THE GREAT DETECTIVE

Moscow

Rodki Semyonov was untroubled about letting the American girl get a few steps ahead of him. Russia, for all of its big cities and vast terrain was as small a place as any other police state. Especially for a first time visitor whose passport had been in the hands of a front desk clerk and now resided in Semyonov’s coat pocket. She was an amateur, anyway. A rich girl who’d gotten in over her head and should’ve stayed on her vacation in Greece, instead of involving herself in situations she had no real imagination for.

General Pushkin would’ve preferred he had an encounter with the girl right away, but Semyonov opted for a more subtle approach. He hated to beat women. It was at times a part of his job, but he went to great lengths to avoid such confrontations. That was work for the secret police and KGB.

“The key sticks,” the woman dressed as a maid told him, as she accompanied him to the tenth floor. She jiggled the lock before it released, letting him into the American woman’s suite.

“She bought a green coat at a textile store near the Kremlin,” the woman testified, “A bowl of sausage and pickle soup in the Red Square cafeteria, a coffee, two creams and no sugar, Kulich bread—though she didn’t eat it—four vodkas, bear cutlets—of which she had only one bite—and stole a pencil from the front desk.” One of ten assistants to the deputy head of hotel security, the woman was intent on distinguishing herself to the man she had always known by only one name—The Great Detective. “I was told she’s a communist.”

The Great Detective nodded. “So was she.”

The woman didn’t understand exactly what he meant, but pretended to, raising her eyebrow as if they were in on a very important clue together. But the Great Detective never returned the gesture and remained in the middle of the living room, his eyes fixed on a painting of a peasant woman in a pale, blue babushka. She reminded him of his mother.

“Comrade Detective,” the woman entreated, “I hope it is not imprudent of me to tell you what an honor it is to meet you. If I can be of any help to you at all, I could go to my death a satisfied woman.”

She hadn’t intended on propositioning him, but his quiet demeanor and general ugliness had emboldened her. Had he appeared conceited, she would’ve never thought that a woman with her pleasant but ordinary features could interest him. Especially since men had often accused her of having a stern manner that lacked sensuality.

The Great Detective, for his part, gave no witty remark or double entendre. He simply buried his face in her hair and took her against a scratched up writing table. It’s delicate, fawn-like legs clashed with the assistant’s upturned thighs and ankles, and the Great Detective thought briefly that the writing table reminded him of his late wife. That thought alone made the encounter worthwhile.

When they finished, Semyonov helped the woman restore her appearance, and with a sufficient amount of respect, asked her to leave while he performed his investigation. She saluted him before she departed—even clicking the heels of her walking shoes.

Semyonov liked being in a room so recently after its inhabitant had left. It allowed him to touch upon what his subject might have been thinking as well as doing. And most importantly, why? He caressed the nub of an open tube of lipstick with his index finger. Revlon, it read. He then wiped the waxy film on his trousers, leaving a crimson smudge. The American girl’s toiletries remained largely untouched, and her bath, though wet, contained a couple of straight, black hairs. The floor in the bathroom had been wiped down, as had the path from the bathroom door to the sofa, and a white bottle containing a clear gel appeared to be the only grooming product she’d used. The detective didn’t have to touch her bedding to see that it was wet.

At the bottom of her make-up case, underneath a disk of powdered rouge, he found a small mirror—the kind that could fit in a pocket book and be used to touch up lipstick. The Great Detective slid the mirror out of its embroidered linen sleeve and noticed that something remained inside the silk lining. Casually, he slipped his finger behind the lining and pulled out a metal card embossed with a plus sign, a star, and the Russian word for tree, derevo.

“Unless you have an urgent message for me, I would prefer to continue my investigation alone,” Semyonov announced. The smell in the air had changed. It was infused with the scent of a man who bathed every day—an uncommon practice in Russia and most of Europe for that matter.

The Hungarian assassin put his gun away quietly.

“Pardon me, Comrade,” the Hungarian said in Russian. “I met a girl at a party downstairs and she gave me her key. I hope something terrible hasn’t happened.”

“Are you from Bucharest?” Semyonov asked in Russian, and then repeated the phrase in Romanian, pocketing the metal card before turning to face the intruder.

“I’m Hungarian,” he answered. “Here on holiday.”

The Hungarian spoke in a distinctive Transylvanian accent. Semyonov had never been particularly good at speaking foreign languages, but he had an ear for detecting dialects. It was a skill he’d sharpened on the police force, when he’d been required to shadow visiting aliens.

“I’ve never been out of Moscow, but I encountered a student from Budapest once,” Semyonov continued. “He sent me a recipe for stuffed cabbage that he wrote on cigarette paper and smuggled to me through one of the prison guards. He was crazy. I still haven’t made the cabbage.”

“Are you the house detective?” the Hungarian asked.

“Yes, I’m a detective.” Semyonov yawned and cracked his neck, feeling an attack of bursitis coming on in his shoulder. “Most of my job is boring, but being sent after a nice-looking girl isn’t so bad.”

The Hungarian forced a smile.

“Can you tell me anything about her?” the detective inquired.

The Hungarian shrugged. “Not really. Pretty piece of ass. Throws her money around.”

Semyonov continued to rifle through the girl’s toiletries, picking through them one by one and lining them up on the bathroom counter. “Do you know where she gets her money?”

The Hungarian curled his lip and folded his arms across his chest. “Maybe her daddy,” he replied.

Semyonov took out a small pad of poor-quality paper and made notes for himself in his own shorthand. There was an unmistakable clarity to finding the spigot of any investigation—the person from whom all of the answers would flow sooner or later, in one way or another. It was the same when he’d been investigating murders and black market rings, and was especially true now, when his detecting revolved solely around espionage.

“Must be her daddy,” he agreed. “Say, you wouldn’t want to have a drink with me, would you? Since your plans with the American girl have fallen through?” Semyonov’s nose pointed left as he smiled, and the Hungarian was transfixed by the man’s broken features. His interest turned to annoyance when the Russian detective put his arm around him and squeezed his shoulder.

The Hungarian shrugged him off and walked out of the suite. He knew it was imprudent to be rude—even to mid-level hotel employees—but he didn’t plan on sticking around Moscow long enough to need any favors or fear petty repercussions.

The Great Detective, for his part, had expected the slight.

“Good morning,” the pretty receptionist bid him as she checked her appointment book. The Hungarian nodded at her instead of returning the greeting. He hated speaking Russian.

As soon as he slipped the unmarked, bulging envelope into the mail slot, the girl found his name, saying, “Yes, here it is,” and reached behind her for a towel, which the Hungarian rejected.

“I brought one,” he explained and the girl told him to suit himself, but insisted he take her towel anyway. Rules were rules.

The Hungarian seized the graying rag and threw it to the floor as soon as he entered the bathhouse.

“Fabi,” the Hungarian called to the preparatory masseuse. Fabi was dripping in perspiration—a pool of it having formed in a palm-sized ledge perched at the top of his domed belly. When he tipped forward to crack his knuckles, the pool dribbled over Fabi’s middle and tinkled off the tip of his penis as if he were taking an unconscious piss. The masseuse then smacked his hands together three times, letting the echo bounce off the sopping tile walls of the steam chamber, and signaling to the Hungarian and a meaty woman who had come in behind him, that it was time for them to strip naked.

Fabi took the Hungarian first, slapping and pounding his back and legs, before grabbing his head in his hands and cracking his neck in two quick spins to the right and left. It was a sudden and unlikable way to be handled, but left the Hungarian feeling strangely titillated—much like he felt after completing a job.

With a slight bow, Fabi took the Hungarian’s hand, shaking it hard, before moving on to the woman. She raised her arms over her head—as if she were being arrested—and the Hungarian watched the masseuse slap her breasts with a towel.

The key Fabi had given him was cupped tightly in his palm as he entered the next chamber. The Hungarian would’ve loved to bypass the rest of the gauntlet and head straight to the locker room for a rendezvous with his new gun, but once he entered the bath house, he knew there was no turning back or skipping any of its prescriptions. With his usual resolve, the Hungarian looked out onto the four marble beds and chose the one closest to the single gas lantern that illuminated the chamber. He placed the key inside his cheek, laid down on his stomach and waited for one of the baton girls to come. To his chagrin, he got a fatty with yellow skin tone and sodden pubic hair.

“Take it easy around my bladder,” the Hungarian ordered. He’d forgotten to use the toilet. The girl ignored him, and he watched her belly-folds waggle as she beat him with a club wrapped in a hot, wet towel until his muscles felt like noodles.

His luck in treatment providers got no better until he entered the fifth chamber, where he was oiled by a fair brunette. Fit and graceful, her only shortcoming was an engorged upper lip. She was also kind enough to use the loufa he provided instead of the ones dubiously sanitized by the house. He thanked her by patting her bare buttocks.

“Atta girl,” he grumbled.

The Hungarian felt good and was especially glad that he’d chosen not to eat that morning. The gauntlet was a vigorous cleansing ritual that partnered well with a liquid diet and the Hungarian decided it was high time for a forty-eight hour reprieve from solid food. He entered the last chamber—the sauna—confident that his reflexes would be sharper and infinitely more precise due to his fast and looked forward to handing Fabi’s son the key in exchange for a rolled bath mat that contained his new weapon.

“Hello there,” a reclining man rasped, before clearing his throat and trying again. “Hello, I said. Fancy meeting you here.” The ugly hotel detective sat up, leaning his elbows onto his knees.

“I’m sorry, have we met?” the Hungarian lied.

“Quite late last night. At the Hotel Rude.”

The Hungarian leaned forward and squinted as if he was trying hard to place him. “Yes, yes of course. I’m not wearing my eyeglasses, so I didn’t recognize you.”

“Nor were you last night. You must be ashamed of them, like I am. I’ve yet to touch mine and they were imposed on me over a year ago.” The detective sat up and leaned against the wall—his bent up face at odds with his body. Back at Hotel Rude, he’d looked rather lumpy in his overcoat, but here, naked and in unforgiving light, his physique revealed itself as lean and muscular.

“You lift weights?” he asked.

The Hungarian shook his head no.

“You should try it,” the detective counseled. “It helps keep the weight off. Look at me—I’m over fifty, although I won’t tell you by how much—and I don’t look much different than I did twenty years ago.”

He patted his taut abdomen and the Hungarian’s face flushed.

“No, really,” the detective continued. “I know it works. I fight—or at least I used to. What’s more, I use a punching bag in the mornings.”

The Hungarian sat down on the wooden bench facing the detective and stood up again. He looked out the small porthole of a window into the locker room, but Fabi’s son was nowhere in sight. The masseuse had asked him explicitly to wait in the sauna until his son was ready for him.

“You should try it.”

“What?”

“A punching bag,” the detective clarified.

The Hungarian sat down again, crossing his arms over his chest. “I travel a lot,” he mumbled.

“All the better,” the detective prodded. “Pillows and blankets make decent punching bags, and it’s much easier than finding weights—unless you don’t mind lifting furniture. But I don’t recommend that. You can strain your back.”

The Hungarian nodded, looking out the porthole window again. “I’ll take a crack at it,” he grunted.

“Wonderful,” the detective exclaimed. “Say, I could show you some moves. I’ve got time. Besides, lunch is coming up and what better way to work up an appetite?”

The Hungarian didn’t answer his invitation.

“Don’t you think?”

“Hmm?” Gulyas scowled.

“Punching works up an appetite, I said.”

The detective put his fists up again and mimed a few fighting moves. The Hungarian stared numbly at his dodges and thrusts until Semyonov punched him with a right cross. It propelled him backwards onto the wooden bench, leaving him slumped nose to bellybutton. A few drips of water plunged from an IV onto the hot rocks, and a billow of steam obscured the Hungarian’s head until evaporating into the parched air.

“Bombah!” Fabi’s son, a frizzy-headed youth with a faint, black mustache and candy-red lips imitated the Great Detective’s knock-out punch before pulling open the sauna doors. He took the Hungarian by the feet, dragging his sweaty body off the bench and letting his head thump to the floor and down the one step into the unisex locker room. The meaty woman from Fabi’s chamber followed, still naked, but bone dry as if the heat had no effect on her. She carried a coil of steel wire and pulled up a chair—not for herself, but for the Hungarian, whom she proceeded to tie to it.

“Mr. Gulyas,” the Great Detective urged, slapping the Hungarian’s cheeks and dousing his face with a cup of coffee with cream that had been sitting on top of locker 32 since the early morning. “Are you ready for that drink now?”

Long before he became known as The Great Detective, Rodki Semyonov had harbored different ambitions. They were grand in neither scope nor mission, but they were ambitions nonetheless. He wanted his own apartment, where he could live with his wife, Polina, and not have to share space with a gaggle of relatives. He wanted a decent factory job in the burgeoning industrial town where he was born, and he wanted to have one child of either sex that he hoped would inherit Polina’s earth-brown eyes.

The job had been provided for him, as he knew it would. A man of his size and strength was a welcome addition to most factory crews. Rodki was confident the child would come once he and Polina were settled. But obtaining an apartment for him and his family alone was another story altogether and Rodki Semyonov knew he would have to use his brain more than his back if he were to pull off such a coup.

“Az isten bassza meg a bu’do’sru’ csko’s kurva anya’dat!” the Hungarian, Beryx Gulyas spat, spraying blood and a chipped tooth into Semyonov’s face.

Semyonov broke the Hungarian’s nose with the back of his hand for the insult. He didn’t appreciate the visual of God “fucking his stinking, wrinkled whore mother,” especially considering the way she’d died—in a gulag, he was told, buried alive next to his Polina.

It was his mother who had told him not to enter into the Shchelkovo underworld, but Semyonov had seen an opportunity for himself. The bare-knuckle tournaments that went on after the factories closed for the day promised big bucks, and more importantly, could win him some influence with the Housing Authority.

“It’s illegal,” his mother had warned. “Maybe they look the other way today, but tomorrow is always another story.”

She was right, of course, but not about the fights. Those were protected by a man named Belnikov, who was at that time a favorite pet of Stalin’s. Belnikov loved the tournaments and grew fond of the eleven-time tournament champion, whom he had personally nick-named The Iron Knuckle.

“Mr. Gulyas, I know who you are and what you do.”

The Great Detective held the Hungarian’s discarded Beretta above his bloody nose, letting him get a good look at it.

“It has an abnormal land and groove pattern, did you know that? It’s a manufacturer’s defect that makes it easy to track from a ballistic standpoint.”

Beryx Gulyas eyed the gun, reacquainting himself with its blunt nose and quarter moon trigger. It had been cleaned.

“Antosha Sidorov, Lev Kretchnif, Teo Anghelescu, Anna and Magnus Karlsson, Charles Monks… I have thirteen other confirmations in addition to five other assassinations I suspect can be attributed to you, although no gun was used. It would appear you’ve branched out into other methods lately. Then, there was that unpleasant killing at the airfield which combined your methods. An improvisation, I suspect, since the co-pilot you savaged was the son of a German attaché.”

Semyonov had always found interrogations distasteful, but they were a fact of life. There was nothing that made a man reveal his secrets or his character better than discomfort. Beryx Gulyas, of course, had no intention of disclosing any information no matter how badly he was beaten. Semyonov had encountered his type before, but their exchange wouldn’t be for nothing.

“I’m confused, Mr. Gulyas, why you would be dispatched here to kill an American tourist when your prey is normally so distinguished?” Semyonov lit a cigarette and put it in the assassin’s mouth. “You can’t have fallen on hard times when there’s so much work out there.”

Gulyas spit the cigarette out and Fabi’s son picked it up and began to smoke. It was a fine Turkish brand.

“Unless there’s someone else you’re after and the girl is incidental. I’d be careful about these incidental players, though, if I were you. You never know who they are.”

Semyonov produced the metal card he’d found in the American girl’s suite. He held it up close enough for Beryx to see and then put it back into his breast pocket. “Funny little thing—wouldn’t you say? Your friend—the American girl—had it amongst her belongings. You wouldn’t happen to know what it is, would you?”

Semyonov punched Beryx Gulyas in the kidney before he could answer. He bore down on the assassin’s shoulder—not enough to break it, but enough to make the Hungarian wonder if it was broken.

“My biggest question to you, Mr. Gulyas, is—what now?”

It had become a stock phrase for Rodki Semyonov. He’d first used it on a British naval officer who was trying to pass himself off as a Kim Philby, ex-patriot, insisting that he was eager to betray his country and move to Moscow. Semyonov knew he was a spy the moment he saw him in his civilian clothes. Dressed to appear like a disillusioned member of the British upper classes, he wore a gold-tinted watch that he’d recently scrubbed free of tarnish and attached to a new leather band.

It was one of his first cases after being recruited into the Moscow police force. Belnikov felt they needed more good fighters on the force and thought “The Iron Knuckle” would be a boon at interrogations. He’d never suspected that Rodki Semyonov could be useful as anything other than a strong man, and Rodki Semyonov never suspected that his natural gift for puzzles and mysteries would draw him into Stalin’s inner circle.

“Junior?”

The Great Detective stepped back and let Fabi’s son box Beryx Gulyas’ ears and kick his groin. The Hungarian bore the abuse well, so Semyonov took a couple of gentle cracks at him to make the eager youth feel like less of a light weight.

Long before joining the ranks of the Moscow police, where socialist protocol made mediocrity essential, Rodki Semyonov had learned not to flaunt his talents. It could be dangerous to distinguish oneself on the force, even if it was more results-focused than the postal service or the universities. Semyonov had always been a likeable fellow and figured out how to handle threatened superiors by using just enough working class humility and appearing genuinely surprised when he solved a case—as if it were by accident.

Belnikov wasn’t fooled. “Aren’t you a revelation?” he’d always remark when he visited Semyonov at his office. “Stalin has his eye on you.”

It would appear Stalin had his eye on Belnikov, too: The trusted advisor’s intestines were gored at his whore’s apartment on New Year’s Day in 1938—the same day they came for Polina and the rest of Semyonov’s family.

Comrade Stalin felt he needed a personal detective without any conflicting loyalties and in one stroke, Rodki Semyonov’s personal life had ceased to exist.

“Mr. Gulyas, I’m sure you understand that whoever sent you—perhaps your Secretary General or one of his henchmen—is himself a servant of Moscow.”

Semyonov clutched Beryx Gulyas by the hair and yanked his head backwards. The Hungarian, choked by his own blood, coughed and gurgled, taking deep gasps of air when the fluids from his nose drained to the back of his throat.

“All we want to know is why you’re here,” the Great Detective said. Like the Hungarian, he was bored. Both men knew a thing or two about applying and surviving pressure, so their encounter was becoming an endless game of tic-tac-toe.

Beryx Gulyas rolled his eyes into the back of his head as if he were about to have a seizure, but Semyonov would brook none of his dramatics. He beat the Hungarian with his knees and elbows until the man really was on the brink of unconsciousness, and perhaps, just the slightest bit sorry that he’d tempted fate with such a wise-ass move.

“You’re looking tired, Mr. Gulyas,” Semyonov teased. “I think you need rest.”

Fabi’s son was keen to continue the interrogation, but The Great Detective took him aside and explained how things were done. He wanted to give the Hungarian a bit of time to get his confidence back before he destroyed it again.

“I could use some lunch,” Semyonov told Fabi. “Is there a decent cafeteria around here?”

Fabi told him there was, and directed him to a small greasy spoon nestled next to a book store. Semyonov bought a book of poetry by Mayakovsky and sat down at a window seat, ordering borscht and some boiled potatoes. He opened the book and pretended to read. Thirty minutes—no more. That’s what he would give the Hungarian, assuming, of course, that his soup was brought to him in a timely manner.

Fabi’s son had a look of both surprise and determination frozen upon his face. His lips—no longer the color of cherry candy—had faded into a grayish-white, and blood ran in one smooth line from the pellet-sized hole above his right eyebrow into his hairline, where it disappeared. He was lying on the floor, clutching a baby blue towel with his left hand. His right hand—the one that had held Beryx Gulyas’ Beretta—was empty, but his fingers looked like they were still coiled around the thing.

Fabi himself had been moved to one of the marble tables in the second chamber, where his big, round belly pointed to a vent in the ceiling. His brains remained in the first chamber, where they had already dripped down the wet, tile walls and slid towards the drain in the center of the floor. A blob of them jiggled over the drain, causing it to slurp.

“I’m leaving my key on the front desk,” the receptionist informed. The noise of the drain made her queasy. She’d been in the toilet when Beryx Gulyas showed himself out, and had stayed there until The Great Detective returned from his lunch.

“I’m impressed with his accuracy,” Rodki Semyonov told General Pushkin’s aide, a nervous type who tried to cover his emotional frailty with an overdone military posture. Semyonov went on to explain that while Fabi’s son had been shot at close range, Fabi had been a moving target who was blasted at a distance of several meters. That was no easy feat for a man who had been worked over as thoroughly as the Hungarian—a man whose eyes were nearly swollen shut, his body bruised to the bone, and his nose completely shattered. Semyonov held the aide’s gun and followed what he imagined the Hungarian’s movements would have been.

“Right there,” Semyonov said, as he moved into the first chamber and found the angle at which Beryx had shot the gun-trading masseuse. Coming in from the second chamber, the Hungarian would’ve been totally exposed and Fabi would’ve had all of the advantages. There would have been no time to position for a shot—only a moment’s grace to allow Beryx to aim by instinct and fire a single round.

“Perfect,” The Great Detective whispered.

Beryx, he recognized, was the highest caliber of professional. Despite his skill, Semyonov could see why General Pushkin hadn’t snagged him for his office, and let him continue working for one of the lesser states. Sadists had never bothered Pushkin, but instability did—and Beryx Gulyas’s penchant for creative murder was a sign of both deep insecurity and staggering hubris.

If he could manage to stick to one method and do what he did best—as he had with poor Fabi and his son—he could have a long career ahead of him, Semyonov reflected.

“The General will be most unhappy about this development,” the aide carped. “If they weren’t already dead, he would have purged this operation of these two hacks and replaced them with more talented operatives.”

Semyonov nodded. His special status left him largely immune from blame for problems like this. Fabi and his son may have been hacks, but they were KGB hacks and it was their responsibility to keep the Hungarian in line. If their superior had any common sense, he would’ve immediately noticed that this father-son team was a losing proposition. Semyonov had noticed. In fact, he had counted on it.

“What should I tell the general?” the aide implored. He tried not to seem worried about being the bearer of bad news.

“That I’ll follow Mr. Gulyas and let the Comrade General know as soon as I discover anything.”

The general held his cards close and hated to surrender any control. Semyonov knew, on the other hand, that surrendering a bit of control was precisely what broke a case wide open. The Hungarian would’ve rather died than talk, and all they would’ve gained by detaining him indefinitely was another prisoner. With Beryx Gulyas loose, Semyonov could wait for his movements as if he were monitoring a radar screen for a cloaked submarine. Eventually, it would have to surface.

“What if he disappears for good?” the aide moaned.

“It’s possible, I guess. But trust me, my friend; I did quite a number on him. And he’ll be far more likely to make stupid errors after the trauma of one of my interrogations—they take a lot out of man. You can tell that to the general.”

The aide seemed pleased, jutting his chin forward and standing “at ease,” while jotting Semyonov’s exact words in his notebook.

“In the meantime, I’m afraid I may need permission to leave Moscow in the near future. It’s just a hunch, but I’d rather the general give me authorization now instead of waiting until our friend reappears and risk losing him again.”

It had been eighteen years since Semyonov had been allowed to leave the Moscow city limits. Stalin had guarded him so jealously that he hadn’t even been allowed a visit to the provinces and conducted all of his investigations—no matter how far reaching—from the city proper. When Stalin died and he acquired a new master, the restraints upon his movements didn’t change. But then, he’d never questioned them, either.

Semyonov didn’t know exactly what made him question them today. He didn’t want to leave Moscow. It had become a comfortable cell for him after all of these years. But something inside him, something perhaps all too human that had nothing to do with his desire or ability to solve this case, made him want to get a look beyond his city prison.

“One more thing,” Semyonov added, as the aide looked up from his notepad. “If I’m to follow this man myself, I’ll need a gun.”

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