Black Knight in Red Square (26 page)

There was no place to dispose of the bomb. Whichever way he turned he would be heading toward a national monument. The major and the lieutenant would have followed whatever procedure had been established for bomb disposal. It would have been impossible to impress the urgency on them, because they did not have his understanding of the woman.

Knowing the sailors were behind him, he ran on, pushing through the crowds and dashing across the open spaces, trying to figure out the least damaging place to put the bomb in case she was nearby. And then luck intervened. Standing in front of him, perhaps fifty yards away in front of the Place of Execution was a blond tourist in a blue suit. She was carrying a camera and wearing dark glasses. Karpo headed toward her and glanced up at the Spassky clock, which showed that it was only a few minutes to eight.

At first the woman ignored him, but when it became clear that he was coming directly at her, she turned to face him. Behind her a young couple examined the Place of Execution.

When he was no more than twenty yards from her, the woman removed her dark glasses and fixed him with a look of black hatred.

“Stop,” she commanded, and Karpo stopped. Behind him the soldiers brushed people aside and moved toward him.

Karpo turned his head in the direction of the running boots and saw the lieutenant in advance of the major and another armed soldier.

“That is the woman,” Karpo shouted back to the young man who, panting, looked beyond him and stopped.

The lieutenant glanced at the woman and then at Karpo and saw the same look on both faces that he would never be able to describe adequately, though at the inquiry that night he would make an attempt at it. But whatever it was he saw convinced him, and he turned, still panting, and intercepted the major and the soldier with the rifle.

Karpo turned back to the woman, who held her camera in front of her. He hoped that the soldiers would back away, keep their distance, and clear the area.

“I said stop,” said the woman, in almost unaccented Russian, but Karpo did not stop. “Do you know what this is?” She held up the camera.

In response, Karpo took another step toward her. He was now no more man a dozen paces away, surely well within the destructive range of the small device he now removed from his pocket and held in front of him.

“You've failed,” he said.

“I'll try again,” she said, her eyes looking beyond Karpo at the soldiers. “If you don't want me to press this button, you will give me assurance that the soldiers will remain where they are until I am gone.”

“I can give no such assurance for the soldiers,” he said, taking another step toward her.

The young couple who had been examining the Place of Execution moved past the woman, talking to each other, ignoring the conversation between her and the tall, cadaverous man.

“There is no place for you to run, Louise Rich,” he said.

His use of the name stung, and the woman shook her blond hair out of her eyes.

“That's not my name,” she said.

“I didn't think it was,” said Karpo.

“But you know about my flight reservation,” she said, “and the identity I've been using.”

“And so,” Karpo said softly, since he was close enough, “your options are gone.”

“Limited,” she corrected, “but not gone.”

“Perhaps,” he said with a shrug.

A draft of wind came across Red Square behind Karpo, blowing the woman's hair back and creating an image of her against the background of the Cathedral of Saint Basil the Blessed that drilled itself into Karpo's mind. At this moment, bomb in hand, facing this enemy of the state, he felt an emotion he wanted to deny but couldn't. Determined in the face of certain defeat, she looked quite beautiful.

“How did you find me?” she said quietly in a voice that matched his own as she looked over at the soldiers.

“Reason, a process of elimination, and a little luck,” he admitted.

Her eyes were on him, her lips pale. He considered turning away, recalling a faint childhood image of Medusa, but he kept his gaze steady.

“We are alike,” she said through clenched white teeth.

And Karpo realized that in some way she was correct and that he stood here now looking at an important aspect of himself which, until this moment, he had denied. The realization shocked him.

“In some ways,” he said.

“You won't back away, will you?” she said with admiration.

“I can't,” he said.

“In a moment or two that soldier will raise his rifle and shoot me,” she said, nodding beyond Karpo. “You know that.”

“Yes,” he said.

“And what would you do in my place?” she asked.

Karpo was silent.

“What is your name?”

“Karpo, Emil Karpo. And yours?”

“That,” she said with a grin, “you will never know.”

Karpo felt a surge within and about him, an explosion of love, regret, and death as he leapt toward the stone platform.

Roman Tibiliski was standing across from the State History Museum at the far end of Red Square seven hundred yards from the Place of Execution. He was telling his co-manager from the Gdansk Steel Mill that the building they were looking at was the headquarters of the KGB, which was as wrong as one could be about a building, but Tibiliski, at the age of sixty, was a massive, confident man with a gruff, assured style that usually masked his ignorance.

He had just turned to Waclaw Wypich, his co-manager, to add a few erroneous details to his description when the explosion occurred. He found himself looking directly at the flash of red, followed almost instantly by a whooshing sound and a ball of smoke.

Tibiliski had no idea what the explosion was, but he felt that he ought to explain it. “Look,” he shouted to Wypich, “the fireworks. The Sunday fireworks in Red Square. They've begun early.”

Wypich, who believed almost nothing his older co-manager said, nodded knowingly, which was his means of getting through life minimally scathed.

“Shall we take a look?” Wypich asked.

Tibiliski could now see the rushing of soldiers and the scurrying of people in the crowd. It dawned on him that he had been quite mistaken about the cause of the explosion.

“No,” he said knowingly, “it's not worth looking at. Let's move on into October Square and have a look at the Sports Palace.”

The major, who had been more than fifty yards away when the explosion came, had been knocked backwards and lifted into the air. He had struck the soldier behind him, whose bayonet pierced the major's right arm.

The lieutenant was ten yards farther back, gently but insistently urging bystanders to move away from something they could neither see nor understand. He felt only the warm blast and turned to see the smoke.

His first act was to go to the major, who lay wounded. Beyond the immediate scene tourists and visitors were running, screaming, or standing in confusion. As far as the lieutenant could tell, no one except the major was seriously injured unless, of course, one counted that mad-looking woman with the camera and the policeman named Karpo. The woman was quite dead. Karpo was a bloody blot huddled against the platform; however, he was still breathing.

“K
ARPO HAS BEEN INJURED.
he may be dying,” said Tkach, putting down the telephone and turning to his wife.

Maya looked at her husband's pale face and knew that he was about to collapse. She took his arm and eased him into a chair.

He had come home from the hospital and immediately assured her that he was all right, that he had escaped with a few stitches and a slight shock, but now a second shock, a more profound one, had hit him.

“It could have been me,” he whispered. “It was a bomb, a bomb like the one…”

He let his voice trail off and looked at her for an answer but she didn't have one. Fortunately, his mother was sleeping in the other room when the call came just before midnight on Sunday.

“It could have been me,” he repeated.

“Yes,” said Maya, “but it wasn't.”

He had turned on the light in the room to answer the phone, and now the dim yellow glow on her face and in the corners of the room frightened him and she knew it.

“Maya,” he said looking at her.

“I know,” she answered.

“Karpo,” he said.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” she asked, not wanting to hear about it but knowing it would help him to talk.

“Not now,” he said, brushing his straight hair back like a little boy. “Maya, if we have a boy, we will call him Emil.”

“Yes,” she agreed, knowing they would do no such thing, “we will call him Emil.”

It took them an hour to get back to sleep, but sleep they did.

Anna Timofeyeva lay in her bed at midnight unable to see in the darkness but quite able to hear the breathing of the woman in the bed next to her and the snoring of the woman across from her.

No one had told her about what had transpired, for the doctors had given specific instructions that she was not to be excited. In fact, she was supposed to be asleep at this very moment. They had given her a pill to make her sleep, but they had not accounted for the determination of Anna Timofeyeva.

She had always considered sleep a waste of time that she could use to perform productive work. She worked well at night, in the moments just before sleep. At home she kept paper at her bedside to write down ideas about cases that she worked out in the darkness with Baku snuggled against her leg.

Rostnikov had assured her that the cat was taken care of, and the doctor had assured her that, with caution, she could return home and resume a limited work schedule after proper treatment. She would undergo that new rehabilitation technique for heart attack victims, learned from a South African who had defected to the Soviet Union. The South African would work with her himself.

Anna Timofeyeva was eager to get back to work. She could not think in this bed, could not think in bed without the cat, could not think with these hospital noises and the pill she was fighting.

She had faith in Rostnikov, she told herself, but there had been something in his tone, his movement. He'd held something back when he visited her. But she must have been mistaken. It must be the illness, the medication. Rostnikov would not hide anything from her.

A twinge hit her just below the breast bone. Angina, the doctor had called it. She considered cursing it and changed her mind. If rest would return her to the desk in Petrovka, then she would try to rest.

Unlike Tkach and Anna Timofeyeva, Rostnikov did not sleep. Neither did Sarah. Part of the reason for his restlessness was the condition of Emil Karpo, but Rostnikov did not blame himself. He had considered doing so, had sat up drinking tea and talking about it to Sarah after he returned from the office, but he could find no logical reason to blame himself for Karpo's condition.

The guilt I feel, he finally decided, is not because of Emil Karpo.

Some time after two in the morning Sarah went to bed, knowing she would not sleep. Rostnikov chose to sit at the table touching his trophy and deciding on how long to wait until he called Drozhkin. He expected that the colonel would eventually call him, but he could not wait too long.

When dawn came, Rostnikov moved to the window and looked across the wide street at the apartments where others were rising to meet Monday. Lights were on, and people were boiling water, rubbing their sleepy eyes, brushing their teeth. Unlike Rostnikov, they did not sense the significance of this Monday.

If Karpo survived, Rostnikov might change his mind, his course of action. But he could not wait. Instead, he told himself that if Karpo died, it was but the final reason for him to act. It was the cutting of a tie.

Sarah rose at eight and silently made breakfast. She wore a long white linen nightgown, and her hair was down.

“Shave,” she said.

He got up, made his way groggily toward the bathroom and shaved. In the small mirror he examined his dark face.

“It is time,” he told himself. “Time, you dull-looking oaf.”

“I'm calling,” he told Sarah as he returned to the room and picked up a piece of bread and butter. She nodded and sat down with her tea and toast to watch him. He reached out a hairy hand and touched her before picking up the phone.

Though it was before eight, Drozhkin was in and took the call almost immediately.

“A somewhat disappointing conclusion to the case,” the colonel said icily.

“In many ways,” Rostnikov agreed.

“Yet,” said Drozhkin, “it could have been worse, much worse. Your man Karpo still lives.”

“He is still alive,” Rostnikov confirmed.

“You will, I am sure, accept responsibility for what has taken place.”

“I will take responsibility for that which was within my scope of authority,” Rostnikov said.

The silence went on for about five seconds during which Rostnikov looked at his wife and nodded.

“The German,” Drozhkin said finally.

“The German,” Rostnikov echoed.

“You will have to explain,” Drozhkin's voice was somber.

“I plan to do so, Comrade Colonel. If I may, I would like to discuss it with you this morning.”

“Come to my office,” said the colonel. “As soon as you can get here.”

“No. I will meet you in the little parkway in front of the Polytechnical Museum,” Rostnikov said, “right near the entrance to the Dzerzhinski metro station.”

“Comrade,” Drozhkin said ominously.

“I'll explain, Colonel.”

“We shall see,” said Drozhkin. “Twenty minutes.”

Rostnikov hung up.

“He will come,” Rostnikov said softly.

When Rostnikov limped up the stairway of the metro twenty minutes later, Colonel Drozhkin was standing at the corner squinting into the morning sun and looking at Lubyanka across the Dzerzhinski Square. The man, Rostnikov could see, looked older, smaller, more gnarled, and tougher outside his own environment. The colonel was wearing a slightly rumpled dark brown suit. He looked at his watch to indicate that Rostnikov was wasting his valuable time.