Belnikov wasn’t fooled. “Aren’t you a revelation?” he’d always remark when he visited Semyonov at his office. “Stalin has his eye on you.”
It would appear Stalin had his eye on Belnikov, too: The trusted advisor’s intestines were gored at his whore’s apartment on New Year’s Day in 1938—the same day they came for Polina and the rest of Semyonov’s family.
Comrade Stalin felt he needed a personal detective without any conflicting loyalties and in one stroke, Rodki Semyonov’s personal life had ceased to exist.
“Mr. Gulyas, I’m sure you understand that whoever sent you—perhaps your Secretary General or one of his henchmen—is himself a servant of Moscow.”
Semyonov clutched Beryx Gulyas by the hair and yanked his head backwards. The Hungarian, choked by his own blood, coughed and gurgled, taking deep gasps of air when the fluids from his nose drained to the back of his throat.
“All we want to know is why you’re here,” the Great Detective said. Like the Hungarian, he was bored. Both men knew a thing or two about applying and surviving pressure, so their encounter was becoming an endless game of tic-tac-toe.
Beryx Gulyas rolled his eyes into the back of his head as if he were about to have a seizure, but Semyonov would brook none of his dramatics. He beat the Hungarian with his knees and elbows until the man really was on the brink of unconsciousness, and perhaps, just the slightest bit sorry that he’d tempted fate with such a wise-ass move.
“You’re looking tired, Mr. Gulyas,” Semyonov teased. “I think you need rest.”
Fabi’s son was keen to continue the interrogation, but The Great Detective took him aside and explained how things were done. He wanted to give the Hungarian a bit of time to get his confidence back before he destroyed it again.
“I could use some lunch,” Semyonov told Fabi. “Is there a decent cafeteria around here?”
Fabi told him there was, and directed him to a small greasy spoon nestled next to a book store. Semyonov bought a book of poetry by Mayakovsky and sat down at a window seat, ordering borscht and some boiled potatoes. He opened the book and pretended to read. Thirty minutes—no more. That’s what he would give the Hungarian, assuming, of course, that his soup was brought to him in a timely manner.
Fabi’s son had a look of both surprise and determination frozen upon his face. His lips—no longer the color of cherry candy—had faded into a grayish-white, and blood ran in one smooth line from the pellet-sized hole above his right eyebrow into his hairline, where it disappeared. He was lying on the floor, clutching a baby blue towel with his left hand. His right hand—the one that had held Beryx Gulyas’ Beretta—was empty, but his fingers looked like they were still coiled around the thing.
Fabi himself had been moved to one of the marble tables in the second chamber, where his big, round belly pointed to a vent in the ceiling. His brains remained in the first chamber, where they had already dripped down the wet, tile walls and slid towards the drain in the center of the floor. A blob of them jiggled over the drain, causing it to slurp.
“I’m leaving my key on the front desk,” the receptionist informed. The noise of the drain made her queasy. She’d been in the toilet when Beryx Gulyas showed himself out, and had stayed there until The Great Detective returned from his lunch.
“I’m impressed with his accuracy,” Rodki Semyonov told General Pushkin’s aide, a nervous type who tried to cover his emotional frailty with an overdone military posture. Semyonov went on to explain that while Fabi’s son had been shot at close range, Fabi had been a moving target who was blasted at a distance of several meters. That was no easy feat for a man who had been worked over as thoroughly as the Hungarian—a man whose eyes were nearly swollen shut, his body bruised to the bone, and his nose completely shattered. Semyonov held the aide’s gun and followed what he imagined the Hungarian’s movements would have been.
“Right there,” Semyonov said, as he moved into the first chamber and found the angle at which Beryx had shot the gun-trading masseuse. Coming in from the second chamber, the Hungarian would’ve been totally exposed and Fabi would’ve had all of the advantages. There would have been no time to position for a shot—only a moment’s grace to allow Beryx to aim by instinct and fire a single round.
“Perfect,” The Great Detective whispered.
Beryx, he recognized, was the highest caliber of professional. Despite his skill, Semyonov could see why General Pushkin hadn’t snagged him for his office, and let him continue working for one of the lesser states. Sadists had never bothered Pushkin, but instability did—and Beryx Gulyas’s penchant for creative murder was a sign of both deep insecurity and staggering hubris.
If he could manage to stick to one method and do what he did best—as he had with poor Fabi and his son—he could have a long career ahead of him, Semyonov reflected.
“The General will be most unhappy about this development,” the aide carped. “If they weren’t already dead, he would have purged this operation of these two hacks and replaced them with more talented operatives.”
Semyonov nodded. His special status left him largely immune from blame for problems like this. Fabi and his son may have been hacks, but they were KGB hacks and it was their responsibility to keep the Hungarian in line. If their superior had any common sense, he would’ve immediately noticed that this father-son team was a losing proposition. Semyonov had noticed. In fact, he had counted on it.
“What should I tell the general?” the aide implored. He tried not to seem worried about being the bearer of bad news.
“That I’ll follow Mr. Gulyas and let the Comrade General know as soon as I discover anything.”
The general held his cards close and hated to surrender any control. Semyonov knew, on the other hand, that surrendering a bit of control was precisely what broke a case wide open. The Hungarian would’ve rather died than talk, and all they would’ve gained by detaining him indefinitely was another prisoner. With Beryx Gulyas loose, Semyonov could wait for his movements as if he were monitoring a radar screen for a cloaked submarine. Eventually, it would have to surface.
“What if he disappears for good?” the aide moaned.
“It’s possible, I guess. But trust me, my friend; I did quite a number on him. And he’ll be far more likely to make stupid errors after the trauma of one of my interrogations—they take a lot out of man. You can tell that to the general.”
The aide seemed pleased, jutting his chin forward and standing “at ease,” while jotting Semyonov’s exact words in his notebook.
“In the meantime, I’m afraid I may need permission to leave Moscow in the near future. It’s just a hunch, but I’d rather the general give me authorization now instead of waiting until our friend reappears and risk losing him again.”
It had been eighteen years since Semyonov had been allowed to leave the Moscow city limits. Stalin had guarded him so jealously that he hadn’t even been allowed a visit to the provinces and conducted all of his investigations—no matter how far reaching—from the city proper. When Stalin died and he acquired a new master, the restraints upon his movements didn’t change. But then, he’d never questioned them, either.
Semyonov didn’t know exactly what made him question them today. He didn’t want to leave Moscow. It had become a comfortable cell for him after all of these years. But something inside him, something perhaps all too human that had nothing to do with his desire or ability to solve this case, made him want to get a look beyond his city prison.