No unannounced visits to Anna and Elena. No complaints about her daughter-in-law. No complaints about the dangers of Sasha’s job. No complaints about how her two grandchildren were being raised. And Lydia had to wear her hearing aid when she visited.
Lydia had violated all these rules and several others within hours of moving in.
Very close to the top of Lydia Tkach’s list was Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, who was to be hounded into getting her son a safe office job in Petrovka or State Security or the Ministry of the Interior or anywhere else.
“Good morning, Lydia Tkach,” said Rostnikov, deciding that with his new position he could probably have someone screen his calls. It would keep Lydia at bay but it would mean that someone else, possibly Pankov, would know everyone who called him.
Pankov and the Yak probably knew anyway, however, so screening might. .
“All right then, good morning,” Lydia said impatiently. “You promised.”
“I did not,” Rostnikov said loudly, knowing his caller was not wearing her hearing device. “I said I would talk to Sasha. I talked to him. I told you that. He does not want to sit in an office, at a desk. He says it would drive him mad. He is a young man. He doesn’t want to sit at a desk preparing reports and answering phones for the next thirty years.”
“He would be alive those thirty years,” she said. “You have the power to have it done even if he doesn’t want it.”
“Again, I have told you that perhaps I could get him reassigned over his objections. He would blame you. He would blame me. He would hate going to work each morning. He has enough things to be depressed about without adding that.”
“What has he to be depressed about?” asked Lydia.
“Beyond the fact that he is Russian and part of our proud heritage of depression,” said Rostnikov, “I can’t think of a thing.”
“You are being ironic,” she said. “I hate ironic. I have trouble understanding it. I have one son. If he is hurt or dies, it will be on your head. I’ll never let you forget it.”
“I am confident of that, Lydia Tkach.”
“Talk to him again,” she said. “Persuade him.”
“I’ll talk to him again,” said Rostnikov, who would indeed do so, though he would not try to persuade Sasha to his mother’s cause.
If Sasha could control his moods and depressions, he still had a promising future, promotion would come quickly. But time was running out on Sasha. If he did not come around in the next year or two, he would be a lower-level investigator for the rest of his career. It could be worse. He might not have a career.
“Report to me,” she said and hung up.
“Yes, Comrade Stalin,” he said to the dead phone, and he too hung up.
The moment the phone hit the cradle, it rang.
“Rostnikov,” he said.
“Pushkin Square in front of the statue in thirty minutes,” said a heavily accented voice which Rostnikov thought was probably Tatar. “Not a second later. Wait there.”
The man hung up, and Rostnikov, who desperately wanted to finish the last four pages of his dearly purchased copy of Ed McBain’s Sadie When She Died, put on his artificial leg, adjusted it, and rose with the aid of his desk. He checked his watch and cal-culated that he would have ample time to get to Pushkin Square by metro. He could, in his new capacity, he reminded himself, requi-sition a car and finish his book in the backseat, but it would take time to get an approval signed by the Yak and a car waiting downstairs.
No, the metro would be faster.
In fact, Rostnikov made it in less than twenty minutes. He emerged from the Pushkin Square metro station in the old Izvestia Building, looked across the Boulevard Ring and down Gorky Street. He surveyed the Square and glanced at the Rossia Cinema.
The dark clouds rumbled but it was not yet raining. This had been going on for several days, and Rostnikov imagined that the skies were waiting for something before they began to cry. There was plenty to cry about already, but using that logic it should be raining constantly throughout Russia.
The square was crowded with people hurrying by but there was no one standing in front of Pushkin, who looked down at the policeman in front of him. Pushkin’s hat was in his left hand at his side and the poet’s right hand rested inside his vest in a Napoleonic pose popular in the 1880s when the statue was completed.
Occasionally, a visitor or a Muscovite would place a flower or two at the foot of the statue, but it was nothing like the wreaths that used to be found here. It was said that when Dostoevsky was presented with a wreath of flowers for his achievements, he carried the heavy wreath and placed it at the foot of this very statue.
Cars bustled, honked, and speeded past the square. People hurried by. Behind Porfiry Petrovich and over the sound of the traffic, a man spoke. Rostnikov did not turn.
“ ‘How oft in grief, from thee long parted
Throughout my vagrant destiny
Moscow my thoughts have turned to thee.’ ”
Rostnikov continued with:
“ ‘Moscow. . what thoughts in each true-hearted Russian come flooding at that word.
How deep an echo there is heard.’ ”
Rostnikov turned to face the dark young man in black slacks and a black zipper jacket. The young man was handsome and slender.
He looked up at Pushkin.
“He wrote that a long time ago, when times were different,” said the young man.
“But you know the words,” said Rostnikov.
“Once I believed them. Once I wanted to be a poet. But there is no market for poets.”
“There never has been,” said Rostnikov, “yet they strive, survive, and breed. Perhaps they are born with a deviant gene.”
“Perhaps,” said the young man. “When we get in the car, you will be searched. If you are wearing a listening device or recorder, we will find it. If you are carrying a weapon, it will be taken, you will be asked to get out, and we will be gone.”
“I carry no weapon. I carry no electronic or recording device,”
said Rostnikov.
The man nodded, looked around, lifted his right hand to his head as if to smooth back his hair. No more than five seconds later, a modest black Zil pulled up, stopping traffic behind it. The windows of the car were tinted. The young man led the way to the car and opened the back door. Rostnikov slipped in awkwardly, pulling in his prosthetic leg a fraction of a second before the young man closed the door.
The car started. The young man remained behind on the street.
At Rostnikov’s left was a pale, thin, young, and quite ugly man with large teeth and a matching nose. The man wore a black zipper jacket exactly like the one worn by the man Rostnikov had spoken to moments earlier.
The driver didn’t turn around. All that Rostnikov could see of him was his recently cut dark hair and his bull neck.
The thin young man said nothing and showed no emotion as he patted Rostnikov down, checking his wallet and even the paperback novel in the inspector’s pocket. He went so far as to examine Porfiry Petrovich’s artificial leg for secret compartments or listening devices. Satisfied, the ugly man reached over and touched the shoulder of the driver, who turned right at the next corner.
Halfway down the narrow street the car stopped and the ugly man reached over to open Rostnikov’s door. Rostnikov obliged by stepping out, which, given his leg, took a bit of time.
As soon as he had cleared the door, it closed and Porfiry Petrovich found himself on an empty street of houses and shops with boarded-up windows. There was another car, black, tinted windows, not large, parked directly across the street. The rear door to the car opened and Rostnikov proceeded to the car and climbed in.