“You believed them?” asked Elena.
Georgi tried to laugh. It came out as a throaty gargle.
“We were to make the exchange at four o’clock today in front of the toy store across from Lubyanka Prison.”
“Your idea?” asked Sasha.
“Yes. They would not do anything to me there, and I planned to take whatever money they gave me and go immediately to Odessa in case they were planning to kill me. They said they would use me again if all went well, and I told them that would be fine, but I did not believe them for a second. Georgi Danielovich is no fool.”
Both detectives thought quite the opposite.
“Do you have some way of reaching them?” asked Elena.
“No. Lubyanka. Four o’clock.”
“And you were planning to go there and try to explain?”
“I do not know. They would not believe me. And I have no money to run. I do not even have a gun anymore, to rob a drug dealer with.”
“We feel for your plight,” said Sasha. “You will be in front of the toy store at four today with a briefcase that you will be given. We will all go buy it. When the Africans come to make the exchange, we will arrest them and you can walk away. You might try walking to Odessa. The weather should be good this time of year.”
“You will let me go?” he asked, looking at them both.
“You are paperwork, and a very bad odor,” said Sasha.
Chapter Seven
It was a warm night in Moscow, more than forty years ago. A warm night. The policeman, burly and resigned, sat on a rock tented by two slabs of concrete which might well have given way to crush him. Unfortunately, this was the only reasonable cover while he watched the truck.
The building was going up slowly, typical of projects in the Soviet Union, where no incentive existed for workers to put in a full day of hard work. Appeals to the abstract love of a nation that needed more buildings were to no avail. The workers did not define themselves as Soviets. They considered themselves Russians, Georgians, Chechens, Lithuanians, or whatever.
And so they had no reservations about stealing from the State as the State had no reservations about taking from them. At least, that was the way most of them thought. It was something the policeman understood.
An inventory by the project director and the Communist Party representative at the site had revealed a serious loss of valued equipment and wiring. The conclusion was theft by employees. The solution was the placement of a policeman in the shadows.
And so he sat as he had for the past two nights, a cheese sandwich in his pocket, his holstered gun resting familiarly against his right thigh, the flashlight on his belt pressing against his left leg.
He was hungry. He slowly, quietly unwrapped his sandwich and took a large, satisfying bite.
And then he heard them coming.
He did not know what time it was, could not read the face of his watch in the darkness, but it was definitely past midnight.
They came, three of them, whispering, climbing on the rear of the truck, opening it with a key, their shoes producing a metallic echo as the door swung open. Two of the men stepped into the truck. The third remained on the ground to receive the equipment handed to him. It looked as if they had planned to take no more than they could carry.
The policeman set aside his sandwich and slowly eased his way out of the concrete tent.
The man on the ground was leaning over to place a metal box near his feet when the policeman approached.
As the man got up to receive something else from the two in the truck, the policeman stepped to the rear of the truck, slammed the door closed, and threw the bolt to lock them in.
The thief on the outside took it all in and began to run. He was much younger than the policeman, and much lighter. He would have gotten away had he not tripped on a coil of wire he had taken from the truck.
The policeman had his gun out and pointed at the man on the ground, who realized that it was all over. The two in the truck obviously realized the same thing. They were making no noise, not crying to be let out. They sat and waited.
An hour later, the policeman led all three of his prisoners into the stone shack that served as the local police station. The shack, with temporary cells in the rear, was at least a century old. Not a single renovation had ever been done.
It was not the policeman’s job to talk to the prisoners. He was just there to catch them, turn them in, and go home while the KGB decided what to do with traitors to the Revolution.
And then, within an hour after he had caught the thieves, she appeared.
The policeman did not know how the woman found it. Somehow people knew. Someone would see an arrest taking place or hear a name mentioned by a clerk who worked in Petrovka, or a talkative young jail guard. No matter. She found out.
She was pretty, with healthy country skin and corn blond hair. She had been sitting, waiting, worried about her husband, the man who had tripped over the coil of wire, when she had found out what happened.
Relatives were not allowed into the police station. This was a place of little hope and the province of those who had learned indifference.
She confronted him when he stepped out of the police station into the early morning light. “What has happened to my husband?”
And that was how it had begun.
The policeman never denied to himself, and he could not hide it from his wife, that if ever he were to suffer a downfall, it would be because of a woman or women. He could not help it. In spite of his less-than-handsome features and bulky frame, there was something comforting about him, something sad and peaceful. He recognized this and let it happen.
And that was how it had happened this time.
Her name was Klara. She was a Pole. She did not love her husband, never had, but he had promised the pretty young girl security and love. He had delivered neither. It was not that he did not want to. He was simply incapable of doing more than being a full-time laborer and a part-time thief.
Klara worked in a glass factory, in terrible heat, for little pay. Now her husband was in jail. That would end his income. She might have to go back to Poland, to a family that did not want her and could not afford to have her.
So the policeman and the factory girl became lovers. It lasted for five months. Her husband went to a Gulag. The policeman helped her even though he had little money and a family of his own.
And then she became pregnant.
And that was how Fyodor Andreiovich Rostnikov, half brother of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, was born.
James sat at the table, a blue metal cup of stale, cold coffee in front of him with a dent in its lip. On the side of the cup was an emblem. It looked a little like a coat of arms. He was curious, but not enough to ask Vladimir Kolokov, who sat across from him.
The table was planked wood with rickety legs. Every time James lifted his heavy arms or dropped them back on the planks, the legs of the table rattled against the uncovered concrete of the floor.
“Tell me,” said Kolokov, examining him, “are you smart?”
Wanting to stay alive and hoping for an opportunity to escape before the day of the exchange, James calculated and easily came to the conclusion that he should say, “I’m very smart.”
Kolokov grinned. It was the right answer. A moderately clever man would have said that he was dumb, stupid, perhaps the most densely stupid creature that ever placed foot inside of Russia. A truly smart man would realize, as James did, that the possible path to some hope of survival lay in pretending to be a fool who thought himself smart. James had learned well from his six years working with these strange people, the Russians.