“With pleasure,” said Lunacharski as the waiter placed the steaming plate before him.
“You said, Colonel, that you have information on two cases?”
“The other is a bit more delicate,” said Lunacharski, unsure of how to avoid eating any of the pungent creamed meat before him. “It involves the daughter of a Syrian diplomat.”
“The Durahaman girl.” On the horizon Snitkonoy just barely caught a glimpse of the sculpture of the Worker and Collective Farm Woman. In a moment he would be able to see the Space Obelisk that commemorates the progress of the Soviet people in mastering outer space.
“The case involves the murder of a Russian citizen by a known Russian criminal,” said Lunacharski. “However, the criminal was hired by the Syrian oil minister to murder his daughter’s Jewish lover. This information has also been passed on to the general.”
“The Syrian did not hire Leonid Dovnik to murder Grisha Zalinsky,” said the Wolfhound, abandoning his examination of the Moscow panorama and turning to his meal. “Dovnik was hired by the girl, Amira Durahaman. Strogonoff is a bit off I think, don’t you?”
Lunacharski looked down at his food, which he had not touched.
“No matter,” said the Wolfhound with a sigh. “It is edible. The girl, according to Dovnik, who is now in our custody, wanted to get away from her father and her boyfriend so she could run away with a married British businessman. The boyfriend threatened to tell her father, and the girl paid a woman named Tatyana to have Zalinsky killed. We have reason to believe that the Tatyana woman was murdered by the Syrian in an attempt to cover up his daughter’s crime.”
“Then we can use the information about the girl to get the father to-”
“I’m afraid not,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “The father has insisted that the girl be tried by a Russian court. He claims that Dovnik’s story is a lie. Since the woman Tatyana cannot be found to confirm the tale and Dovnik is a known criminal … Well. We have interviewed the girl at the Syrian embassy and she claims that she knows nothing about the murder. Lovely girl, I understand. Quite innocent looking. She suggests that Dovnik and the Tatyana woman did it all in the hope of extorting money from her father. The father claims he has a tape of a phone call made by this Tatyana, offering to find the daughter for a fee. We are now in the process of compiling a detailed account of her whereabouts while she was missing. She went from Zalinsky to Chesney and then moved in with a man named Arbanik who we suspect may be an Israeli agent. It seems the girl is attracted to the enemy, whether to provoke her father or … but who can say. Though our information is not complete, Interpol has sent us a preliminary report documenting that when she was fifteen years old a similar situation, including the accidental death of a young man, took place while she was with her father in Paris. Have you anything else that might be of service to us in our work?”
“And this, too, has been brought to the attention of-”
“Secretary Panyushkin, yes,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “A pity you had not come to me a bit sooner, so that your report, which seems to be somewhat in error, could be coordinated with our investigation. Do you have any other assistance you wish to give my department, Colonel?”
“Not at the moment,” said Lunacharski. He plunged his fork deeply into a square of cream-covered meat that looked absolutely repulsive to him, but he forced himself to raise it to his mouth.
“What do you think?” asked the Wolfhound.
“Most palatable,” said Lunacharski.
“You don’t find it a little tough? Just a bit too hard to swallow?”
“Not at all,” said Lunacharski. “It is delicious.”
Lunacharski had not simply underestimated this great maned peacock and his staff, he had underestimated him badly. Lunacharski’s impulse was to make an excuse, to claim another appointment, to run. He had errors to cover and reports to retrieve, if possible. But he would force himself to stay, to finish the food, even to have coffee with Colonel Snitkonoy.
Lunacharski was a man of patience. There would be changes in his staff and there would be another time, and at this other time Colonel Vladimir Lunacharski would be far better prepared.
At midnight, in the town of Arkush, in the church with four towers, Aleksandr Merhum helped the new priest put on his robes.
The ritual was familiar, for many times the boy had helped his grandfather perform the same ritual.
This priest was young and serious. He neither spoke nor sang under his breath. He neither noticed Aleksandr nor looked away from him, and this was fine with the boy.
When he was ready, the priest nodded to the boy and moved to the door beyond which the soft sound of singing could already be heard.
“You are the grandson of Father Merhum,” the priest said.
Aleksandr looked up at the man. His beard was long but showed no gray.
“Yes,” he said.
“You know the Gospels,” said the priest.
“Some, Father.”
“What comes at this moment to the mind of the grandson of Father Merhum?”
Without knowing why, Aleksandr Merhum thought of his father and mother, who were beyond the door waiting for the service to begin. Then he thought of the policeman with the sad eyes and the bad leg. Finally, he thought of Sister Nina and his grandfather, and the boy said, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him and without him was not anything made that was made.”
“Mir vsyem,” said the priest. “Peace be with you.”
“Spasi gospodi” answered the boy. “God save you.”
The priest opened the door, and the sound of voices came in. As he closed it behind him there was silence again. Alone, the boy continued the passage from Saint John which he had begun:
“In him was life and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it.”
Then the boy knelt, lifted the loose floorboard, and reached into the darkness. He pulled out the thick notebook he had seen his grandfather put there when the priest thought he was unobserved.
The boy carefully put the board back in place and moved to the table. Beyond the wall the voice of the new priest called out to the congregation.
Aleksandr Merhum opened the book and began to read.
HOLY FATHER, TO ACCEPT THE SINS YOU HAVE IN YOUR WISDOM IMPRESSED ON THIS WEAK VESSEL WHICH IS THE BODY OF VASILI MERHUM, I HEREBY COMMIT THIS CONFESSION IN THE YEAR OF OUR LORD 1962:
In the Spring of the year 1938, in the village in which my father was priest, two weeks and ten days following my 15th birthday I entered for the first of many times the bed of Yelena Yozhgov, the mother of my best friend Oleg Yozhgov.
Since that time, I have committed many sins of the flesh and mind and sought in vain to control this test you have given me.
I will herein enscribe all of my transgressions in the hope that it will show me the path to righteousness.
In the sanctuary, the voice of the congregation swelled in song. Young Aleksandr Merhum continued to read. He understood little of what he read, but he knew that he had discovered a terrible and powerful secret. The policeman with the bad leg had known, but Aleksandr had not been weak. He had learned well from his grandfather, and the book would teach him more.
But it was well past the time he should have joined the congregation, so Aleksandr closed his grandfather’s book. He returned the book to the hiding place below the loose floorboard, straightened his cloak and walked to the side door that led to the narrow street. He would walk around and enter the front of the church.
SIXTEEN
“You have twenty minutes,” Sarah said. She was looking at the table, which was really the regular kitchen table and the metal folding table, covered with the white embossed linen cloth her mother had given her almost twenty years ago. With the help of Lydia Tkach, Sarah had set an appetizing table of zahkooskee, appetizers, including dishes of eggplant; caviar; blinis; cabbage mixed with onions, apples, and sugar; egg salad; and sprats. Four bottles of red wine and a bottle of cognac stood in the center of the table.