A Fine Red Rain

CHAPTER SEVEN

When Rostnikov stepped around the building onto the sidewalk of Vernadksogo Prospekt, he knew he would not have to walk to the metro station. The black Volga with the darkened windows was a symbol. The heavyset man in the blue suit leaning against it was a sign, a sign he recognized. The man was smoking a cigarette. He looked at Rostnikov without emotion or a nod, and Rostnikov walked slowly toward the man and the car.

No one spoke as the man opened the car door and Porfiry Petrovich got into the back seat. A trio of young women tried not to glance at the KGB vehicle, laughed a bit too heartily at nothing, and moved quickly on. The seat was clean and soft and the car smelled of tobacco. Rostnikov did not recognize the driver. However, the man who had been leaning against the car was one of the two he had encountered yesterday in the lobby of the hospital where he had met with Drozhkin.

Rostnikov did not enjoy the ride. He did not dread it, but he did not enjoy it. He looked out the window, wondered if it would rain, wondered if he would be finished with whatever they were going to do with him in time for him to get Sarah and go to the circus. For a flash of time too thin to grasp, he even wondered if they were going to take him to a place where he would never see his wife, his son, or the light of day again. The thought, or fragment of thought, did not frighten him as much as it scratched him with a shudder of curiosity.

The ride took less than twenty minutes. They rode on large boulevards in the center lanereserved for party members, the KGB, and dignitaries with special connections. The car pulled up to the door of the small hospital and Rostnikov was escorted inside by the burly KGB man. They were met by the second big man, in an identical blue suit, and once again they moved past the desk, to the elevator, and up to the patio, where his escorts remained in the hall as he stepped outside.

A slight wind was blowing as late afternoon approached. Drozhkin was seated in the same chair, almost in the same position, under the fifth canopy. His eyes were open and watching as Rostnikov limped forward.

"You are looking better, Colonel," Rostnikov ventured.

"It is an illusion," said Drozhkin, his gray hand reaching for a drink of what looked like lemonade. "I am much worse, worse by the day. Would you like to sit?"

"Yes," said Rostnikov.

"Well, you may not do so," said Drozhkin. He sucked at a glass straw in the drink, his cheeks drawing in, his face showing what his skull would soon look like. "Do you know why?"

"You wish me to be uncomfortable, Comrade," answered Rostnikov.

"Yes, I wish you to be uncomfortable." Drozhkin looked at the drink with distaste and put it down. "You have made the last several years, the last years of my life, uncomfortable. You do not listen to what you are told. You don't seem to understand the consequences of your rebelliousness. You have stepped into at least five situations in which you interfered with our work. You know that?"

Rostnikov shifted his weight, trying to ignore the discomfort that would soon become pain.

"It is difficult always to avoid the jurisdiction of the KGB, Comrade," he said. "The lines are not always clear and…"

Drozhkin started to reach for the lemonade again and changed his mind. The effort was too great. A sudden breeze whipped his gray hair into a frenzy and settled again.

"This had nothing to do with lines," the old man said. "I told you to stay away from the circus investigation. You remember I told you that?"

"I remember, Comrade," said Rostnikov. "I have given up that investigation."

"Then why did you follow the woman? Why did you go to the circus? I don't expect the truth, but I do expect a story that will not make me think you a fool or, worse, make me think you take me for a fool."

"I was investigating a hit-and-run case, or almost a hit and run. The victim was". "The Rashkovskaya woman," Drozhkin said, sighing.

"Colonel Snitkonoy is aware of my" Rostnikov began again, only to be cut off by Drozhkin.

"The Gray Wolfhound is a fool. I'm a dying man. I need no longer be politic. He is a fool. You know it. I know it. What is this suicide urge you possess, Porfiry Petrovich?"

The familiarity startled Rostnikov, who feared that his leg was about to give way. He examined the old man, who was shaking his head and looking at him. Drozhkin smiled, the smile of a ghost, but a smile. Rostnikov smiled back tentatively.

"It's a good thing I'm dying, a good thing for both of us," said the old man. "I'm afraid I'm beginning to understand you, and that might lead to liking you, and that would not be a good thing. But if you keep up behavior like this, I may yet outlive you."

Rostnikov said nothing. He knew that in a few minutes he would begin to sway and that if he did not sit down or at least lean against something he would run the risk of collapsing.

Drozhkin reached for the half-filled glass of lemonade again, picked it up, looked at it with disgust, and threw it to the wooden floor. Shards rained on Rostnikov's trousers, and the two burly KGB men burst through the door with pistols leveled at Porfiry Petrovich.

"I dropped a glass," Drozhkin said, without looking at the two men, his watery eyes on Rostnikov. 'Tell the nurse to come out here and clean it up when the inspector and I are finished."

The two men departed, closing the patio door behind them.

"You look uncomfortable," said Drozhkin, pulling a knit blanket over his knees. "Imagine what it is like to have this thing eating inside me. That is uncomfortable. You think I'm complaining?"

"No," said Rostnikov.

"Sit down, damn you. Sit down."

Rostnikov moved forward slowly to the wooden chair and sat. His leg was stiff and straight, and he knew better from thirty-five years of experience than to try to bend it.

"You are supposed to thank me," said Drozhkin. He threw his hands up and shook his head. "What's the use? You must stay away from the circus, from Mazaraki, because we are watching him. We know he killed Pesknoko. We know he drove that drunken fool to jump off the Pushkin statue."

"It was the Gogol he jumped off," Rostnikov said.

"The Gogol, then. All right. What's the difference?"

A great deal, thought Rostnikov. But he said nothing.

"Mazaraki has been using his tours of the socialist states to smuggle people over the borders to the West," said Drozhkin. "They pay massive amounts, these storekeepers, black marketers, Jews, and he gets them to the borders and often beyond as troupe members, one at a time, sometimes two. He has relatives in Latvia or Lithuania who help him. I can't remember which. -Just four or five a year smuggled out for the past six years has made him wealthy."

"I've seen his office," Rostnikov said.

"Duznetzov, Pesknoko, and the woman were part of his scheme," explained Drozhkin. "He needed them to help him cover. At one level a brilliant idea. Circus performers don't defect. Their lives here are good, secure. They travel, live well, get lifetime pensions when they retire. But once in a while a Mazaraki comes along, a Lithuanian or Latvian with desires for more. I'm getting tired."

"I'm sorry," said Rostnikov.

Drozhkin looked at his guest, his thin, cracked lips tight.

"You say that with insufficient conviction."

"I'm sorry. I was distracted for a moment thinking about my son."

"Ah, the son," Drozhkin said with understanding. "You raised the stakes, Porfiry Petrovich. You tried to play in blackmail against me. It was a game of cards and I called your bluff."

Rostnikov said nothing and then, "So you want me to stay away from Mazaraki so you can trap him when he goes on his next tour?"

' "That broken glass there is dangerous," Drozhkin said, his voice cracking. "All I need besides what I have is a foot full of glass." Then he looked up at Rostnikov. "No, you do not understand. We want Mazaraki to continue to smuggle people out of the Soviet Union. If you must know, we have even subsidized him without his knowledge. Are you beginning to understand?"

"He is smuggling some of your people out, undercover defectors," said Rostnikov, making the first attempt to move his locked leg and finding it most difficult.

"Something like that," agreed Drozhkin. "The price we pay in letting a few nakhlebniki, parasites, intellectuals, run away is worth what we gain in the long run but…"

"Mazaraki is becoming a bit unstable," said Rostnikov.

"He seems to be going mad," agreed Drozhkin. "It's not surprising. Six years of what he has done. Duznetzov cracked under the pressure. I don't know about Pesknoko. My guess is that Mazaraki got rid of him because he feared he would not make it."

"The woman," said Rostnikov.

"The woman, yes," said Drozhkin, pulling the blanket up to his waist. "It's getting cold here."

"Yes, it's getting cold," Rostnikov agreed, feeling quite warm.

"The woman is the least likely to crumble, but Mazaraki does not understand that and so he feels he must get rid of her."

"And we," said Rostnikov, finally bending his knee, "must not stop him."

"He must make the next tour, at least the next tour," whispered Drozhkin with a shiver. "His cargo is especially valuable to us. I'm tired now. I must sleep. You must stay away."

"You work to the end," Rostnikov said, rising.

Drozhkin's eyes were closed, and Rostnikov could not hear what the old man mumbled.

"I'm sorry…" Rostnikov said.

"I said," Drozhkin groaned dryly, "you would do the same. I will die loyal to the revolution. I don't know what your motives would be. Tell them to send in the nurse when you leave."

"I will, Comrade," Rostnikov said, moving toward the door.

Colonel Drozhkin said nothing. His eyes remained closed. His thin right hand rose slightly from the blanket in what might have been a wave of good-bye or a sign of dismissal.

Rostnikov moved slowly past the two KGB men after telling them the colonel wanted a nurse. One of the men, the one who had come with him in the car, escorted Rostnikov to the lobby and out of the hospital. The other man hurried for the nurse.

In the street, Rostnikov moved for a waiting taxi nearby. He could not make it to the metro or the bus. He would file for reimbursement. Perhaps the Wolfhound would grant it, perhaps not.

He should have gone back to Petrovka. He went over what he had been told by the dying colonel. It was simple. He was to stay away and let Mazaraki kill Katya Rashkovskaya. He was to stay away or else. Rostnikov suddenly felt hungry, very hungry, hungry as a snarling bear. He gave the driver his address on Krasikov Street and closed his eyes.

Deputy Procurator Khabolov smoothed back his hair with both hands and examined his teeth in the mirror of his beloved white Chaika. The car was almost like new in spite of the recent damage that was done when the vehicle had been stolen. The damage had been repaired by a disreputable mechanic known as Nosh, the Knife, who owed much, including his freedom, to the deputy procurator.

It was early in the afternoon, a sunny afternoon, and Khabolov felt confident as he stepped out of the car, locked it carefully, pulled the chain around the door handles and inserted the padlock. He snapped the padlock after checking his pocket for the key and moved to the trailer of the Gorgasali brothers. It looked a bit smaller than he had expected, but he had hopes, hopes for the best. It had been a good year for Khabolov, a good year indeed. First, Anna Timofeyeva had been stricken with a series of heart attacks to open the deputy procurator's position for him at the very moment when Odessa had grown too small for him. And then Rostnikov, who always looked as if he had some secret joke and seemed to be saying more than his words, was transferred to the MVD. It had something to do with some trouble with the KGB. Khabolov didn't care. Rostnikov, with his knowing eyes, was gone. And then this, this had fallen onto his desk.

In thanks to the God his father back in Odessa still believed in, Khabolov would give the old man a videotape machine and a supply of movies for his forthcoming eighty-first birthday. Yes, it would be a token of Khabolov's humility, his gesture to show that he still revered and respected his father. It would also give his father, whose respect for his son was too often minimal, further evidence of how wealthy and powerful his son had become.

Khabolov adjusted his glasses, tightened his tie, and knocked once, hard, at the door to the trailer. The door opened almost immediately. He was sure they had been waiting for him, watching him arrive in his Chaika.

"Comrade Procurator," Felix Gorgasali said, ushering him in. "We are honored."

Gorgasali backed away as Khabolov entered with a wave of the hand, indicating that he accepted the thanks.

The trailer was a bit bigger inside than the deputy procurator had expected, but the line of metal cabinets was promising. Since he had never been in the trailer before, he thought nothing of the curtained area in the front of the vehicle. He was also unaware that the interior of the trailer was normally much darker than it was now, with powerful 300-watt bulbs in each outlet.

"Comrade Procurator," said Osip Gorgasali, rubbing his hands and stepping forward. It looked as if he were about to extend his hand to shake and then thought better of it.

"I have very little time," Khabolov said, looking around the trailer, adjusting his glasses, and taking a notebook out of his inner jacket pocket. "Give me a quick inventory, in general terms, with the names of clients to whom you have sold equipment and tapes."

The brothers looked at each other. The dark younger one with the balding head looked toward the front of the trailer and then at his brother, who said, "Most of our customers don't give names, and we don't ask them, do we, Osip?"

"No," said Osip. "We don't ask them. We should, but we don't. We'll start asking them right away. Today."

"Good," said Khabolov. "The names are especially important."

"There will be names," promised Felix.

The two brothers seemed nervous, but nervous was the only way Khabolov had ever seen them, nervous and frightened, which was just the way he wanted them.

"A rough inventory now," Khabolov said, moving behind the table and sitting with his pad and pen. A rough inventory is what he got. Ten minutes later the deputy procurator said "Good" and stood up.

"Thank you, Comrade," Osip said. "If there is anything, anything…"

"Yes. I will have to take two video players and a television set, plus twenty, no, twenty-five, tapes. I've written the titles on this sheet."

He tore off a sheet from his notebook and handed it to Osip, who handed it to Felix. Khabolov closed the notebook and returned it to his pocket.

"May we ask? I mean you are going to do… something with these tapes and the machines," said Felix through a close-toothed smile.

Khabolov adjusted his glasses and gave the man a withering glare, a glare over his nose that he had spent nearly twenty years developing, a glare that said, "How dare an insignificant bit of cheese like you ask a question like that of someone as important as I?"

"I just…" Felix whispered, backing away.

Khabolov took a step toward him, his eyes meeting the frightened, watery eyes of the elder Gorgasali brother.

"The white Chaika outside is mine. The trunk is open. Put it all in the trunk," he said.

Felix gulped and nodded to his brother. Khabolov did not remove his eyes from Felix's, but he heard Osip clumsily open cabinets, move, find.

"What I do with this," Khabolov said, patting the notebook in his pocket, "and with you, is entirely up to me. I can use you, your equipment, your tapes, in any way I choose. To catch economic traitors to the revolution"- with this he paused to make it clear who two such economic traitors might be" to give to my friends, or to use myself. Each day of freedom for the two of you is one more day than you should have."

Felix closed his eyes, opened his mouth, opened his eyes, and in a voice filled with fear croaked, "But you would be in trouble if you used any of this for your own profit and Osip and I told about it during an inquiry."

Khabolov smiled, a small rodent smile that he thought made him look like the villain in a decadent French play he had once seen. He enjoyed a small display of rebellion, one that could easily be crushed.

"I would call you a liar," Khabolov said, grabbing Felix's tie. "I would call you a liar and accuse you of the most obscene of crimes, crimes for which I would produce great mounds of evidence, sacks and boxes of evidence. You would both choke on the evidence. Do you understand? Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, yes, yes," croaked Felix, his white hair falling over his eyes.

Khabolov let go of Felix's tie, removed a handkerchief from his pocket, wiped his palms to cleanse them from the contact, and replaced the handkerchief without removing his eyes from the cowering peddler. Khabolov was proud of his performance and thought of how nice it would be to have someone witness it who would really appreciate his artistry.

"Ready," said Osip, his voice even more broken and frightened than that of his brother.

Khabolov turned and looked at the two video machines and the box on top of one of them. The box was filled with tapes. A television set's dead white eye peeked out from behind the machines and tapes.

"Good," said Khabolov, looking at his watch. "I've got to get back to my office. I'll return when I need information or more material. Meanwhile, you prepare a detailed inventory."

"Yes, Comrade," said Felix.

"Yes, Comrade," agreed Osip, who bent to pick up a machine and the box of tapes.

Five minutes later, the load safely locked in the trunk of the car, Khabolov was on his way back to Petrovka. A caseload awaited his careful eye.

"He's gone," sighed Osip from the curtained window as he watched the white Chaika move into traffic and hurry away.

The curtain at the end of the trailer parted and Sasha Tkach stepped out.

"I hope I did it correctly," Sasha said.

"If you did what we showed you, it was fine, fine," whispered Osip, finding a bottle in his drawer and pouring himself a large glass with trembling hands. "It has to be fine. I would rather go to Lubyanka than go through that again."

"I wouldn't," said Felix, reaching for the bottle.

"You did well," said Sasha, "very well."

"You'd like a drink?" Felix asked, turning to the detective with an outstretched hand containing a drink.

"No," said Sasha. It wasn't that he didn't want the drink. Not at all. What he didn't want was the Gorgasali brothers to see that his hands were trembling every bit as much as theirs.

Sarah wasn't home when Rostnikov arrived. He didn't expect her to be. She would be working late, till seven. He would simply go to the second-hand foreign book store on Kachalov Street and wait for her outside. He would smile and tell her that they were going to the circus. She would give him a look that told him she was not going to be able to think about circuses and clowns, that all she could think about was their son, that Josef was in Afghanistan, that madmen were shooting at him, trying to kill him. Her eyes would show that, seek the same fear in his, and he would let the fear show. Then things would be Tall right. She would nod. They would go to the circus and eat later, afterwards, talking about the acts, about their memories as children. And then she would remember, if she had not by then, the times Porfiry Petrovich had taken the family to the circus. She would remember the little boy's cackling laughter, open-mouthed awe. Then she would weep just a little and they would go to sleep.

There would be no time later to lift his weights. He made himself a plate of cheese, cold meat pie, onions with vinegar, and a slice of bread. There was a half bottle of white wine in the cabinet over the sink. He poured himself a full glass and placed plate and drink on the table near the window, where he could see them while he lifted. Then he changed into his sweatpants and the T-shirt with the words "Moscow Senior Championship 1983," set out his mat, chair, and weights, and began his routine.

He worked, as always, slowly, deliberately, curling with both hands as he sat, pumping with both hands as he lay on the floor. He was not conscious of the smell of cheese as he began to sweat, but he sensed it. His concentration went to the bar, the weights clanking. He saw nothing, thought nothing. The smell of the food flowed through him as he rolled, moved, lifted, grunted. His T-shirt was soaked through in ten minutes. In twenty minutes his face and neck were itching. He hardly noticed. He was one with the moving weights, the routine. It was at times like this that Rostnikov often lost count, did too much, and only caught himself when his eyes happened to fall on the ticking clock next to his trophy. But this time he did not lose himself. He came out slowly on the last series of repetitions, let himself feel the tension in his stomach as he sat forward with the 150-pound weight behind his back, let himself feel the rivulets of sweat weave their way down his stomach and through the hairs of his crotch. He gave himself a final count, though he knew, could feel, that he was almost finished. He made the sit-ups, eased the weight back to the blanket, and lay back, looking up at the ceiling and the rivers of cracks he could never remember but that came back to him familiarly and clearly each time he was in this position. Rostnikov listened to himself breathe, tightened his stomach, and sat up. The early afternoon light through the window fell on the plate of food and the wineglass, turning them into a still life that pleased Porfiry Petrovich as he put his towel around his neck and lifted himself up awkwardly. The leg was still a bit stiff from Drozhkin's punishment, but it was coming back. A few minutes in the shower and the food would help greatly.

Rostnikov moved slowly still, put the weights back in the cabinet, rolled up the blanket and put it over the weights, and closed the cabinet doors. Then he moved to the bathroom immediately inside the bedroom, stripped off his clothes, examined his dark, solid, and quite hairy body, noticing that even his navel hairs were turning gray, turned on the shower, and waited for the water to turn warm. Hot was too much too expect. Hot had never happened. Warm was a luxury and, as it turned out, a luxury Rostnikov would have to forgo. The water remained cold.

"Yahmm," hummed Rostnikov as he stepped into the stream of cold water, letting it hit his back, his chest, bounce off his head. He took the soap out of the soap box, rubbed himself from head to foot, including his hair, and continued to "Yahmm," pausing only to catch his breath. The soap was a luxury, tooFrench soap, purchased by Sarah for a price and from a source she preferred not to discuss with her policeman husband. Rostnikov didn't care. He smelled the soap and hummed. Rinsed himself off and hummed. Turned off the water and continued to hum for the few seconds it took to reach the towel. As soon as he touched the towel he stopped humming and thought of his mother at their kitchen table. She smiled, a thin woman with yellow-brown hair, and then the thought was gone.

Rostnikov was brushing his teeth when the phone rang. He wrapped the towel around his ample middle and moved as quickly as he could to the phone in the other room. The phone was both a luxury and a reminder of how near the nearest order was. The phone was his because he was a policeman. The phone was his because sometimes police inspectors had to be reached quickly.

"Rostnikov," he answered, picking up the receiver.

"Karpo," came the familiar voice. "I'm at Elk Island. A row of tree stumps cut for chess players. You know it?"

"I know it," said Rostnikov.

"If you catch a cab, you can get here"

"In twenty minutes, if I frighten the cabdriver," said Rostnikov, throwing off the towel and reaching for his undershorts as he spoke.

"We may have to move," said Karpo.

Perhaps only Rostnikov would have noticed the very slight change in that monotone, a change so slight that perhaps a dog could not pick it up, but a change he sensed. Rostnikov said nothing. He struggled into his pants as Emil Karpo added, "I have found the prostitute killer but I cannot arrest him."

Rostnikov tried to buckle his belt with one hand but couldn't.

"He has Mathilde," Karpo said. "And he knows I am here."

"I'm coming," said Rostnikov, and hung up the phone. Although Rostnikov had known about Mathilde Verson for several years, he had finally met her in the hospital a few months ago when Emil Karpo was stubbornly refusing to allow surgery on his arm. She had helped Rostnikov convince the stubborn zealot to agree to let Sarah's cousin Alex perform the operation in his office. Karpo had tried to hide it, but Rostnikov had seen the eyesnot the face, but the eyesreveal an appreciation, a willingness to respond to the life force of the woman. And now that woman was in the hands of a killer of eight women.

As soon as the phone was down, Rostnikov buckled his pants and put on his shirt. He slipped on his socks, knowing that at least the right one was inside out. The shoes went on without tying. He took four steps to the table, put the cheese and onion on top of the cold meat pie, held the combination in his right hand, and downed the glass of wine with his left. On the way out the door, Rostnikov took his first bite of pie-cheese-meat and found it dry and not nearly as satisfying as he had hoped it would be.