The Case of the General's Thumb

by Andrei Kurkov

  “You met colleagues from other countries, I suppose.”

  “I did.”

  “Well, off you go and see if District’s got anything further about the Widow. Call you this evening.”

  Slipping a pack of Caffrey’s Irish Ale into a carrier bag for Ratko, he set off for District, telling Ira he’d be back in three or four hours.

  Seeing no sign of his Mazda, he asked the guard if he knew what Zanozin was up to.

  “Not yet back from the airport,” said the guard.

  “You’ve been in great demand,” said Ratty, concealing the Irish Ale under his desk. “Ministry kept ringing, Directorate kept ringing and somewhere else rang too. Ten calls at least. All asking when you’d be back. Back today, I said, but so far today no one’s rung.”

  Returning to his office, more than a little irritated at the non-return of his Mazda, Viktor fetched the Bronitsky file from his safe, and spread the recent photographs on the desk before him. He’d give Zanozin a rocket for joyriding, then tell him to get details of the Widow’s death and the home address of Border Troops Captain Kylimnik.

  The door banged open.

  “He’s in intensive care, your Zanozin!” announced Ratko. “Rocket launcher attack at the South Bridge approach.”

  “Have we a car?”

  “Take the Zhiguli. You’ll find Kharkov District in attendance.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “Two hours ago.”

  “Why the delay?”

  “Took time to identify the driver.”

  Pausing only to lock file and photographs in the safe, Viktor rushed out to the Zhiguli.

  53

  By the time Nik made his final phone call, Sakhno had still not returned.

  Supposing he didn’t return – what then?

  His thoughts turned to Weinberg’s dogs. Next it would be some person or persons who would have to be shot.

  The phone rang.

  “How’s your pal?”

  “Fine. Gone for a drive.”

  “His last for a bit. Ring tomorrow, as I said, and call me if they answer. Keep your friend off drink and the other, and see he gets a good night’s sleep. Your next trip’s the day after tomorrow.”

  The “last for a bit” had a disturbingly ominous ring.

  Nina having long since retired beneath the radiator, Nik too went to bed.

  Next morning, Sakhno had still not returned.

  Nik drank coffee, made the phone call, shopped in the supermarket, and visiting his café, was alarmed to hear talk of a collision somewhere in the vicinity between a bus and another vehicle at 8.30 that morning.

  Hurrying back to the flat, he put down lettuce and cucumber for Nina. It was getting on for 11.00, time for his second phone call. Suddenly he heard the familiar sound of the hearse, and rushing to the window, saw it turning in to park behind the house.

  Sakhno came in empty-handed, without the rifle case.

  “Where on earth have you been?”

  “Why the old-womanly concern?” he asked, pulling out a wad of notes. “And here’s your seven hundred back.”

  “And the rifle?”

  “In the hearse. Didn’t know you wanted to go shooting.”

  “Well, go and fetch it.”

  “Go yourself.” He threw over the keys. “And you can stop being bossy. I, too, bring in the money!”

  He flourished his wad of notes.

  “You do realize that the police are onto us,” Nik said evenly.

  “Where did you get that from?”

  “The paper that’s still in the car. If you like to fetch it, I’ll translate.” He threw the keys back. “And bring the rifle.”

  While Sakhno was gone, Nik made his call.

  The newspaper report left Sakhno unimpressed.

  “That’s about burglars, not us.”

  “It will be, if they look hard enough. Come and have some tea. It’s Trier again tomorrow.”

  Sakhno made a face.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “One, I’m out of bullets and so can’t shoot. Two, I’m brassed off with working for damn all!”

  54

  For three days Zanozin lay in a coma, and Viktor visited the military hospital several times each day.

  It was still too early to say how good a chance he had. His lungs were clear of blood, but he still had metal in his chest, and was in danger of heart failure.

  “May I see him?”

  “Just for a minute.”

  Zanozin was all bandages and projecting tubes. His eyes were shut.

  As Viktor stood at the bedside, assailed by feelings of guilt and a sense of responsibility, his mobile rang, and he retreated to the corridor.

  “How is he?”

  “Still in a coma.”

  “I’ve a nasty feeling there’s something you’ve not told me.”

  “How so?”

  “The logic of it. You go to England, someone here tries to kill you. You’re lucky it’s not you lying there in a coma. You must be onto something? So come on, tell me what.”

  “Can we speak this evening?”

  “I’ll call at 7.00.”

  On his way back to District, Viktor dropped into McDonald’s for a cheeseburger and coffee, and staring out at a steady drizzle, thought suddenly of Dima Rakin of Special Branch F., who had got him into all this, and rang him.

  “No longer with us,” was the chilly response.

  “Where can I find him?”

  “What’s your connection?”

  “We were MVD together.”

  “OK. Baykov Cemetery, Plot 64, is where you’ll find him.”

  “You mean, he’s dead?”

  “Rush hour accident. Fell under a train. Obolon metro station.”

  At 7.00 Viktor sat on in his office. It was dark outside, and raining. The hospital reported no change.

  At last Georgiy rang.

  “Well? What have you got?”

  “Photos.”

  “Where are you at the moment?”

  “District.”

  “The photos too? Right. October Palace, Exhibition Hall construction site entrance. You’ll see two hooded back-to-back public phones. Be there thirty minutes from now.”

  Viktor eyed the SVI duty groundsheet-cape on its wooden peg in the corner. There were no umbrellas. Just as well. “The cop with a brolly ends up on a trolley,” was one of Ratko’s pearls of wisdom. So he would go as groundsheet-caped SVI man.

  Viktor stood under the phone hood out of the rain, wondering where Georgiy would appear from, when Georgiy spoke from the other side of the partition.

  “Stay where you are – we can talk like this. Let’s have the photos.”

  Viktor passed the envelope under the partition.

  “Tell me about them.”

  “The two men in denim suits hopped it from Kiev the day after Bronitsky died. The other two tailed them from Poland to the German frontier. The close-cropped one is Captain Kylimnik of Border Troops HQ.”

  “Good lad,” said Georgiy, rather to Viktor’s surprise. “Where did you get them?”

  “Our Polish equivalent. Otherwise confidential.”

  “So be it. Just so long as the result of your investigation isn’t also confidential! Next step?”

  “To tackle Kylimnik,” said Viktor, caught unawares by the question.

  “Leave Kylimnik to me.”

  “Isn’t this where we came in?” Viktor exploded. “I’m the one investigating and damned near getting killed in the process!”

  “Let’s put it this way,” soothed Georgiy, “I’m director, you’re official executive.”

  “And official target?”

  “True, but under my protection, which is good against most things. If we win, you get the medals, I stay in the background. OK? The endgame’s where bodies mount, remember, so take care not to be one of them. How are you getting home?”

  “By metro.”

  “No. Go back to District and take the dut
y car. Ring you tomorrow morning. I’ll return the photos.”

  “How am I to cope without an aide?”

  “Leave that with me.”

  Looking back, as he walked away, he caught sight of Georgiy disappearing into the rainy darkness. Taller, more heavily built than Viktor, he wore a long cape, his top half concealed by his umbrella.

  55

  Sakhno rose at 9.00 next morning, put lettuce and sliced cucumber down for Nina, and taking the rifle case, left, closing the door quietly behind him, as if out of consideration for Nik.

  But far from asleep, Nik lay reconciled to the fact that no intervention on his part would have changed Sakhno’s plans in the slightest, or improved his own state of mind.

  He returned to the flat from a walk in the rain to find the phone ringing.

  “Change of plan,” said the man. “Set off nearer 6.00 and get there before dark. Kick up a racket, bring the guards out, and your friend opens fire. If he wings or bags anyone, so much the better. Phone from Trier on the way back, and say, ‘Pierre agrees to talk in two days time.’ Got that? Call you tomorrow.”

  6.00 came and went. Nik took a beer from the fridge, and went over to the open window. The moist, refreshing evening air induced a feeling of calm, suspended thought. He raised the bottle to his lips. He no longer gave a damn.

  Next morning it was still raining, and there was still no sign of Sakhno. Perhaps he was never coming back. Nik stared at Nina as if she was empowered to answer for him.

  At 10.00, when the phone rang, Nik explained the position.

  “Ring you back,” said the man, after a lengthy silence.

  When he did, his voice was muted.

  “Stay by the phone. An old friend’s going to give you a call.”

  Nik made tea, took it over to the open window, and by the time the phone rang, had again achieved a state of total indifference.

  “Nik, it’s me, Ivan Lvovich.”

  “Where are you?”

  “In far-off Kiev. And with some bad news … I don’t know how to tell you … It’s your wife, Nik, and your son – they’re dead.”

  Nik stood transfixed.

  “What – what did you say?”

  “Nik, I’m terribly, terribly sorry. There was a fire. Maybe the stove got overstoked. Look, we’ll get you back in a day or two. Forget all the rest. We’ll ring. Be brave, Nik.”

  56

  For two more days Zanozin’s condition remained unchanged, and the doctor did not hold out much hope. Zanozin’s youthful mother had arrived from Sumy, and Ratko was cheered by her presence. Every day he had brought oranges for the patient, which, to his annoyance, daily disappeared. “What patients don’t eat, the nurses take,” a doctor had explained. Now Mrs Zanozin took the oranges, keeping them in a carrier bag in the bedside table, where, as she confided to Viktor, blushing with embarrassment, there was now any number of oranges, some going bad.

  Viktor, who till then had come empty-handed, took the hint, and next time brought half a sausage and a fresh black loaf, for which Mrs Zanozin was very grateful.

  “I can understand the nurses doing what they do,” she said. “Sixty a month is all they get, and you can’t live on that. No wonder they don’t make much effort.”

  “And how much do you get?”

  “The pension, which, as you know, is 49.90, and never gets paid on time. Still, there’s one nice nurse here who brings me tea.”

  “First-rate, those photos,” said Georgiy, ringing Viktor at District. “We’ve made two more identifications. The chap with Kylimnik is Vasily Portnov, also known as Port. Served with Special Forces. Two convictions since. In the other photo we have Sergey Sakhno, also known as Sapper. He was one once. He’s done dirty jobs for Security. Not overbright. Neurasthenic. Uses drugs. Exported ‘for disposal’ would be my reading for him. But his companion we’ve not been able to identify. Still, I think I get the picture.”

  “Which is?”

  “That Sakhno and his companion were being shadowed to prevent their doubling back to Ukraine. Sakhno will have been given the chop in Germany, and by now his companion too. Professional requirement. It’s ninety-nine per cent certain that both pairs are, were, directly linked with the Bronitsky business.”

  “Where are the other two now?”

  “Portnov’s disappeared. Unconfirmed reports say to Russia. Kylimnik is currently Assistant Military Attaché at our Embassy in Paris.”

  “Since when?”

  “The last two weeks.”

  “So do I go to Paris?”

  “You may well have to. Give me a couple of days. I’ll float the idea. But watch it. If he’s big time, this Kylimnik, you won’t even make the plane. If he isn’t, he’ll get run over in Paris.”

  “But if he doesn’t, and I don’t go under a train on the metro?”

  “In that case, no security leak. Get it? So give me time. No packing, no talk of Eiffel Towers! Not yet. Suss out Border Troops HQ, that’s the next job.

  “So for the next few days, you take the duty car, park, at noon precisely, at the Cavalry Street–Vladimir Street junction, observe comings and goings for the next thirty minutes, then buzz off.”

  “Looking for what?”

  “Just keeping an eye on the door.”

  Viktor collected an unstamped envelope and some junk mail from their post box, and took the new lift up to their flat. Ira and Yana were already in bed. Quietly, he shut himself into the kitchen and sat down at the table.

  The envelope contained the message, “In Kiev tomorrow. Meet you 10 p.m., Hydropark metro station, Lisova line platform. Refat.”

  A curious rendezvous, and not one he was mentally prepared for. He had, since their London agreement to pool information, learnt things which, if communicated, would show him to be the source of the leak. Still, without Refat and his photos, Georgiy would not have made his identifications. So, purely and simply for the good of the investigation, and in the hope of some return … Albeit with a nasty premonition of one day finding himself written off for collaborating with “the Russian enemy”.

  The Georgiy-inspired watch on Border Troops HQ produced little of note beyond that, of the men passing in and out, none were in uniform, whereas at the Zolotovorotsky Lane entrance Georgiy had expressed no interest in, all were, their parked cars being of a poorer order.

  Returning to District, he learnt that a drunken caretaker claimed, belatedly, to have seen a young man shove Widow Bronitsky into the path of an old white Mercedes, but that, interrogated further, he had been unable to remember either the make or colour of the vehicle.

  Leaving the duty Zhiguli at Arsenal, Viktor took the metro to Hydropark, and at 9.57 was the only one to alight there. A train came in from the opposite direction, opened and closed its doors, and continued on its way.

  “Greetings,” came a familiar voice, and there, from nowhere, was Refat, in elegant, knee-length raincoat and carrying an umbrella.

  Keeping to unlit paths, they made their way into Hydropark, and Viktor told Refat who was who in the photographs, and of the fate of Widow Bronitsky.

  “What about the son you saw in England?”

  “I didn’t. He’d been collected by the Embassy and put on a plane, his mother having been involved in an accident.”

  “As indeed she was, but later.”

  “So you know.”

  “No, not entirely. How could we? Is that the lot?”

  “Yes.”

  “My contribution is the fourth man. We’ll know for certain in a couple of days, but if we’re right, he’s a military interpreter. Left Dushanbe for Kiev on the say-so of a certain Kiev colonel, sending wife and son to relatives in Saratov – while he got settled and looked for a flat – their effects having been sent to Kiev in advance. Wife and son sit expecting to hear. Two months pass, then out of the blue comes a letter from someone here saying our interpreter’s left money with him for safe keeping, and as he hasn’t returned, what should he do with it?”

&n
bsp; “Is there any way of establishing if that’s him?”

  “A man’s gone to Saratov with the photographs. If it is the husband, there’ll be the problem of keeping the wife and the son quiet for a bit. Red Cross Missing Person inquiries are the last thing we want. It would be good to get hold of the colonel who enticed him into coming to Kiev.”

  The eerie silence of Hydropark was broken by a sudden patter of rain on foliage invisible in the dark. Refat opened his umbrella over them both.

  Seeing a figure stretched on a bench, Viktor stopped abruptly.

  “Drunk or dead,” said Refat. “Come on.”

  But Viktor still stood as if in a different world.

  Refat came and bent over the man.

  “Drunk,” he said straightening. “Roughed up and robbed. Come on, he won’t die of cold.”

  They went on deeper into the park, which, at that hour, had all the air of a sinister forest.

  “I’ve got a couple more days here,” said Refat as they headed back towards the lights. “If there’s any news, you’ll get a letter.”

  57

  Well into a second bottle of Absolut, Nik sat by the window gazing out at the rain.

  He began, for the first time, to feel genuine pity for Sakhno, whose pregnant fiancée had been knocked down and killed by a car. Whether or not by accident, was no longer of such consequence as the fact of death itself.

  He’d given no thought to what had caused the fire that had killed Tanya and Volodya, accepting it as an accident. Grandfather’s little stove was old, but perfectly safe if properly tended.

  He and Sakhno were in the same boat. No longer anybody’s now their nearest and dearest were dead. Like lost dogs.

  Lost, despite still having masters and food. There was no sense to anything – going on included.

  This promise “to get him back” – back where? Dushanbe? Saratov? Kiev? Home? He had no home.

  Collapsing onto his bed, he slept until woken by the phone.

  “Your pal not back?”

  “No. When do I get away?”

  “You must wait, you can’t just leave him.”