The Sin Collector

He still had time. He had done the calculations many times over. He didn’t trust taking the car—there could always be a traffic jam—and he didn’t feel like going underground to take the metro. Instead, he walked the Boulevard Ring Road, and when it came down to it, he had earned this walk.

He wore an old Mackintosh-type raincoat, frayed at the wrists. His wife had fixed up the lining more than once, but she couldn’t do anything about the fraying. He loved this old jacket though, loved even the disrepair it was in. The raincoat lived his life with him from the start of fall until it got cold enough for a wool coat, then again from midspring to summer. And he always preferred these middle seasons to the winter cold or the intense summer heat. Between seasons, when the sun shone gently and the air was wet and carried a stronger smell of gasoline, it was easier for him to believe what his heart could see. What he saw now were not the cars flashing by, the tacky billboards, the sordid advertisements, or the current of people flowing past him, none of whom even noticed the man in the decrepit old raincoat and scuffed shoes, the man with the face that looked tired of life.

No, he had become invisible even to himself, like the changeable air in those times between the seasons, and he could see the urban landscape around him changing as well. The walls of Bely Gorod rose up, the walls Boris Godunov had called Tsargrad, the white rock emerging to conceal the river of filthy garbage below. Above the walls there was only the sky, the same as it had been in 1593, when Fyodor Kon finished the construction, and the Khan and his marauders rode right up to the fortress walls and left again empty-handed. He smiled cunningly, as if he himself were sitting under that pyramid of a roof and watching the Tatar horde retreat into the distance.

He had almost reached his second-to-last stop: an enormous C-shaped building with three wings just off the Boulevard Ring. One wing had an exit onto Znamenka Street, the “Street of the Sign.” He thought he’d walk along that street, too, afterward. Then he’d get to see two small churches before him, through the advancing dusk, as if they had never been demolished: the Church of St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, with its three domes and bell tower, where they had built a garish new chapel, and the Church of the Sign of the Holy Mother, where now there was nothing but a playground. He’d need only half an hour to do his work, and then he’d take a leisurely walk to Borovitskaya Square, and from there, on to the waterfront.

He showed his ID at the desk and they handed him a pass. MMMD, the pass read. Main Military Medical Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The corner of the little card featured a complicated emblem: the traditional serpent, wrapped around a chalice. And there was something inside the cup. A dagger? A mortar? Oak branches on each side, an eagle posed above it, a red cross below. My, oh my! He chuckled. Such ridiculous heraldry.

He knocked at the door. The secretary had already left, as he had anticipated, and he walked in, welcomed by a low, rumbling voice. Leontiev even stood up to greet him. There was a certain apprehension in his eyes. Clearly, he wondered what the prosecutor might want from him. But in the end, you don’t turn down meetings with people like Herr Prosecutor, even after you’ve worked your way into a directorship, into a vast office with a view of the Kremlin. They shook hands, and then Leontiev sat down in his leather chair at the end of a long table, polished till it gleamed like ice. He gestured with one broad hand that his visitor should have a seat, too.

“I’ve heard of you, of course!” he boomed, taking a look at the man in the old raincoat. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

The man smiled, baring some poorly made dentures.

“Oh, I’ll be quick. I know your time is valuable. Just one small question,” he said. “I’ve received some information about a series of suicides. Or, I should say, apparent suicides. All the men who killed themselves had been soldiers in Afghanistan. Now, here’s what I figured out.” Was the man in the raincoat’s smile turning into a sneer, or had it always been that way? “I learned that they all had been denied wheelchairs. That same decree—dictated, officially speaking, by the need to conserve resources—also canceled the veterans’ prescription-medicine discounts.”

“I’m not sure I understand your interest in this ministry’s affairs.” Leontiev was trying to remain polite, but on the open face that had been such an asset in his career, a hint of annoyance was visible. “You know as well as I do how much the federal budget has shrunk.”

The man nodded in time with the tapping of his old shoe on the floor, and he went on as if nothing had happened. “However, according to the information I have, at the same time, a new suite of furniture was purchased for your office.” He ran a finger gently over the shining tabletop. “Cherry, is it?”

Leontiev nodded.

“For a little more than five million rubles,” the man continued. “All of this carving work, the bronze and the good leather, it all costs good money, doesn’t it?” He stood up and walked around the table, very close to Leontiev, his voice friendly. “Doesn’t all this expensive garbage give you a rash on the ass?”

“What is the meaning of this?” Leontiev was rising slowly out of his chair, upholstered in that incriminating leather. Standing, he was the same height as this uncouth prosecutor. Suddenly he heard a click. His eyes darted to one side, and there, just an inch from his temple, another eye stared at him, unblinking—the barrel of a pistol. He also saw, for the first time, the eyes of the man in the ragged raincoat. Compared to them, the pistol looked almost kind.

“What are you—?” Leontiev began, but the man ordered him to shut his mouth, and with the easy gesture of a practiced magician, pulled a gag over Leontiev’s head and fastened it tight around his mouth. From the other pocket of his raincoat, the man took a roll of packing tape, which he used to tie Leontiev to his extravagant chair. There was a moment when Leontiev could have broken free. But that pistol… And the prosecutor seemed so sure of himself, not even the slightest bit nervous. Now he laid an ordinary black briefcase on the table. In no more hurry than before, he began taking wooden pegs out of the case, one after another, and he arranged them neatly on the table.

Leontiev thought he must be going mad. The events taking place here in his office, with no particular ceremony, simply did not compute. What could the man need those pegs for? Before Leontiev found an answer, his eyes stopped darting around like a frightened bird’s and he froze. Moving just a little, he rolled closer to the table. The new furniture did not creak, and the carpet concealed the sound. With the sole of one long soft-leather dress shoe, Leontiev felt for the alarm button under the table. There was the usual button that alerted building security, but there was a second one with a direct connection to the police. One more inch, just one more… He coughed a little, to distract the prosecutor from what he was doing, and finally—oh, thank God!—his foot hit the alarm button.