The Hunters

26

Colonel Viktor Borovsky, a member of the senior supervising staff of the Investigations Special Branch, leaned against the doorway of Anatoli Vargunin’s tiny office in the Moskovskaya police station. The warrant officer became aware of Borovsky’s presence before he saw his face.

‘Who’s there, and what is it now?’ Vargunin asked irritably, pecking with stubby, inexperienced fingers on the keyboard of his relatively new computer.

Borovsky smiled at Vargunin’s tone. The Moskovskaya station was in much better shape than most in the Moscow suburbs. Although the plain exterior of the station was ominous, the interior had been freshly painted in a cheerful sunflower yellow, and freshly redecorated with wide, white tile floors that were geometrically divided by glass and steel cubicles.

Borovsky remained silent as he studied Vargunin’s office. He noted that the cramped space bridged the old and the new: the new being his computer, the old being everything else, most prominently the building’s walls that seemed to loom more than stand.

‘I asked you a question,’ Vargunin said. ‘Who’s there, and what is it now?’

‘What is it now?’ Borovsky growled. ‘That’s what I was about to ask you, comrade.’

At the sound of the unfamiliar voice, Vargunin’s large head snapped up. His eyes rose slowly, widening, but the annoyance fled like a rat when he saw the polished military bearing of his visitor. His blood-stained eyes, stinging from the new computer monitor and reddened by increasing amounts of drink the past few years, took in the visitor’s proud, polished belt buckle, his gray jacket, the three-starred epaulettes, and the decorations over his upper left jacket pocket.

Vargunin had not yet reached the visitor’s face when he jerked up to attention, sending his old wooden office chair banging into the wall behind him.

‘Excuse me, comrade Colonel,’ Vargunin said crisply. He kept his eyes straight ahead, focused on the wall, as he had been trained to do. ‘No one told me of your visit!’

‘Ana, Ana, Ana,’ Borovsky laughed, fully entering the office now. ‘Do I have to make appointments to see an old friend?’

Finally, Vargunin’s tired eyes made it to his visitor’s face. At that precise moment, his own face relaxed and broke into a welcoming smile.

‘Viktor!’ he exclaimed. ‘Viktor, is it really you?’

‘I hope it’s really me. Who else would I be then?’

The two met at the front of the desk and gripped each other’s forearms.

Borovsky looked his old militia friend up and down. ‘Still in the blue-shirted, black tie and slacks uniform, just as I remember,’ he said. ‘Maybe a bit thicker around the middle and a bit thinner in the hair — but, yes, still the same old Anatoli.’

‘No,’ Vargunin said. ‘I am a crabbier version, out of alignment with the modern world.’ He dipped his head toward the computer. ‘I hate that thing.’

Borovsky laughed. ‘There was a time when everything was new. People adjusted.’

‘They had time to adjust,’ Vargunin countered. ‘You had time to adjust to an electric light before there was an automobile. Today, it’s one thing after another after another.’

‘You’re right,’ Borovsky said, smiling. ‘You are crabbier.’

Both men were silent for a moment, then they laughed.

‘How long has it been?’ Vargunin wondered, mentally counting backwards.

‘Close to three years,’ Borovsky informed him. ‘Well before “the Bill” was introduced.’

Vargunin sneered. ‘The Bill. I hate that thing, too.’

‘I know,’ Borovsky said. ‘A plague on it.’

‘It ruined enough people to qualify as one.’

‘It was necessary.’

Vargunin shook his head. ‘So is a tooth extraction. One doesn’t hate the dentist, but don’t ask me to cheer the decay.’

Borovsky laughed at the comment. It was the same debate that they’d had three years ago, mercifully reduced to this shorthand.

‘The Bill’ was the Bill on Police, one of the first major reforms of the department since 1917. It had previously been the People’s Militia, but after almost a hundred years of growing corruption, President Dmitry Medvedev had introduced sweeping reforms in 2010. They were ratified by the State Duma in early 2011 and put into effect on March 1st of that year.

Borovsky had been one in the group of officers whose responsibility it had been to reduce the one million, twenty-eight thousand police officers to one million, one thousand. Most of his peers found it either an odious or vengeful task, but Borovsky approached it with the same professional pride he had brought to every aspect of his life.

In fact, he found it relatively easy. One recent study had maintained that twenty percent of the force routinely took bribes as well as extorting money from tourists and locals alike. Borovsky understood that the police department’s poor pay contributed to that, but he felt more sympathy for the reported sixty percent who sought more work rather than affiliations with local mobs. The police officers that he and his confederates found worthy got salary increases of up to thirty percent. Those that they found unworthy were now, more than likely, part of the criminal organizations they had taken money from. The ranks of the criminals were swelled by the reforms.

Then there were the men like Vargunin. Men who were better suited to life in an office. Men who were not corrupt but who believed that confessions beaten from suspects were just as valid as those obtained by detective work.

Vargunin changed the conversation with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘Just two old war horses, eh?’

‘War horses, yes,’ Borovsky agreed. ‘But not so old.’

‘My spirit feels as if it fought the Mongols in the thirteenth century.’

‘Maybe it did,’ he teased. ‘I think this office was here, too.’

Both men laughed, and Vargunin took a step back, finally taking the time to look his old friend up and down. If Anatoli were a workhorse, it was clear that Borovsky was still a thoroughbred. No thickening of his middle. And while his slicked-back hair may have had a little more gray on the temples, it was still enviably substantial.

The healthier life of the optimist, Vargunin thought.

In fact, age seemed to make Borovsky look even more impressive, from his angular face, probing light brown eyes, and sharp chin, all the way down to his long flat feet. Encased in specially made boots, they were one of Borovsky’s only concessions to personal comfort.

‘The changes to the uniform become you,’ Vargunin decided, releasing his friend’s forearms and turning back to the desk. ‘Apparently, so do the changes to the force.’

‘It’s not that,’ Borovsky said. ‘I have just never been a pessimist like you.’

‘That’s anti-Russian,’ his old coworker said. ‘So. What brings you down here?’

‘Couldn’t it be a friendly visit?’ Borovsky asked innocently, pulling forward a seat.

‘Couldn’t Lenin rise from his tomb and take a stroll around Red Square?’ Vargunin shrugged. ‘I suppose it is possible.’

‘I was wrong,’ Borovsky said. ‘You’re not a pessimist. You’re a cynic.’

Vargunin barked out a laugh. ‘Years after “the Bill”, you come to say “hi” to one of the officers who notoriously escaped your net and then slipped through another at the Forensic Expertise Center? I am not so old a detective as to consider your arrival merely a coincidence.’

‘We were friends, despite the task that was given to me.’

‘We were, yes,’ Vargunin said. He hoped he hadn’t emphasized the ‘were’ when he spoke it. ‘Would you like a drink?’

‘Why not?’ Borovsky decided. ‘For old times’ sake.’