Sasha closed his eyes. There was a scuffle of feet. The blow did not come, or perhaps Sasha was too numb to feel it. There was a greater scuffling and the grunt of a man, followed by the pained, high, angry groan of a child.
Sasha opened his eyes. A man, Zelach, was kicking at the boy with the wooden plank. The young one who had hovered over Sasha with a brick was huddled against the wall, brick gone. He was holding his head. Zelach’s kick was true. He caught the boy in the stomach. The boy dropped the plank and fell to his knees. The last boy, the one who had ordered Boris to hit Sasha, had begun to run across the small street, toward the apartment building the two policemen had been watching. Zelach looked down at Sasha, who had finally managed to pull out his weapon. Sasha nodded, and Zelach took off after the fleeing boy, who had a good start.
The next few seconds were miraculous. The usually slouching, recently ill Zelach caught the boy before he got through the door to the apartment building. He grabbed him by the neck and turned him back across the street, where the two other boys nursed their wounds and showed no inclination to run.
Methodically Zelach handcuffed the boy he had caught to the one who had hit Sasha with the plank. Then Zelach held out his hand to Sasha, who in confusion started to hand him his gun.
“No, Sasha,” Zelach said softly. “Your handcuffs. I’ll get them.”
Zelach reached under Sasha’s jacket and removed the fallen policeman’s handcuffs. A moment later the three boys were handcuffed in a circle around a lamppost.
“Are you all right?” asked Zelach, kneeling in front of Sasha.
“I don’t know,” said Sasha, but he was reasonably certain that the words came out so softly that Zelach couldn’t hear them.
Zelach touched his partner’s arm and said, “I’ll be back in an instant.”
Sasha tried to nod and looked at the boys, small, angry-faced children around a dark maypole. The two older ones glared at Sasha with hatred, and the oldest one said, “Why didn’t you say you were a cop?”
Sasha didn’t answer. He fumbled to put his weapon back in its holster and thought he succeeded. He felt himself passing out.
“The widow is calling for an ambulance,” Zelach called, coming back to Sasha, who nodded, eyes closed.
“He’s dying,” said the oldest boy.
By now faces were appearing at windows. People looked out of their dark little caves at the sight below them.
Zelach rose, stepped to the three boys, and hit the oldest one with the back of his hand directly in the face. The boy’s nose began to bleed, and blood appeared in his mouth, covering his teeth. He looked like a pale-faced vampire, and worst of all he did not cry. He did not even look angry. He simply glared into the face of the policeman, who considered hitting him again but changed his mind. The first blows he had struck against the children had been to protect Sasha. This blow had been in anger. Zelach had no blows left in him, and at this point he was sure they would do no good.
“Stay awake, Sasha Tkach,” Zelach said, moving quickly toward his fallen friend. “I think I already hear the sound of a police van. Stay awake.”
Sasha tried.
He failed.
Karpo made what proved to be the mistake of stopping at his office. It should have been safe. It was well after midnight. The lights were out in the Office of Special Investigation, but before his finger finished flipping the switch, Karpo knew that he was not alone, that someone had been sitting in the darkness.
The man was seated in Karpo’s cubicle, at Karpo’s desk. It was Hamilton, the FBI agent. He looked dressed for the day, suit pressed, clean-shaven, the faint smell of aftershave lotion on his face.
Karpo stood in front of the man, who handed him a sealed envelope. Karpo opened the envelope and read the message, which was signed by both Chief Inspector Rostnikov and Colonel Snitkonoy. The message was brief. Karpo was ordered to surrender to the FBI agent all the information he had gathered on the gang called the Beasts and possible nuclear-weapons dealers. He was then to follow all of Hamilton’s orders in pursuit of the investigation. In short, he was working for the American on the search for Mathilde’s killers.
Hamilton pointed to the seat next to the desk.
“Are you ordering me to sit?”
“No,” said Hamilton. “Inviting you.”
“I decline the invitation.”
Hamilton nodded his head in acceptance, took a small tape recorder from his pocket, and said, “I understand you had a relationship with the woman who was murdered.”
Karpo did not respond. He had not been asked a question and felt no willingness to cooperate, though he would do what Rostnikov ordered.
“I talked to the man whose thumbs you broke,” said Hamilton. “I assume it was he who broke your finger.”
Karpo said nothing.
“If he ever gets out of prison, he’ll be coming after you.”
Karpo didn’t think the man would come out of prison alive, but still he said nothing.
“Assuming you do find some individual or individuals you think are responsible, what do you plan to do? Break their thumbs?”
“No,” said Karpo, at near attention. “I plan to execute them.”
Hamilton shook his head and said, “No. You will not execute them.”
Karpo said nothing.
“You will not execute them,” Hamilton repeated. “That is an order.”
Karpo did not respond. He had little imagination, but he was suddenly aware of the fact that a Russian police officer was under the direct command of an American FBI agent, who was no longer the enemy but rather was now his superior.
Hamilton pushed a button on the tape recorder and said, “Tell me everything you know about this case.”
It had been a bad day and was about to be a far worse night for Artiom Solovyov. A few weeks ago he had been an automobile mechanic with a small but successful business. He had, with Boris, his one assistant, catered to the newly rich, mostly the Chechen mafia and their associates, who referred him to others. Business was growing, and one of his customers, who looked something like an American Indian, told him that if Artiom ever needed particular auto parts, he could help him.
Artiom worked every day. He liked cars. Cars seemed to like him. At night he would go home, get out of his greasy overalls, shower, and change. Artiom liked to go out. He had a few favorite bars, knew a few women. Sometimes he just liked to stay home in his robe, feet bare, watching television. He had been a happy, slightly heavy, dark man with a weary, handsome face and a perpetual and not entirely assumed look of stupidity, the result of heredity principally but not exclusively. It was that very appearance of open, dark good looks and stupidity that made his customers trust him.
From time to time a female customer would catch his eye, give him a smile. Nothing had ever come of it. Nothing was meant to. And then she happened, Anna Porvinovich. He was completely unprepared.
He was taking a shower after work, singing an American song about purple skies, when he heard a loud knock at the door. He turned off the shower, threw on his robe, and stamped the water off his large feet onto the carpeted floor as he walked. He had checked his peephole first and could tell only that it was a woman. He opened the door and stepped back, trying to comb back his hair with his fingers.
“Mrs. Porvinovich,” he said as she moved past him into the room.
She had been dressed, he remembered, in a red and white, very tight dress, and her mouth matched the red in the dress. She smelled like vanilla and something he did not recognize. She pushed the door closed behind her, surveyed the mess of a room, and turned to him. Standing only a few feet in front of him, she seemed a bit older than she had appeared earlier, when she’d stood a car-length away. In fact, Artiom was sure, she was almost certainly older than he, which instead of calming him, gave him an immediate erection.