The Dog Who Bit a Policeman

Chapter Thirteen

Iosef stood before the desk of Director Yaklovev, doing his best to hide his anger. It took all of the skills he had learned in the theater. He should have discussed this with his father before he came to see the director, but he was fairly certain what Porfiry Petrovich would have advised.

Iosef didn’t want common sense and he didn’t want caution. He wanted to express his ire even if it cost him his job. Since he preferred not to lose his job and he hoped for some satisfaction, Iosef decided to play the role of an unflappable diplomat, unsurprised by events, only slightly disappointed by the actions of his superior.

It was what he decided, but Iosef was certain that his indignation would overcome him. There really was nothing to gain here and much to lose.

Yaklovev sat behind his desk, looking at the transcript of the confession of Oleg Kisolev and the statements of Yulia Yalutshkin and Yevgeny Pleshkov. It was Iosef ’s copy, the copy Pankov had handed to the young inspector less than fifteen minutes earlier.

“Yes, I have heard the tape,” said the Yak. “I have read the transcript.”

“And?” asked Iosef.

“Too many typing errors, but I will edit them and Pankov will produce another version,” said the Yak.

“This,” said Iosef, pointing at the transcription, “is not what happened. Oleg Kisolev has no money. The German wouldn’t get anything by trying to blackmail him. And how would he know that Kisolev was homosexual? If Oleg told Yulia to take Pleshkov away from the hotel after he killed the German, there is no chance she would do it. She would never be ordered about by Oleg Kisolev or anyone else. You saw that. And Kisolev is incapable of participating in such a sequence of events-killing the German, trying to destroy the body, ordering Pleshkov to leave the scene. In this version, Pleshkov and the woman did nothing, and Kisolev acted in self-defense and to protect his friend. And none of this is what they told me and Zelach. It is a different story.”

“Are you finished?” asked the Yak calmly.

“I don’t know,” Iosef said.

“You are finished,” said the Yak. “And if you pursue this case any further, your career will be finished before it begins. You are a very good investigator. You could be, with time, as good as your father, possibly a chief inspector. I have great respect for Porfiry Petrovich’s discretion and ability. He could not be pleased if I were forced to dismiss you from Special Investigation. Pause now and think. Think and discuss this with your father.”

Suddenly, Iosef understood. It should have been clear and would have come to him had he not been enraged and stormed into the Yak’s office. Yaklovev had not been taken in by a flimsy story.

The director of Special Investigation had made a deal, had gambled on the possibility of Pleshkov being in an even greater position of power in Russia. The Yak had given the politician freedom from jail in exchange for future considerations relating to the Yak’s ambition.

“I believe the statements,” said the Yak. “I suggest you do the same. The German could well have spied on Kisolev and discovered that he was a homosexual. The German could have assumed that Kisolev could borrow money from his friend Pleshkov. And our soccer coach, in a state of panic, showed an aggressive side of his nature that is normally hidden. His very future and present were at stake. The case is closed. You understand?”

“Yes,” said Iosef, holding out his hand.

The Yak gave him the transcript. “I have a new assignment for you,” he said. “Someone broke into the office of the United States Peace Corps. He or they took thirty thousand dollars and stayed to cook a ham, which they ate. There appear to be no clues and the MVD and State Security want no part of it. They see no gain in catching a fool, and they are sure of ridicule if they fail. I, on the other hand, have an instinct for such crimes. Chief Inspector Rostnikov will discuss it with you after I meet with him.”

“I’m to catch a ham thief?” said Iosef.

“Who also took thirty thousand dollars,” said the Yak.

“I am being punished,” said Iosef.

“No, you are being given an assignment.”

“I would like to offer. .” Iosef began.

“No,” said the Yak, still not looking up. “I want you to leave now, talk to the chief inspector, and then consider the offer you were about to make. Iosef Rostnikov, I have learned that our work follows a simple principle. We take one step forward and one step back. We are always in the same place we started. Our hope for success is to plan carefully, taking what we might be able to use, as we step forward and back in a simple two-step.”

Iosef nodded and left the office.

The Yak opened his desk drawer and removed the tape containing the voices of Pleshkov and the others telling what really had happened. He sat for the next hour making two copies, using the two tape recorders he kept in his desk. The copies would not be perfect but they would be clear enough. He would keep one copy in his desk and place the others in separate, safe places. While his office was reasonably secure, the Yak knew that someone in Petrovka could be bribed to break in when he was away and remove the tape from the desk drawer. The Yak almost welcomed the possibility. He began to imagine the conversation that would take place with Pleshkov. The Yak would produce another copy of the tape, and Pleshkov would be in a very awkward position from which the Yak would help him to escape. . at a price. But Pleshkov was probably too intelligent. He would realize that there would be other copies. He would not make that mistake. Still, he had been witness to other, even worse mistakes from people supposed to be intelligent and capable.

While the copies were being made, the Yak contemplated the future of Iosef Rostnikov. The young man would either be made aware of reality by his father or the Yak would have to find a way to transfer Iosef to another department.

Director Yaklovev had great confidence in Porfiry Petrovich’s powers of persuasion and his understanding of the need for compromise.

They had not yet cut Sarah’s hair. She lay in a bed in a prepara-tion room, waiting. There were no other patients in the room. Rostnikov sat at his wife’s bedside, holding her hand.

“What have they done so far?” asked Rostnikov.

“Tests. They put me on the machine. The same one as before, the one with the lights that hums. Leon and the surgeon are looking at the results.”

“I brought you something,” he said, taking out the triangular pastry with his free hand. “You can have it when you wake up after the surgery.”

“It looks good,” she said. “Hold on to it for me, Porfiry Petrovich.”

“I will,” he said.

“The last time we were in a hospital room,” she said, “a big naked man came in.”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov.

“You handled him perfectly,” she said. “I hadn’t seen you acting in your job before, except for the time when you were a uniformed officer and we ran into the two drunks on the street harassing a young woman. You were wonderful.”

“Thank you,” said Rostnikov.

“You know what I hate the most about this surgery?” asked Sarah.

“Yes,” he said. “The loss of your hair.”

“Yes,” she said. “And what do you hate most?”

“That I might lose you,” he said.

“You would survive, Porfiry Petrovich,” she said, patting his hand.

“Yes,” he said. “But it would be a lonely and less than meaningful survival. I am being selfish.”

“No,” Sarah said. “You are being honest. I. .”

The door opened and Leon came in holding an X ray.

“The growth is smaller,” he said. “Much smaller. The pressure on your brain is gone.”

Leon showed them the X ray.

“We have canceled the surgery,” he said. “We’ll keep checking you, but you can go home. This kind of spontaneous remission is uncommon but not unheard of.”

Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich looked at each other, stunned and only in the first stage of understanding what was happening.

“Could it come back?” Sarah asked.

“It could,” said Leon, “but the decrease in size in just a few days is remarkable. It could have been the blood thinner I gave you.”

“It could be a miracle,” Sarah said.

“I don’t believe in miracles,” said Leon. “You both deserve good news. I’m happy to be the one who brings it to you. How about a celebration? Would you like to come to a chamber music concert tonight? I think you might enjoy it. All Mozart.”

“I would very much like that,” said Rostnikov, smiling at Sarah and holding her delicate hand in both of his thick, heavy ones. “A celebration. But I have to attend a dogfight. There is, however, a chance that the dogfight will be over early. What time is your concert?”

“Ten,” said Leon.

“Perhaps I can do something to make the dogs decide to retire early so that we can make the concert.”

“I’d like that,” said Sarah, reaching for Leon’s hand.

He took it and Rostnikov could see that Leon was very much in love with his cousin. It was a condition that Porfiry Petrovich fully understood. He too loved Sarah very much. He would do his best to end the dogfight early.

Iosef knocked at the door of the apartment of Anna Timofeyeva. He had called Leon’s home in panic because he had not been at the hospital before his mother’s surgery. He had been talking to Yaklovev. When he had reached Leon, he had been told the good news.

“Shall I come there now?” Iosef had asked.

“Your mother is on her way home,” said Leon.

Iosef had expected the worst and had been feeling great guilt.

What if his mother had gone into surgery and not come back? But she was fine. Something, the most important thing, had gone well this day. Perhaps another thing would now go well.

The door was opened by Elena, who had her right arm in a sling.

“I got here as quickly as I could,” he said.

Elena stepped back to let him in. Anna Timofeyeva sat at the window, her cat, Baku, in her lap, her puzzle before her.

Elena closed the door.

“How are you?”

“Alive,” said Elena. “Thanks to Porfiry Petrovich.”

“How are you, Anna Timofeyeva?” he asked the woman at the window.

“There was a time when even if I were in the throes of a heart attack, I would answer ‘fine.’ Ever the stoic Communist bureaucrat.

There were other times when I welcomed the question so I could complain about my condition. It was a very short period. I quickly learned that few cared for details and few would accept a simple answer. You ask me now and I answer as I am answering you, fine.”

“That’s good,” Iosef said.

“It’s not true,” said Elena, cradling her injured arm with her healthy one. It looked to Iosef as if she were cradling an infant.

“My Aunt Anna had words with Lydia Tkach last night. Sasha’s mother demanded that she find him immediately, that. . well, it was a domestic issue. Anna Timofeyeva said she could do nothing.

And. .”

“I banished her from these two rooms,” said Anna, looking out the window, stroking the cat, whose eyes were closed in ecstasy.

“Now I’m feeling like an irritable old woman who sees from her window the wife of a fugitive hiding from a charge of armed rob-bery. I should make calls, ask if she is using her real name, let the police take over. But what do I do? I decide to watch her, wait for her fugitive husband to appear, then call Porfiry Petrovich. The hero in the window.”

“Like Rear Window, ” said Elena.

“What is Rear Window? ” asked Anna Timofeyeva.

“A movie about what you are doing,” said Elena. “The man watching is almost murdered by the killer.”

“Was he a policeman?” asked Anna.

“The killer?” said Elena, hiding a smile.

“The man watching,” said Anna.

“No, a photographer.”

“That explains it. Come, look.”

Iosef and Elena went to the window. The curtains were drawn back as they were always during the day. In the large concrete courtyard, children played, chasing each other, riding tricycles, hiding behind the concrete blocks that were supposed to be decorative.

Five young women sat on the concrete seat with a concrete table between them. The sky promised rain, but it had for almost a week and had not delivered.

“The one with the baby,” said Anna. “Her child is the little blond boy chasing the girl.”

“He’s cute,” said Elena.

Elena stood up, wincing. Bending to look out the window had brought blood rushing painfully to her wound, which began to THE DOG WHO BIT A POLICEMANNN251

throb. She would have to take one of the pills Sarah Rostnikov’s cousin had given her.

“He is presentable,” Anna went on, changing quickly into the deputy procurator she had once been. The transformation was dramatic. The block of a woman who had begun her career as a factory worker and loyal Communist who believed in the revolution was now sitting up. Her voice had grown stronger, deeper, official.

“The woman is using the name Rosa Dotiom. Her real name is Rosa Dodropov. Her husband is Sergei Dodropov. Two years ago he robbed a bank. He was positively identified. He got away with lots of money. No one knows how much. The bank lied. The money was illegal business money from gangsters. He is wanted by the police. He is wanted by the bankers, who are afraid he will be caught and talk. He will come back here. She is waiting for him.

See, she waits.”

“How can you tell?” asked Iosef, who was still looking out the window.

“By how often she glances around in anticipation,” said Anna.

“It is not a look of fear. It is a look of hope. She has been looking like that for more than a week. He will show up soon. Do you want to be the one to call or should I?”

“Call my father, Anna Timofeyeva.”

“You believe me?”

“I have been taught by my father that you were a great procurator, one who did not act rashly.”

“Good,” she said. “But I’ll give you a demonstration of my training. You are angry, Iosef, very angry. And you are nervous and determined.”

“Yes,” said Iosef.

“You realize, Elena, I have just done more talking and shown more emotion that I believe I have done in the rest of my adult life.”

“Yes,” said Elena.

Anna looked down at the cat, which may have been asleep in her lap. Anna sighed.

“You want privacy?” she said.

“Well. .” Iosef began.

Baku awakened as Anna rose.

“I am required to take a nap,” Anna said. “I do not like wasting the time, but I cannot avoid it. Give my regards to your father.”

Anna stood straight and walked without any hint of her problem to the bedroom, where she closed the door behind her.

Elena moved back to the window and looked out.

“She has me doing it,” said Elena with a smile. “I feel I have to take her place on the vigil.”

“You are really all right?” he asked.

“I will be fine,” she said. “I will be in pain for an undetermined period of time, but I will then be fine.”

“Elena,” he said, “I don’t have much time and I don’t know why I am doing this again now. It is probably not a good time. Maybe it is my fear of losing you.”

“I am not yours to lose,” she said, standing straight and facing him.

“But I would like you to be,” he said.

“You are proposing again.”

“I am proposing again.”

“It is not a good idea,” Elena said. “You will worry about me on the job, and I will worry about you, and I will worry about you worrying about me, and. . you see?”

“I worry about you now,” he said.

“Then I will accept your proposal,” she said.

“You will?”

“You expected rejection again,” she said, stepping in front of him.

“Yes,” he said. “I don’t know how to react to acceptance.”

“Start by very gently kissing me and avoiding contact with my arm,” she said. “And continue by taking a seat, so we can discuss what this means.”

Iosef was dazed. Elena came into his arms and he was very careful as he kissed her. It was a long, open kiss that Iosef did not want to end.

Elena sat in her aunt’s chair. Iosef sat across from her in the chair that visitors were often directed to.

“You’re not on some pain medication that is causing this reaction? You are not going to change your mind in a day or two?”

“No, Iosef, I will not. But there are things I must tell you about my past, about. .”

“And I have things too,” he said. “Unless you must, I would prefer that you tell me nothing about you that would cause either of us pain.”

“And you do the same,” she said, reaching forward to touch his hand.

“And I will do the same,” he said.

“Do you believe in signs?” Elena went on.

“Mysticism?” he said, adding perplexity to his emotions of the moment. “God? ESP?”

“Perhaps,” she said, looking out the window again.

“Not really,” he said.

“Look out the window, Iosef,” Elena said. “Less than a minute after you propose and I accept, Aunt Anna’s bank robber appears.

It is a sign for policemen.”

Iosef leaned over to look out the window. A small blond boy was running toward a young man who stood next to one of the concrete blocks that surrounded the courtyard. The woman Anna had been watching said something to the other women and got up.

“I’ll call for backup,” he said, picking up the phone. “Elena, I love you.”

“I’ll lose some weight,” she said.

“No,” he said, “don’t. You are beautiful as you are and. . this is Inspector Rostnikov. . no, the other one. I need backup, quickly.”

Elena and Iosef smiled at each other. Iosef ’s anger was gone, the Pleshkov situation of minor interest compared to the beauty of this moment.

He hung up the phone.

“They’ll be here soon,” he said.

“Meanwhile,” she said, “we can watch and talk. We have plans to make.”

It was dangerous. It was stupid, but Sasha was frantic. When the meeting with the Frenchmen was over, hands were shaken, drinks downed, and talk was almost nonexistent.

“At some point, if we are to work together,” said the rugged youngest man, “you will both have to learn a little French, come visit us in Marseilles.”

“I am very bad with languages,” said Sasha.

“And I am not interested in any language but the one of my people,” said Nimitsov.

More amiable silence. A few toasts to the future. The old men showed nothing.

When the rugged Frenchman looked at his watch and said,

“Time to go,” Sasha followed Boris and Nimitsov into the entry hall. The door closed behind them.

“I have to make a call,” said Sasha.

“No time,” said Peter Nimitsov.

“There’s plenty of time,” said Sasha.

“Who are you calling?” asked Nimitsov.

“A woman,” said Sasha, flashing a huge false and leering smile.

“No time,” Nimitsov repeated. “We must get back, prepare.”

“I could have had the call finished by now,” said Sasha. “I must make the call.”

Nimitsov played his teeth against his lower lip and nodded at Boris. “There’s a phone in the kitchen. Boris will show you. Be quick.”

There was no doubt that Nimitsov was suspicious. There was no doubt that making this call was madness. There was no doubt that Sasha didn’t care.

Boris led Sasha through an arch, down a stone-floored hallway lined with cabinets containing dinnerware, large serving bowls, service for dozens.

They entered the large kitchen. There was an oven, a refrigerator, a freezer locker, a stone table in the center of the room and knives, pots, and pans hanging on hooks along the wall.

“There,” said Boris.

Sasha went to the phone on the wall, picked it up, and dialed his home. After three rings, Maya answered.

“Maya,” he said, trying not to betray himself to Boris. “It is me, Dmitri.”

“Dmitri? Sasha, are you drunk in the middle of the day?”

“No,” he said with a laugh.

“Someone is listening to you?”

“Of course,” Sasha said, grinning hugely.

“They could. . maybe someone is listening on an extension?”

she said.

“It’s possible,” he said, winking at Boris.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked.

“Don’t you know?”

“Dmitri,” she said, using his cover name, “you are mad.”

“It’s worth the risk. Don’t leave.”

“Your uncle Porfiry came to talk to me about our problem,” she said.

“And?” he said, knowing that his mother had certainly interfered again.

“Are you going to be home soon?”

“Late tonight,” he said. “Will you be there?”

“You are in danger.”

“Of course,” he said.

“Be careful. We will be here.”

“I have to go now,” he said, looking at Boris. “Wear your silk nightgown, the clinging one.”

“If I had such a thing, this would not be the night I would wear it. Be careful.”

Sasha hung up and sighed deeply. “It’s good to keep them happy,” he said.

“Till you tire of them,” said Boris.

“True,” said Sasha. “Let’s go.”

One hour later Sasha was in a dogfight arena, definitely upscale compared to the one where he thought he would be, the one he had been in the night before. This room was air conditioned and im-maculately clean. There were fewer seats, but the men in them were better dressed and the betting in the first fight had been handled by men in matching dark suits. Drinks were served. If there were a shooter present to control any dog that might go wild, that shooter was not immediately visible. It was all very respectable, and the noise level, except when the fights were taking place, was relatively low and conversational, with much laughter.

The first was not civilized. A pair of malamutes from the same litter were matched against each other. One dog was completely white except for a healed pink scar on his rump where hair would not grow. His brother was black and white. The trainers had held the straining dogs back till a man in dark slacks and a white jacket over a black shirt with a white tie announced that all bets were in and the trainers could release their dogs.

There was no familial recognition in the animals, which attacked each other with fury. They were noisy even above the frenzy of the crowd. Sasha turned his eyes from the animals and looked at the front row where the three Frenchmen sat, not joining in the insanity, not interested in the battle before them. In seats flanking the three were four men, one almost as old as the two older Frenchmen. The other three were young, wearing masks of indifference.

Twice, Sasha had caught one of the young men looking at him.

When Sasha decided to meet his eyes, the man did not turn away.

Definitely a bad sign. It was also a bad sign that all of the Frenchmen were armed. Sasha had looked for and immediately seen the signs of weapons under their jackets.

When Sasha turned back to the fight, it was over. The all-white dog was bloody. His brother lay dying with a terrible gash across his nose and right eye. The white dog was restrained but tried to get at his brother, to finish him. The dying dog snapped at the trainer who tried to help him up. The dying dog whimpered from the effort. The trainer backed away.

Sasha still had to deal with whether to let Tchaikovsky try to win or to do something to insure the dog’s loss. Sasha had not the slightest idea of what he could do to hamper the dog, and besides, he had decided that he had no intention of contributing to the murder of the animal.

Sasha looked at the seven men in the front row. The one who had been looking at him looked again. Nimitsov was suddenly at Sasha’s side.

“We are next,” said Nimitsov. “You know, this used to be a children’s circus arena? I’ve considered staging fights between children.

There are plenty of them on the street. You could give them knives and promise them more money than they dreamed of if they won.”

Sasha looked at the smiling young man at his side. Nimitsov was not just evil, he was quite serious and quite mad.

While the blood was being cleaned from the dirt ring, Sasha decided that he had to act, even though the action was loathsome.

“I understand French,” Sasha said, pretending interest in the cleanup.

“Interesting,” said Nimitsov. “I may learn the language. Now that we have French partners.”

“They plan to kill both of us,” said Sasha.

Nimitsov turned to look at Sasha. They were only a few feet apart.

“You are telling the truth.”

“I am telling the truth.”

“When?” asked Nimitsov.

“After the fight sometime,” said Sasha. “Tonight.”

Nimitsov looked at the rugged Frenchman, who nodded. Nimitsov nodded back and said to Sasha, “Dmitri, we could all have been very rich men. These Frenchmen are fools. You and I will have to kill them first, after Bronson destroys your dog.”

“I do not intend to do anything to contribute to my dog’s destruction,” said Sasha.

“Then I will have to kill you too.”

“You were planning to anyway. However, I think we stand a better chance of survival if we form a temporary partnership.”

Nimitsov’s smile was sincere as he put his hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “I almost like you, Dmitri Kolk, but you are too clever, too dangerous. Bronson can win without your help. You and I are partners, but just for the night.”

“You should tell Boris,” said Sasha.

“He would be useless in a battle,” said Nimitsov. “He can’t shoot straight. Actually, he is a good front man but a terrible cow-ard. No, I’m afraid it will be just you and me. A partnership made in hell, to face the demon hordes.”

Sasha went to get Tchaikovsky. The pit bull was lying in the cage ears up.

“Tchaikovsky,” said Sasha, “you are on your own, and, it appears, so am I.”

The cage was heavy. A strong young man who watched over the dogs in a back room helped Sasha bring the cage out and place it on one end of the ring. Bronson was uncaged, standing alert, teeth showing in clenched anger. The trainer, a crook-backed man with no hair, spoke soothingly to the dog. The betting was furious. The room, now full of smoke, was alive with debate about the animals, particularly the almost legendary Bronson.

Nimitsov stood, Boris at his side, hands folded in front of him.

He was directly across from Sasha, who was suddenly afraid, very much afraid.

The announcer stepped forward and said loudly, “All bets are in.

The battle begins.”

Sasha opened the cage door and Tchaikovsky stepped out, facing the dog across the ring. Sasha was holding the cord around the pit bull’s neck, but the dog was not straining at it. The man who had helped Sasha pulled the open cage back and out of the ring.

The moment had come.

Sasha let the rope loose at a signal from the announcer.

“Survive, Tchaikovsky,” he whispered. “It is what I plan to do.”

Bronson leapt across the ring and landed on the pit bull’s back.

The crowd went mad with killing frenzy, all except the seven men in the front row.

Bronson had bitten into the smaller dog’s back but he suddenly released his hold. Tchaikovsky had calmly ignored the pain and sunk his teeth deeply into the left foreleg of the dog on his back.

Bronson turned, unable to free himself from the teeth that dug into his leg. He snapped at Tchaikovsky’s left ear and took a small piece of it. The pit bull showed no pain but bit even more deeply into the leg.

“Fight,” shouted someone. “Let go of his leg and fight.”

Tchaikovsky paid no attention.

Bronson was now trying to get away. On his three good legs he pulled the smaller dog around the arena, turning every few seconds to try to sink his teeth into the pit bull.

“Stop it,” shouted someone. “It’s boring.”

Others told the shouter to shut up. The crowd was in a fighting mood. This was not the fight they expected, not the fight they had been led to expect.

Bronson’s foreleg was bleeding badly. He kept thrashing, trying to escape. It was clear to all that the only way he would get away from the pit bull’s grip was to lose his leg.

Bronson lunged awkwardly, teeth apart, at the pit bull’s head.

Tchaikovsky, without loosening his grip, calmly turned his head down toward the dirt floor and out of reach of the madly snapping larger dog.

The fight was clearly over. Tchaikovsky seemed almost sedate and clearly determined to never loosen his jaws.

“Tchaikovsky, stop,” shouted Sasha.

Instantly the pit bull loosened his grip and walked away from his bloody opponent, who tried to move after him on his remaining three legs. The almost severed foreleg made it impossible for him to pursue. He took two steps and rolled over on his side, now trying to lick his bloody wound.

Meanwhile, Tchaikovsky walked indifferently toward his cage, ignoring his own significant but clearly not crippling or life-threatening wounds. There were shouts, demands for the return of bets, while others shouted that there had been nothing wrong with the fight. Drinks spilled. Cigar and cigarette butts were thrown.

Bronson would never fight again. He might survive to walk three-legged through life, but that was the best the animal would ever achieve.

Tchaikovsky entered his cage, turned to face the action in the arena and to watch Bronson hobbling toward his trainer, who stood next to Nimitsov.

“You did well, Tchaikovsky,” said Sasha.

The dog blinked.

Nimitsov looked at Sasha, smiled and shrugged.

What happened next came so fast that Sasha was not really aware that Nimitsov had saved his life. The pudgy young madman had stepped into the ring where the dogs had fought and bled. He faced the seven men in the first row.

Over the crowd roar, Peter shouted, “Betrayers. French scum.”

The Frenchmen in the front row and the crowd heard the elated shriek of madness from the man in the ring. The Frenchmen began to go for their guns. Sasha was frozen for an instant and then dived for Tchaikovsky’s cage and the compartment where the gun was hidden. There was a momentary standoff in the arena because Nimitsov now stood feet apart, a gun in each hand, a very happy look on his face.

The crowd began to scramble for the exits, pushing, trampling each other, growing louder in their panic.

Sasha had just opened the drawer when the first shot was fired.

For an instant he did not know who had started the insane battle, and then he felt the body fall on his back. He heard an explosion of gunfire from the ring and the first row. Sasha pushed the body off of him. It was the young Frenchman who had stared at him.

He was still staring, but now with a third, round eye in his forehead, a simple, bleeding dark hole from which blood and something yellow was seeping. The dead man held a gun loosely in his right hand.

Peter Nimitsov had saved Sasha’s life.

Sasha took the dead man’s gun in one hand, his own in the other, and rolled over shooting toward the first row, over the wooden rim of the ring.

The madness of the battle equaled the madness of the dogfights. Seven men were in that front row, each with a gun in hand.

Two of them were now dead. The remaining five were shooting at Nimitsov, who stood unprotected.

A fat man dashed out of the stands and waddled past Nimitsov, who was firing rapidly. A bullet took the fat man in the back.

Sasha aimed more carefully and put a bullet into the rugged Frenchman who had ordered the death of Peter and himself. The rugged man bit his lower lip and closed his eyes, falling forward.

Now some of the Frenchmen began firing wildly at Sasha.

Except for the combatants, the arena was almost empty. Sasha glanced at the now-wounded Nimitsov, who was on his knees, still firing. One of Nimitsov’s bullets took the oldest Frenchman in the chest and then Nimitsov fell forward on his face. His fingers kept pulling the triggers of his weapon and the random shots shattered through the roof and into empty seats.

The four remaining Frenchmen turned their full attention on Sasha. They had all scrambled for some cover when Nimitsov fell.

Sasha fired almost blindly, hitting nothing.

And then silence. Nimitsov was no longer firing, and since no gunfire was coming from the Frenchmen, Sasha forced his shaking hands to stop pulling the trigger. He had no idea of how many shots he had fired or how many were left or if he was wounded.

His hope that the four men had fled was destroyed when he heard a voice in French say, “You two that way, around. Martin, hold him down. Maurice, go the other way.”

The gunfire resumed. A single person resumed firing at Sasha to keep him in place till the others came around him from the sides or rear. Sasha didn’t shoot. There was no time to think through the slightly controlled panic. Sasha went into a crouch and raced toward the man shooting from the cover of the aisle chairs. While the others flanked him, there was only one man between Sasha and a chance at the exit. Sasha ran right, turned and ran left, took two steps back to the right and then dived forward, now no more than a dozen feet from the man who had him pinned down. Bullets echoed. Sasha’s last bullet tore into the man’s left arm. The man’s gun was in his left hand. Sasha fired again. Nothing.

A wild thought. He turned to go for the guns in Nimitsov’s hands, but it was too late. The Frenchmen had moved into the open and now stood in a circle along the rim of the low wall around the ring.

It was Sasha’s turn to entertain.

“I am a police officer,” Sasha said in French, panting, sitting back, still hoping for a chance at Nimitsov’s guns.

“We suspected,” said the very old man in French. His gun, like the others, was pointed at Sasha. “You have killed my nephew. You have left our business in the hands of old men. Your being a policeman makes no difference.”

“It makes a difference,” came a voice from the darkness of one aisle of the arena.

The Frenchmen turned their guns toward the voice.

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov stepped into the light. So did five uniformed and helmeted men in flak jackets, all carrying modified Kalishnikov automatic rifles.

There was a moment, only a moment, in which the eyes of the old Frenchmen turned toward each other. They had the least to lose in death. The pause was long and then the oldest man dropped his weapon. So did the others.

“I’m sorry to be a bit late, Sasha,” Rostnikov said awkwardly, going over the rim of the ring and reaching down to help Sasha to his feet. “We had an informant, but she had some difficulty telling us where the fight would be.”

The policemen herded the Frenchmen out of the arena. Sasha saw the old man look toward the body of the rugged man. There were tears in the old man’s eyes as he left the arena.

Sasha, breathing heavily, turned over the body of Peter Nimitsov, who looked up at him. The two guns were still in his hands. Nimitsov let the guns go. The number of bullet holes in the young man was remarkable, including one in his neck and one through his cheek. What was even more remarkable was that Peter Nimitsov was still alive.

“What did you tell them, in French?” Nimitsov asked in a gur-gle that Sasha could barely hear.

“That I am a policeman.”

Nimitsov nodded as if everything were clear now. “I’ll never get the chance to save Russia,” the dying man said.

“You saved me,” said Sasha. “Why?”

“Destiny,” said Nimitsov, choking.

“Destiny?”

“You ask a madman a question and you’ll get a mad answer,”

said Nimitsov. “It was a good fight, wasn’t it?”

“A very good fight,” said Sasha.

“Now, if you will excuse me, I must die.”

And he did.

“Are you wounded, Sasha Tkach? An ambulance is coming.”

“No. I should be but, no, I am not. The dog is hurt.”

Rostnikov left Sasha looking down at the corpse of the lunatic killer who had saved his life, and moved toward the cage of the pit bull. Tchaikovsky was still inside, lying down now, watching the end of the show.

“Dog,” said Rostnikov, “someone will be here soon to take care of your wounds.”

The dog looked up at Rostnikov.

“The Hindus believe in reincarnation till one achieves Nirvana,”

Rostnikov said conversationally, watching Sasha kneeling at the side of Nimitsov’s body. “I would value your opinion, dog. What were you before? Who were you before? I doubt if one remembers when one is reincarnated. What will Nimitsov be? I think a bird, a small, vulnerable bird would be appropriate.”

Rostnikov looked down at the dog who was looking back up at him, his head cocked to the left. No one had ever spoken to him this way before.

“But,” said Rostnikov, now looking at the bodies in the front row. “The truth is that I don’t believe in reincarnation. Atheism when taught from an early age is a difficult religion from which to escape. Perhaps we’ll talk again, dog. As I said, help is coming soon for you.”

Rostnikov checked his watch. If he did the paperwork tomorrow and hurried, there was still a chance he and Sarah could make most of Leon’s concert. He would have preferred the blues, or 1950s American modern jazz on his cassette machine, but this was a celebration. He had hoped for the best and expected the worst when he discovered that his wife needed more surgery. The best, as it seldom does, had come.

“Are you all right, Sasha?” he asked, moving back to his detective, who rose.

“I don’t know what to think, to feel. I think I. . I feel alive.”

“And things that seemed important no longer seem so.”

“Yes.”

“The feeling comes more frequently as you grow older,” said Rostnikov. “Go home. Come in early tomorrow. Write a long report. Kiss your children for me. Kiss your wife for yourself.”

“If she’ll let me,” said Sasha. “You spoke to her.”

“Yes. Go home. Try,” said Rostnikov. “You want a ride? I have a car and a driver.”

“Yes,” said Sasha, following Rostnikov out of the ring and into the darkness behind the stands.

When all the humans were gone, the pit bull walked slowly out of his open cage, ignoring the wounds to his ear and back. He moved to the side of Peter Nimitsov and smelled death. He looked at the bodies in the first row and smelled their death too.

Tchaikovsky sat back and waited as the sound of a siren approached from too far away for a human to hear.

Rostnikov recognized the melody, could hear the playful interchange of themes and instruments. It was not unlike the best work of Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker. Sarah took his hand. They were in the large auditorium of the Moscow Technical Institute. The room was about half full. Rostnikov estimated about one hundred people were listening, mostly older people, but a few of college age or a bit older. There were even two little girls in the audience. Sarah and Porfiry Petrovich had brought them. It had been Sarah’s idea.

The girls’ grandmother claimed she was too tired for a concert and that she had never learned to appreciate “smart” music. The girls sat next to Leon’s son, Ivan. The three children had been promised ice cream after the concert, if they weren’t too tired for the treat.

They had all insisted that they would not be too tired, but a glance showed that only Laura, the older girl, was still alert and even attentive.

The piece ended with a solo closing by Leon at the piano. When the last note stopped echoing, the applause began.

“Are you enjoying?” asked Sarah.

“Yes,” said the older girl.

The younger one had fallen asleep and was now in danger of toppling from the wooden seat. Ivan was still awake, but he had begun fighting his heavy eyelids. Rostnikov reached past his wife, picked the sleeping girl up, and put her on his lap. She stirred slightly and put her head on his shoulder.

“It is beautiful,” said the older girl.

“It is beautiful,” Sarah agreed, reaching over to touch her husband’s arm.

The next piece began.

Destruction, creation. Death, beauty, thought Rostnikov. He decided that if he could make the time tomorrow, he would find the young Israeli rabbi, Avrum Belinsky, and have a serious talk which would probably clarify nothing but, Rostnikov was sure, would make a one-legged policeman a bit more at peace with the chaos that is Russia.

The trio on the low stage began another piece.

“Brahms,” Sarah whispered.

Brahms would be most appropriate, Rostnikov thought as he smelled the clean sweet hair of the child on his lap.

The children were both asleep in the living room and, thank whatever gods there may be, Lydia Tkach was not in the apartment.

Sasha sat next to Maya on the bed. Neither spoke. Neither reached out to touch the other. There was a night chill of impend-ing Moscow rain in the air. People were going nearly mad waiting for the rain that refused to come. Maya wore flannel pajamas Sasha had given her for her birthday two years earlier. Sasha was in his white boxer shorts and the extra-large Totenham Hotspurs soccer shirt he had confiscated from a shipment of illegally imported goods from England a few months earlier. The three suitcases were on the floor in the corner. They were closed, waiting, threatening.

“Something has happened to me, Maya,” he said.

She said nothing. He went on.

“I would normally be depressed now, afraid of losing you and the children, dreading the need to face my mother, cursing my work. But I’m not. I feel calm, as if the things that usually get to me are not important. I don’t want you to go. I will surely weep.

But if you must, I’ll try to understand. You surely have reason to leave.”

“You are reacting to being alive when you should be dead, Sasha,” she said softly, her head down. “Lydia is right. You should try to do something less dangerous, but I know you will not.”

She was right.

“Maya, I did it again. The weakness came. I became a different person, Dmitri Kolk, criminal.”

“You were with a woman,” said Maya. “I knew. I could tell from the guilt in your voice on the phone. Did she have a name?”

“Tatyana,” he said.

“Was she pretty?”

“Thin, but pretty, yes.”

“Did you have to do it? Would the people you were with be suspicious if you didn’t?”

“Maybe. No,” Sasha said, “I was drunk. I was playing a role.

Forgive me if you can, but I was enjoying playing that role.”

Maya turned her head toward him. “Sasha, you just told me the truth.”

“I know.”

“You have always lied in the past.”

“Yes. I told you. Something has changed. Don’t go, Maya.”

“Twenty-two days’ trial,” she said. “I’m not threatening you, Sasha. It just seems reasonable, enough time to see if you’ve really changed.”

“Twenty-two days,” he said. “An odd number.”

“I took a leave from work,” she said. “I have twenty-two days.

We can spend time together. I’m not sure I have much hope. I’ll call my office in the morning and say I might like to come back. They’ll be happy to have me. No one else knows the billing system program.”

Maya worked for the Council for International Business Advancement. She liked the job. She did not want to lose it. She would decide what to do about the Japanese businessman when the need to decide arose. What she would do would depend primarily on Sasha.

“Would you like to get under the covers and make love?” she asked.

“What?”

“I still love and want you,” she said, “I’m just not sure I can live with you.”

“I would like very much to make love. The moment you asked the question, I was immediately. . I love you, Maya.”

“I know, Sasha Tkach,” she said. “But that is not enough.”

Iosef sat in his small, comfortable one-room apartment trying to read a play by a new writer named Simsonevski. Simsonevski had three plays produced in the last year, all in the little theaters in storefronts or the back rooms of shoe stores or churches. Iosef had seen all of the plays, liked none of them. The one in his lap-he was wearing only his underwear and a plain white T-shirt-was even more grim than the others. There had been one suicide, one murder of a husband by a wife, one young woman going insane (with a stage note indicating that she should bite off her tongue), and a soldier who has an epileptic seizure onstage.

Iosef laughed. It was that or cry, but on balance the laugh was called for. He put aside the play knowing he would not pick it up again. It was very late but he thought he would try to find something on television, anything but the news.

He could not match the tragedies of Simsonevski’s play but he could beat it for simple irony. First, the Yak had purposely allowed Yevgeny Pleshkov to go free of a crime he surely committed. The Yak was not one to take bribes. From what Iosef could see, Yaklovev was not interested in material things. Porfiry Petrovich had told him that the Yak lived alone and simply. His wardrobe each day confirmed this in part. No, money was not the culprit in this injustice. Did Pleshkov or the woman have something on the Yak? Iosef didn’t think the Yak would stand for blackmail even if they did have something. He would find a way out. It was something Iosef would discuss tomorrow with his father.

But the problem of the Pleshkov case was less vexing than Iosef ’s embarrassment over arresting the man in the courtyard outside of Anna Timofeyeva’s window. The man proved to be the woman’s brother, a construction worker, not the woman’s husband.

Anna had been right about who the woman was, but Iosef had now revealed that her place of hiding and change of name were known.

They had alerted her, and she would alert her fugitive husband.

Anna Timofeyeva slept through the capture, and when she was told about it when she awakened, she shook her head and said,

“You should have awakened me. I know what the husband looks like.”

That was all she said. She asked them if they wanted tea, which she disliked but drank because she thought it might be good for her. As Anna had moved toward the stove, Iosef and Elena declined the offer of tea and told her that they planned to marry.

Anna went to the small sink in the corner, filled her teapot with water, and turned on the gas on the stove.

“I know,” Anna said.

“How would you?” asked Elena, standing next to Iosef. “I didn’t know he would ask. I didn’t know I would say yes.”

“I knew,” said Anna, rummaging for a tea she might find drink-able.

“You approve?” asked Elena.

“I approve,” said Anna, making a choice of teas, the least of the four evils on the shelf.

“When?”

“We haven’t discussed that,” said Iosef.

“No,” said Anna, pushing the tea she had selected back in the narrow cupboard over the sink.

“No?” asked Elena.

“Tonight I take you both out for dinner,” she said. “An old woman with a bad heart, a young woman with a bad arm, and a man who has made a fool of himself. The perfect trio for celebrat-ing. I still have friends, even a friend or two with a restaurant.”

And they had celebrated at an Uzbekistani restaurant where Anna knew the owner, a former cabinet minister who had once needed the help of the stern procurator.

They had eaten well- tkhum-duma, boiled egg inside a fried meat patty; mastava, a rice soup with chopped meat; maniar, a strong broth with ground meat, egg, and bits of rolled-out dough; a shashlik mar-inated and broiled over hot coals. They had laughed, though Elena was in pain from time to time, and they had made some prelimi-nary plans. She had said that she would like to wait a few months before a wedding, to be sure they had not been carried away by a romantic moment. This seemed reasonable to Iosef.

By the time he got to his room, it was too late to call his parents.

Iosef ’s stomach was contentedly full. That, and Elena’s acceptance of him, made it just a bit easier to face the embarrassment at Petrovka in the morning.

Iosef ’s room had theater posters on each of the four walls, bright theater posters except for the one for the self-indulgent play Iosef had written and starred in. That poster held a place of prominence to remind him that he was not a playwright. He had a two-cushion, sturdy yellow sofa with black trim, two chairs, a worn but still colorful handmade Armenian rug that covered most of the floor, and a desk in one corner. The couch opened into a bed in which Iosef slept. There were three bright floor lamps, one black-painted steel, one a mock Tiffany, and the third a brass monstros-ity from the 1950s. The room was bright. Next to the desk was a small table on which the television sat. The rest of the wall space on all four walls was filled by floor-to-ceiling bookcases he had made himself.

He supposed that after he and Elena were married, this is where they would live.

It could have been worse. He had his own toilet and shower behind the door off the kitchen area. The sink, toilet, and shower functioned perfectly since Porfiry Petrovich had worked on them.

Tomorrow, when he was the object of jokes at Petrovka, he would concentrate on thoughts of his and Elena’s future. There was no doubt that word of his calling out a squad to arrest an innocent construction worker would be all over the building, and that there were some who would make lame jokes about the event.

Think of Elena, he told himself, removing the pillows from the couch and opening it into a bed. Think about telling your father and mother. He finished making the bed, propped up his pillows, and turned on the television. There was nothing worth watching.

He turned it off and then turned off the lights.

Tomorrow he would ask Elena if she had changed her mind, tell her that he would understand. He was certain she would not change her mind and that she had already taken plenty of time to decide.

Overall, thought Iosef, it had been a good day.

He lay back in his bed and fell asleep almost instantly.

Emil Karpo sat at the desk in his cell-like room, entering new data in his black book on the new Mafias. Even though he had a computer, Karpo did not fully trust it. He had heard tales of computers losing data, breaking down, crashing in bad weather. He would enter the data on the computer tomorrow night.

Karpo was fully dressed, scrubbed clean with rough soap, teeth brushed, face shaved.

He wrote his last word for the night, closed the book, and turned to look at the painting of Mathilde Verson on the wall.

Emil Karpo had only one bright image in his dark room, the painting of Mathilde, the reminder of a great failure.

Emil Karpo needed the smiling image of Mathilde on the wall to remind him that she had been real. Her red hair was flowing, her cheeks were white. Karpo’s memory held the black-and-white images of hundreds of criminals, but they were flat, dead images.

He turned away from the painting, rose, removed all his clothes, and hung them neatly in his closet. Everything in the closet with the exception of the few things Mathilde had bought for him were black. He closed the closet door and moved naked to the cot. Before he turned off his single light next to the cot, he tried to imagine Raisa Munyakinova in her holding cell. He could not. He simply knew she was there.

She had done no more than he had considered. Mathilde had been gunned down on the street between two Mafias. Raisa’s son had been torn by bullets. But Karpo was certain he would not be able to kill as she had. His belief in Communism was gone.

Mathilde was gone. All he had was the daily solace of doing his job, a job that would never end.

He turned off the light.