Red Chameleon (25 page)

“And I want to get into the files. I want to find Shmuel Prensky.”

He told her the entire story, from the moment he was assigned the case through his finding of the body of Lev Ostrovsky. A look he recognized had come over her. He imagined her back in her office, uniform tight, the picture of Lenin in his monastic room over her head as she weighed possibilities.

“If you go back to Petrovka, you will have to drop the case. Khabolov will dismiss you.”

Rostnikov agreed and reached over to pet Baku, who lay on the table watching him.

“You have dropped the Savitskaya case,” she said. “You can call in and so report. The killer confessed and was run down by a hit-and-run driver. The case is closed. I still have a phone. You can do it from here.”

“And then?” he said.

“Then you pursue the case of the murdered old actor. It is a different case. He gave you the name of Shmuel Prensky.”

“I need the files,” Rostnikov said, sighing.

“And you want me to get them for you,” she said, standing up to remove the dishes. “I have taken to drinking one glass of wine each night. Your doctor, Alex, prescribed it. You'll have a glass?”

She brought two glasses and a dark bottle from the cupboard.

“It's Greek wine,” she said. “A gift from the chief procurator, who has, I'm sure, dismissed me from his mind, which is understandable. He has not, however, revoked my privileges, as you well know.”

“So,” he said, taking the wine she poured for him in a kitchen glass.

“So, I will do it. We will get a taxi after you call in, and I will go to the central files. If the name of Shmuel Prensky is there, I will find it. I warn you, I am very poor with those computers. If the information is new, I probably will have difficulty with it.”

“This is an old man, comrade Anna, a very old man. His deeds are buried in Soviet antiquity.”

She shrugged and smiled, happy to be active.

“Make your call and watch the television. I may be an hour or more.”

Before she left, he called Petrovka and left a message for the assistant procurator, indicating that the killer of Abraham Savitskaya had almost accidentally fallen into his lap and that the case was now ended and he was going out for dinner and a movie. The operator at Petrovka indicated that Procurator Khabolov was trying to reach him, but Rostnikov sighed and said he would come to see the assistant procurator first thing in the morning.

After Anna Timofeyeva left, he stroked Baku, who leaped heavily onto his lap, sipped Greek wine, and watched a travel show on the television. The show was about Hong Kong and made the Oriental city look like a vast, noisy illuminated toy. He wanted to visit Hong Kong now almost as much as he wanted to see America.

After an hour he called home and told Sarah he was working late. She told him Josef had called and would be in for a short visit in a few days. She sounded genuinely happy, and Rostnikov sensed that things were going better for him at home. Sarah also said that calls had come every half hour for Rostnikov to get in touch with Procurator Khabolov.

“I have called in,” he said. “I will see Comrade Khabolov in the morning. Meanwhile, I must eat, perhaps take in a show, and pursue another case for at least a few hours.”

Sarah said, “I understand,” and by the way she said it, he was sure that she did, indeed, understand. Their phone had been tapped since his unsuccessful attempt to blackmail the KGB into letting him emigrate to the United States. While the tap was often an inconvenience, it could sometimes be used to bolster his lies and deceptions. He hung up the phone to wait.

Anna Timofeyeva came back almost three hours after she had left and found Rostnikov dozing in a straight-backed chair with Baku asleep on his lap. She sat down in front of him and shook his right leg.

“I'm awake,” he said without opening his eyes. “You had trouble?”

“I had trouble,” she said, and his eyes opened. “The traces of Shmuel Prensky are very old, comrade, very old. References to him exist going back to 1932. He held minor positions in the Stalin rise, and then he disappeared. He was a Jew. Many Jews disappeared. You know that.”

“But now he has appeared again.” Rostnikov sighed, placing Baku gently on the chair he vacated.

“I'll do more tomorrow,” she said. “The records are old. The strings are thin. The boxes heavy. The clerks irritable.”

“Thank you, Anna Timofeyeva,” he said, going to the door.

“We'll talk tomorrow, Porfiry Petrovich,” she said. “It felt good to be active. I'll walk an extra mile tomorrow.”

He waved his candlestick to her and the cat and left.

Rostnikov's initial plan was to walk home. It was about four miles, but the sky was now clear and the evening cool. He walked, candlestick under his arm, unaware of the people who moved out of his path, deep in thought. He had gone no more than a mile when he knew his leg would permit no further exercise. Besides, he longed for, needed, his weights, needed the strain of muscle to clear the wine and confusion. As he turned his head, looking for the light of the metro station he had just passed, a cab pulled up to the curb.

Through the open window, the cab driver, wearing a black cap, called, “You want a cab?”

Rostnikov opened the door, got in wearily, sat back with his candlestick, and closed his eyes. The cab eased into the night traffic and jostled him comfortably. Less than ten minutes later, the cab pulled up in front of Rostnikov's apartment building. Instead of paying, Rostnikov sat silently waiting, looking at the back of the cab driver's head. Rostnikov had not given the driver a destination, had not given his address. He had waited for the man to ask, but when the question had not come, he had sat back to absorb and wait, the candlestick ready in his hand.

“Tomorrow morning at six, no later,” the driver said. “You are to report to KGB headquarters. You are not to leave your apartment tonight. Colonel Drozhkin will be expecting you.”

Rostnikov got out of the cab without offering to pay and made his way wearily through the door and up the stairs.

I
N THE MORNING, SARAH ROSTNIKOV
rolled over in bed and examined the face of her husband. His eyes were open and appeared to be examining the ceiling with great interest. His behavior the night before had been most strange. She had been too much within herself, too much concerned with disappointment to worry about Porfiry Petrovich, and since he seemed content in his routine, she had not thought greatly about his problems, though she knew they were great and many.

When he had come home late the night before, he had eaten without noticing what he ate, had lifted his weights, losing himself so completely that she had to remind him that it was well past midnight and the clanking of the metal on the mat in the corner was surely disturbing the neighbors downstairs. They both knew the downstairs neighbors. Misha and Alexiana Korkov, would never complain. They were a mousy pair with a pale, near-teen daughter. Misha sold tickets at the USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition, while Alexiana did something vague and menial at the Aeroflot Air Terminal.

After he had stopped lifting, Rostnikov had sat on his small bench, sweating, thinking, distant. He had washed, and for the first time in memory, at least her memory, he had not read at least a few pages of an American detective novel. It had become a ritual need of her husband's to read at least a few pages of Ed McBain or Lawrence Block, Bill Pronzini, or Joseph Wambaugh. He was forever ferreting out their novels in English, hoarding them, fearing that he would run out. But last night he read nothing.

Stranger still, he had asked her if she wanted to make love. He had said it so softly, almost an exhaled breath with words, that she almost missed it. Sarah had been tired, concerned, hot, and far from any feeling of passion, but there was something in her husband that made the request a near plea. It was a sound she had never heard from him before. No one else would have noticed it. The man was so solid, so confident, so unmovable, that his possible vulnerability frightened her.

And now, in the morning, the sun coming through the window's thin curtains, she said, “Porfiry, what is it?”

“I must get up,” he said. “I have an appointment.”

He sat up, scratched his broad, hard, and hairy belly through his white undershirt, and reached over to massage his leg. At least this part of the ritual did not change.

“Where are you going?” she tried.

Rostnikov looked at his wife, her long, red-tinged hair back over her shoulders, framing her round, still-handsome face.

“Porfiry?”

“It's better you do not know,” he said, getting up and reaching for his pants. Sarah had sewn the sleeve the evening before, and it looked fine. He had but two suits and liked to keep the other one for emergencies and when his regular suit was being cleaned. Getting it cleaned was a major chore. So much was a major chore, he thought, looking for his shirt.

“You'll call me later?” she said. “I'll be home by six. Is this dangerous?”

Rostnikov had one shirt-sleeve on. He paused, pondering the question. “I don't know,” he said.

“Are you—are you afraid?” she asked, a question she never imagined asking him. She could tell by his broad, flat face that he had not considered this. Before he answered, he finished putting on his shirt.

“I don't think so,” he said, buttoning his shirt and searching for his tie. “I am curious, filled with curiosity. If you ask me, is this dangerous, Porfiry? I say, yes. I think so. But it is a puzzle, a page that must be turned even if the page is on fire and I burn my hand.”

She was still in bed, watching him, when he finished dressing. He moved to her, kissed both her cheeks and her forehead.

“If Josef gets here before I do, do not eat without me,” he said. “If I am not back by nine, call Tkach at Petrovka.”

“Porfiry,” she said, feeling fear.

He shook his head no and pursed his lips. Then he turned and went out the door. Sarah tried to hold that memory of him, to etch it in her mind. She didn't want to tell herself why she was doing this, but she knew, she knew deep within her, that she feared never seeing him again.

Rostnikov was more familiar with the huge yellow-gray building at 22 Lubyanka Street than he really wanted to be. He walked up the small rise toward the building, past the thirty-six-foot statue of “Iron” Felix Dzerzhinksy, who organized the Cheka for Lenin. The Cheka, after many transformations, was now the KGB.

The building, like the others that flanked it and were part of the KGB complex, was unmarked. Before the Revolution, the building had belonged to the All-Russian Insurance Company. Captured German soldiers and political prisoners built a nine-story annex after World War II. The old section circles a courtyard. On one side of the courtyard is Lubyanka Prison where thousands have been led to execution cells.

Rostnikov walked slowly up the steps of the main building at 2 Dzerzhinsky Square. He passed a pair of men coming out, both of whom had the somber look of agents. They did not look at him.

And then Rostnikov was through the door and standing in the complex known as the Center. Another KGB building existed on the Outer Ring Road where foreign operations were handled. Rostnikov had passed it, at least the place where he knew it existed. It could not be viewed from the road. Meanwhile, the Center continued as the heart of the KGB operation.

Rostnikov moved through the outer lobby, absorbing the building again. The walls and hallways were, he knew, all a uniform light green, and the parquet floors, except those of the generals, a few colonels, and the division leaders, were uncarpeted. Throughout the complex, lighting came from large, round ceiling globes covered with shades.

“Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov,” he told the uniformed young man at the desk. Behind this uniformed man stood another young man, in uniform, carrying a small automatic weapon and standing at full attention.

“Chief Inspector Rostnikov,” Rostnikov added.

“Wait there,” the young officer said, pointing to a series of nearby wooden chairs. Rostnikov sat. He sat for about fifteen minutes, watching people come in and out, noting that everyone seemed to whisper as if they were in a cathedral or Lenin's tomb.

Then an older officer in uniform appeared before Rostnikov, ramrod straight, and said, “Come.”

And Rostnikov came. As had happened the other times he had been there, his guide moved at march pace, easily outdistancing the policeman, who simply tried to keep his guide in sight until the man realized the distance and slowed down. But in this case Rostnikov knew where they were headed, knew the door they stopped in front of, recognized the gravelly voice that answered the guide's knock. There was no name on the door, no marking.

“Come,” said the voice, and Rostnikov entered alone and closed the door behind him—dark brown carpet, not very thick; framed posters on the wall from the past, urging productivity and solidarity; chairs with arms and dark nylon padded seats and an old polished desk behind which, as on other occasions, sat Colonel Drozhkin.

Drozhkin looked even smaller this time than the last. His hair was just as white, his suit and tie just as black. The last time they had spoken, Drozhkin had indicated that he was, at the age of seventy-two, about to retire, but that clearly had not yet come to pass.

“Do you know why you are here?” Drozhkin said.

Rostnikov assumed that the question was somewhat rhetorical and shrugged, and then he observed from Drozhkin's face that the colonel did not know why the chief inspector was there.

“Do you know who wants to meet you?” Drozhkin said.

“No,” said Rostnikov.

“General Shakhtyor, the miner,” said Drozhkin, rising to glare angrily at Rostnikov. “Do you know who that is?”

“The name is familiar,” said Rostnikov, watching the clearly frightened face of the old man before him.