Tarnished Icons

TWELVE

Porfiry Petrovich grunted mightily, his hair and brow damp with sweat, his purple-and-white Northwestern University sweatshirt with the tiny hole in the sleeve turned nearly gray from his perspiration. If he did two more bench presses, just two more, it would be a new record for him.

To the voice of Dinah Washington singing “Down with Love” Porfiry Petrovich, in the corner of his living room in his apartment on Karasikov Street, willed his arms and chest to move. Two things other than his own determination were helping him toward the new record. First, using extrastrength green plastic piping, he had designed and built a simple stand onto which he could place the weight as he lay back on the narrow bench. Placing the weight on the stand made it easier to get the weight in the air by not having to awkwardly lift it from the floor. He had no one to spot him on either side, so he had to be sure of the safe extent of both his weights and repetitions. He should have considered such a device years ago. He had seen them, used them in many weight rooms, even one in a small navy weather station in Siberia, but building one had only recently occurred to him. The second thing that made it easier to do the bench presses was the new leg. With his crippled leg he had balanced awkwardly on his right leg while doing the presses. It had taken a major effort just to get the weight to his chest and then down again when he finished. The new leg served as a brace, like the strong leg of a table.

The two girls, as always, sat watching Rostnikov. They sat quietly, listening to the music and to his grunting. Grunting and blowing air were not only part of the ritual, they actually helped him get through each exercise.

They had finished dinner, chicken tabak, Rostnikov’s favorite. He did not ask Sarah where she got the chicken, but he had not eaten with his usual hum of satisfaction. Sarah had something to discuss. He could see it in her face, her movements, in the fact that she had served him his favorite meal. They would talk later, either in bed or seated on the sofa with the lights low.

He, too, had something to tell his wife, but he was somehow sure that what she had to say was more important. It was her look, the look of a witness who had decided after hours or days or years of agony to come forth with what she knew and could no longer keep to herself.

Dinah Washington and Porfiry Petrovich finished together. He placed the weight back on the stand, and the singer concluded with a plaintive low note that nearly brought tears to the detective’s eyes.

He sat up, reached for his towel, and wiped himself as he looked at the girls, who seemed to find even his wiping of sweat fascinating.

“You are the strongest person in the world,” said the older girl.

Rostnikov looked over at Sarah, who sat in her chair across the room reading a book.

Although neither of the two girls had spoken much since their grandmother was taken from them and sent to prison, they had done reasonably well in school from the day the Rostnikovs had taken them in. And now the girls were gradually beginning to speak more and more.

“Sometime I will take you to watch the Olympic hopefuls working out,” he said. “If we’re lucky, we’ll see one of the former champions, a few of whom are now coaches, demonstrate. Then you will see some of the strongest men in the world. And the strongest ever was …”

“Alexiev,” finished the younger child.

Rostnikov smiled. Normally at this point he would turn off the record player, which he now did, put away the bench and weights in the space he had made behind the doors of the bookcase against the wall, which he now did, and change his clothes and shower, which he did not do.

Rostnikov had many loves, beginning with his wife and son and, more recently, the two little girls who were looking up at him from where they were seated. Following his family on his list, a list of which he was never overtly conscious, were his work and his coworkers, weight lifting, American mysteries, particularly those about the police by Ed McBain, and plumbing.

On his days off Rostnikov would often spend hours searching the outdoor stalls around the city for mystery novels in English. An Ed McBain was always a treasure, as was anything in English translation by Georges Simenon, but close behind were Lawrence Block, Donald Westlake, and many others.

When the weights and bench were compactly stored and the bookcase door closed, Rostnikov wiped his brow, neck, and head once more and said to the girls, “Shall we go to work?”

Both children nodded yes and smiled. Rostnikov glanced at Sarah, who looked up and smiled at the trio across the room, but there was something plaintive in her expression.

Rostnikov went into the bedroom and came back with his big plastic toolbox in one hand and five four-foot-long plastic tubes under the other arm. Bulianika and his wife on the fourth floor had come by earlier and left a message with Sarah that their sink was backed up. Sarah had said that if nothing came up at Petrovka, she was sure Porfiry Petrovich would take care of it later.

He told the older girl to get his plastic bucket from the storage box in the kitchen area. She moved quickly.

Rostnikov loved plumbing. He owned books on plumbing and pored over the diagrams even when the books were in German or any other language he could not read. From time to time Rostnikov would drop in on the Detlev Warehouse, a great indoor expanse that had once been a lightbulb factory. Now it was piled with neatly organized building parts, including piping, fittings, and tools for plumbers.

In exchange for the not inconsiderable right to evoke Rostnikov’s name and rank when trouble arose, Detlev and his son, who looked like nearly identical well-built Italian construction workers, complete with dark mustaches and faded overalls, supplied the detective with parts and tools free or at a laughably low price. The Detlevs firmly believed that they were getting the better of the deal by saving the money they would normally have to pay to the police and one of the new mafias. At night an armed guard, an off-duty police officer, protected the warehouse, but the Washtub’s reputation was far more effective.

“We should not be long,” Rostnikov said as the older girl opened the front door with one hand, carrying the bucket in the other.

Sarah nodded.

On the way to the Bulianikas’ apartment, the two girls took turns opening doors for Rostnikov, who moved slowly on his new leg, walking before him with a serious demeanor suitable to the serious business at hand.

For Rostnikov, this building, with its ancient and ill-built pipes, was his challenge. Eventually, if he lived long enough and the building continued to stand, he would probably replace every pipe, joint, toilet, and sink. Behind the walls was a network of metal and plastic that worked like a system of the human body. Water came in supposedly clean and left, usually dirty.

The Bulianikas, an old Hungarian couple whose son had moved back to Budapest years ago, welcomed the repair trio, offering tea and cookies. The girls each took one cookie, as they had been instructed, and Rostnikov said they would all have a quick tea when the job was finished.

The job turned out to be an easy one. The sink, old and cracked, was backed up with foul-smelling water and almost full to overflowing.

“First rule in a case like this,” said Rostnikov to the two attentive girls, “is not to immediately use a plunger or drain auger, that long spring. The cause may be in the fixture drain, right here, or in the main drain, which collects waste from the fixture drains. Or the problem could be in the sewer drain that carries liquid and solid waste out of the house and to the sewer. We’ve had no other complaints, so we can tentatively conclude that the scene of the crime is in the fixture. So we start by clearing the drain opening.”

One of the first things he had done when taking on the circulatory system of the ill-constructed building was to collect a few kopecks from each tenant to buy strainers for each sink. It would not solve any problems, but it would go a long way toward cutting down on clogged drains.

Rostnikov, sweating even more through his white sweat suit, removed the stopper and, using a flashlight, looked down the drain to the first bend a few feet away. He could see nothing.

Then, using his plunger, he created suction and pulled, his neck muscles bulging red, the girls standing back in awe. Nothing.

Next Rostnikov forced the long, flexible metal coil of his auger down the drain. He cranked the handle, which rotated a stiff spring when he hit what he thought might be a slight blockage. This accomplished nothing.

“Next,” said Rostnikov like a seasoned surgeon addressing a group of interns rather than two fascinated little girls, “we can do one of two things. We can use a chemical cleaner, which would probably not work because the drain is completely clogged. If it didn’t work, we would then have to contend with caustic water. So we must dismantle the trap and use the auger on the drainpipe that goes into the floor.”

The girls nodded in understanding as Rostnikov dismantled the trap, found it a bit dirty but clear, and inserted the auger into the floor drain. Again no result. He reassembled the trap and, awkwardly holding on to the sink, pulled himself up.

“The clues lead us elsewhere,” Rostnikov said, picking up his piping and toolbox.

After reassuring the Bulianikas that he was on the trail of the problem, Rostnikov took his equipment and, with the girls ahead of him opening the stairway doors, went to the apartment below, where Vitali Sharakov lived alone. His wife had left him two years earlier. She had stayed with him for years only because he had been a member of the Communist Party, the ranking member in the apartment building, who earned a good living as a district sanitation supervisor, though he knew nothing about sanitation. But Sharakov was now a sullen stoop-shouldered man whose bush of dark hair always looked as if it needed cutting and who frequently looked as if he had forgotten to shave.

He let Rostnikov and the girls in with the air of a man who was accustomed to being intruded upon and had resigned himself to a lack of privacy.

“Plumbing problem upstairs,” Rostnikov said.

Sharakov was wearing socks, a pair of wrinkled pants, and a white T-shirt with short sleeves from which his thin arms dangled like winter birch twigs.

Sharakov nodded. The room was dark except for the light from the television set placed directly in front of an old armchair. As far as Rostnikov could see, the room was neat and clean.

From the television came the voices of a couple of actors arguing about a woman who was married to one of the characters.

“No trouble with your sink or toilet?” asked Rostnikov.

Sharakov shrugged and said, “No more, no less than normal.”

He went back to his chair and his television show and let Rostnikov and the girls find their way to the sink. Rostnikov put down his toolbox and piping and turned on the water. The flow was weak. Then the work began. Rostnikov got on his back and moved awkwardly to open the little door that revealed the drain that was connected to the apartment above. Rostnikov stopped and asked Sharakov if he could have more light.

“Yes,” said the man in the armchair, but he didn’t move.

The older girl found the switch, and a hundred-watt bulb came on. Rostnikov took out his flashlight and a few tools and began to remove the metal plate under the sink. The screws were rusted. Rostnikov would replace them with new ones from his toolbox. For now he needed a careful but firm grip to turn each screw, not wanting to crack the grooves. Once he got each screw out slightly, he put a few drops of oil from a small aluminum can into the space behind the screw head. After giving the oil a few seconds to soak through, he removed the plate and searched the space behind it with his flashlight.

The coupling of the two sections of drainpipe was directly in front of him, a piece of luck since many of the joints in the building were difficult to reach. He had both the right wrench and the strength, after using more oil, to turn the coupling. It took about four minutes to loosen the ring and free the pipe. Each twist brought forth an ear-punishing squeak of rusted metal nearly locked by time and decades of polluted wastewater.

Rostnikov placed the coupling carefully on the floor, pushed the freed lower pipe gently out of the way, and called for the bucket and the flexible auger. The older girl handed him the bucket. The younger girl handed him the rolled-up metal coil.

Rostnikov, lying on his back, pushed the coil upward slowly. Gradually the coil almost disappeared, and then he paused, feeling some resistance. He reached for the bucket and held it in one hand while he twisted the handle of the auger. He paused, pushed it a second time, and then quickly pulled it out of the pipe as a trickle of dark liquid dribbled down, falling deep inside the wall of the building. Rostnikov got the bucket under the pipe just in time. The trickle suddenly turned into a torrent as the combination of hair, pieces of metal, paper, and items of unknown origin came thundering out.

He turned his head away and held the bucket tightly. The muck was almost to the top of the bucket when the flow suddenly stopped.

Rostnikov carefully removed the bucket, which gave off a foul odor that got even Sharakov’s attention.

“What is that?” he called.

“I think it best not to know,” said Rostnikov.

He wanted to replace the two sections of pipe with two of the new plastic sections he had brought, but he checked his watch. He did not have the time. He did, however, replace the rusted connecter with a new plastic one. Then he put the plate that covered the piping back in place and replaced the old screws with new plastic ones.

Sweat-drenched and dirty, Rostnikov gently eased his way out from under the sink, grabbed the countertop, and pulled himself up. The girls were looking in the bucket.

“I think I see a bug, a big bug,” the younger child said.

“It would not surprise me,” said Rostnikov, washing his hands in the sink and drying them on his sweatshirt. He would wash off thoroughly in the shower when he got back to his apartment.

“I’ll be back when I can to put in new piping,” Rostnikov said as he and the girls moved past Sharakov, who grunted and continued to watch his melodrama.

Rostnikov had to carry the bucket. It was very heavy now and dangerously near to overflowing. He let each of the girls carry two sections of the relatively lightweight plastic pipe. They managed with difficulty and dignity.

“Go tell the Hungarians that their drain is fixed,” he said to the girls, who nodded like solemn, dutiful soldiers. “Then bring the pipes back to our apartment. You have done good work.”

Both girls smiled and hurried away.

By the time he got back to the apartment after going downstairs and outside to dump the putrid mess directly into the sewer, the girls were already in their night-clothes, men’s extralarge black T-shirts with the words THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE printed in English across the front.

Sarah finished getting the girls ready for bed while Rostnikov removed his left leg, placed it nearby, and showered using the heavy-duty grainy Chinese soap that went through even the dirtiest grease. He shampooed with just the right amount of American liquid Prell and was dry, leg back on and fully dressed, in ten minutes. He said good night to each girl and thanked them for their help.

“I’m going to dream about that bug,” said the older girl.

“It wasn’t a bug,” Rostnikov lied. “It was a piece of black rubber.”

The child sighed with relief, and Rostnikov went into the living room, closing the door behind him. Sarah sat at the table, a cup of tea for her husband in front of the empty chair across from her.

Rostnikov sat, sipped some tea, and said that he had to go back to work. He didn’t know for how long. Maybe an hour or two, maybe most of the night. He told her he still had almost two hours before he had to leave. Then he waited for her to tell him what was troubling her.

Sarah spoke softly, calmly, telling him what she felt and thought and what her cousin had said.

“I’ve been having seizures,” she explained. “I have medication from Leon that should stop them, but I may have more. I go blank. I think I shake. I wet myself. I don’t want the girls to see this happen. I don’t want you to see it happen, but you should be prepared. I should tell the girls and Iosef.”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov, reaching across the table to touch his wife’s hand. “I was wondering why I got chicken tabak tonight.”

“I will survive,” Sarah said, a confident smile on her full lips and pale face.

“And we will endure,” said Rostnikov. “Surviving and enduring are what Russians do best. We have almost made an art of it.”

“If the medication doesn’t work,” Sarah said calmly, “we will try another medication. If that, too, fails, the woman who operated on me, removed the tumor, will conduct a procedure to relieve the pressure in my brain. It is not an operation in the same sense as the one I had. This is a simple procedure that is almost certain to work and poses no threat to my life.”

Rostnikov said nothing.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said softly, “Leon would not lie to me.”

While Rostnikov had been lying on his back under the pipe holding the plastic bucket, Valentin Spaskov was sitting in the unmarked car across from the Moscow Television News office. The engine was off. Spaskov did not want to draw any attention. He had signed the vehicle out for surveillance of a suspected illegal arms dealer.

He watched each person exiting the building, waiting for Magda Stern. He knew she was inside. He had called from a public phone five minutes before he parked across from the building and asked if she was there. The woman who answered said she was, but she was in a meeting. Spaskov said he was Inspector Tkach and asked to leave Magda Stern a message that the new photographs would be ready for her to look at the next morning.

Valentin hardly noticed the cold. He was wearing civilian clothes and a lightweight jacket so he could move quickly when the time came. In the holster under the jacket was a fully-loaded Colt Delta 10mm Gold Cup that he had taken from the Trotsky Station evidence room. After he killed Magda Stern, he would clean the weapon and return it to the evidence room on a shelf containing dozens of weapons.

He had decided to use it because the killing might then be linked to a shooting in front of Moscow Television News almost a year ago. A popular newscaster and commentator had been shot as he exited the office. The man had, on the air, been critical of both the government and the rise of extremists. Valentin had no idea what Magda Stern’s political position might be. He simply planned to kill the woman nearby in the hope that it would be blamed on the same people who had committed the earlier murder and had never been caught.

If this were his district, he would have carefully supported such a suggestion. But this wasn’t his district, and he wasn’t at all certain whose district it was, considering the recent drawing of districts by the Ministry of the Interior. On more than one occasion, Valentin had been called upon to step in to negotiate jurisdiction over a crime because both Trotsky Station and another station claimed the territory.

The detectives from the Office of Special Investigation would, he was sure, not accept such a motive. The death of Magda Stern the night before she was to look at new photographs in the hope that she could identify her attacker would be too much of a coincidence. The detectives would conclude that her attacker and murderer was in one of the photographs. But which one? They would check, to the best of their ability, where each man photographed this day was at the time of each rape and beating. They might even eventually grow suspicious of Lieutenant Valentin Spaskov.

He would remain calm, cooperative. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he would now, this night, have to murder an innocent woman. The problem was that he did not know if he was capable of stopping his attacks. And now he considered that once he had murdered Magda Stern he might well murder his next victim.

She came out of the building walking quickly, pulling the collar of her coat around her neck to temper a winter wind that came out of the darkness carrying drifts of snow from the street and sidewalk. A few people came out with her. If she went somewhere with them, he would follow and have to kill her elsewhere, but the group went to the right and she moved alone to the left. The group was moving toward the nearby metro station. She was walking into a darkness that was barely relieved by streetlights blurred by blowing snow. She was cooperating fully in her own murder.

Valentin got out of the car quietly, normally, looking like a man who had someplace to go in the area. He crossed the street and slowly followed the woman. He remembered her cool, pale, pretty made-up face. He remembered her tall body and erect posture.

“God,” he said to himself, “I’m going to do it again, do it before I kill her.” It was the wrong thing to do. It would definitely point to the serial rapist and not to the political fanatics who had murdered the newsman, but Valentin knew that he could not control himself.

He quickened his pace, closing the distance between himself and Magda. She did not look back. There were no footsteps to be heard in the thin layer of snow on the sidewalk. He waited, following. There were hardly any people on the street. It was cold. It was late. A few cars were parked nearby, their hubcaps and windshield wipers removed for the night by their owners to keep them from being stolen. It was reasonably safe for him. Besides, he had little choice. The obsession had taken him. It had overridden his conviction that he had to murder the woman in front of him. Murder her he would, but first …

Valentin closed the distance between them to no more than six feet and then he knew. He felt it before he saw them. It was confirmed by the look of revenge on the hard, lovely face of Magda Stern, who turned suddenly to face him. Valentin stopped.

“Halt,” came a voice behind him. The voice was familiar. “Hands behind your head.”

Valentin did not think about what he did next. He closed the distance between himself and Magda Stern in three long, quick steps, moved behind her, and with one swift instinctive motion, put his left arm over her neck, pulled out the pistol, and put it to her head.

In front of him, over her shoulder, Valentin could now see Sasha Tkach and Elena Timofeyeva no more than a dozen yards away with pistols aimed at him.

“What is the point of this, Spaskov?” Elena asked him. “If you pull the trigger, we will kill you.”

“You know who I am now,” said Spaskov, the concern of the honest policeman coming to the fore. “I will not be taken in to face this woman’s charges, to stand in front of other women, to be humiliated, to have my family humiliated. It would be better to die in the street. I have nothing to lose by killing her.”

Magda Stern stood tall, making no sound, determined to give no satisfaction to the man who had attacked her and now threatened to kill her.

Both Elena and Sasha knew that Valentin Spaskov would probably not shoot Magda Stern first. His first shot would be at Sasha and then, whether Elena hesitated or fired knowing she might hit Magda, Spaskov would shoot Elena. Magda would be last.

The only one of the four people in the stalemate on the silent street wearing gloves was Magda Stern. The three police officers had no gloves so that they could more easily handle their weapons. Their hands were cold but steady.

“I need time to think,” said Valentin, pushing the woman slowly forward. “Move into the street. Give us room to pass. Don’t try to get behind me. Move now.”

“You have a wife, a beautiful child,” said Sasha. “Remember, I saw their pictures.”

“And you have a wife and two children,” said Valentin as Sasha and Elena moved into the street. “What would they do? What would they think if they found you were like me? I don’t want to kill you, but I will if you don’t give me time.”

Sasha was silent.

“You see?” said Valentin. “You have a great deal to lose.”

“You could get help,” said Elena. “We could get you psychological help. You haven’t killed anyone yet.”

“No,” said Valentin, turning Magda to face the two armed officers as he moved back toward the Moscow Television News office. “I’ll go to prison. My wife and child won’t be able to face me. Can’t you see I need time to think? How many times must I say it? Do you want to push me into doing something without having the chance to think?”

“Take your time, then,” said Elena. “Stop. Take your time. We won’t do anything as long as you don’t hurt her.”

Valentin continued to move, keeping Magda between himself and the two in the street with guns. As they approached the corner, Valentin moved himself and his captive into the street.

“I’m going to my car,” he said. “Stay back. Stay careful. I would guess that I am a better shot than either of you. I don’t want to shoot police officers. None of us wants a massacre. I just want time to decide what to do.”

“We can’t let you drive off,” said Sasha. “You know that.”

“You may have to,” said Valentin as he backed his way across the street, his arm tight around Magda’s neck. She was not cooperating, so he had to half drag her, causing his arm to tighten around her neck. Even with the increased pain and the difficulty breathing she refused to cooperate. Valentin admired her, and in spite of what was now happening, he wanted to have her. It was at this moment he knew he was surely mad.

Sasha and Elena followed, guns leveled as he moved to the car. He had left the door unlocked so he could get away quickly. Now he opened it and said, his voice shaking, not with fear but with emotion, “I am going to put her in the passenger seat. I will have to let her go, but I’ll keep the gun against her head. We are at the moment when you will have to shoot me and risk her life or let us get in.”

Valentin pushed Magda into the car. Sasha and Elena did not fire as he got in after his hostage and closed the door. But they did stand directly in front of the car, weapons at the ready, hands numb from the cold.

Spaskov did not try to start the car. He kept his weapon against Magda Stern’s head. Both Elena and Sasha realized at the same time what he was doing. The inside of the car was definitely not warm, but it was much warmer there than the outside. Soon Elena’s and Sasha’s hands would begin to lose feeling. Already the prickling sensation had begun.

Valentin looked at them through the frost-covered window. He could see their shapes in the street before him, and they could see the faint outline of Spaskov with the gun to Magda’s head.

The standoff was definitely in Spaskov’s favor. All he had to do was wait till the hands of the two who stood in front of the car were too cold to shoot.

The car was a Mercedes. Many police cars, marked and unmarked, were Mercedes, which were far more reliable than Russian-made cars. Even cold it would start quickly. He could run right into them and over them before they could react. Neither Elena nor Sasha could tell if the front window was bulletproof. It probably wasn’t, but they couldn’t be sure with the frost and shadows covering it.

Elena felt as if she were in a dream. Less than two hours ago, when Sasha called her to say he was picking her up and that Magda Stern would be leaving the Moscow Television News office at ten, she had been sitting in her aunt’s living room. The meal was over. Elena was confident that she had done a good job, not because Iosef had said so but because she knew she had. The conversation had been fine, and Anna had retired to her room to leave them alone.

Elena and Iosef had cleaned the dishes together, talking softly about work, family, his ideas and ambitions, her ideas and ambitions. The conversation had ranged from politics to books and movies, and they had discovered even more remarkable coincidences in their views, though Elena was a bit more pessimistic about the future of Russia and the world than Iosef. He attributed the difference to his experiences in the army. Almost naively, he assumed that things could probably not get much worse than that.

He had kissed her when the last pot was cleaned and the last dish put away. He had kissed her deeply and she had responded eagerly and when he had again asked her to marry him, she had been about to say “yes, yes, yes” when the phone rang and Sasha told her to come quickly.

She had expected the call, but not quite this early.

Iosef understood. He, too, was a police officer. It was another thing they had in common, that made him understand this sudden action in a way that might well be impossible for a husband or lover who was not a police officer. Iosef said he would go with her, but she had stopped him. It wasn’t his case. It was hers and Sasha’s, and if she showed up with Iosef, Sasha would surely feel offended by not having been consulted. Elena knew that she would feel the same in his place. Iosef had kissed her again, less passionately, but a long, moist kiss nonetheless. And then he had left, telling her to thank her aunt again for having him to dinner. He didn’t tell Elena to be careful. He knew she would be as careful as the situation allowed.

Now she stood next to Sasha, absolutely unsure of what the situation allowed, and her hands were definitely stiff with the cold. She could hold the gun in one hand and try to warm the other in her pocket, but she was right-handed and a weak shot with her left hand. If either she or Sasha tried to put a hand in a pocket, Valentin Spaskov might well take that moment to act. Besides, the pocket by now was not much warmer than the air. And if the windshield was bulletproof?

Sasha’s evening had not been as dramatic or romantic as Elena’s, but it had not been at all bad. Maya was clearly pleased with him and far more affectionate than she had been in a long time because of the stand he had taken with Lydia. The baby, Illya, was definitely getting better. Pulcharia, before she had gone to bed, had sat warm and close in Sasha’s lap listening to him read “The Snow Maiden.”

Now he was here, hands freezing to his gun, facing a car that could suddenly come to life and kill him. Or the policeman with a gun in a warmer hand inside the car, who could probably shoot better than Sasha could even with warm hands, might decide to come out shooting.

There was no knowing how long the standoff would have lasted or what the result would have been had Magda Stern not made the next and decisive move. Valentin was looking ahead, thinking about what would become of his wife and child regardless of what happened and gradually coming to the horrible conclusion that he would have to kill not only the woman at his side but the two police officers as well.

Valentin felt his hand pushed forward and a terrible pain as Magda bit him, bit him hard and deep enough to draw blood. Valentin fired, but the bullet thudded into the passenger-side door. Magda opened the door and jumped out, kicking it closed behind her and rolling away into the street.

Elena and Sasha moved instantly out of the direct path of the car and fired almost at the same time. And at the same time they realized that it was difficult to shoot straight with frozen fingers and that the car window in front of them was, indeed, bulletproof. They kept firing, knowing that even a bulletproof window was, in truth, only bullet resistant. The question was, how resistant was this window?

The window cracked, forming a beautiful spider web design. Magda Stern was on her feet now, running toward the doorway of the Moscow Television News offices.

The firing stopped. Elena and Sasha were almost out of bullets, and they had not penetrated the window. But what they had accomplished was to make it impossible to see out of the window. Suddenly the driver’s side door opened.

Elena and Sasha went to the ground on their stomachs, aiming toward the open door. Lieutenant Valentin Spaskov put out his left hand and Sasha shouted, “Come out slowly. Hands high. You know what to do.”

Valentin obeyed. In his bloody right hand he still held a gun. He stepped out onto the sidewalk.

“Now,” said Elena, “drop the gun.”

Blood was dripping in the snow. Spaskov hesitated, fathered the whisper of a sigh, and said, “Tell my wife I am sorry. Tell her I love her. Tell her I couldn’t help myself. Tell her I would like her to try to understand and to raise our child without telling her what her father did.”

“Drop the gun,” Elena repeated.

It seemed for an instant that he was about to drop his weapon. Instead he quickly put the barrel of the weapon to his ear and fired. Sasha closed his eyes. Elena watched in horror.

The body of Valentin Spaskov crumpled to the sidewalk.

Sasha and Elena got up, brushing snow from their coats, and approached the body. There was no doubt that he was dead. The blood and lack of motion told them that. But beyond what they saw, they could feel death before them.

Even so, Sasha kept his gun pointed at the body of Valentin Spaskov while Elena tucked her gun into the holster in her pocket and reached down to feel for a pulse she knew would not be there.

Yevgeny had insisted on sitting in the backseat of Georgi’s heap of a car with his automatic rifle across his lap. There wasn’t much room for him back there because the springs came through on one side of the seat, leaving little space for a passenger. Usually Leonid sat in the back, but Yevgeny had insisted, making Georgi and Leonid decidedly uncomfortable.

“It’s dark,” Georgi said, looking across at the old church that the Jews had converted to a temple. “There’s no one there.”

“Five more minutes,” said Yevgeny. “Eleven o’clock. I want to get started as badly as you do. We said eleven. We wait till eleven.”

“We wait till eleven,” Georgi said with a shrug.

“You have all the tools?” asked Yevgeny.

“You asked me that,” said Georgi.

“I’m asking again,” said Yevgeny.

“All the tools. In the trunk,” said Georgi.

He knows, Leonid thought. He knows. He’s never wanted to sit back there before. He wants to keep his eyes on us. Maybe when it’s over, he’ll shoot us. Maybe I should try to get behind him when we’re inside. Hit him with one of Georgi’s tools. Kill them both. Take my chances.

“It’s eleven,” said Georgi. “Let’s go.”

“Yes,” said Leonid, trying not to sound nervous and failing. “Let’s go.”

In answer, Yevgeny got out of the car, holding his gun low in one hand, pointed toward the ground. The door squeaked as he pushed it shut and waited for Georgi and Leonid to get out.

Yevgeny stood, as the wind blew and the snow danced, facing his two partners while Georgi opened the trunk as quietly as he could and handed Leonid some tools. Georgi himself hoisted a tarnished black crowbar over his shoulder and closed the trunk.

“In back. No talking till we’re inside,” Yevgeny whispered.

Georgi led the way with Leonid almost at his side and Yevgeny several steps back. The street was, as they had all expected, quiet. It wasn’t a residential neighborhood, mostly a row of old brick three-and four-story buildings housing offices and businesses.

The snow was thick behind the building. No one had been there for weeks. Yevgeny had anticipated this and worn his boots. Georgi always wore boots. Only Leonid was in shoes and found his socks and the cuffs of his pants growing moist and cold.

There was only a dim light from a street lamp nearly a half block away, but they could see well enough to make it to the rear window. Georgi propped his crowbar against the wall and reached for the window. He tried to simply push it open, but it didn’t budge. He reached for the crowbar and wedged it under the bottom of the window. The wood was old but frozen. He had to move the bar back and forth four or five times to get it in. When it was firmly in place, Georgi began to pull the bar down slowly. The window creaked, resisted, and then began to move upward as Georgi pulled down. Ice in the corners of the window crackled, and the lock snapped much louder than any of them had expected.

They stopped for a moment and looked around. Nothing.

The window was open. Georgi placed the crowbar so that it would keep the window from falling closed as they climbed in. Georgi went first, then Leonid and finally Yevgeny, entering the most awkwardly of all because he kept his finger on the trigger of his weapon and his thigh still hurt from where the rabbi had kicked him.

Yevgeny’s shoes touched something only about two feet inside below the window. He had heard a metallic sound when the other two had climbed in, and now he caused the same noise.

Georgi reached toward Yevgeny in the almost nonexistent light. Yevgeny stumbled to his left out of the bigger man’s reach and tumbled onto his back. He rolled quickly and leveled his weapon at Georgi, who removed the crowbar from the window with one hand and brought the window down slowly and quietly with the other.

Yevgeny pulled his small flashlight from his pocket and shined it on the faces of his two partners. If there had been any doubt before, now there was none. This was a partnership that would end in hell. Yevgeny lowered his weapon.

Both Georgi and Leonid turned on their flashlights, bending low. There was a small platform with a podium. Behind the podium was a cabinet. On either side of the cabinet were framed documents written, Yevgeny was sure, in Hebrew. In front of the podium was the expanse of the floor. Folding chairs were piled in one corner of the room.

“They made it easy for us,” Georgi whispered, continuing to move his beam around the room. The entrance to the temple was to his right. He knew there was a small alcove there with a tiny office big enough for a table and chair.

All three men could now see the aluminum tubing that they had stepped on. The tubing ran around the room, connecting to four stoves with pipes that went out through the ceiling. The stoves were cold and so, too, was the room.

Yevgeny cradled his weapon and moved to the center of the room, shining his light across the floor, getting his bearings.

“We start in each corner and take five steps toward the center of the room,” Yevgeny said.

This was the first the other two had heard of such a plan. Either Yevgeny had a plan that they could not fathom or he had information that he had not shared with them. In fact, Yevgeny had taken Igor’s letter and discovered that Igor had not told them the precise location inside the old church, but that didn’t matter now.

“We move quietly. We work as quietly as we can. The boards should come up easily, and it should be buried no more than a foot deep. The ground will be frozen. We have no time to waste.”

The plan meant that one corner was not covered, but the odds were three to one in their favor, and if they were wrong, all three could work from the last corner. They had time if they worked quickly and hard.

Yevgeny had no hope of putting the dirt and floorboards back before they fled. Instead he planned to push over the cabinet and podium and, if they could do so quietly enough, pull at least one of the stoves from the wall and tip it over. The goal was to make this look like a desecration tied in to the killings. He had even had the foresight to bring a small can of black spray paint so he could leave a few crude swastikas on the walls. The can bulged in his jacket pocket.

Yevgeny took a long iron bar from Leonid, who backed away from him. Then they all retreated to separate corners and began to pace off toward the center of the room. They placed their small flashlights on the floor, the beams crossing one another. Yevgeny put his weapon on the floor at his side, where he could reach it quickly. The men were now separated by about ten feet.

Yevgeny reached down to find a space between the boards at his feet into which he could insert the steel bar. His fingers touched the wood beneath him and he pulled at it hard. The board came up easily, suddenly hitting him across the cheek.

He dropped the board and went to one knee for his weapon. In the light that shone up from the floor, the faces of Leonid and Georgi looked ghostly pale, sunken holes for eyes, dark, upward shadows in skeleton grins.

Each of them had found the same thing. The boards beneath them had simply come up with a slight pull. It was Georgi who picked up his flashlight first and shined it at the ground under the board he had placed at his side.

“Someone’s been here,” Georgi said. “Someone’s been digging here.”

“And here,” said Leonid.

Yevgeny turned his light downward and said nothing. The other two were right.

“How did you know where to start digging, five paces from the corner?” asked Georgi, hoisting his crowbar like a baseball bat.

“Igor had a letter,” said Yevgeny, trying to think.

“One of us came here and got it,” said Georgi.

“Yes,” said Yevgeny as Georgi stepped forward and Leonid stepped back.

“No,” came a new voice.

The three men threw the beams of their lights across the walls and into the corners and then toward the alcove as overhead ceiling lights came on and two men stepped into view. One was the rabbi who had beaten them in the street. The other was the policeman, the Washtub, Rostnikov, holding something in his arms. Whatever it was, was covered by a white cloth.

“This is what you are looking for,” said Rostnikov, pulling the cloth away to reveal a tarnished stone-encrusted figure of a dog or wolf. Even after a century under the earth, the creature was magnificent. “When it is expertly cleaned and restored, it will go to either the Hermitage, from which it was stolen, or to the Kremlin Museum. You have murdered for nothing. You do not even have the excuse of murdering for hatred, simply greed.”

“Put it down and back away,” said Yevgeny, aiming his weapon at the two men.

Rostnikov didn’t move.

“How many are outside waiting?” Yevgeny asked.

“None,” said Rostnikov.

“Leonid,” said Yevgeny.

Leonid went to the window and looked out cautiously, half expecting a bullet through his forehead. He rushed across the room and did the same on the street side.

“I don’t see anyone,” Leonid said.

“You can’t be that stupid,” said Yevgeny.

“Thank you,” said Rostnikov, still holding the golden wolf.

“Georgi,” Yevgeny said, “when I shoot, you take the wolf. Leave the tools here. We go through the front door. Leonid, you turn off the lights and close the door.”

There was nothing more to say. Yevgeny pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He pulled again. Nothing.

“We found the gun while you were at work this morning,” said Rostnikov. “Behind a panel in the ceiling of the bathroom down the hall from your room. We disarmed it.”

“You knew before you came to the laundry,” said Yevgeny.

Rostnikov shrugged.

“You wanted to catch us here,” Yevgeny went on.

Belinsky could take no more. He strode across the floor, pushed Yevgeny’s gun to the side, and slapped the young man with the back of his right hand. Yevgeny’s head spun to the side. A tooth spat from his open mouth. The young man staggered back, dropping his gun, stunned, mouth bloody. The rabbi slapped him five more times and said, “One for each of the men you murdered.”

“I don’t think we’ll need guns, will we?” asked Rostnikov.

Georgi took another step forward past the rabbi, hoisting his crowbar high. Once past the smaller man he advanced on Rostnikov, who still held the wolf and blocked the doorway.

“Give it to me or I’ll break your head,” Georgi threatened.

“That will be a problem,” said Rostnikov. “I don’t think you can hold it in one arm. It is quite heavy and if you use both arms, you will have to put the crowbar down. It is a dilemma.”

Yevgeny was on the floor, using his sleeve in an effort to stop the blood from his nose and mouth. Leonid had backed against the wall and sagged to a sitting position on the aluminum tunnel.

“Now,” demanded Georgi. “Leonid, come.”

Leonid paid no attention.

When Georgi, crowbar upraised, stood directly before Rostnikov, the inspector dropped the wolf. It landed on Georgi’s right foot. Every man in the room heard the bones cracking followed by a shriek of pain and the crowbar clanking across the room in a wild spin into the aluminum tubing, which clanged loudly. Even this did not rouse Leonid.

Georgi’s eyes rolled back and he slumped to the floor and onto his back, unconscious with the shock of sudden, horrible agony. For an instant, Rostnikov wondered if the big man on the floor would lose his foot.

With the help of Rabbi Belinsky, Rostnikov handcuffed Yevgeny and Leonid together and got them out to their car, where Zelach sat behind the wheel. Rostnikov then went back into Congregation Israel for the wolf, which he put in the trunk of the car. Finally he returned to carry the limp, semi-conscious Georgi Radzo, who, Belinsky estimated, weighed well over 220 pounds. Rostnikov had lifted him with no great effort in spite of having to do so with only one good leg.

Outside, after turning off the lights and locking the door, the rabbi took a handful of snow and gently put it to the mouth of Yevgeny Tutsolov, who sat in the backseat of the police car handcuffed to the zombielike Leonid, who did not even react to the weight of Georgi unconsciously slumped against him.

“That should stop the bleeding,” said Belinsky, examining Yevgeny’s face.

Yevgeny didn’t answer. His hand was cuffed to the dead weight of Leonid, and he was at the mercy of the mad Jew.

A little more than an hour later, when the three murderers were behind bars and Belinsky had gone home, Rostnikov entered Petrovka and went up to see the director of the Office of Special Investigation. The lights were on and the door open. Rostnikov entered, holding the wolf in one arm, and then walked in front of Pankov’s desk to the inner door. It came open before he had to shift the burden again.

Director Yakovlev stood back to let him in and pointed to the conference table, where a thick towel lay. Rostnikov placed the wolf on the towel. The Yak said nothing. He shook Rostnikov’s hand and stood at the door ushering his deputy director out. He closed the door behind him.

Twenty minutes later Rostnikov took off his left leg and crawled into bed under the thick blanket next to Sarah.

“You’re all right?” she asked dreamily.

“I’m all right,” he answered.

And then they slept.