“You drugged him, had Heinrich and Bottle Kaps put him in a car, and you took him somewhere,” Karpo said. “You will tell me here and now where he is. Then you will go with me to find him or his body.”
“You are crazy,” said Mitsin, getting between Karpo and the girl, putting his face up inches before the taller detective, playing to the crowd.
“You will step out of the way,” Karpo said, so quietly that Mitsin could barely hear him. “Or I will shoot you in the left leg just above the knee. The pain will be unbearable and you will be fortunate to walk normally again.”
Mitsin’s smirk faded. In the eyes of the tall ghost he could see truth. He stepped out of the way and said, “We are not going with you.
“No,” agreed the crowd, which pressed forward slightly.
More and more people in the concrete block were now aware that something was happening. Fights were not uncommon here. Murder was not unheard of just outside the doors.
Karpo showed not the slightest fear or concern, and in fact he felt none, He was calm, ready, and very determined. For an instant he considered that he might welcome an attack from the crowd.
The girl seemed uncertain. She looked at Mitsin, who avoided her eyes.
“What happens if I tell you?”
“That depends on where he is, if he is alive and well, and why you did it,” said Karpo.
“Do not talk to him,” called a burly skinhead in the front of the.small circle.
“He is alive,” she said. “I think he is alive. It was just a joke. He is alive. Someone wants to teach him a lesson, that is all.”
“Someone paid you,” said Karpo. “Who?”
The burly skinhead pushed ahead of the crowd. Karpo barely glanced at him. The detectives hand went inside his jacket and came out with a gun pointed directly at the skinhead, who suddenly stopped.
“Who paid you?” asked Karpo.
The girl hesitated, her eyes moving around, considering a run for the exit, hoping the crowd would protect her. Her thoughts went no further than that.
“It would be a very bad idea,” Karpo said, seeming to read her thoughts.
The girl who called herself Anarchista gulped nervously and Karpo could see tears forming in her eyes. He could also see two men moving quickly through the crowd, two men who fit into the scene even less than Karpo and Zelach.
The men were wearing identical dark suits with white shirts and ties. They had the look of athletes. Both were no more than forty.
“Where is he?” asked Karpo as the two men moved behind the girl and Mitsin.
Suddenly both men had weapons in their hands. One of the two, the larger, had a small machine gun, which he had pulled from under his coat. Karpo turned his gun on the two men. The crowd began to back away in panic. People screamed and fell. Tables toppled.
Each of the men in suits grabbed an arm of the girl and began to back away with her. Mitsin moved with them. They were all facing Karpo, who was certain he could shoot the man with the automatic weapon through his forehead before he could fire. It was unlikely that he would get off a shot at the second man before he himself was killed.
The quartet backed away toward the entrance, toward Zelach, who had his weapon in two hands aimed at the backs of the two men.
Zelach fired.
The man not holding the machine gun fell to his knees but did not scream. The crowd was screaming louder, making for the exit, blocking Zelach’s vision. He could not fire again without the risk of hitting someone innocent or, given the nature of those in the building, someone who was at least innocent of what was taking place at the moment.
The man behind Nina Aronskaya ducked with her as cover and kept backing away, leaving his partner on his knees. Karpo could shoot the girl or Mitsin, but there was no point to it.
The man with the gun, Mitsin, and the girl joined the fleeing crowd and swept past Zelach through the doors and into the cold day.
Karpo followed, nodding to Zelach to deal with the fallen man. In the street, Karpo saw Mitsin entering the back seat of a black car with heavily tinted windows. The door closed and the car pulled away. Karpo hurried back into the building, where Zelach stood over the fallen man. The man’s weapon had been kicked professionally out of reach.
“He needs a doctor,” Zelach said.
The wounded man, now in a sitting position on the concrete floor, turned his head toward Karpo. Zelach’s bullet had entered his right thigh. Blood was oozing out. The pain must have been great, but the man did not show it. He calmly removed his belt and began to use it as a tourniquet around the top of his thigh.
“Get an ambulance,” Karpo said to Zelach.
Zelach said nothing. He holstered his gun and looked around for a phone. The hall was clear of people now and he saw no phone. But he did see a glass door in one corner that might well lead to an office. He hurried toward it, half expecting to hear a gunshot, half expecting to turn and see the wounded gunman on his back, dead or dying.
But there was no shot. Emil Karpo had already decided what to do with the wounded man.
Chapter Five
Frightened wolves, nowhere to go
Find winding cloths of sleet and snow
The sleeping kings of long ago
Deep beneath Ben Bulben grow
Drifts are shifted by the plough
Like waves that break against the prow
How do you like your blue-eyed boy now
Mr. Death?
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was seated in the dining car, his notebook in his lap, a mechanical pencil in one hand, a cup of tea before him. It was just before dawn and he had the car to himself except for a train attendant who sat in the rear, his head against the window, his mouth open, his eyes closed.
For some reason, probably the jostling of the train, Rostnikov found it difficult to sleep. What remained of his left leg kept waking him with a vibration he was sure no one with full limbs would understand.
Added to that he had a nightmare. No, that is not exactly right. He was filled with neither fear, horror, nor repulsion during the dream, only a morbid curiosity.
In the dream, he had opened his eyes and found himself on an operating table. Paulinin stood over him, a bloody saw in his hand. Behind Paulinin, blazing down on the helpless Rostnikov, were the bright lights of an operating room. Paulinin nodded his head to the right. Rostnikov turned his eyes in that direction and saw what certainly was his severed left leg a few feet away. There was something sad about the leg. Rostnikov felt like weeping. He turned back to look at Paulinin but the scientist was gone. Rostnikov found himself staring directly into the sun. He felt heat, thought he would go blind, and then a warmth came over him. That was when he awoke in darkness to the clanking of steel wheels. The others in his cabin were quiet except for one of the old Americans, who snored gently. Rostnikov had risen, dressed quietly, found his notebook, and gone to the dining car after picking up a cup of tea using an English tea bag and the steaming water from the samovar in the corridor.
Now Rostnikov drew the nearby mountains, very roughly, and tried to suggest the first rays of sunlight coming over them. He was dissatisfied. He tried traditional rays, almost like the paintings of a child, erased them and tried an indistinct, faint arch between two ridges. He moved up an inch and drew an even-less-distinct arch. Then, to show the contrast between light and dark, he shaded in the foreground, trees, mountains. He would have liked to suggest something dark and wild in the early shadows but he was not a good enough artist for that.
It was just after five in the morning, according to Rostnikov’s wristwatch. He knew the train would pass through many time zones before Vladivostok. He did not try to keep track by changing his watch, though he was aware of when the train would reach each stop.
While he worked on the rising sun, someone approached down the aisle. He did not look up. He did not have to. He recognized the slight perfume of the woman who had called herself Svetlana Britchevna. She sat across from him.