"No," she said.
"Well, he was separated from the Procurator's Office two years ago," said Sasha. "They said he had proved to be incompetent. He was so incompetent that he's now running an automobile shop, has his own car and lives in a big apartment near Izmailovo Park."
"What kind of car?" asked Maya.
"A Soviet Fiat — I25," he said, "and…" He stopped his pacing and looked down at her. "Are you humoring me?"
"I'm trying to," she said smiling up at him, a point of cheese on the tip of her finger near her mouth, "but I'm not doing as well as I would like."
Sasha shook his head.
"I'm not going to quit, am I?"
"No," she said, "but if it helps you to pace and complain, I'm happy to listen."
"Enough complaining," he said smiling for the first time since that morning. He leaned over and kissed her. She tasted like cheese, and Sasha felt excited. "Do you think we have time before Lydia gets home?"
"Why not call your aunt and see if she's still there? It takes her at least an hour to get back."
Tkach moved beyond the baby's crib. He had turned on a small light on the table near the phone and was about to call his aunt when the phone rang. He picked it up after the first ring and looked back at the crib to be sure the baby hadn't awakened.
"Tkach," he said softly.
"It's me, Zelach."
"Yes."
"Volovkatin. I found him."
"Where?"
"He came back to his apartment building, through the back. I was waiting. He's up there now. You want me to go up and get him?"
"No. Go inside. Get somewhere where he can't get past you, where you can watch his door. If he starts to leave before I get there, take him. I'm coming."
He hung up and looked at his wife.
"I'm sorry," he said feeling strangely elated.
Maya moved past the crib to her husband, put her arms around him and kissed him deeply, the way she had seen Catherine Deneuve kiss some thin man in a French movie she and Sasha had seen last year.
"I was very proud of you this afternoon," she whispered. "It made me very excited to see you like that. Is that a little sick, do you think?"
"Maybe a little," he whispered rubbing his nose against hers, "but don't lose the feeling."
Less than two minutes later he was out the door, on the street and running for a taxi parked at the stand on the corner.
The person responsible for the murder of Illya Rutkin stood in the darkened room near the window. Light came from some windows in Tumsk and the moon helped to brighten the square, but no one was about and no one was likely to be about except those who had no choice. The temperature had dropped again. Even with layer-upon-layer of clothes and the best Evenk-made furs, no one could remain outside tonight without pain. The killer watched, waited, going over the encounter with Rostnikov.
Rutkin had been lucky, had stumbled on a truth, but this one, this quiet block of a man seemed to be working it out. His questions suggested a direction, an understanding, and his suspicion was evident in his watching eyes which belied his stolid, bland peasant face.
There was no point in trying to make his death look like an accident. With two deaths in the small village within a month, it was unlikely that a third death, the death of a man investigating a murder, would be accepted as accidental, regardless of the circumstances. It could be covered up, obscured, but it couldn't be ignored. Perhaps the assumption would be that a madman was at large. It wasn't important. At this point it was simply a matter of slowing things down for five days. In five days or so it would all be over.
The killer poured a drink from the bottle on the table and waited, waited and watched. The secret of success was surprise, patience and anticipation. The killer knew that, had been taught that, had already gone out in the snowy night to take care of the possibility of temporary failure.
And so the waiting continued and was eventually rewarded. Just before midnight a round, bundled figure stepped out of the door of the weather station and limped slowly, even more slowly than he had come up the slope, down toward the square. He was alone.
At his present pace, it would take Rostnikov no more than three or four minutes to get back to the house on the square.
The killer lifted the nearby binoculars and scanned the frost-covered windows of the houses around the small square. No one was visible. It was time for the killer to act.
The rifle was oiled, ready and waiting near the rear door.
Rostnikov had a great deal on his mind. Normally, the cold would have driven him down the slope as quickly as his leg would allow, but he barely noticed the cold. All he could think about was the phone call. He was but dimly aware of where he was and where he was going. It almost cost him his life.
The sailors in the weather station, an efficient, comfortable box of a building with walls painted white, were in gray sweaters and matching sweat pants and they all looked young, even younger than his Josef, even the commanding officer whose face was serious and pink. The large room in which they were congregated held a variety of odd ma chines with dials, pointers and cylinders. The machines hummed and clicked as Rostnikov looked around for a phone.
"This way, Comrade Inspector," the officer said. He obviously knew something was happening, something that suggested that sympathy was in order for this limping man.
Rostnikov thanked him and followed the officer through an open door to a small office with very bright overhead lights and a small desk that looked as if it were made out of plastic. The decks, walls and even the phone were the same gray as the casual uniforms of the sailors.
"I don't know how to…" Rostnikov began.
"Let me," the officer said with a very small, supportive smile. "Let me know the number you want and I'll see if I can get you through. It should be easy. This is a military phone."
Rostnikov gave him the number of his apartment in Moscow and the man made contact with an operator almost immediately.
"Sometimes the lines…" the officer began. "Ah, here it is."
He handed the phone to Rostnikov and left the room quickly and quietly, closing the door behind him.
Rostnikov listened to three rings and then the phone was picked up in Moscow.
"Sarah?" he said before she could speak.
"Yes, Porfiry, who else would you expect to be here?" Her voice would have sounded perfectly calm to anyone but him. He detected the strain. "I should have known they would call you. I didn't want them to. It could have waited till you got back."
"Is it Josef?" he asked softly.
"No," she said. "On the contrary. He is fine. At least he was last Thursday. I just got a letter from him."
"Then…?"
"It's me," she said softly.
"The headaches," he said.
"They think I might have some kind of growth, a something on the brain," she said.
"They think," he said, sitting on the steel chair behind the desk.
"They know," she said. "They did a machine thing with my head."
"I see," he said.
"It's probably nothing much," Sarah said.
He imagined her sitting on the dark little bench near the phone, her left hand playing with the loose strands of auburn hair at the nape of her neck. She paused and he said nothing.
"Porfiry, are you still there?" she asked.
"Unfortunately, I am still here and not in Moscow," he said, his voice dry, very dry.
"Will it be long? Will you be long?" she asked quite matter-of-factly.
"I'll try to get this finished in a few days. I'm doing some things to move it along. Who did you see? What are they going to do?"
"My cousin Alex sent me to a friend of his, another doctor. She did the test. I'm afraid it will cost, Porfiry Petrovich. She is a private doctor, private clinic just outside of Moscow. She'll try to keep it down, but, I'm sorry."