Black Knight in Red Square (21 page)

Sarah reached for the phone back, but he turned away to continue the conversation.

What there was to say couldn't be said on the phone.

“Was there anything special?” Iosef asked after a brief pause.

“Special? No, nothing special. We just hadn't heard your voice for some time,” Rostnikov went on. “The film festival is going on here. Lots of visitors, a carnival. You remember.”

“I remember,” said Iosef. “Do you remember when you took me to my first movie? Jane Powell.”

“Yes.” Rostnikov remembered. “She was almost as good as Deanna Durbin.”

“I have to go now,” said Iosef cheerily. “The officer in charge has just told me my time is up. So, good-bye and take care.”

“And you, too,” said Rostnikov. “Say good-bye to your mother.”

He handed the phone to Sarah who managed not to sob as she said good-bye. She listened to something Iosef said and then hung up.

They looked at each other for a few seconds in silence.

“I forgot to tell him Illya asked about him,” Sarah said looking at the phone.

“Put it in a letter,” he said, standing up. He looked around the room for his pants, though he always put them in the same place, draped over a wooden chair in the corner.

“You can go back to sleep for a while, Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said, sitting on the bed and looking up at him.

“No, I have work to do,” he said, lifting his pants from the chair and sitting down as he wondered what time his German would get out of bed to begin what might be the most important day of both their lives.

After Iosef Rostnikov hung up the phone, he walked slowly and correctly to the door of the small squad room without facing the lieutenant who sat behind the desk a few feet away. The officer, Galinarov, had listened openly and intently to Iosef's side of the conversation with his hands folded in front of him. He had been instructed to do so, but he would have listened anyway because he did not like Rostnikov.

Iosef looked far more like his mother's side of the family than his father's which, in the mind of Galinarov who knew the histories of every man under his command, made the younger Rostnikov a Jew. Galinarov had nothing in particular against the Jews, just as he had nothing against the Mongols and Tatars who were forming a larger and larger percentage of the militia. That worried Galinarov and others above him. There had always been a rather high percentage of Jews in the Russian army, going back to the days of the czars. The reason was simple: Jews could not buy their way out, and it was believed that an important function of the army was to control and contain the Jews.

During the rule of the czars, soldiers would go to the Jewish villages once a year to round up their quota of boys twelve and older. The boys would serve for a period of five to forty years. The longer they served, the more likely they were either to die or to accept Christ, though the Jews had proved stubborn, and deaths had always outnumbered conversions among Hebrew soldiers.

Since the Revolution, the goal of the military was no longer to convert the Jewish conscripts to Christianity or even to communism, since the majority of the Jews seemed to embrace socialism with the great hope that it would ease their lot in life. No, the roots of the army's hostility to the Jews were deeply anchored in the Russian psyche, nurtured by suspicion of Jewish separateness and intellectualism.

“Rostnikov,” said Galinarov as the young corporal reached the door.

“Yes, Comrade,” Rostnikov answered without turning, which was a mild but obvious insult.

“Turn around,” said Galinarov.

Iosef turned around and faced the officer, who was almost exactly a year younger than he was.

“Calls to this station by relatives are, as you know, discouraged except in emergencies,” said Galinarov, tapping his fingertips together.

“I know, Comrade,” Iosef said.

“And?” prompted Galinarov.

“Nothing further,” Iosef said. “I did not tell my parents to call. I have informed them of the order. You can, of course, call them yourself and so inform them. You can reach my father at home now or at his office tomorrow. His number is—”

“I know he is a policeman,” said Galinarov through his teeth.

“A chief inspector,” Iosef amplified, adding a gentle smile.

“Are you trying to impress me with your family's position?” Galinarov said, standing. He was in full uniform, his collar buttoned, clean and shaved as always.

“No, Comrade,” said Iosef. “I was simply providing you with adequate information with which you could make a decision on the proper course of action.”

“You have a tendency to say more than is good for you, Rostnikov.”

Iosef nodded. “A habit I acquired from my father,” he explained.

“A racial quality,” Galinarov prodded.

“Perhaps, Comrade,” Iosef said agreeably. “But it is my mother who is discreet, and she is the one who is Jewish. My father comes from a long line of Russian Christian peasants, like your father.”

“You will not get very far in this army, Rostnikov,” Galinarov said, tapping his fingers nervously on the desk top.

“I do not expect to, Comrade. My goal is to do my job, serve my time with honor, and return to civilian life where I can make my contribution to the state.”

“You don't really know how difficult things can be for you, Rostnikov,” Galinarov went on.

“They were quite difficult in Afghanistan during the winter,” Rostnikov responded. “The man you replaced was killed there, as you know. I realize that you have not had the privilege of serving in combat for the nation, but—”

Galinarov moved from the desk in three boot-clapping steps and faced Rostnikov, his nose inches from that of his subordinate.

“To say that you will regret this conversation is an understatement to match Napoleon's comment that he would destroy Russia in two weeks.”

Galinarov's breath was surprisingly minty, to cover the smell of Madeira wine, which everyone knew was the lieutenant's constant companion. Rostnikov was also quite sure that Napoleon had said nothing of the kind. It was a typical Soviet ploy. People were forever quoting Lenin, much of the time with a great deal of creativity, knowing that even scholars had a difficult time identifying quotations from the mass of Lenin's writing and speeches.

Rostnikov couldn't resist joining the game.

“I believe it was Hitler who said that,” he said as innocently as he could, though he had no idea if Hitler had said any such thing.

“Get out,” Galinarov said, a faint tic quivering above his right eye.

Rostnikov turned and left as smartly as he could. He knew that Galinarov was sorely tempted to test him physically, but both Rostnikov and Galinarov knew that Iosef was stronger, faster, and a good deal smarter. And that was part of the problem, along with the fact that Rostnikov found it very difficult to conceal his superiority.

In the hallway with the door shut behind him, Iosef looked at his hands, which were quite steady. He had to admit that he really enjoyed such confrontations. He had been honed on them over meals at home and had learned to consider such verbal jousting not only a fact of Soviet life but one of its intellectual joys. Actually, Galinarov could make his life at the barracks near Kiev quite miserable and would probably do so, but soon Iosef would inherit the secret rock, the rock that was always passed to the man with the shortest time remaining in service. The short-timers' rock, painted red and quite smooth, would rest in the pocket of the fortunate holder, to be passed ceremoniously to the next man when it was time for the holder to go.

The procedure had been part of Rostnikov's company for years, and it had been a lighthearted ritual until the return from Afghanistan. The expedition had brought the men—those who survived—close together.

As he returned to his barracks room where Misha and Rolf were waiting for him with a chess game, Iosef had two concurrent thoughts. First, he thought it might be interesting to be a policeman as his father was and spend much of the time confronting people as he had confronted Galinarov. He had never seriously considered that before, and though he was trained as a mechanical engineer, he wondered if his father could make some arrangement for him to join the MVD. The second thought was less specific but troublesome: What, in fact,
had
prompted his parents to call him?

J
AMES WILLERY SAT SILENTLY ON
the floor, his legs crossed, staring at the wall. Several students came to look in on him and discuss the controversy that had arisen after the screening of
To the Left
. One of them managed to get a grunt out of him shortly before two o'clock. Half an hour later Alexander Platnov, who was rather enjoying the silence, felt obliged to offer his guest something to eat. Willery rejected the soup but accepted a piece of coarse white bread, which he ate slowly and silently.

“What's wrong with him?” asked a young woman with long dark hair when Platnov went out in the hall to use the toilet.

“I don't know.” Platnov shrugged, quite happy to talk to the woman who, until now, had acted as if Platnov was not a member of the human race. “He was in India a few years ago. I think he may be meditating.”

The young woman looked toward the room. “He is a very profound filmmaker,” she said.

He is, thought Alexander Platnov, an ass. However, he said, “Yes, yes, he is. And I've learned much from him in the last few days.”

The woman, who was named Katya, looked at him seriously with intense gray eyes.

“I'd very much like to know what he has shared with you, Comrade,” she said.

“When he leaves,” Platnov said, “I'll be most happy to share his thoughts with you.”

Willery's thoughts at the moment would have interested the two very much, but not for aesthetic reasons. He was trying to work himself up to a sufficient level of courage—or numbness—to blow up a building. After his walk the previous day, he had gone from despair to euphoria when the woman failed to contact him. He allowed himself to imagine that she had changed her mind, been caught, or met with an accident.

A good two hours after returning to the student residence, while he was discussing the possibility of getting between two thoughts with a young woman he had met at the screening of his film, his hand bumped against his side, and he felt the hard object in his pocket. Without thinking, he pulled it out to look at. It was about the size of a small tape cassette, very black and shiny with a black plastic button in the center.

“What is that?” the young woman had asked.

“This?” said Willery, looking at the object in terror.

She laughed. “Are you making fun of me?”

“No,” he said. “This is an invention.”

“What does it do?”

“It is a remote control switch for starting a hidden camera,” he said.

“I see,” said the young woman with a wicked smile, “and you have such a camera in this room. Let me push the button and start it.”

She had reached for the black piece in his hand, and he had leaped back, ramming into a desk.

“No,” he said sharply, and shoved the thing back into his pocket.

It had then taken him five minutes and several promises to get the young woman to leave. He had to think, he had told her. Inspiration came on him like that, between two thoughts.

Since she had already decided that part of her fascination with him was his Western eccentricity, she accepted his need to be alone, though she wasn't at all sure she accepted his reason. As soon as she had left, Willery had headed for the bed and had hidden in sleep in a near fetal position till the next morning. His snoring kept Alexander Platnov up most of the night, but Platnov kept telling himself that the madman would be gone in a day or two. Willery had already been informed unofficially that he had no chance to win a prize in any competition.

In the morning, Willery had accepted coffee and a sandwich and taken his seat on the floor, looking at the wall. Once in a while he adjusted his dark glasses, but otherwise he was completely still.

Willery had come to several conclusions. First, he did not have to get too close to the hotel and the theater when he pressed the button. It would almost surely work from some distance, but what distance? He had been told that when the moment came he was to be across the street, no more man fifty yards away, but maybe it would work from farther away. He could try, couldn't he? If it didn't work, he could simply move in a little closer. The best thing about this was that he would not have to see what happened inside the theater when he pressed the button. The worst thing was that he could easily imagine what would happen. He had seen the damage done by IRA bombings in London. He had wanted to make a movie about terrorism, but one visit to the site of a bombing had changed his mind. That was how he had met Robert from World Liberation.

He had no misgivings about blowing up the theater. In fact, he was quite happy about that part because it was the same theater where two nights before the audience had ridiculed his film. Yes, that very ridicule made him an aesthetic martyr. He would tell the Western reporters, especially his friend Elsie Brougham who worked for the
Guardian
, about the vulgarity of the Russian movie-goers. But still, there would be some justice in imploding that overdone excuse for a movie theater. If only there would be no people in or near it—or if he could carefully select the people who would be inside. He could come up with a nice list, starting with the pock-faced little turd from the Moscow Film Festival Committee who had tried to get him to withdraw his film and had smirked at him every time Willery tried to explain what his film was about.

He looked down at his watch and discovered that it was almost four o'clock. He groaned. In one hour, just one hour, he had to do it. He really had no thought of not doing it. They had killed Monique, and they would surely kill him. The Russians, even if they caught him…One more hour.