Rostnikov’s mouth was inches from Sarah’s ear as they lay in darkness well after midnight.
“It will be,” he said so softly that even the most sensitive microphone could not pick it up.
She turned to look at his stubbly, dark face with its knowing smile. She smiled back. He had managed to carry them this far, she thought; perhaps he could do it. There was much about it she didn’t like, but if he could do it, it would be beyond what she had ever really expected.
If he failed, however, she knew quite well that neither of them would see another Moscow winter.
Osip Stock lived near Druzhbin, not far from the Moscow Ring Road, which encircles the city, marking its perimeter beyond which it is exceedingly difficult to travel without private transportation. Osip Stock had no private transportation.
Osip was almost thirty years old and looked rather like a tubercular bird. In spite of his dry appearance, with his thin chest and a hacking cough from too much smoking, Osip was a passionate man. In his free time he would take to the roads near his home, winter or summer, and in his precious running shoes, one of his few extravagances, take flight, losing himself in distance, not knowing how far he ran, returning sometimes hours later. Osip was well aware that his primary reason for running was to escape from the three-room apartment he shared with his parents, his aunt Sophie, and his cousin Svetlana, a grotesque creature.
But Osip had a plan to end this lifestyle, which was the reason he arose so early this day. He was up by seven in the evening. He slept alone in the bed during the day. Usually when he arose, his parents were ready for sleep, and would take over the bed, occasionally changing the sheet. Aunt Sophie and Svetlana slept in the large room, which was not so large, in which they shared meals, conversation, battles, and comforts.
“You are up so early,” said his mother. Cousin Svetlana made her familiar gurgling sound and agreed that he was indeed up early. Osip grinned, showing his silver teeth, and searched for his cigarettes. He couldn’t immediately find them and nearly panicked. But his mother, to head off his grumbling, joined the search and found half a packet.
Lighting up, Osip leaned back in his chair at the wooden table, adjusted the buttons on his uniform, and drank some coffee to wash down the chunk of bread that was his meal. There was more food, but Osip was not much of an eater.
“Why are you looking so happy?” asked his mother, a red-cheeked little woman.
“Why?” he answered, grinning more broadly. “Because it is a fine evening. I have a good job and a secret.”
“A secret?” asked his mother, looking at Aunt Sophie and Cousin Svetlana for an explanation. They had none. Svetlana made her gurgling sound again.
“Nothing important,” said Osip, standing up and adjusting his jacket. “We must have some privacy if only on the open road and in our own heads.”
“It would be better if when you talked you made sense,” his mother said, again looking at Sophie. This time Sophie nodded in agreement. Svetlana seemed to be dozing.
Osip looked at all of them with great tolerance. Soon he would be rid of them. Soon he would be a man of means, a respected man with his own apartment, far from this. Privacy. Oh, how he longed for it.
His mother seemed about to pursue the subject of his secrecy, but he said, “I’m off,” and grabbing the small sack that contained his midnight meal, he hurried out the door. In the dark corridor, his father approached, moving slowly and wearily, returning from his job on a road repair crew.
Father and son grunted at each other as they passed, and Osip hurried out into the light. He wanted to run or at least jog to the metro station, but the sweat would ruin his uniform. So he walked slowly, planning. There weren’t many people going to the heart of town at that hour, so there were plenty of seats when he got to the metro.
It was almost nine when he got off at the Novokuznekskaya metro station and headed for number 10 Lavrushinsky Pereulok, a quiet side street across the Moskva River not far from the Kremlin. When he arrived, he paused in front of the low metal fence with the fancy repeated design of circles and pointed stars and stared at the building beyond. Yes, it was something from an old fairy tale, this gingerbread building, complete with its second-story frieze of Saint George slaying the dragon. He looked up at Saint George and smiled.
He had taken the job at the Tretyakov Gallery more than five years ago. His main reason then was the privacy. He would be alone for many hours in the mansion, though other guards would be wandering about on their rounds. But soon after he took the job he began to grow interested in the thousands of sculptures, drawings, watercolors, and engravings that covered the walls and filled the rooms.
More than four thousand people visited the gallery every day, plunking down thirty kopecks each and waiting in long lines, but Osip paid nothing and had the rooms to himself. He could pause and carry on a conversation with Kiprensky’s portrait of Pushkin or sit on the bench, his feet planted firmly on the inlaid wooden floor, and lecture to Rublev’s larger-than-life nine-hundred-year-old saints.
Tonight, however, would be special. It had all been arranged. It would be his last trip through the gallery, and he would say good-bye to almost all of his iconic acquaintances. Osip checked in at the side door, trying to control his grin as he said hello to old Victor and put his sack on the ledge in the small guards’ room.
“Quiet so far,” said old Victor, looking up from the chessboard over which he sat slumped for hours. It was what Victor always said. Osip would miss that. He wondered what old Victor would be saying about him tomorrow.
In ten minutes, Osip began his rounds. In the past four years, he had slowly, carefully, and systematically stolen eighty-five paintings from these walls, carefully replacing them with others of about the same size and shape from various storage rooms of the collection.
The thefts, in fact, had been discovered only recently, and only a few of them, because of a complaint from a Belgian art student who could not locate a small canvas by Ilya Repin. He had been most careful since then and had cooperated fully and enthusiastically with the police investigators, who found that Osip Stock lived most frugally, did not have the paintings hidden in his home, and seemed most eager to find the missing artworks. He was confident that he was very low on the list of suspects, but after tonight he would be quite well known and very far away.
None of the thefts had been his idea. Well, a few of the later ones were at his suggestion. He had been recruited by the Dutchman, who had invited him for a drink. It had seemed that the two had met accidentally, but it did not take long for Osip to figure out that it had been well planned. Van der Vale had dined and befriended Osip for three weeks before he brought up the possibility of taking some paintings. Osip had been most receptive, and the partnership had begun.
Osip would remove a painting from the wall, hide the frame, wrap the canvas around his body, replace the stolen painting with a similar one from the storage rooms, and walk out. He would meet van der Vale in an alley not far from the gallery where they would make the transfer.
The agreement was that van der Vale would bank Osip’s money in Amsterdam and, when the right moment came, would supply Osip with a forged German passport and a ticket to Zurich. Tonight was the right time. Osip would take the most valuable painting available. At first they had tried to figure out a way to take the Rublev Trinity or Dionisii’s icon of the Metropolitan Alexis, for which Osip had particular affection, but getting the wood blocks out would have been impossible. They settled on a series of eighteenth-century paintings which, when wrapped around Osip, would make him a bit stocky, but not enough for any of the guards to notice. By the time the theft was discovered in the morning, if it was, Stock would already be in Zurich. He had been preparing for this for almost five years, right down to learning enough German to carry him past the airport inspectors if necessary.