Sasha was closer to Georgi than she was, but not close enough. Georgi stepped back against the wall leaving the refrigerator door open. He had a gun in his hand.
“I’m going,” he said.
Elena held up two hands palms up to show that he was free to leave. No comment was necessary. The man’s hands were shaking. No pacification, no provocation. Let him leave. He would be easy to find.
“When I left home this morning my mother was worried about something like this,” said Sasha.
Georgi blinked and licked his dry lips as he inched toward the door. Sasha took a step toward Georgi.
“Sasha,” Elena warned.
“No more,” said Georgi. “Do not move.”
Sasha shook his head. He was smiling.
“Put the gun down on the floor,” said Sasha. “Gently. Do not drop it. Just put it down.”
“I will kill you both if I have to,” Georgi warned.
“No,” said Sasha, taking another step toward him. “You will not. It would earn you nothing but death if you could even shoot straight enough to hit one of us. The other would kill you on the spot. Right?”
Elena, though she felt no confidence in Sasha’s assessment, said, “That is right.”
“And,” said Sasha, taking yet another step closer to Georgi, “if you were fortunate enough and we were unfortunate enough to discover that you could shoot straight enough to end our lives, which is extremely doubtful given your shaking hand, what would happen to you? You’d be caught by policemen very upset about your having killed two policemen.”
“I don’t care,” Georgi screamed, almost at the door.
“If you put the gun down, we talk, you tell us things, we all live happily ever after.”
“Shit,” said Georgi. “Shit, shit, shit.”
Sasha now stood less than three feet in front of him. Georgi made a fist with his free hand and bounced it gently against his mouth.
“Now put the gun on the floor,” said Sasha.
Georgi docilely handed the weapon to Sasha, who tapped the gun solidly on top of Georgi Danielovich’s head. Georgi slunk to the floor holding his head and moaning, “That hurts.”
“I told you to put the gun on the floor,” said Sasha, kneeling in front of Georgi who was holding his head with both hands. “Now, we talk.”
And, thought Elena, later you and I will have a chat about the stupid thing you just did. Sasha was smiling. Sasha looked happy. Sasha, she was certain, was more than a little bit suicidal.
Chapter Six
Just beyond a sparse forest of what looked like leafless trees, six elk darted across the snowless tundra. In the distance there was a long range of low mountains topped with snow. No sign of man had been seen from the air for more than five hundred miles.
And then, Devochka appeared, a collection of eight identical one-story concrete block buildings with slightly pitched roofs and a wide road of cracked concrete which stretched from the concrete block buildings to a far different structure, the mine. The structure was taller, older than the town and reflected the cloud-covered sun from the few unrusted spots of its steel beams.
Next to the structure was a dark strip, perhaps three hundred yards long. Karpo could not tell how deep a bite had been taken to create the strip.
“What do you see, Emil Karpo?”
“It was a strip mine and then tunnels were dug when the stripping ceased to yield diamonds.”
“They had to go deeper,” said Rostnikov, sitting back to adjust his leg before the landing.
“Yes.”
“We shall have to go deeper,” said Rostnikov. “Ferret out secrets, talk to people, drink their vodka, rub our hands together as they do, listen to their complaints.”
“I do not drink vodka,” said Karpo.
“I know. You drink no alcohol. I was speaking of us collectively. I’ll drink the vodka for both of us. Perhaps they have celery juice for you.”
“Water will be sufficient,” said Karpo, looking out the window.
Rostnikov was not a drinker unless there was a celebration or an investigation that warranted it. He was not repulsed by alcohol and, in fact, enjoyed the occasional thrust of liquid heat and euphoria, particularly from French brandy. He got a similar and far more satisfying reaction from fixing his neighbor’s maze of water pipes or from the weights in his cabinet, and with no dulling of the senses.
“They will drink and try to find our secrets,” said Rostnikov, “and in trying to find our secrets, we will discover theirs.”
“We have no secrets,” said Karpo.
“But they do not know that,” whispered Rostnikov.
“Why are you whispering?”
“To simulate conspiracy. To ready us for an inevitable duel.”
“And if they do not engage you in such a duel?”
Rostnikov looked at the unsmiling man next to him and resisted the powerful urge to put an arm around the shoulders of his dour companion.
“They are Russians, Emil Karpo. It is in their nature to protect themselves even when they are not being attacked.”
“I am Russian. I do not feel this need.”
“You are the exception. Perhaps it is your Mongol blood or a quirk of birth, but I have always found your directness refreshing. We have always made a good team, have we not?”
“Yes.”
“Prepare yourself for a surprise when we land,” said Rostnikov.
Karpo nodded. He was almost curious.
The plane’s low, sudden roar signaled descent. Rostnikov put on his seat belt and felt the slight pop in his ears. He distrusted statistics on airplane fatalities. They were always reported in terms of miles flown and not in terms of takeoffs and landings. Airplanes seldom simply fell from the sky, but they did run into significant problems when trying to leave the earth or come back to it, where they belonged.
The landing on the wide, cracked road to the mine, which doubled as Devochka’s airstrip, was reasonably smooth, and when the engines stopped the voice of the pilot wearily announced, “Voa ta na,” Here it is.
They were within forty yards of the line of concrete block buildings.
Seat belts clicked. The other passengers coughed, talked, shuffled. None of the handful who rose to get off seemed particularly happy to have arrived. It was difficult to imagine that some of them called this place home, that they and many he would meet had lived their lives here and, in all likelihood, so had their parents. Inbreeding had plagued Gulag towns for generations. Perhaps the same would be true of Devochka.
The two policemen were the last to get off. Descent down the aluminum steps was an even bigger adventure than had been the ascent. Rostnikov did not know who was watching, and there was little he could do to make the maneuver anything but slightly awkward at best. He silently urged his young and senseless leg to cooperate in the venture.
When he and Karpo had reached the ground and retrieved their bags, they saw a contingent of four men stepping across the road toward them.
“Well, is it what you expected?” Rostnikov asked Karpo.
The buildings appeared to be solid, well maintained, functional, and bleak. There were many windows, wide windows letting in the sunlight, facing not just the far less modern structure of the mine, but the forest and mountains beyond.
“I had no expectations,” said Karpo.
The quartet was almost on them now. The passengers had all deplaned, retrieved their luggage, and begun walking toward the closest of the buildings.
“It is not like our last adventure in Siberia.”
“That was two thousand kilometers from here.”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov, looking toward a thick gathering of trees in the distance.
Three of the four men were not impressed by the Moscow policemen but they tried not to show it. What they witnessed was a gaunt, thin, and quite dour spectre in black and a limping, average-sized, broad man with a typical Russian face.