"She's good," said the old man as Rostnikov limped forward.
"I know," said Rostnikov.
"You've seen her?" asked the old man.
"No."
"Then, how…?"
"Where does the assistant director park his car?"
The old man looked at Rostnikov with uncertainty, but answered. "Back behind the building. There's a small lot. His space is right near the door."
"Thank you," said Rostnikov, turning toward the rear of the building.
He found the rear door with no trouble. And the car. It was black. As he stepped into the lot, he looked up at the side of the building and found the window of Mazaraki's office. He had thought for a moment that Mazaraki's office was farther down a bit, but the angry, smiling face of Dimitri Mazaraki, his arms folded, framed in the window, made it evident that Valerian Duznetzov had made a slight drunken mistake before he leaped from Gogol's head. It was not a man who saw thunder whom he feared but a man who saw Blue Thunder.
CHAPTER SEVEN
When Rostnikov stepped around the building onto the sidewalk of Vernadksogo Prospekt, he knew he would not have to walk to the metro station. The black Volga with the darkened windows was a symbol. The heavyset man in the blue suit leaning against it was a sign, a sign he recognized. The man was smoking a cigarette. He looked at Rostnikov without emotion or a nod, and Rostnikov walked slowly toward the man and the car.
No one spoke as the man opened the car door and Porfiry Petrovich got into the back seat. A trio of young women tried not to glance at the KGB vehicle, laughed a bit too heartily at nothing, and moved quickly on. The seat was clean and soft and the car smelled of tobacco. Rostnikov did not recognize the driver. However, the man who had been leaning against the car was one of the two he had encountered yesterday in the lobby of the hospital where he had met with Drozhkin.
Rostnikov did not enjoy the ride. He did not dread it, but he did not enjoy it. He looked out the window, wondered if it would rain, wondered if he would be finished with whatever they were going to do with him in time for him to get Sarah and go to the circus. For a flash of time too thin to grasp, he even wondered if they were going to take him to a place where he would never see his wife, his son, or the light of day again. The thought, or fragment of thought, did not frighten him as much as it scratched him with a shudder of curiosity.
The ride took less than twenty minutes. They rode on large boulevards in the center lanereserved for party members, the KGB, and dignitaries with special connections. The car pulled up to the door of the small hospital and Rostnikov was escorted inside by the burly KGB man. They were met by the second big man, in an identical blue suit, and once again they moved past the desk, to the elevator, and up to the patio, where his escorts remained in the hall as he stepped outside.
A slight wind was blowing as late afternoon approached. Drozhkin was seated in the same chair, almost in the same position, under the fifth canopy. His eyes were open and watching as Rostnikov limped forward.
"You are looking better, Colonel," Rostnikov ventured.
"It is an illusion," said Drozhkin, his gray hand reaching for a drink of what looked like lemonade. "I am much worse, worse by the day. Would you like to sit?"
"Yes," said Rostnikov.
"Well, you may not do so," said Drozhkin. He sucked at a glass straw in the drink, his cheeks drawing in, his face showing what his skull would soon look like. "Do you know why?"
"You wish me to be uncomfortable, Comrade," answered Rostnikov.
"Yes, I wish you to be uncomfortable." Drozhkin looked at the drink with distaste and put it down. "You have made the last several years, the last years of my life, uncomfortable. You do not listen to what you are told. You don't seem to understand the consequences of your rebelliousness. You have stepped into at least five situations in which you interfered with our work. You know that?"
Rostnikov shifted his weight, trying to ignore the discomfort that would soon become pain.
"It is difficult always to avoid the jurisdiction of the KGB, Comrade," he said. "The lines are not always clear and…"
Drozhkin started to reach for the lemonade again and changed his mind. The effort was too great. A sudden breeze whipped his gray hair into a frenzy and settled again.
"This had nothing to do with lines," the old man said. "I told you to stay away from the circus investigation. You remember I told you that?"
"I remember, Comrade," said Rostnikov. "I have given up that investigation."
"Then why did you follow the woman? Why did you go to the circus? I don't expect the truth, but I do expect a story that will not make me think you a fool or, worse, make me think you take me for a fool."
"I was investigating a hit-and-run case, or almost a hit and run. The victim was". "The Rashkovskaya woman," Drozhkin said, sighing.
"Colonel Snitkonoy is aware of my" Rostnikov began again, only to be cut off by Drozhkin.
"The Gray Wolfhound is a fool. I'm a dying man. I need no longer be politic. He is a fool. You know it. I know it. What is this suicide urge you possess, Porfiry Petrovich?"
The familiarity startled Rostnikov, who feared that his leg was about to give way. He examined the old man, who was shaking his head and looking at him. Drozhkin smiled, the smile of a ghost, but a smile. Rostnikov smiled back tentatively.
"It's a good thing I'm dying, a good thing for both of us," said the old man. "I'm afraid I'm beginning to understand you, and that might lead to liking you, and that would not be a good thing. But if you keep up behavior like this, I may yet outlive you."
Rostnikov said nothing. He knew that in a few minutes he would begin to sway and that if he did not sit down or at least lean against something he would run the risk of collapsing.
Drozhkin reached for the half-filled glass of lemonade again, picked it up, looked at it with disgust, and threw it to the wooden floor. Shards rained on Rostnikov's trousers, and the two burly KGB men burst through the door with pistols leveled at Porfiry Petrovich.
"I dropped a glass," Drozhkin said, without looking at the two men, his watery eyes on Rostnikov. 'Tell the nurse to come out here and clean it up when the inspector and I are finished."
The two men departed, closing the patio door behind them.
"You look uncomfortable," said Drozhkin, pulling a knit blanket over his knees. "Imagine what it is like to have this thing eating inside me. That is uncomfortable. You think I'm complaining?"
"No," said Rostnikov.
"Sit down, damn you. Sit down."
Rostnikov moved forward slowly to the wooden chair and sat. His leg was stiff and straight, and he knew better from thirty-five years of experience than to try to bend it.
"You are supposed to thank me," said Drozhkin. He threw his hands up and shook his head. "What's the use? You must stay away from the circus, from Mazaraki, because we are watching him. We know he killed Pesknoko. We know he drove that drunken fool to jump off the Pushkin statue."
"It was the Gogol he jumped off," Rostnikov said.
"The Gogol, then. All right. What's the difference?"
A great deal, thought Rostnikov. But he said nothing.
"Mazaraki has been using his tours of the socialist states to smuggle people over the borders to the West," said Drozhkin. "They pay massive amounts, these storekeepers, black marketers, Jews, and he gets them to the borders and often beyond as troupe members, one at a time, sometimes two. He has relatives in Latvia or Lithuania who help him. I can't remember which. -Just four or five a year smuggled out for the past six years has made him wealthy."