Tarnished Icons

FIVE

It was called Trotsky Station by the policemen who worked there and by most of the veterans from other law enforcement agencies who had dealt with or heard about it. Actually this police station, like the other 133 stations in Moscow, had a number. Only the administrators ever used the number. No one was quite sure why it was called Trotsky Station.

The primary tale was that Trotsky and a group of friends had lived for a time in the building. It was certainly old enough. The large stone blocks it was built with probably had been white once. Now they were gray. The stairs to the second floor needed repair. The walls needed plastering and painting, and the heating system was barely functional. The building also had a distinctive, and certainly not pleasant, moldy odor. The floor tiles were loose, and the toilets in the rest room were reluctant at best.

Another reason less often given for the Trotsky name was that those assigned to the district had a reputation for effective brutality. It was said that the major in charge during the 1950s had actually smashed a murder suspect’s head with a hammer-a death similar to Trotsky’s.

Elena and Sasha sat in the anteroom in front of the office of a Lieutenant Spaskov to whom they had been sent by the clerk downstairs, who sat behind a barred window that made him look more like a prisoner than a police officer. The uniformed man, with an ageless pock-marked face, had barely looked up when they identified themselves.

Sasha had said they wanted to see whoever was in charge of ongoing investigations. When the man behind the bars had asked which investigation, Elena said, “The rapes.”

“Which …?” the man had begun, and then he had looked up at them. “Lieutenant Spaskov on the second floor, Room 2. He’s in a meeting in his office. I think he’ll be done soon.”

So they now sat on a wooden bench outside four offices with no names on the doors but numbers over each. They could make out the sound of voices from a few of the offices but no distinct words. In Russia, government officials had learned to keep their voices down and their conversations quiet.

“This is a waste of time,” Sasha said.

“You have a better lead?” answered Elena.

“An old woman got a glimpse of a man who tried to rob her ten years ago. He may be the rapist. Now she sees a policeman two or three times in a police car in Leningrad Square and declares it is the man.”

“She gave a description,” said Elena quietly as she unbuttoned her jacket.

“Which could fit a few million men in Moscow and half or more of the police,” he said, slumping on the bench. “I need some coffee.”

There were voices in Room 2; one in particular was deep, confident. Occasionally another voice or two would respond.

“How is your aunt?” Sasha said, holding his head, which cried for coffee.

“Anna Timofeyeva is fine,” said Elena, looking forward at Room 3, from which no voices came. “She and your mother get along well.”

“My mother follows the agreement?” he asked.

“Usually,” said Elena. “She comes when she is invited, and when Anna wants her to go, she says she is tired and needs to rest. Your mother is less inclined to follow the rule about not complaining about you, Maya, the children, and the failure of the new Russia to protect her son. She can’t stop. Aunt Anna can take more of it than I can. I dread walking down that corridor at night and hearing your mother’s voice behind my aunt’s door.”

“I know how you feel,” said Sasha.

“Your mother supports the Nationalist Party,” Elena said.

“Just talk,” he said, trying to sit upright in the hope that it might ease the tension of his caffeineless headache. “It was probably a bad idea to have her move into your building, but we were desperate.”

Elena shrugged and said, “Aunt Anna seems to find your mother amusing and distracting if a bit too loud. Your mother is no fool. She is, however, protectively conditioned to act like one. Eventually the act, if played long enough, becomes reality.”

Sasha threw his hair back from his forehead and looked at his partner, who turned her clear, round face to his, prepared for attack.

“You’re right,” he said.

“She’s not allowed in the door without her hearing aid,” said Elena, “but I don’t think it works properly, or she just has too many years of shouting to overcome her hearing loss.”

“Going home to my mother can be depressing,” he said, “but she is good with the children. She worries about me. She talks with affection about your aunt.”

“But not about me,” said Elena.

“She finds you cold and distant,” he said, now closing his eyes.

“Perhaps, but I do not want to cultivate too close a relationship to your mother,” said Elena as the door to Room 2 opened.

Three uniformed policemen wearing helmets and carrying Kalishnikov automatic rifles stepped out. They were all young. They wore their supposedly bulletproof jackets outside their uniforms. The jackets were of no use against weapons such as the ones they were carrying, and criminals increasingly had weapons far more powerful than those of the police. The jackets were slightly cumbersome, but they were required. The three men, all in their twenties, moved quickly down the hall past the two seated detectives.

A man appeared in the doorway, at least six feet tall, medium build, with thinning dark hair and a mustache, which was common in many officers. At first they grew them thinking it would make them look older. Later some kept them simply because they had grown accustomed to them. It looked good on this man in blue slacks, a blue shirt, and a leather jacket, unzipped.

“Spaskov,” he said, introducing himself as the two detectives rose.

Elena and Sasha introduced themselves and showed their cards. Spaskov stepped back so they could enter his office. It was surprisingly large and surprisingly empty-a desk, a chair behind it, four wooden chairs in front of it, nothing on the walls, and a file cabinet in one corner across from the desk on which there sat two wire boxes, both neatly piled with reports. One small, framed photograph and one file were on the desk in front of the chair. There were no windows.

“Would either of you like tea or coffee?” Spaskov said.

“Coffee,” said Sasha gratefully.

“Nothing,” said Elena.

Spaskov left the office and the two detectives sat in silence till he returned moments later with two white mugs. He handed one to Sasha, who thanked him and immediately took a drink. It was awful-murky, and stale-but it was coffee.

“Frankonovich says you have some information on the rapes,” Spaskov said, sitting not behind his desk but at one of the wooden chairs before it. Elena and Sasha pulled up their chairs to face him.

“Most of the attacks came in this district,” said Elena.

Spaskov nodded emphatically.

“Brutal,” he said. “What he has done … When I was promoted, Major Lenonov assigned me the case. I interviewed the victims, at least the ones who came forward or were hospitalized and reported by the hospital. Some of them were badly injured, permanently injured. No description. The man is strong, as the report shows. He is probably medium height. There seems to have been no pattern other than the attacks occur at night on women who are alone. Young, old, some girls. I will get you a copy of our file on the case.”

Spaskov drank some of the hot coffee from his mug.

“The Office of Special Investigation has been assigned the case,” said Tkach. “We have a new lead.”

Spaskov was placing his mug on his desk when Sasha spoke. He paused and turned with interest.

“New lead?”

“Witness,” said Elena.

Spaskov sat back to listen.

“An old woman was robbed almost ten years ago,” said Sasha. “She wasn’t raped but she thinks the man was trying to rape her. He hit her on the head from behind, but she fought back, fought him off, got a look at his face. The attack bore striking resemblances to the reported rapes that began four years later.”

Spaskov looked incredulous.

“I know,” said Sasha, warming his hands on the mug. “The woman is old. The cases may not be related. By now her recollection of the man may be a blur, a confusion. She might identify a perfectly innocent man.”

“She claims she has seen the man since,” said Elena. “She seems certain.”

“Where?” asked Spaskov.

“In a police car,” said Sasha.

“She says the man who attacked her was a police officer?” said Spaskov.

“Yes,” said Elena. “She says she saw him in a police car two or three times about three years ago, all around Kievskaya railway station.”

Spaskov nodded, finished his coffee, and put the cup down on his battle-scarred desk.

“Does she have a time of day? How good is the identification? I’ve been in this district almost twenty years. I know every patrol car officer.”

“She says it was during the day each time, between three and five,” said Elena. “The policeman was dark, wore a cap, had brown eyes and a small white scar on his face.”

Spaskov was momentarily lost in thought.

“A number of officers have scars on their faces,” he said. “I’ll go check immediately, but I think your witness is probably wrong.”

Spaskov left again, taking his and Sasha’s mugs. He didn’t offer more coffee, but what Sasha had taken in was probably enough to tide him over, especially if he could convince Elena to give him three or four of the aspirin she carried in her bag.

Spaskov came back. In his hands was a file, which he handed to Sasha, and a notebook.

“Assignment reports are bulky,” he said, sitting. “I copied some of the schedules that might fit. You can look through the whole thing downstairs if you like. If the woman did see her assailant and he was a police officer, there were two regular afternoon patrols in that area, same officers for at least five years. Two of the officers were army veterans, joined the force after your witness was attacked. One of the officers on patrol at that time is dead, died in a car accident while off duty a little over a year ago. He can’t have committed the recent rapes, obviously. And the last unlikely suspect is retired now. No scar. He works as a guard at an electronics storage warehouse. I know him well, name is Peotor Grinsk. I can’t believe he could be your man, but here is a file photograph of him, which I would like returned.”

Spaskov handed the photograph to Elena. Sasha leaned over to look. The man in the small photograph had nearly blond hair and no scar.

“Peotor is short, stocky, and, as the data in his file shows, he has blue eyes. He is married, married young, has a granddaughter now. But you are welcome to him as a suspect. Now I must go. The men who passed you in the hall are on the way to the home of a known drug dealer. I should be there, though it will be of little use. We have one hundred ten officers in this district and more than seventy thousand citizens, about a quarter of whom seem to be involved in criminal activity of some kind.”

Sasha and Elena knew what he meant. The drug dealer would have retained one of the new specialists who might be a lawyer. The specialist would know whom to bribe and who had secrets they would not want revealed. The specialist would have information on members of the police and courts. The drug dealer would probably have connections with a mafia. He would be back in business within a week and spend no more than a night or two in the station’s lockup. Sasha and Elena both knew about lockups in Moscow. It would not be a pleasant night or two for the drug dealer, even if he found some guards he could bribe.

“If you need anything more, let me know. I want to catch this rapist. I have a wife and a young daughter. I want him. I want him alone in an interrogation room. But between us, Peotor is not your man, and your witness sounds far from reliable.”

Sasha looked at Elena as if the lieutenant’s words confirmed his opinion.

“I must leave now,” said Spaskov. “You can take the file with you and make a copy. I would like it back.”

Sasha and Elena nodded. Nothing they found in the file was very helpful or new. There was a sheet on each victim with a photograph. Some of the women were battered beyond recognition. All looked blank and confused. None had given a description, only a sense of the man’s size and a vague account of a deep voice that might have been purposely disguised.

Nonetheless, they walked the almost eight blocks in the snow to the apartment of Ludmilla Henshakayova and showed her the photograph of Officer Grinsk. The old woman barely glanced at it.

“That’s not the man,” she said. “I know the man. I’ll never forget him. I have seen him. He is a policeman. I told you.”

“Anyone could be mistaken,” said Elena gently.

Ludmilla looked at the young woman and answered, “About many things, but not about this.”

The morning was growing a bit warmer, but it was still cold and white with snow. Sasha and Elena stood in front of Ludmilla’s apartment. A trolley bus drove slowly by, its wheels crunching tire patterns in the thin layer of snow that had accumulated since the street was cleared early that morning.

“And now?” asked Sasha.

“You know,” she said.

Sasha shook his head and watched the trolley pull away down the street. They would reinterview every victim, try to discover something others had missed, try to build a profile from bits of information, most of which, like Ludmilla’s, would be flawed.

Paulinin rubbed his head. His hair was probably in dire need of washing. But Paulinin was only one odd exhibit in this lower-level laboratory of Petrovka. Iosef had heard about the man and about the place, but now that he was actually inside it, the laboratory exceeded even his more extreme imaginings. Large, yes, and amazingly cluttered. Tables filled the room, and to get around you had to walk through a maze of them and past shelves piled with oddities, most of which Iosef could neither absorb nor identify.

There were shelves of glass jars filled with animal organs, probably human. Brains and hearts were the most common. There were pans piled high in a sink. Books and scrawled notes and reports were scattered everywhere, even on the floor near Paulinin’s desk in a far rear corner of the room illuminated by about a dozen hanging lightbulbs, all covered with green metal shades that reflected downward. The room was remarkably bright. The curiosities were clearly visible: machines of various sorts; a few of them with spaces for or containing test tubes; a cardboard box of bright, untarnished tools ranging from scalpels to hammers and chisels. Iosef had almost banged into a shelf containing boxes of bones.

Before they had begun, Paulinin had offered Karpo and Iosef some tea. They both accepted and Paulinin poured the liquid from a pot on a hot plate near the sink. The tea was served in glass measuring cups. Iosef tried not to think about how well Paulinin had washed the cup or about what had been in it before the tea.

“Behold,” Paulinin said, looking down at the package Karpo and Iosef had retrieved from the mail room. The scientist smiled. “We are dealing with a brilliant technologist. Not a genius. Not as smart as I am, but brilliant, a worthy criminal for a change.”

“And what makes you say that?” asked Iosef.

Paulinin looked at Iosef as if he were first noticing the young man.

“You are Rostnikov’s son,” he said. “I heard you had joined the chaos of mingled purposes teeming over my head, the investigators bumping into one another, contaminating evidence, going to one of those incompetent so-called pathologists with their bodies. Emil Karpo and your father are the only ones who know what they are doing, and sometimes I am not so sure about Rostnikov.”

“The package,” Iosef said.

“He will learn,” said Karpo to Paulinin after drinking some tea.

Iosef drank some tea. It was not nearly as offensive as he had expected. Perhaps it did not contain the essence of some specimen after all.

“No X rays were possible,” said Paulinin. “Can you imagine someone going through the trouble of lining the package with a thin layer of lead, the thickness of a sheet of paper, to prevent X rays? I weighed it to the gram. I smelled it. I calculated contents by density and composition. I did this by inserting a small tube and hypodermic needle into the bottom of the package between the two layers of lead. The tip of the needle just penetrated the envelope. It was a slight risk. I did it inside the bomb squad’s iron tub.”

Iosef was about to ask what the scientist had discovered, but he saw the warning look on Karpo’s pale face and said nothing.

“I was right,” said Paulinin. “There is a one-inch-thick block of birch in the package. It is simply wood-nothing attached to it, nothing inside. There are three sheets of paper. And there is a mechanism made of aluminum attached to a claylike substance.”

“A bomb,” Iosef said before he could stop himself.

Instead of being irritated, Paulinin looked extremely pleased as he turned to the young man.

“No,” said Paulinin. “He anticipated the possibility that someone as capable as I might inspect the package. I inserted a fiber-optic probe through the hole I had made with the hypodermic. I probed gently till I saw enough to convince me. It is a fake bomb. The clay is clay. The mechanism is little more than a flimsy mousetrap device set to click when the package is opened.”

“A joke?” asked Iosef.

“A challenge,” said Paulinin with satisfaction.

Karpo wondered where the scientist had obtained the use of expensive fiber-optic instruments to conduct his probe. The logical conclusion, since Paulinin was almost unfunded, was that he had snuck into a laboratory somewhere.

“I took the fingerprints that were usable from the package,” said Paulinin, “but none of them are the bomber’s.”

“How can you tell?” asked Iosef.

“Smell it.”

Karpo leaned over and smelled the package.

“Do you smell it?” asked Paulinin.

“Something faint,” said Karpo. “A powder residue.”

Iosef felt like an idiot, but he leaned over and smelled the package. Nothing.

“Latex gloves,” said Paulinin. “That’s what you smell. He wore lightly powdered latex gloves. The package is safe to open. I should like it back with the original papers inside, after you copy them. They will also contain no fingerprints.”

Karpo nodded, finished his tea, and put his cup down on an open spot on the table between a metal object painted black and an empty glass container. Iosef did the same.

“Can you get me anything that’s left of the bombs, the previous letter bombs?” asked Paulinin. “I’m sure the bomb squad dolts have destroyed whatever might be of use, and they’d never think of asking me, but there may be something. This man is a worthy opponent.”

“We will do what we can,” said Karpo.

“Lunch, chess?” said Paulinin.

“Tomorrow, one o’clock,” said Karpo.

When they were out in the hall of the lower level of Petrovka and the heavy door to Paulinin’s laboratory had slammed shut, sending a metallic echo down the hall, Iosef said, “He’s crazy.”

“He is also a genius,” said Karpo.

Karpo carried the package as they walked.

Within three minutes, they had set the package on the desk of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, who looked up at Karpo, who nodded. It was enough to let Rostnikov know it was safe to open the package.

He did so with the sharp blade of his small pocket knife.

“Fingerprints?” asked Rostnikov.

“Paulinin says there will be none,” said Karpo. “Latex gloves.”

Iosef stood dumbfounded. On the word of a madman in the basement, his father was opening a package that could explode and kill them all if Paulinin was wrong. Iosef had seen mangled bodies when he was in the army in Afghanistan. He had seen what remained of soldiers and civilians who had stepped on small mines hidden in sand.

Rostnikov reached in and pulled out the contents of the package, laying each piece neatly on the desk-the fake bomb and clay, the thin sheets of lead, the block of birch, and the three sheets of paper. Rostnikov laid the paper before him. The top page was typed and said: “I wonder how many hours and how much sweat were spent before you decided to open this. Probably enough so that it is past today’s mail delivery and the letter bomb I sent has already gone off. Meanwhile, enclosed is the declaration to be made on television. I will have made my point if it is delivered to the people of Moscow. I will stop the bombs and I will wait to see what, if anything, will be done. I expect nothing will be done. I expect I will resume my bombing. More will die, more from the hands of those in power than from me.”

It was unsigned. Rostnikov handed the letter to Karpo, who read it slowly where he stood.

Rostnikov read the two single-spaced pages titled “Declaration to the People of Russia.” The declaration was a demand to dismantle and destroy all nuclear facilities, to clean up all Russian nuclear dump sites, and to cease any nuclear research, whether military, industrial, or medical. The declaration cited examples of the dangers of each and the threat to Russian citizens. The writer was educated, well-informed, and probably as out of touch with reality as Paulinin, Rostnikov concluded.

“Now?” asked Iosef.

“Now,” said his father, “we wait for the bomb to go off and the bomber to call me.”

“Television?” asked Iosef.

“I will ask,” said Rostnikov. “I am confident that the demand to read the declaration will be denied.”

“Paulinin would like to examine whatever remnants or traces of past letter bombs exist,” said Karpo.

Rostnikov picked up the phone on his desk and pushed three buttons. Pankov answered. Rostnikov asked to speak to the director and was put through immediately.

Karpo and Iosef stood listening as Rostnikov reported on the package and Paulinin’s request. Rostnikov listened and then hung up.

“You can pick up the bomb remnants from the bomb squad. They are being informed that they are to cooperate. It is almost certain that the bomber’s demands will not be met.”

Karpo nodded, turned, and left the office with Iosef right behind.

Rostnikov then ate at his desk, a sandwich prepared by his wife, who had made a request that he would take care of that very evening. Sarah had also prepared a thermos of tepid but sweet tea. Rostnikov had four reasons for eating in today. First, he was waiting for the report of a letter bombing that the bomber had promised. Second, he was waiting for a call from the bomber, who would want to know if Rostnikov had received his package. Third, he was waiting for a call from a former black marketeer who was now a legitimate businessman. The man had promised to find the ducting Rostnikov needed to work on Belinsky’s synagogue. The fourth reason for eating at his desk was that it was easier than walking on the artificial leg. He had been getting plenty of practice at doing that. He could use an hour or two seated at his desk.

The phone rang before Rostnikov had finished his sandwich.

Avrum Belinsky sat reading in a wooden chair that had been placed outside of Rostnikov’s office by Akardy Zelach, whose desk was in the room of five cubicles across the hall. Belinsky had not called in advance. He had slept fitfully, dreaming of a war in the streets of small towns, shooting at Syrians, being shot at. Flimsy walls of small one-and two-story buildings crumbled or exploded from shells that would have made small holes or scraped out ruts in larger, more solid buildings of the big cities. He had seen friends die, and he had killed more than once. That was both long ago and not long ago in his memory.

Avrum had come to Petrovka after his morning prayers. It had been a long journey with a stop at the synagogue to see if it was still there. It was. Untouched. But a truck was waiting at the door when he arrived, and a man sat in the cab of the truck, a burly man with a coat and cap and a scarf around his neck. The man was smoking and looking lost in thoughts or memories. The motor was not running.

Belinsky had approached the truck and startled the driver, who rolled down his window, no mean feat in this weather and considering the age of the truck.

“Belinsky?” asked the driver in a rasp of a voice that suggested a tonsillectomy had been botched in his childhood.

“Yes.” The man rolled the window up, got out of the truck, and closed the door with a slam.

“I knocked,” he said.

“It’s still early.”

“I have many things to do,” said the truck driver, who was thin and much older than he had first appeared. “Are you strong?”

“Reasonably,” said Belinsky.

“Good. This isn’t one of those days you can’t work?” asked the man, holding back a sniffle. His nose was quite red.

“No,” said Belinsky. “That’s Friday night and Saturday.”

“Good. Yuri has a sore back. He’s my helper. He’s good for nothing, but he’s strong and he’s my sister’s son,” said the driver. “Let’s go.”

The driver moved to the rear of the truck, pulled out a ring of keys, and opened the padlock. Belinsky stood back and watched as the doors squeaked open to reveal shiny aluminum sheets of various sizes and a variety of joints and angles.

“Let’s go,” the man said with resignation, and driver and rabbi slowly began to move the metal into the small synagogue.

It was especially slow because the driver was old and the rabbi probably should have been in a hospital.

That had been several hours ago. At Petrovka, Avrum asked to see Rostnikov. The young uniformed man at the guard cage looked at him with less than respect when he said his name was Rabbi Belinsky. The guard made a call and apparently got Zelach, who told the guard to let the rabbi in.

A second guard, who was supposed to be outside the cage, arms at the ready, had come into the cage to warm up a bit, though it was not particularly warm there. The second guard, who looked younger than the first, stepped out and pointed toward the entrance of the U-shaped building. The courtyard was a white rolling garden of snow hills. A wind, chill and whistling low, swirled around the U, sending up puffs of snow.

The lobby of Petrovka was dark. There was a desk inside with another uniformed man. This man was older than the guards and wore a brown uniform and no hat. His head was practically shaved at the sides, and his short brown hair was brushed back. Behind him stood a uniformed guard carrying Kalishnikov automatic weapons. Belinsky recognized the guns. He had seen them in the hands of the PLO, Syrians, Lebanese. Uzis against Kalishnikovs. Belinsky told himself that was another place and time. This was a new Russia. Another armed guard stood at a stairway nearby.

All three armed guards looked at Belinsky, though they pretended not to. Four people came down the stairs arguing. All were in their forties or fifties; only one wore a uniform. It was a military uniform. The military man was doing all the talking. Emphatic, certain, loud, confident, he spoke slowly while the others listened with respect.

“Yulia Piskovaya,” said the military man in disgust. “We bring the case against Yulia Piskovaya. She spends eleven years as a court stenographer and then, suddenly, she’s a judge. How do you talk to someone like that?”

“She’ll find him guilty,” one of the other men said wearily. “She finds everyone guilty. Don’t worry, Constantin.”

“I don’t like dealing with fools,” the older, disgusted man said.

They passed and Avrum turned his attention back to the man with short hair behind the desk.

“Someone will be down for you,” said the man, writing in the ledger before him. “Belinsky, David.”

“Avrum,” the rabbi corrected.

“Abe-ra-ham,” the guard strung out flatly, but making clear what he thought of the Jewish name. “To see Inspector Rostnikov. He is expecting you?”

“He will not be surprised,” said Belinsky, feeling dizzy but not showing it.

The man grunted, examined the rabbi, and went back to his book, pretending to work.

Akardy Zelach was there soon after, awkwardly greeting Belinsky and just as awkwardly asking if it was all right to walk up since there was a problem with the elevators. He didn’t add that there was always a problem with the elevators.

Though it became an ordeal, Belinsky kept pace with the detective, who fortunately did not move quickly. Then they were in the hallway, and Zelach was fetching a chair and asking him if he wanted some coffee. Belinsky declined and Zelach hesitated for a moment, unsure of what he should do next, watch the visitor or go back to his desk. He knew better than to discuss what little he knew of the murders with the rabbi. All clergymen made Zelach uncomfortable. His father, who died when Akardy was a boy, had hated all religions but his own. He was a loyal and unthinking Communist policeman who believed Stalin was a god to be worshiped. Zelach’s father saved his greatest venom for the Jews, and his mother made it clear, through her silence, that she agreed with her husband. She had feared his rages and did her best to agree with his frequent and fervent lectures on everything from collective farming to Jews. Gradually, because her husband was smarter than she, she came to share his prejudices, though she’d had none when she had married.

Even before the Soviet Union ended and the Communists fell into disgrace, Zelach’s mother had returned to the Russian Orthodox Church and had told her son that his father had been right about most things, except Stalin: He was no god, but a mass murderer. Years later Akardy, who admittedly was slow, was just beginning to reconcile the differences between his dead father and his living mother and what he had learned of tolerance from Rostnikov and his coworkers in the Office of Special Investigation.

Zelach disappeared across the hall.

The blow to his neck had been the worst, Belinsky decided as he sat waiting. His neck was sore to the touch, and it had throbbed when he was helping the truck driver. The cut on his chest was certainly worthy of a long line of stitches. There were a few other lesser injuries, and there was a possibility that the small finger on his right hand was broken. He had packed it in snow, taped it, and taken some codeine pills that he had stored in a drawer in his small room. The wound on his chest he had treated by a thorough cleaning with soap and water and then stinging peroxide. The wound appeared to be clean. He had taped it neatly, expertly, probably better than would have been done in a Russian hospital. He would bear a scar, but that did not bother him. It would join the other scars both inside and outside his firm body. The tape had probably loosened a bit from the hour or so of moving metal and parts from the truck, but it would hold till he could re-dress it. It was his neck that troubled him most. Turning it was painful. The man had hit him hard but didn’t know what he was doing. If Avrum had delivered such a blow, he would have done it correctly, and his opponent would be dead.

What had happened was curious. So curious that Avrum had lain awake most of the night waiting for the dawn thinking about the event, doing his best to ignore his pain.

Avrum had kept walking toward the two young men in front of him. Before he had reached them, the two stood together to block the sidewalk and the one on the right said, “Jew, if you live through this night, you are to take yourself and the rest of your filth out of Moscow. You are to sell your church to anyone foolish enough to buy it. We will probably let you live so you can do this, but we can’t guarantee it.”

Belinsky stopped about five feet before them, sensing the man coming from behind, moving slowly. The young man before him was talking loudly and rapidly to cover the approach of the assailant behind, who tried not to make sounds in the snow.

Belinsky stood, listening both to the young man and to the slight sound behind him. He watched the eyes of the man who wasn’t talking. It was dark but there was enough light to see the man’s eyes. Both young men wore scarves around their faces like masks, an indication to Belinsky that they might seriously be considering letting him live, but unable to identify his attackers. Even as he spun and squatted, he wondered why he wasn’t dead. Why he hadn’t been shot like the others.

The man behind Belinsky was big, bigger than the other two, and older. Belinsky plunged his right fist into the man’s stomach, but the man didn’t go down. The attacker swung his right fist, catching Avrum in the neck. The pain was swift and electric. The rabbi thought he might pass out, but his life might well depend on staying awake. His second strike at the older man was with the heel of his left hand into the big man’s nose. The nose broke. Belinsky had been weakened by the blow to his neck and had not struck hard enough to drive the broken bones into the attacker’s brain, but he had done enough damage to send the groaning man to his knees.

It had all happened quickly, before the other two, the ones who had blocked his way, could react. They had assumed the smaller rabbi would put up little resistance to Georgi. Georgi was big, strong, and unafraid. Now he lay in the snow holding his hand to his face to slow the flow of blood from his nose. What they saw made them cautious and gave Belinsky an instant in which to turn as the young man who had spoken, Yevgeny Tutsolov, struck out with a slash of his knife. The cut had gone through Belinsky’s coat and shirt and across his chest.

Belinsky felt a sudden chill race along his fresh wound. He kicked out at the kneecap of the man who had slashed him. The blow was high. The kneecap did not break, but the man staggered back with a scream of pain. That left the silent man standing before the rabbi, trembling with fright, a pistol in his hand. Belinsky could see in the man’s eyes that he was going to shoot, but the man had made a mistake. He was no more than two feet away. Avrum stepped swiftly to his right and with a chop brought his right hand down on Leonid Sharvotz’s wrist. Leonid let out a gasp and dropped the gun in a knee-high bank of snow.

A first-floor light went on in the building next to which they were fighting. A woman’s face appeared, squinting at the window, wiping away a small circle of frost so that she could see what was going on. The three men fled in different directions. The one he had kicked above the knee hopped rather than ran. Belinsky could have caught him, but the rabbi had no idea of how serious his chest wound might be, how much blood he had lost. The one whose nose he had broken was far down the street, and Avrum could see a trail of blood in the light from the woman’s window. His eyes turned to hers, and the woman backed away quickly and turned off her light.

Avrum went to the snowbank where the gun had fallen, picked up a handful of snow, and pressed it through the tear in his clothes onto his bleeding chest. He groped in the bank for a few seconds, found the weapon-a Glock 9mm, model 17. Avrum had seen them before. There were few weapons that Avrum had not seen. He pocketed the Glock and walked home, but not too fast, as he continued to press the freshest snow he could find against his wound. To run or even walk quickly would make his heart beat faster and the blood flow more rapidly. He made it home, teeth tight, a prayer in his mind, and dead-bolted the door.

His clothes were ruined. Even his pants were covered with blood. He washed and treated himself, relieved that the chest wound was not deeper, took the codeine, and lay in his bed with a small light on next to him.

Why hadn’t they simply killed him as they had killed the others?

The question jabbed at him through the night and the pain till the relief of his morning prayers.

And now he sat waiting to tell his story to the police; the Glock he had taken taped under his small dresser. He had called his Israeli contact before he came, had called from an outdoor phone, told her what had happened and described his attackers. She had seemed more puzzled than Avrum that he was still alive. She promised to get orders and suggested that he call back late that afternoon. He agreed.

Now he sat waiting while Rostnikov talked on the phone.

A few hours earlier Oleg Selski had finished his breakfast: a bowl of barley soup, some bread, and a cup of strong, hot tea. Oleg was a man of average height and weight, forty-five years old, with a head full of hair that always needed cutting and a wife and a ten-year-old daughter.

Oleg was an editor of Izvestia who had grown comfortable with the new openness of Russia. His job was no longer simply a bore, concerned with only the rote tasks of editing and selecting stories to be published after approval, of course, by the senior editor from the Party. That had changed. Though it had lost millions of readers to the newer, bolder Russian newspapers, Izvestia had also been liberated, and Oleg had found causes, crusades, and corruption. His salary had increased, not enough to make him and his family financially secure, but enough to give them some comforts. All in all, life was good for Oleg Selski.

He was just finishing the last of his bread when Katrina, his daughter, came in with a letter. Selski occasionally received letters at home from his brother in Volgograd or from sources who didn’t want to write to him at the news office.

This letter was a bit bigger than the rest.

“Can I open it?” Katrina asked.

Oleg threw the last of his bread into his mouth and washed it down with the last of his tea. He smiled at his daughter, pigtailed, in her blue-and-white dress, her pink face aglow.

And then something struck Oleg. He wanted to speak, but he choked and spat out bread. He could be wrong, must be wrong. His instincts were not always right, but he was a cautious man who had learned how to survive.

Katrina, a smile on her face, was already opening the letter when he finally shouted no. His shout startled the girl, who dropped the half-opened letter to the floor, where it instantly exploded.