Blood and Rubles

ONE

Oleg Makmunov knew it was night. There was no sun. He knew he must be somewhere off of Gorky Street, for that was where he had started. The rest was a drunken blur. Even though he was dressed only in shoes, worn socks, threadbare pants, and a yellow and red American flannel shirt, Oleg Makmunov couldn’t even have told a policeman if it was winter or summer.

Alexei Chazov and his two brothers had followed the drunkard for about five blocks. They had stayed back in the darkness, though it was unlikely the drunken man would see them unless they were in his face.

The street was narrow and empty. Well, not completely empty. The Chazovs had seen a young man and woman with their arms around each other in a doorway.

The drunkard had wandered far since he had been thrown out of the New Hampshire Café with its blaring American music. He had stumbled, seemingly without knowing it, in the general direction of the Strogino District, a neighborhood of cement tenements. When he entered the Strogino, the Chazovs spotted him.

The drunk stopped, but Alexei held his brothers back.

In front of them, sitting on a low stoop, a man smoked a pipe. The man seemed big, but it was hard to tell because most of the lights on the small street were out, and the ones that were on were dim.

Oleg slumped into a doorway and searched his pockets for the small bottle of vodka he had tucked away, but found nothing. Another search, this time for money, produced enough rubles to buy a small bottle should he stumble on someone who might have one to sell. He repocketed the money and tried to decide which way led back to Gorky Street. He guessed left and took his first few steps in that direction.

The big man on the stoop finished his pipe. He tapped the ashes out on the sidewalk, rose, turned, and went through the door behind him.

Now the Chazovs could move. As they neared the drunkard, Alexei supposed that the man was old, at least fifty.

In fact, Oleg was thirty-three. He had given up most of his teeth to drink and dissolute living. He was known to the down and the drunk as Smiling Oleg, not because he smiled so much but because he looked so incredibly funny when he smiled his near-toothless grin.

“One small step for Oleg,” he said to the man who’d been smoking across the street, but now the man was nowhere to be seen. Oleg shrugged and took another step. “And one more step for the glorious future of Mother Russia.”

Before he took another step, he tottered. Almost certainly he would fall to the pavement. It had happened to him before. And so many times he had rolled over on the street to look up at whoever had pushed him and saw no one. This time he did not fall.

He took another step and was shoved hard from behind. His hands went out to protect his battered face from smashing into the pavement. At that he was successful. He was aware of more than one person above him as he rolled over on his elbows and looked up with his loopy smile that usually brought a laugh. The three faces hovering over him did not laugh. Oleg was trying to rise when something hit him, something hard, something heavy, just above his left eye. It wasn’t quite pain he felt but surprise. He slipped back down.

The second blow caught him flush in the face, and he was aware of his nose being smashed once again, probably along with his cheekbone. When something crushed his chest, cracking ribs, he found it very difficult to breathe.

He tried to speak when something cracked his skull, and he was vaguely aware that he must be dying. He made some attempt to breathe and think, but failed.

The three brothers continued picking up pieces of concrete and throwing them at the bloody mutilated head of Oleg Makmunov. When they were certain he was dead, the one who had jumped on his chest went through Oleg’s pockets where he found his few rubles, two keys, a piece of smooth stone, the color of which they could not see, and a stub of a pencil.

It was enough. The Chazovs expected no more. They walked down the narrow street, saying nothing, in no great hurry.

Alexei Chazov was eleven. His brothers, Boris and Mark, were nine and seven.

Porvinovich stood in line reading a book at the Registration Chamber. The book was in Russian, a rather boring novel about a family that could not make a living in the new Moscow.

Making a living was not a problem for Alexei Porvinovich. He was a wealthy man with a weekly income, after payoffs to all including the tax police, of twenty-four million rubles a week, approximately twelve thousand dollars.

He owned three companies-a lamp factory, a cigarette factory, and a movie company. The lamps were flimsy things with green shades that sat on tables and would take no more than a 30-watt bulb. The cigarette factory was actually a packaging plant where the Turkish cigarettes Alexei bought for practically nothing were repackaged and sold at a profit of five hundred percent. The movie company was new. Alexei knew nothing about movies, but he had discovered that American, French, German, English, and Japanese producers wanted to make movies in Russia. Alexei’s job, for a very high fee, was to get the foreign filmmakers through the new bureaucracy. Alexei was a master of proizvol, the exploitation of a system in confusion; the wielding of power to make rubles, and rubles to give power; the use of his power to further his own ends. He had been masterful at it when the bureaucrats were Communists, and he was an even greater master now that the bureaucrats were working for themselves. Capitalism had come with a typically Russian slant.

In addition to wealth, he had acquired a beautiful, intelligent wife who could speak five languages she had learned during her early years as a prostitute, and he supported his brother, who was little more than a lokhl, a simpleton.

The line moved up. Alexei could read the book no longer. He offered it to a lean, coughing man behind him. The man took it with no sign of thanks or gratitude. Alexei expected none.

Finally, it was Alexei’s turn to sit in the metal folding chair across the desk from the man with many chins. Alexei had dressed for the occasion-a conservative definitely-not-new gray suit, a slightly rumpled white shirt open at the collar, a gray tie with little blue lightning bolts. He put his black vinyl briefcase on the desk and smiled wearily as he handed over the papers. The man took them in his swollen fingers.

“Let’s see,” the man said.

He was dressed more formally than Alexei, in the near-uniform of dark suit and dark tie at the tightly buttoned collar.

“Protokal Sobradi is in order, addresses are … Is this a seven?”

Alexei leaned over and confirmed that it was indeed a seven. The man nodded his head seriously, the opening move to inform Alexei that there would be a price to pay for this problem and others he would surely find.

“Your ustav, charter, seems to be correct. You are requesting a limited-liability charter. What will you be making or selling?”

“Books and other related items,” said Alexei.

The other items included computers and apartment sublets.

The fat man did not pursue this. He turned the page to the financial statement, the heart of the matter.

“You have the twenty million rubles to start this venture?”

“As is stated on the forms, which are all certified,” said Alexei. “All dues and charges have been paid, as the documents show.”

“Good, good,” the man said, moistening his finger and slowly turning the page to the landlord guaranty letters. “You will maintain your business at Forty-five Pushkin Lane?”

“I will,” said Alexei.

The document before the fat man was signed by Alexei’s wife, who was officially the owner of the office building where all of Alexei’s businesses rented space.

Behind Alexei, the line waiting for permission to open a new business was long. Everyone waited patiently. They had waited patiently all their lives, and most of them fully expected that their requests to open businesses would be rejected and that they would be sent to some other office to have their documents “corrected.”

“Temporary registration also in order,” said the fat man, looking at the card before him.

It had cost Alexei five hundred thousand rubles to the lawyer appointed by the Registration Chamber to be sure the registration forms were in order so that he could be issued the card.

“Official police stamp,” the man said. “Code number assigned by State Statistics Committee. The stamp is a bit underinked.”

Alexei let out a small sigh.

“And your company stamp looks a bit too much like that of several others who have applied in the last month,” the fat man said, shaking his head at the incompetence of those who did such things. “Signature card in order and notarized,” he went on. “Three names. Partners?”

“Yes,” Alexei said.

The fat man went to the next document.

“Bank account for the business seems to be fine.” The fat man looked directly at Alexei for the first time.

“We are fortunate enough to have raised sufficient money for this venture,” Alexei said softly.

“Good, good, good,” said the fat man. “Let’s see if we can move this along. Pension-fund papers are signed and stamped, and you have the form from the Tax Inspectorate.”

The man flipped through the documents, once more shaking his head.

“I would like to issue you a permanent registration certificate,” the man said, “but there are some minor discrepancies, words crossed out, stamps too faint. I would like to …” He shrugged his shoulders to show that he would like to help.

“I have one more document that might help,” Alexei said, handing the fat man a small brown envelope.

The man opened the envelope and looked in, careful to keep anyone waiting in line or the registrar at the next desk from seeing. There were five one-hundred-dollar bills. The fat man slipped the envelope into the drawer of his desk and stamped the final certificate that would permit Alexei Porvinovich to open his new business. Alexei accepted the document, shook the man’s flabby hand, and put all of his papers back in his briefcase.

Alexei relinquished the folding chair to the thin, nervous man who was next in line, the one to whom Alexei had given the book.

Success. It had taken only three weeks of waiting and bribing to get the document. He had two more envelopes in his briefcase, each with five hundred dollars. He had been prepared to give them all to the fat registrar. The man had sold his approval well below the going rate.

Swinging his briefcase, Alexei left the bureau building. Outside, he looked at the sky. It was early October. The first night frosts had already come, and soon the first snow would follow. Within a month the Moscow River would freeze and the city would be covered in snow. Good.

It was early, just before two in the afternoon, and Alexei decided to stop at the Grand Hotel for a drink and perhaps a sandwich before he went to his office.

He hurried down Nikloskaya Street-formerly Twenty-fifth of October Street-a street as old as the city of Moscow itself. The street was crowded with people. Alexei paused in front of the Old Printing House at Number 15. With its pale blue facade and neo-Gothic working of white stone, sundials, spires, and the prancing lion and unicorn above the main entrance, it was a building Alexei much admired. The first Russian book was printed there in 1564 by Ivan Fedorov. Alexei was confident that in time he would own this building.

He was looking up at the unicorn when the black Mercedes-Benz pulled up at the curb and two men stepped out of the car, both wearing ski masks and holding automatic weapons. People ran, fell to the ground, and screamed.

Alexei turned, saw the men, started to go to the ground, and then quickly realized that the weapons were aimed at him.

“In the car,” one of the men ordered.

Alexei was stunned. A mistake was being made.

“I’m not-” he began but was cut off by the blow from a steel barrel against his face.

His cheekbone broke and he spat blood. The kidnapper repeated, “In the car.”

Alexei staggered into the backseat of the car, followed by one of the masked men. The driver took off his mask as the car sped down the street, and his partner in the backseat screamed, “What are you doing? You want him to recognize you?”

“I can’t drive down the street wearing a mask,” the driver answered reasonably.

The kidnapper in the backseat still wore his mask. He let out a grunt of nervous acceptance.

“Try not to bleed all over the car,” he said, taking off his own mask and handing it to Alexei, “it’s not mine.”

Alexei took the mask and put it to his throbbing cheek. Then he looked up and recognized the man who had given him the mask. The man’s hair was a wild frenzy and he was panting.

Alexei was certain that he was going to die very soon.

A few short blocks from the Neva River, not far from Saint Isaac’s Square, a tall, lean man in black slacks, shoes, shirt, and jacket stood watching uniformed men pile efficiently out of two vans. At the side of the tall man-who some passersby thought resembled a vampire-stood a pretty, slightly plump young woman wearing an efficient gray suit. They were an odd and serious couple.

The men coming out of the vans carried standard-issue AK-47s and wore dark blue uniforms with helmets. Over their uniforms they wore bulletproof jackets that would have done little good against the automatic weapons that had been circulating in Moscow since well before the rise of Yeltsin’s democracy.

A crowd was quickly gathering, most with nothing better to do, some with a curiosity that demanded satisfaction.

“Terrorists,” one old babushka said with assurance to the plump, pretty woman. No one dared talk to the forbidding and somber Tatar.

The pretty woman, whose name was Elena Timofeyeva, nodded her head. This encouraged the babushka, who shifted a heavy cloth bag from her right hand to her left and said, “Afghans.”

A murmur ran through the crowd, some accepting this conjecture, others declaring it garbage.

“Chechens. It was Chechens. I saw them,” someone shouted.

There were now more than twenty uniformed men arranging themselves at even intervals in front of the ancient two-story wooden apartment building. They reminded Elena of the men she had once seen in an old American horror movie, The Thing, where the scientists circled a giant flying saucer buried beneath the ice.

There was no ice this morning, just the first cold nip of winter.

Elena had taken the number 3 bus down Nevsky Prospekt and walked another two blocks to get there. Deputy Inspector Emil Karpo, the gaunt man at her side, had arrived by metro at the Gostinniy Dvor stop.

Someone gave a sharp command and the uniformed men pulled out long lines of rope with grappling hooks.

Cameramen madly clicked away. Journalists frantically made notes in their pads.

“If they are trying to surprise the terrorists,” grunted a one-legged old man with crutches and a two-day growth of white beard, “they are idiots.”

“Not terrorists,” said another man with a voice of weary knowledge. “Mafia.”

“Mafia,” ran voices through the crowd.

Elena Timofeyeva knew why the men in uniform were hurling their grappling lines to the roof of the two-story building, lines that were as likely to pull down the ancient bricks of the roof as to support the weight of overarmed men wearing supposedly bulletproof vests.

This was a show. Elena and Karpo had been assigned to the show as representatives of the Office of Special Investigation. They were to work, according to Colonel Snitkonoy, as liaison with the tax police, who were now scurrying up the sides of the building to the applause of the crowd. It was not the Moscow Circus, but it was quite a spectacle and cost nothing.

Karpo and Elena knew that there was no need for this show. The tax police could simply have knocked down the door. This was not a raid on a dangerous group or individual, but a follow-up on a tip from a reliable informant. The old man who owned the building had recently died. He had accumulated valuable jewelry and other items subject to taxation.

It was the job of the tax police to enforce the new tax laws that would bring in many billions of rubles from individual citizens, businesses, and foreigners doing business in a new but more than slightly frayed Russia. It was also the job of the tax police to strike fear into the people so that they would pay their taxes. Daytime raids featuring fully armed men were now common. The media were always informed when raids would take place. It was common now to see bewildered businessmen led out of their offices with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

A position in the tax police was much desired, for the tax police received not only their salaries but also a small percentage of what they recovered. Karpo doubted that such rampant capitalism had ever been practiced even in the United States.

The crowd had grown larger as the tax police officers scampered to the rooftop or crashed through windows on their way up the lines. As glass shattered and sprayed the crowd below, the onlookers jumped back and covered their heads.

Captain Sergei Valarov of the tax police, an ex-Soviet army officer, strode to Elena and Karpo and said, “The building is secure.” Valarov looked like a captain-trim, efficient, with dark straight hair and the hint of a mustache.

No bullhorn had been brought forth to order the occupants out. No one had knocked on the door of the two-story house. It struck Elena that the front door might very well be open or that a knock might have resulted in a reluctant invitation from the building’s occupant to come in.

“Thank you,” said Emil Karpo. He followed the captain across the street and through the door of the house, which had been opened by one of the uniformed men who had scaled the building.

The crowd followed the captain, the vampire, and the young woman across the street, where they were stopped by two dozen uniformed police.

“As you know,” the captain said as he strode past the saluting officer at the door, “we have been observing this house for some time.”

Both Elena and Karpo were well aware of this.

“And,” Captain Valarov added as he walked down a dark, narrow passageway with photographers behind him snapping and flashing madly, “we had reason to believe that a hoard of artifacts of historical significance was being kept by an old man named Dokorov. These artifacts-and we had reason to believe that it was a substantial collection-had never been taxed. In addition to which, some of them might be protected artworks. In that case they would belong to the state.”

Both Karpo and Elena were certain that Captain Valarov had more than “reason to believe” the house was worth raiding. Otherwise he would not have been instructed to stage the elaborate invasion that would certainly be the highlight of the evening news on television.

The captain’s step was certain. Elena, Karpo, and a select group of hand-chosen press representatives, some juggling video cameras, struggled through the narrow passageway for a better view.

What they saw through the next door was beyond what they had imagined, beyond what Valarov and probably his superiors had imagined. The interior of the house had been gutted. They stood in a large storage space with shelves piled almost two stories high, their upper reaches accessible only by the long ladder that leaned against the wall to their left.

Flashbulbs went wild. Captain Sergei Valarov stood flat-footed looking at the museum before him: rows of books, jewelry, a chandelier, paintings, serving dishes, wooden boxes marked MICROSCOPES, MANUSCRIPTS, and SMALL ICONS, and much more.

Karpo reached forward and touched the shoulder of the posing Valarov, who showed only the slightest trace of tightening in his cheeks to indicate that this was much more than he had expected to find inside the house.

“It might be best if the press were taken outside and told that you will be out in several minutes with a full report. Meanwhile I suggest you contact your superiors for instruction.”

The captain nodded, blew out some air, and turned with the help of three of his men to urge the complaining crowd into the passageway. When they were gone, Karpo motioned to Elena, who closed the door. The two police officers were alone in the room.

“Notes,” Karpo said, and Elena took out her notebook and a white pen that had BARNES amp; NOBLE printed in red on its side.

He walked slowly down an aisle. The noise of demanding reporters could be heard beyond the closed door.

“Preliminary report,” he said. “Random observations. Family painting of the Romanovs, official. If the date is to be believed, it is the last such portrait of the family. Shelves full of books are held in place by gold- and silver-framed icons.”

He opened one book and went on. “First edition, Bible, dated 1639, signed ‘To Ilya, Ivan Fyodorov.’”

Elena touched the book. She knew that Fedorov was the Russian Gutenberg. There appeared to be a dozen similar-looking volumes.

“There are hundreds of books,” Elena could not stop herself from saying.

“Several thousand,” Karpo amended, and opened a wooden box on the shelf before him.

Inside were tiny, fragile magnifying glasses, each in a separate compartment protected by cotton. Lying on top of the glasses was a yellowing page torn from a book. Karpo scanned the page and handed it to Elena, who read, “The microscope was invented by a Dutch oculist in the seventeenth century. It was a simple thing. He made each one himself. They worked surprisingly well. Most have disappeared into private collections or simply been lost. In 1923 a complete box of Leeuwenhoek microscopes was reportedly discovered in a pharmacy in Belgrade. The box had disappeared by the time the police arrived. The pharmacist was ordered to undergo psychiatric examination.”

“And this …?” Elena began.

“… may well be that box,” said Karpo, holding one of the glass and wire objects in his palm.

“This room,” she said, looking around, “it must have more treasures than the Kremlin museum.”

A mouse scampered across an old piece of paper somewhere in a dark corner.

“Not more, perhaps, but different,” said Karpo.

“My God,” said Elena.

Since Karpo believed in neither God nor blasphemy, he continued randomly selecting items, some of which he was unable to identify, but jewelry from the various courts of Russia was certain, including one very ancient ornate gold crown that, if Karpo read the worn inscription properly, had belonged to Ivan the Terrible.

“We will have to call in the experts on this,” he finally said.

Elena put her notebook away and touched the crown of Ivan the Terrible. It was, like the room they were in, cool, damp, and smelled of mildew.

“Millions,” she muttered. “Worth millions.”

“In rubles,” Karpo said, examining the portrait of a beautiful and quite regal woman, “billions upon billions.”

“American dollars?” she asked.

Karpo looked around. “Beyond price. Billions.”

“But who …?” Elena asked, just as a frail old woman in a badly worn dress stepped out from behind a set of shelves and said, “Get out.”

“We are the police,” said Elena.

The woman advanced on them. She was carrying what looked like a silver scepter embedded with red and green jewels.

“Out,” she cried.

“Is all this yours?” asked Karpo.

“My brother’s and before him my father’s,” the little woman said, holding up her scepter as if to strike. “All purchased honestly, piece by piece, from before the Revolution, until Pavel died.”

“Your father died?” asked Elena.

“My brother, Pavel,” the woman said. “Just last week. So now it is mine. All those … those parasites in the street who knew that my family collected, one of them went to the tax police.” The woman spat dryly in the general direction of the front door. “Pavel never bothered anyone. He was a poor electrician for government cafeterias. We didn’t live fancy. He loved … this.”

The woman stood in front of Karpo, who did not blink, though the heavy scepter was waving before his eyes.

“There were people-speculators in homes, weapons, rare goods,” said Karpo. “When the Revolution began, they bought these things for a few rubles from the members of the czar’s court and from rich merchants fleeing the Soviet Union who couldn’t carry everything they had stolen from the people. I have heard of such collections smuggled out of the country and sold to dealers, collectors, museums. I have never heard of one this size.”

Unable to intimidate the pale man, the frail woman looked at Elena, who forced herself to wear a mask of determination. Defeated, the woman put the scepter on a nearby shelf.

“What were you going to do with all this?” Elena asked as the woman leaned back against a bookcase. Then, suddenly, the woman pushed away from the books and ran down an aisle screaming, “They are mine.”

Elena started after the woman, but Karpo held out his hand to stop her.

“It is not the woman we want,” he said, looking around the room.

Elena, too, looked around at the roomful of treasures. “This is wonderful,” she said.

Karpo did not answer. The tax police were outside and would make their claims in the name of the new state. Karpo was certain that whoever controlled this cavern of riches would have enormous political power.

Karpo picked up a small icon. The dead Jesus, wearing a blanket that covered his head, was surrounded by his disciples, all of whom were wreathed, like Jesus, and clothed in what appeared to be ancient gold.

Valarov strode back into the huge room, his confidence returned, and announced to Elena and Karpo, “Experts will come in the morning to begin cataloging everything in this room. Meanwhile the old woman will be confined here with guards posted at the doors. I have been instructed to tell the press this much.”

Karpo, now holding an ancient leather-bound book in his hands, nodded without looking at the captain. Valarov departed quickly, wondering if he might be entitled to a small percentage of what looked like the biggest tax recovery in the history of the tax police. Karpo closed the book gently and placed it back on the shelf, intending to return the next day.

But the next morning, when the three antique dealers and four professors from Moscow State University entered the room accompanied by Valarov and his men, they found it quite empty.

The man lay sprawled on his back over the front hood of the blue Lada, his arms extended out wide as if he had been frozen in the middle of a rather intricate Olympic high dive. At least that was Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov’s first impression, an impression dispelled by the fact that the man was fully clothed, certainly dead, and staring wide-eyed, open-mouthed, and upside down at him. The body on the car fascinated Rostnikov. The man’s head was bald and covered with a minutely perfect tattoo of a flying eagle carrying something in its talons.

From the position of the body, the line of bloody holes in the man’s black shirt, and the Kalashnikov automatic weapon lying on the ground a few feet away, Rostnikov concluded that he had probably been shot at close range on the sidewalk and blown backward over the hood of the Lada.

The Lada was the only car parked on the block. Other cars had certainly been there, but in the four or five minutes it took for the police to arrive, their owners had hurried to move them before they could be impounded as evidence.

The body of another man, clothed in a leather jacket identical to that of the bald man, lay in the street on his face. There was no weapon near him.

The glass of a telephone kiosk on the sidewalk not far from the Lada was shattered, as were the windows of two small shops, a pharmacy and a café, on this side of the street, a few feet from the dead man on the car. Inside the pharmacy a woman was being treated for a gunshot wound to her right shoulder. She whimpered and looked around for a friend or relative. Her eyes met those of Rostnikov.

In the café there were three dead people: a foreign-looking little round man and a woman, who had been seated at the same table, and their waiter. In his right hand the dead man at the table clutched a Freedom Arms Casull.454, capable of bringing down an elk at one hundred yards.

Uniformed police had roped off the street for twenty yards in both directions, stopping afternoon traffic. Cars were backed up for half a block; their drivers, unaware of the slaughter in front of them, were angrily and uselessly honking their horns. Two men, one thin and marked by a large mole on his face and one quite old and marked by an apoplectic anger that might threaten his life, were being held back by two policemen across the street from Rostnikov and the man with the tattooed head.

“Who is that crippled lunatic staring at the dead man?” asked Irina Smetenova of no one in particular.

Irina, who had been standing in a long line waiting for bread at what might be a nearly sane price, had been present just after the shooting and well before the police drove up and began sending would-be looters scurrying away. Now she was surrounded by others, men in jackets and open collars, babushkas and businessmen, smartly dressed women carrying boxes of certainly expensive things, which they tried to hide in plain plastic bags marked PEPSI–COLA or ORANGINA.

No one answered Irina’s question, though others had noticed the boxy man in a dark jacket, his weight decidedly on his right leg as he moved. Now the man was standing still, hands in pockets, while police hurried to cover bodies, find witnesses, seek evidence, and make phone calls. Irina shifted her heavy shopping bag from her right hand to her left and her little white dog from her left to her right.

Rostnikov, the crippled lunatic, had been a boy soldier who got his leg run over by a tank in 1941. The fool of a boy, whom the adult Rostnikov could not clearly remember, had stepped into a street in Rostov not much different from the one in which he stood now. The boy had stepped out of a doorway and, with a lucky grenade and a hail of bullets from the machine pistol he had taken from a dead German, had destroyed the tank. The cost had been a nearly destroyed left leg, which he would have to drag slowly and often painfully behind him throughout the rest of his life.

But that was not the event that caused the boy to become the man who now somewhat resembled the German tank he had destroyed. When he was a young policeman, he had caught a drunken thief named Gremko assaulting a young woman outside the Kursk railway terminal. The drunk had nearly killed Rostnikov with his bare hands, but a well-placed knee to the groin had turned the tables.

It was after that incident that Rostnikov began lifting weights, first in the hope of building the muscle that a policeman’s life on the street seemed to require and later as a routine he could not and did not wish to break, a meditation of sweat and determination and-he had long ago admitted to himself without benefit of a state psychiatrist-a way to compensate for the nearly useless leg. A few years ago he had quietly entered the annual competition for men and women fifty and over in Sokolniki Recreation Park. He had easily won the competition and a gold-painted aluminum statue, which rested, the gilt already chipping in spite of his care, on a bookshelf in his living room. The June afternoon when he had been presented with the trophy by the great Alexeyev himself had been one of the great memories of Rostnikov’s life.

Long before he was assigned as chief inspector in the Office of Special Investigation, he had earned a variety of nicknames including “the Refrigerator,” “the Kiosk,” and “the Washtub.”

Behind Rostnikov, each body was being uncovered and photographed. Overworked police shouted at one another. The crowd warmed itself with speculation.

“Inspector,” said someone at his side.

Rostnikov nodded, still fascinated by the tattoo.

“Inspector,” Sergeant Popovich repeated, just a touch louder. Popovich had recently been promoted. He was thirty, had a child on the way, and hoped one day for yet another promotion. With a salary of less than ninety thousand rubles a month, about ninety dollars or less at current rates, it would have been impossible to feed his family if he, like most of the 100,000 police officers in Moscow who had the opportunity, did not take bribes ranging from sweet juices from street vendors to serious rubles from gangs large and small.

This time Rostnikov grunted. Popovich took this as a signal to report.

“Five dead. One, the pharmacist, injured. She saw nothing. Just heard guns going off. Appears to be a battle between two mafias.”

“Witnesses?” asked Rostnikov.

“They don’t want to admit it,” said Popovich, “but …”

“Bring a witness over,” said Rostnikov.

Popovich nodded and headed toward a police car whose lights were flashing across the street.

Rostnikov looked away from the upside-down dead man with the tattoo on his head and over at the café whose windows had been blown out by gunfire. Cloth sheets covered the bodies of the man and woman that were still half-supported by the table. A wisp of the dead woman’s hair showed from under the cloth. Rostnikov had recognized the woman. Perhaps he was wrong, but still he put off finding out.

“A witness, Chief Inspector,” Popovich said.

Rostnikov barely heard, so intently was he reexamining the head of the dead man who looked at him upside down with eyes as defiant as they must have been in life.

“Popovich, what is your first name?”

“Vladimir. Vladimir Andreyevich Popovich.”

“Vladimir Andreyevich,” Rostnikov said, shifting his weight slightly to remind his left leg to retain some semblance of life. “Have you ever seen Snegourotchka (The Snow Maiden)?”

“I …” Popovich began in confusion.

“It’s an opera by Rimsky-Korsakov, taken from a children’s story,” said Rostnikov. He looked toward the dead woman in the window of the café. “After finally succeeding, by the last act, in getting her beloved Miskar to fall in love with her, the Snow Maiden steps forward before dawn to receive the blessing of the czar. In her joy and happiness she has forgotten the warning of the fairies, and as the first rays of sun touch her beautiful face, she melts away forever, and Miskar in his anguish throws himself into the lake and drowns.”

Popovich had heard of the chief inspector’s eccentricities, but telling fairy stories to a witness in the midst of this bloody madness went beyond eccentricity.

“You know what we must do, Vladimir?” Rostnikov said, putting his hand on the young policeman’s shoulder.

“I believe I know the proper procedure.”

“We must keep Miskar from drowning himself,” Rostnikov said. He walked around the rear of the Lada and headed for the devastated café. He didn’t bother to avoid stepping on the broken glass, though he did avoid the spatters of blood on the sidewalk in front of the shop.

“Witness,” said Rostnikov, walking through the broken window of the café to the table where the dead man and woman sat under the cloth, their heads down as if they were taking a slight nap.

“I saw it all,” said a man eagerly.

Rostnikov kept looking down at the dead couple.

“I saw it all,” the man repeated eagerly. “I saw it. Lots of them saw it. The guy with the little table, the Napyerstochnik, the thimbler who plays that three-card game with the fools across the street. He saw it. He’s out in the crowd somewhere, I think.”

Rostnikov glanced at the talking man. He was skinny, wild-haired, wearing a coat too long for him and a look on his face of confident madness. He could have been thirty. He could have been fifty. He was certainly crazy.

“What did you see?” asked Rostnikov.

“Nazis,” the man said, looking around to be sure no Nazis were listening. “Nazis,” he repeated. “Dozens. Black pants. Brown shirts. Armbands with swastikas. They shot everyone and shouted, ‘Heil Zhirinovsky, Heil Hitler.’ They put out their hands in a Nazi salute like this, and then they all climbed into their SS armored cars and drove away. They didn’t give a damn if anyone saw them.”

“Thank you,” said Rostnikov. “I assume Officer Popovich has your address. We will contact you.”

“Just said ‘Heil,’” the man repeated.

A uniformed officer came forward and led the man away.

“Other witnesses?” asked Rostnikov.

“Just getting them together,” said Popovich. “Owner of this shop. Owner of the car on which the bald man is lying. A few people in the crowd who claim to have heard something.”

“All old people,” said Rostnikov, looking at the cloth covering the dead woman.

“Yes,” said Popovich.

“The ones with lives left recognize a mafia killing and run. The old ones seeking attention stay,” said Rostnikov. He pulled back the cloth and looked down at the face of the dead woman. Her eyes were closed. A very slight trickle of blood came from the left corner of her mouth. It was nearly dry. Rostnikov covered her again and closed his eyes for a long time.

Finally the chief inspector opened his eyes and turned to Popovich. “What do you conclude about this event?” he asked, rubbing his eyes as if he had just awakened from a short nap.

“Definitely mafias,” Popovich said with relief now that he was on known territory. “Or perhaps a single mafia in some kind of internal battle.”

“Why this conclusion?” Rostnikov asked, still rubbing his eyes.

“The dead man is covered with tattoos, which means he was probably in prison,” said Popovich. “I don’t know what the tattoos mean, but there is one that appears on both of the dead men. In the case of the man on the car, it is on his head. It is on the buttocks of the other one, the one in the street.”

“You rolled him over and pulled down his pants?” asked Rostnikov, now looking at the sergeant with eyes rubbed red.

“He had fallen dead on his face,” said Popovich. “His pants had slipped down. He had defecated on himself, but I could still see the eagle.”

“What else?” asked Rostnikov.

“Else?”

“The eagle was carrying something in its claws. What was it?”

“It looked like a bomb of some sort.”

“It was a bomb,” Rostnikov said. “Did he have a weapon?”

“The eagle?”

“The dead man.”

“No.”

“I’m going to get myself a glass of tea. Would you like one?”

“No, Chief Inspector,” said Popovich, though he would truly have welcomed something for his dry mouth.

“Bring in the witnesses one at a time,” Rostnikov said. He moved toward the rear of the café, where there was a shining metal urn, its spigot slowly dripping tea into a saucer that had overflowed. “When you come back in, I’ll have a glass of tea poured for you.”

Unsure of what to do, Popovich saluted and stepped back out onto the street, where he waved at the two policemen who were detaining a group of men. He held up a single finger to indicate that he wanted one of the men sent over. One of the policemen ushered a thin man across the street. The crowd, assuming that the man was a suspect, began pelting him with a few bits of glass from the broken café window, the odd stone, and a piece or two of rotten fruit. Fortunately for the man, who was the owner of the Lada, and for the policeman who escorted him, the crowd found little to throw.

The gray wolfhound entered the room and looked down at the four men seated behind the finely polished wooden table. “Reports today will be limited to direct criminal investigations in progress,” he said. “I have an important meeting with the Minister of the Interior in twenty minutes.”

Ever since the dissolution of Communism and the Soviet Union, the Gray Wolfhound had taken to wearing a green uniform of his own design. No one seemed to know or care if this act of creative military fashion was within the realm of protocol and law. But as the four men seated behind the table all knew but would admit to few, there was a kind of free-floating law in Russia-partly the remnants of Communism, partly an attempt to establish the semblance of a democratic process, and partly the whim of whoever was willing to act as if he knew what to do. The risk of taking this step forward was that it might well destroy one in the future. The political advantages of the move, on the other hand, were potentially great.

The Wolfhound’s uniform was, as always, perfectly pressed, presumably by his adjutant, who lived with the colonel in a small but sufficient dacha not far from Moscow. The colonel’s medals, his lone concession to the past, glittered on his chest. His mane of perfect white hair flowed back as if fashioned by a benevolent wind.

The senior staff meeting was being held, as always, in the colonel’s office in Petrovka 38, the central headquarters of the various police districts reorganized in the last several years by an unknown Yeltsin associate. Today’s meeting was out of the ordinary due to the presence of a solidly built man seated at the end of the conference table well apart from the others. He wore a blue suit and tie and had his curly black hair cut short. He looked decidedly athletic, and his age appeared to be somewhere between forty and fifty, though it was difficult for the colonel’s staff to gauge the age of a black man. The need to do so had come up infrequently in their careers.

At the center of the table sat Pankov, the near-dwarf who served as the colonel’s assistant. Pankov’s primary function was to appear in public at the colonel’s side, thus enhancing the image of the Wolfhound by comparison with the rumpled, unkempt, confused little Pankov.

To Pankov’s right was Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, who seemed to be taking notes on a large pad. Colonel Snitkonoy was well aware that the chief inspector was almost certainly drawing pictures of houses, people, books, flowers, statues, or even the window behind the colonel. The colonel had purposely sat the black man in the blue suit at the end of the table where he would not see such inattentive behavior.

To Pankov’s left sat Major Gregorovich, a thick man in his late forties who survived by displaying absolute public loyalty to the Wolfhound on all issues while secretly reporting on the Office of Special Investigation to officers in other bureaus jealous of the increasing power of the Wolfhound’s small but highly successful staff. Gregorovich, who had given up wearing any uniform other than a brown business suit, still held a faint hope that if the Wolfhound ever faltered, those to whom he had passed on information would wish Gregorovich to take over the directorship. It would not simply be a reward. Gregorovich was too smart to settle for that. It would be the expedient, self-serving thing for them to do.

“Chief Inspector,” the Wolfhound said. “Your report.”

Rostnikov put down his pad, and though it was upside down and a dozen feet away, the Wolfhound could see that the drawing Rostnikov had been intent on was the face of a woman with billowing hair.

“Four new investigations begun,” said Rostnikov. “Twelve ongoing, five closed with arrests.”

“New investigations only,” the Wolfhound said, looking at the clock.

Rostnikov seemed not to notice and went on. “Alexei Porvinovich. Owns several businesses, launders foreign money, and makes bribes to get permits. Suspected ties to several mafias, particularly the Afghan veterans. He was abducted on the street in a dark Mercedes-Benz by two men with automatic weapons. Both abductors wore ski masks. No body yet found. Wife reports ransom call. Three million American dollars.”

“Three million …” Pankov said, and then shut up after a stern look from the colonel.

“Go on, Chief Inspector,” said the Wolfhound.

“Another victim of an attack in the Strogino area,” Rostnikov said. “Face and head crushed by pavement pieces, ribs broken, organs ruptured. This is the eleventh such killing in less than a year.”

“If you think it is worth our attention,” the Wolfhound said, “then assign someone.”

“I will assign Inspectors Tkach and Zelach.”

“Fine, fine, what else?” asked the Wolfhound.

“Liaison with tax police on information provided by paid informant who led them to a hoard of valuable artifacts. Inspectors Karpo and Timofeyeva report that sometime between the discovery of the items by the tax police and the next morning all of the articles were removed. The estimated value of the find, according to Inspector Karpo, may be in excess of one billion dollars.”

“One bill-” Pankov started, and immediately shut up.

“We take these cases,” said Colonel Snitkonoy. “Gentlemen, this presents the proper moment for me to introduce our guest, Mr. Craig Hamilton.”

Rostnikov, Pankov, and Gregorovich now openly looked at the black man for the first time. Mr. Craig Hamilton looked at them, gave a small smile, and said in perfect and quite precise Russian, “It is a pleasure to meet you and an honor to be invited to your morning meeting.”

The man learned his Russian in a good, intensive language school, thought Rostnikov.

“Mr. Hamilton is with the American Federal Bureau of Investigation,” said the colonel. “He is here to observe our methods, help if he can in ongoing investigations, and prepare a report for his own superiors and ours. Mr. Hamilton is an attorney and an accountant with thirteen years of investigative experience. I am assigning him to you, Inspector Rostnikov.”

Rostnikov put the finishing touches on the drawing before him and put down his pencil.

“I will, with your approval, take the abduction myself and assign Elena Timofeyeva to the missing artifacts. Perhaps Agent Hamilton will be able to give us some assistance.”

“I would prefer that you or Inspector Karpo handle the missing treasures,” said the Wolfhound. “Inspector Elena Timofeyeva is lacking in experience.”

“I have taken the liberty of assigning Inspector Karpo to the street killings yesterday,” said Rostnikov.

“Five dead,” said the Wolfhound, displaying to the FBI agent that he was fully knowledgeable about day-to-day criminal activity in his city.

“I will supervise Inspector Timofeyeva and conduct the investigation of the abduction with the assistance and advice of Agent Hamilton,” said Rostnikov.

“Why assign Karpo to-?” the Wolfhound began.

“Inspector Karpo has a particular interest in the street killings,” explained Rostnikov, “and I believe he will be zealous in his investigation.”

“Particular interest?” asked the Wolfhound.

“A woman who was killed in the cross fire was a friend of Emil Karpo’s, a particular friend. Her name was Mathilde Verson.”

Sasha Tkach and Arkady Zelach sat in the small, drafty flat of Dmitra Klepikova, who wore a heavy blue man’s sweater and slacks and hugged herself in a way that made Sasha wonder if she was ill. She had thin bones and was a woman who seemed to be taking the winter badly. Her skin was already dry, and her gray-white hair was cut very short. She was forty-eight years old but looked two decades older.

Dmitra had handed each of the policemen a cup of tea and then taken a seat between them. In this intimate semicircle Zelach was not at all comfortable.

Dmitra was the local uchastovaya. She was given her flat free of charge, for which privilege she was expected to know the neighborhood and its problems, to anticipate crimes, and to quickly identify those who had already committed crimes. Dmitra had a small desk in the corner of the room, and she rarely left her apartment. There were many people in the neighborhood, particularly old people, only too happy to come and chat in return for a cup of tea and a biscuit. Occasionally Dmitra made rounds so that she would be known around the neighborhood and given some respect-not as much as she had been given when she was a district Communist party supervisor, but sufficient respect to satisfy her.

She had never had a visit from criminal investigators before. In fact, she had never had a visit from any uniformed patrol at all. She had always gone to the run-down 108th Police District office to deliver her reports. In her three years as an uchastovaya she had seen Lieutenant Colonel Lorin, the head of the district of more than seventy thousand residents, only twice and had never exchanged a word with him.

“I can tell you who the local drunks are, who is likely to come home in a bad mood and beat his wife, who might break into an apartment,” Dmitra said in a very high singsong voice that began to get on Sasha’s nerves as soon as she spoke. The voice and the woman reminded him of his own mother. “But I can’t tell you with certainty who killed Oleg Makmunov.”

“You know the dead man’s name,” said Sasha.

“One of many. The police sometimes rousted him from doorways early in the morning. Another biscuit?”

Zelach nodded yes and Sasha answered, “Da,” throwing his head back to get the blond hair out of his eyes. It was a boyish act, one that contributed to his attractiveness to women, who wanted either to mother him or to smother him. At least that was the way Sasha now saw things. At thirty-one he was no longer a boy and his hair was growing subtly darker. At home he had a wife, two small children, and a mother who made shopkeepers cringe.

“The biscuits are from Poland,” Dmitra said. She held out the small plate to the two policemen, each of whom took one small vanilla biscuit. Then she whispered, “Gift from a local vendor. The truth? Between us?”

“Between us,” Sasha said, beginning to feel quite warm in the small apartment.

“I let her set up her table in front of the metro,” Dmitra said, leaning forward. “She gives me a tin of biscuits here, a juice there. She has a prime location. You know how it is? You know what I get paid?”

Sasha was well aware of “how it is.” His wife, Maya, worked, and his mother, who had had her own place for a while, had moved back in with them and was now contributing most of her salary as a government clerk to the household. With two small children it was still difficult, very difficult, but Sasha had never taken a gift from a criminal or a suspect.

“About the murdered man,” Sasha said, giving a stern glance at Zelach, who reached for another biscuit on the small plate on the table in front of them.

“Who kills a drunk?” said Dmitra. Her shrug was a ripple of bony shoulders beneath her oversized sweater. “And especially a drunk like this Makmunov, who could barely put a few rubles together for a cheap bottle.”

“Who?” asked Zelach, who had ignored Sasha’s glance and devoured two more biscuits.

“Another drunk he got into a fight with,” Dmitra guessed. “A creature of the night even lower than Oleg Makmunov.”

“A creature of the night?” asked Zelach, his cheek full.

“Gang members wandering the streets, ready to pick a fight and a drunk’s pocket. Remember, we have no curfews any longer.”

“A gang?” Sasha said.

“A gang of the very young,” Dmitra said. “If they were older, they wouldn’t be using pieces of concrete and their feet. They would have knives and guns.”

“Wouldn’t they simply be afraid to fire weapons?” asked Sasha. “Afraid to be heard?”

“Are we friends now?” Dmitra asked, leaning forward again and speaking softly.

“Well …” said Zelach.

“Fellow members of the law enforcement team, then,” she said.

“Yes,” said Sasha, looking directly at Zelach to keep him from answering.

Dmitra sat back with her tea, comfortable in the new camaraderie she had purchased with a few biscuits. “Response time on a gunshot in this area,” she said, “is at least ten minutes from the time of the call, usually more like fifteen minutes. You could slaughter the entire Bolshoi Ballet on the Prospekt, quietly pick up the shell casings, and walk away singing those incomprehensible American songs. There are only one hundred and nine policemen in this district and five patrol cars. The police, I can tell you, are not anxious to go driving down a street where they might find themselves facing two or three men with submachine guns or those pistols that shoot through solid steel.”

“Continue,” said Sasha with an encouraging smile, not his most winning smile, but certainly one that moved beyond mere politeness.

“Whoever killed Oleg Makmunov didn’t have a gun,” she said. “And what criminal doesn’t have a gun?”

Sasha nodded for her to go on and she did.

“Almost any criminal today has a gun. Almost every civilian has a gun. Like Los Angeles. Only small children, at least most small children in this district, can’t afford guns … yet.”

“So you think this murder was committed by children?” asked Zelach, reaching for the biscuits. Sasha beat him to the plate, took one, and moved it out of Zelach’s reach. He underestimated Zelach’s determination, however, and found the slouching man leaning far forward to get to the plate. Sasha put a hand on his partner’s shoulder to move him back.

“Combined with the fact that there have been five similar killings within the past few months,” Dmitra said, “and all within two square kilometers of where we are sitting-all were drunks out late-it fits the pattern.”

Sasha had seen bands of poorly dressed children-three, six, ten at a time-hands in their pockets, smoking, looking around insolently, daring people to get in their way, begging, demanding. Some of the children were little more than babies, six, maybe seven, years old. Now, with winter coming, these children, many without homes, would be growing more desperate, needing money for clothes or for someplace to sleep.

“Where do you suggest we begin?” Sasha asked.

“Neighbors,” Dmitra said confidently. “I’ll give you names of people who live on the same street where our Oleg was murdered last night. You can tell them you talked to me, that you are friends of mine.”

The prospect of two real detectives saying they were her friends had great appeal for Dmitra.

“I’ll write their names and addresses for you.” She fished a small pad from a great kangaroolike pocket in her sweater.

While she wrote, Zelach pleaded with his eyes for Sasha’s permission to reach for another biscuit or two. Sasha ignored him and finished his tea.

“There,” said Dmitra. She handed Sasha the list.

“Thank you,” he said, glancing at the brief list of names. He took out his notebook and inserted the sheet of paper inside it for protection.

Then Sasha stood up. Zelach joined him and so did Dmitra.

“You hardly touched the biscuits,” she said. “Here, let me give you each a box to take home.”

“We …” Sasha began, but she had already hurried to a cupboard in the corner.

She was back almost instantly with two small blue cardboard boxes covered with Polish words. She held them out, and Zelach took his instantly. Sasha hesitated for an instant and then imagined the look on his daughter Pulcharia’s face when he presented her with the biscuits. He took them, said “Thanks,” and hurried Zelach out of the apartment.

“Let me know if I can help any further,” Dmitra called down the hall as the policemen departed.

“We will,” said Sasha.

When the thin woman had closed the door, Zelach grinned and held up his blue box from Poland. “You know what they call these in America?” he asked. “Cookie. My mother loves them.”

Zelach lived with his old mother in a small apartment. For years he had taken care of her through her various maladies. When Zelach had been savagely beaten recently, she had pulled herself from her bed and taken care of her only child. It had made a new and healthier woman of her.

They hurried down the steps past the graffiti-filled walls and out into the street. Zelach was still grinning. He had plunged the package into the pocket of his jacket. He looked a bit odd to Sasha.

“Are you all right?”

“A bit dizzy,” said Zelach. “Fine, just a bit dizzy. I have medicine for it at home, but sometimes I feel good and forget. I’ll be fine.”

So Sasha Tkach, his own biscuit box in his pocket, walked down the street, keeping an eye on his partner. Just what every investigator needs, he thought, a partner who might suddenly pass out on him.