“The man you are helping murdered the Jew, Zalinsky,” said Durahaman.
A sound came from the throat of Leonid Dovnik, and Elena thought he might be choking on his tongue. Then she realized, when the sound did not stop, that he was laughing.
“I heard him confess,” said Durahaman. “I will be happy to give a full deposition,”
And still Leonid Dovnik, who leaned heavily on Elena Timofeyeva and bled upon her coat, continued to laugh. “Come before a Russian judge and tell him who really killed Zalinsky,” he croaked. “Tell him where Tatyana is.”
“Who killed Zalinsky?” asked Sasha.
“I did, but his daughter paid us to do it.” Laughing, Leonid Dovnik tried to point at the man in the window. “She paid Tatyana. She had her Jew lover killed so she could run to England. Let him come before a Russian judge and deny it.”
Elena and Sasha looked up at the man in the window, but he made no reply and they could see from his face that the killer in the leather jacket was telling the truth.
FIFTEEN
Rostnikov sat at the table in Father Merhum’s house where the nun had been hacked to death only a day before. The room had been scrubbed clean, and the icons, those that had not been destroyed, were back on display. Where the ax had been removed from the wall a deep, black scar remained. On the small table in front of the policeman were a pot of tea, two glasses, and a plate on which rested half a loaf of dark bread and an ancient bread knife.
In the chair in which Emil Karpo had sat talking to Sister Nina, Rostnikov drew the same picture for the twentieth time in the last three days. It had not changed greatly, but there were some subtle revisions. His bed did not take up quite so much space. The table had moved closer to the wall and under the window. The rug on the floor was not quite so patterned. All in all the room looked far less exotic than he had at first remembered.
The room was finished. There was an end to it. Now he would have to move on to the next step, remembering the faces of his mother and father. Porfiry Petrovich knew that would be much more difficult. He pushed the small pad aside and looked at Emil Karpo.
“He is waiting,” said Karpo.
“Yes,” said Rostnikov with a sigh. “You want to be here?”
“No,” said Karpo.
“Then send him in.”
Karpo got up and moved toward the door.
“Emil,” Rostnikov said. “Shall we simply shoot him and say he was trying to escape?”
“You would not do that,” said Karpo.
“Would you?”
“No, I would not.”
“Because you believe in the law?”
“Because I accept the law.”
“Father Merhum and Sister Nina believed in a higher law,” said Rostnikov. “They had faith. Does the faith of those you have seen here tempt you, Emil Karpo?”
“One cannot believe what one does not believe,” said Karpo. “To pretend to do so fools everyone but oneself.”
“Very philosophical, Emil.”
“Hegel,” said Karpo, and moved to the door.
When he opened it, Vadim Petrov stepped in. He wore no hat. His ears were bright red from the afternoon wind and his hair a brambled bush.
Karpo stepped outside and closed the door. Petrov moved across the room toward Rostnikov. “The other policeman told me you wanted to see me. I came right over,” he said.
“Please sit,” said Rostnikov. “I prefer not to look up.”
Petrov eyed the chair across from Rostnikov and sat wearily.
“Do you know where our Officer Gonsk might be?” Rostnikov asked.
“Looking for Peotor, I suppose,” said Vadim Petrov.
“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “You look tired.”
“I’ve had little sleep since this began,” said Petrov. The darkness under the farmer’s eyes looked painted. His hair needed washing and his clothes looked slept in.
“You’ve had a great responsibility,” said Rostnikov.
Petrov looked up at the policeman, who continued, “Party chair, leader of the community, keeper of secrets.”
Petrov said nothing.
“May I ask you a question, Comrade Petrov?”
Petrov looked up.
“Do you have a scar on your chest?”
Petrov looked away.
“It won’t be difficult to find out,” said Rostnikov gently.
“I have nothing to say,” said Petrov.
“Then I will speak,” Rostnikov continued, looking down at the notes before him. “You came to Arkush in late April of 1959. You were twenty years old. You came in search of your father, the priest. You identified yourself to him and agreed not to reveal your identity. You remained close to him, even accompanied him on a religious mission to protect a monastery. Shortly after you returned, in 1974, you joined the Communist party and became a zealous leader who opposed the church. Then, two days ago, you murdered your own father with an ax.”
Petrov turned his gray eyes to the policeman.
“And yesterday,” Rostnikov added, “you murdered a nun. At least that is what makes sense to me. If you have any other explanation, let’s have some tea and discuss it.”
“Then she died for nothing,” Petrov muttered.
“I didn’t hear …” said Rostnikov.
“Sister Nina,” he said. “She died for nothing.”
“Would you like tea?” asked Rostnikov.
“Yes,” said Petrov.
Rostnikov poured and handed the tepid glass across to the farmer, who took it in his large hand. The policeman waited silently while the man drank.
“My mother lived in the small town near Kiev where my father was born,” said Petrov. “Merhum was a boy, but he seduced her, more than once. The son of a priest who would become a priest seduced a married woman, the mother of his closest friend, Oleg Yozhgov.”
“Oleg,” said Rostnikov.
“Oleg,” repeated Petrov. “Merhum, his father, and his family fled the village when Stalin’s purge of priests began in the west. He did not know that my mother was pregnant with me. I barely remember my half-brother Oleg. He and his father, Viktor, were forced into the army when the Nazis came. I was a little boy. They died in the war. My mother survived, and when I was eighteen, just before I left for my army service, she told me of my real father. He was not as famous as he later became, but his name was known and she told me of him and where he could be found. She thought if I revealed myself to him, he would take me in with open arms. I had no such illusions, but I wanted to find him, to face him. My mother died when I was in the army. I had nothing to go back to in my village, so I took the name of Petrov and came to Arkush. More tea, please.”
Rostnikov poured another glass and Petrov drank it quickly. Then he held out his glass for more.
“He had a family,” Petrov went on. “Wife and son. He did not deny me, but he did not want to reveal my identity. I accepted that. I joined his faith, believed in him, and then, little by little, I learned.” He stopped and looked down at his empty glass.
“You learned?”
“That he had only begun with my mother, that he had touched many women, girls, taken them, lied to them. Though my wife was ill by then, dying, he even made overtures to her. I turned from him, but I didn’t renounce him. And then he had a son, my brother, and later a grandson. I had no children, no family. I befriended Peotor and his family. Helped them. Peotor was weakened, beaten, almost broken by our father’s strength. I supported him.”
“But you never told him you were his brother?”
“No.”
“And then?” asked Rostnikov.
“He set himself upon Sonia, the wife of his son. The mother of his grandson. He took her, tricked her, and then shamed her. He made her … I found out about it three weeks ago. I went to him, told him to stop, said I would expose him. He said no one would believe it, that it would bring ridicule upon me, Sonia, Peotor, and Aleksandr. I tried and he said to me … he said to me, ‘Vadim, there is much that I believe in in this world. I do the work of God and man with my full heart, but the Lord has also given me a lust that age has not ended. It is the burden I carry. I cannot overcome it. In many ways that which I have accomplished has come from the guilt I feel because of what I am.’ That is what he said to me and that is why I killed him on the morning when he had planned a meeting in Moscow with Sonia. Sonia looks very much like my own mother’s pictures.”