"Wha…" Rutkin cried at the hulking animal-like figure before him. The creature had risen from the snow like an extension of it, a massive snow man.
Illya Rutkin was startled but not frightened. He was a practical man who represented the Soviet Union. He faced the creature and waited for it to move away or speak, but it did neither. It stood facing Rutkin.
"What do you want?" Rutkin said.
The creature said nothing.
"Are you drunk?" Rutkin went on. "I am a Soviet Commissar. I am conducting an important investigation and you, you are in my way."
The creature did move now. It moved toward Illya Rutkin who stepped back, clutching his briefcase protectively to his chest.
"What do you want?" Rutkin shouted. "You want trouble? You want trouble? That can be arranged."
The creature closed in on him.
"Stop," Rutkin shouted, hoping someone in one of the shuttered houses on the square would hear and come to his aid, but no one responded and the statue of Ermak continued to point east.
The creature did not stop and fear came to Commissar Illya Rutkin.
"Stop," Rutkin repeated, seeing something now in the hand of the creature, something that made him want to run, run to the safety of the People's Hall of Justice.
He tried not to think about dying. Not here, he thought, not here. All thought of the hearing, of his future, was gone. Rutkin couldn't take in enough air. There wasn't enough air in the world to satisfy him and so he stumbled, mouth suddenly dry, nostrils acrid. He clutched his briefcase and trudged, stumbled, fell and rose to look back at the creature that was now a few yards from him. Yes, he was much closer to the Hall of Justice, much closer but it was still so far. Rutkin tore off his hat, hurled his briefcase at the creature and tried to force his iron legs to move, to hurry, but they did not move.
Rutkin screamed, now only a few feet from the door. The creature hovered over him and he screamed and from far beyond the village an animal, perhaps a wolf, perhaps the companion of this creature, howled into the dawn.
The door. If he could simply open the door, get inside, close it and throw the latch. Was that too much to ask of his body, his legs, whatever gods might exist and in which he did not believe?
His hand actually touched the wooden panel next to the door but he did not get the opportunity to clasp the handle. He had a moment, however, before he died to regret what he did next. He turned his head to see how far behind the creature was, and the icicle in the creature's hand penetrated through his eye and into his brain.
It should be cold, Rutkin thought. I should be dead. He shivered once and slumped against the stone stoop of the People's Hall of Justice thinking that he would survive this, that he would pretend to be dead and that he would be found and taken by helicopter to a hospital where he would somehow recover. Yes. It did not hurt. He would survive. And with that thought, Illya Rutkin died.
Inside the People's Hall of Justice of the Village of Tumsk, Sergei Mirasnikov looked out of the frosted window and adjusted his rimless glasses. Sergei clutched his broom and watched the creature gather in something brown that looked like a huge book. Sergei's eyes were not good even with the glasses. At the age of eighty-three, he was content that God had allowed him to live this long in relatively good health. One sure way to end that life and show his ingratitude to God would have been to open the door and try to come to the aid of the fool of a Commissar who had strongly hinted that Sergei was too old to continue to hold his job. Had he gone through that door to face the creature with his broom, Sergei was sure that there would now be a dead Commissar and a dead caretaker in the square.
Now there would be another Commissar coming, another investigation. It wouldn't end. Sergei watched the creature amble into the far snow, move toward the taiga, and then disappear into a clump of birch trees.
Sergei put down his broom when the creature was out of sight and looked around to be sure no one was there to see him. It was then that he saw the other figure standing silently near the row of birches at the edge of the forest just beyond the square. He could not make out the face of this other figure, but he knew from the stance, the fur parka, who it was. This other figure had also witnessed the death of the Commissar. Sergei blinked and this figure near the forest disappeared. Perhaps the figure had never been there. Perhaps the memories of age were playing tricks on Sergei. Perhaps the Commissar wasn't dead at all, hadn't been murdered by the creature.
Before he went to the door to check, Sergei Mirasnikov backed away from the window so he couldn't be seen, and crossed himself.
CHAPTER TWO
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov pushed away the sleeve of a jacket that brushed against his cheek and shifted his weight on the battered wooden stool to keep his partly lame left leg from growing too stiff. He would probably need to move quickly when the moment came to act.
He was sitting in the closet of an apartment on the third floor of a building on Babuskina Street in Moscow just four blocks from his own apartment on Krasikov Street. In his left hand, Inspector Rostnikov held a small Japanese flashlight whose bulb was threatening to reject the Czech batteries which he had recently put into it. In his right hand, Rostnikov held a paperback copy in English of Ed McBain's The Mugger. He had read the book five years earlier and about four years before that. It was rime to reread it and so, while he waited for the three strong-arm robbers to return to the apartment, Rostnikov sat silent, shifted his more than 220-pound bulk, and hoped that the batteries would hold out.
If the flashlight did fail, Rostnikov would put the book away and sit silently waiting, contemplating the dinner of chicken tabaka, chicken with prune sauce and pickled cabbage, that his wife Sarah had promised him for that night if she did not get another one of the headaches she had been plagued by for the past few months.
Rostnikov read: "For as the old maid remarked upon kissing the cow, it's all a matter of taste." He had read the line before but for the first time he thought he understood the joke and he smiled slightly, appreciatively. Americans were most peculiar. Ed McBain was peculiar, including in his police novels pictures of fingerprints, maps, reports, even photographs. Delightful but peculiar.
And then Rostnikov heard the door to the apartment begin to open. He turned off the flashlight and stood quickly and silently in spite of his bulk and muscles tight from years of lifting weights. As the three men entered the apartment talking loudly, Rostnikov placed the flashlight in the left pocket of his jacket and in the right he carefully placed the paperback book. He did not use a bookmark, would never consider turning down a corner of the page to mark his place. He had no trouble remembering his place in the book.
The first man through the door was named Kola, Kola the Truck, a great bear of a man with ears turned in and curled by too many drunken battles. Kola, who would be celebrating his thirty-ninth birthday in two days, shaved his head and wore French T-shirts that showed his muscles. Unfortunately, T-shirts did nothing to hide his huge belly though no one would have the nerve to tell this to Kola, not even Yuri Glemp who was the second man into the apartment. Yuri was even bigger than Kola and ten years younger, probably even stronger, but Yuri was afraid of the older man who didn't seem to mind being hurt, didn't seem to be afraid of anything. Yuri, on the other hand, did not like to be hurt though he thoroughly enjoyed hurting others.
Together, for almost two years, Kola and Yuri had made a more-than-adequate living by robbing people on the streets at night and beating them severely if they did not have much money. They also beat them if they had money, but not with as much zeal. Watches, wallets, belts and even shoes they sold to Volovkatin.