All police officers in the system work for the procurator’s office. The Procurator General is appointed to his office for seven years, the longest term of any Soviet officer. Working under him or her are subordinate procurators, who are appointed for five years at a time. The job of the procurator’s office is enormous: to sanction arrests, supervise investigations, appear at trials, handle execution of sentences, and supervise detention. The Procurator General’s office is police, district attorney, warden and if necessary, executioner. The procurators of Moscow are very busy.
Which is why Procurator Anna Timofeyeva was still at her desk in the huge central police complex called Petrovka, on Petrovka Street. Petrovka consists of two ten-story L-shaped buildings which most Muscovites regard with a combination of awe and fear. Procurator Timofeyeva’s office was a small, sparsely furnished room on the second floor of Building #1. Below her were the kennels where the German shepherds stalked and sometimes barked restlessly when they were not on patrol. At two in the morning, most of the dogs were out, but Procurator Timofeyeva did not notice the time nor the absence of the dogs she could hear during the daylight hours. She was a thick box of a woman, about fifty, officious and hard working. She knew that she looked formidable in her striped shirt and dark blue procurator’s uniform, and she wished to look formidable. Therefore she wore the uniform most of the time, though it was not required. On her desk, as she drank cold tea, was a pile of reports from investigators on various crimes which were her responsibility. The top report, #30241, was on a case of hooliganism in which a group of drunks in a café had refused to leave at the 11:30 closing time. Procurator Timofeyeva knew from the report that one of the drunks was a Party member. She would try to shame him before the judge, point out what terrible behavior that was from a Communist when such great difficulties existed in establishing a new moral order.
Exactly how extensive those difficulties were in the case of crime was somewhat of a mystery even to Procurator Timofeyeva since statistics were never made public. However, judging from the pile of reports on her desk, the difficulties were extensive. There were cases of theft, drunkenness, black market sale of typewriters, refusals to pay alimony, murder. The pile never got smaller in spite of the eighteen hours a day the Procurator put in. This particular pile would in fact get much larger before it became smaller.
The Procurator General himself had called her no more than half an hour earlier. She had listened, asking questions only when it was expected. The conversation lasted no more than five minutes, after which she called the Petrovka motor pool and ordered a police car to go to the apartment of Inspector Rostnikov and bring him in immediately. She had watched the yellow Volga with the blue horizontal stripe pull silently into the wide street from her window as she wondered why the murder of Aleksander Granovsky was being turned over to the police and not the K.G.B.
Rostnikov had been sleeping in his apartment on Krasikov Street not more than two blocks from that of the Granovskys when the knock had come at his door. He had been dreaming of bench pressing four hundred pounds and had been grunting under the effort. His pained groans had awakened his wife, who was sure he was dreaming of some terrible sight witnessed during some investigation in his past.
“Porfiry,” his wife said, shaking him gently. “Porfiry, there is a policeman at the door for you.”
Rostnikov woke slowly to the voice telling him the police had come for him. That, he felt sure, was nonsense. He was a policeman, and it was he who knocked at doors in the night. Gradually, the four hundred pounds floated away and he forced himself awake.
“Time?” he said, sitting up at the side of the bed.
“After two,” Sarah answered.
He was about to ask if Iosif were up and then remembered that his son, their son, rashly named for Stalin in a moment of youthful patriotism, was in the army now and stationed somewhere near Kiev. Rostnikov pulled himself from the bed, touched his wife’s cheek reassuringly and limped across the room. He was a powerful, compact man of fifty-two, who lifted weights to compensate his body for the injury to his leg. In 1941 he had caught a piece of metal in that leg during the battle of Rostov. It was so long ago that he didn’t even remember what it was like to walk without dragging the leg behind him.
The young policeman was standing in the doorway, afraid to step into an inspector’s home and track snow. He held his fur cap in his hand.
“You are to come with me to Procurator Timofeyeva’s office immediately,” the boy said almost apologetically.
Rostnikov rubbed his hand across his stubble and held the other up to indicate to the young man that he would be with him in a few minutes. The young policeman looked relieved.
After nearly thirty years as an inspector of police, Rostnikov knew better than to ask the young officer what it was about. The boy would have been told nothing. In five minutes, Rostnikov was out of his apartment, which was no larger than that of the dead Granovsky, and on his way to Petrovka. He tried to get back to his wonderful dream as he rocked in the back seat of the Volga, but the dream was gone. Rostnikov sighed, accepted its loss, and opened his eyes.
When he arrived at Procurator Timofeyeva’s office, Rostnikov entered slowly after knocking and sat in the soft black chair across from the Procurator. She in turn sat behind her desk in a straight wooden chair. Rostnikov wasn’t sure if she gave her guests the more comfortable chair to make them feel guilty about having greater immediate comfort or because she really preferred discomfort. He had come to the tentative conclusion that it was discomfort for herself she sought. Above her head, on the wall, was a picture of Lenin as a young man, emerging from his cell-like room with a wan smile. Rostnikov had long ago concluded that the picture was not just a political necessity but a source of inspiration to Comrade Timofeyeva. He sometimes imagined her as a happy convert to the religion of Communism. He had, however, learned to have great respect for her zeal and ability.
Timofeyeva looked across her desk at the investigator known widely as “the washtub.” She offered him a cup of cold tea, and he accepted it, reaching out a rather hairy hand to take it in.
“What do you know of Aleksander Granovsky?” she asked, trying to ignore the pile of work on her desk and concentrate on this new problem. She did not think in terms of complaint. She was a loyal party member. If a task was given to her, it was necessary, and she would simply have to find the time for it. Her doctor had warned her about her work load and her heart, but she had decided to put aside the occasional pains she felt, which he had told her were warnings to slow down and relax.
“I’ve read the papers, heard the news,” shrugged Rostnikov, still wearing his coat pulled snugly around Him. Comrade Procurator’s office was always cold.
“Granovsky is dead,” she said. “Murdered. At about eleven, someone went to his apartment and plunged a rusty sickle into his chest. Apparently, it was a madman who also threw a law book through the window before he fled.”
“His trial was to have been the day after tomorrow?” Rostnikov asked.
“Yes.”
“Can I ask why he was not in prison?”
“He welcomed the trial,” Timofeyeva said, drinking some sugarless cold tea. “It was decided to be a good gesture.”
“The K.G.B.?” Rostnikov tried.
“They were watching him,” she said slowly, “but they did not see who killed him.”
“And the K.G.B. doesn’t want to handle the investigation?” Rostnikov went on, knowing he was treading dangerously.
“What do you wish to discover, Tovarisheh?” she said with a cold look, which did nothing to intimidate Rostnikov, who was suddenly very hungry.