Though he told no one, Petrov had no desire to return to duty following his shooting. He was afraid because he was a young man in a job growing more dangerous. He had been given an honorable escape.
Petrov had drifted from job to job. For almost a year he was on the security staff of the Bolshoi Theater. The job paid poorly and the hours were terrible but there were perks, including food from various company parties, mainly for wealthy foreigners.
But Petrov’s wife had grown ill with a disease of weariness the doctor called chronic fatigue syndrome, which he said could not be cured. Petrov’s wife couldn’t work.
So Viktor Petrov moved on to a job that paid much more. He became, as his father had been, a waiter. For a year he had waited tables at a private club. After being a policeman, however, he found it humiliating to be an anonymous figure to loud men and over-dressed women. He found it humiliating to constantly be saying
“thank you very much” for tips he had earned.
And so, Viktor had found, through a friend who was not only still a policeman but now a captain, the job of security guard at the Leningradskaya Hotel. The hotel was one of the seven huge concrete monstrosities built on Stalin’s orders in the 1950s. Some found the hotel strangely beautiful. Others pronounced it a hideous tower whose rooms should be reserved for visiting mad scientists.
Petrov liked working there and asked to work nights when he would chance on few hotel employees and fewer guests. If a patron of Jacko’s Bar in the hotel grew unruly, it was not Petrov’s problem.
Jacko’s had its own security. His primary job was to check the doors to be sure they were locked, and look for thieves.
Security at the front door was good, but from time to time one of the petty criminals, gypsies, or desperate homeless who spent their hours in the Leningradsky, Yarolslavsky, or Kazansky railway stations directly across from the hotel made their way in. Petrov was armed, an American.38-millimeter pistol that he had been ordered to buy with his own money.
The rooms of the Leningradskaya were not fancy or particularly well furnished, but they were relatively clean and, by Moscow standards, which were far beyond the reach of Petrov, relatively inexpensive.
Early in the morning, before the sun was quite ready to rise, Petrov had moved slowly down the halls, hearing or imagining that he heard the loud band in Jacko’s that played every night almost till dawn.
Everything was fine. The cleaning crew was already at work.
Doors were locked. No suspicious people were roaming the halls or hiding in supply closets. The door to the small exercise room was open, which was not unusual. The night staff frequently forgot to lock it. Petrov had a key and was prepared to lock the door when he heard something inside. He went in slowly. The room was dark and had no windows.
Petrov considered calling out but for some reason decided against it. He remembered where the light switch was and moved along the wall to click it. The room went cold-white as the fluo-rescent lights sputtered and tinkled to life. The free weights were in a corner. The machines-treadmill, bicycle, and others which Petrov did not know and did not know how to use-were empty.
He had been about to click off the lights and leave when he heard a sound beyond the door that led to the small shower and toilet. No light was coming under the door. One of the three showers was running. Water was hitting the tiles.
Petrov felt sweat forming on his brow and a very bad feeling in his stomach. He imagined armed young men beyond the door, ready to kill anyone who disturbed them as they hid. He imagined even worse. He could have backed out of the weight room and into the hall where he could find the floor phone and call for help. But what if there was no one beyond the door? What if the incident was reported by whoever came to back him up? The hotel knew his background. Petrov might well lose his job. He could not afford to lose his job. In all likelihood, someone had simply left the water running in a shower. He took his weapon from his holster and pushed open the shower room door.
Darkness as the door remained open, light from the weight room barely cutting into the darkness. Petrov crouched and pointed his weapon. He really expected and hoped to see nothing.
Moments like this had haunted him since he had been wounded. It was better, he frequently told himself, to be overly cautious and prepared than to be confident and dead.
“Is anyone here?” he said, expecting no answer as he reached for the switch.
The sound he then heard over the water was definitely human, definitely in pain. Petrov went down on one knee, weapon held out, trying to see into the near darkness. The sound, a low, weak groan, came again.
“Who is it?” Petrov repeated.
This time there was a weak “Oh. Oh. Oh.”
Viktor stood quickly, hit the light switch, and crouched again with his gun outstretched and ready. He tried not to tremble. He tried so hard not to breathe that it made him dizzy, a frequent occurrence resulting from the fact that he had but one functioning lung.
The doors of the two toilets stalls were open. The stalls were empty. Lying on the shower tiles, water hitting his face, was a big man, a naked man with a bad complexion and blood streaming from two wounds to his chest. The blood poured across the tattoos on his body and formed a river to the shower drain.
There was nowhere to hide in the shower room or the weight room. Whoever had done this was gone, but Viktor took no chances. He wasn’t sure what he should do, but he decided to turn off the shower. He did so carefully, trying not to get his only decent pair of shoes too wet. Then he turned his attention to the big man.
“Are you alive?” Petrov said, knowing that it was a stupid question.
The man was alive, but not very. Viktor put his gun away and knelt without thinking of what damage it might do to his pants.
The man opened his eyes and saw Viktor. The eyes darted around the room. The man grabbed Viktor’s hair and pulled him to within inches of his own face. Even about to die the man was extremely strong.
“I had a wound like this,”Viktor said calmly. “I survived. So will you.”
The big man shook his head once to show that he had no illusions about survival.
“Who shot you?” asked Viktor, prying the dying man’s fingers from his hair with great difficulty.
“Little boy,” the man said.
“A little boy shot you?”
The dying man shook his head again. “Little boy. . dead.”
“Who shot you?”
“Shot because of dead boy,” he said. “I didn’t even remember him. I didn’t know.”
“But who shot you?” Petrov asked.
“No,” the big man said, closing his eyes. “I understand. I would do the same.”
And with that he died.
Petrov stood and ran for the door, slipping and almost falling on the wet floor. He hurried through the weight room and into the hall, where he went to the floor phone and called the desk, telling them to put two security men on the front door, another one at the employee entrance, and another at the loading dock immediately.
And to stop anyone who had wet shoes.
“And call the police, now,” he said. “A guest has been murdered and the killer probably has not had time to leave the hotel.”
“I don’t. .” the desk clerk began.
“Do it, immediately,” Viktor said, reverting to the days when he had been a sergeant and had barked orders to younger officers.