The goal was to stay close to Pavel Cherkasov in the city, on the train, to wait till the exchange was made, then to seize the prize and, possibly, the money. This, the watcher well knew, would require the death of the joke-telling courier and probably the person to whom the money was to be delivered. There might even be more who got in the way.
The watcher was prepared. The stakes of the job were high but the assignment was routine. It would be executed with precision and maybe, thought the watcher, with a touch of irony, which was far more interesting than coarse jokes.
Perhaps the one-legged policeman would appreciate the irony when the time came. The watcher respected the Washtub and sincerely hoped that he would.
“Yah golahdyeen, I’m hungry,” Iosef said.
Elena Timofeyeva and Iosef Rostnikov had not had dinner. They had rushed onto the metro platform, having paused only to call Paulinin, who was still in his laboratory.
“Do not let anyone touch him,” Paulinin had said. “Do not let any of the butchers upstairs get near him. No one should get near him till I talk to him.”
Iosef had hung up the phone and turned to Elena. “He’s coming. He wants to talk to the dead man.”
“Paulinin is mad,” Elena observed as they moved out of their temporary underground office and ran for the train just pulling in.
When they pushed their way onto the train, Iosef had turned to Elena and declared his hunger. She too was hungry, but she was on a diet. Elena was sure that she would be on a diet her entire life. Not for the first time she wondered what would happen if she were ever to have children. She remembered the photographs of her mother before she was pregnant with Elena and after. The before mother was plump and pretty. The after mother was a far different, heavier person: still pretty, but definitely tired.
They were packed tightly and talking was difficult so they said nothing till they got to the Komsomol station. There the body of Toomas Vana was being guarded by three young uniformed police officers, who told gawkers to keep moving.
Elena and Iosef stepped near the body, avoiding the pool of blood that had formed under him, spreading out in an amoebic deep-red pattern.
“Has anyone touched him?” Elena asked the nearest uniformed policeman.
“Not since we have been here,” the young man said, glancing over his shoulder at the mutilated corpse. “I was on the street with my partner in our car. A woman told us someone had been killed. Then he”-he pointed to the third policeman-“showed up.” The third policeman was one of the uniformed detail that had been assigned to work the platforms.
“Good,” said Elena. “Witnesses?”
“Them,” the young policeman said, nodding toward a child who held the hand of a woman and seemed to be consoling her. Elena moved toward the two, who stood a dozen feet away. People moved past, glancing at the dead man.
“You saw what happened?” Elena asked gently.
The woman nodded, her hands trembling.
“And you?” Elena asked the little girl.
“Yes,” she said.
“Your name is? …”
“Alexandra,” the child said. “The man is dead”
“I know,” said Elena.
“My grandmother is frightened.”
“I see. What is your grandmother’s name?”
“Sylvia. Her name is Sylvia.”
“The person who did that to the man. What did he look like?”
“It was a lady,” Alexandra said. “She hit him and hit him and he was bleeding and bleeding and she ran away up the stairs. That way.”
The girl pointed toward the escalators at the end of the platform.
“What did she look like?” asked Elena.
Sylvia gulped and shook her head.
“Like a lady,” Alexandra said. “Like Mrs. Duenya, my teacher. A little like Mrs. Duenya. She had a knife. The lady. She made a noise. She hurt her hand. This one. This is the right hand.”
“Yes, it is,” said Elena, looking back at Iosef, who was standing over the body. “Is that the hand she had the knife in?”
The girl nodded. “It was hurting both of them, the man and the lady, only the man is dead and the lady went away.”
“Did you see anything else?”
“Two big boys took the man’s bag when he dropped it. They ran away. That way.”
This time she pointed to the opposite end of the platform from the one toward which she had said the woman had run.
“They stole it,” the girl said.
“It appears as if they did,” said Elena. “Did the lady say anything?”
Elena looked at the grandmother, who was still trembling. The little girl held the older woman’s hand and patted it gently.
“My grandma does not watch television,” Alexandra confided almost in a whisper. “She has not seen people bleeding and killed and things. I tried to explain to her.”
“Yes,” said Elena. “Anything else you can tell us about the lady?”
The grandmother shook her head.
Alexandra said, “Yes. He was her father.”
“Her father?”
“She called the man At’e’ts, ‘Father,’” said the child. “Two times while she was hitting him, like this.” The child raised her fist as if she held a knife and jabbed out, saying, “‘Father, Father.’ Like that. Just like that.”
They could hear the sound, feel the vibration and the noise, coming from Loni’s when they were about a hundred yards away. A guitar screeched.
“Jimi Hendrix,” Zelach said as they walked toward the door. A very big pair of men wearing leather vests and no shirts on their shaved chests stood guard.
“The player is Jimi Hendrix?” asked Karpo.
“No, the sound. Whoever is playing is imitating Hendrix.”
“I see,” said Karpo, who did not see at all.
At the door the sound was a screaming, sharp-nailed scratch down the spine. The two men in leather vests stood in front of them. Karpo and Zelach took out their wallets and showed their identification.
“I’ll check with the manager,” one of the two men said.
“You may check with the manager after we are inside,” said Karpo. “We do not require permission.”
The two big guards looked at each other and then at Karpo and Zelach.
“You do here,” one of them said. “Mr. Trotskov has friends.”
Which meant that Mr. Trotskov was paying off a Mafia and very likely local police. At least that was what the big man at the door implied.
“You will step back and let us pass,” Karpo said calmly.
“Just wait till …” the big man started, and Karpo stepped forward so his face was inches from the guard.
“We will not wait,” he said. “You will open the door and we will pass.
Karpo’s pale face stood out in the light above the door. His black clothing made that face look like a floating death mask. Something in that mask, the eyes, made the big man say, “Fine, go in.” He nodded to the other man, who opened the door. “Primo,” the first guard said, “go tell Mr. Trotskov that the police are here.”
There would be no need to point out to the owner who Karpo and Zelach were. They stood out in the blaring smoke-filled crowd of young people. With Karpo in front, the detectives made their way through a sea of young men with bad teeth and tattoos as colorful as those of a Siberian convict. Swastikas, skeletons, guns, knives, churches, women, angels, and devils adorned the chests, arms, and even cheeks of both young men and women who, drinks or cigarettes in hand, swayed to the music and parted with scowls as the policemen moved through them to the bar.
Behind the crowded bar, the man they had spoken to earlier, the one called Abbi, stood serving. He was clean-faced and looked sober, with a fresh blue T-shirt and hands moving professionally to keep up with the orders.
Abbi spotted the detectives and moved toward them behind the bar. “You were here this morning, right?”
It was almost impossible to hear him over the screaming of Death Times Four on the small stage.
“That is right,” said Karpo. “We are looking for Bottle Kaps and Heinrich.”