“Tomorrow morning at six, no later,” the driver said. “You are to report to KGB headquarters. You are not to leave your apartment tonight. Colonel Drozhkin will be expecting you.”
Rostnikov got out of the cab without offering to pay and made his way wearily through the door and up the stairs.
TEN
In the morning, Sarah Rostnikov rolled over in bed and examined the face of her husband. His eyes were open and appeared to be examining the ceiling with great interest. His behavior the night before had been most strange. She had been too much within herself, too much concerned with disappointment to worry about Porfiry Petrovich, and since he seemed content in his routine, she had not thought greatly about his problems, though she knew they were great and many.
When he had come home late the night before, he had eaten without noticing what he ate, had lifted his weights, losing himself so completely that she had to remind him that it was well past midnight and the clanking of the metal on the mat in the corner was surely disturbing the neighbors downstairs. They both knew the downstairs neighbors. Misha and Alexiana Korkov, would never complain. They were a mousy pair with a pale, near-teen daughter. Misha sold tickets at the USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition, while Alexiana did something vague and menial at the Aeroflot Air Terminal.
After he had stopped lifting, Rostnikov had sat on his small bench, sweating, thinking, distant. He had washed, and for the first time in memory, at least her memory, he had not read at least a few pages of an American detective novel. It had become a ritual need of her husband’s to read at least a few pages of Ed McBain or Lawrence Block, Bill Pronzini, or Joseph Wambaugh. He was forever ferreting out their novels in English, hoarding them, fearing that he would run out. But last night he read nothing.
Stranger still, he had asked her if she wanted to make love. He had said it so softly, almost an exhaled breath with words, that she almost missed it. Sarah had been tired, concerned, hot, and far from any feeling of passion, but there was something in her husband that made the request a near plea. It was a sound she had never heard from him before. No one else would have noticed it. The man was so solid, so confident, so unmovable, that his possible vulnerability frightened her.
And now, in the morning, the sun coming through the window’s thin curtains, she said, “Porfiry, what is it?”
“I must get up,” he said. “I have an appointment.”
He sat up, scratched his broad, hard, and hairy belly through his white undershirt, and reached over to massage his leg. At least this part of the ritual did not change.
“Where are you going?” she tried.
Rostnikov looked at his wife, her long, red-tinged hair back over her shoulders, framing her round, still-handsome face.
“Porfiry?”
“It’s better you do not know,” he said, getting up and reaching for his pants. Sarah had sewn the sleeve the evening before, and it looked fine. He had but two suits and liked to keep the other one for emergencies and when his regular suit was being cleaned. Getting it cleaned was a major chore. So much was a major chore, he thought, looking for his shirt.
“You’ll call me later?” she said. “I’ll be home by six. Is this dangerous?”
Rostnikov had one shirt-sleeve on. He paused, pondering the question. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Are you-are you afraid?” she asked, a question she never imagined asking him. She could tell by his broad, flat face that he had not considered this. Before he answered, he finished putting on his shirt.
“I don’t think so,” he said, buttoning his shirt and searching for his tie. “I am curious, filled with curiosity. If you ask me, is this dangerous, Porfiry? I say, yes. I think so. But it is a puzzle, a page that must be turned even if the page is on fire and I burn my hand.”
She was still in bed, watching him, when he finished dressing. He moved to her, kissed both her cheeks and her forehead.
“If Josef gets here before I do, do not eat without me,” he said. “If I am not back by nine, call Tkach at Petrovka.”
“Porfiry,” she said, feeling fear.
He shook his head no and pursed his lips. Then he turned and went out the door. Sarah tried to hold that memory of him, to etch it in her mind. She didn’t want to tell herself why she was doing this, but she knew, she knew deep within her, that she feared never seeing him again.
Rostnikov was more familiar with the huge yellow-gray building at 22 Lubyanka Street than he really wanted to be. He walked up the small rise toward the building, past the thirty-six-foot statue of “Iron” Felix Dzerzhinksy, who organized the Cheka for Lenin. The Cheka, after many transformations, was now the KGB.
The building, like the others that flanked it and were part of the KGB complex, was unmarked. Before the Revolution, the building had belonged to the All-Russian Insurance Company. Captured German soldiers and political prisoners built a nine-story annex after World War II. The old section circles a courtyard. On one side of the courtyard is Lubyanka Prison where thousands have been led to execution cells.
Rostnikov walked slowly up the steps of the main building at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. He passed a pair of men coming out, both of whom had the somber look of agents. They did not look at him.
And then Rostnikov was through the door and standing in the complex known as the Center. Another KGB building existed on the Outer Ring Road where foreign operations were handled. Rostnikov had passed it, at least the place where he knew it existed. It could not be viewed from the road. Meanwhile, the Center continued as the heart of the KGB operation.
Rostnikov moved through the outer lobby, absorbing the building again. The walls and hallways were, he knew, all a uniform light green, and the parquet floors, except those of the generals, a few colonels, and the division leaders, were uncarpeted. Throughout the complex, lighting came from large, round ceiling globes covered with shades.
“Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov,” he told the uniformed young man at the desk. Behind this uniformed man stood another young man, in uniform, carrying a small automatic weapon and standing at full attention.
“Chief Inspector Rostnikov,” Rostnikov added.
“Wait there,” the young officer said, pointing to a series of nearby wooden chairs. Rostnikov sat. He sat for about fifteen minutes, watching people come in and out, noting that everyone seemed to whisper as if they were in a cathedral or Lenin’s tomb.
Then an older officer in uniform appeared before Rostnikov, ramrod straight, and said, “Come.”
And Rostnikov came. As had happened the other times he had been there, his guide moved at march pace, easily outdistancing the policeman, who simply tried to keep his guide in sight until the man realized the distance and slowed down. But in this case Rostnikov knew where they were headed, knew the door they stopped in front of, recognized the gravelly voice that answered the guide’s knock. There was no name on the door, no marking.
“Come,” said the voice, and Rostnikov entered alone and closed the door behind him-dark brown carpet, not very thick; framed posters on the wall from the past, urging productivity and solidarity; chairs with arms and dark nylon padded seats and an old polished desk behind which, as on other occasions, sat Colonel Drozhkin.
Drozhkin looked even smaller this time than the last. His hair was just as white, his suit and tie just as black. The last time they had spoken, Drozhkin had indicated that he was, at the age of seventy-two, about to retire, but that clearly had not yet come to pass.
“Do you know why you are here?” Drozhkin said.
Rostnikov assumed that the question was somewhat rhetorical and shrugged, and then he observed from Drozhkin’s face that the colonel did not know why the chief inspector was there.