Black Knight in Red Square (9 page)

Once inside the Tretyakov Gallery, Karpo, having visited the building many times in the daytime, moved softly in the shadows, avoiding the old guards, to a room on the second floor. There the walls were jammed with gilt-framed paintings of various sizes. Sliding around a small marble statue of a man with a spear, Karpo opened the door to a maintenance closet and eased inside. He had done this for the past five nights, knew the room well, and placed himself so that he could see out through a thin space where door and jamb failed to meet. As usual, he would stand there till nearly dawn, watching and waiting.

The building contains the world's largest collection of Russian paintings, certainly more than five thousand. More than one and a half million visitors each year look at the iconic paintings of Andrei Rublev or the massive nineteenth-century realist paintings of Ilya Repin or the hundreds of photolike social realist paintings done during Stalin's tenure, such as
Workers at the Feskoskaya Factory in Morensk.

A week ago a director of the gallery had discovered that one of the oldest paintings in the collection was missing. This was Karpo's case, and he had advised the gallery director to say nothing. When another painting, of a different period and in a different room, was found missing two days later, Karpo had begun his closet vigil. If there was a pattern, and the pattern held, eventually the thief would enter this room during the night, and Karpo would be there to catch him. Throughout the night, guards came and went. The room was silent but for the scuttling of something, probably a mouse, just before dawn. One of the guards paused on his rounds for a long drink from a bottle hidden in his jacket, and then light came. There had been no theft, at least not in this room.

Karpo was undiscouraged. He would simply return again tomorrow and the next night and the next, as he returned to the Moscow Book House. He had enough time to slip out unseen, get back to his room, and catch an hour of sleep before returning to the current investigation. Karpo had no great interest in the murder of an American writer, especially one as decadent as Aubrey clearly had been, but it was his duty, and he would work on the case as diligently as he worked on any other.

As Karpo allowed himself to recline on his narrow bed at seven on Friday morning, trying to find a reasonably tolerable position for his arm, Porfiry Rostnikov was entering the huge pale yellow building at 22 Lubyanka Street. The KGB headquarters stands opposite the 36-foot statue of “Iron” Felix Dzerzhinsky, who organized the Cheka for Lenin. The Cheka went through many transformations and is now the KGB, “the sword of the Revolution.” There are white curtains at the windows and shiny brass fittings on the door. Beyond the general offices and interrogation rooms are, as everyone knows, the cells.

The KGB has more than 110,000 members, including many of the most intelligent and highly motivated Russians. It seemed to be Rostnikov's fortune, however, to deal with but one of that number each time he entered this building. After a ten-minute wait, a stiff-backed man with dark, curly hair led Rostnikov down a corridor and up a short stairway. It was a repeat of his last visit, and Rostnikov did not look forward to it. The guide knocked at the unmarked door, and a familiar raspy voice behind it said, “Come.”

Rostnikov entered alone and closed the door behind him. Yes, it was the same. Dark brown carpet, framed posters on the wall urging productivity and solidarity. Chairs with arms and dark nylon padded seats and an ancient, well-polished desk behind which sat Colonel Drozhkin, white hair, dark suit, black tie. Drozhkin examined Rostnikov critically and indicated with a gesture of his callused hand that the inspector could sit.

“Your son is back in Kiev,” said Drozhkin, starting the game.

“Yes,” said Rostnikov, gazing at his host without emotion.

“Good,” said the colonel. “Afghanistan is not a safe place for a Russian. Our losses, I will tell you confidentially, have been high.”

It was Drozhkin, Rostnikov knew, who had arranged to have Iosef sent to Afghanistan, and it was Drozhkin who, having gotten Rostnikov's full cooperation in covering up certain details about a politically sensitive case, allowed Iosef to return to Kiev with his unit. It was Drozhkin now who was making it quite clear that he could do the same thing again.

“There is,” Drozhkin said, folding his hands in front of him on the clean desk top, “a group of fanatics, capitalist terrorists who have sought on various occasions to embarrass the Soviet Union. This pitifully small group calls itself World Liberation. It has members from several countries. It seeks to drive us into conflict with the West. It claims in its literature that once we are at war with the Western powers, both sides will be destroyed, and World Liberation will be able to take over. We have infiltrated this group in the past. We thought we had destroyed them, but a few have survived. Some of them are now in Moscow.”

There was nothing for Rostnikov to say as the gnarled colonel paused to allow him to speak. It was rare for a KGB official to reveal so much even to the police, and Rostnikov knew that much of it might not be exactly true. Rostnikov shifted his leg and nodded.

“Your dead American, Aubrey,” Drozhkin went on, “was working on a story about this group, this World Liberation. We think that his death may be related to that story and the presence of those terrorists in Moscow.”

“Why—” Rostnikov began, but Drozhkin cut him off, rising and waving a hand.

“We know where the core is,” the colonel said, straightening a poster of a grim-faced woman holding a flag against a red background, “but we want them all. We will watch that core while you continue your investigation. We are especially concerned about possible terrorist acts. There are many Western and Third World people in Moscow for this film festival. Any act of terrorism would be most unfortunate.”

“Most unfortunate,” Rostnikov repeated, thinking, unfortunate for whom?

“This is your investigation,” Drozhkin said, his back turned, his hands clasped behind him. “It is important that you not fail.”

The situation was now quite clear to Rostnikov. Dealing with terrorists was the responsibility of the KGB. Drozhkin, a survivor of several decades of purges in the intelligence and security service, had been given a most touchy assignment, to find these terrorists before they acted. As he had done in the past, Drozhkin was covering his flank. If the terrorists acted, he would somehow blame it on Rostnikov and the MVD.

“I understand,” said Rostnikov.

“We have been watching the known members of World Liberation who are presently in Moscow,” Drozhkin went on. “In fact, they are in Moscow because we chose to let them come in.”

“Moscow becomes the web of a spider,” Rostnikov said and immediately regretted it.

“If you wish,” agreed the colonel, fixing his eyes on the policeman. “I am not given to metaphor. Our watching has yielded little. If nothing comes from you in forty-eight hours, we will arrest those members we know. Your task is considerable, Comrade Inspector.”

“Considerable,” Rostnikov agreed blandly. “But we must face our daily challenges and responsibilities.”

Drozhkin's mouth went tight for an instant and then relaxed. “I'll detain you no longer,” he said. “You may return to your investigation…and your plumbing. And please give our best to your wife.”

Ah, thought Rostnikov, rising, the final point goes to the KGB. Rostnikov was being watched even down to his little plumbing escapade. And what of the remark about Sarah, whom Drozhkin had never met? The most vulnerable aspect of Sarah was her Jewishness. Was Rostnikov's apartment bugged? Yes, he thought, it probably is, and the KGB knows that we have talked about applying for immigration. Drozhkin is making an oblique threat.

“It has been good to talk to you again,” Drozhkin added.

Rostnikov paused at the door. “It is, as always, stimulating to talk to you, Comrade Colonel.”

The guide was waiting in the hall to escort Rostnikov from the building. He moved quickly down the hall, making it difficult for the policeman to follow him, but Rostnikov took satisfaction in the conviction that he could surely lift the man above his head and hurl him through the colonel's door, should madness come.

All in all, Rostnikov decided, he had emerged reasonably well from the discussion. Granted, he now was in a dangerous situation, but that was part of life. He had discovered that Aubrey's death was probably part of a terrorist plot. Growing in him was the hope and near conviction that the people Aubrey had interviewed were connected to the murder—the Frenchwoman, the Englishman, and the German. He would push them, push them hard, but first he would speak to Mrs. Aubrey to see if she could shed any light on her husband's research on World Liberation.

The sunlight and fresh air came as a surprise to Rostnikov when he stepped back into Krov Street and crossed to the metro station in front of the Mayakovsky Museum. He dismissed the idea that he might be followed. It would be so laughably easy to keep track of him that the KGB would have no reason to follow, but the idea came nonetheless, and as he moved into the underground he considered checking. It would be easy to look back, scan the crowd, then go through the underpass, return, and watch to see which face doubled back with him. The person would be crafty, probably quite good, but Rostnikov was confident he could spot anyone following him. The problem was that the KGB would then know that he knew he was being followed. So, since it made no difference either way, Rostnikov fought back the urge to let the KGB know he was aware of their interest. Such devious thinking, thought Rostnikov, keeps the mind active.

Back at Petrovka, Rostnikov walked past the downstairs desk, grumbled something to the uniformed guard, and went up the stairs to his office. He nodded at the junior inspectors who shared desks in the outer office and went to his own cubbyhole, where he sat down at his desk, picked up the messages, and removed the small tape recorder from his pocket.

The message on top informed him that the poison which had killed Aubrey, the Japanese, and the two Russians was a bizarre extract, cultivated from bacteria that affect birds. This deadly extract causes psittacosis, a disease normally transmitted to birds and occasionally affecting human beings. The report did not puzzle Rostnikov. It confirmed his limited knowledge of small terrorist groups. Drama was very important to them. If you simply hit a victim with a bat and walk away, you generate little publicity. If you inject diseases, take hostages in public landmarks, hijack airplanes, bomb babies, the world looks at you with fear or disgust or awe. The important thing is that the world looks at you.

Yes, thought Rostnikov, and in a society like ours, the act would have to be so massive, so public, that it would be difficult or impossible to cover up. Now the only problem would be to decide what such a public display might be. Would they kidnap the president?

Rostnikov ran his finger along the scratch on his desk made last winter by a sickle, the murder weapon in the case that first brought Rostnikov in contact with Colonel Drozhkin.

In ten minutes, it would be nine o'clock, time for Tkach and Karpo to come to his office for a meeting. The ten minutes gave him just enough time to hide the tape of his conversation with Drozhkin, see Procurator Timofeyeva, and on his way shout to that blini-head Zelach to find Mrs. Aubrey.

When he entered Anna Timofeyeva's office two floors above, he was disturbed to see how pale she looked. She was definitely ill. She had told him to report as soon as he returned to Petrovka, but he found it difficult to concentrate on his account of the interchange and nuances of the meeting at KGB headquarters. He doubted if her office was bugged, but it might be.

She sipped her tea, nodding at crucial points, her breath heaving in and out.

“Anna,” Rostnikov said, stopping in the middle of a sentence, “I must call an ambulance for you.”

“No,” she said gasping for air. “I have a pill. Give your report and leave. I'm very busy.”

The look in her eyes filled Rostnikov with a deep and sudden sadness. She was frightened, and Rostnikov suspected that she was having a heart attack.

“Overwork,” she said.

“I'm calling the police ambulance,” he said, reaching for the phone.

“Porfiry,” she gasped, pulling a brown bottle from her desk and extracting a small pill, which she put under her tongue, “they'll carry me out on a stretcher, past everyone. I…it would be a humiliation.”

“I'll accompany you, Comrade,” he said, taking the phone.

“I do not wish to show weakness,” she said, gritting her teeth and willing the pain to go away, but it would not.

“Our bodies are weak,” said Rostnikov, dialing. “There is only so much we can do about it. What we can do is face the inevitable with dignity.”

Through the pain, Anna Timofeyeva smiled. “You are a comforting mongrel, Porfiry Petrovich,” she said.

Rostnikov told the medical aides to hurry to the office, explaining that the procurator was probably suffering a heart seizure. He hung up, and turned to Anna Timofeyeva. He wanted to take her hand, but held back, knowing she would not want that. When Ivan Kolenko was knifed, Rostnikov had held the hand of his dying colleague, though the two had never been friends. But Kolenko was a man, and in this society where the sexes were supposedly equal, he did not have the burden of proving his strength as did Anna Timofeyeva.

They said little while they waited for the medical aides. He offered her some tea which she refused. They could hear the aides coming down the hall.

“Porfiry,” she said, softly gasping, “I must ask you a favor. If they take me to the hospital, will you go to my apartment and take care of my cat? His name is Baku.” The request took a great deal out of her.

“Of course,” he said lightly. “I am very fond of cats.” Rostnikov knew that he lied well. In truth, he detested cats almost as much as he hated dogs. No, it was those who insisted on keeping them whom he had always disliked. The animals themselves were the extension, the manifestation. For the first time, he saw in Anna Timofeyeva's face something of the need one might have for an animal.