“But,” her aunt said, “what other plan do you have? More police on the platforms? We know you cannot get them. Your plan cannot hurt.”
“Cannot hurt,” Elena exclaimed, rising from her chair. “It can get him killed.”
“The woman is not big,” Iosef said. “I’ll be alert. And there are not really that many men in suits and ties, carrying briefcases, on the metro. They are above the ground in cabs and private cars.”
Elena considered trying to reach Iosef’s father, but Rostnikov was on a train to Siberia. Iosef was his only son. He would surely dissuade him. She could go to the Yak, but she was certain he would see nothing wrong with the plan. He would not be the one making a target of himself on the metro platform, and the Yak had no great fondness for Iosef. Elena considered that it might even be possible to simply order Iosef not to do it. She was the senior inspector on the case. But to issue him an order in this situation might be a blow to their relationship.
She looked up at Iosef cradling the cat in his arms. He was no fool and he had several advantages in the situation. He had been an actor. He would not overact his role as a businessman. He was an ex-soldier, a combat veteran of the Afghanistan disaster. He had a keenly developed sense of danger.
Elena had little choice.
“All right,” she said, stepping in front of him and reaching out to pet Baku. “But I will be there every moment.”
Iosef smiled.
Inna’s mother’s name had been Katyana. Inna’s mother had been perfect. Katyana, Inna thought as she sat at the table, her wrist wrapped tightly and resting under a bag of ice, had betrayed her daughter by dying.
Inna adjusted the bag on top of her wrist. The wrist no longer hurt in the same way. It was now either numbly frozen or burning.
Inna’s life was no life. She took her pills and existed to please her father. There was nothing else. She was trapped, too frightened and too dependent to walk away. Where would she go? She had no other relatives. What would she do? She had no skills.
Viktor Dalipovna was her life. She had to take care of him. What if something should happen to him? Things happen, you know. He could have a heart attack, be killed in a robbery, get hit by a car or truck. One of the women he sometimes spent the night with might kill him in his sleep for the money in his wallet, his watch, his ring. He did not take good enough care of himself in many ways. His diet was bad. Inna fed him healthy meals. She never argued or disagreed with him. She snuck vitamins into his food, cut every speck of fat from his meat, even watered his vodka but ever so slightly.
Inna looked around the room. She would have to get up soon, retape her wrist, work through the pain, get her father’s dinner ready. Had she taken the medicine? She couldn’t remember. Had she meant to? Probably not. She was not supposed to take too much. But she had been taking none of it.
She put the question to her mother, whose ghost sat across from her on the other side of the table. The dead Katyana was the same age as when she had died, a mature, plump, pretty woman.
“Did I take the medicine?” Inna asked.
“Yes,” her mother said. “Don’t you feel it?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps you did not take it,” Katyana said. “We can count the pills. We can keep count so you will know. Prepare a sheet of paper, write the date. Make a check mark when you take the pill.”
“Yes,” said Inna, but she knew she would not do it. It was curious. Each day, she woke up certain that she could keep track of everything, pills, shopping, cleaning. She needed no list. But then she discovered that she could not remember if she had taken a pill or eaten lunch. In the grocery, she could not remember if the night before she had onions or potatoes or whether the night before she had served his favorite salad, sahlad eez reedyeesah, sliced, radishes with salt and sour cream. That particular dish did not matter. He would not care if he had it every day.
“It is just the idea of not being able to remember,” she explained to her dead mother.
“I know,” Katyana answered. “How is your wrist?”
“It … I don’t know.”
“Take off the ice,” her mother advised. “You have had it on too long.”
Inna removed the top bag of already melting ice and slowly lifted her hand. “It hurts,” she said.
“You might have to go to the clinic,” her mother said.
“They would know what I have been doing,” she answered.
“How? A woman hurts her wrist. How would they know?”
“I am not good at lying.”
“Then you will suffer.”
“Yes,” she said, biting her lower lip to hold off the pain as she moved her hand.
“A little suffering is not a bad thing,” her mother said. “But when the suffering is more than a little you should do something.”
“I will be fine,” Inna said.
“I worry about you,” her mother said.
“Why?”
“Because you are crazy. You are crazy and you don’t take your medicine. You know that both of these things are true.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“I cannot stop. I will grow even crazier if I stop. I love my father. He must know. I must drive it into his heart. He must know. He must reach over and smile sadly and say something, anything, like ‘You are my daughter.’”
“He is not that kind of man,” Katyana said.
“I know,” said Inna, resting her throbbing arm in her lap. “I must go shopping.”
“Make a list,” her mother said.
“I don’t need one,” Inna said.
“This is not a good day for you to show your love,” Katyana said gently. “Do not go in search of your father on the trains.”
“I search for both of us, for you,” Inna said.
“I know, but not today.”
“Tomorrow?” Inna asked, almost pleading.
“Tomorrow, if you must,” her mother said with a smile.
“I will be nothing if I do not go,” Inna tried to explain. “I will disappear. My body will be here but I will have no thoughts, no meaning. You understand?”
“Perfectly,” her mother said.
“I don’t, but I know it is so.”
And then her mother was gone. It was always like this. She would be there and it would be quite natural. She would not be there and that would be natural too. Inna knew her mother was dead but she did not have to address this reality. In fact, she chose to address no reality at all other than keeping herself reasonably clean, taking care of her father, and keeping the knife very, very sharp.
Chapter Three
The world is long, there is no consolation
For those who join at the end of the line
Porfiry Petrovich sat at a table in the dining car with the three other men from his compartment, the Americans dressed casually and the slightly dapper, somewhat portly man with the neatly trimmed beard, wearing a suit and tie, who had identified himself as David Drovny-a dealer in men’s clothes on his way to Vladivostok to approve a shipment of material from Japan.
Meanwhile, Sasha was making his rounds of the eighteen cars in search of the suitcase. Meals were the best time for such a search because people would be in the dining car. Even if they were not, he would make up an excuse, be at his charming boyish best, apologize, ask for help with something, and without giving himself away examine the luggage, perhaps even swaying slightly and reaching out to touch a particularly interesting suitcase, to balance himself, and feel for its contents.
“Never made it this far during the war,” one of the Americans, the tall one named Allberry, said. “Liaison with Russian intelligence near Rostov.”
“OSS?” asked the other American, Susman.
The tall American nodded and said, “I helped get some information from our people to the Russians,” said Allberry. “We’d broken the Nazi codes. It helped a little. Always wanted to come back.”
“And here we are, Bob,” said the smaller, bald American with a sigh. “I never made it past Rome. Landed in Casino. Thought about making this trip from the day the war ended. Then the Cold War. Ellen died last year. Figured, what the hell.”