“She might be. There’s a file on her certainly.”
“My son told me her apartment was searched.”
“So I believe.”
“I haven’t been able to get through to her on the phone. People have been hanging up when I call her building.”
The Chekist shrugged again.
“She hasn’t been arrested yet, not that I know of. But she’s being investigated-that does tend to make neighbors nervous.”
It occurred to Korolev that something about the conversation didn’t quite make sense.
“Why are you telling me this?”
The Chekist smiled and nodded to himself, as if pleased with the question.
“Let’s say that we feel you should know that we know-about your wife, that is.”
“But I know you know,” Korolev said, wondering whether he was being made fun of. “It’s you who are investigating her.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. A different part of State Security is investigating her. But we know they’re investigating her and that might be a good thing for you.”
“You might intervene?”
“Colonel Rodinov values you highly,” Dubinkin said-as if that were answer enough. Korolev realized how a mouse must feel when played with by a cat. Still, if he understood correctly what Dubinkin was saying about this different part of State Security, then there was something he should tell him.
“Well, if you know all that, Comrade-then you should know some people came to my home today and searched it.”
Dubinkin exhaled a narrow stream of smoke.
“What kind of people?”
“Careful people, your kind of people-everything was left almost exactly as it was, but I’m certain they were there. And there’s more, I was followed here. But that they didn’t bother to hide.”
“You see, this is why we want to be so open with you-so that you’re open with us. It would seem the Twelfth Department aren’t pleased the investigation has been taken from them. Just so you know, we’re pretty much certain they’re the ones who took the doorman, Priudski. At least, no one else seems to have. We’ve been through the records for all the Moscow prisons-nothing. It’s possible they’ve put him in under another name, so we’re checking further. But most likely they have him somewhere else altogether.”
Korolev sighed-he’d been temporarily assigned to the NKVD, without his having been given much choice in the matter, and now, as a result, he was being investigated by them.
“It feels like I’m a football being kicked around a field.”
“An excellent analogy,” Dubinkin agreed. “Except one side wants to puncture you while the other want to keep you in play and use you to score a goal. Which side do you hope wins?”
“Christ,” Korolev said.
“He’s not playing. He’s not even the referee-Ezhov is. It’s as well to be clear about things-if we aren’t successful in this investigation of ours, things will not go well. Not for you, not for Sergeant Slivka, and probably not for me either.”
Dubinkin didn’t seem too bothered by the prospect, inhaling a lungful of smoke with a contented expression.
“Chestnova should be ready by now. Shall we see?” he said eventually.
* * *
She was. They found the doctor hovering over Shtange’s pale corpse like a white-coated carrion bird. She looked up at them, nodded her greeting and without further ado began to describe the man’s condition. While she did so, Korolev made his own examination-shocked by the number of wounds. They covered his arm, chest, face, and shoulders. Deep incisions, a big knife by the look of it.
“There’s one particularly interesting thing about the wounds,” Chestnova said.
Korolev waited-he doubted she’d need any encouragement to tell them and, sure enough, she smiled, as if reading his thoughts.
“You see these ones…” She flicked a finger back and forth across the blue-lipped cuts that Korolev had been looking at.
“Stab wounds?” he asked.
“Oh yes, I’d say as much. And enough to do the job five times over. A big blade-eight, maybe ten inches. In places it went right through his body.”
“I can see that.”
“But what do you make of this?”
Chestnova pointed to a long thin cut a couple of centimeters in front of the dead man’s ear, precise and clean.
“A different weapon?” Korolev asked, comparing it to the other puncture marks.
“Yes, Korolev. And this weapon, I would almost stake my life on it, was a surgical scalpel. What’s more, in my opinion, this wound was made some time after Dr. Shtange was already dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Korolev approached the Hotel Moskva from the Teatralnaya Square side, parking at the end of the cab rank on Okhotny Ryad and showing the babushka in charge of it his identity card when she gave him the evil eye. The identity card didn’t stop her looking at him with a malevolence that felt like it could blister paint-but at least she stopped waving her hands in his direction and insisting he parked elsewhere. That was all he asked for. And that the Chekists who had pulled in a few car-lengths behind would go and bother some other poor citizen.
The Hotel Moskva was an enormous building. It had opened two years before and dwarfed the National Hotel and the Metropol-its near neighbors. If the newsreels proclaimed that Moscow was being transformed into a city that the whole world would envy, then the Moskva was the building to prove that they weren’t just talking hot air. Its hard lines and brutal simplicity might not be to everyone’s taste, but it was certainly impressive.
A warm-looking doorman in a long coat pushed open a door as high as a double-decker tram and Korolev made his way across a lobby as wide and as long as some football fields he’d played on.
“Korolev,” he said when he reached the reception desk, handing his identity card over. He glanced back at the red carpet he’d marched the length of to get there and allowed his gaze to take in the small clusters of foreigners and bosses, huddled together in encampments of leather armchairs, talking in low tones. They looked insignificant in among the square marble columns and the wide expanses of space.
“How may we assist you, Comrade Captain?”
He turned back to the receptionist-a fat head above a frock coat with a cravat to round it off, no less. He appeared to be trying to look down his nose at Korolev but, as Korolev was a good six inches taller than him, he was failing. All the same, his nose looked like it was planning to recoil back into that plump face in horror at the fact that an honest cop like Korolev should wander in unannounced. Korolev was about to become annoyed when he remembered what his face must look like. He shrugged inwardly. The fellow probably had a point.
“I’m here to talk to Madame Shtange, Comrade. She’s staying here-and I’m expected.”
“Madame Shtange is a Soviet citizen?” The question was as carefully delivered as a ballet dancer’s pirouette. But the meaning was clear enough-if she’s a foreigner, you can go whistle, flatfoot-she’s State Security’s business.
Korolev put his elbows on the counter and yawned, then looked at the receptionist with genial menace, pleased to see his reaction change from puzzlement to concern. Korolev let him sweat for a moment or two before he spoke.
“She’s a Soviet resident,” Korolev said. “A Soviet resident that this Soviet Militiaman wants to talk to. Now, how about you do your duty to the Soviet State and tell her I’m here to speak to her? As I said, she’s expecting me. And be quick about it-the consequences for you if you don’t cooperate fully won’t be pleasant, believe me.”
The receptionist blinked twice and then his demeanor was transformed smoothly to one of ingratiation.
“Of course, Comrade Captain, it would be my pleasure. I always do my duty to the State, of that you can be completely and absolutely certain. Let me see which room she’s in.”
Korolev smiled grimly, thinking there were certain advantages to his temporary assignment. The receptionist pulled out a long drawer that was built into the reception desk and let his fingers flicker along the filing cards it contained. The only problem, Korolev thought to himself, was that being able to push citizens round like this would probably make scoundrels out of most men before a week was out.