The water was boiling now. Anna, who stood next to the stove, turned off the flame and poured the steaming water into her large glass, which contained an English tea bag.
Since she was an atheist, Anna did not pray as she stood drinking her tea, but she did close her eyes and will that Elena would be all right. It struck her that she suddenly knew how the many wives and mothers of police officers felt each night, the fear, the attempts not to think about what might happen.
She finished the tea, threw the bag in the garbage, rinsed the glass and said, “To bed, Baku. Tomorrow we have a satisfying and meaninglessly busy day before us, and, if we are fortunate, Elena will be home.”
Chapter Eight
“No,” said the woman with her head bowed, wearing a dark veil to cover her eyes and hide her face.
Fortunately, the veil was appropriate since it was a funeral and other women present also had their faces covered.
The crowd around the grave site was large and dangerous. Rostnikov had hoped but not expected that it might rain, which might cut the burial short and lessen the possibility of conflict in the cemetery. But the morning was pleasantly cool, and the sky, while cloudy, gave no sign of an immediate shower.
To the right of the temporary headstone-a ten-foot dark stone with a life-size image of Lashkovich in a leather jacket was being prepared-gathered the one-eyed Casmir Chenko and his Tatar Mafia. To the right stood Shatalov and the Chechin Mafia. Both gangs were dressed in dark suits. Four uniformed policemen from the special gang force stood a discreet distance away at the foot of the grave where the casket was now being lowered. The police were armed with automatic weapons, which two of them had put aside before the burial service began so they could search the incoming members of the two Mafias for weapons. They had found none.
This section of the cemetery was a ghostly army of tall, black gravestones etched with the likelinesses of dead young men in leather who looked down like an army of the damned.
“You are certain,” said Rostnikov, who stood on one side of the veiled woman. Emil Karpo stood on the other.
“The man who was with Mr. Lashkovich is not here,” Raisa Munyakinova said. “I would like to leave.”
“Just a while longer,” Porfiry Petrovich said gently.
The service was being conducted by a tall man somewhere in his fifties. He wore a white gown and, before the lowering of the casket began, he had spoken in an unfamiliar language, his deep voice filled with emotion.
“He said,” Karpo whispered, “that a good man was being buried today, a man who treated his elders with respect, his wife and children with love, and his country, Tataria, with pride. We shall miss him.”
Rostnikov knew that the man being lowered into the ground must have treated his elders, since they included Casmir Chenko, with respect because he had little choice. Lashkovich, however, had abandoned his wife and teenage son five years earlier and never sent them a penny. The widow lived in Kazan, five hundred miles from Moscow, in what had been declared the Tatar capital. The widow lived by working in a belt factory. She was not present. As for his patriotism, a quick search had revealed that the dead man had paid no taxes. It might also be considered a less than chauvinistic act to murder citizens, as the dead man had made a career of doing.
“Look again, Raisa Munyakinova, please,” said Rostnikov, well under the voice of the man in the white gown who shifted in Russian to an almost tearful prayer.
“May God take the soul of this good man into his arms. May he receive in heaven all that he deserves for a life well spent in devotion and toil.”
“Amen to that,” said Rostnikov.
“I want to go now,” Raisa said. “I’m tired. I’m afraid.”
“One last look,” said Rostnikov, incredibly uncomfortable and trying to bear the brunt of the weight of his body with his good right leg, using the left one to simply maintain his balance.
She lifted her veil just enough to see out from under it and scanned the crowd once again.
“No,” she said, letting the veil drop. “He is not here. I am sure.”
Raisa had worked a full shift and it had been a difficult one. The Carpathian Bathhouse was nowhere near as well-maintained as the hotel health club where she had worked the night before and where the Tatar had died. She had expected another cleaning woman, Olga Sachnova, but the other woman had simply not shown up.
There had been debris and wet towels. The sinks and toilets weren’t filthy but they were not clean. She had put in an extra hour, though she would never be paid for it. She did not wish to lose her job, and she could not possibly bring herself to leave any sign of dirt behind her.
From the bathhouse, she had caught a bus and made it to Petrovka at the time designated for her meeting with the pale detective named Karpo. She had passed the police building hundreds of times and heard tales about the dark bowels of the building. Raisa did not want to enter, but she could not refuse. The guard at the gate had taken her name and made a call. Moments later Karpo had appeared and led her into the building for a nearly two-hour examination of the photographs of not only Chechin gangsters, but Tatars, Afghan veteran Mafia members, and dozens of Georgians, Moslems, Ukrainians, Estonians, and Russians of all ages. Nothing.
The casket was now resting on the dirt bottom of the grave and three Tatars were shoveling soil over it. The man in the white gown made a motion with his raised hand and the burial was over.
Rostnikov and Karpo had not been surprised by the appearance of the Chechins at a Tatar burial. The code of dishonor adopted loosely from an amalgam of American gangster movies required such an appearance and the presentation of a large flowery wreath to lay on the grave.
Two Chechins in their twenties were standing back with the ready wreath and a signal from Shatalov.
The service was over but no one moved.
Two of the Tatar men, hands folded in front of them, and a woman headed straight for the two policemen and the veiled woman.
“Please, please, please, let’s leave now,” Raisa said, gripping Rostnikov’s hand.
Her grip of fear was surprisingly strong.
The Tatar contingent stopped directly in front of Raisa, and the woman, who was young and very pretty, with Asiatic features, looked at Raisa, whose head was bent forward in a fear she hoped looked like grief.
“My father, Casmir Chenko,” the young woman said, “wants to thank you for coming. The journey must have been difficult. Your son was a very good man and a loyal friend. You should be very proud of him.”
The young woman lifted her right hand slightly and one of the young Tatars stepped forward, a letter-sized brown envelope in his hand. He handed the envelope to the young woman and stood back.
“My father wants you to have this, a small token of his respect for your son.”
Raisa wanted to look at one of the policemen to determine if she should refuse the gift. She couldn’t do so. She took the envelope and nodded. The young girl stepped forward and gave Raisa a hug, whispering in her ear, “Whatever your son may have told you, do not share it with these policemen who brought you here.
Valentin would not have wished it.”
The young woman was adept at such whispered messages, and while the two policemen had not heard the words, they had heard the voice.
“You are one of us too,” said Chenko’s daughter, looking at Emil Karpo. “A relative?”
“No,” he said.
“You are a Tatar,” she said, looking into the ghostly face.