He marked them off with a pencil by date. The first attack had been a month ago near the Volkovskaya station. The next was a short walk from the Sokol station. The pattern was clear. The muggers were using this line and moving closer to central Moscow. If the pattern held, the next attack would take place near Pushkin Square.
But there was something wrong. There was no mugging near the Byelorusskaya station. Why would they skip that station, if indeed they were working along the line and using it to escape? The most obvious answer was that Byelorusskaya was their home station, where they worked from and where they might be recognized. It made sense. So, what was next? Why did these muggings take place early in the evening? Wouldn’t it be better for the criminals to wait till total darkness? The answer was almost laughable. They committed these crimes after work; they left their jobs, went out and beat and raped women, and then promptly went home.
Tkach could wait at the Pushkin Square metro station shortly before dark in the hope of seeing a gang of young men who fit the description of the criminals, but miss them in the crowds. Or they might change their pattern.
No, it would be better to watch the Byelorusskaya station and painstakingly follow any suspicious group. But that, too, might take days, weeks, months. The great open square near the station was especially crowded in the evening.
At that moment he put it together. One of the victims had told him that she thought she’d recognized one of the muggers. He was a dark young man who had sold her a drink near the statue in Gorky Square.
Twenty minutes after the idea came to him, Sasha Tkach was standing in Gorky Square, eating his lunch and pretending to admire the statue of Maxim Gorky erected in 1951. Chewing thoughtfully, Tkach pushed his blond hair from his forehead, skipped out of the way of two little boys who were playing a game, and pretended to admire the old Byelorussian railway station, one of the few structures that remain from Moscow’s past. The station is over a hundred years old with trains leaving daily for Paris, Vienna, London, Oslo, and Stockholm.
Tkach had seen it all before, had been in the garden, heard his mother’s tale of welcoming home the war heroes, in the square in 1945, but today his thoughts were elsewhere. Several young men wandered by selling drinks, but all were blond. Then, after about an hour, Tkach saw what he was looking for. A young man with straight dark hair, looking very much like a French or American rocker of the 1950s, strode down from Leningrad Prospekt carrying a basketful of bottled drinks. Tkach began following him at a discreet distance. It might be the wrong youth, but Tkach had a hunch. The man was easy to follow. He moved slowly through the crowd and did not seem particularly concerned with selling his wares. Then a second young man joined him. A few minutes later, a third joined them and then a fourth. They laughed, pushed one another, looked at the passing women. Then they checked their watches and headed for the metro station. They took the underground walkway across the street, and Tkach almost lost them in the crowd, but they were in no hurry, and he found them well before they entered the station.
Tkach got on the same car with them and his heart started pounding when, two stops later at Pushkin Square, they began pushing their way off the train. The pattern fit.
Out on the street they hesitated, discussing whether they should move across the square toward the Rossyia Cinema or down Gorky Street. They opted for Gorky Street, and Tkach followed. They turned off at the Stanislavsky Theater, made another turn a block farther on, and stopped. The street was narrow and almost deserted. Tkach kept walking and went right past them as if he were in a hurry to get home. They watched him, he was sure, as he turned a corner. Darkness was coming now, and Tkach started looking for a public building, an open door. It was time to get help. He was confident that he had found the attackers, even though he had no evidence. The victims could identify them. That would be proof enough. He found a small gift shop and ducked inside, watching the window for the approaching muggers.
“Yes?” said the woman behind the counter without enthusiasm, recognizing Tkach for what he was, a Russian and not a foreign tourist.
“Your phone,” he said, looking back. The young men had turned the corner and were walking toward the entrance to a building Tkach did not recognize. It was a large new office building.
“We have no phone,” the dark-haired shop owner said.
“Then find one.” He pulled out his wallet and held his identification in front of the woman’s face. “Find one and call Petrovka nine-one-one. Ask for Chief Inspector Rostnikov.” The young men had now disappeared into the building across the street. “If he’s not there, ask for Inspector Karpo. Or ask for anyone and tell them Inspector Tkach needs help in that building.”
He pointed to the building, stuffed his wallet in his pocket and turned to leave. But the woman looked unimpressed, and Tkach said angrily, “I vow to you, woman, if you do not find a phone and make the call, and do it quickly, you will be answering questions tonight instead of going home.”
He dashed out of the store and ran across the street.
He was panting lightly when he entered the building. He loosened his tie and looked around the lobby. It was the headquarters of some branch of the railway and transportation system. A guard should have been in the lobby to take names. Even though it was a bit late, some people were still leaving the building. Now, he thought, where are they? Did they spot me? Do they know of some other way out? Or have they already found a victim and pulled her into a stairwell, or…One of them was standing around a corner near an elevator door. Where were the others?
The young man pressed the button impatiently, glanced over his shoulder at Tkach, who was walking toward him, and showed no sign of recognition. Tkach waited with him at the elevator. Without looking at the man, Tkach could see that he was about twenty. He outweighed Tkach by twenty pounds, and was a few inches taller. As Tkach recalled, this was one of the smaller members of the group.
Tkach didn’t have his gun with him. He had not expected to need it. In truth, he had carried it as seldom as possible since he shot the young robber this past winter. But Tkach knew that he could subdue this one young man.
Looking at Tkach’s loosened tie, the young man smiled and said, “I think it will be a warm summer.”
“Perhaps,” said Tkach indifferently.
“You work here?” the young man asked casually.
“Sometimes,” Tkach replied, giving the man an imperious look to indicate that such a question was far too familiar for his taste.
The elevator arrived, and the two men stepped inside. The operator was a woman about fifty. Tkach didn’t want to seem reluctant to give his floor number, so he said, “Twelve.” The young man said, “Seven.”
The elevator rose slowly. The woman adjusted her glasses, and Tkach pretended to ignore the young man. When the doors opened at seven, the young man turned to Tkach and smiled slightly before getting off.
As soon as the doors closed Tkach said, “Comrade, let me off at the next floor. Then take the elevator down to the lobby and wait there for the police, who will arrive soon. Take them up to the seventh floor and tell them to be careful.”
The elevator operator looked over her shoulder at him as if he were mad and went past the eighth floor. Tkach, sweating now, whipped out his wallet and showed his identification. “MVD,” he said. “There is a gang of rapists in this building. You just let one of them out on the seventh floor. The others are probably there now looking for a victim.” They were passing the ninth floor, and she was looking at him stupidly with her mouth open. He went on. “You might be that victim. Let me out. Then go right back down without stopping and do what I said. Do you understand?”