Drozhkin started to rise again but changed his mind, and Rostnikov moved slowly to the door.
“Thank you, Colonel,” Rostnikov said.
The K.G.B. officer did not answer.
Zhenya was waiting outside the door to escort Rostnikov out, but Rostnikov had no intention of rushing after him. He walked slowly, and Zhenya was forced to stop and wait twice.
At the door, Rostnkov said “Thank you, comrade,” to the retreating back of Zhenya and moved to the waiting car.
“Next time you wait for me,” Rostnikov said, sinking back into the seat, “turn off the engine. You waste petrol.”
“Yes, sir,” said the driver.
A blanket of heat lay on Sonya Granovsky like a wet cat, as she tried to read by the light of the single bulb in the apartment on Dimitry Ulanov Street. She was as far from where her husband’s body had been as she could be. The police had tried to keep her from returning, but she had threatened to go to the housing board. The apartment was hers. If they had completed their investigation, she wanted to return with her daughter. Apartments were not easy to get and she didn’t want this one picked cold by some policeman who wanted to move his family in over the body of her husband. She would fight them at every step. She didn’t know why the apartment was so warm. Perhaps it wasn’t warm at all. Perhaps she was feverish. It was possible.
It was almost dawn. In the hall two tenants were arguing about something. She could make out few of their words and didn’t want to listen to them. She had been unable to sleep. In the other room, her daughter Natasha lay dreaming fitfully, tossing and moaning. There was nothing Sonya wanted to do, but what she wanted least was to sit alone in that smothering dark room. It had, she admitted, been terrible here when Aleksander was alive. They had never been happy and she had never liked him, though she had loved him and respected him. He had provided the focus of meaning in her life. She knew no other.
The voices in the hall grew louder, a man and a woman. It had something to do with using hot water. Sonya wanted to go to the door and shout at them to be quiet, but she couldn’t bear to be part of what would follow such an act. She couldn’t rise. Moist hands of heat pushed her down trickling wet under her print dress, between her breasts and thighs, into the hair between her legs, making her shudder and whimper. She closed her eyes again and opened them to her daughter standing in the door to the second room.
“What’s the noise?” she asked sleepily.
Sonya thought there was contempt in the girl’s eyes as she looked down at her, as if she knew her thoughts and feelings, as if she probed her mind and body and shame. Sonya had seen this look in Aleksander’s eyes.
“Just some neighbors fighting, arguing,” Sonya said. “Go back to sleep for a while. Are you warm?”
Natasha, whose hair was wound in braids, was wearing long-sleeved flannel pajamas that had been Sonya’s.
“No,” said the girl, heading back into the dark room.
The fight stopped abruptly in the hall, and a door closed. Footsteps went down the corridor, and there was silence. Sonya pushed herself from the chair, her back soaked with sweat and her bare lower legs sticky. The wooden floor boards creaked when she crossed the room and went to look out the window into near darkness.
The knock at the door was firm and insistent. Sonya started and wasn’t sure that it had been a real sound and not just something in her head. Then it came again.
“Coming,” she said. It was probably her brother Nikolai, stopping to see her on the way to work.
Before opening the door, Sonya paused at the wall to look at the photograph of her and Aleksander on the day of their wedding. She knew that it would soon become a ritual, a requirement. She would have to look at the photograph every time she passed. There were no words to give to this sensation, but it was welling in her nonetheless.
Sonya opened the door, not to the pale sad face of her brother, but to the figure of a young man in a black coat.
“Ilyusha,” she said softly. “What are you doing here?”
He moved quickly past her.
“Is Natasha here?” he said, looking around.
“Yes,” Sonya said confused. “What is wrong?”
He paused for a moment and looked at her. He looked as if he had not slept in days. Certainly he had not shaved.
“Don’t you know about Marie?” he asked, his hands plunged deeply into his pockets.
“Marie? No. What?”
“She’s dead,” he said, taking a step toward her. Sonya Granovsky stepped back.
“Dead?”
“Dead, dead, dead,” he repeated. “And so is Aleksander. ”
“I know,” said Sonya softly. “Please, Ilyusha, sit down. I’ll make some tea and we’ll talk.” She moved toward the kettle, but Malenko stepped in her way.
“Do you know who killed Aleksander?” he whispered.
“A man named Vonovich,” she said. “I know you’re upset Ilyusha, but you’ve got to keep quiet. Natasha is sleeping. It’s been very hard for her.”
Malenko shook his head and ran his hand through his hair.
“Hard for her,” he chuckled.
“Ilyusha, are you sure Marie is dead?” Sonya Granovsky said softly. “Maybe you’re just upset by what happened to Aleksander and-”
Ilyusha Malenko’s sudden move forward sent her staggering back. Panic was in his eyes.
“Oh no,” he said, holding his hand out while the other remained in his coat pocket. “That’s what happened before. I wasn’t sure what had happened, but I proved it with the cab driver. I proved it. It did happen. She is dead. I hit her and hung her up. I killed her and the cab driver and Alek. I did. You aren’t going to convince me that I didn’t.”
His hand came out of his pocket slowly, holding a large, heavy pair of rusty scissors.
“Ilyusha,” Sonya started to scream.
“But it’s not enough,” he said, stepping toward her. “Simon convinced me, showed me, it’s not enough. He’s the one I should have listened to all the time. I’m going to make things even.”
Sonya was paralyzed with fear. She imagined herself turning to run, feeling the thud of a heavy blow to her back, and knowing that filmy thing in his hand was plunging into her. There was nowhere to run. She stood in confusion and terror as he moved to her.
“I’ll explain,” he said, holding his free hand up to his lips. “Let’s be quiet and not wake Natasha yet. I’ll explain and you’ll understand why I will do what I must do.”
At the moment Ilyusha Malenko had entered the Granovsky apartment on Dimitry Ulanov Street, Porfiry Rostnikov was on his way back to his office from his meeting with Colonel Drozhkin. He weighed in his mind the possibility of trading what he knew for the safety of his son. The deliberation was brief. He would do what he could to protect Iosef. He would trade with the odious colonel. What difference did it make if Malenko went to Siberia for killing his wife or for killing Granovsky and the cab driver too? The K.G.B. wanted it finished so the political crisis could end. Then so be it, it was ended. Of course it meant that Vonovich would go to trial and be quickly convicted of murders he did not commit, but Rostnikov was also convinced that Vonovich had murdered some unknown human in his past. It didn’t matter to Rostnikov who murdered whom as long as the killers were all caught, stopped, and punished. What nagged Rostnikov was something much more basic than that. The “who” was no longer important. What was important was “why.”
“Wait,” he called to the driver as they turned down the street less than a block from Petrovka. “We have someplace else to go.”
The driver made a broad U-turn and headed back where he was told without comment. There was no time to waste. Rostnikov would confront Lvov directly and see what he could discover. Tkach had had two chances, but there was a limit to the amount of time he could give the young man when the issues were so important. There was a chance, Rostnikov realized, that he had given Tkach too much authority, had relied too heavily on him, had treated him and viewed him as a substitute son, a hedge against the possible loss of Iosef. If it were true, it may have jeopardized this investigation, for Tkach was not yet worthy of the responsibility he had been given.