“That is in Missouri,” said Rostnikov with pride.
“Right,” agreed Posniky. “But he found out I was after him. Then I found he had come back to Russia. He came back here to hide from me, came back with my mother’s candlestick. Through contacts I found that he had a protector who had helped him get back into Russia, to get away from me; at least that’s what they said.”
“And who was this protector?” asked Rostnikov, knowing that he would have to rise soon or his leg would lock in pain.
The old man shrugged. “Whoever it was”-he sighed-“he didn’t protect him this time. You can’t imagine the feeling I’ve lived with, the feeling of unfinished business. You wake up with it every morning.”
“Like finding the last few pages missing from a mystery novel you like and knowing the book is so old that you will probably never know the ending,” said Rostnikov.
“Exactly,” said the old man, looking up and brushing back his mane of colorless hair.
“And now?”
“And now,” said Posniky with resignation, “I am finished. I’ve read you the last two pages of your mystery, and you can close the book. A question: is there some way we can get Martin on the plane? Somehow this reminds me of that day in Riga sixty years ago. Only this time it is me and Martin and an airplane.”
Martin, hearing his name mentioned, came alert and looked at the two men.
“We will see,” said Rostnikov, starting to get up. “But not now. I think we must now go to my office for an official statement.” Posniky leaned forward, and for an instant Porfiry Petrovich feared that the tough old man was going to have a heart attack or cry. Instead, he reached under the table and came up with a brown package, which clearly contained the brass candlestick.
“Let’s go,” he said, but Martin was not prepared to go without trouble. He pushed his chair back, looked to the two doors, chose Tkach’s, and ran toward him. Rostnikov reached out to grab him but was too late. Martin bumped into one table where a couple was eating soup, which went flying.
Rostnikov could but watch as Martin, a head taller and much more solid, rushed at Tkach, who appeared to step to the side to let him pass. When Martin hit the hinged kitchen door, he threw Tkach a quick warning look that Tkach answered with a solid right fist to Martin’s throat. Martin twisted, clutching his throat, and Tkach hit him again with a nearby chair.
Customers watched. Women screamed, and Zelach ambled over to help subdue the writhing American.
“He’s still young,” said Posniky, who was standing at Rostnikov’s side with the candlestick under his arm. “He doesn’t know when he has lost. I was the same. Let’s go, chief inspector.”
Ignoring the crowd, which seemed to realize that a police or KGB action was taking place, Zelach and Tkach handcuffed Martin’s hands behind him and led him out behind Rostnikov and Posniky, who moved slowly through the lobby and onto the sidewalk.
“This is the first time I have been in Moscow,” Posniky said, looking around. “When I was a boy, my family wouldn’t let us come to the city. They thought Jews were routinely slaughtered on the streets of Moscow.”
Rostnikov turned to watch Zelach shove the gasping, angry Martin forward. The turn, as it was, probably saved Rostnikov’s life. A dark car screeched down the street away from the curb. It roared in front of a taxi that was just pulling away from the Metropole, leaped the curb, and hit Posniky, who had no idea that it was coming. The fender of the moving car missed Rostnikov by a shadow as he fell back to the sidewalk. Posniky was sucked under the car and disappeared for an instant, though Rostnikov could hear his body thud against the undercarriage of the automobile. Then the car jerked forward, hitting a young woman, who was lifted into the air. From the rear of the black car Posniky’s twisted, bloody body was spat out toward the seated Rostnikov. The packaged brass candlestick was still clutched tightly in the gnarled hand of the corpse.
NINE
As the car had struck Posniky, a thought had struck Rostnikov. The driver’s face had been covered with a scarf even in the hot evening, but Rostnikov was sure of two things about that driver. First, that it was a man and not a woman. Second, that it was not an old man. He was also certain, even as the car deposited the body before him, that it had been no accident. The eyes of the driver had not been shrouded by drink. They had been quite cold, quite firm, quite professional.
There was a silent fraction of a second when the world stopped and everyone and everything froze, everything but the dark car speeding away down the avenue. Rostnikov knew from experience that the silent moment was so slight, so nearly imperceptible, that only those who had learned to experience it even noticed it existed. He had never discussed that halting of time with anyone, had savored it secretly, wondered at how many thoughts, ideas, insights, came during that hush. And then it was over.
Women were screaming. The handcuffed American lurched forward and tripped, sprawling hard on his face and smashing his nose. Tkach leaned over to pick him up as Zelach shambled over to the woman who had been hit by the car that had ground the old man to rags. People rushed out of the hotel. One man actually ran down the street after the disappearing automobile. The world, following the silent moment, rushed by, and Rostnikov felt himself moving slowly, letting madness wave past him. He knelt and removed the candlestick from the old man’s dead hand.
“Call an ambulance,” shouted Zelach from the stricken woman whom he was tending. “You,” he said, pointing to one of the hotel clerks who had rushed out. “Call now.”
Martin was on his knees, his nose crushed, eyes wide open, and Tkach was using his own handkerchief to stop the bleeding.
“I must go, Sasha,” Rostnikov said, tucking the candlestick under his right arm.
Tkach looked up from his prisoner with a question but held it back when he saw Rostnikov’s face. The Washtub was somewhere else. For a moment Tkach thought that the chief inspector might be in shock from the hit-and-run, the crushed body, the near miss, but he was sure that what he saw in that worn face was a disturbing thought.
“Where can I reach you?” Tkach said. Already down the street a police car was screeching through the night.
“I’m not sure. I may be at the home of Lev Ostrovsky or at the Moscow Art Theatre, the old one. Old men are dying.”
That old men were dying seemed perfectly normal to Tkach, who was a young man, but he looked at the pieces of bone and flesh that had once been Mikhail Posniky, and he nodded.
Five uniformed policemen appeared from nowhere and began to hold the crowd back. Rostnikov and the candlestick moved past the policemen and into the small crowd. He broke through and found himself moving through a traffic jam.
“What happened?” a fat woman in a gray dress asked him.
“An old man died,” he said absently, and walked on.
He had Lev Ostrovsky’s address in his pocket, but he was closer to the theater and decided to head there first. He was probably too late, but he had to try. Of course, he might be wrong. There were many possibilities. The black car could already have visited Lev Ostrovsky. Or it might now be on its way to find him. Or someone else might be taking care of Ostrovsky. Or Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov might be entirely wrong.
The taxi driver looked at him suspiciously, eyed the heavy package under the arm of the square man with the bad leg, and wondered whether it was a gun or a bar to hit him with and take his money. The driver, whose name was Ivan Ivanov, was very sensitive to the commonness of his name, the anonymity of his existence. There were times when he wondered if anyone would miss one more or less Ivan Ivanov.