She smiled. Tkach wasn’t sure whether she was pleased that he was speaking to her in her native language or amused because he was doing it so poorly. Either way, her smile made him uncomfortable. In fact, Monique Freneau made him quite uncomfortable as she gestured for him to enter the room, but gave him little space to get through the doorway without brushing against her.
He glanced around the room. It was far bigger than the apartment he and Maya shared with his mother.
“I am from the police,” he said immediately.
“I’m surprised,” she said, sitting in one of the two chairs in the room and crossing her legs. “I thought a requirement of nonuniformed Russian policemen was that they be over fifty, solid, sober, and shaped either like a lamppost or like an American mailbox.”
Her description fit Rostnikov quite well, Tkach thought. He also was aware that the woman, who might be anywhere from twenty-five to forty, was looking at him with amusement and employing what must have been her formidable sexuality.
“I have, I am sorry to say, another appointment,” Sasha lied. “So, I will have to ask you some questions rather quickly. You probably have much to do, too.”
“No, not really,” she said, putting a finger to her chin.
“You are a maker of films?” he asked, taking out his notebook.
“I am a producer of films,” she said. “There is quite a difference. Actually, I am the assistant to a producer, and I’m representing him at the festival.”
“I would have thought you were an actress,” he said, and immediately regretted it.
“I was,” she said. “But I found it more…rewarding to be the assistant to Pierre Maxitte. You’ve heard of him?”
“I’m afraid not,” Tkach said seriously.
“You have a name,” she added disarmingly.
“Inspector Tkach,” he said. “On Monday-”
“A first name?” she cut in.
“Sasha,” he said.
“That is a nice name,” she mused. “Fun to say. Sasha. Sasha.”
“Warren Harding Aubrey,” Sasha threw in. It stopped her, but didn’t seem to disturb or upset her.
“The writer?” she asked.
“I imagine there would be few with such a name,” he said seriously, “though I must admit I know little about American names.”
“Aubrey interviewed me a few days ago,” she said.
“Monday,” Sasha said. “What did you talk about?”
“Why?” she asked. “What has he done?”
“He has gotten himself killed,” explained Tkach. “It may well be an accident, but we are trying to trace his movements up to the time of his death yesterday morning.”
“Dead,” she said, looking at Tkach more seriously.
“Quite dead,” he said. “Why did he interview you?”
“About Pierre,” she said. “The movie we’re showing at the festival, The Devil in the Wind. I had the impression that it was not a serious interview, that he was looking for gossip, perhaps about Pierre. Who knows? He even hinted that he might look favorably on our film if I was friendly to him. You understand?”
“Yes,” said Tkach, writing down far more than he needed in order to keep from looking at her. Now he thought perhaps he understood why Aubrey had referred to her as the frog bitch. But as a lead, this looked like a dead end.
“What was the essence of his interview?” he asked.
“The essence. Let me see.” She tapped her even white teeth with a neat fingernail and seemed to be thinking. “He wanted to know if Pierre and I were lovers, if I had ever made any nude films, if we were thinking of bribing or trying to bribe judges. He was not a particularly nice man.”
“Any other details of the interview? Did he seem…”
“Aroused?” she asked.
That was enough. Tkach closed his notebook and looked at her. She looked back. There was certainly intelligence in the brown eyes, intelligence and amusement and something else.
“I haven’t been much help, have I?” she said, rising slowly.
“You’ve told me what was necessary.”
“If you’d like to come back tonight after dinner and ask more questions,” she said, taking a step toward him, “I’ll be right here.”
Now Tkach smiled, and his smile stopped her. The game-playing halted, for she had seen something that told her things had not gone as she had guided them. That smile was quite knowing and much older than the face of the good-looking young detective.
“I have to work tonight,” he said, stepping past her. “But I may have more questions. And perhaps next time you will answer with the truth.”
Without looking at her he crossed the room, opened the door, and stepped into the hall, closing the door behind him. At this point, he had no idea whether or not she had told the truth. He’d had no reason to be suspicious until he gave her the knowing smile he had been working on for four years. He thought of it as the Russian police smile, which says, I know what you are hiding. Tkach didn’t know that it was the smile of all detectives from Tokyo to Calcutta to San Francisco to Moscow. He had seen her play her scene out, then had given her the knowing smile, and for an instant she had broken, showing that there was something more behind those eyes and that lovely facade. He had no idea what she might be hiding or why. He would simply give the information to Rostnikov and let him worry about it.
Meanwhile, Sasha knew of a store that supposedly had received a shipment of coffee. If he was lucky, and if he hurried, he could get there while there was still some left. It would get him home late and cost more than he should really spend, but it would be a welcome treat for Maya and his mother.
The coffee was indeed there. The wait was long, and Sasha arrived home late but quite content at a few minutes after eight, precisely at the moment that the dark-eyed foreigner had put the third and final bomb in place behind the screen in the Zaryadye movie theater in the Hotel Rossyia.
SIX
The thin filament of wire attached to the bottom of the door to Emil Karpo’s apartment was just as he had left it. An intruder, even if he or she located the strand, could not replace it at exactly the right point. No one, Karpo was sure, had ever broken into his apartment. No one, as far as he knew, had any reason to do so, but on the slight chance that it might happen someday, he religiously attached that filament each time he left his room.
Inside the room, Karpo turned on the light over his desk in the corner, removed his notebook from his pocket, and carefully copied his notes as he always did. He put the copied pages into a dark book, made additional notes for cross reference, and shelved the book with forty similar books. There was no such thing as a closed case for Karpo. If a criminal-an enemy of the state-was not caught, the MVD might forget about it, but for Karpo the case would remain active. He had twenty-five such active cases, some dating back sixteen years, and he devoted a specific time each month to each of those cases.
The case of the bookstore skewer took a precise thirty minutes of his time every two weeks. In 1968, on a Tuesday afternoon, in the midst of dozens of people, someone had driven a sharp saberlike object through a minor Party official who was browsing in the Moscow Book House, Dom Knigi. No one had seen the crime done. The following Tuesday, a reasonably well-known poet had been similarly skewered in the philately department of the Moscow Book House. Again, no one saw it happen. Karpo had worked for almost three months on the case, which his colleagues jokingly called the shish-kabob murders. Then he was ordered to go on to other things. But his spare time was his own, and his spare time existed only to serve the state. So, every other Tuesday afternoon, at precisely the time the murders had occurred, Karpo returned to the Moscow Book House, in the faint hope that the killer, who had not struck for almost a dozen years, might show up again. He looked especially hard at people carrying umbrellas or canes or anything that might hide a long, sharp instrument. Such dogged pursuit had, in fact, led eventually to the apprehension of eight criminals who would otherwise have gotten away with their crimes.