Red Chameleon (8 page)

“None,” Rostnikov agreed.

“None,” Yuri said. “And so they make vests without heart, spirit, need. You know what kind of vests they make?”

“Vests of poor quality,” Rostnikov guessed, glancing at Zelach, who clearly ached to shake the old rag of a man into a cooperation that would never come.

“Vests of paper, toilet paper, vests not fit to wipe one's ass with,” the old man said with venom, spit forming on his mouth, eyes turned always toward the factory.

“It wasn't always like this,” Rostnikov said softly.

“There were times,” the old man said.

“Long ago,” Rostnikov agreed.

“Long ago,” Yuri agreed.

“I understand you remember a man named Abraham Savitskaya who was here a long time ago,” Rostnikov said, not looking at the man.

“I don't remember.”

Zelach stepped forward, whipped the photograph from his pocket, and thrust it in front of the wrinkled face.

“That,” said Zelach, “is you. And that is Savitskaya.”

“And you are Comrade Shit,” the old man said sweetly.

“Zelach,” Rostnikov said firmly before the sweating, weary policeman could crush the dry old man. “Walk back to the police station, arrange for a car to get us to the station in time to catch the next train.”

Zelach's face displayed a rush of thought: first the consideration of defiance and then its quick suppression, followed by petulance, and finally resignation.

When Zelach had gone, Rostnikov leaned against the wall and said nothing.

“What happened to your leg?”

“Battle of Rostov,” Yuri said. “I still have poison gas in my lungs. I can taste it when I belch.”

They watched the factory a while longer before the old man spoke again.

“Some didn't stay around to face the troubles, the Germans, the Revolution.”

“Some?” Rostnikov tried gently.

“Savitskaya,” he said. “Savitskaya and Mikhail.”

“Mikhail?”

“Mikhail Posniky,” the old man said. “After the first Revolution, they fled.”

“Mikhail Posniky is the third man in the photograph?”

Yuri shrugged, the closest he would come to cooperation.

“What happened to him?”

“They left, said they were going to America. Who knows? We were supposed to be friends, but they ran like cowards.”

“They should have stayed,” Rostnikov agreed.

“To make vests?” said the old man.

“To fight the Nazis,” Rostnikov answered.

“Who knew in 1920 the Nazis were coming?” the old man said, looking at his feebleminded police guest.

“Who knew?” Rostnikov agreed. “And the fourth man?”

Pashkov shrugged and shivered. “I don't know.”

Rostnikov was sure, however, that the man did know. His face had paled, and he had folded his hands on his lap. His arthritic fingers had held each other to keep from trembling.

“You are Jewish,” Rostnikov said.

“Ah,” Yuri said, laughing. “I knew it was coming. It always comes. I fought. This village fought. And you people come and—”

“The four of you were Jewish?” Rostnikov said, stepping in front of the old man and cutting off his view of the factory.

“Some of us still are,” Pashkov said defiantly. “Those of us who are alive, at least one, me.” He pointed a gnarled finger at his own chest.

“The fourth man,” Rostnikov repeated. “Who is he?”

“I forget,” Pashkov said, showing yellow teeth barely rooted to his gums.

“You forget nothing,” Rostnikov said, looking down.

“I forget what I must forget. I'm a very old man.”

“A name,” Rostnikov said, and then softly added, “My wife is Jewish.”

“You lie, comrade policeman,” the old man said.

Rostnikov reached into his back pocket with a grunt, removed his wallet, and fished through it till he found the picture of Sarah and his identification papers. He handed them to the old man.

“You could have prepared these just to fool me?” he said, handing the photograph and papers back to the man who blocked his view of the loved and hated factory.

“I could have,” Rostnikov agreed. “But I didn't, and you know I didn't.”

“I know,” Pashkov said, painfully rising, using the side of the house to help him to a level of near dignity. “He was not a pleasant boy.”

“And you are afraid?”

“Vests,” Yuri Pashkov spat, coming to a decision. “His name was Shmuel Prensky. Beyond that I know nothing. He cooperated with the Stalinist pishers who came here in, I don't know, 1930, '31. He helped them. … I have nothing more to say.”

“You were afraid of him?” Rostnikov said, stepping out of the man's line of sight.

“I'm still afraid of him,” Yuri whispered. “May you carry my damnation for bringing his name and memory back to me, for reminding me of those dark eyes that betrayed his own people. I damn you for bringing that photograph.”

Rostnikov stepped back and let the trembling man return to his chair and to his thoughts of useless vests and distant Italians wearing them.

There was nothing more to say. Rostnikov had two names now, and if Sofiya Savitskaya was right in her identification, the name of the killer of her father was Mikhail Posniky.

“The other man in the photograph,” Rostnikov tried, hoping to catch the old man before he was completely lost. “The little man with the smile in the photograph.”

“Lev, Lev Ostrovsky,” Yuri answered, sighing. “The clown, the actor.”

“Actor?”

“He stayed through the troubles and moved to Moscow.” The word Moscow came out like the spit of a dry, dirty word. “He left to become an actor. His father had been the rabbi here. But we had no need for rabbis or the sons of rabbis when Shmuel Prensky and his friends …”

He never finished the sentence. His eyes closed and then his mouth, hiding what little remained of lips. The sun was hot and high, and Rostnikov was tired and hungry. The walk to the police station was far and dry, but Porfiry Petrovich did not mind. He had some names to work with. He wanted to hurry back to Moscow, for it was there a survivor existed who might provide a link in the puzzle of the murder of Abraham Savitskaya.

T
HE YOUNG MAN AND WOMAN
walked along Granovsky Street arm in arm. People who passed them in the late afternoon assumed the man had obtained his flattened nose in some hockey or soccer game. He was burly, rugged looking, and his straight black hair, falling over his forehead, bounced athletically as he moved. He talked easily and loudly. He wore a clean blue short-sleeved shirt that revealed his well-developed biceps and added to his image as an athlete. It was also appropriate that the woman with him was quite beautiful and strikingly blond, her hair worn back in an American-style ponytail. She was not thin like an American, however. She was full and athletic appearing, possibly weighing about 140 pounds and looking as if she had just rolled up her sleeves and stepped out of a poster for increasing production in the steel industry. All she needed was a flag. She wore no makeup and needed none. Health beamed from their faces, and Vera Shepovik glanced at them as she passed, cursed them silently, and wished that she could cross to the park, get out her father's old rifle, and burn the joy of life from their faces.

Vera, however, was a half mile away when the couple passed in front of a large apartment building, one of the many on the street that housed the most important and privileged
nachalstvo,
bosses, in the Soviet Union. A chauffeur-driven car stood in front of one building where Chernenko supposedly lived. The couple paid no attention but whispered something to each other that the driver, pretending to look straight ahead, assumed was sexual. It made the driver shift and wish he could remove the jacket of his semimilitary uniform. It was a hot day, a muggy hot Thursday.

A jogger, complete with Western sweat suit, flew past the young couple, seriously intent on three or four miles before dinner. His hair was white, and he was lean and fit, an unusual figure on the streets of Moscow. The serious joggers were like this one, head forward, arms low, pace steady. The less serious moved slowly, sometimes almost walking. The jogging suit made it clear, the runner hoped, that he was indeed running and not simply walking.

As the couple passed a group of men and women arriving home from work, the woman tugged at the sleeve of the young man and pointed at a white Chaika parked in front of an apartment building about four car lengths from the building's entrance. He seemed at first reluctant to look at the car but then smiled weakly and gave in. Like two honeymooners, they peered through the window and examined the upholstery of the car that the likes of them would never own.

“Well,” said the man in a pebbly voice from a throat planed dry by too much vodka.

The woman smiled, her pink cheeks a contrast to the broken veins on the man's hose, visible at close range.

“Yes,” she said decisively.

The street was relatively clear. Cars passed, the sound of traffic rattled past them, and pedestrians ambled forward, carrying cloth shopping bags and briefcases. Standing on the sidewalk, his eyes toward the front of the apartment building, the muscular man, who looked not quite so young at close range, leaned against the car as the woman moved to his side to join him. Behind her back she tried to open the door to the Chaika. It was locked. They talked of this and that and nothing for a few seconds, mentioned a possible picnic in the park, and waited for a break in the crowd. It came, a brief one, and the woman turned, pulling a hollow metal tube of twelve inches or so from her bag. Quickly, without looking back, she leaned forward and thrust the steel tube against the car's window. Her arms were strong and the thrust powerful. The bar penetrated the window almost noiselessly and the circle of glass fell to the plush seat within. She withdrew the bar to the patter of the man with the mashed nose, who repeated,
“Khorosho,
good” as she worked. She dropped the bar into her shopping bag, pushed her fingers through the small hole, and lifted the button inside.

She stood, turned again, and looked around the street. They continued to look like a pair of lovers who had paused on their nightly walk to admire the apartments of the great and near-great men who ran the country.

“Now,” she said softly when an older couple passed in front of them. Had the older couple paid more attention to the two at the car, they would have seen that the man was perspiring. The sun was already going down, and the early evening was turning cool.

The young woman turned, opened the door of the white car, slid across the seat, and pulled a metal bar and a wire with a clip at the end of her shopping bag as the man jumped in at her side, closed the door, and looked back over his shoulder.

“Use the mirror,” the woman said without looking up from what she was doing under the dashboard. “Don't draw attention.”

The man wiped his forehead and glanced at the mirror without looking at the woman. He tried to keep himself from panting like a dog as he counted slowly. By the time he reached seven, the woman had started the car. He stopped counting as she sat up. In the rearview mirror, he saw a pair of men step out of the apartment building and look around. They glanced at the Chaika, and the young man reached inside his jacket for the pistol, which stuck clammily to his stomach.

“Go,” he said. “Go.”

She sat up with maddening calm, looked back over her shoulder for an opening in traffic, and began to ease out of the space. In the mirror, the man saw the two men at the apartment entrance turn the other way and wave.

“Done, Ilya,” the woman said. He looked at her beautiful, strong face and marveled once again at her coolness. Ilya wanted nothing more than a drink.

“When we get this to the garage, we are done, Marina,” he said, opening the glove compartment to keep his hands from trembling.

As Marina sped along Botanical Street past Dzerzhinsky Recreation Park, a dog shot into the street. She swerved deftly to miss it and barely avoided a collision with a tourist bus. Oriental faces peered out the bus window.

“Drive carefully,” Ilya hissed between closed teeth.

“Next time I'll hit the dog,” she said jokingly.

It was then that he found the report among the papers in the glove compartment and almost threw up on the freshly scented seat of the newly shampooed Chaika. He controlled the hot, vile, small ball of fear that rose from his stomach to his throat and spoke as calmly as he could, which, he was sure, was not calm at all.

“This car belongs to the deputy procurator general at Moscow,” he said, almost in a whisper.

“No,” Marina replied calmly, looking out of the window, her arm on the open window as she glided along like a movie star. “It belongs to us.”

The train ride back from Yekteraslav was hell. Zelach brooded, pouted, almost sucked his thumb. He shifted and squirmed and demanded more attention than a petulant child. Rostnikov's leg hurt at the knee, and he couldn't read. He knew he would have to face Sarah's growing anguish if she hadn't found work. He worried about Josef, his son, and wondered why there had been no letters from him in Kiev for almost three weeks. Rostnikov tried to build a tale from the bits of information he had gathered about the old men in the photograph. Nothing came. He put the book aside and turned to Zelach.

“Why the brass candlestick?” he said.

Zelach shrugged.

“Hidden value? An antique?” Rostnikov went on as the train rattled forward, buzzing electrically. There were few passengers going toward the city in the late afternoon. Passengers were going the other way, away from Moscow as the workday ended. It had not been difficult to catch a train. They ran frequently, a tribute to the efficiency of the system, according to Emil Karpo. Rostnikov had once suggested to Karpo in return that it demonstrated quite the reverse. Because the train system had to meet its quota of hours in service, trains often ran empty, sometimes in the middle of the night, wasting power. They were ghosts, zombies plodding forward to meet quotas like the vest factory in Yekteraslav. Rostnikov had discovered that the vest factory often went twenty-four hours in ceaseless production of second-rate vests for which there was no market. Work quotas had to be met. People had to be kept busy.