Black Knight in Red Square

ELEVEN

Discouraging, Rostnikov thought, most discouraging. The room was crowded with people. It was normally a basketball court, but at present it was being used as a warm-up room for those competing in the Sokolniki Recreation Park’s annual weight-lifting competition for men and women over fifty. The contestants warmed up in here and then competed in another building. Four people competed at a time early in the competition, and as the lifting continued, this was decreased to two, and at last the finalists competed individually before a substantial audience.

In the past, Rostnikov had seen only the finalists. He did not realize how many people in Moscow over the age of fifty considered themselves weight lifters. There were several hundred, and it was discouraging. The room was filled with people doing situps and pushups, running in place, turning red in the face from their efforts. It was madness. Some of the contestants looked too old to compete in anything. Others looked far younger than fifty.

Feeling awkward, he moved to a corner and flexed his muscles. Normally he warmed up by simply lifting. He had a terrorist killer to catch, a dangerous plan to execute. How long could he wait here to be called? Yes, it was Saturday, and most of the people here did not have to work, but for him this was a working day.

“Breathe,” said a robust woman doing situps next to him. “You don’t want to hyperventilate. Breathe deep.”

This discouraged Rostnikov even more. He must look like a novice if this woman was giving him advice. Many of the people in the gymnasium were wearing sweat suits like his. Others wore fancy European running suits in blue or red. A good number were in shorts and shirts emblazoned with the names of the cooperatives or factories they represented. Rostnikov’s sweat suit was gray and baggy.

“Breathe,” insisted the robust woman, coming up from a situp.

“I am breathing,” Rostnikov replied. Off in a corner, someone dropped a weight with a terrible clang and cursed. A man with an enormous belly and a bald head came past and paused to look down at Rostnikov as if he were inferior competition. Around his neck the man had draped a blue towel, which he held with both hands and used to flex the muscles in his hairy arms. Rostnikov suddenly felt like apologizing and heading for the exit, but it was too late for that, and this might well be his last chance to compete.

Names were called. Weight totals were posted solemnly on a blackboard to indicate leaders. Losers trooped in silently, some angry with themselves. The bald man, as it turned out, was an early loser. He stomped past Rostnikov and threw his towel at the wall. It hit with a sweat-soaked splat. People around pretended not to notice.

And then Rostnikov was called. The robust woman who, he was sure, had warmed herself up into total exhaustion, wished him luck and reminded him to breathe. He promised to do so.

“Name,” said a man in a white shirt, dark tie, and thick glasses. He held a clipboard and did not look back at Rostnikov as he led the way. Rostnikov, dragging his bad leg, had trouble keeping up with him.

“Rostnikov, Porfiry Petrovich,” the chief inspector called ahead, following the man through the crowd and out of the building.

“That is right,” said the man, heading for the next building.

“I thought it might be,” said Rostnikov.

The man stopped and turned to the detective, his clipboard clutched to his chest. “This is a most serious competition,” he said. “We take it seriously.”

“As do I,” said Rostnikov, wondering if the man was using an editorial “we,” or whether “we” referred to the state, or to everyone competing except Rostnikov.

The man examined Rostnikov and found nothing impressive in the washtub with the oversized gray sweat suit.

As a participant rather than a spectator, Rostnikov’s first view of the auditorium was a revelation. The sense of being looked over and criticized was overwhelming. He followed the man with the glasses like a lost child latching onto the nearest adult.

There was little formality. When he got to mat number three, a no-nonsense woman checked his name again and pointed with a pencil for him to move to the weight that sat waiting. No one told him how much it weighed. Things were moving too quickly. The morning was too hot, and there were too many people to eliminate. A pair of bored, muscular young spotters with tight white shirts moved to either side of Rostnikov as he stood behind the bar and looked at the woman who held the stopwatch.

“Time,” she said.

Rostnikov took a deep breath, bent awkwardly with his bad leg braced. He had taped the leg to give it a bit more stability, but he knew he could not count on it for help. He looked down at the bar but not the weights. You will rise and become one with me, he commanded the bar.

Rostnikov had not practiced the snatch very often. It was too difficult to do with his leg, to bring the weight from the floor to a locked overhead position in one smooth move. In addition, when he practiced in his apartment, he was afraid of sending the weights through the floor onto the heads of the Vonoviches below.

Rostnikov grabbed the weight. Though this was not his event he would try not to embarrass himself. Up, he commanded, up as one, and he imagined Alexiev or young Anatoli Pisarenko flinging the metal overhead with that beauty of motion that demonstrated a man’s control over his own body.

He bent his good knee and moved his other leg to a firmer position and lifted. Up, up, up, he commanded, but he was lucky to get the weight as far as his chest. Fearing that time was running out, he paused only a fraction of a second, then pressed the weight upward and held it. It was heavy, but tolerable. He looked over at the woman and the man with the glasses for the sign that he could drop the weight and end the embarrassment of having failed, but there was something strange about their faces. Both had mouths open and the woman was not looking at her watch. Several people from the other mats had moved over quickly to look at him, and there was a buzz of words he could not make out. The weight above his head began to sway, and he was afraid he would drop it.

Rostnikov pleaded with the woman with his eyes, and finally she nodded to indicate that the lift was complete. He dropped the weight as easily as he could and pulled his bad leg back out of the way as the bar bounced against the mat as if alive. The two spotters bent over to stop it, and Rostnikov straightened up, a slight ache in his back. It was at this point that he realized the cluster of people around his mat were applauding.

“Why did you do that?” asked the man with glasses, a look of awe on his face.

“It was too heavy for me to snatch,” Rostnikov answered, bewildered.

“You weren’t supposed to snatch it,” said the man. “That was the weight for the dead lift. It was more than three hundred pounds. You were just supposed to lift it off the mat. No one has ever cleaned and jerked that much in this competition.”

Rostnikov’s eyes widened. So he was doing all right after all. Then again, he knew that Alexiev and Pisarenko and a handful of Americans, Poles, East Germans, and Bulgarians could clean and jerk almost 600 pounds.

Then things began to move quickly. Rostnikov developed a retinue led by the man with glasses, who became his guardian through the competition.

“Did you breathe?” asked the woman back in the warm-up building when Rostnikov returned between events. She sat cross-legged, red-faced, rubbing her cheek.

“I breathed,” he said.

“I forgot,” she said, getting to her knees and reaching for a blue bag. “Good luck.” And she was off.

With the help of the man with glasses, Rostnikov found out not only what the weights were but how he stood in the competition as the morning moved to afternoon. For the final rounds of each event, there was but one mat, and things moved more quickly.

Rostnikov’s snatch proved to be his weakest event, and there was even a moment of consultation among the judges when they had to decide if his awkward thrust counted.

One of the judges stepped forward, a young man with enormous shoulders and white-blond hair.

“How did your leg get like that?” the young man asked.

“The war,” Rostnikov explained. “Battle of Rostov.”

The young man nodded, looked at his pad of paper, bit his lower lip, and returned to the other two judges. They consulted briefly and announced that Rostnikov’s lift, good enough for third place, would stand.

In the dead lift, however, there was no problem or question. His 560 pounds won easily as did his 300 pounds for the clean and jerk. His totals for the three events were enough to give Rostnikov the championship.

“I knew it,” said the man with glasses, taking Rostnikov’s sleeve and leading him back to the platform to receive his awards. “I knew we could do it.”

Then applause, and lights. Rostnikov blinked back the sweat and wiped his face with his sleeve. He knew he should smile, but the serious look would not leave his face. He held one arm up to acknowledge the applause. It was too much like a dream, and the most amazing part of the dream was Alexiev. Rostnikov could see him now, but it was a strange Alexiev wearing a suit. He had never thought of Alexiev wearing a suit, only the shorts and light shirt or blue sweatshirt, but it was Alexiev, and he was applauding-applauding for Rostnikov. It was a moment to savor. Rostnikov tried to shake himself out of the dream and enjoy the moment, but his mind would not respond. He walked as if in a heavy fog.

When the moment came to accept the silver trophy, Rostnikov solemnly shook Alexiev’s massive hand. He wanted to say something, but it seemed too little to say, “You inspired me” or “This is the great moment of my life.” So, cursing himself, Rostnikov said, “Thank you.”

“If you were twenty years younger,” Alexiev said clapping his shoulder, his dark face just as serious as Rostnikov’s, “you’d be giving Anatoli and the East Germans worries.”

And then Rostnikov smiled. And in that smile came the idea of abandoning his plan. But before the thought was fully formed, while Alexiev still grasped his hand and Rostnikov clutched his trophy to his chest, he saw Sarah in the crowd. He had not expected her to come, for he’d never told her how much this competition meant to him. But she was there, her hair pinned back, a broad smile on her face matching his own, and his resolve returned. He held out the trophy for her to see, and she cocked her head as she often did, feigning deep concentration. Then she nodded and laughed, and Rostnikov laughed.

When he finally escaped from the man with glasses and the reporters from the weight-lifting magazine, who took his picture, and from the other contestants, who congratulated him, Rostnikov changed into his trousers and a clean shirt.

“You did very well, Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said, touching his arm as they walked outside. Rostnikov had wrapped the trophy in his sweatshirt, not wanting to draw attention as he went home.

“It was a good feeling,” he admitted.

“Are you sure you want to go ahead with it?” she said. A trio of soldiers passed them, one bearing a resemblance to their own Iosef.

“I’m sure,” said Rostnikov. “And I must stop to make a call. Would you like an ice cream?”

Sarah found an ice cream vendor while he entered a phone booth and dropped some coins into the slot. He attached the tape recorder to the phone, shifting the trophy. It took a few minutes to reach Drozhkin at Lubyanka. It was Saturday, but the colonel was at his desk, just as Rostnikov had assumed he would be.

“What is it, Rostnikov?” he said impatiently.

Good, thought Rostnikov, the pressure from above is on him. Now it was a question of correctly gauging the size of the man’s ego. A wrong guess at this point would destroy Rostnikov’s plan.

“Colonel,” he said, “I suggest that you arrest and detain the German Bintz and the Englishman Willery. I believe they are involved in the plan to assist World Liberation by committing terrorist acts.”

“Inspector,” Drozhkin hissed, “have you taken leave of your senses? This is a telephone conversation.”

“I understand,” said Rostnikov, “but the situation is urgent.”

“My respect for your abilities has diminished, Inspector,” sighed Drozhkin, showing signs of impatience. “We will watch these men. You will be responsible for watching them also. We will wait for them to make some move. They are foreign nationals. We cannot simply arrest them.”

“But they might get away,” Rostnikov persisted.

“Inspector,” said Drozhkin with barely concealed fury, “if they give any sign of their involvement, they will not get away. I suggest you get about your business, and let me get back to mine. I did not waste my morning and much of my afternoon playing games in the park.”

With that reminder that the KGB was watching him, Drozhkin hung up. Rostnikov removed the rubber cup from the phone, put it in his bag, and went in search of Sarah.

Though Rostnikov did not know it, others besides the KGB were aware of his participation in the competition. Sasha Tkach had heard about it from Dmitri Gregorich in the records office. Gregorich heard about it from a switchboard operator at Petrovka who happened to overhear Rostnikov when he registered for the competition months earlier. Tkach had planned to witness Rostnikov’s efforts since he was well aware of his superior’s strength, but circumstances do not always favor the well-intentioned.

Instead of watching the weight-lifting competition, Tkach sat in People’s Court, Leninskii District, City of Moscow. The courtroom was small, old, stuffy, and crowded. There was a single bare light bulb, aided by July sunlight spilling through the two double-paned windows. The judge, a man with a sharp, pinched face that would never quite look shaved, put a finger behind his neck to loosen his slightly frayed collar, then sat down at the battered desk.

“Misha Vernoska, Boris Panyushkin, Alexi Arenko, Sergi Sarnoff,” said the judge in a weedy voice that bespoke too many cigarettes, “do you understand the charges against you?”

The four young men who had tried to kill Sasha Tkach and had very nearly killed several women, looked at one another, particularly at Sarnoff, to decide their collective answer. They had been cleaned up, properly dressed, and talked to by a member of the procurator’s office who was not obliged to defend them, simply to tell them what the situation was and what they should be prepared for.

“Come, come,” said the judge, tapping a yellow pencil against the desk top. “What is so hard to understand? You are accused of rape, theft, and attempted murder.”

“Comrade Judge,” said Sarnoff, glancing over at Tkach, who sat on a wooden chair nearby waiting to testify. “We understand.”

“And,” the judge went on, “do you admit guilt as charged?”

Sarnoff looked at the other defendants and glanced over at Marina Restovya, the third victim, who still showed signs of the beating they had given her. It seemed incredible to Tkach that the four thugs had not anticipated that question.

“We did some of those things,” Sarnoff said, sullenly looking down so that his dark hair fell forward over his eyes. He threw his head back and looked at the judge. “But not all of those things.”

“Will you tell us which you did and which you did not do?” the judge asked with a sigh that indicated that he did not intend to believe anything the young man said.

“We didn’t try to kill anybody,” Sarnoff said defiantly, glancing at Tkach. Sasha tried to engage the young man’s dark eyes, but Sarnoff turned away.

“Admirable,” the judge said sarcastically and let out a hacking cough. “So all you did was beat and rape women who were no longer young.”

“Yes, Comrade Judge,” Sarnoff said, enjoying his moment in center stage. “That’s all.”

“Then you robbed them,” the judge added, looking down at the long yellow sheet in front of him and checking something with the pencil.

“Yes,” agreed Sarnoff, “but we were not always responsible.”

“The women forced you to do it?”

“No, but they didn’t-”

“Stop,” said the judge, raising his pencil. “Just tell us what you think of what you have done.”

“We are sorry it happened,” Sarnoff said with what he must have taken to be smile of contrition.

“You are all sorry,” the judge said.

“Yes,” the others answered together.

“Have any of you ever been arrested before?” the judge asked.

“Not that we can remember,” Sarnoff answered for them.

“A forgettable thing, being arrested,” the judge agreed. “Could happen to anyone. Why should you remember it? Let’s see, Vernoska, age twenty-five, arrested for illegal profiteering, fighting in the metro. Do you remember now, Vernoska? It comes back to you?”

The young man who had confronted Tkach in the elevator and who now had a wide strip of tape over his nose, which Tkach had broken, looked up and spoke.

“I remember,” he said quietly.

“Good,” said the judge. “Arenko-theft, vandalism. Panyushkin, what is this, no arrests?”

“The police once took my knife in a store,” said the youngest member of the group.

“Sorry,” said the judge, making a note of this. “We wish you to have all the credit you deserve. And now, Sarnoff, your lack of memory is hard to understand in view of the frequency of your dealings with the police. Illegal sale of goods, making indecent suggestions to a little girl. Yes, I can see how you would forget such things. Let us have the witnesses.”

Three of the women testified, followed by Tkach, who was greeted by applause from the small gathering of relatives of the victims when he described Rostnikov’s decimation of the gang.

“We object,” cried Sarnoff, looking back at a young woman who sat near the door and was giving him a sour look.

“You object to having been humiliated?” said the judge.

“It didn’t happen that way,” insisted Sarnoff.

“I’ll decide which way it happened,” said the judge.

Normally, the detective who has made the arrest does not appear at the trial, and the judge simply reads a statement written by the detective. The detective’s deposition is normally a repetition of the charges with any comments about the defendant’s background or character that the police wish to make. In this case, however, Tkach was actually a party to one of the charges, that of attempted murder, and so was called on to testify though there had been little doubt from the moment of arrest what the conclusion would be.

“So,” the judge said, after Tkach had finished his testimony, “does anyone have any questions, anything to say? Is everything clear? No? Good, the defendants can have the last word.”

“Comrade Judge,” said Sarnoff, launching into a speech he had obviously rehearsed, “we have done a terrible thing. We are not worthy of Soviet citizenship, but we have learned from your wisdom, and we now see that what we did was wrong. We wish to accept our punishment and as soon as possible return to useful jobs to demonstrate our commitment to the state and the future.” Sarnoff paused and got prodded from behind gently by the one called Arenko.

“Oh, yes,” Sarnoff added. “We beg the court to be merciful.”

“That’s all?” the judge said. “Good. I’ll be back with the verdict in a little while.”

An armed police officer stepped forward as the judge rose and moved to the little dark closet that served as his chambers. While the judge wrote out his verdict and decision and smoked four black cigarettes, the defendants conferred, argued, and ignored as best they could their relatives and their victims.

Tkach sat down next to Marina Restovya who, now that the swelling in her face had gone down a bit, looked even more like an older version of his Maya.

“Will they be executed?” she whispered to Tkach.

“Not for a crime such as this,” he answered, “but I’m confident the punishment will be severe.” The death sentence, Tkach knew, was generally reserved for murder and political heresy.

The judge returned in about twenty minutes, sat down, and motioned for silence. By now the already stuffy room was stifling with twenty sweating bodies and poor ventilation.

“In the name of the Russian Federated Socialist Republic,” began the judge wearily, “it is found that the defendants committed the acts charged in the indictment, crimes specified in the criminal code. In determining punishment, the court has taken into consideration the past record of arrests of three of the defendants, the clear hypocrisy of their contrition, and the disgusting nature of their acts. The sentence is ten years of corrective labor with deprivation of freedom in a penal institution to be decided upon by the state.”

It was about what Tkach had expected. Everyone in the courtroom knew that ten years meant ten years, that this meant Siberia, that in ten years the men would age thirty years, and that at least one and possibly more of them would not survive. Tkach looked at Marina Restovya, who nodded solemnly in approval of the verdict. A woman of about fifty began to weep softly and was comforted by a gritty man her own age in worker’s clothes.

“Is the sentence clear to you defendants?”

“It is clear,” said Sarnoff, his voice breaking.

“Good,” said the judge rising.

The defendants were ushered out by the armed police officers and a few minutes of shuffling cleared the courtroom except for the judge, Tkach, and the court secretary.

The judge lit a cigarette and coughed.

“If I could,” said the judge to Tkach, “I’d have them executed as an example.”

“Yes,” said Tkach, thinking that examples, from his experience, didn’t seem to have much effect on the behavior of such young men.

“Ludmilla,” the judge said to the secretary, “a copy of the trial report for the police.”

With that, the judge turned his back, coughed again, and returned to his little office. Ludmilla brushed past Sasha and went into the corridor.

All in all, Tkach thought, Soviet justice was swift and clear, which was just the way he and most of the police wanted it.