Sasha had finished his breakfast. Svetlana Britchevna rose. So did he. They left Rostnikov sitting at the table.
At the end of the car she turned to Sasha and said, “Does he often talk like that?”
“Often,” he said.
She took his hand. He considered pulling away but did not.
“We are lovers, remember,” she said, turning her face to his.
Sasha would find it difficult to forget.
Pavel Cherkasov was awake and dressed. He had several jokes he wanted to try out on whoever might be fortunate enough to be seated with him for breakfast.
Pavel had a well-honed sense of imagined smell. He considered food first as a remembered savory odor, followed by recalled taste. Confirmation came in seeing the food, and taste was an ecstasy that surpassed sex.
He was alone. The old Americans and the one-legged Russian were gone. The old men, Pavel knew, needed little sleep at night and many naps during the day. Perhaps they had all gone to lunch early and saved him a seat at their table. He would listen patiently to their stories of a war long past, eat modestly in anticipation of a very important day, and try out his jokes. He had retrieved his suitcase and would keep it at his side until the moment came to exchange it for the smaller package on the railway platform. He would explain, if anyone asked, that he carried the duffel bag because he had papers inside it he would be needing, that he would be spending much of the day working. They would not question him. The bag was not large. The bills were packed tightly. People, Pavel knew, displayed little curiosity about such things.
Satisfied that he was properly dressed for the day, he stood up and looked out of the window. In the vast plain, he did not imagine wandering dinosaurs or a dying sun.
Soon, he thought, I can head back to civilization. Soon I can be on an airplane heading for Paris or Vienna or New York. Soon.
The compartment door opened. Pavel turned from the window and smiled. “I was just heading for the dining car,” he said, duffel bag in hand.
The watcher stepped forward, covered Pavel’s mouth with one hand, and plunged the long pointed awl deep into his heart. Pavel tasted the moist unpleasantness of the watcher’s hand. Gone was the imagined odor of food. His final taste was of dirt and human flesh.
There must be a joke to fit such an occasion, but Pavel could think of none. The pain was brief and then Pavel was dead. He sank to the floor.
The watcher picked up the duffel bag, leaving the awl where it was.
A man and woman carrying their suitcases and arguing in Russian, their son of no more than eight or nine trailing behind them, wedged past Sasha and Svetlana. They were the, family Sasha and Porfiry Petrovich had gotten onto the train behind.
“It is too soon,” the woman said.
“It is better to be first in line to get off,” the man said. “How many times are we going to talk about this? We are getting to the door. We can sit on the bags.”
“For two hours?” the woman asked.
The little boy dragged a bag, listening to his parents. He looked up at Sasha and Svetlana apologetically, embarrassed by his parents.
“You fight with your wife like that?” Svetlana said as they moved forward. She held his hand.
“Not like that,” Sasha said.
“But you fight,” she said.
“All couples fight,” he said. “Porfiry Petrovich says it goes in cycles. Honeymoon, fights, truce, shorter honeymoon, fights, truce, crisis, tentative peace agreement, followed by comfort and only minor conflict.”
“Always?” she asked, playing with his hand.
“No, not always,” said Sasha.
“My vision is different,” she said. “Brief honeymoon and it is over. Next honeymoon. Stop before the first fight.”
“The relationship never gets, what is the word?…”
“Deeper?” she supplied. “No, depth requires commitment and effort. My need for male contact, sexual and romantic, is very much alive, but I reserve my depth for myself, my work, my ambition.
They were glancing into compartments now just in case Pavel Cherkasov might be inside of one, though they both knew that his own compartment was in the next car.
“You feel the need to confess all this to me?” he asked.
“It is not a confession,” she said, turning to him. “It is a proposal which may or may not come to fruition. Consider it.”
“I think not,” he said.
“I think you will,” she said. “But when and where will depend on what takes place in the next two hours or so.”
What took place next put Svetlana’s proposition far from either of their minds. They reached the compartment of Pavel Cherkasov. The door was closed, the curtains drawn.
Svetlana did not hesitate. Sasha had known her for only a few hours but he was sure she would have a bold and plausible excuse if someone was inside. She slid open the door.
The bloody body of Pavel Cherkasov lay on the floor, the long awl protruding from his chest. That he was dead was without doubt. His eyes were closed. His mouth was open. His face was white and his shirt and jacket a deep, dark, and bloody red.
Sasha closed the door. Svetlana began a quick search. It took moments.
“No money,” she said.
Neither expected to find it.
“I’ll stay here,” she said. “You get Rostnikov.”
Sasha said nothing. He went through the door and heard her lock it behind him. What she would say to the old Americans if they returned would, he was sure, be most inventive and bold.
Rostnikov was seated in the lounge, talking, in fact, to the two old Americans.
“Yes,” the tall one, Allberry, was saying. “We were First Army. You lost your leg on this side of the front. I lost the hearing in my left ear on the other, and Jack lost his mind for two years.”
“Three years,” the other old man, Susman, said. “Don’t even remember what it was I saw that put me into cuckoo land, but I spent almost three years in a basket. Hell of a war.”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov in English, looking up to see Sasha motioning to him. “Hell of a war. Please excuse me. I have to tend to my leg. You understand.”
“Perfectly,” said Jack.
Rostnikov rose and the two men continued to talk.
“He is dead,” Sasha whispered when Rostnikov was at his side. “Cherkasov.”
Sasha led the way through the cars. People passed. They stepped around the luggage of the man, woman, and child Svetlana and Sasha had encountered minutes earlier. The family was at the end of a car in the small alcove near the door. They were not speaking. The man was eating a piece of cheese. The woman sat sullenly. The little boy dozed.
When they reached the car, Sasha knocked and said, “It is us.”
The door slid open. They moved in and Svetlana slid it closed and locked it.
“The Americans are in the lounge car,” Sasha said.
She nodded and said, “He has been dead no more than ten minutes.”
It was awkward for Rostnikov to kneel. He did not try. He accepted her word. Rostnikov eased himself down into a seat. Svetlana and Sasha stood, waiting, swaying with the movement of the train.
Rostnikov was taken by the fact that the sunlight cast a broad bright beam across the dead man. Rostnikov imagined the sun intensifying, an amazing heat that touched only what fell within the beam, consuming the body without smoke or fire, absorbing it, taking it, making it a part of timelessness. But the body did not disappear.
“Why did he kill him before he made the exchange in Ekaterinburg?” he asked himself aloud.
“Panic. Perhaps he just wanted the money,” answered Sasha.
“Our assassin is a professional,” Svetlana said. “He would not panic.”
“Then he has a plan,” said Rostnikov.
No one spoke for a moment. Then Rostnikov looked up at them. Svetlana understood immediately. It took Sasha a beat longer and he said, “He is going to take Cherkasov’s place. He is going to make the transaction. The person he is to make the exchange with does not know Cherkasov.”