Black Knight in Red Square (3 page)

Which was why Procurator Anna Timofeyeva, a thick box of a woman, about fifty, spent at least fourteen hours a day, seven days a week in her office in Petrovka, trying to shorten the pile of cases on her desk. She looked quite formidable in her striped shirt and dark blue procurator's uniform. She drank gallons of cold tea, did her best to ignore her weak and frequently complaining heart, and went on with her massive task.

Procurator Timofeyeva was in her second ten-year term of office. Before that she had been an assistant to one of the commissars of Leningrad in charge of shipping and manufacturing quotas. She had no background in law, no training for her position, but she was dedicated, reasonably intelligent, and, above all, a zealot. She was an excellent procurator.

She was behind her desk as always when Rostnikov entered her office after knocking and being told gruffly to enter. Then the ritual began. Rostnikov sat in the chair opposite her, glanced up at the picture of Lenin above her head, and waited. As always she offered him a glass of her room-temperature tea.

“Murder,” she said.

Rostnikov sipped his tea and waited.

“Poison,” added Procurator Timofeyeva.

Rostnikov looked down at his glass, hesitated and again sipped at the tea. He liked sugar in his tea, or at least lemon. This had neither and very little taste, but it kept his hands busy. Procurator Timofeyeva's one vice was her taste for the dramatic in assigning cases.

“An American,” she went on. “During the night, at the Metropole.”

“An American,” Rostnikov repeated, shifting his left leg. Keeping it in one position for more than a few minutes always resulted in stiffening and at least minor pain.

“And two Soviet citizens. And a Japanese.”

“Four,” said Rostnikov.

“Let us hope our powers of addition are not taxed beyond this number,” she said, sipping her own tea.

“And the inquiry, I take it, is now mine?” said Rostnikov.

“It is yours, and it is, once again, delicate. The American was a journalist here for the Moscow Film Festival. The Soviets were businessmen. The Japanese was also here for the festival, but it is the American who causes concern. It seems he was well known in his country.”

“An accident?” tried Rostnikov.

“According to the preliminary medical report from the hotel, this poison could hardly have been an accident. So, you must work quickly. There are several thousand visitors in Moscow for the festival from more than a hundred countries. There must be no rumors of a poisoner, no panic to spoil the festival. It is an important cultural event, a world event. The Olympics as you know were successfully sabotaged by the Americans and their puppets. Moscow cannot be the scene of another such embarrassment.”

Comrade Timofeyeva's knuckles were white as she clutched her glass.

“Forgive me, Comrade Procurator, but are not such fears a bit premature? This is but—”

“Sources have informed me that there may be those who wish to embarrass the Soviet Union during the festival and that this may be part of their scheme,” she said, looking over her shoulder at the portrait of Lenin as if to seek approval.

“In which case, would this not be properly handled by—” Rostnikov began, but she interrupted him again.

“The KGB wishes us to investigate this as a common crime and not a political one. I'm afraid, Comrade Rostnikov, you have gained a reputation for discretion in such matters.”

The meaning of this, Rostnikov well knew, was that if he failed, his enemies could throw him to the dogs. He was expendable, and this precarious state was becoming part of his life with each delicate case he handled.

“I understand,” Rostnikov said, rising. “I assume I am to go to the Metropole immediately. I am to keep you informed, and I am to work, as always, as swiftly as possible.”

She stood and took the empty glass from his hand.

“An American is dead, poisoned,” she said. “It is already an embarrassment.”

“And Karpo is to work with me?”

“If you wish,” she agreed, sitting again and already reaching for the next file on her desk. “But he must keep up with the rest of his case load.”

Rostnikov moved toward the door.

“If you need Tkach, yes,” she said.

He opened the door but paused before he stepped out. The next thing he was going to say would surely be dangerous, but it was worth saying, for he both liked and admired the homely, far too serious, and officious woman who sat behind the desk in this hot office.

“How are you feeling, Comrade Anna?” He spoke softly so that she could ignore him if she wished.

Her reaction was to yank off her glasses and glare at him angrily for an instant. But something in his look, the way he stood, the sincerity of his tone, got through to her, and she couldn't sustain the anger.

“I am well, Porfiry,” she lied evenly.

He recognized the lie and smiled ever so slightly.

“Good,” he said and stepped into the corridor, closing the door behind him.

He knew that she would not take his inquiry as the false solicitude of the underling who coveted his superior's job, for the facts were clear. Rostnikov would never be more than a chief inspector in the MVD, a position higher than might be expected of him considering his inability to control his tongue, his frequent impetuousness, and his politically hazardous Jewish wife—a wife who had no interest at all in either religion or politics. Fortunately, Rostnikov had no ambition; he was politically uninterested. His job was to catch criminals and occasionally punish them at the moment of capture. Usually, however, the game—and he saw it as a game—ended when he caught the criminals and turned them over to the procurator's office for justice. It didn't matter to Rostnikov whether the law was reasonable or not. The criminals knew the law and knew when they were violating it.

Beyond catching criminals, Rostnikov's life was in his wife, his son Iosef who had recently been posted to Kiev with his army unit, weight lifting, reading American mystery novels, and, most recently, plumbing.

Lost in thought, Rostnikov turned the corner and found himself facing Emil Karpo, a startling specter.

“You'll be needing me?” Karpo said.

“For now,” answered Rostnikov, continuing to limp down the corridor. “We are going to the Metropole Hotel.”

On Sverdlov Square facing the monument to Karl Marx stands the Metropole Hotel, which belongs to Intourist, the official Soviet tourist travel agency. The Metropole was built in 1903. In October 1917 the revolutionary workers and soldiers fought fiercely to capture it from the White army troops who had barricaded themselves inside. On the side of the hotel facing Marx Prospekt is a plaque commemorating this battle. Near the entrance to the hotel, on the square, are other memorial plaques, reminding people that the hotel for a time housed the offices of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of Soviets of Working People's Deputies under the chairmanship of Yakov Sverdlov after whom the square had been named. Lenin often spoke in the ballroom of the Metropole.

The Metropole has been renovated several times. The upper part of the facade is decorated with mosaic panels designed by Mikhai Vrubel on the theme of the play
La Princesse Lointaine
by the French playwright Edmond Rostand, who also wrote
Cyrano de Bergerac.
Feodor Chaliapin once sang in the hotel's restaurant and Maxim Gorky once described the hotel in glowing terms in his novel
The Life of Klim Samgin.

That is the tourist-book description of the Metropole. In fact, the hotel is dark, dusty, and decaying. The food in the restaurant is poor, the service ridiculous even by Moscow's standards, and the orchestra laughable. In spite of this, many foreigners prefer the Metropole because it behaves like old Moscow and there is so little of old Moscow left. In addition, the Bolshoi is across the square, and the hotel is well located for city-wide events such as the Moscow Film Festival. Another attraction for festival participants is the Stero Cinema on Sverdlov Square, which specializes in 3-D movies.

By 11:40 that morning every room in the Metropole had been searched. Police were guarding the exits of the hotel, and a trio of pathologists from the Kremlin Hospital were examining the four bodies, which were assembled on tables in the ornate but now unused Victorian bar. The bar was decadently ornate with massive mirrors, beautiful chandeliers, and even a gilded foot rail. The door to the dining room was guarded by two uniformed policemen.

Rostnikov looked around the room, ignoring the white-haired man who stood next to the four tables where the corpses lay. Rostnikov was absorbing the place through his pores, beyond his senses. It might be thought that this was part of his method, his secret means of detection that went beyond words, but it had nothing at all to do with the case. Being a policeman, Rostnikov occasionally entered one of the big hotels in pursuit of a criminal. Being a policeman, however, he could not afford to eat in the restaurants of any of these hotels. And being a Muscovite, he could not stay in any hotel in Moscow. It was the law. So he stood and imagined the past.

Karpo, while he did not approve of his superior's lapses into romanticism, did not interfere. In spite of his less than zealous interest in building the Soviet state, Rostnikov was a good policeman who, in his way, probably did far more for the state than so many of the self-interested Party members.

“You are the police?” asked the white-haired man impatiently. His voice echoed through the large room. Rostnikov enjoyed the sensation.

“We are,” replied Rostnikov, moving toward the tables and giving up that instant of relaxation he always enjoyed before plunging into a case.

“I am Dr. Gregori Konstantinov of the Kremlin Hospital,” said the man.

The import of that statement was not lost on Rostnikov. The Kremlin Hospital was known as the treatment center for the Soviet Union's political and military leaders. Dr. Gregori Konstantinov might well be an important man.

As he came closer to the doctor, Rostnikov could see that he was about seventy, stoop-shouldered, and very irritable.

“They all died of the same thing?” Rostnikov asked, glancing at the four naked bodies on the tables. Karpo had begun examining each one.

“It looks that way,” said Dr. Konstantinov, pursing his lips. “If not, we have a coincidence worthy of publication in medical journals. Four men, all dead in the same night. All apparently poisoned. All with blood on their mouths, all pale. All in the same hotel.”

“Hmm,” grunted Rostnikov standing reflectively as Karpo went from one body to another.

“What's he doing?” asked the doctor irritably. “We'll do a proper medical examination at the hospital. I've already looked at the bodies.”

“Magic,” whispered Rostnikov.

“Policemen,” grunted the doctor.

It was obvious which of the four bodies was the Japanese, and had the other three been dressed Rostnikov could probably have told instantly which were the Russians and which the American. Even so, that determination took little thought; the American was the bald man. His face had none of the squinting hardness of the Soviet male.

“Well, can I take the bodies?” sighed the doctor.

“A moment,” said Rostnikov.

“There are sick people back at the hospital who are still alive,” the doctor said.

“And they will have to wait for you,” Rostnikov replied evenly. “I have never waited less than an hour for a doctor at the hospital. The patients will not notice.”

Karpo came away from the bodies to speak to Rostnikov. As he paused in the dusty light of one of the high windows, he looked to Rostnikov like a figure in a religious painting by Rublev.

“They have all been drinking vodka,” he said. “All have swelling at the lymph nodes. All have blood in the mouth. All have the smell, the same smell which I cannot place.”

“Now can I—” began the doctor, but Rostnikov ignored him.

“So we have four guests in the hotel who have died from the same thing, probably something ingested.”

“Quite probably,” agreed Karpo, taking notes.

“So now we find out if they had dinner or a drink together last night. Who was with them. What they ate. Get the waiters who were on duty last night. Find out if any of these men were with a group, traveling with anyone. Discover—”

“Chief Inspector,” came a voice from the doorway, interrupting Rostnikov.

Rostnikov looked toward the doorway and saw the form of a woman against the light. He could not tell her age, but her voice sounded young.

“Yes?”

“My name is Olga Kuznetsov. I am from the Intourist office in the hotel,” she said, coming forward. “Mrs. Aubrey is here. She is demanding to know what happened. What shall I tell her?”

“Chief Inspector,” growled the old doctor, “I would like to—”

“Who is Mrs. Aubrey?” Rostnikov asked.

“Her husband is the American who died,” said the young woman, her voice wavering. She had seen the four corpses as she came forward, and had taken a step backward and looked away.

“Shall I talk to her?” said Karpo.

“No,” sighed Rostnikov. “You find the waiters, check with the elevator operators, cleaning ladies, floor women. We'll meet in the lobby in half an hour.”

“Shall we let them open the restaurant?” Karpo asked, putting his notebook away.

“After the good doctor has seen to the removal of the bodies. I think their removal during lunch might affect the customers and cut into the sales receipts.” Rostnikov looked at the doctor to indicate that the corpses could now be removed.

“Games,” grumbled the old man. “Bureaucratic games. They never change.”

“Never,” agreed Rostnikov. And then to the young woman from Intourist he added, “I'll see Mrs. Aubrey in your office.”

“No need for that,” came a voice behind him. It was a woman's voice, older than the Intourist woman and quite startling, for she spoke in English.