Black Knight in Red Square (15 page)

He ordered the driver to wait outside Procurator Timofeyeva's apartment, got out of the car, and went into the building carrying his briefcase.

In spite of her high position, Anna Timofeyeva lived in a small one-room apartment in an old one-story concrete building that had originally been built as a barracks for an artillery unit. When the site was abandoned after ground-to-air missiles were developed, the barracks on the Moskva River were converted into small apartments with a communal kitchen that had once served the unit stationed within its walls.

Rostnikov entered the apartment with the key she had given him. The cat on the bed arched its back and hissed.

“I've come to feed you, animal,” Rostnikov said gently, reaching for the can of food. “Straighten your back. I know you have no claws.”

The cat put down its back and watched the heavy man shuffle across the room, get the familiar can opener, and open the can. The smell lured Baku off the bed and across the room. Rostnikov grunted as he got to one knee and offered the animal the open can of fish and a fresh cup of water. He changed the newspaper in the wooden box in the corner and then, without the slightest feeling of guilt, went through Anna Timofeyeva's belongings. In a dresser drawer, he found a note stating that if she died her instruction book on outstanding cases was in the top drawer of her office desk. The note also requested that, in the event of her death, the cat be given to Rostnikov.

Rostnikov looked at the orange cat. He felt nothing for the animal but quite a bit for Anna Timofeyeva.

“Animal,” he said, and the cat paused in its eating to look up at him with yellow eyes, “we may have to be comrades for a time. We shall have to practice mutual tolerance. I will make the effort, and I expect the same from you.”

The cat went back to eating, and Rostnikov failed to find anything in the apartment that would be of use to him. Anna Timofeyeva kept her official business in her office and her private life, which was almost nonexistent, in her room.

From her bed in the hospital, Anna Timofeyeva watched the woman across from her. There were only four women in her room, a remarkably small number, so the hospital knew she was a relatively important official. They had allowed her no papers or work and had told her little about her condition.

The nurses were efficient but unenthusiastic. The doctors were respectful but volunteered very little. After the pain had stopped and they had ceased scurrying around attaching machines to her and shouting at one another, she had concluded that, at least for the immediate future, she was going to live. The heart attack had been fairly mild, but it was not her first. The doctors had no plans to operate on her and no plans to release her. They would simply watch her, and when her recovery was sufficient, if it ever was, they would release her. She suspected that she would not be long in the hospital. Beds were scarce, and the staff could do little for her.

A doctor would make the obligatory visit, she was sure, and tell her that she must stop working and relax. She would acknowledge the warning and terminate the conversation as soon as possible. She would also return to her work the moment her health permitted her to do so. There was nothing else she wanted to do.

So, for the moment, she watched the woman across the room, a very fat woman who seemed to be telling herself a silent story. The woman sometimes looked sad and at other times smiled, revealing very few teeth. Anna Timofeyeva wondered what the woman could be thinking.

“Comrade Procurator.” Rostnikov's voice came through her reverie, and she turned to him.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” she said, trying to sound gruff.

He looked, as always, solid, with something dancing behind his eyes. Today, however, the light dancing back there was particularly bright. Not many would have noticed, but she had made it her business to read the faces and minds of those who worked with her.

“I have taken the liberty of examining the files on pending cases,” he said, “and I have taken care of your cat.”

She nodded in acknowledgment, and Rostnikov changed the subject.

“You are better,” he said.

“It appears that I will survive,” she said. The woman across the aisle laughed. Both Rostnikov and Timofeyeva looked at her, but she seemed to be responding to voices in her own mind. The other beds were empty. Their occupants were having X-rays…or operations; Anna couldn't remember which.

The pause now was awkward. She was not given to small talk, and her helplessness was an embarrassment for both of them.

“How is the investigation progressing?” she asked.

Rostnikov shrugged and shifted his briefcase from his right hand to his left.

“It progresses,” he said, reluctant to go into details.

“Good,” she said.

The pause this time was even more awkward.

“Can I bring you anything?” he said.

“I will be home in a few days and back to work soon.”

Rostnikov reached into his briefcase, pulled out a book, and handed it to her.

“Something I had at home,” he said.

It was a book on the history and collections of museums in Moscow. He had thought for some time about what kind of book she might like and had settled on this, though he had been tempted to bring her a novel. He was sure that Anna Timofeyeva had not read a novel for several decades.

“I will study it,” she said, putting it next to her. “What are you planning, Rostnikov?”

“Me, planning?” he said, looking around the room. “Nothing.”

“Be careful,” she said, closing her eyes. “Whatever it is, be careful.”

“I will be as careful as I can,” he said, but he was thinking that there were times when one must take a chance.

When he looked down at her, she was snoring gently.

The woman across the way looked at Rostnikov as he stepped away from the bed. Her eyes met his, and she too seemed to know his innermost secrets. She smiled. He hid a shudder and left as quickly as he could.

“I
DON'T LIKE MOVIES,” SAID
Lydia Tkach as she sat down in the Zaryadye cinema hall in the Hotel Rossyia. Most of the theater's three thousand seats were full, and since Lydia Tkach was almost deaf and had spoken very loudly, many of those present were aware of her sentiments. Sasha gave an apologetic look to the well-dressed man sitting next to his mother and shrugged at Maya, who smiled sympathetically, having grown used to her mother-in-law.

Lydia was a proud woman of sixty-five. During the day, she worked in the Ministry of Information Building, filing papers and telling anyone who would listen that her son was a high-ranking government official. Lydia was not a popular woman in the Ministry of Information Building. People avoided her because she drew attention to herself with her loud conversation. This tended to make her more lonely and crotchety, which in turn made her turn on her captive audience at home, her son and daughter-in-law.

Sasha had more than once urged her to get a hearing aid, but Lydia had stoutly refused, insisting that there was nothing wrong with her hearing. Nor, she insisted, was there anything wrong with her common sense, which was why she disliked most movies.

“Mother,” Sasha said in a normal voice, which he had little hope his mother would hear, “please.”

He handed her the headphones attached to her seat and urged her to try them. Maya put hers on and played with the switch. The translation would be given in six languages on six separate channels. Nothing came through on the headset, so Maya put it down.

“I understand this movie has no words,” Maya said to her mother-in-law, mouthing each word carefully. Lydia nodded, trying to get comfortable in her seat and staring down a woman in front of her who turned to indicate that she would allow none of this chatter to continue after the film began.

Sasha was pleased that everything had worked out so well. Willery sat in the front of the theater, wearing a jacket and tie, looking about nervously. In spite of the jacket and tie, he still wore faded jeans. Tkach knew that Kirslov was at the door of the theater to pick up Willery after the performance. The program notes Tkach had been given made the film sound suitable for his mother. It was, he discovered, silent. There was no need for her to hear anything.
To the Left
was also dedicated to the great silent film director Eisenstein so it might tell a story his mother would like. In addition, it was made in America, so they could see a glimpse of that elusive country.

“It's about America,” Maya told her mother-in-law, leaning close to the woman's ear. Sasha and Maya had flanked Lydia for their own protection as well as hers.

“I don't like movies,” Lydia answered emphatically.

With this second assurance, a small titter of laughter erupted from some young people who looked like students sitting to the far right. Sasha urged the second hand of his watch to move more quickly. He longed for darkness. Then Willery, responding to Lydia's second declaration, looked in her direction, spotted Tkach, and gave a sickly smile.

“It will start in a minute,” Sasha said, sinking deeply into his seat and pointing to his watch. His mother looked down at the watch and pursed her lips.

“I hope it's funny,” she said. “If it's funny, it will be all right. I've had enough tragedy.”

Then mercifully the lights began to go down.

“Isn't it in color?” said Lydia as the film began. Shushing sounds came from nearby, but Lydia was right, the film was in black and white, and Sasha was disappointed.

The audience soon discovered that
To the Left
was not silent. In fact, as the titles appeared in white against black, faint animal noises and the chattering of birds emerged from the speakers.

Then the film began in earnest, and Tkach could see vertical bars on the screen. A prison, he thought, a political prison, but what was that moving black hulk in the corner of the cell? Before he could make it out, the camera began to move, at first to the left, just far enough to put the black hulk off the screen. The chattering sound continued, and as the camera began to move faster, the sound grew louder.

The audience sat in rapt attention for almost ten minutes. Experimental beginning, Sasha thought. And then, in the twelfth minute, he began to lose faith. Luckily, Lydia had remained quiet. Sasha and Maya both glanced at her fearfully from time to time, but her eyes remained riveted to the screen.

A quarter of an hour into the film Lydia said in her loud voice, “Monkey. That's a monkey in the corner.”

People called out for her to be quiet, but one man said, “She's right. It
is
monkeys.”

The audience fell silent once more, and the camera increased its spin to the left. Those who were fleet of eye could see the lumbering figure move forward.

“A gorilla,” said Lydia Tkach with satisfaction, for while her hearing was failing, her eyesight rivaled that of an Olympic marksman.

“Gorilla…gorilla,” came the echo of agreeing voices in the theater.

Forty minutes into the film, however, people were extremely restless.

“What is this?” came a voice from back in the theater.

“A gorilla,” said Lydia Tkach smugly.

The gorilla cries on the sound track had risen in volume, and one hour into the film, the majority of the audience was in open revolt.

“Is this a joke?” someone shouted.

“Shut up,” came a young woman's voice.

In front of the theater, Willery stood looking back at his tormentors and defenders, a frail dark outline. Tkach could make out his flickering form. Very few in the audience knew who he was. If he keeps quiet, Tkach thought, he may escape without bodily injury.

People began to leave, the better-dressed patrons first. With fifteen minutes of film to go, the screen was simply a blur as the camera spun around and the shrill blast of gorilla cries filled the theater.

Sasha glanced at his mother, who was watching the screen with a smile on her face.

“Shall we leave?” Maya asked, looking back toward the sound of what appeared to be a fight in the rear.

Lydia gestured for her daughter-in-law to sit still.

By the time the film ended and the lights came on, there were less than two hundred people left in the theater. Four young men and a woman stood up and applauded furiously, shouting “Bravo!” and looking defiantly at those who did not join them. Willery glanced back at his supporters with a thin smile.

Tkach had a headache. The sound and the spinning image had affected him like a drug. His first impulse was to apologize to his wife and mother, but Maya simply agreed with him and Lydia actually looked elated.

“Not as bad as I thought,” she said, leading the way up the aisle, ignoring the clusters of still arguing moviegoers.

Tkach didn't bother to look back at Willery, and that was unfortunate for at that moment Willery was looking around the nearly empty theater, lifting his dark glasses and scanning the walls and seats. Tkach, if he had seen him, would have wondered what he was looking for, and almost certainly he would have concluded that Willery was looking for something connected with the map of festival theaters Karpo had given to Rostnikov. Tkach might even have concluded that Willery was looking for a hidden bomb, which is exactly what the filmmaker was doing.

Feeling misunderstood, angry, and hostile, James Willery was thinking that it might not be such a bad idea to blow up this theater while some of the people who had just ridiculed his film were still in it. James Willery had a marvelous imagination, and he could quite clearly imagine the writhing bodies, the screams, the burned survivors fleeing blindly.

The cluster of students remained after everyone else had gone. The ushers came in and told them to clear out because the next feature would be starting soon. Willery considered beating a hasty retreat behind the screen, but the students had already begun moving toward him down the aisle.

It would do his ego some good, Willery thought, to have a few drinks with some people who would reassure him about his creation. After all, this Russian audience was not as sophisticated as those in London, Paris, New York, or San Francisco. Yes, a few drinks with these students would help him forget the audience. And the young woman in the group did not look bad at all. Maybe she would even help him forget for a while the bomb that was hidden somewhere in this theater and that he would detonate the following night.