Black Knight in Red Square (20 page)

Zelach looked over at him, and Karpo nodded in recognition. Then Zelach looked away. Karpo picked up the phone and dialed.

“Kostnitsov, laboratory,” came the voice after a long wait.

“Karpo.”

“So, I'm here,” said Kostnitsov. “The sun is coming out over the Kremlin Wall, my wife is turning over for another few hours' sleep, and my daughter is who the hell knows where.”

“Do you have the report ready?” said Karpo.

“Would I be in my laboratory now if I had no report? Would I have gotten myself up in darkness, cut an acre of my chin shaving in a daze, traveled without food to say I had nothing?”

“I do not know you well enough to answer such questions,” said Karpo.

“I'm talking human nature, not Boris Kostnitsov. Sometimes, Inspector Karpo, I despair of you. Come on up to my office. That is the least you can do. No, wait, the least you could do in addition to coming to my office is to bring me some tea.”

With that, Kostnitsov hung up. The assistant director of the MVD laboratory had no fear or awe of Karpo, no respect for his reputation. Others shied away from the Vampire and limited their contacts with him, but Kostnitsov had always treated him as he treated others, with no respect at all.

In a rather strange and inexplicable way, Karpo liked the man. So, as he would for no other—with the possible exception of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, who would never ask—Karpo made his way to the darkened cafeteria, boiled some water, and made a cup of tea. Then he took the elevator to the lower level, which housed the laboratory.

There was no name on the door, only a number. Knocking was awkward. Karpo shifted the hot cup to his left hand, which he could only raise to his waist. He knocked with his right.

“Come in,” shouted Kostnitsov. “Come in, Karpo. Why are you knocking? I told you to come down. What do you think I'm doing in here? Performing lewd acts with laboratory specimens?”

Karpo opened the door, walked across the hard tile floor, and placed the cup on the walnut desk in front of Kostnitsov. Kostnitsov was somewhere in his fifties, medium height, a little belly, straight white hair, and a red face more the result of his Georgian heritage than of his intake of alcohol, which was moderate. He wore a blue lab jacket and was holding a gray envelope.

“Sit,” he told Karpo and reached for the tea, which he drank in a single gulp. “Not enough sugar. How am I to get through this morning without dextrose?”

“I don't know,” said Karpo, taking a seat across from the desk.

Kostnitsov sucked in his cheeks and examined Karpo.

“Has anyone ever told you you are a most humorless man?” he asked.

“Four times,” Karpo replied. “You have a report ready for me.”

“And an image to protect,” Kostnitsov said with a glower. “You'll have to tolerate my eccentricity. It is all I have to keep me going in this mausoleum. You know what I really wanted to be in this life?”

“No.”

“A soccer coach. Here is your report. Do you want me to summarize it for you?”

“Yes.”

“Death was definitely caused by an irradiated liquid dosage of psittacosis bacilli,” said Kostnitsov, looking at the report. “An unnecessarily flamboyant method for murder. The means available to someone to commit murder by poison without resorting to exotic potions smuggled into the country is almost infinite. Your murderer is a showoff. He is—”

“She,” corrected Karpo.

“She was signing her crime with a flourish,” said Kostnitsov.

“Where could she get this psittacosis material?” Karpo asked, commanding his arm not to throb.

Kostnitsov's grin was broad and manic, revealing rather poorly-cared-for teeth.

“Only one place as far as I can tell,” he said, tapping the report before him. “The Suttcliffe Pharmaceutical Company in a place called Trenton, New Jersey. How she stole it or why is beyond my knowledge, but, as far as I know, Suttcliffe is where Dr. Y. T. Yui is working. He is the foremost authority on the disease which, incidentally, normally affects parakeets, parrots, and other jungle birds. It can be passed on to man, but this happens rarely. Of course you must understand that the strain which killed your Mr. Aubrey and the other three gentlemen was carefully nurtured for this destructive purpose. Suttcliffe is well known for its private work on biological warfare.”

“I see,” said Karpo when Kostnitsov paused to scan the report for other pertinent information.

“Has this charming woman used the poison since the murders at the Metropole?”

“I think not,” said Karpo. No, he doubted she would use it again. He understood her more with each bit of information. She considered herself a professional, perhaps even an artist in terrorism. Once she had used a method, she would not repeat it—at least not without introducing some striking variation.

“Karpo,” Kostnitsov said, handing the report to him, “that concoction appears to be amazingly virulent. I would guess that even if an expert in virology had been at his side the moment your victim took it, he could have done nothing to save him.”

“And if she is still carrying this or has given it to someone else to use—” Karpo began.

“Anyone ingesting it,” said Kostnitsov, examining the plastic cup for remnants of tea, “will be absolutely safe. I bred a culture of the bacilli taken from the stomach of the Japanese. Its life is incredibly short, four days at most. You or I could drink a cup full of her leftover psittacosis bacilli and suffer nothing worse than a bad taste in the mouth. Unless there are other side effects, though none would be—”

“Wait,” Karpo said. “Would it be possible from your study of the bacilli and the samples taken from the body to determine when it was created?”

“When the culture was created?” asked Kostnitsov with a puzzled look, which turned to one of enlightenment. “Of course, yes. You are a clever devil, Karpo. Five days ago, six at the most.”

“And,” said Karpo thinking aloud, “since it was cultured in the United States—”

“Could have been recultured elsewhere,” jumped in Kostnitsov, “or perhaps someone else is working on psittacosis. Perhaps even someone in the Soviet Union. The KGB would know.”

“But if it was taken from New Jersey and brought to the Soviet Union,” Karpo persisted, “the person who carried it would have to have arrived in Moscow on Wednesday, since the flight from New York takes a full day, with stopover and time difference, and then customs checks here.”

Kostnitsov nodded. “Thin, thin,” he said.

“Logical?” asked Karpo.

“Worth trying,” agreed Kostnitsov.

Karpo got up with his file and nodded at Kostnitsov. “You've been most helpful,” he said.

“I most certainly have,” Kostnitsov agreed. “Don't forget the empty cup.”

Back at his desk, Karpo glanced at fat Nostavo and the uniformed policeman, who was still nodding. A new inspector, whom Karpo did not recognize, was seated at a desk across the narrow aisle. He was humming something that sounded vaguely French. Karpo had no ear for music and no interest in it. Right now he was interested only in flights from New York.

He called Intourist and was told that he could have a list of all passengers who had arrived on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Can I have a list of females between the ages of thirty and forty-five only, both Soviet nationals and foreigners?”

“Yes, but it will be long, perhaps two or three hundred names,” said the man from Intourist.

“I will come and get the list,” said Karpo. “Where will it be?”

“The Intourist Office, sixteen Karl Marx Prospekt.”

So far, it had been easy. Most Soviet institutions worked with painful slowness and indifference. Intourist, however, was a model of efficiency because it was on display to foreign visitors. Its efficiency carried over into its dealings with Soviet officials, including the police.

By eight, Karpo was back at his desk. By noon, he had managed to locate many of the people whose names were on the list. Since tourists have to register, it was much easier to find them than it might have been in any other country. The indifference of hotel managers hampered him, though, as did the veiled hostility of a few younger people who answered the phones in homes and apartments.

But it was coming. With patience and determination, of which he had much, he was confident that by early evening he would have the name the woman was using. He might also, with luck, have a photograph of her.

Karpo considered calling Rostnikov and asking for help, but he had a hunch that time was now precious. He also admitted to himself that he did not want help. He wanted to do this by himself.

She woke from a deep sleep with a teeth-clenched cry. Never could she recall falling so deeply into sleep. It had taken an effort as great as breaking to the surface of a deep pool to come out of the dream, and when she was out and awake, the dream was gone.

“What is it?” asked the young man, blinking at seeing the woman as he had never seen her before.

She couldn't stop a look of hatred from flickering across her face, though she did avert her dark eyes in the first dull patches of morning light and reach for her watch. It was six o'clock, but even now that she was awake, the feeling of something, someone, closing in and smothering her wouldn't go away.

The young man's arm went around her.

“It's just a nightmare,” he said with a superior little laugh.

She held back the impulse to push him away, this weak creature who strutted his frail masculinity. She even toyed with the idea of killing him on the spot, but he might be useful for the rest of the day, and she didn't want to be on the move again, not until it was necessary.

“I'll be fine,” she forced herself to say.

“Women,” he chuckled and rolled over to his side after giving her a pat on the shoulder. He was sure that whatever he had seen on her face, that mask of stone, had been an illusion from his own dreams. He was asleep almost instantly.

She was well aware that the Russians claimed to have achieved equality of the sexes, but she was equally aware that it was a hollow claim, that women were rarely given anything but token positions of importance, that, in fact, women were expected to work at full-time jobs and to be responsible for homemaking as well, while men complained and continued to run things, just as they had done in the past. It was the same everywhere. What she had, she had taken by her own intellect and strength. She had long since decided not to take part in the world of men like this one next to her. But her motivation was not a feminist one. No, she felt far above and outside such considerations. Any “ism” was an illusion created by individuals or groups to give false meaning and direction to essentially meaningless lives. All that counted was one's image of oneself, not what others saw. One lived only to have the satisfaction of achievement and control. It was a game she would lose, but she would not play by false rules. She would create her own rules.

She got up as quietly as she could. He stirred behind her but did not wake. She bent over her flight bag, unlocked it and found the small aspirin bottle. Silently, she removed two tablets, which were not aspirin, from the bottom of the bottle and tucked them into the pocket of her shirt. When the proper moment arrived later in the day, she would dissolve the pills in a beverage and be sure he drank it all. The dosage would probably not kill him, but would make him ill and dazed and keep him out of her way. If he was going to be killed, this one, she wanted to do it with her own hands. She wanted him to know what she was doing.

Thinking about the day and the night helped ease the feeling of liquid weight. She moved to the window, pushed the grubby curtain aside, and looked out at the city. Somewhere they were looking for her, that barrel of an inspector and the lean monk of a detective she had deceived at the Metropole.

The feeling that ran through her now was not fear, but a sensation of inevitability. Thinking about the lean one had brought on that feeling. Perhaps it had been part of her nightmare.

The phone call they'd placed to Iosef came through at six on Sunday morning. Rostnikov heard it but dimly, wondering if it was the bells of some imagined church. Sarah roused herself quickly and picked up the telephone.

“It's Iosef,” she said, poking Rostnikov, who grunted and let go of the dream image of a large bottle of Czech pilsner beer.

“Up, I'm getting up,” he said and reached out for the phone.

“When I'm done,” she said, slapping his hand away.

Rostnikov sat up, scratched his stomach, and held one hand to his ear as he pointed to the corner where he had discovered the tiny microphone. Sarah nodded.

Rostnikov heard Sarah ask Iosef how he was, what he was doing. She told him about Rostnikov's weight-lifting trophy.

When he saw the tear in the corner of her eye, Rostnikov reached for the phone. Sarah pulled back, then sighed deeply and gave it to him.

“Iosef,” he said.

“Father,” replied Iosef in a voice almost forgotten in the past year. The familiar tones jolted Rostnikov's emotions. He looked at Sarah and closed his eyes. “Yes, you are well?”

“I'm well,” said Iosef. “Congratulations on your trophy.”

“It's a fine trophy,” said Rostnikov, looking across the room to where it stood on a table near the cabinet that contained the weights. “Iosef, we would like to see you. It has been a long time. Have you applied for leave?”

“Difficult,” he said. “Those of us who have been—”

“I know,” Rostnikov stepped in. It didn't have to be spoken. Those who had been to Afghanistan were being kept under tight security, at least for the present. “Perhaps things will change. You are well?”

“You just asked that,” Iosef laughed. “I'm well. Are you catching criminals?”

“No criminal is safe with Rostnikov in Moscow.” He laughed, too.