“Fifty years, more than fifty years, can you imagine that?” Rostnikov said, folding his hands on his lap over the American novel. “Perhaps the very year I was born, maybe even before, these young men are together in this little village, friends, and then … what?”
“What?” said Zelach, not caring what or who or why or when.
Rostnikov turned his face to his subordinate. “Where is your soul, Alexei Stepanovich Zelach?”
“There is no such thing as a soul,” Zelach said, trying to hide his irritation.
“Fine,” Rostnikov agreed. “Then you have no soul. Where is your curiosity? What do you think of? What drives you each day, gets you out of bed, into that old suit?”
“I’m not a philosopher,” Zelach said uncomfortably.
“I didn’t ask for philosophy,” Rostnikov sighed. “I was seeking conversation.”
“I’m not very good at talking, chief inspector. You are well aware of that.”
Rostnikov considered returning to his book, but he knew Zelach would find some way to gain his attention. Rostnikov had made up his mind. He would find some diversion for Zelach, something to keep the man busy and, he hoped, useful, something to keep him as distant as possible while Rostnikov worked on the murder of Abraham Savitskaya.
“Are we working tonight?” Zelach said, looking out the window at the first tall buildings that indicated they were approaching Moscow. “I’ll get some sandwiches and bring them to the office.”
“No,” said Rostnikov. “Go home. In the morning I will have a new assignment for you.”
Zelach grunted and looked out the window at the familiar surroundings of Moscow.
It was almost seven in the evening when Rostnikov got to Petrovka Street. He had fought the crowds with success and emerged a bit weary from the Sverdlov Square metro station. The sun was almost down and the evening not quite so hot as he crossed the square, went through the park, around the Karl Marx monument, and waited patiently for the traffic to slow so he could limp across Marx Prospekt and move past the shadow of the massive USSR State Academic Bolshoi Theatre.
Minutes later he stepped into Petrovka, the twin ten-story buildings that house the police operations of the city of Moscow. The buildings are modern, utilitarian, and always busy. The people of Moscow know where to find Petrovka, for it is not hidden, nor are the thousands of gray-clad policemen who patrol the city. Indeed, the ratio of police to populace is higher in Moscow than in any other major city of the world.
In spite of this, crime, while it does not flourish, exists. Files of poznaniye, or inquiries, cover the desks of the procurators working under the procurator general of the Soviet Union. The police work with the procurators in the twenty districts of Moscow and are responsible for all but political crimes. Political crimes fall within the sphere of the KGB (Komitet Gosudarst-vennoi Beszopasnosti), or State Security Agency. It was a constant puzzle to Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov what a political crime might be. Economic crimes are generally political, because they threaten the economy of the state and are subversive. In fact, however, Rostnikov knew that any crime could be considered political, even the beating of a wife by a drunken husband. Officially, the procurator general’s office is empowered by the constitution (Fundamental Law) of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, adapted at the Seventh (Special) Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Ninth Convocation, on October 7, 1977, according to Article 164, to exercise “supreme power of supervision over the strict and uniform observance of laws by all ministries, state committees and departments, enterprises, institutions and organizations, executive-administrative bodies of local Soviets of People’s Deputies, collective farms, cooperatives, and other public organizations, officials, and citizens.”
When he entered the station, Rostnikov planned to head for his small office on the fifth floor, pick up any messages, take care of them, sit quietly in the solitude of his only place of refuge outside the toilet in his apartment, and rest for an hour or two before going home. He planned, of course, to call his wife and give her a half lie about his tardiness, but it would only be a half lie if there was no work to do. He would spend the time doodling on the sheets of rough paper and thinking about the old Jewish man in the bathtub and his daughter, this frightened daughter with the leg as stiff as his own.
However, he did not get to his office right away. As he entered the building, the uniformed officer at the desk, behind whom stood another uniformed officer with a ready Sten gun, called to Rostnikov.
“Inspector,” the man called. “The assistant procurator wants you to come to his office the moment you arrive.”
Rostnikov nodded and made his way to the elevator. It was late for the deputy procurator still to be in. The former deputy, Anna Timofeyeva, had spent as much as eighteen hours a day working until her heart attacks had sent her into retirement in a one-room apartment shared by her cat, Bakunin.
Like former procurator Timofeyeva, Procurator Khabolov had no training in law. Anna Timofeyeva had been the assistant to one of the commissars of Leningrad in charge of shipping and manufacturing quotas. A zealot, she had learned the job of procurator well and with reasonable intelligence had done as well as anyone to combat crime. Khabolov, on the other hand, had come to his first ten-year term as a deputy procurator after having made a name for himself as a trouble-shooter who ferreted out slacking and shirking among factory workers. It was the hound-dog-faced Khabolov who had discovered the tunnel in the piston factory in Odessa, the tunnel through which workers were smuggling vodka, which they consumed in large quantities, leading to the slowdown of production and the failure to meet quotas. Comrade Khabolov had also, through the payment of strategic bribes, discovered how a trio of government dock workers had funneled Czech toothpaste into the black market. Suspicion was the primary tool of the new deputy.
Rostnikov made his way to the door of the deputy procurator and knocked. There was no answer for about fifteen seconds, and then the high voice shouted, “Come.”
Khabolov sat behind the desk, looking down at the file in front of him, apparently barely aware of Rostnikov. But Rostnikov knew that the man had set the scene, had picked up the file as a prop to prepare himself for the inspector.
“Sit,” Khabolov said without looking up.
Rostnikov sat in the wooden chair opposite the deputy and looked up at the photograph of Lenin left over from the days of Anna Timofeyeva. The photograph had meant much to that box of a woman. Rostnikov was sure that it remained only as another prop for the ambitious dog of a man behind the desk.
Like Anna Timofeyeva, Khabolov also wore his uncomfortable brown uniform, but the button at the neck was undone. To Procurator Timofeyeva, the uniform had been a reminder of her duty. To Khabolov, it was a badge of his authority. That Rostnikov had little respect for the new procurator was evident to both men, but nothing on the inspector’s face or in his manner let the fact be known.
Finally, Khabolov made a check mark on the file in front of him and put the file on the stack to his left with the pencil atop it to indicate that he planned only a brief moment or two with Rostnikov before he got back to the more serious business that awaited him.
Rostnikov wanted to shift his stiff leg but did not do so. Instead, he sat, betraying no emotion, and waited.
“The old Jew,” Khabolov said. “Are you making progress?”
The game would have to be played out. Khabolov had no interest in the dead Abraham Savitskaya. Whatever was really on his mind would come when he was ready, after he had reminded Rostnikov once again of his demotion, had hinted, once again, at his vulnerability and his Jewish wife.