Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

Chapter Five

There were plainclothes police officers at every one of the twenty-two stops of the Kaluzhsko-Rizhskaya line, the orange line, of the Moscow metro. Some carried newspapers, pretending to read. Others carried briefcases and wore watches, which they checked periodically as if they were late for an important meeting. A few were more creative.

Most of the officers, regular users of the metro system themselves, were aware that the more successful businessmen, government officials, and Mafiosi of the city seldom used the underground. Although there was a clear class distinction, there were still many well-dressed men in the age group of the men who had been attacked.

One young officer named Mariankyov assigned to the Cheryomushki station dressed up like a gypsy, or what he thought a gypsy looked like. He was the most conspicuous of all the police officers. Gypsy men alone on the platform at a metro station or at a bus stop were open warnings that a pickpocket was present. The truth was that the gypsy pickpockets had long since learned to dress more conservatively.

People avoided Mariankyov, except for one old man in an overcoat who bumped into him as he rushed to catch a departing train. Moments later Mariankyov discovered that his pocket had been picked.

By noon, five women had been picked up based upon their resemblance to the drawing each officer carried in his memory and his pocket. The women were brought to Elena Timofeyeva and Iosef Rostnikov, who headquartered in a small office at the Tretyakovskaya station at the center of the line.

One of the women was the wife of a Portuguese leather buyer. The woman had been in Moscow for only one day and carried no knife. She was released.

Another woman was an actress with the Moscow Theater Company. Iosef knew her slightly from his theater days. She carried no knife and found the arrest interesting. She was released.

The third woman did have a small folding knife in her purse, along with a can of Mace. She was terrified of muggers and not particularly at ease with the police. She had once been accosted by a drunk on her way to work as a hotel maid. She was released.

The fourth woman was Chinese. She was released.

The fifth woman was not a woman at all but a transvestite prostitute coming home from an unsuccessful morning, which did not surprise either of the detectives since the man was incredibly homely. He carried a razor in his pocket. It was an ancient straight razor. He said the sight of it usually deterred people who did not understand or appreciate alternative life-styles and careers. He was released.

None of those arrested had a sprained wrist.

While all this was going on, more than fifty thousand people traveled to work, home, sightseeing, and nowhere in particular on the metro system. The system opened each morning at six and closed at one the following morning. That gave the cleaning crews a little over five hours to clean the platforms, walls, pillars, and tracks, and repair any broken windows or chipped paint. The cleaning crews worked quickly and generally efficiently, depending on who headed each particular crew.

There was a lack of funds for metro repairs and cleaning, though the stations were more cosmetically acceptable than the interior of most of the city’s hotels. The metro system was a symbol of Russian accomplishment, a source of pride along with the space program and the Trans-Siberian Railroad system. The mayor of Moscow was a man who built his career on the image of the city, and he saw to it that the metro stations were clean and well-maintained. Efficient, sometimes magnificent, each station-all built during the Stalin era-was in a different style.

Guidebooks told tourists that they should not miss a tour of the metro stations, and few of them did.

One of the most opulent examples of the old Soviet system was the Komsomolskaya station, dedicated to the Komsomol, the Young Communist League, whose members provided labor during construction of the metro.

Many metro stations had undergone name changes after the fall of the Soviet Union. If the Komsomolskaya had undergone such a change, few Moscovites who rode it were aware of this rejection of Communism. It was still and would probably remain the Komsomol station to all who rode it.

One of the regular riders was Toomas Vana. Toomas, born in Tallinn in Estonia, had come to Moscow to work in the office of the state gas company when he was fourteen. His father had been an unpopular and very corrupt commissar in Estonia, who thought the way for his son to achieve political position at a high level in the Soviet Union was to move the boy to Moscow. Toomas had, indeed, moved up, but not politically. He earned his university degree and developed a passion for gas. He wanted, not political power, but to be the world’s foremost authority on natural gas and its uses. At the age of forty-six he was certainly among the elite of the world in that knowledge.

And Toomas had a very valuable skill which added to his stature. Tallinn, Estonia, is sixty miles across the Gulf of Finland from Helsinki. The Estonians of the region spoke a language almost identical to that of Finland, and until the age of fourteen when he was sent off to Moscow he had regularly listened to and watched Finnish television, a link to the Western world available to few in the Soviet Union.

Toomas traveled frequently to Finland to consult on that country’s attempts to expand its use of natural gas.

This morning Toomas did not have the correct change. He stopped at the change machine and then proceeded to the automatic gate and dropped in his coins.

The platform was crowded. It always was around lunchtime. Toomas stood against a pillar, briefcase in one hand, a report on the cost of pipeline repairs in the other. Moscow was heated and cooled by natural gas. The gas company was still a great government bureaucracy to be reckoned with, the largest natural-gas company in the world.

Had he not stood on this same platform at this same pillar thousands of times before he would certainly have looked up at the decorated arched ceiling with its massive, ornate, and multilamped chandeliers running the length of the platform longer than a soccer field and nearly as wide. He would have noted the arches above the pillars echoing the elegant medieval theme of the station. He might have looked straight up, as he had many years earlier, at the huge, multicolored mosaic of a warrior with shield and lance upon a prancing white horse and admired the elaborate design of curlicues and flowers that framed it.

But this was today and his mind was on rusting gas pipes.

He barely noticed the woman walking slowly in his direction. People were moving. She would pass him and move to the edge of the platform to look for an incoming train. Toomas never bothered to move for the train until he heard it coming with a roar down the tunnel. Then he would make a slow turn, always to the right, and place himself exactly where the train door would slide open. He knew the spot. He didn’t have to think about it. Now he heard the first distant rumble of the approaching train.

The woman stood in front of him. She was probably going to ask him a question about the train schedule, or perhaps she was going to ask him for some coins, which he would not give her. To encourage one is to encourage all, he thought. He read the report.

And then the report exploded in his hands, split in two, and he felt a sudden pain, saw a flash of bright light. The world turned into a sparkling light show. Fireworks. Strobe lights. A bomb, he thought. Terrorists. Chechins. A bomb. They had bombed underpasses and now a metro station. It made sense.

He knew he had slumped back against the flat pillar. Toomas did not panic. Someone or something was punching him in the stomach. An aftershock from a bomb? Wait. Was there a gas main under this station? A gas explosion? It had happened before, many times before, but there was no gas main under the platform or nearby.

His head ached. The fireworks stopped. The punching ceased, leaving nausea. Toomas felt himself passing out. At least he thought he was passing out. In fact, he was dying.

Inna Dalipovna stepped back and turned away from the falling man in the dark suit. She tucked the knife into her deep coat pocket. She would wash it when she got home. She would sharpen it with oil on the rectangular stone when she got home. She would use the knife to make dinner for her father tonight. She would use it to slice the sausage into the thin, almost transparent slices he liked to heap upon his bread.

The attack had been quick. Some people thought it was probably a husband and wife quarreling. Some people pretended to see nothing. Most on the crowded platform did not notice. When it was over, however, a woman screamed. Inna, now at the end of the platform, nearing the escalator steps, heard the scream above the noise of the crowd and the approaching train.

The screaming woman, who stood hand in hand with her six-year-old granddaughter, looked down at the man who lay before her, his right eye socket a small pool of blood, his neck pulsing red, and spots of darkness quickly forming and spreading on his white shirt and dark suit.

“Don’t be afraid, Grandma,” the child said. “It’s just a dead man.

Inna did not look back. Her wrist felt numb. She had used her right hand, had taped it thickly and tightly with white adhesive. She had planned to thrust without turning her hand, but when she had seen the man standing there, had known it would be him, she had forgotten everything, had gone into some kind of automatic state, had let it take over. And now she felt both pain and satisfaction. Only when she reached the street and stepped into the falling snow did she examine herself for bloodstains. She could see none. No one had looked at her strangely so she assumed that her face and neck were untouched, but she paused at a window to be sure.

The woman looking back at her was the one she saw each morning in the mirror. It was not her own face but the face of her mother.

No policeman had appeared during or immediately after Inna’s attack on Toomas Vana. There had been no policeman on the platform for a very good reason. None had been assigned to this station.

The Komsomolskaya station was on the red line, the Kirovsko-Frunzenskaya line, not on the line where Inna had attacked before.

Five minutes later when Elena and Iosef were informed of the murder they realized that there were now more than ninety stations where their killer might strike. To patrol the stations in two shifts would require about two hundred officers. The chances of their getting two hundred officers assigned to the case were nonexistent.

They would have to find another way to the woman or wait for her to make a mistake.

Sasha had tried to pack. It was useless. The scuffed but serviceable dark-leather suitcase that had once been his father’s lay open on the bed. His mother, who had been in the apartment uninvited when he arrived, had criticized him as he placed the first item, a pair of trousers, at the bottom of the case.

“You will squash it,” Lydia had shouted.

She was a wiry wraith who denied her near deafness, loved Sasha and her grandchildren to the point where she would die for them, and drove her son nearly to madness each time they spoke.

“It will be fine,” he said.

“You will pile things on it. It will wrinkle. You will not have a pair of decent pants. Where can you get pants cleaned and pressed on a train?”

He flattened the pants with the palms of his hands and reached for the first of the three shirts he had placed on the bed.

“That is not the way to fold them,” Lydia said, arms folded.

“It will be fine,” Sasha said, the first sign of impending defeat in his tone.

“You fold along the seam, sleeves back,” she said. “The way you are doing it …”

“Would you like to pack for me?” he asked, closing his eyes.

“Yes, why don’t I pack for you?” his mother said, stepping to his side.

Sasha stepped out of the way and watched her fold, invade his drawers, select items from the bathroom and closet, and keep up a running commentary on each item.

“This is worn at the cuffs. See? Frayed. You need a new jacket. I will get you a new jacket.”

He did not argue.

“What size are you now? You’ve lost weight. You do not know,” she said with a what-am-I-going-to-do-with-you sigh. “I used to know. Don’t worry. I will figure it out. Shirts, you need shirts. Who ironed this shirt? Maya?”

“You did,” he said, leaning against the wall, defeated.

“I will iron it again. When you have worn a shirt all day on the train, do not try to clean it. Do not wear it again. Put it in a plastic bag.”

“There will be no room in the suitcase for clothes in a bag. You are stuffing it full of things I don’t need.”

“Change your socks every morning,” she said.

“You are packing enough for a month,” he said. “It will weigh as much as I do.”

“In the other room, on the table. I brought you a book to read so you don’t get bored.”

“I will be working,” he said before he could stop himself.

“It is about learning to relax,” she said. “I read it. It has done wonderful things for me.”

She scurried around, looking for more to do, taking one thing out and replacing it with another.

“I look forward to reading the book,” he said.

“We have forgotten something,” Lydia said. “I know! A small plastic bag to keep your toothpaste in so it doesn’t squish out and ruin your clothes.”

“I will get one,” he said.

“Go see if you have one,” his mother ordered.

He escaped from the bedroom and took his time bringing the plastic bag back. He had called Maya, told her what had happened. She had asked if he could find some way to keep his mother away from the apartment for the first few days while he was gone. He said he would try.

“I do not dislike her, Sasha,” she said.

Sasha was not sure he felt the same way about his mother.

“She wants to see the children,” he said. “How can I? …”

“Tell her I will call her soon, that, that I have had a breakdown … no, she will come with doctors. I do not know what you can tell her.”

“I can tell her anything,” Sasha had said. “The problem is that she will not listen.”

“I know,” Maya said.

They had spoken a few minutes longer, holding back, putting away till they had face-to-face time together the important things that had to be dealt with, the important things other than the omnipresence of Sasha’s mother.

And now Sasha stood watching his mother stuff the suitcase beyond its reasonable capacity.

“And this is last,” she said, holding up a pair of binoculars. “They were your father’s. You can look out the train window with them.”

“Thank you,” said Sasha, having no intention of using the binoculars. Were she returning to her own apartment that night he would have considered removing half of what she had packed and hiding it. But that would probably not work. His mother was certain to search the two rooms to be sure he had not done just that.

This was madness. He was thirty-five years old.

“Mother,” he said as she struggled to zip the bag closed. “For the first few days, when Maya and the children come back …”

“Tomorrow,” Lydia said, standing back to examine her handiwork.

“Yes.” He had promised Maya he would try and so he would.

“I won’t be here,” his mother said, turning to Sasha. “I have to go to Istra for a while.”

“Istra?”

“You do not know where Istra is?” she asked, looking at her son as if he might be feverish.

“I know exactly where it is,” he said. “About forty kilometers from here off the Volokolamsk Highway.”

“On the bank of the Istra River,” she said. “That is right.”

“Why are you going there?” he asked, his curiosity replacing for the moment his pleasure at having achieved instant success.

“To spend some time with Matvei,” she said, walking past him into the room that served as living room, dining area, and kitchen.

Sasha followed her quickly.

“Matvei? Who is Matvei?”

“Matvei Labroadovnik, the famous painter,” she said, looking around the room for something to straighten or at least change.

“The famous … I’ve never heard of … why are you going to spend time with this Matvei La …”

“Labroadovnik,” she supplied. “He is very famous. We are considering marriage.”

Sasha felt slightly dizzy. He reached back for the arm of the couch, found it, and sat heavily.

“He is living in a dacha in Istra while he helps with the restoration of the Cathedral of the Resurrection,” she said, finding a chair that had to be moved a few inches to satisfy her sense of decor.

Sasha’s mother had retired from her government job four years earlier. She was now nearly sixty years old, and as far as Sasha knew she had had nothing to do with men since his father had died when he was a boy.

“How did you meet him? How old is he?” asked Sasha, bewildered.

“You want some tea? Pepsi-Cola?” she asked.

“Water,” he said.

She nodded, moved into the kitchen area, and got him a glass of water from the noisy tap.

“Matvei is fifty-six years old. His mother lives in the building where I have my apartment. We have met frequently. We have much in common.”

“Like what?” asked Sasha.

“Art,” she said.

“You have never shown the slightest interest in art,” he said.

“You haven’t noticed,” she said, sitting across from him, continuing to scan the room for imperfection.

“Art?”

“And movies.”

“You don’t like to go to movies. You can’t hear them.”

“You are wrong,” she said. “I love movies.”

Sasha had an insight, or thought he did.

“And he is famous?”

“Very.”

“And he is well paid?”

“He has a great deal of money. He is in great demand.”

Sasha sought desperately for a reason why this man might be interested in his mother. If it wasn’t for her money, then what? Lydia was no beauty. Lydia was no aesthete. Lydia was a meddler and a tyrant.

“He is healthy?”

“Like a swine,” she said with a small smile. “Tall, robust. When we get back, you can meet him. I’ll see that he dresses up.”

There was a mystery here for which Sasha did not have the time, energy, or proper source of information. He recognized the possible blessings of seeing far less of his mother, but he was a detective and the evidence sat before him.

“Does he know I am a policeman?” he asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said. She stood up suddenly and said, “I will go shopping, get food, some new clothes for the children for when Maya gets back … Sasha,” she said, picking up her oversized black purse. “You must promise me something.”

“What?” he asked.

“On the train, you will stay away from women.”

“I will be working with Porfiry Petrovich,” he said.

“That has not stopped you before.”

She walked over to her seated son and touched his cheek. “You are too much like your father,” she said.

“My father? My father? …”

“Had a weakness.” She sighed. “For the ladies. He was handsome, weak, but he had a bad heart.”

“You’ve never told me this before,” he said.

“You knew he had a bad heart. It killed him.”

“No,” he said, “about the women.”

“I must have,” she said. “How could you not know after all this time? I had best go do some shopping now. You should eat before you go.”

“Yes,” he said, not wanting to hear any more surprises from his mother. “I should eat.”

“Is there anything you would like special for dinner?”

His mother never asked such questions. She simply made what she wished and expected anyone at the table to enjoy it, though she was a terrible cook.

“No,” he said. “Whatever you choose.”

She nodded as if he had made a very wise decision, and marched out the door.

When the door closed, it struck him. He had carried on an entire conversation with his nearly deaf mother without having her fail to understand him.

His mother had changed in what appeared to be an instant. Had it been gradual? Had he been too preoccupied to notice? He took out his notebook and pen and wrote the name Matvei Labroadovnik in it. He would make some calls, ask some questions.

The building on Brjanskaya Street was about half a hundred paces from the entrance to the Kievski Market, across the Moscow River from the heart of the city. There was no name on the building, just an address, and the building itself was no more than a few years old; it was a relatively simple, clean, yellow-brick six-story structure.

It was not the kind of building in which one might expect to find one of the wealthiest men in all of Russia. The truly wealthy new capitalists and those who aspired to be and lived on the edge of success were in the prestigious buildings in the center of the city.

Nikoli Lovski could have his office wherever he wished. He owned six radio stations, two newspapers, a paper company with a supporting forest in Siberia, and a piece of several banks and stock in a large number of foreign companies, not to mention considerable land, mostly in the growing suburbs of the city.

The only real clue to Nikoli Lovski’s wealth was the quartet of armed men in the lobby of the building. Two of the men, wearing well-trimmed dark suits and ties, carried automatic weapons in their hands and stood at ease on opposite sides of the smoothly tiled lobby. Another man armed with an equally, formidable weapon stood behind a bulletproof-glass plate, ceiling-high, behind which sat a very pretty dark woman with a pie-shaped speaker’s screen directly in front of her.

Few would have noticed the fourth man, who stood inside an open elevator in a gray uniform. He seemed to be the elevator operator. The very slight bulge under his jacket and the fact that a modern elevator would need no operator were enough to demonstrate to Emil Karpo that he was probably the most formidable member of the quartet.

There were no other people in the lobby. Karpo and Zelach moved to the reception window, the sound of their shoes echoing.

“We are here to see Mr. Lovski,” said Karpo.

“Names?” the pretty dark woman asked.

“Inspectors Karpo and Zelach. I called earlier.”

The woman nodded and said, “May I see your identification?”

Both men pulled out their identification cards and held them up to the window. The armed man behind the glass glanced at the cards and nodded to the woman, who shook her head.

“Are you armed?” the woman asked.

“Yes,” said Emil Karpo.

She looked at Zelach.

“Yes,” he said.

“You will have to leave your weapons with me,” she said.

A metal drawer slid open in front of Karpo.

“No,” said Karpo. “We cannot.”

In fact, Karpo could if he so chose, but he was not prepared to give in to the power of a capitalist trying to make him feel inferior. It was not Karpo’s feelings that were at issue. He had no feeling about the demand, just an understanding that to comply would put himself and Zelach into the position of accepting their capitulation.

“Then Mr. Lovski will be unable to see you,” she said.

“Please tell Mr. Lovski that under section fourteen of the Moscow City Criminal Investigation Law of 1992 we can insist that he accompany us to Petrovka for questioning. If he refuses, we have the duty to arrest and fine him for violation of the law.”

“Fine him?” the woman said with the hint of a smile. She knew that money meant nothing to her employer.

“And hold him a minimum of twenty-four hours in which we can interrogate him in addition to a fine,” said Karpo. “Call him.”

“Are you sure you wish to antagonize Mr. Lovski?” she asked.

Lovski was a new capitalist. Karpo was an old-line Marxist-Leninist. He had been forced by the reality of corruption in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the crumbling of any true hope for a principled revival of the party to put aside the beliefs on which he had based his life. People like Lovski were the new Russia of the privileged few and wealthy who had replaced the privileged few and politically powerful. Lovski, a Jew whose media regularly attacked Vladimir Putin and his regime, had suffered several indignities, courtroom confrontations, and even nights in jail. Each time he had emerged, determined but a little closer to the edge over which Putin did not yet have the power to push him.

The woman nodded, pushed a button that cut off sound through the screen, and picked up the phone. She hit a single number and began speaking. Karpo and Zelach could not hear her. The conversation was brief, the button to the screen was pushed, and the woman said, “The elevator will take you up.”

“Thank you,” Zelach said.

Karpo said nothing. He moved toward the elevator with Zelach at his side.

“Section fourteen of the Criminal Investigation Law?” Zelach whispered.

“Yes,” said Karpo as they neared the elevator.

“Is there really? …”

“Not since 1932,” said Karpo.

They stepped into the elevator. Since there was no law, Karpo was willing to pick and choose what would serve his assignment still a law existed. When there was a coherent body of law, which there might never be in this new Russia, he would obey it to the letter. Karpo believed in the law, wanted clear rules and guidelines, but he would exist without them and think only of bringing in the guilty and putting the evidence of their guilt before Chief Inspector Rostnikov. What happened after that was something he chose not to consider.

The elevator moved up slowly. The armed man who pushed the buttons folded his hands in front of him and stood back where he could watch the two policemen. The elevator came to a stop so smoothly that when the doors opened Zelach had the impression they had not moved.

The entryway before them was covered in white carpet. There was a single dark wooden door in the wall with no name on or near it.

Karpo and Zelach moved forward to the door, the armed elevator operator behind them. The door popped open. Inside was a large room with a well-polished wooden floor. At a very modern white desk sat an old man in a suit and tie. The old man had thick white hair and small, remarkably blue eyes.

He looked up at the three men and said, “You have ten minutes, no more. Mr. Lovski has an important engagement.”

Karpo nodded. He did not think that they would require more than ten minutes, but if they did, he would take whatever time he felt was needed.

The old man’s eyes met Karpo’s. Karpo was accustomed to people looking away from his ghostly appearance. This old man did not. The old man nodded at the elevator operator, and a door behind the old man’s desk opened.

Karpo and Zelach moved forward with the elevator operator at their backs. They walked through the door and it closed behind them.

The office was as remarkably modest as the building itself. Through the large double window one could see the Hero Tower several hundred yards away and the Moscow River beyond it.

There were four comfortable, soft black-leather chairs and a matching couch against the wall. A conference table with six chairs stood in the corner next to a low wooden table with a marble top, on which rested a large samovar and a line of cups, saucers, spoons, and a bowl of sugar cubes.

Behind the wooden desk before them sat Nikoli Lovski. Both detectives recognized the man from both newspaper and television pictures and they knew his voice when he suggested that they be seated.

He was a man of average height, a bit stocky and no more than fifty years old. His hair was thinning and dark and his face was full, with deep-set eyes. He wore a white shirt and an orange tie. His jacket was draped over the back of his desk chair.

Karpo and Zelach sat. The elevator operator stood behind them near the door.

“Tea?” asked Lovski. “Or I can get you coffee? I am particularly partial to strong tea with water brewed, as it was meant to be, in a samovar. The one over there belonged to my mother’s father and his father before that. It was the only possession the family had that was worth anything in rubles or memories.”

“I’ll have …” Zelach began.

“Nothing,” said Karpo.

“I will,” said Lovski, reaching under his desk to press a button.

The office door opened and the old man entered. Lovski held up one finger and pointed to himself. The old man moved to pour him a cup of tea.

“Your son is missing,” Karpo said.

“I have two sons,” Lovski said.

“Misha,” said Karpo, knowing that the man behind the desk knew which son was missing. “We have reason to believe he has been kidnapped. Have you been contacted with a ransom demand?”

“No,” said Lovski, accepting the cup of tea from the old man, who quickly left the room.

Karpo was reasonably sure the man was telling the truth. “You may be contacted very soon,” he said.

Lovski nodded and drank some tea. “And I will pay any reasonable amount, providing it can be demonstrated that it is not a scheme of Misha’s to get money from me. He is not beyond that.”

“How can that be demonstrated?” asked Karpo.

“Simple,” said Lovski, licking his lips. “I shall demand that they deliver to me the small finger of his left hand. I will check it against his fingerprints, of which I have a set. Misha would not cut off his own finger. He needs it to play that piece of steel garbage he calls a guitar.”

“Do you have any idea who might want to hurt your son?” asked Karpo.

Lovski smiled and said, “Anyone in his right mind. Have you seen him, heard the filth he spews? He has even written a song about me, calls me the wealthy Jew in the steel tower, the Manipulator of Metropolis. He says I should be flattened by a female robot, my penis ripped from my body. I understand it is one of his more popular songs.”

“It is,” said Zelach.

“You’ve heard it?” asked Lovski with some interest.

“Yes,” said Zelach.

“And?”

“It is what you say, though there is a pulse to the music that …”

“It is possible that he has not been taken for ransom,” said Karpo.

“You mean someone who hates him has already killed him or is torturing him somewhere?” asked Lovski, taking another sip of tea.

“There are many possibilities,” said Karpo.

Lovski nodded. “There is another possibility,” he said. “I am a member of the Russian Jewish Congress.”

“I am aware, of this,” said Karpo.

“My newspapers, television stations have been critical of Putin and his regime. This you also know.”

It was Karpo’s turn to nod. “So, you believe he may have been taken by someone who wants to put pressure on you to stop your attacks on Vladimir Putin?” Karpo asked.

Lovski smiled. “Nothing so simple,” he said. “A few months ago Putin attended a rededication ceremony at Marina Roscha, the Chabad Lubavich Hasidic synagogue.”

“I remember,” said Karpo.

“What do you know of the synagogue?” asked Lovski.

“It was one of only two allowed in Moscow during the Soviet era,” said Karpo. “It was untouched until the fall of Communism. Since then it has been attacked three times. In 1993 it was almost destroyed by fire. It was bombed in 1996 and 1998. And it has been restored and rebuilt.”

“Yes,” Lovski said with an approving nod. “And Mr. Putin was there to proclaim that the new Russia would not tolerate anti-Semitism. My newspapers covered it, put Putin on the front page and oh the television screen. Putin was not just making peace with a handful of Jews. He was making a peace gesture toward me.”

Karpo nodded.

“You think it is my inflated ego making this assumption?”

“No,” said Karpo. “Your ego, as you call it, is clearly large, but your interpretation bears serious consideration.”

“Meaning?” Lovski prompted.

“Your son may have been taken by an individual or group, anti-Semitic in nature, anti-Putin in philosophy, who wants to put pressure on you to keep you from supporting Putin.”

“Yes.”

“But they have not yet contacted you?”

“No, but when they do it may not be for money. It may be to tell me that Misha is safe as long as I keep up my attacks on the regime.”

“It is a possibility,” said Karpo.

“It is more than that,” said Lovski. “Inspector, I confess that I have been contacted. My receptionist took a message this morning. The caller said to tell me that Misha is alive for now.”

“Was the caller a man or woman?”

“The receptionist said it was a man, or, to be more accurate, a young man.”

“Anything else?” asked Karpo.

“I do not want my son to die,” he said. “I don’t want to see him or hear from him, and I would prefer it if he were somewhere far away. South America would be fine. I understand there is a second and third generation of fascists there who might like his kind of hatred, but I do not want him dead. He is young. People change. I did. Perhaps in ten years, twenty years, he will change, perhaps for the better. I’ll be an old man and far beyond wanting a reconciliation, but he will have to live with whatever that means to him. Officers, give me your number. If I am contacted I will call you, but only if I feel certain that whoever called means to kill Misha no matter what I do. I will try to keep that from happening by promising them and delivering a bonus for his safe return, if that is what they want. I will not, however, change my policy toward Putin. For now, he is relatively safe from attack by me. I have no illusions. Our president has donned a yarmulke for political reasons. He bears ho great love for Russia’s Jews. There is a price I will not pay to free my son, but the price I am willing to pay is quite high to insure that he is safe.”

“Safe except for a finger,” said Karpo.

“He will have to be a singer without a guitar perhaps,” said Lovski with a shrug. “I know little of such music.”

“There is a guitarist with Dead Zombies with two fingers missing,” Zelach said.

“That is comforting,” said Lovski. “Now, if you have no more questions …”

Karpo rose. Zelach did the same. Lovski picked up the phone and was talking to someone before the detectives reached the door, which was opened for them by the elevator operator.

Five minutes later they were on the street.

“Thoughts?” asked Karpo.

Zelach shrugged.

“He hates his son,” said Karpo.

“No,” said Zelach. “He loves his son. He loves him very much.”

Karpo nodded. Karpo trusted his own sense of reason, but he had learned to trust Zelach’s feelings if not his intellect.