“Maya is coming back tomorrow,” he said.
“I am pleased to hear that,” said Rostnikov. “You can call her. Tell her to move in with the children, get resettled, have the apartment to herself. Does Lydia know Maya is coming back?”
“Yes,” said Sasha. “I should be here.”
“Perhaps not” said Rostnikov. “Perhaps Maya would welcome a few days or so without the awkwardness of reunion. And you would have time away from Lydia.”
“That would be good,” Sasha admitted.
“Can you keep her away from Maya and the children?”
“No,” said Sasha. “She paid for their return tickets. She wants to see her grandchildren. Maya knows. She understands.”
“Good. Tonight. Number-two train. I’ll pick you up in a cab around ten. Have you ever been to Siberia?”
“No,” said Sasha.
“It can be cold, beautiful,” said Rostnikov. It can also be quite deadly, he thought.
“Do I have a choice?” asked Sasha.
“Refusal is always an option, but refusal has consequences,” said Rostnikov. “That is not a threat, Sasha. It is an essential moral essence of life.”
“I have some work to finish,” said Sasha, standing.
“Call Maya from here; your office,” said Rostnikov. “It is police business. I’m sure Director Yaklovev will not mind.” He was equally certain that the Yak was listening to the conversation. “Pack enough for seven days,” he added.
If things went well and they found the courier and the package, they might be back sooner, possibly much sooner, but they had to be prepared to travel all the way to Vladivostok if necessary.
Sasha nodded and left the office.
Rostnikov thought the younger detective was in serious need of a change of scenery. It would probably be snowing in Siberia. He could spend hours looking out at mountains, losing himself in a meditation he would not recognize as meditation.
Rostnikov sat back and turned his chair toward the window so he could watch the snow and plan how he was to find his quarry, on a train full of people, when he had no idea who he might be looking for.
A bag of half a million American dollars, or deutsche marks or French francs or British pounds, would be reasonably large even if the bills were in large denominations. Starting with the first-class passengers, he would have Sasha make his way through the train, examining every piece of luggage. A passenger who carried a sizeable bag with him or her at all times would be a certain target. Distracting the carrier might be difficult but Rostnikov enjoyed a game of distraction.
Because of his leg, Rostnikovs task would be the diversion of individual passengers. The agile and innocent-appearing Sasha Tkach would do the search of each compartment.
It was a reasonable plan, but there had to be contingencies. He would work them out. Later he would work them out.
But now he began to think seriously about lunch.
Chapter Five
There were plainclothes police officers at every one of the twenty-two stops of the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya line, the orange line, of the Moscow metro. Some carried newspapers, pretending to read. Others carried briefcases and wore watches, which they checked periodically as if they were late for an important meeting. A few were more creative.
Most of the officers, regular users of the metro system themselves, were aware that the more successful businessmen, government officials, and Mafiosi of the city seldom used the underground. Although there was a clear class distinction, there were still many well-dressed men in the age group of the men who had been attacked.
One young officer named Mariankyov assigned to the Cheryomushki station dressed up like a gypsy, or what he thought a gypsy looked like. He was the most conspicuous of all the police officers. Gypsy men alone on the platform at a metro station or at a bus stop were open warnings that a pickpocket was present. The truth was that the gypsy pickpockets had long since learned to dress more conservatively.
People avoided Mariankyov, except for one old man in an overcoat who bumped into him as he rushed to catch a departing train. Moments later Mariankyov discovered that his pocket had been picked.
By noon, five women had been picked up based upon their resemblance to the drawing each officer carried in his memory and his pocket. The women were brought to Elena Timofeyeva and Iosef Rostnikov, who headquartered in a small office at the Tretyakovskaya station at the center of the line.
One of the women was the wife of a Portuguese leather buyer. The woman had been in Moscow for only one day and carried no knife. She was released.
Another woman was an actress with the Moscow Theater Company. Iosef knew her slightly from his theater days. She carried no knife and found the arrest interesting. She was released.
The third woman did have a small folding knife in her purse, along with a can of Mace. She was terrified of muggers and not particularly at ease with the police. She had once been accosted by a drunk on her way to work as a hotel maid. She was released.
The fourth woman was Chinese. She was released.
The fifth woman was not a woman at all but a transvestite prostitute coming home from an unsuccessful morning, which did not surprise either of the detectives since the man was incredibly homely. He carried a razor in his pocket. It was an ancient straight razor. He said the sight of it usually deterred people who did not understand or appreciate alternative life-styles and careers. He was released.
None of those arrested had a sprained wrist.
While all this was going on, more than fifty thousand people traveled to work, home, sightseeing, and nowhere in particular on the metro system. The system opened each morning at six and closed at one the following morning. That gave the cleaning crews a little over five hours to clean the platforms, walls, pillars, and tracks, and repair any broken windows or chipped paint. The cleaning crews worked quickly and generally efficiently, depending on who headed each particular crew.
There was a lack of funds for metro repairs and cleaning, though the stations were more cosmetically acceptable than the interior of most of the city’s hotels. The metro system was a symbol of Russian accomplishment, a source of pride along with the space program and the Trans-Siberian Railroad system. The mayor of Moscow was a man who built his career on the image of the city, and he saw to it that the metro stations were clean and well-maintained. Efficient, sometimes magnificent, each station-all built during the Stalin era-was in a different style.
Guidebooks told tourists that they should not miss a tour of the metro stations, and few of them did.
One of the most opulent examples of the old Soviet system was the Komsomolskaya station, dedicated to the Komsomol, the Young Communist League, whose members provided labor during construction of the metro.
Many metro stations had undergone name changes after the fall of the Soviet Union. If the Komsomolskaya had undergone such a change, few Moscovites who rode it were aware of this rejection of Communism. It was still and would probably remain the Komsomol station to all who rode it.
One of the regular riders was Toomas Vana. Toomas, born in Tallinn in Estonia, had come to Moscow to work in the office of the state gas company when he was fourteen. His father had been an unpopular and very corrupt commissar in Estonia, who thought the way for his son to achieve political position at a high level in the Soviet Union was to move the boy to Moscow. Toomas had, indeed, moved up, but not politically. He earned his university degree and developed a passion for gas. He wanted, not political power, but to be the world’s foremost authority on natural gas and its uses. At the age of forty-six he was certainly among the elite of the world in that knowledge.
And Toomas had a very valuable skill which added to his stature. Tallinn, Estonia, is sixty miles across the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki. The Estonians of the region spoke a language almost identical to that of Finland, and until the age of fourteen when he was sent off to Moscow he had regularly listened to and watched Finnish television, a link to the Western world available to few in the Soviet Union.