Toomas traveled frequently to Finland to consult on that country’s attempts to expand its use of natural gas.
This morning Toomas did not have the correct change. He stopped at the change machine and then proceeded to the automatic gate and dropped in his coins.
The platform was crowded. It always was around lunchtime. Toomas stood against a pillar, briefcase in one hand, a report on the cost of pipeline repairs in the other. Moscow was heated and cooled by natural gas. The gas company was still a great government bureaucracy to be reckoned with, the largest natural-gas company in the world.
Had he not stood on this same platform at this same pillar thousands of times before he would certainly have looked up at the decorated arched ceiling with its massive, ornate, and multilamped chandeliers running the length of the platform longer than a soccer field and nearly as wide. He would have noted the arches above the pillars echoing the elegant medieval theme of the station. He might have looked straight up, as he had many years earlier, at the huge, multicolored mosaic of a warrior with shield and lance upon a prancing white horse and admired the elaborate design of curlicues and flowers that framed it.
But this was today and his mind was on rusting gas pipes.
He barely noticed the woman walking slowly in his direction. People were moving. She would pass him and move to the edge of the platform to look for an incoming train. Toomas never bothered to move for the train until he heard it coming with a roar down the tunnel. Then he would make a slow turn, always to the right, and place himself exactly where the train door would slide open. He knew the spot. He didn’t have to think about it. Now he heard the first distant rumble of the approaching train.
The woman stood in front of him. She was probably going to ask him a question about the train schedule, or perhaps she was going to ask him for some coins, which he would not give her. To encourage one is to encourage all, he thought. He read the report.
And then the report exploded in his hands, split in two, and he felt a sudden pain, saw a flash of bright light. The world turned into a sparkling light show. Fireworks. Strobe lights. A bomb, he thought. Terrorists. Chechins. A bomb. They had bombed underpasses and now a metro station. It made sense.
He knew he had slumped back against the flat pillar. Toomas did not panic. Someone or something was punching him in the stomach. An aftershock from a bomb? Wait. Was there a gas main under this station? A gas explosion? It had happened before, many times before, but there was no gas main under the platform or nearby.
His head ached. The fireworks stopped. The punching ceased, leaving nausea. Toomas felt himself passing out. At least he thought he was passing out. In fact, he was dying.
Inna Dalipovna stepped back and turned away from the falling man in the dark suit. She tucked the knife into her deep coat pocket. She would wash it when she got home. She would sharpen it with oil on the rectangular stone when she got home. She would use the knife to make dinner for her father tonight. She would use it to slice the sausage into the thin, almost transparent slices he liked to heap upon his bread.
The attack had been quick. Some people thought it was probably a husband and wife quarreling. Some people pretended to see nothing. Most on the crowded platform did not notice. When it was over, however, a woman screamed. Inna, now at the end of the platform, nearing the escalator steps, heard the scream above the noise of the crowd and the approaching train.
The screaming woman, who stood hand in hand with her six-year-old granddaughter, looked down at the man who lay before her, his right eye socket a small pool of blood, his neck pulsing red, and spots of darkness quickly forming and spreading on his white shirt and dark suit.
“Don’t be afraid, Grandma,” the child said. “It’s just a dead man.
Inna did not look back. Her wrist felt numb. She had used her right hand, had taped it thickly and tightly with white adhesive. She had planned to thrust without turning her hand, but when she had seen the man standing there, had known it would be him, she had forgotten everything, had gone into some kind of automatic state, had let it take over. And now she felt both pain and satisfaction. Only when she reached the street and stepped into the falling snow did she examine herself for bloodstains. She could see none. No one had looked at her strangely so she assumed that her face and neck were untouched, but she paused at a window to be sure.
The woman looking back at her was the one she saw each morning in the mirror. It was not her own face but the face of her mother.
No policeman had appeared during or immediately after Inna’s attack on Toomas Vana. There had been no policeman on the platform for a very good reason. None had been assigned to this station.
The Komsomolskaya station was on the red line, the Kirovsko-Frunzenskaya line, not on the line where Inna had attacked before.
Five minutes later when Elena and Iosef were informed of the murder they realized that there were now more than ninety stations where their killer might strike. To patrol the stations in two shifts would require about two hundred officers. The chances of their getting two hundred officers assigned to the case were nonexistent.
They would have to find another way to the woman or wait for her to make a mistake.
Sasha had tried to pack. It was useless. The scuffed but serviceable dark-leather suitcase that had once been his father’s lay open on the bed. His mother, who had been in the apartment uninvited when he arrived, had criticized him as he placed the first item, a pair of trousers, at the bottom of the case.
“You will squash it,” Lydia had shouted.
She was a wiry wraith who denied her near deafness, loved Sasha and her grandchildren to the point where she would die for them, and drove her son nearly to madness each time they spoke.
“It will be fine,” he said.
“You will pile things on it. It will wrinkle. You will not have a pair of decent pants. Where can you get pants cleaned and pressed on a train?”
He flattened the pants with the palms of his hands and reached for the first of the three shirts he had placed on the bed.
“That is not the way to fold them,” Lydia said, arms folded.
“It will be fine,” Sasha said, the first sign of impending defeat in his tone.
“You fold along the seam, sleeves back,” she said. “The way you are doing it …”
“Would you like to pack for me?” he asked, closing his eyes.
“Yes, why don’t I pack for you?” his mother said, stepping to his side.
Sasha stepped out of the way and watched her fold, invade his drawers, select items from the bathroom and closet, and keep up a running commentary on each item.
“This is worn at the cuffs. See? Frayed. You need a new jacket. I will get you a new jacket.”
He did not argue.
“What size are you now? You’ve lost weight. You do not know,” she said with a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sigh. “I used to know. Don’t worry. I will figure it out. Shirts, you need shirts. Who ironed this shirt? Maya?”
“You did,” he said, leaning against the wall, defeated.
“I will iron it again. When you have worn a shirt all day on the train, do not try to clean it. Do not wear it again. Put it in a plastic bag.”
“There will be no room in the suitcase for clothes in a bag. You are stuffing it full of things I don’t need.”
“Change your socks every morning,” she said.
“You are packing enough for a month,” he said. “It will weigh as much as I do.”
“In the other room, on the table. I brought you a book to read so you don’t get bored.”
“I will be working,” he said before he could stop himself.