Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

Chapter Four

“It was a meaningless comment,” Iosef Rostnikov said to Elena Timofeyeva as they headed slowly down the corridor two levels below Petrovka.

“It was not meaningless,” Elena said, eyes forward, stride steady.

“So, I said what? That there is a resemblance between you and your aunt? That is meaningful? An insult?”

“My Aunt Anna and I are alike in only one way physically. We both have a tendency, as does my mother, to be overweight. You were suggesting that I am growing fat.”

Iosef stopped walking. “I … your aunt is a shrewd, intelligent, highly capable person. See, I said person, not woman. That was the comparison I was making.”

A pair of uniformed policemen walked past them, talking softly and emphatically, taking a quick step to the side to avoid collision with the couple who now stood facing each other.

“I am watching my weight,” she said. “I eat carefully. I exercise. I am fit. I am also genetically disposed toward a certain plumpness which, I thought, pleased you.”

“This is not the place …”

“I’m well aware of that,” Elena said. “But where is a good place and when will we next be there? You said I am like my aunt. I am. She taught me to face situations when they arise, to accept confrontation rather than allow incidents to become infected.”

“I didn’t-,” Iosef said, holding out his hands.

“You did,” she said. “And you are smart enough to know that you did. I would not love you if I thought you were a self-deluded generic man.”

“You are being too sensitive,” he tried.

“That is what generic men say when they wish to avoid responsibility. The woman is being too sensitive. Perhaps the man is being too insensitive. Do you wish to marry me?”

“Yes,” he said. “Definitely. Without question. As soon as possible.”

“Good,” Elena said.

A door opened behind her. She could hear the tapping of shoes behind her.

“Let’s talk to Paulinin,” Iosef said as a slight older woman in a dark suit walked past them quickly, a pile of files cradled in her arms like a baby.

“Iosef, I am what I am destined to be.”

“And that is what I want,” he said. “I-”

“Later,” she said as he advanced and stood in front of her. She touched his right hand with her left and his cheek, with her right hand and then turned to continue down the corridor.

A few dozen steps farther and they were before a heavy metal door. The door was unnumbered and there was no plate on it indicating what lay behind. Elena knocked.

Paulinin did not look pleased when he answered the door to his laboratory. Elena and Iosef were no happier to be here.

“The dead man on the subway,” Elena said.

“Your case?” asked Paulinin, adjusting his glasses with the back of his hand.

The scientist was of average height, a bit on the thin side, with wild white hair that was beginning to show definite signs of thinning. He wore a less-than-clean lab coat that had once been white but was now tinged with hues whose source neither of the detectives wished to consider.

“Our case,” said Elena. “May we? …”

“Come in,” Paulinin said, throwing open the heavy metal door and turning his back on his guests.

They stepped in, and Paulinin pushed the door shut behind them. A fluorescent bulb dying slowly tinkled deep inside the vast room which had once been used for file storage. It had been a haven for Paulinin for at least two decades.

The man was, at best, eccentric. More likely he was a bit mad.

Paulinin was twenty paces ahead of them, maneuvering around familiar objects that formed the maze of his sanctuary-laboratory tables covered with metallic and glass contrivances, most of which were his own peculiar invention and which no one else would know how to use, stacks of books and scientific journals on the floor and on lower tables and two desks, one of which was missing several drawers. Along the walls were shelves up to the top of the ten-foot ceiling. On the shelves were cardboard and wooden boxes, each with a large number in black on its sides. There were also jars ranging in size from a gallon to five gallons or more. Something floated in each of the jars. A brain, a kidney, a small animal, and, somewhere, the left leg of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov; and, according to Petrovka lore, the brain of Josef Stalin.

Elena and Iosef wended their way toward Paulinin, who now stood behind a table on which lay the naked body of a man who appeared to be about fifty. The corpse was neither fat nor thin, tall nor short. He was not particularly handsome; neither was he ugly. Stripped of his suit, the dead colonel was simply a corpse with seven deep, long, clotted knife wounds on his neck, arms, and stomach.

Paulinin’s arms were out and resting next to the body. When he leaned forward, the strong overhead light cast a shadow in the sockets of his eyes. The visitors to Paulinin’s lair had a wide variety of options with which to respond, ranging from amusement to discomfort and fear.

Iosef thought Paulinin would have been a particularly sad and isolated creature were he not sustained by his own paranoia, delusions, and self-confidence.

“This should be Emil Karpo’s case,” Paulinin said.

The closest thing the scientist had to a friend was the silent pale detective. At least once a week they lunched together. Karpo was a good listener. Paulinin was a talker.

“We take the cases we are assigned,” Elena said.

“I didn’t suggest otherwise,” Paulinin said with irritation. “I made an observation. It is bad enough that those bunglers up there”-he looked up toward the ceiling-“treat the dead with ignorance and no respect,” he went on. “Do you know what Bolgakov did?”

Neither Elena nor Iosef knew who Bolgakov was.

“Woman, dead inside the Kremlin gift shop,” Paulinin said. “Greek. Just fell. Boom. Like that. No one saw. She was in a corner, supposedly alone. And Bolgakov, that oaf who could not see an elephant without an electron microscope, looks at the body, declares she had a heart attack. Case closed. The great Bolgakov has spoken. I get the body after they have pawed it with no sense of respect or dignity. I read the report. Broken nose. Bolgakov says she fell on her nose when she had her attack. Cheek bones are intact. Bone in the nose is thin. The nose had been broken before, twice. One rib had been broken before. Simple X rays showed that. Given her weight, even if she didn’t fall flat, the nose should have been flattened, pulp. You understand?”

“Perfectly,” said Iosef patiently.

“Heart attack,” Paulinin went on. “Pills in her purse for angina. Bolgakov, the language expert, can read the pill bottle in Greek but just enough to make out the medication. I get the bottle. Can I read Greek?”

“I do not know,” said Elena.

“I cannot,” Paulinin said with a smile. “But I do not pretend to. I find a Greek. There’s one at the newsstand on Kolpolski Square. I give him the bottle. The pills belong to the woman’s husband. She was carrying them for him. I go back to the body, look at the heart, the arteries. Bolgakov had not bothered to open her. There was nothing wrong with her heart till it stopped. She died of a stroke brought on by a blow to her head. Something hit her in the face. She fell back and struck her head. Hematoma under the hair. Any idiot could see it if he looked, but not the great Bolgakov, chief medical examiner for the Homicide Division.”

“So what did happen?” asked Iosef, knowing that they would not get to the dead man before them till Paulinin’s story was over.

“I asked to see the husband of the dead woman. He was leaving with the body that very day. They had waited two days to get the dead woman to me. I talked to Karpo. He stopped the man at the airport and brought him here. You know what I found?”

“What?” asked Elena, resisting the urge to look at her watch.

“Signs of broken capillaries in the knuckles of his right hand. That is what I found. They had fought. He had punched her. She had fallen and the fools upstairs had missed it.”

“He confessed?” asked Elena.

“Of course,” said Paulinin. “I laid out the evidence. One, two, three, four, five. Built a tower of steel truth. He was a wife beater. Greece has as many as we do in Russia, but possibly Russian women have thicker skulls.”

He looked directly at Elena, who met his eyes.

“Interesting,” she said. “The man on the table.”

“You want some coffee? Tea?”

“No, thank you,” said Elena.

Both she and Iosef had made the mistake in the past of accepting Paulinin’s offer of coffee or tea. They had suffered for their attempt to get on his good side, not knowing at the time that he had no good side. The coffee had come in small glass jars with hints of white powder and something that did not look like coffee grounds floating in the tan liquid. They had drunk the vile brew, trying to avoid the floating dots.

“Business, then,” said Paulinin. “My friend here,” he said, touching the hairy chest of the corpse, “and I have had a long talk. He told me all about his attacker.”

With this Paulinin looked down at the face of the dead man, whose eyes were closed.

“And he told you?” Iosef prompted.

“She is five foot and six inches tall, or within an inch. Approximately one hundred and twenty pounds. About thirty years of age. Right-handed but with a sprained wrist. Strong. Determined. If you find her, I can definitely identify her from the description given by our friend.”

He went silent and looked at each of the detectives with a knowing, secret smile.

Iosef briefly considered not asking Paulinin how he knew all of this, but that would be cruel. The man had nothing but his skill and vanity and the need for a small appreciative audience.

“Two of the surviving victims of this woman said she had used her right hand,” he said, holding up his right hand as if clasping a knife. “The others didn’t remember. Our friend here was stabbed by someone with the knife in the left hand.”

“A different attacker?” asked Elena.

“No,” said Paulinin. “Same knife in all the attacks. Same general pattern, but this time the strokes came across from the left and were not as deep. Mind you, they were deep, but not as deep as those she had delivered in the past with her right hand. Hence, there is something wrong with her right hand, probably a strain. She strikes hard, very hard. She could well cause herself injury. The spacing and location of the blows suggest an attacker without plan or pattern. She simply lashes out, probably screams when she attacks. Her height is evident from the angle of the wounds, and her weight is more than suggested by the depth of her thrusts.”

“And you can identify her?” asked Elena.

“Bolgakov didn’t bother to examine my friend here closely. Look at his fingers.”

Both detectives leaned forward to examine the white fingers.

“Under the nails of his right hand,” said Paulinin. “He held up his hands to ward her off after the first two or three blows, but it was too late. He touched her face or arm. There were tiny, very tiny pieces of surface skin under his nails. Definitely a woman.”

“DNA,” said Iosef.

“Absolutely,” said Paulinin. “Find her. Look for a woman with a weak right wrist, possibly bandaged. You know her height, her general description. Questions?”

“We have spoken to those who have survived this woman’s attacks. They have given us a description,” said Elena, removing the artist’s sketch from her pocket. “They say this is a reasonable representation.”

Paulinin adjusted his glasses and leaned forward to examine the sketch.

“She is not that thin in the face,” he said. “Given her weight she could not be. Your surviving victims got only a glimpse before they were struck. They had childhood images of witches to pull from deep inside their surprise and fear.”

“We will adjust the sketch,” Iosef said.

“It will help, but you are seeking a woman, not a witch. She probably looks like a mouse. No, not a mouse, a timid rabbit, unnoticed, shy, and then she strikes. And then she is gone.”

“You know this to be a fact?” asked Elena.

Paulinin stepped back, clearly offended.

“My friend here told me,” he said. “By his wounds, his former life, his whispers without words that only those of us who listen closely can hear. I gave you facts. Any more questions?”

“None,” said Elena.

“Then go,” he said. “My “friend and I still have much to talk about.”

“What goes on in here is nothing compared to what goes on in.the streets,” said the paunchy man with the clean-cut goatee and short-trimmed dark hair.

They were in the club and bar called Loni’s on Kropotkin Street. Loni’s took up two floors of a former ten-story apartment building. It was vast and dark and smelled of alcohol, sweat, and the ammonia being used by the cleaning crew. Six women were working slowly, sweeping, mopping, scrubbing graffiti from the walls, taking down torn posters of leather-clad, electric-guitar-holding young men with open mouths and angry faces, and putting up fresh posters very much like the ones they removed. The women moved silently, pushing buckets of water ahead of them.

The paunchy man in a black T-shirt was Karoli Stinichkov. He was the day manager. His duties involved seeing to it that Loni’s was ready for the nightly crowd-clean, well stocked-and that the money from the preceding night, which ended at almost four in the morning, was correctly accounted for.

Karoli had a partner who worked evenings and nights. The men met late every afternoon for an hour, and every morning for an hour, to hand over the keys and give a report to the other.

This worked well because neither man liked the other. They were brothers-in-law. The sisters they were married to didn’t like either of the men.

“You’ve got crowds of homosexuals hanging around in front of the Bolshoi, drug dealers right in Derzhinski Square where State Security can look out the windows of Lubyanka and see them. You’ve got …”

“Misha Lovski,” Emil Karpo interrupted.

“Misha Lovski?” the man asked.

“Naked Cossack,” said Zelach.

“Oh, him,” said Karoli. “His name is Lovski? Between you and me and nobody else, he’s a bastard son of a bitch. But what can we do? They like him. They go crazy for him. Between you and me and nobody else I don’t understand half of what he says, but then I don’t really have to listen to him or any of them much. My partner’s here at night.”

“When was he last here?” asked Karpo.

“My partner?”

“Lovski.”

The gaunt detective made Karoli nervous. He had a great deal to hide, though almost none of it was related to the prick who called himself and his group of addle-brains Naked Cossack. Karoli shrugged and reached for the Diet Sprite with ice that was bubbling on the bar.

“You mean performing? That was last week. Wednesday, I think. They’re due back on Saturday. Saturday is a big night.”

“He come in here when he’s not performing?”

“I’m told,” Karoli said, looking at the ice in his drink. “He likes to be patted on the back, praised. The skinheads buy him drinks and things.”

“Things?” asked Karpo. “Drugs?”

“Things,” Karoli answered. “We don’t sell anything but soft drinks and alcohol and a few things to eat. Chips. They love chips. You know how many bags of chips we sell every week?”

“I do not,” said Karpo.

“Eight, nine hundred, maybe more,” said Karoli proudly. “We get all kinds from a plant outside the city. They have a deal with some potato farmers in the north.”

“Misha Lovski,” Karpo repeated. “He was in here two nights ago.

“Wait, Yervonovich is still here. He doesn’t sleep. Bartender. Knows everybody. Wait.”

Karoli motioned to one of the nearby cleaning women, who came over, a rag in her hand.

“Go in the back. Get Abbi,” he ordered.

The woman looked at the two policemen and moved slowly around the long bar and through a door.

“Between you and me and nobody else,” Karoli said. “A lot of the skinheads like Naked Cossack because of the girl, the redheaded girl who backs him and pretends to play.”

“Anarchista,” Zelach said.

“That is right,” Karoli confirmed. “Crazy business. At another club, the Cossack and the girl pretended to have sex during a song he was singing about wanting to be an American Indian and scalp slaves. Sick stuff. And he is not the worst. Filth. But it is a good living. I like the old stuff. Rock ’n’ roll. Elvis. Bill Haley. Johnny Rotten.”

A man staggered out through the door behind the bar. He wore no shirt and there was a dark stain on his tan slacks. The man was hairless and looked ancient and hung over.

“Abbi,” Karoli said. “Cops. They have questions. Answer them. We don’t want trouble.”

“When was Misha Lovski last in here?” asked Karpo.

“Naked Cossack,” Zelach explained.

“Cossack,” Abbi repeated, followed by a cough. “Last here. Yesterday. The day before. The Iron Maidens were on. I remember.”

“That was the day before yesterday,” Karoli explained.

“What?” asked Abbi, straining to hear. “I’m going deaf from the damned music. I wear earplugs. Thick ones, but it drives through my head like a sharp nail. What did you say?”

“Who was he hanging around with?” Karpo asked loudly.

Abbi scratched his head and searched his pockets. He came up with a crumpled cigarette, looked at it, and threw it on the floor.

“We just cleaned back there,” a large woman said.

“Pick it up, Abbi,” said Karoli.

Abbi nodded, sighed, and leaned over to pick up the cigarette. When he stood on uncertain legs, Karpo repeated the question.

“Everybody,” Abbi said. “Everybody wanted to touch him or the girl. They didn’t mind. They never do. There were two skinheads who took it on themselves to protect him and the girl, stayed with them. Big guys. Kids.”

“With whom did he leave?” asked Karpo.

“Leave? I don’t know. I think it was the skins. The other two guys from the band, Naked Cossack’s band. They weren’t here. I think the girl was here, the crazy one with red hair. Maybe not. The skins. I saw the Cossack with some skins.”

“Names?”

“The skinheads? Real names? I don’t know real names. Bottle Kaps and … let me think, Heinrich. That’s it. Bottle Kaps and Heinrich. Tattoos on their arms. Nazi stuff., SS, swastikas. Stupid talk.”

“Where can we find Bottle Kaps and Heinrich?” asked Karpo.

“Find them? Here, tonight. Almost every night,” Abbi said. “Tonight especially. Death Times Four is on. Their lead … what’s his name? …”

“Snub Nose Bullet,” Zelach supplied.

“Yeah, Snub Nose Bullet,” Abbi confirmed with a smirk, plunging his hands into his pockets. “Loud, very loud. Screeching. Drums. Steel. I need some sleep.”

“Go in back,” said Karoli. “Get some sleep.”

Abbi nodded and went back through the door behind the bar.

“Yes,” said Karoli. “He’s a drunk but an amazing bartender. He’s like an artist. Drunk one second and then when the customers hit the bar he becomes an acrobat. I think he used to be an accountant. Me, I used to sell office supplies.”

“We’ll be back tonight,” said Karpo. “Tell no one. Not even your partner.”

“Then don’t tell him you told me you were coming back,” he said. “I’ve got enough grief with him. When I have enough saved, I’m going to buy him out or sell out and start my own place. The hell with my wife. The hell with her sister. A man can only take so much. You know what I mean?”

The detectives turned, crossed the room, opened the door, and went out into a light falling snow.

Porfiry Petrovich read the note, neatly printed in ink on a piece of paper that showed the creases of a double fold. The note read:

Take the green rubles in a simple bag on the Two leaving M. for V. on Thursday. Contact will be made en route. Contact will give you the words Nicholas’s Secret. Give contact the suitcase after contact gives you a package. Do not open the package. Deliver it to Ivan. Collect fee remainder from Ivan.

The note was unsigned. Rostnikov laid it flat before him and looked up at the Yak, who gave a slight tilt of his head to indicate that he waited for his chief inspector’s response.

“Two is the number-two train leaving from M., Moscow, on Thursday. Green rubles are not rubles. They are another green currency, probably dollars, half a million American dollars.”

Rostnikov paused. Today was Thursday.

“Go on,” said the Yak.

“There is nowhere to go until you give me more information.”

Porfiry Petrovich wanted to take off his leg and scratch the stump. The itching was demanding, almost unbearable. He sat motionless.

“The message was intercepted,” said the Yak. “The sender, who was being watched, was taken into custody. What you have is a copy of a one-sided telephone conversation. The call was from the sender’s apartment in Odessa to a phone booth in Moscow. The Odessa phone line was tapped. The receiver at the phone booth said nothing. By the time a car arrived at the booth, the receiver was long gone. In the course of interrogating the sender-a very old man who unfortunately died under the strain of vigorous questioning-it was determined that the old man had simply been hired in a bar by a woman he could not identify. He was given a handful of rubles to make the call and repeat exactly what is on the sheet before you. Security forces considered it a dead end, possibly drugs, smuggled currency. They lost interest. There wasn’t enough information for them to board the train and search all the luggage for a bag of money. And even if they found such a bag, it would prove nothing.”

“And I am to board the Trans-Siberian Express tonight, find the person with the bag of money, and? …” asked Rostnikov.

“I am not interested in the money or the man,” said Yaklovev, suddenly standing. “Though you are to bring both to me. What is more important, I want the package. Look at the next item in the folder before you.”

Rostnikov opened the folder and pulled out the xeroxed sheet of two pages copied from what must have been an old book.

“Read,” said the Yak.

The two pages dealt with court intrigue during the decline of the reign of Czar Nicholas I. There was speculation on the relationship of Russia to Japan, the growing hostility between the two countries over offshore islands in the Sea of Japan. Highlighted in yellow marker were the words: “believed to have been a secret treaty signed by the czar and the emperor of Japan. The document supposedly disappeared or was stolen en route from Vladivostok to St. Petersburg.”

Rostnikov looked up.

“Speculation?” asked the Yak.

“The person with the suitcase full of money is buying the document?” Rostnikov tried.

The Yak said nothing.

“Such a document would have little political or economic significance even if it did exist,” Rostnikov said. “Agreements made by a Czar a hundred years ago would not be honored today and it would do little good to attack the royal family. It is ancient history.

“Go on.”

“And there is little reason to see a connection between this intercepted message and the supposed document.”

“And so you believe the pursuit of this package is not worthy of action?”

Behind the Yak, through the window, Rostnikov could see the snow beginning to fall. It heartened him. Winter was his season, the season of most Moscovites. A clean white blanket of snow. Crisp chill air. He considered pointing out the falling snow to the director and thought better of it. Instead, he said, “I believe it is worth pursuing.”

His reasons for making the statement needed no further comment. There was something the Yak was not telling him. There was probably a great deal the Yak was not telling him.

“Take one of your people with you.”

“Sasha Tkach,” Rostnikov answered without hesitation. “He has no immediate assignment.”

That was true, but the chief inspector had other reasons for wanting the less-than-stable detective to accompany him.

The Yak turned his back and walked to the window, hands folded behind his back. He was looking at the falling snow.

“It will not be easy to locate the courier,” said the Yak. “But I have great confidence in you, Porfiry Petrovich.”

“I shall do my best to merit such confidence,” said Rostnikov.

“Pankov will hand you tickets for you and Tkach on your way out. The number-two train leaves a few minutes before midnight. You are in separate first-class compartments. If the courier is a professional, and it seems that he or she is, then they are likely to be in first class, if for no reason other than to protect the suitcase full of money. You have twelve hours to prepare. Take the entire folder. You have one-way tickets. As soon as you find the package, the courier, and the money, you are to fly back to Moscow from the nearest airport. Pankov will take care of all travel arrangements and provide you with necessary expense money. You will return whatever you do not use directly to him.”

Rostnikov rose, steadying his leg with both hands as he did so. He picked up the file folder and his notebook and turned toward the door.

“No one sees the contents of the package,” the Yak said, his back still turned. “It is to be delivered to me unopened.”

“Unopened,” said Rostnikov. He closed the door gently behind him and stood before the desk of the moist-foreheaded Pankov.

Without a word Pankov handed Rostnikov a thick envelope, and the chief inspector departed. Three minutes later he was in his office, door closed, behind his desk. He dropped the folder and envelope with the tickets and cash on his desk and quickly removed his artificial leg as he sat. He began scratching the stump as he settled back. Ecstasy. Pure delight. Better than Sarah s Chicken Tabak. Better than walking in the snow. Better than winning the senior weight-lifting title in Ismailovo Park. The itch slowly spread and Rostnikov worked on it as he reached for the phone on his desk with one hand and pushed a number on the keyboard.

“Come to my office,” he said and hung up.

The itching slowly departed and Porfiry Petrovich reconsidered the delights of life. Scratching an itch was very good, but Chicken Tabak, sex, snow, and the rush from lifting massive weights had now moved high above it on his list of pleasures.

He put his legs down, the front of the desk hiding the artificial leg he had not replaced on the chance that the itch would return.

Rostnikov had believed very little of what Yaklovev had told him, but that didn’t matter. The assignment was clear and probably not as difficult as it appeared to be on the surface.

A knock.

“Come in.”

Sasha Tkach entered. Rostnikov motioned him across the small space and nodded at the chair on the other side of the desk. Sasha sat.

“How would you like to take a trip?”

“Where?”

“Siberia, the Trans-Siberian Express.”

“To China?”

“Vladivostok.”

Sasha brushed the lock of hair from his face. He did not look pleased by the prospect of the journey.

“When?” asked Sasha.

“Tonight,” said Rostnikov.

“Maya is coming back tomorrow,” he said.

“I am pleased to hear that,” said Rostnikov. “You can call her. Tell her to move in with the children, get resettled, have the apartment to herself. Does Lydia know Maya is coming back?”

“Yes,” said Sasha. “I should be here.”

“Perhaps not” said Rostnikov. “Perhaps Maya would welcome a few days or so without the awkwardness of reunion. And you would have time away from Lydia.”

“That would be good,” Sasha admitted.

“Can you keep her away from Maya and the children?”

“No,” said Sasha. “She paid for their return tickets. She wants to see her grandchildren. Maya knows. She understands.”

“Good. Tonight. Number-two train. I’ll pick you up in a cab around ten. Have you ever been to Siberia?”

“No,” said Sasha.

“It can be cold, beautiful,” said Rostnikov. It can also be quite deadly, he thought.

“Do I have a choice?” asked Sasha.

“Refusal is always an option, but refusal has consequences,” said Rostnikov. “That is not a threat, Sasha. It is an essential moral essence of life.”

“I have some work to finish,” said Sasha, standing.

“Call Maya from here; your office,” said Rostnikov. “It is police business. I’m sure Director Yaklovev will not mind.” He was equally certain that the Yak was listening to the conversation. “Pack enough for seven days,” he added.

If things went well and they found the courier and the package, they might be back sooner, possibly much sooner, but they had to be prepared to travel all the way to Vladivostok if necessary.

Sasha nodded and left the office.

Rostnikov thought the younger detective was in serious need of a change of scenery. It would probably be snowing in Siberia. He could spend hours looking out at mountains, losing himself in a meditation he would not recognize as meditation.

Rostnikov sat back and turned his chair toward the window so he could watch the snow and plan how he was to find his quarry, on a train full of people, when he had no idea who he might be looking for.

A bag of half a million American dollars, or deutsche marks or French francs or British pounds, would be reasonably large even if the bills were in large denominations. Starting with the first-class passengers, he would have Sasha make his way through the train, examining every piece of luggage. A passenger who carried a sizeable bag with him or her at all times would be a certain target. Distracting the carrier might be difficult but Rostnikov enjoyed a game of distraction.

Because of his leg, Rostnikovs task would be the diversion of individual passengers. The agile and innocent-appearing Sasha Tkach would do the search of each compartment.

It was a reasonable plan, but there had to be contingencies. He would work them out. Later he would work them out.

But now he began to think seriously about lunch.