People Who Walk In Darkness

Chapter Fourteen

Gerald St. James threw darts at the target across the room. The target was backed by a corkboard that covered almost half the wall to protect the paneling from the always-sharpened steel points. An open wooden box on his desk contained several dozen finely balanced darts, all neatly lined up.

Ellen Sten sat quietly in a firm red leather armchair near the floor-to-ceiling windows beyond which St. James could see the rooftop of DeBeers of London. She had flown in only hours before on St. James’s private Astra/Gulfstram SPX. Ellen had not slept in more than fifty hours but, thanks to an intentionally slight overdose of Provigil, she was now awake and attentive.

St. James calmly balanced a dart over his shoulder and, with a snap of the wrist, sent it noiselessly across the room and into the target. The target was his own design.

He was not interested in keeping score or hitting anything but the coin-sized black dot within a red circle the size of a baby’s face. One should not get points for coming close. One did not get points in life for coming close. Gerald St. James’s accuracy was uncanny.

Once, many years ago in Estonia, he had sat in a very damp cellar, wheezing and hiding from people who called themselves police. He had nothing to do but eat what was smuggled down to him by an old woman to whom he eventually had paid everything he owned.

In that cellar he had his knife. He kept it sharp against the jutting edges of the stone wall. For forty-one days he had thrown his knife, the knife with which he had killed the opium dealer who had tried to kill him.

That was long before he became Gerald St. James.

He had used the knife to kill the old woman. He took back the money he had given her and the bit more he found hidden in an empty grain jar in her kitchen.

Neither the boy he had been nor the man he had become ever showed anger or emotion of any kind, not that he did not feel them.

“So?” he asked, picking up another dart.

When he had exhausted his supply in the box, he would get up and retrieve the darts. He considered this the exercise his physician had prescribed for him.

“The Moscow policeman Rostnikov,” Ellen Sten said, “will discover our man in Devochka. He is capable. Our man has been careless.”

“He will not talk,” said St. James, hurling a fresh dart.

“You wish to take that chance?”

The chance was that their man would reveal how the diamonds were smuggled out of Devochka and turned over to the Botswanans in Moscow. There was no doubt now that the man who had contacted him, the Russian policeman named Yaklovev, knew about the operation, but he had no proof, no culprits to arrest and parade in court or use as chips to deal himself into a fortune. But the man had not indicated that he was interested in money. He wanted power. Others would not have believed the Russian, but St. James did. He understood. The Russian was a kindred seeker of power and approval. St. James did not intend to give him either.

Gerald St. James had carefully worked out the plan for the demise of his own network. It had outlived its usefulness and had become far too vulnerable. Devochka was only a small part of the St. James empire, a very vulnerable part. Devochka had become too elaborate. If and when it was re-established, he would see to it that it was far more simple. As it stood now, the diamonds were smuggled out of Devochka by the regularly scheduled plane to Moscow. In Moscow, the diamonds were turned over to the Botswanans, who verified their authenticity and made arrangements to safeguard their transfer to a courier who would take them to the contact in Kiev, who, in turn, would get them to Paris, where they would be transported to London. It had evolved thus. It was much too awkward. It had all been set up by a member of the Russian parliament for a steep price. It had been early in Gerald St. James’s expansion. He would never do something so full of unnecessary intrigue again. A simple transfer of diamonds to Ellen in Moscow and a quick flight on St. James’s jet, and that would be that. The present system had to end, and so too did the contacts in Devochka, Moscow, and Kiev.

“No,” said St. James. “Have him killed, but first have him eliminate any trace of what we have done in the mine.”

“Cut off our access to the pipe?” she said calmly.

“The trickle is not worth the risk. We’ll use our source to find another way to the pipe, but we’ll wait a few years. Patience. Moscow?”

“The situation is a bit messy I’m afraid,” Sten said. “Another of our Botswanans has been killed. This time by the police. That leaves two, plus the one the alcoholic Russian is holding.”

St. James shook his head before throwing the dart in his hand.

“Situations involving the kind of people we deal with will often get messy.”

“The Botswanans who are left do not know how to reach us. The one who is a hostage of the Russian. .”

“Kolokov,” she supplied.

“The Botswanan he has is our contact, correct?”

“Yes.”

“And this Kolokov is proving himself an idiot.”

“Yes,” she said. “The two remaining Botswanans seem to be planning a rescue or an exchange. It seems the police know about the planned rescue. Shall we warn Kolokov?”

He looked at her and sighed.

“No,” he said. “Let us not lose sight of our goal, which is. .”

“To end our operation in Devochka, Moscow, and Kiev and eliminate anyone with whom we have had direct business contact so that it looks as if we were not involved.”

“So that it looks as if we have been hurt by the murder and violence,” he amended. “Messy. I wonder if they ever have problems like this at DeBeers?”

“I’m confident they do,” she said.

He had at least fifteen darts left before he had to get up from his chair.

“Eliminate the enterprise,” he said.

“Yes,” she said.

“How difficult will it be to replace the Botswanans?”

“Not difficult. Expensive.”

“You will have two years from the time the current enterprise is terminated till we have a new presence in Moscow. That leaves Kiev.”

“Balta is behaving rather strangely,” she said.

“Strangely? The man is mad,” said St. James, deftly letting a dart fly and missing the red circle by at least a foot. “You know what he is doing?”

“I think so,” she said. “With a man like that. .”

“A man like that,” St. James repeated, remembering a time when circumstances had briefly made him a man like Balta, with a knife as sharp.

“He plans to find the diamonds and keep the money for himself,” she said. “He has no intention I’m sure of turning over anything to the Botswanans.”

“Who will not exist in any case. Talk to Balta.”

“I doubt if it will do any good.”

“I don’t intend to reason with him. I intend to lull him into a sense of complacency.”

“And then?”

“You will arrange to get the diamonds and the money and kill Balta. That will be the last step in our temporary closure of the Russian chain. The checkmate of Yaklovev and his Office of Special Investigations.”

He paused, dart in hand, and sighed so slightly that only Ellen, who knew his every move, would have detected it.

“What is it?” she asked.

“What an asinine name. Balta.”

Mounted on shiny dark stone and laid into notches along the path of gray blocks rested the thirteen honored rectangular polished coffins. The coffins contained not human remains but capsules of earth from the Hero Cities of World War II-Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Volgograd, Sevastopol, Odessa, Novorossiysk, Kerch, Tula, the Brest Fortress, Murmansk, and Smolensk. The name of each city stood out in large letters facing the path.

The memorial, the Eternal Flame, and the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior meant little to Biko and Laurence other than as possible places in which to hide while they waited for the coming of the Russians who had James Harumbaki.

Yesterday Patrice, before he was killed by the police, had wondered what they might do if the Russians came without their hostage. He had come to no clear conclusion. Biko and Laurence were even less equipped to deal with the problem. So they had concluded that they would arrive in the Alexandrovsky Gardens early, hide, wait, and when the Russians appeared with James Harumbaki they would spring out and fire, trying very hard not to kill James Harumbaki. If the Russians arrived without their hostage, they would try to bargain with the worthless stones Biko had in his pocket. They agreed that Laurence would do the talking, though his command of Russian was no better than Biko’s.

But this was not to be.

First, there were uniformed soldiers in full dress and carrying rifles guarding the ground-level tomb, which was set back against a high wall behind the thirteen entombed capsules of earth.

They could be dealt with. They would have no idea what was going to happen, and both Biko and Laurence reasoned that in the bloody battle that was very likely to take place the death of a few soldiers caught in the crossfire would be marked as casualties of Moscow gang fighting.

But this was also not to be.

Biko and Laurence stood about forty yards from the memorial, off the path, behind a stand of bushes. They thought that this would be the direction from which the Russians would come with James Harumbaki.

And then, quite suddenly, to their left, down the path a dozen or so people quietly appeared, men and women, mostly in their twenties or thirties. All of them were carrying flowers. The group went silently past Biko and Laurence to the tomb and placed the flowers among others that had been put there during the day. The soldiers stood at attention.

Biko and Laurence waited behind a small brace of yellow-flowered bushes for the group to move away, but they stood silently, heads bowed.

Then Biko and Laurence heard something coming from their right. At first there was a distant murmur of voices. Then it became a chanting. Then dozens of people appeared, crowding the path, bleeding over onto the grass.

Biko and Laurence carefully moved farther back, where they were less likely to be seen.

They could not understand who these new, angry people were. There were boys in black shirts, bearded Russian Orthodox priests carrying crosses and icons, old babushkas crying out.

They descended on the small group that had laid out the flowers and began throwing stones, eggs, and condoms filled with water, shouting, “Moscow is not Sodom” and “Faggots Out.” One screaming young woman with a bullhorn, her face turning red, screeched a tinny-sounding, “Not Gay Pride. Queer Shame.”

“What is happening?” asked Biko.

“I do not know,” answered Laurence as about twenty policemen in full uniform and wearing helmets with Plexiglas face covers appeared as if from the air, swinging batons at the black shirts, priests, and old ladies.

Surrounded, the twenty or so gays fought their way through the crowd with the help of the police and began to run, with the black shirts in pursuit. The police beat the attackers with clubs and pushed a dozen or so of them against the wall behind the tomb.

“We must leave and come back in an hour,” said Laurence.

Biko agreed. If this crowd was attacking a small group of quiet homosexuals peacefully placing flowers on a tomb, what might they do to two black men who were carrying weapons?

As they eased away, above the shouting they could clearly hear the voice of the screaming woman on the bullhorn.

“Mayor Yuri Luzhkov of our beloved Moscow has said that any attempt by these people to lay flowers here is a ‘desecration of a sacred place.’ They should expect to be beaten.”

“Russians are very crazy people,” said Laurence. “I have known crazy people in Sudan, Ghana, but none as crazy as Russians.”

Yes, thought Biko, Africa is much safer.

Sasha Tkach had just been through an early morning ordeal. His phone had rung just before six while he lay in the darkness of his hotel room, awake but unwilling to rise, shower, and shave. He would move when the glowing red numbers on his tiny travel clock, a gift from his mother, hit six and two zeroes.

“Sasha?”

It was the very last person whose voice he wished to hear.

“Yes.”

“Do you know what your name means?” Lydia Tkach asked.

“You woke me to ask. .?”

“Aleksei, do you know?”

She almost never called him Aleksei, and when she did so it was intended to indicate a very serious subject of conversation. The problem was that Lydia thought anything regarding her only son was monumentally important.

“Defender of men,” he said.

“Do you know what your name was supposed to be before your father, may he rest with the angels in a field of silver icons, insisted that you be called Aleksei?”

“You are a Communist and an atheist,” he said, holding the phone a few inches from his ear to protect himself from his hard-of-hearing mother who, at the age of seventy, thought people could only be heard on telephones if they were shouted at. “You do not believe that my father is with any angels.”

“I believe what the times dictate I should believe,” she shouted. “That is how we survive. Your name was to have been the same as my father’s, Kliment which means. .”

“Merciful and gentle,” he concluded.

“Merciful and gentle,” she said, not heeding her son’s words. “You were meant to be merciful and gentle.”

“By God?”

“No, by me. Did you see Maya?”

“Yes.”

“When is she coming home with the children?”

“She is not.”

“Try again.”

“I’m going to go see her and the children as soon as you let me go.”

“Who is keeping you? It is time for you to stop being a policeman. I will bet that even now as we are speaking some criminal is planning to beat you or seduce you or stab you or shoot you. .”

“Or drop a rock on my head or beat me with a wooden cross or. .”

“You are mocking me.”

“Yes.”

“You are mocking your mother who is trying to save your marriage and your life,” she said.

“I am sorry.”

He was sitting up now, licking his dry lips with his dry tongue and wondering if perhaps his mother might not be right.

“Think about it.”

“I will,” he said.

“Now go get my grandchildren and your wife.”

Before he could ask her how she got his cell phone’s newly changed number, she hung up.

He should plan what he was going to say, how he would say it. It was difficult to convince himself that he would be fine if she gave him another chance. If he could not convince himself, how could he convince Maya?

What was it she had said? He was a lamb waiting to be shorn by any attractive woman. Some day the shears would slip and he would bleed and be standing shorn and suddenly naked.

He staggered to the bathroom, turned on the light, and looked at himself in the mirror. He was not growing more handsome with each passing day.

“Pathetic image that was meant to be Kliment, you must offer something meaningful. You must make a sacrifice that she cannot refuse.”

His image looked back at him, letting him know exactly what that sacrifice must be. He hurried to shower, shave, wash, and dress so that he could see his children and present his gift to Maya.

Elena lined up the 5 × 7 photographs next to the fax machine in the Russian embassy.

They had two more days before the meeting that would determine the fate of the Office of Special Investigations.

It was a little before seven in the morning and she had a buttered roll and a cup of coffee perched on the table next to the machine. The roll and coffee had been provided by a junior diplomat who had worked through the previous night on a report dealing with the potential tour of a Chinese cellist who now resided in Kiev.

The junior diplomat, whose name was Machov, had told her that the fax machine would be in constant demand in less than twenty minutes when the rest of the staff started to come in.

The first photograph was of Jan Pendowski. The second was of the French woman named Rochelle Tanquay, and the third was of a thin, vacant-eyed man with a scarf around his neck who appeared to be following the Kiev policeman.

She faxed all three photos to Moscow. Later she would try to find a fax number for Porfiry Petrovich in Siberia. When she was finished, she put the photographs back in a folder in her briefcase and stood drinking her coffee and eating her roll.

She yearned for a sausage, even a small one. She had been watching her weight for months and she was sure, though he denied it, Iosef was also watching her weight.

He said that he loved her just the way she was, but when she pressed him about her size, he had admitted that she might be able to fit in clothing more svelte were she to shed a few pounds. Shed a few pounds. He had said it as if it were as easy as taking off one’s shoes. “Svelte” was not a descriptive term for Elena. Full-bodied was much more accurate. Her bones would not allow for svelte as they had not allowed her mother, aunt, or grandmothers a leaner frame.

There was no way Elena Timofeyeva would or could ever look like Oxana Balakona or Rochelle Tanquay.

In half an hour she was due in Jan Pendowski’s office for what she was certain would be a wild goose chase across Kiev in search of Oxana Balakona. She had agreed to let Sasha see Maya and the children instead of coming with her.

The primary problem with being alone to spend the better part of a day with Pendowski was that he was certain to make sexual overtures unless she did something forceful. She was not flattered by the possibility of his advances. He seemed to be in very good condition. He made that clear by wearing his sleeves rolled up to display his muscles and his shirt unbuttoned one button to show just a bit of chest. He was not an oaf, and she could see how some women might find him interesting. Elena found him wearisome, however. The man was a walking unsatisfied penis.

The one thing she had decided was that if he placed a hand on her once, she would remove it. If he placed a hand on her twice, he would hit the floor with a sudden and painful thud. She hoped, if that happened, there were many people around to watch, and that of the many people around to watch, police officers would be preferable.

She checked her watch and went looking for the junior diplomat to ask him if there was a place nearby, perhaps a cart or stand, where she could buy a sausage sandwich.

Iosef and Zelach were jostled forward by the crowd, wedged in between two bearded priests wielding crosses like bludgeons and crying out against specified and unspecified blasphemy. Iosef wondered where these men had been for the almost seventy godless years of Communism.

It was difficult in the mélange of bodies to remain upright, to keep from getting herded by the police against the wall behind the tomb, and also to watch the two Africans, who were running from the scene.

The screaming woman with the bullhorn was at Zelach’s side now, as the two policemen tried to make their way through the crowd to the grass beyond the path. Zelach reached up and turned a knob on the bullhorn, sending out a screech that brought winces to the faces of police, gay mourners, and the angry mob. Then the bullhorn went silent. The screaming woman had not noticed Zelach’s move, but a babushka had and shouted, “That one. He turned it off.” She was pointing at Zelach.

Iosef also shouted and pointed at a nearby tall black shirt.

“Him,” he said. “I saw him too.”

A few in the crowd reached for the protesting black shirt. Zelach and Iosef made a lunge through a small opening in the crowd and arrived in the open, just missing a baton swung by a particularly large policeman.

“Police,” Iosef said, pulling out his identification and showing it to the large slashing policeman who was in no mood or condition to examine identification.

Iosef and Zelach ran. The large policeman turned back on the crowd.

“We are the police,” Zelach said, panting.

“Policemen have been known to be injured by mobs and each other,” said Iosef. “Which way did they go?”

“The mob? They are right. .”

“The Africans.”

“There,” said Zelach, pointing.

“You see them?”

“They were heading for Red Square.”

Iosef nodded and started in pursuit with Zelach right behind.

“They will get lost in the crowd,” said Zelach.

“Two black men? One tall and thin, the other short and round?”

“It is possible.”

“It is possible,” said Iosef, who began laughing as they ran.

“Is this funny?” asked Zelach, barely able to keep up.

“Forgive me, Zelach. The Rostnikovs have a peculiar sense of humor.”

Which, thought Zelach, is better than having no sense of humor, which is the legacy of both sides of my family.

“There,” gasped Zelach, trying to catch his breath.

Iosef saw them in the crowd, just about to hurry through the Metro station entrance.

“Slow, now,” said Iosef.

It was a command Zelach has happy to hear.

Iosef was hoping that the two men they were trying to catch would also slow down. They had no reason to believe they were being followed. If the policemen hurried, they might be spotted. If they were too slow, they might well lose their quarry.

Biko and Laurence had to slow down. They had no magnetic Metro cards. They had to stop at the booth and pay their fares, pointing to the map of stations on the wall. Neither man commanded more than a short supply of Russian.

“Now what?” they both said at almost the same instant, walking toward their platform.

They walked through the palatial Metro station, past glittering statues and brightly painted ceilings, unsure of what their next step might be or how they might reconnect with the Russians who had James Harumbaki.

The loudspeaker announced the arrival of a train in Russian. It meant nothing to the two men, who were trying to decipher the name of the station on the wall. They were heading back to the only neighborhood in the city where they were likely to reach other Africans, particularly Botswanans.

They looked blankly at the station map and got on the first train that arrived, hoping that they had read the map correctly.

Their weapons were under their coats in leather and cloth slings designed by James Harumbaki. It was possible to fire simply by reaching under the coat, tilting the weapon, and firing while it was still in the sling. Biko had given serious consideration to doing just that when he saw the insane crowd moving in their direction in the park.

They were living in a nation of near madness.

Biko and Laurence sat in the almost empty late evening car of the Metro as far from others as they could. Across from them on a seat lay a German shepherd, asleep. There was no human who looked like an owner nearby. Laurence was particularly fond of dogs and wanted to move across and carefully offer his hand. The dog did not seem to belong to anyone. Maybe they could take it with them. Dogs had a calming effect on him, and he harbored a very slight feeling of guilt about the three times not long ago in Somalia when he had eaten the meat of scrawny dogs.

Farther down, three Russians were sprawled on the seat. They were drunk. One man had his head in the lap of a second. The third lay by himself, eyes open, about to slip to the floor.

As the car doors began to close, a large bald man holding a cloth to the back of his head got in, glanced at Biko and Laurence, and sat at the far end of the car.

The train moved out of the station, and a Russian voice announced the next station.

The bald man, Pau Montez, did not look directly at the Africans, and in the next car Iosef and Zelach sat doing their best not to be seen by the desperate Biko and Laurence.

“Do you know why I pace like this?” asked Kolokov without stopping.

James Harumbaki was not interested in the question but he waited for an answer. He was seated at a table, the chessboard before him. He was not tied, and he considered, since the large bald man was not present, that it might be possible to run across the room, throw open the door, dash through the house, and, once in the open, make a dash over the pile of rubbish and into the partial cover of the trees. He had gauged all this. It might be possible, but it was unlikely to succeed. James Harumbaki’s legs were weak. One eye was almost closed. He felt slightly dizzy. And there were two others in the room, silent Russians, one of whom, though he looked quite out of shape, was close to the door. Better to wait for a more promising opportunity.

“Do you know why I pace?” Kolokov repeated, smoking as he walked a bit faster across the room.

James Harumbaki’s lower lip was swollen where Kolokov had punched him.

The room smelled of sweat, tobacco, and sour dampness. James Harumbaki would have been sick to his stomach even if Kolokov had not punched his belly.

“No, I do not,” said James Harumbaki.

“Because, it helps me think, think, think.”

With each “think” Kolokov had tapped the side of his head with a distinct thwack.

James Harumbaki nodded his understanding.

“I am not surrounded by a council of great minds,” Kolokov said, looking at his two cohorts who provided no response. “I would like to have at least one person I can count on to use his head for something besides a battering ram. You know what I mean?”

James Harumbaki croaked a “yes.”

As a matter of fact, he did know what it was like to be surrounded by people who could not think. He wondered what resources Patrice, Biko, and Laurence were calling upon to replace his leadership. His life depended on what they were going to do and, while he did not doubt their determination, loyalty, or courage, he had no illusions about their intellect.

He smiled. Two gangs of incompetents led by a mad Russian and a Botswanan who really wanted to be a baker of fine cakes.

“This is funny?” asked Kolokov.

“No,” said James Harumbaki. “I was just thinking that you are clearly correct in your assessment of the situation. We Africans smile at different things than do Russians.”

Kolokov decided to ignore his hostage’s reply.

James Harumbaki decided that he would have to control himself to keep from beating the Russian in six or eight moves when the man stopped pacing and decided to play another game of chess.

“All the great. . ” Kolokov began when the door opened.

The large bald man entered and said, “You will not believe this.”

Kolokov had stopped pacing.

“I would believe that Putin has become a Jew,” Kolokov said. “I would believe that the sun is about to stop shining. I would believe you have seen the ghost of Lenin. What can you possibly say that I would not believe? What are you doing here? You are supposed to be waiting for us at the War Memorial. You are supposed to be looking for the Africans.”

“There was a demonstration at the War Memorial,” said the bald man. “Faggots were putting flowers on the tomb.”

“How patriotic,” said Kolokov.

“Then there were lots of people. Men, boys, old women, priests. They came throwing eggs, water, stones. I got hit. Look.”

He turned his head to reveal a bloody opening that almost certainly needed stitches and certainly would not be getting them.

“The police came.”

“Yes, they beat the queers,” said Kolokov, wanting the bald man to get to the point.

“No, they beat the others, the men, the women, the priests. .”

“Yes, yes,” said Kolokov. “Were the Africans there?”

“Yes, there were two of them. They ran away. I think some of the crowd was chasing them. I followed them. They got on the Metro.”

“Where did they go?”

“To a bar, a bar full of blacks. I think they may have noticed me.”

One of the other two men made a sound that may have been a laugh. The bald man gave him a warning look.

“How could they possibly notice you?” Kolokov said. “A big, bald white man with a gushing wound on his head. They must have had to employ very keen powers of observation honed from a hundred generations of hunting in the jungle. They will not be coming to the memorial to make the exchange.”

“I have the phone number of the cafe,” said the bald man.

Kolokov scratched his neck, and the bald man handed him a torn corner from a newspaper.

“You know the cafe they went to?”

The question was addressed to James Harumbaki.

“Yes,” he said.

“You will call them and I will tell you a new place for the exchange,” said Kolokov.

James Harumbaki said nothing.

“There is one more thing,” said the bald man.

Kolokov had been leaning forward so that his face was only inches from his hostage.

“And what is that?” asked Kolokov, still looking at James Harumbaki.

“There were two other people following them. I think they were policemen.”

Kolokov clasped his hands together, then clapped once and stood up.

“Go take care of your head,” he said calmly. “We will all have a drink from the bottle of vodka which Bogdan, who laughs in the corner, will pour for us all. I will then play another game of chess with our valuable guest and decide how we will engage our endgame with his friends and the police.”

He sat across from James Harumbaki.

“It will be interesting, and when it is over either we will have millions in diamonds or this will be the last game of chess for our guest.”

It was at this point, as the mad Russian waited for him to set up the pieces on the board, that James Harumbaki decided that it was not the time or place to beat his captor.

The bodies of the two Africans had been replaced on Paulinin’s laboratory table by two bodies that had been flown in from some idiotic place in Siberia.

Rostnikov had called, inquired about the condition and tranquility of his leg, and asked that the examination of the bodies he had sent be done as soon as possible.

One reason, Rostnikov said, was that the Canadian government wanted the body of the younger man.

And that was why Paulinin had turned on the CD of Peter Illyich Tchaikovsky’s Rococo Variations for Cello and Orchestra, switched on the bright overheads, scratched his head, adjusted his glasses, scrubbed his hands, and made a decision. In the privacy of his laboratory, he would perform a dual autopsy.

Before doing so, however, he consulted with the two dead men as he laid out his instruments.

“You do not mind?” he asked.

“No, why should we,” said the old man, naked on the table. “We are dead. Are you not going to ask who killed us?”

“Would you tell me?” asked Paulinin, scalpel in hand, bending over the pale corpse of the Canadian.

“No,” said the old man. “You will have to discover that for yourself.”

“You agree?” he asked the Canadian as he made an incision to open wide the dark, almost blue, clotted wound in his chest, which had probably been the cause of death.

“Of course,” said the Canadian in perfect Russian.

Paulinin paused, long, sharp blade inserted deeply in flesh, as a favorite cello solo called out from the shadows where the speakers rested. The beauty of the passage almost brought him to tears.

Paulinin knew full well that neither dead man could talk, that the conversation was completely within his mind. Often Paulinin would get carried away by his conversations with the dead and forget for a while that the dead could not really speak. He likened his experience to that of a writer who carries on conversations with characters who do not exist, or of people watching a movie who both believe and disbelieve that what they are seeing is really taking place.

“Of course,” he said, pushing two fingers deeply into the wound, “one would have to be insane to believe that what was happening in a movie was really taking place, but at the same time, if the movie experience was working, the viewer would. . what have I found?”

“What?” asked the Canadian.

“What?” asked the old man on the table behind Paulinin.

Paulinin took his bloody fingers from the wound, picked up a foot-long instrument with a pincer at the end, and inserted it into the wound where his fingers had been.

It took him a difficult minute or so of probing before he realized that he had pushed that which he sought into the auricle of the heart.

Tchaikovsky, orchestra, and plaintive cello urged him on.

He found what he was looking for and slowly, carefully, to keep from losing it, removed the long, thin instrument and held it up to the light. The object was small-tiny actually-a piece of metal with a determined clot of blood clinging to it.

He dropped the bit of metal into a kidney-shaped porcelain receptacle.

“What is it?” asked the Canadian. “It was in me. I have a right to know.”

“He does not know yet what it is,” said the old Russian.

“Let us know when you find out,” said the Canadian.

“I will,” Paulinin promised, “but before I examine it, I must probe the surfaces and recesses of your bodies for more treasures.”

“We will not stop you,” said the old man.

“I am certain you will not,” said Paulinin, turning his attention and gleaming instruments on the old man.

“It is good to have a spotter who knows what he is doing,” said Viktor Panin.

He was lying on his back on the bench in the well-equipped weight room. His hands were heavily chalked. Over his blue sweatshorts and a matching cutoff shirt that revealed his taut, full muscles, Viktor wore a leather harness pulled tightly to guard against hernia.

Rostnikov, wearing a full long-sleeved gray sweatsuit, stood at the head of the bench. The bar, with massive black disks weighing more than four hundred pounds, rested in the cradle of the matching upright thick round steel bars that straddled the bench. It was unlikely that Rostnikov, even with a rush of adrenaline, could hold the weight should Panin begin to falter, an eventuality that was quite unlikely.

“A spotter one can count on,” said Panin, “gives one confidence.”

Panin was looking up at the bar, gauging it, his strength, and his resolve, not seeing Porfiry Petrovich beyond that bar.

He placed both palms against the bar and worked his fingers around it. Rostnikov understood the meditative moment, the merging of hands, fingers, arms, body, mind, and the weight of iron-solid iron.

Viktor Panin closed his eyes, clearing his mind, took a deep breath, held it, and pushed upward, lifting the bar from the cradle and slowly bringing the crushing weight down toward his body. He stopped just short of his chest and exhaled. Then he lifted again, his arms steady, locking over his head.

Rostnikov had not seen anything quite like this before, though he had experienced something like the much younger man was feeling. It was a universal experience that Porfiry Petrovich was certain all who reached a certain level of truly heavy weights must feel.

Instead of resting the bar back on the cradles, Viktor Panin took another deep breath and brought the bar to his chest once more, still without a quiver in his arms. Then he slowly pushed the bar back to a locked arm position, exhaled, and placed the bar on the cradles.

“I’ve never done two repetitions with this much weight before,” Panin said between short breaths, sitting upon the bench. “Your understanding inspires me, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov. Your turn now. I’ll change the weights.”

Viktor Panin got off the bench.

Rostnikov chalked his hands, beginning his necessary ritual of appeasing and praising his plastic and metal leg as he laid back on the bench.

“How much weight?” Viktor asked, moving to the bar.

“I think I will try this weight.”

Viktor touched Porfiry Petrovich’s arm.

“Good,” the young man said.

“You have inspired me,” said Rostnikov.

“Trust me.”

“I will,” said Rostnikov.

This the detective said knowing that Viktor could slip at a crucial moment, letting the four hundred pounds of steel drop, crushing Porfiry Petrovich’s chest.

This the detective said knowing that he was putting his trust in a man who was still, in spite of an alibi for one of the two murders, a distinct suspect as diamond thief, smuggler, murderer, and keeper of the secret of the ghost girl.

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, Chief Inspector in the Moscow Police Office of Special Investigations, had seen far stronger alibis crumble to dust.

Viktor Panin looked down at him, a smile of encouragement and confidence on the perspiring face of the younger man.

“When you are ready, Porfiry Petrovich.”

Rostnikov closed his eyes and imagined the fleeting voice of Dinah Washington singing the first words of “What A Difference A Day Makes.”

There were two days remaining until the Yak’s deadline and the possible end of the Office of Special Investigations.