“This is the Alexei Porvinovich whose home you called less than an hour ago,” said Rostnikov.
“I made a long list of calls,” Artiom said with a shrug, hoping he was not sweating. He sweated easily. It was something Anna said she liked about him. “You know, with my mechanic out, everything will be running late and-”
“You remember the call?” the black man asked. “You spoke to Mrs. Porvinovich. You’ve met her. You could hardly forget her.”
“Porvinovich,” Artiom pondered. “Ah, yes, that one. A beauty. Not my type.”
“What is your type?” asked Rostnikov.
“Big. Blond. Loud. Not too smart,” he said with a grin.
“Just the opposite of Mrs. Porvinovich,” said the black man.
“I suppose,” said Artiom.
“So?” said Rostnikov. “You called her.”
“Yes, ah, yes. Now I remember,” he said, hitting his forehead with the palm of his right hand. “They were scheduled to bring in their car, a black Buick. I said I couldn’t take care of it. She seemed quite upset that she couldn’t make a new appointment.”
“Mrs. Porvinovich does not strike me as the kind of woman who, if she were upset, would allow herself to display it to a mechanic,” said the black man.
“I’m perceptive,” Artiom almost pleaded. “It’s a gift and a curse from my mother. She was perceptive too. Could see right through to people’s souls.” With this, he laid a palm across his chest in a suggestion of where one’s soul might be found.
“What am I feeling?” asked the black man.
“I never got your name,” said Artiom, extending his hand.
“Craig Hamilton,” said the black man, taking Artiom’s quite moist hand. “What am I feeling?” he repeated.
“I’m sorry. My intuition is hindered by a lack of familiarity with Africans.”
“Then what am I thinking?” asked Rostnikov.
“That I know something or am guilty of something,” said Artiom. “But I tell you, I promise you, I pledge to you: You are wrong. If you’ll just tell me what you want, I-”
“You kidnapped Alexei Porvinovich,” said Rostnikov. “You and your assistant, Boris. If you have killed Porvinovich, you shall be tried and executed, as you well know. If he is alive, life will be hard, but you will at least exist. Look at this bush.”
Rostnikov pulled a notebook from his pocket and opened it to the page with the flowering bush he had sketched earlier.
Artiom looked at the picture. It was not at all badly rendered. “Yes?” asked he.
“Do you know what kind of bush it is?”
“No,” said Artiom. “I know nothing of plants. I know cars.”
“If you have killed Porvinovich,” said Rostnikov, taking another look at the picture of the bush and returning it to his pocket, “then you will never see a flowering bush again.”
“I did not kidnap Alexei Porvinovich,” Artiom cried with sincerity. “I’m an honest businessman. Ask Sergeant Boronov. I run an honest business.”
“And you go to bed with Anna Porvinovich,” said Rostnikov.
“And with her brother,” added Hamilton.
Artiom’s sincerity turned to anger.
“What are you saying? That I’m a homosexual? I am not.”
“Then,” said Rostnikov, “you have had sex only with Mrs. Porvinovich?”
“I haven’t had sex with anybody,” Artiom protested, both hands moving up and down.
“You are celibate?” said Hamilton.
“I didn’t say … What do you want?”
“Porvinovich, now, uninjured,” said Rostnikov.
“I didn’t kidnap him,” Artiom cried. He clasped his hands together and said, “As God is my judge, I have kidnapped no one.”
“How long have you believed in God?” asked Rostnikov.
Artiom shrugged again. “All my life,” he said. “What’s God got to-”
“We are leaving,” said Rostnikov. “You will deliver Alexei Porvinovich before this day ends.”
“I. …” Artiom began, but saw that nothing he could say would convince these two. “It has come to my attention from a source I cannot reveal that this Alexei Porvinovich has been engaged in illegal activities.”
“I thought you couldn’t remember him?” asked Hamilton, who was following Rostnikov toward the door of the garage.
“I didn’t want to get involved in anything,” Artiom said, now sweating profusely and not trying to hide it. “But if someone were to find this Porvinovich and turn him loose and they had information about important criminal activities by this Porvinovich …?”
“It would be interesting,” said Rostnikov, limping toward the door. “We might be appreciative of such information.”
“How appreciative?” asked Artiom.
“That would depend on the information,” said Rostnikov. “And the evidence. Call Petrovka, ask for me. Let us say in four hours.”
Rostnikov pulled out his pad of paper, wrote down his own name and phone number, and handed it to Artiom, who took it and followed the two men through the door into the chilly gray day.
“I don’t know anything,” he said.
“Four hours,” Rostnikov repeated, continuing to walk away, his back to Artiom Solovyov. “That should be plenty of time.”
Artiom gave up, went back into the garage, and slammed the door. Rostnikov continued to walk toward the dark car parked at the end of the street.
“We were lucky,” said Hamilton softly.
“He is an amateur in love with a professional,” said Rostnikov. “An affair made in hell.”
“She would have had Porvinovich killed,” said Hamilton.
“I’m certain.”
“So am I,” said Hamilton. “You think he’ll let Porvinovich go and give you something dirty on him?”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov, opening the front passenger door of the car. “He has heard tales of Russian prisons.” He sat and closed the door while Hamilton went around the car and got into the driver’s seat.
“Should we call someone to follow him?” asked Hamilton, starting the engine.
“It will take too long,” said Rostnikov.
“We could follow him ourselves,” Hamilton suggested.
“I have a bad leg and you have a black face,” said Rostnikov. “He would have to be an even bigger fool than he is not to spot us. I think he will give us our kidnap victim if he is still alive.”
SEVEN
They sat, as they had planned to, inside the Saint Petersburg Café, formerly the Café of the October Revolution. Normally they would have met at a café less than a half mile away, but that was where Mathilde Verson had been killed.
They had pulled two rectangular wooden tables together. Rostnikov sat at one end of the improvised table, Craig Hamilton at the other. Rostnikov always sat where he could see everyone’s faces without any painful movement of his leg. On his left were Sasha Tkach and Zelach. On his right were Emil Karpo and Elena Timofeyeva. In front of each person was a cup of coffee or tea and two thin wafers that the management called imported biscotti but that Tkach described as sugar-plaster sandwiches.
Several months earlier they had begun meeting informally at a café. There were two major reasons for this. First, the Gray Wolfhound, Pankov, and Major Gregorovich were not present. Second, it was unlikely that anyone had bugged the café, whereas it was highly likely that the Wolfhound’s office was bugged and almost certain that Major Gregorovich was passing information on to people who might be appreciative when the proper time came.
“Pulcharia said what?” Elena asked.
“‘Grandmother gives me a gahlahvnahya bol,’ a headache,” answered Tkach, looking, with a proud smile, around the table. “Three years old, not even three.”
He shook his head. The others were appreciatively silent.
“‘Gahlahvnahya bol,’” Tkach repeated almost to himself.
“And how is your aunt?” Rostnikov asked.
“Anna Timofeyeva has good days and bad,” said Elena, a bit self-consciously.
“She is a bad cook, a stubborn woman, and was the best procurator in all of Russia,” Rostnikov said.