavy drinker, and enjoyed canoeing and hunting.

  Viktor next visited Bronitsky’s widow, with whom he sat and talked in homely fashion in the kitchen. Emotions well under control, she poured cognac and they drank to her husband’s memory. A source of grievance was the failure to release his body for burial, and Viktor promised to hurry things up.

  She answered his questions calmly, matter-of-factly.

  Her husband had no real friends. At Staff HQ he had had any number, but not since becoming Adviser. Apple of his eye was son Boris, now studying in England. He, as it happened, had left by air two days before his father’s death, and would thus be spared being questioned and the pain of the funeral. He was only eighteen. His fees were paid, but only for the first six months, which had been a worry, until colleagues of her husband promised State funding for a year, after which he could complete his studies in Ukraine.

  Recalling this in the still of the Kiev night, Viktor thought of at least five more questions he ought to have asked. Helpful as they’d seemed at the time, her ramblings did not, he now saw, contribute anything of consequence.

  Tiptoeing to the living-room balcony, he made sure that his Mazda was still safe.

  Returning to the kitchen and punching two holes in a tin of ration-entitlement condensed milk, he drank, helping it down with cold tea.

  Outside in the corridor his mobile rang in the pocket of his jacket, and in three strides he reached and answered it.

  “Me, Georgiy. Hi!”

  “Hi,” said Viktor, taken aback.

  “Couldn’t sleep, thought I’d ring. Seen the widow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Learn anything?”

  “Next to nothing.”

  “That’s because she was on her home ground. Get her out to a café earlyish, when she’s got herself in order but not her thoughts. As in football, it’s harder to win away. Get it?”

  “I think so.”

  “You ring her tomorrow at ten, tell her you’ll pick her up at eleven and put the phone down. You must be a fellow insomniac … Speak to you later.”

  From the window Viktor saw headlights go on, then move slowly away along the metro road.

  “You look like death warmed up!” said Ira over breakfast next morning.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll catch up on sleep,” he said, largely to himself, as Ira hurried away to feed their crying daughter.

  He breakfasted in solitude, then went to the balcony to check on his car.

  Strung out along the road, like Napoleon’s army retreating to Smolensk, an ant-like safari of commuters was making for the metro.

  For a while he sat in the bedroom, where Ira was feeding Yana, but feeling superfluous, soon returned to the kitchen. At 9.30, when the metro road was deserted, except for kids with toy tommy guns playing “New Russians”, he rang Bronitsky’s widow, as suggested.

  Widow Bronitsky in long black skirt and emerald blous
e was sitting outside her residence when Viktor drove up and dutifully opened the door.

  “So much for the myth of militia poverty!” she said, impressed by the car.

  The Grey Tom bar, steps still wet from washing, was only just open and apart from the bar girl, deserted.

  He settled the widow at the corner table where he and Dima had sat.

  “Coffee?”

  “And cognac.”

  Georgiy was right. Calmly, casually, smiling, mildly flirtatious in her melancholy, she came up with real answers. The lost friends had, in fact, departed the scene after scandal over a leak. There was hell to pay, a major clampdown. A colonel committed suicide, a female civilian secretary disappeared, and three senior HQ staff turned up in Moscow in cosy flats on Kutuzov Prospekt, and were duly followed by their families. Maksim Ivin, who was one of them, had phoned several times since. He’d been her husband’s best friend in the old days and a constant visitor. He and her husband hunted together, and played préférence.

  “Don’t you need three for that?” Viktor objected.

  “Maksim would call his son or some subordinate over, and they’d play on long after I’d gone to bed. Next morning there’d be one of them on the sofa, another in a chair.”

  They talked on over coffee and cognac, but as the morning advanced and the cognac took effect, the Widow Bronitsky said progressively less and the intervals between question and answer lengthened. Viktor decided to call it a day.

  “Don’t forget what you said about getting the body released,” she reminded him. “It’s so awkward. Colleagues, neighbours all the time phoning and asking when the funeral is.”

  Viktor said he’d not forgotten.

  He drove her to her door and was rewarded with a pleasant smile.

  He returned to District shortly before one only to learn that Bronitsky’s body was missing, the antediluvian alarm at the forensic lab. having been deactivated during the night. Pausing only to jot down the salient points of his interview, Viktor dashed out to his car.

  10

  Not having drawn his curtain, Nik woke with the sun at 5.15. How long had he slept? Two hours? Three? He had no idea.

  Things were moving fast. How and where he was to rescue Sakhno, he had yet to discover. But soon they’d be on the run. So what to do with his things? And the five thousand dollars wrapped in a towel in his case?

  Ivan Lvovich was coming at 11.00. It was now only 5.30. He had time, but for what?

  Mechanically, he got up, dressed, put the kettle on, sliced bread, sausage, cheese, drank coffee, and began to think more calmly.

  He couldn’t take his cases with him, and wasn’t keen on leaving them in the chalet. He could have left them with friends, but his having no friends in Kiev or anywhere else in Ukraine was why he was here, ideally unidentifiable if found dead, even if pictured on television. Provided Valentin and Svetlana weren’t watching … Now there was a thought!

  Leaving his coffee, he dragged both cases from under the bed and took out the towel-wrapped dollars, a notebook, and a folder containing birth certificate, army papers, marriage certificate.

  It would be nice to give them something. The Phillips electric razor, bought on stupid impulse, still boxed and unused, instructions in Arabic – as if one needed to be told how to shave! – would do for Valentin. And for Svetlana, the fine Chinese fountain pen with which he wrote the address of their Saratov relatives. With dollars, papers and presents in a Marlboro carrier bag, he set off. All was quiet.

  Valentin was not, as he had hoped, fishing.

  The house, when he reached it, was sleeping. He hesitated to knock, but in the end he did. There was nothing else for it.

  The sleepy Valentin who eventually opened he greeted with a torrent of apology.

  “Bit off colour, I’m afraid,” Valentin confessed, letting him in. “Either a cold or something I ate. Like some tea?”

  Seated again at the long pine table, Nik produced his presents.

  “I have a favour to ask – that is, if you’ve not said anything to anyone about our having met.”

  “I haven’t, no,” said Valentin, clearly surprised.

  “And don’t, please. I’ve been called away. I can’t say more. And since you are the only people I know here, I’d like to leave these things.”

  He emptied the carrier on the table.

  “Money, papers, my wife’s address. If I’m not back in two months, let her know you have my stuff … I’m sorry to land you with this.”

  “No problem.”

  Returning to the chalet, Nik made a second breakfast, then sat outside on the wooden step.

  Sun, birds, trees – a fairy-tale morning! Such as he wished all his mornings to be!

  A woodpecker began to hammer. Eventually he spotted it high up on a tall dead pine. The first he’d heard since childhood. There’d been no woodpeckers in Tadzhikistan.

  11

  So far Viktor had worked solo, with no one, apart from the invisible Georgiy, showing any interest in the case of the retired general, though the Mazda and mobile phone were evidence of its importance to someone somewhere.

  The disappearance of the body brought about a change: phone calls from Directorate, phone calls from Ministry, both demanding an all-out effort.

  Even Ratko was involved, to the extent of switching Viktor’s cadets onto the search for the corpse, though to what effect, with them taking their ease in some café, it was hard to imagine.

  Viktor was dozing at his desk when Georgiy rang.

  “Six bodies so far, in case you haven’t heard.”

  “One of them Bronitsky’s?”

  “Could be. I’m waiting to hear – they’re all in different morgues – but I doubt it. No sense in pinching a body, then dumping it where even the militia can find it. These will just be the homeless or suicides. And by the way, it’s not just militia on the job.”

  “Security?”

  “Not them, though they do, it’s true, ‘render emergency assistance’ … No, military counterintelligence. Sit back, quiet as mice, then pop out like like ants in the spring.”

  “He was, after all, General Staff.”

  “Then Defence Adviser to the President. And don’t you think it a bit odd, retiring, then going on being involved?”

  “No.”

  “Well, sleep on it,” said Georgiy amiably, ringing off.

  Viktor informed Ratko of the six bodies, but two hours later the search was resumed. Georgiy had been right.

  It was nearly 10.00 before Viktor arrived home, exhausted and convinced there would be no new developments till morning.

  Ira and Yana were in bed.

  Throwing himself onto the living-room sofa, he fell instantly asleep.

  Three hours later his mobile rang and continued to ring until retrieved from his jacket hung over a chair.

  “Still awake?” asked the familiar voice.

  “Actually no.”

  “You should be. Time to get moving.”

  “Now? Where?”

  “Just heard from an obliging smuggler: would we kindly relieve him and his aircraft of a neatly packaged corpse.”

  “What aircraft?”

  “You really are awake?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then listen. Thirty minutes from now you set off for Zhulyany Airport. Just beyond the Sevastopol Square roundabout, you stop, flash your warning lights for a minute, then drive on. You’ll be overtaken by two vehicles, a Volga and a minivan. The snatch squad. They’ve got their orders. To the right of the terminal building there’s a gate onto the airfield. It’ll be open. Drive out to the AN-26, where you’ll see the snatch squad parked. The plane takes off at 0300 hrs. You disembark the body, but touch nothing on board. Silence essential – don’t use your horn. We don’t want customs and the like in on the scene.”

  The terminal concourse beneath its blue neon KIEV ZHULYANY was as brightly illuminated as the city streets were not.

  Cutting his lights, Viktor dro
ve a little way onto an apron of sleeping aircraft, lowered his window and breathed in the keen night air. His watch showed 02.15. The only sounds were the rustle of grass and the faint drumming of some insect.

  Way out on the airfield, headlights flashed on and off, and Viktor drove in their direction, now over concrete, now over grass, avoiding the landing lights and stubby striped marker posts.

  Two masked Special Forces men armed with short Kalashnikovs were standing guard by the loading doors of an AN-26 of Belarusian Airlines. One motioned him to climb aboard. Two others were stationed at the tail where the Volga and the minivan were parked.

  At the top of the ramp he was greeted by an officer, also masked, who led him towards the rear between strapped-down loads and carefully stowed cartons, crates and canvas trunks.

  “Here we are,” he said, indicating a zipped up canvas bag at the end of the aisle.

  A Special Forces man drew down the zip a little, and his powerful torch showed a man’s face under milky polythene. The air was heavy with a sour, pungent odour. He zipped the bag up again.

  “Is it him?” Viktor asked the officer.

  “We’ll know in an hour. But let’s get out of here. Hazardous cargo.”

  The odour was now overpowering.

  “Chemicals?” Viktor asked.

  “Apart from the liquid nitrogen in the body bag, no. More the province of nuclear physics.”

  They quickly left the plane, followed by two men carrying the body bag which they loaded into the minivan.

  “Where was the body going?”

  “Russia. Voronezh.”

  “I’d have thought Moscow, where his friends are.”

  The eyes in the mask shot him an odd look.

  “Isn’t Russia one big Moscow?”

  Standing under a wing out of earshot, Viktor phoned Georgiy.

  Georgiy told him he should now go home and get some sleep. He would ring in the morning.

  As he got into his car, Viktor saw three scared-looking aircrew emerge from the Volga and scuttle up the ramp into their plane.

  Half dead with fatigue, he drove, slumped forward onto the wheel, eyes fixed on the deserted road ahead. What had been the sense of his being there? Special Forces had managed perfectly without him. His only answer was the road in the Mazda’s headlights.