Red Chameleon

EIGHT

Emil Karpo opened his eyes, expecting to see the gray sky above the roof of the Ukraine Hotel. Instead, he saw pale gray walls, the solid, unsmiling face of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, and he heard voices around him.

“I saw a French movie last night,” Rostnikov said, looking down at him. “The French laugh too much, with too little feeling and with almost no reason. Do you agree?”

“I’m not an expert of the French mentality,” Karpo croaked through his painfully dry throat. He realized now that he was in a bed, in a hospital.

A man was standing beside the chief inspector. He was about forty with a birdlike chest and glasses with wire rims that made him look like an intellectual from a 1930s movie about the Revolution.

“The woman who fell from the roof,” Rostnikov said. “She was the Weeper?”

Karpo nodded.

“This is Monday morning,” Rostnikov said. “I’m going to sit on your bed.” He did. “They didn’t call me yesterday when it happened. I think it was Procurator. Khabolov’s way of punishing me for the destruction of his Chaika. Well, you are supposed to be curious. You are supposed to be amused. You are supposed to be burning with curiosity about this destroyed Chaika, and you just lie there.”

“Comrade inspector,” Karpo whispered painfully, “I have neither a sense of humor nor a morbid curiosity about the humiliation of others.”

“See?” said Rostnikov, turning to the man with the glasses. “Didn’t I tell you he would steal his way into your heart, Alex?”

“You told me he would steal his way into my heart,” Alex agreed, moving forward to Emil Karpo’s side and looking down at him intently.

“She jumped,” Karpo said, his eyes on those of Rostnikov’s companion. “I will detail it in my report. Did she injure anyone in her fall?”

“No, no one, though the street had to be closed off for almost half an hour, I understand. The rifle she had with her went through the window of a clothing shop.”

Karpo took in the six other patients in the ward room. None had a visitor; three were displaying mild curiosity about Karpo and his guests, and three were in no condition to respond to their environment.

The man named Alex put his hand on Karpo’s forehead, leaned down to look into his eyes, and then reached for the numb right arm.

“Comrade inspector, I take it this man is some kind of health professional and not a morbid lunatic you encountered in the hall,” Karpo said, watching his arm being lifted, seeing the dingy gray sleeve of his gown slide back, feeling a tingling in the fingers as the man examined.

“See, Alex, I told you he had a sense of humor. He can deny it all he likes, but Emil Karpo could make a living as a comedian.”

“He is very funny,” Alex agreed blankly as he ran his hand over the limp arm and bent it at the elbow.

“Alex is a doctor,” Rostnikov whispered, “but we will keep that a secret. The woman who is supposed to be your physician would not take consultation with exuberance. Alex is my wife’s cousin. Remember? He went to a real doctor’s school in Poland.”

Alex prodded away, ignoring Rostnikov, who continued, “On the way in we stopped at the X-ray department and told a slight lie which enabled Alex to examine your X rays.”

“They were botched.” Alex sighed, working ahead. “But I could see enough. I just want to be sure …” He rolled Karpo’s shoulder firmly and caused a pain that brought a minor grimace to Karpo’s pale face.

“You are supposed to give vent to some feeling when you have pain,” Alex said, looking at Karpo’s pale face. “How am I supposed to know I’m hurting you if you do not cooperate?”

“I will scream the next time,” Karpo said.

“Would you like some water? They stuck a tube down your nose, but I don’t know what the hell for,” Alex said, shaking his head and reaching for the water glass on the small table. “These sheets aren’t even properly cleaned.”

Karpo took a drink of water, a small sip that burned as it rolled over inflamed and tender nodules at the base of his tongue.

“I’m going to tell you what you should do,” Alex said, adjusting his little black tie professionally. The room was warm, but a breeze did flow through the open windows. A spot of sweat showed, clearly etched like the outline of an amoeba on Alex’s white shirt. “You should get out of here as fast as you can. Tell them you feel fine before they operate on you and maim you for life or, worse, infect you in an unsterile environment. They are controlling your fever with drugs. Who knows what drugs. Do you know why you have a fever?”

“I-” began Karpo, but Alex ignored him.

“You have a fever because you have an infection in your shoulder resulting from an improperly reset dislocation. You also have a severe cold. You can recover from the cold at home after I reset your arm in my office.”

“Listen to him, Emil Karpo,” Rostnikov whispered.

“Here you get treated free,” Alex said, adjusting his glasses. “A service of the state. I’ll treat you for two hundred rubles. That’s a month’s salary for the doctors who work in this hospital, and as you probably know, it is less than a factory worker makes, which explains something about the quality of care you get here.”

“The system will eventually operate if corruption is controlled and the people accept the sacrifices necessary,” Karpo croaked.

Alex turned to Rostnikov with a shrug. “You ask me to see the man, and I get quotes from Lenin and insults. When I was in medical school in Poland, we had a regular underground railroad of your Soviet sacrificers in high places shipping themselves and their families West for real medical treatment. The head of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, Keldysh, got an American doctor when he had heart trouble.”

“I’m sorry, doctor,” Karpo said. “Then why do you stay in the Soviet Union if you feel this way?”

Alex shook his head at the density of some people and leaned over to breathe on Karpo and examine his face through the thick glasses.

“They won’t let me go,” he said. “No more quotas for Jews. No more doctors getting out. But you know what I really think. They want to keep us around for when they really need competence. There are little rooms full of Jewish doctors, Catholic writers, Mongol craftsmen, all of whom will be plucked out in emergencies or rot until one comes. Meanwhile, two hundred rubles is a small price to pay for the use of your arm.”

“Pay him, Emil,” Rostnikov said.

A man two beds away shouted, “Don’t be a fool. You have two hundred rubles; pay him. If he could cure rotted lungs, I’d pay him five hundred rubles.”

“See,” said Rostnikov, “even the proletariat support this exception. You will violate no law, Emil, and you’d be doing me a favor. I’m getting tired of visiting you in hospitals every time you catch a criminal. There is something in you that seeks destruction.”

“Not so loud,” said Alex, pouring himself a drink of water from the nearby pitcher, examining it, and then deciding that it was too suspicious to drink. “The state frowns on any suggestion of neurosis. Everything is organic. Neurosis is decadent, something for the West Germans, French, English, and Canadians. Don’t drink any more of this water.”

“I think he should be treated in the hospital,” cried a man in the corner. “We have to stay here. The state takes care of us. He should stay here.”

“Shut up, you old nakhlebnik, you parasite,” said the man with the rotted lungs. “You’d pay a thousand rubles if you could get a new pair of balls.”

“Gentlemen,” Rostnikov said, standing because his leg would no longer permit him to sit. “There is merit to what you both say, but if you don’t stop shouting, a doctor will come in.”

“A doctor,” said the man with the lung problem. “That would be a novelty.”

“Capitalist traitor,” coughed the man with no balls.

“Eunuch,” countered the man with no lungs.

And then both fell silent.

“I’m going,” said Alex. “I can hear this kind of talk at home. Porfiry Petrovich, tell him how to get to me if he decides he prefers going through life with two arms instead of one.”

And off went Alex, leaving the two policemen alone.

“You’ll do it?”

“I will see what the doctors here say,” whispered Karpo. From the bed Karpo could not see the woman who had entered the ward as Alex was leaving, but Rostnikov watched her enter, look around, see them, and head in their direction. She was tall, perhaps in the late thirties, with billowing brown hair. Her face was not pretty in any conventional way, but it was handsome, strong. She strode with confidence, her green dress slightly tight, very Western.

“You are Chief Inspector Rostnikov?” she said, holding out her hand.

Rostnikov took it and nodded.

“I am Mathilde Verson,” she said.

Karpo looked at her as. did all the other patients in the room who were awake or capable, but Karpo was the only one who had seen her before. In fact, for seven years he had seen her regularly, every two weeks on Thursday afternoons for about an hour. He had also seen her occasionally to get information about other prostitutes who might be involved in or have information about some crime he was investigating. Karpo looked at her without betraying surprise but with a question.

“How did you know I-” he began, but Mathilde was looking at Rostnikov, and Karpo understood. He stopped the question and addressed a new one to the chief inspector. “How long have you known about Mathilde?”

“Who knows?” He shrugged, dismissing the question. “A few years. I’m a detective, remember? I know things. So what’s so important about this? Did you think someone would blackmail you, discover you might be human and not just an efficient pawn of the state? It was refreshing to discover that you are a man like other men, Emil Karpo.”

Talking was difficult for Karpo, but things had to be said. “We are all animals,” he said dryly. “We cannot deny our animalness. We must acknowledge, channel, and control it so we can carry out our duty.”

“Can you believe it, chief inspector?” Mathilde Verson said, sitting on the bed. “He is always this romantic. Am I here for pay, Karpo? Do you think I came here to do business? There’s a performance of Swan Lake at the Bolshoi this afternoon. That’s four intermissions. You know how many tourists I could line up today? I’m giving up as much as one hundred dollars in American money by coming to see you. You know how Americans spend rubles? They think they’re play money, little dollars with funny pictures of Lenin on them.”

“I’m moved by your sacrifice,” Karpo muttered.

Mathilde looked to Rostnikov for support. He gave her a shrug and adjusted his jacket to show that he was about to leave.

“The chief inspector said you might enjoy a visitor,” she said to Karpo. “I’ll just sit here a few minutes, exude personality, and have you smiling before you control yourself. You believe that?”

“I do not smile,” Karpo whispered seriously.

“I’m going,” Rostnikov said. “See if you can convince him.”

“What’s all this?” bellowed a woman in a white coat, striding toward them, a black file folder under her arm. She was of no known age. Her size was small, her hair was pulled back tightly, and she wanted control.

“Visitors,” said Rostnikov.

The woman eyed Mathilde, appeared to discern her profession, and turned to Karpo.

“They are parasites,” shouted the man with no balls.

“Hah,” croaked the lungless one. “You can’t even keep your insults straight. You are the parasite.”

“Quiet,” shouted the woman. She turned to Karpo, and Rostnikov hesitated so he could listen. “You are awake.”

“I am awake,” agreed Karpo.

“I am Doctor Komiakov,” she said, opening the worn, dark folder and examining it. “I’m afraid I have some difficult news for you. Your right arm is infected and will have to be removed. I would rather not be so abrupt with this information, but you must know that the situation is severe, and you are a police officer. The surgery will be performed sometime tomorrow, and you should be functioning several weeks after that. There is even the possibility of a prosthetic device. Do you have a question?”

“Yes,” said Karpo, trying to sit up. His head was light, and he felt dizzy. He realized that the first touches of an aura indicating a migraine might be on him. “How do I get my clothes?”

The doctor looked at Rostnikov, who offered her no support, so that she had to turn to Mathilde, who smiled.

“You are a very sick man,” the doctor said.

Karpo was up now, his feet dangling over the side of the bed.

“My clothes,” he repeated,

Outnumbered, the doctor closed her notebook with a slap. “That is your right as a citizen,” she said grimly. “But I warn you that the infection is almost certain to kill you. You’ll have to sign papers indicating that you chose to leave the hospital in spite of my warnings.”

Mathilde held out a hand to help Karpo, who had managed to retain his dignity in spite of the absurd hospital gown. At first he rejected her offered hand and then took it.

The two debating patients behind them argued at a somewhat lower level the relative merits of leaving the hospital.

“It may take a while to get your clothes,” Rostnikov observed. “I’ll wait.”

But as it turned out, he could not wait. After five minutes, Sasha Tkach entered the ward, looked around, spotted Rostnikov, and hurried over.

“Karpo,” he said, brushing his straight hair back from his forehead. “How are you?”

“He is well, fine. We are waiting for his pants,” said Rostnikov. He didn’t introduce Mathilde, though Tkach stood waiting for an introduction. “Why are you here?”

“Posniky,” he said with a smile. “We found him. He’s a guest at the Metropole Hotel. He has a plane ticket to New York for this evening. I left Zelach to watch him. He’s with a younger man.”

“No one approached them?”

Tkach couldn’t stop looking at the woman helping Emil Karpo to stand, but he tried not to look at her, to wonder. Karpo had always been a puzzle to him, a person to stay away from unless they were forced together for an investigation. Emil Karpo and this woman did not fit together.

“No one approached them. They don’t know they have been identified, are being watched.”

“Good, fine,” Rostnikov said, sighing. “Then you and I will drive to the Metropole for a little drink. Emil,

Comrade Verson, you are on your own. I’ll give you Alex’s address this evening.”

Emil Karpo lifted his head to speak, realized there was nothing to say, and watched his two fellow officers of the state as they left the ward and the smell of alcohol behind them.

There was no real excuse for going to the Metropole. Rostnikov was off the case, had been told to stop the investigation. There was almost no way out of this if it came to a confrontation with Procurator Khabolov. His only hope was to bring in the killers, apologize for having them accidentally fall into his hands, and back away, taking the consequences. He could do one other thing. He could simply let Tkach turn them in and take no credit at all, simply disappear, but it was not in Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov to disappear. He had tried it before and failed.

Tkach and Rostnikov rode in a bumpy taxi. It was hot all over Moscow, but a breeze through the open car window felt good. Rostnikov watched the streetlights go by and said nothing as they turned down Marx Prospekt.

“You want me to go with you to their room if they’re in?” asked Tkach to the back of Rostnikov’s head. “They are probably packing to leave.”

Rostnikov grunted a barely audible no.

For the rest of the trip, Tkach was silent.

Rostnikov was quite familiar with the Metropole. He had investigated murders committed there, thefts, interviewed suspects.

There was an Old World seediness about the old hotel. One expected to encounter criminals in its dusty halls and shabby restaurant. The food was awful, the service terrible even by Moscow standards. Criminals of some stature were, however, almost obligated to make an appearance at the Metropole. On the staircase leading up to the mezzanine of the hotel stood a large bronze statue of two naked children passionately kissing. The statue symbolized the hotel and had become a good-luck charm for the bolder criminals who touched the eternally embracing underage couple.

Rostnikov liked the Metropole. It was like stepping into the past. He could, at least for a moment, imagine himself Dostoyevski’s Porfiry Petrovich, for whom he was named, could imagine himself fencing verbally with a rapidly wilting Raskolnikov.

When the cab stopped, Tkach paid the driver, and Rostnikov moved ahead, not even glancing back across Sverdlov at the Bolshoi where, he knew, Swan Lake would soon be starting.

Zelach was seated conspicuously in the lobby, his hands folded on his lap, his eyes looking toward the entrance to the restaurant. He spotted Rostnikov and stood to greet him.

“They are in the restaurant,” Zelach said.

“Fine.”

“I’ll point them out to you.”

“I think I’ll know who they are,” said Rostnikov.

Tkach had now joined them. “Zelach, place yourself at the entrance of the restaurant,” he said. “I don’t care if they see you. In fact, it would be better if they do. Sasha, you make your way to the door by the kitchen. Just stand there looking like a policeman.”

Tkach had no idea of how to look like what he was, but he nodded and watched Rostnikov move slowly, pulling his reluctant leg behind him. The several people in the lobby worked hard not to watch the scene, but watch they did.

As he entered the restaurant and let his eyes take in the various tables, he was grateful that the regular orchestra was not there. It was too early, but they were loud and terrible at any time. He did not want to shout over them.

There were a few dozen people in the room and at one table a man and woman Rostnikov recognized. The man had been imprisoned for beating another man who filled beer vending machines. The man pretended not to see the policeman.

Then Rostnikov saw the two men he was looking for. They were seated near the marble fountain in the center of the room in front of the stage, where there was no orchestra. The light from the fountain played on the stained-glass window behind the stage, and Rostnikov felt quite comfortable as he made his way to the two men and listened to the gentle splashing of the water in the fountain and the murmur of voices in the room.

The two men did not look up until he was standing next to the table. Even then only the younger of the two raised his head. The other man, the old man with the white hair, looked at his drink.

“Good afternoon,” Rostnikov said amiably in English. “I am Chief Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, I do not know what name you are registered under, but you are Mikhail Posniky.”

The younger man, a burly figure, very much the way Sofiya Savitskaya had described him, started to rise, his eyes looking about.

“Sit down, Martin,” the old man said in English, taking a sip of his wine. “We’re in the middle of Moscow. Where are we going to run to? “

“May I sit?” Rostnikov said, still in English. “I have a bad leg. The war.”

“Sit,” said Posniky in Russian, and Rostnikov sat. Rostnikov could see a faint resemblance between this old man and the young one in the photograph. This man’s face was a dry landscape, a parched riverbed filled with crevices. “You like wine, chief inspector?”

“That would be nice.”

Rostnikov glanced at the younger man, who was looking around the room. His eyes stopped first on Zelach, then circled and found Tkach. If he panicked, Rostnikov was prepared to reach out and grab him. He looked trained, formidable, possibly even a challenge. Posniky’s very blue eyes came up and met Rostnikov’s.

“Don’t do anything stupid, Martin,” the old man said in English.

“Thank you,” said Rostnikov, accepting a glass of dark wine.

“The wine isn’t as I remembered it,” Posniky said, looking at this glass. “Has it changed that much, or have I?”

“It has changed,” said Rostnikov. “But you’ve been gone for a long time. If you would feel more comfortable speaking English …”

“More than sixty years,” Posniky said with a little smile. “I’ll try Russian, though my phrases may be a bit out-of-date and there are many words I’ve forgotten. I am over eighty years old. Do I look it?”

“I would have guessed sixty,” said Rostnikov, sipping the wine. It was awful.

“Let’s try-” Martin said, leaning forward, his voice urgent.

“Sit and do what you are told,” Posniky said with authority. Martin sat back and divided his attention between the three policemen in the room.

“The candlestick,” Rostnikov said. “You have a story. I would like to hear it.”

“I have a story,” the old man said. “Do we have time?”

“We have time,” said the detective, placing his half-finished drink on the table.

“In 1891-” he began. “You’ll forgive me if I go back that far. It might help you to understand the-how do you say, ugly?”

“Nekrasivyi,” said Rostnikov.

“Ah, yes,” said the old man, shaking his head at the memory of the word, “the ugly details. In the winter of 1891 the Gentile soldiers of the fonie, the czar, came to Yekteraslav for their quota of boys twelve and older who were to go for an indeterminate period, which the fonie forever varied from five to forty years. The longer the period of service, the more likely the boy to die or accept Christ, though Jewish boys had proved stubborn and deaths outnumbered conversions among Hebrew soldier children. It had been agreed that only one son would be taken for each family. According to my father, the Russian officer who came that day was a foolish man, a stupid man. He took who he wanted, which meant my father and his two brothers, one of whom was only eleven. My uncles died. My father came back in six years, half mad.”

Rostnikov nodded to show that he was listening, but the old man was not watching the policeman. He was holding his wineglass in both hands and watching the last drops as he spoke more to himself.

“My father was arrested in 1909 by an officer who came to the door in a blue coat and fur hat. I was only a few years old, but I remember my father, or-who knows? — my mother may have described him so often that I think I remember him. He was arrested because we had a local shopkeeper’s son working for us during the small harvest of our farm. The soldier at the door quoted the May Laws of 1881 stating that Jews could not hire Christian domestics without the express permission of the regional governor. The shopkeeper’s son was only half Christian; and we paid him only with a few vegetables. We had no money, but”-Posniky shrugged-“they took my father, and we never saw him again. … My father, the village lunatic.

“And now,” Posniky said, looking up with narrow eyes at the uneasy Martin, “and now ten years later, the Revolution. I was a boy. My friends were boys. Yekteraslav was an isolated Jewish village. We knew little of the Revolution. We didn’t know which side was which. Some said the Jews would be better off after the Revolution. Most of us didn’t believe it. Shmuel Prensky believed it. Abraham Savitskaya and I had lost too many relatives to the Christian Russia to believe it.”

“And Ostrovsky,” Rostnikov added, reaching for the bottle of wine. It was awful wine, but it was wine. “The actor.”

Posniky looked up warily, not quite startled. “It will be easier to tell my story if you let me know what you know so I don’t have to repeat-”

“I know names,” Rostnikov said, biting back a bitter sip. “I know events of the last days, the murder of Abraham Savitskaya by you and your companion, the theft of the candlestick.”

“It was no theft,” the old man said with some emotion. “It was mine. It was my mother’s. When the Reds came to our village in 1919 or 1920 to collect young men the way the fonie had collected our fathers, Abraham and I decided to get out. My mother and his gave us some food, and my mother gave me the candlestick. It was all she could give, and it was worth little. I said good-bye to my mother and sister, and we left on a winter morning. We were young, too stupid to see the uselessness of what we were trying, to get to Riga, to walk to Riga or steal a ride, but to get to Riga and get on a boat for Canada or America. We didn’t know about passports. We didn’t know that the few rubles in our pockets would buy not even enough bread for the trip. We assumed other Jews would help us on the way. We had names of friends of friends in towns along the way. We never found the towns or the friends. How much detail do you want, policeman?”

“As much as you wish to give,” said Rostnikov, checking to see that Zelach and Tkach were alert. Zelach, across the room, looked puzzled by the scene.

“When we got to the road leading out of town,” Posniky said, “we were too stupid even to go across the fields. We met two soldiers who had been left to stop just what we were doing. One was young. One was quite old. Their uniforms were makeshift, and they were surprised when we killed them. They expected docile young Jewish boys to run back into town, weeping. They had one horse between them, and both were standing on the ground, ordering us to turn around, when I pulled out the brass candlestick from my cloth sack and hit the young one in the face. His cheek gave way, and he tried to scream. I hit him again while the old soldier watched. Neither of them were real soldiers. The old one turned to run, but Abraham leaped on him, and I beat him to death, too. Since then, I have killed others.”

“Including Abraham Savitskaya,” said Rostnikov.

Martin was examining the faces of the two men across from him, trying to understand odd words in a foreign language, tense with frustration. Rostnikov was sure the young man would have to be dealt with before the afternoon was over.

“Including Savitskaya,” agreed Posniky. “We dragged the bodies into the gray weeds off the road, and we ran through the field, leaving the horse standing in the middle of the road. Neither of us even considered taking the horse.”

“Young boys often do very foolish things,” said Rostnikov.

“And old men,” added Posniky, holding up his glass, which Rostnikov refilled with wine.

“Mr. Parker,” Martin said, glancing at Rostnikov. “I think-”

Posniky didn’t even bother to look at the man. He shook his head and held up a wrinkled hand to quiet him. And then he went on with his story, interrupted only by a waiter, who brought a fresh bottle of wine and some bread.

“The trees were thin in near spring, and they gave little protection in the light of day, so we had to walk deeper in the woods to be sure we weren’t seen from the road. When we heard a cart passing, we found shelter and waited. By early evening we had circled around a pair of small villages and watched a line of men on horseback heading in the direction from which we had come.

“‘They’re coming for us,’ Abraham said softly.

“‘No,’ I told him, rubbing my lower back and putting down his sack. ‘They are riding slowly and laughing.’

“‘Why are we still hiding in the woods instead of walking the roads?’

“‘We will take no chances until we are far away.’

“‘And how will we get on a boat at Riga? We have no money.’

“‘When we get to Riga’-I sighed-‘we will find the money.’

“‘God willing,’ said Abraham.

“A savage cold rain hit by evening, driving us under an outcrop of rocks where children had been before us, leaving a few torn books and pieces of glass. We shared the last of our cheese, drank rainwater from our clothes, and slept chilled. I remember dreaming of a town I had never seen, a town with no people, a town where rows of houses were being torn down. I had to run from house to house to stay ahead of the men and machines that moved forward to knock down the walls and send the dust of brick and mud into the air. I fled to a river and a long bridge that frightened me. I trembled and hesitated to put my foot on the white bridge, but behind me I heard the breathing of a sick cow, and I put my foot forward just as I woke up.

“We moved slowly, so slowly that our feet sometimes sank ankle-deep into mud in the woods and fields. The roads were a bit better, but we still avoided them. Sometimes we saw or heard someone working in a field, and one time we moved boldly through a nameless town and asked a ragged water carrier if we were on the right road to Riga.

“‘You’re on the right road, but you’ll both be old men by the time you walk there.’ The water carrier was a dry old man himself, a stick of a man, a kindling of a man with a brittle beard and no teeth. Very much like Abraham Savitskaya was in the bathtub when Martin and I found him.

“‘We haven’t any money,’ Abraham said.

“The old man opened his mouth to comment or laugh but said nothing. Instead, he held out his water bucket to us, and we took a drink. The street was cobbled, and three little children wearing sacks for clothes played near us, some game with sticks and a little ball. I thanked the old water carrier, and we hurried out of town and back off the road.

“After three days of travel, Abraham was shivering and estimated that we had gone no more than a tenth part of our journey at most. Even if we could keep up our present pace, it would be at least thirty days before we reached Riga, and Abraham, always fragile, could not keep it up for thirty days.

“‘We can go back,’ he said, sitting on a wet tree stump. ‘We could hide in the fields until we’re sure it’s safe.’

“I remember searching my sack for the last of our bread, finding it and tearing it in two for us.

“‘We killed two soldiers,’ I reminded him. ‘We will not be soon forgotten. And I don’t want to go back. You can go back if you want to.’

“We sat in the darkness, hugging ourselves, waiting for the night cold to take us. Abraham was first to give in to the chill and let it carry him to sleep, but I fought it, gritted my teeth, challenged until I felt I had proven myself and could allow my body the reward of rest. Before I slept, however, I planned.

“The next day’s travel was like the last, and we spoke little. The road turned, and we followed it, afraid that we had made a mistake and were now bound in the wrong direction, had somehow missed a turn and were headed into the vastness of an endless Russia toward Moscow; but the road gradually turned back in a direction I thought was north. Late in the brown afternoon we came to a large town and circled it. It took us an hour, and we never discovered the town’s name.

“‘We’ll wait here,’ I said. We were at the side of a road leading north from the town, and we sat in the woods about five hundred yards from the last house.

“‘I can go no further, Mikhail,’ Abraham said.

“‘We’ll go no further,’ I said, pulling my mother’s brass candlestick from his sack. I probably looked mad as the falling sun hit my face. Abraham backed away in fear and sat in silence.

“A few carts and wagons, and even an automobile, went by, away from the town, followed by a few people on foot, and then a rather elegant carriage went into the town. From behind a bush we watched them all as I held the brass candlestick tightly in the dark, dirty palm of my right hand. We looked at each other, two wild men, creatures of darkness, and in the midst of this meaninglessness I felt a power of nothing to lose.

“When the sun had almost disappeared across the wide field opposite us, a carriage clattered slowly from the town.

“‘Now,’ I said, rising, and Abraham rose, knowing what we would do without being told, transforming the deed into a ritual to allow us to do it, a pagan act born of despair as we two dark figures hurried forward, a brass candlestick in my hand, a stick in his.

“‘On the road,’ I said. ‘Stop the carriage. Even if you have to kill the horse. Stop the carriage.’ And I disappeared behind a ridge of low rocks.

“Abraham hurried forward, lumbered on legs turned stiff from sitting for hours, blood pumping to his throbbing head, probably thinking he might die before the deed was done, but he did not die. When the carriage with one horse turned the bend in the road, Abraham, a dark, spindly mantis, as much animal as man, stood in the road and frightened the gray horse. Had the driver urged him on, the horse would have run Abraham down and hurried into the coming night, but the driver, like the horse, was startled and stopped.

“The driver, a middle-aged man with a fine black coat and glasses, stood up and shouted something at Abraham, who reached up for the horse and held its muzzle. The angry man seemed frightened. I could see Abraham simply watch and wait as the man reached for something under the seat. Abraham strained his neck over the horse’s head as he petted it to see what the man was doing. When the gun came out, Abraham did not look afraid, only curious. He was not even afraid when the man raised the weapon in his direction and sputtered something. He did not become afraid even when he saw me work my way around from behind the carriage. The bullet and my swing of the candlestick came at the same time. The bullet leaped into the darkness above Abraham’s head, and he turned to watch it but saw nothing as the sudden night swallowed it. He had to pet and talk softly to the horse, whose eyes opened wide with fear at the sound of the struggle behind him.

“There was a rocking of the carriage and a terrible sound of something hard hitting bone, then a cry, not a cry really but a gasp that sounded like a child saying, ‘Why?’

“‘Hurry,’ I whispered. ‘Before someone comes by. Hurry.’

“Abraham hurried to the carriage and moved his head close to see the man, who lay slumped forward. Perhaps he expected blood, but could make nothing out in the darkness.

“‘Quick,’ I said, breathing quickly. ‘Let’s get him into the woods. Quick.’

“We lifted the man, and we could feel that he was still alive, though his right arm, the one that had held the gun, hung at an impossible angle, and we knew it was broken. When we had moved behind some rocks, we leaned over to listen to the man’s chest.

“‘He breathes,’ I said softly.

“‘A little,’ said Abraham.

“‘A little.’

“We hurried back to the carriage and drove into the night with me at the reins, feeling confidence returning for the first time since we had left Yekteraslav. I turned to share my feeling with Abraham, but he was slumped forward, his face in his hands.

“‘You think he’s dead?’ asked Abraham, squinting into the darkness.

“‘No,’ I replied. ‘He’s not dead.’

“‘How do you know?’

“‘I don’t know,’ I cried. ‘Stop talking.’

“We rode in silence and opened the cloth purse of the man we had robbed to find money, both paper and coin. It seemed like a lot.

“‘We had to do it,’ said Abraham.

“I nodded in the darkness, the wind and the smell of the sweating horse overwhelming me as I pushed the money in my pocket and flung the purse and the gun into the night. I did not want to know more about the man.

“‘If they find him, when they find him, they will come looking for this carriage,’ I said. ‘We’ll give ourselves a day with it. No more.’

“‘It’s a fine carriage and a fine horse,’ said Abraham, sounding well to me for the first time since we left Yekteraslav.

“‘Maybe we can sell it,’ I said as I climbed into the back seat and lay down to rest. ‘Do not stop in any town or village. I’ll sleep an hour, and then we’ll rest the horse and I’ll drive.’

“Abraham agreed, though I knew he would have liked to drive the carriage forever, never stopping or thinking, just feeling the reins and the jogs in the road.

“I slept for four hours. When I awoke, the carriage had stopped. Abraham had unharnessed the horse and was letting it eat dry grass off the road. Across a marshy field, I could see a town that looked large, but it was much too soon for Riga.

“‘Stay here with the horse,’ I told Abraham. ‘I’ll go into the town and buy some clothes. Two ragged Jews riding a fine carriage is not going to be overlooked.’

“‘So we will become two fine Jews with a carriage,’ Abraham said with a smile.

“I nodded and looked at my friend, whose cap had slipped forward over his eyes, making him look like a village fool as he urged the horse to eat.

“‘Talk to no one and stay here,’ I said.

“‘I will.’

“The town was Gomel, and the streets were cobbled, but there were still huge puddles from the thawing snow and rain. There were many Jews in their beards and hats. I could see the tips of their prayer shawls under their coats, but I needed no signs of clothing to recognize other Jews, with their dark, frightened look that marked them even if their features did not.

“A small boy with fingers sticking through ragged gloves sold me two hard bagels in the street from a woven straw basket. I ate one and put the other in my pocket for Abraham.

“‘Where can I buy some clothes?” I asked the boy in Yiddish.

“The boy looked at me without looking, for to look openly might earn a blow, might imply that the stranger was too ragged to be looking for decent clothing. The boy could not have been more than nine, but he had learned much, perhaps all of what he would need for life in Gomel.

“‘Nothing expensive, mind you,’ I said. I knew a coin to the boy would get me a quick answer, but I was reluctant to part with the money. My plan was forming: we would spend no more than we had to, because I didn’t know how much it might cost to get on a boat to England or America. In the near sleep of the night before I had decided that we had to get by on the money we had taken from the man with the gun, that if we did make it on the money, then the man would have made a contribution to our survival. The attack would have been necessary and meaningful, a sacrifice. Anything less than that and what we had done would be an act of brutality, meaningless animal brutality. The man would recover, get more money, buy another carriage. In fact, I had reasoned, this might turn out to be the best deed the man had ever done, to help two desperate young men.

“‘… dead,’ said the boy with the bagels.

“‘Dead?’ I cried, looking around.

“‘I said,’ continued the boy, ‘that Menahcan the tailor is dead, but his son, Yigdol, has clothes. I’ll take you.’

“I followed the boy for a few streets to a two-story brick building with a wooden door the boy pointed to and waited. I impulsively took out a coin and gave it to him.

“‘Shalom,’ said the boy.

“‘Shalom,’ I said, and knocked at the door.

“Yigdol the tailor proved to be a few years older than I, a few inches taller. There were no words or questions, just guarded looks of curiosity through the young tailor’s thick glasses. Yigdol’s one-room home and shop was small, one wall lined with cheap thin books, the other with heaps of clothing.

“‘I need a suit,’ I said.

“‘Desperately,’ said Yigdol, looking over his glasses. I wondered why he kept the room so dark, for it seemed obvious that a man who sews and reads in the dark would soon go blind, and Yigdol seemed well on the way to it.

“‘You have something, something good, not work clothes but not too expensive? I have some money. Not much, but some.’

“Yigdol looked at me, put aside the dark cloth he was sewing, and went to a black pile in the corner near a dirty window. Outside a child was screaming at another child.

“In ten minutes, we had negotiated for a reworked suit and a white shirt, and only when the negotiation was completed did I mention the suit for Abraham, a suit that would have to be chosen without the wearer present. Yigdol acted as if he understood, and a second suit was selected.

“In preparation, I had shifted a small amount of money from one pocket to the next and took out a few crumpled rubles to pay the tailor, who looked at them and at me.

“‘Is there something wrong with my money?’

“‘No,’ said Yigdol, ‘and there’s nothing wrong with my brain, though my eyes are failing, but even failing, they see too much and ask too many questions, which may be why the Almighty is taking them back. They ask, where did this young man come from, why is he frightened, why does he buy two suits, and why does he keep so much money in his side pocket and pretend to be so little?’

“‘I’m a tailor,’ explained Yigdol. ‘I notice bulges, tears, and faces. Don’t fold your bills and don’t keep them in your pants pocket. That is what peasants do. One might wonder why a peasant has so much money. These clothes may make you look like a shopkeeper, but you must act to fit the clothes.’

“‘What do you want of me?’ I said with my eyes on the man at the same time I sought a weapon in the corners or on the table. The scissors and knife were within reach. ‘I’ll pay no more than we agreed on.’

“Yigdol laughed. ‘I want the promised land,’ he said. ‘I want it now. Can you pay me that? I want no more of your money than we agreed upon. You have nothing to fear from me.’

“‘You think I’m funny,’ I said in some confusion.

“Yigdol shook his head no and pushed the glasses up on his ample nose.

“‘No, I think you are afraid and could use some help. You are running from the Revolution. You are from the south. You have the accent. You are heading north, for Riga, the sea?’

“‘Yes, for Riga.’

“Yigdol smiled proudly at the confirmation of his deduction. “‘Go to Palestine,’ he said.

“‘Perhaps,’ I said. ‘Yes, perhaps.’ I said it as if I were really considering it, but I was not. Yigdol, with his failing eyes, saw through me and gave an amused look that shook my confidence.

“‘I have a carriage to sell,’ I said.

“‘A carriage? A good carriage such as a well-to-do shopkeeper might have?’

“‘Yes,’ I said, clutching the two suits to my chest.

“‘If you drive your fine carriage down this street as far as the street goes, you will find a market. In the market you will see a wagon. The wagon has no wheels. It is a store from which a fat man sells geese. Say to that fat man that Yigdol suggested you see him about your fine carriage. But you would do well to put on your new suit before you do so.’

“I reached in my pocket for more money.

“‘No more money,’ said Yigdol, raising his hand, a needle pressed tightly between thumb and finger, a filament of thread swaying against the dusty light. ‘I don’t know what you are or what you are doing. I am simply a man helping another man.’

“Yigdol smiled, and I tried to smile back, but I had no idea of why we were smiling. I escaped quickly through the door and hurried through the town with my bundle in hand, circling the puddles the children played in.

“I found Abraham talking to the horse and threw him his new clothes. Twenty minutes later we drove into Gomel in our fine carriage and new clothes, with Abraham smiling proudly and me feeling like a fool in disguise. The market was easy to find in an uncrowded, open, uncobbled area with a ring of carts and crates, squawking chickens and geese, and a few goats. The people in the market, sellers and buyers, all stopped to watch the two well-dressed young men in the carriage. I considered telling Abraham to drive straight through quickly, but he held back and played his part. The fat man near the broken wagon sat like a rock, watching me as I got down and moved toward him. An old woman and a young girl stood next to him, the girl no more than eight or nine, keeping her hand in the old woman’s as if I or someone else might steal her.

“‘Yigdol the tailor said you might be interested in buying a carriage?’“

“‘I am interested in buying what I can sell,’ said the fat man in an incredibly high voice that belied his body as he pulled his jacket tight around him. ‘I’m interested in staying alive. I’m interested in keeping my mother here and my son’s daughter alive.’

“‘What can you give me for the carriage?’

“‘I can give you a little money for the carriage and the horse and a little advice. The advice will be worth more than the money. The carriage is not yours, and you’d best get rid of it quickly before you are asked questions you can’t answer. That’s a good horse, but it will have to be slaughtered for its meat. A chance can’t be taken that it will be recognized. This is the money I’ll give with that advice, and I’ll tell you how to get on a train that will take you to …’ He waited.

“‘Riga,’ I said.

“‘Of course, Riga. I’ll have someone take you to the train in Minsk and buy your tickets for a slight price. The ticket man is a half Jew. He’ll put you in a car where no one will ask you questions until you get to Riga. For this you will pay me. Subtracted from what I will pay you for the horse and carriage, which can be my death, you owe me thirty rubles.’

“‘The Jews of Gomel are very clever,’ I said.

“‘The Jews of Gomel have to be very clever or there would soon be no Jews of Gomel. Isn’t it that way in your village?’

“‘It is.’

“‘We have a bargain?’

“‘Yes,’ I said, and paid the man. The little girl looked at me and backed away.

“‘Her father, my son, left her last year and went to America,’ explained the fat man, counting the money I gave him and nodding to a thin young man, who moved forward to take the horse and carriage from Abraham. I nodded to Abraham to let the young man take them, and he reluctantly got down and watched the horse and cart being led into a large barnlike door in a stone building behind the broken wagon.

“‘He’s going to send for her?’ I said.

“The fat man shrugged.

“The thin young man came back with an older, heavier horse and a wagon, not a carriage. The fat man made a pushing move with his hand to indicate that we should climb in the wagon. We did, and the fat man immediately turned to his business of negotiating with a sagging woman over the price of a goose.

“There was straw in the wagon and a few blankets. We gave the driver some money to buy food for the trip, and I lay back with his sack for a pillow and tried to sleep, my head rolling against the brass candlestick.

“We spent two days in the wagon, getting out only to relieve ourselves, sitting up only to eat the food brought by the young driver, who said nothing, did not even give his name.

“Minsk began almost an hour before we reached the train station, first with farms and then a few inns and small factories, followed by a few blacksmiths and clusters of homes and shops. When we reached the cobbled streets, buildings began to rise on both sides, some four stories tall. A platoon of firemen lounged in front of a fire station, their uniforms military and their hats shined metal.

“From the wagon we could see that most of the men we passed were unshaven and not Jewish. There were carriages going past with finely dressed women with wide hats, and then we passed a synagogue, the largest I had ever seen.

“Without thinking, I moved closer to the young driver, resenting him but dependent. At the train station, the young man went in and purchased the tickets while we got down from the wagon and stretched our legs.

“‘There is a train for Riga in five hours. Sit on a bench and pretend you are sleeping till the train comes. Then get on the train and go to the third class, next to the last car. Eat the food you have with you and stay away from the front of the train and the Russians.’

“It was all the young man said to us, and he was gone without looking back. We found a space on a bench next to a tree stump of a father and fat son in clean work clothes. The father and son ate garlic sausage and talked. For five hours we pretended to sleep. The train was another hour late, and we pretended to sleep some more. I needed a toilet but was afraid to leave the bench.

“The platform was filled with passengers, many of them Russian soldiers, one of whom bumped into me when a few of them playfully pushed each other. The man fell momentarily in my lap, but I pretended to sleep through the incident. I didn’t even know which side of the Revolution the soldiers were on.

“When the train arrived, we got to the next to last car. People were sitting on all the benches, but we found space on the floor near the window wall. There were pockets of conversations, including a low conversation about something called Zionism held between two shabbily dressed men. When I could stand it no longer, I asked someone where the toilet was. To get to it, I would have to move to the front of the train through the Russian soldiers. Instead, I made my way to the space between the two cars and urinated into the night.

“In two days and many stops the word ‘Riga’ spread through the car. People began to check their cloth sacks and thin suitcases, to prepare, though the word was we were still many hours away. Abraham smiled, and I nodded, touching the flattened roll of bills in my jacket.

“When the train jerked into Riga, the people spewed forth as if they were already in America or England. We tried to stay in the middle of the crowd. The Russian soldiers got off, joking about the smell of the people still pushing each other and the crowd.

“A trio of soldiers and officers forced their way through the confusion and headed right past us. To clear the way, the officers pushed with their sticks and hands, moving against the flow of the crowd. One young officer stood in front of me and prodded me with his stick.

“The soldier was amused at what looked like a confrontation with a simpleminded Jew, and he turned to his comrades to share the joke. They looked equally amused.

“We followed the crowd into the darkness to a vast foggy waterfront where thousands of people sat on their luggage, talking, looking at the huge metal boat with peeling paint, a boat that was as big as the entire village of Yekteraslav, maybe as big as two Yekteraslavs.

“I grabbed the arm of a well-dressed Jewish woman who was talking to another well-dressed woman seated on a trio of matching cloth suitcases. The woman turned on me in anger, but something in my face frightened her, and she stood mute.

“‘Tell me,’ I whispered, my voice cracking. ‘How do we get on that boat. Where is it going?’

“‘To America,’ the woman said. She was about thirty, not pretty but womanly.

“‘You have to get an exit visa,’ the woman said. ‘You go to the end of the dock. If you didn’t get one in your district, you go there and stand in line.’

“‘And,’ said her friend, an overflowing older woman with a very wide hat, ‘when you get in, you tell them you want to go and you pay them a bribe, and they make you wait a few days. If you don’t bribe, you wait a week or two weeks or ten, but you go, anyway. You go because you are Jewish, and they want to get rid of you as much as you want to go.’

“‘I know,’ I said.

“‘Yes,’ said the woman, whose arm I still held. I let her loose, and Abraham and I walked in the direction to the visa’ shack, stepping over sleeping families, couples huddled together. The heavy mist from the sea and the ship drifted over the crowd, a cloud that covered clumps of people, that blanketed but didn’t protect us.

“Shifting my sack from one shoulder to the next a dozen times, I finally found a long line stretching for what looked like miles. We watched the line for fifteen minutes, but it did not move.

“‘The office is closed until the morning,’ said a man we were standing in front of. Abraham and I had made the man nervous, and the fellow, a frayed creature in a gray foreign-looking suit, wanted us to be gone. ‘Go to the end and wait till it opens.’

“We nodded and moved toward the end, a hike almost as long as the one we had taken from the two women to the line itself. We sat at the rear behind two old couples and watched an old man with a long beard hugging himself hard to keep out the cold, though the night was not as terrible as others we had suffered in the last two weeks. I watched Abraham’s eyes turning into the night mist in the direction of Yekteraslav, not expecting to see anything but unable to turn away.

“‘You want a visa?’

“The voice was soft, pleading; the words in Yiddish I found hard to understand. I turned my eyes to the voice and automatically put my hand out to protect my jacket and money. The man before me was short, almost a dwarf. He was clean-shaven, and his mouth showed an incredibly jagged line of teeth, distorting his face so that he had a permanent look, which might have been a smile or a grimace of pain.

“‘You want a visa?’ repeated the little man.

“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘We need visas.’

“‘And a passage on that ship?’ the little man said, nodding back toward the dock.

“‘Yes,’ I said.

“‘Can you pay?’ said the man.

“The old man, hugging himself, leaned into the conversation and looked at the little man.

“‘He’s a shtupper,” said the old man. ‘A pig sticker. He gets people who don’t want to leave to sell him visas, and then he resells them, taking places away from people who should be on the ships.’

“‘You don’t know,’ hissed the little man. ‘You old cocker. You don’t know.’

“‘How much do you want?’ I said, grabbing at the possibility of immediately departing from fear and memory.

“‘Maybe more than you can pay?’

“I reached out and grabbed the little man by the collar, clapping my hand over his mouth to quiet him. The feel of the wet mouth disgusted me.

“‘Just tell me.’

“‘Show me what you have,’ whispered the little man.

“I turned my back and pulled out my money, but the man had maneuvered to see it.

“‘I’ll take that,’ said the little man. ‘All of it.’

“‘Show me the visas and the tickets,’ I demanded.

“The little man pulled a crumpled package from his pocket and held it out. Inside the package was a folded piece of cardboard.

“‘That’s only one visa, one ticket,’ I said, looking at Abraham, who had said nothing, only looked like a frightened cow since we had descended into the nightmare of Riga.

“The old man nodded yes, that he had only one ticket, one visa, that we would have to make up our minds if we wanted it. I said no, and lifted my sack, stepping out of line and back into the mist and the tangle of waiting bodies. Abraham hesitated and followed. He said something to the old man, who nodded, and I called over my shoulder to Abraham to join with me. I’ll tell you the truth. I planned to find two people, get them out of line behind a shack and take their tickets and, if need be, their lives, but I never got the chance. Abraham and I huddled in the chill fog behind a storage shack on the dock, and I dozed. Being hit is supposed to knock you out. It woke me for an instant like a headache, and I found myself looking up at Abraham, who stood over me, my mother’s candlestick in his hand. He brought the candlestick down again on my head. I was stunned, couldn’t move, blood coming into my eyes. I’m sure he took me for dead. I know I was unconscious.

“When I woke up, it was just dawn. My sack was gone. The money was gone. I lurched to the dock as people were boarding the ship, and I could see Abraham in the crowd. He saw me, too, and fear was in his eyes. I tried to get on the ship, tried to push past the people crowding the gangplank, screamed like a mad bloody fool, and was thrown from the dock by ship’s guards.

“I had passed out again and lay there, in the crowd gathering for the next ship. People moved around me, waiting for me to die. Some went through my pockets. I could feel it, but there was nothing to take. Abraham, my friend from childhood, had taken everything. Obviously, I did not die. I was too stubborn to die. I crawled away that night, stole some food, and the next day, when I felt strong enough, I washed my face in stinging seawater and found a solitary man who had a ticket and a visa. His name was Vasili Rosnechikov. I became Vasili Rosnechikov, and I got on the next ship with a small sack of food purchased with Vasili Rosnechikov’s money. Two hours later I felt the boat creak and lurch and heard sailors running around and yelling, heard old women crying and being comforted by old men, heard young people laugh with joy, touched with fear of the unknown future, but I sat looking at my filthy hands and the deck of the ship, not back at the shore, at Russia. I was on my way to America to kill Abraham Savitskaya.”

The story had taken a half hour or more, but Rostnikov had not interrupted. It had been an old man’s story, a story remembered or imagined in vivid detail, the fairy tale of his life, the justification for his existence. In the corner near the door to the restaurant, Zelach had begun to slouch, losing whatever alertness he had managed to muster. Tkach, mindful of recent embarrassment, stood alert. Martin, the gunman, had folded his arms and leaned back, refusing drinks from the bottle shared by the policeman and Posniky.

“And so,” said Rostnikov, pouring himself and Posniky the last of the bottle and feeling slightly drunk, “you went to America and were unable to find Savitskaya.”

“I did not find him,” Posniky agreed, clenching his worn teeth and remembering his frustration. “I found other things while I looked. I found how to take care of myself. I-let us just say that I made a good living. I raised a family. I have grandchildren, even two great-grandchildren. I don’t show photographs anymore. I can’t remember which one has which name. But I kept looking for Abraham. I almost caught up to him in St. Louis.”

“That is in Missouri,” said Rostnikov with pride.

“Right,” agreed Posniky. “But he found out I was after him. Then I found he had come back to Russia. He came back here to hide from me, came back with my mother’s candlestick. Through contacts I found that he had a protector who had helped him get back into Russia, to get away from me; at least that’s what they said.”

“And who was this protector?” asked Rostnikov, knowing that he would have to rise soon or his leg would lock in pain.

The old man shrugged. “Whoever it was”-he sighed-“he didn’t protect him this time. You can’t imagine the feeling I’ve lived with, the feeling of unfinished business. You wake up with it every morning.”

“Like finding the last few pages missing from a mystery novel you like and knowing the book is so old that you will probably never know the ending,” said Rostnikov.

“Exactly,” said the old man, looking up and brushing back his mane of colorless hair.

“And now?”

“And now,” said Posniky with resignation, “I am finished. I’ve read you the last two pages of your mystery, and you can close the book. A question: is there some way we can get Martin on the plane? Somehow this reminds me of that day in Riga sixty years ago. Only this time it is me and Martin and an airplane.”

Martin, hearing his name mentioned, came alert and looked at the two men.

“We will see,” said Rostnikov, starting to get up. “But not now. I think we must now go to my office for an official statement.” Posniky leaned forward, and for an instant Porfiry Petrovich feared that the tough old man was going to have a heart attack or cry. Instead, he reached under the table and came up with a brown package, which clearly contained the brass candlestick.

“Let’s go,” he said, but Martin was not prepared to go without trouble. He pushed his chair back, looked to the two doors, chose Tkach’s, and ran toward him. Rostnikov reached out to grab him but was too late. Martin bumped into one table where a couple was eating soup, which went flying.

Rostnikov could but watch as Martin, a head taller and much more solid, rushed at Tkach, who appeared to step to the side to let him pass. When Martin hit the hinged kitchen door, he threw Tkach a quick warning look that Tkach answered with a solid right fist to Martin’s throat. Martin twisted, clutching his throat, and Tkach hit him again with a nearby chair.

Customers watched. Women screamed, and Zelach ambled over to help subdue the writhing American.

“He’s still young,” said Posniky, who was standing at Rostnikov’s side with the candlestick under his arm. “He doesn’t know when he has lost. I was the same. Let’s go, chief inspector.”

Ignoring the crowd, which seemed to realize that a police or KGB action was taking place, Zelach and Tkach handcuffed Martin’s hands behind him and led him out behind Rostnikov and Posniky, who moved slowly through the lobby and onto the sidewalk.

“This is the first time I have been in Moscow,” Posniky said, looking around. “When I was a boy, my family wouldn’t let us come to the city. They thought Jews were routinely slaughtered on the streets of Moscow.”

Rostnikov turned to watch Zelach shove the gasping, angry Martin forward. The turn, as it was, probably saved Rostnikov’s life. A dark car screeched down the street away from the curb. It roared in front of a taxi that was just pulling away from the Metropole, leaped the curb, and hit Posniky, who had no idea that it was coming. The fender of the moving car missed Rostnikov by a shadow as he fell back to the sidewalk. Posniky was sucked under the car and disappeared for an instant, though Rostnikov could hear his body thud against the undercarriage of the automobile. Then the car jerked forward, hitting a young woman, who was lifted into the air. From the rear of the black car Posniky’s twisted, bloody body was spat out toward the seated Rostnikov. The packaged brass candlestick was still clutched tightly in the gnarled hand of the corpse.