Stuart Kaminsky - People Who Walk In Darkness

“Have I hurt you?” asked Kolokov, himself looking hurt by the movement of the man in the chair.

“No.”

“Your Russian is a little weak, James,” Kolokov said. “You’ll have to speak up.”

“No, you have not hurt me.”

Kolokov, who relished the scene, turned away to face his audience of three, and then he turned back suddenly, inches away from James’s face again, spit spraying his prisoner’s face.

“But I could, could I not?”

One of the men in the shadows, Alek, laughed.

“Yes.”

“Then we are partners,” said Kolokov. “We have a fair split. I get everything and you get to live.”

“Yes.”

“You tell me who you sell the diamonds to and when, and you and I go and make the transaction, and we all part company with a drink and a tear for fallen comrades.”

“Yes,” said James, not believing it for an instant.

Believing this lunatic was not really an issue. The diamonds were gone. When they had encountered Kolokov, James and the others had been on the way to their courier, a stupid Russian drug addict who had not been of James’s choosing. James and the others had been informed of the theft of the diamonds and the murder of the prostitute who had been carrying them. A drug addict and a prostitute. If he survived, which was not likely, James planned to find out how two incompetents could be selected to transport millions in diamonds.

Kolokov leaned even closer and whispered into James’s ear.

“I am sorry. I cannot treat you too nicely. You understand how it is. My friends here would not understand. They would be jealous. They would think, or maybe even say, ‘Vladimir, you have a new friend. You have abandoned us.’ You understand, James Hakimkov?”

James did not correct him. Instead he said,

“Yes.”

With that Kolokov pulled a small screwdriver from his pocket and shoved it deeply into the side of the man in the chair.

James gasped.

“Are you all right?” asked Kolokov with mock concern. “I’m sorry. I had to do it.”

James couldn’t speak. The pain was searing, throbbing, screaming.

“Are you all right, James?”

James shook his head yes.

“Good.”

Another pat on the shoulder.

“We’ll clean that up. It’s not deep and I rinsed the screwdriver earlier today. Fresh bandages. Pau’s mother was a nurse, is that correct, Pau?”

“Yes,” came a voice from the blurred darkness.

“Partners,” came Kolokov’s voice as James started to pass out.

“You’ve cometo visit your father’s leg,” Paulinin said, stepping back to let Iosef and Zelach through the reinforced door.

Paulinin’s laboratory was two levels below ground in Petrovka. It was an anomaly. A bureaucracy bustled or shuffled in the sparsely furnished rooms above, but Paulinin’s laboratory stood alone as a testament to a time long gone if it ever existed at all.

“Among other things,” said Iosef.

Paulinin, dressed in a white laboratory apron spotted with something that was probably more unpleasant than blood, looked at Zelach who was decidedly uncomfortable.

“The man who slouches,” said Paulinin, adjusting his glasses.

Zelach immediately straightened up. There was much in the laboratory that made Zelach uncomfortable-the seemingly random jars of specimens arranged in no apparent order, the unmatched desks covered with books and towers of reports that threatened to tumble over, the laboratory and autopsy tables under bright lamps.

But what made Zelach most uncomfortable was Paulinin himself.

The lean, bald man was clean shaven. His ears were large, as were his teeth. He spoke quickly, softly, and often burst out loudly with a “Don’t touch that” or an “Are you paying attention?”

But, as the scientist led the way around the desk toward the low music from a CD player or radio, Zelach saw that there were two naked black bodies on adjoining autopsy tables.

“Over there.” Paulinin pointed with his left hand as they moved.

“I know,” said Iosef, looking at the leg of his father floating in a large jar.

Zelach looked too.

“I don’t talk to it enough,” Paulinin said almost sadly. “Too much to do. Chopin.”

He had turned his head and was looking at Zelach who was puzzled. Did the mad scientist call Rostnikov’s leg Chopin?

“The music,” Paulinin said as they moved between the two autopsy tables. “Chopin.”

Akardy Zelach knew little about classical music. Heavy metal, fine. Jazz, fine. Classical, no.

Iosef, Porfiry Petrovich, and Karpo had long assured Zelach that the scientist was brilliant. Detectives and even members of military law enforcement came to him, but most police avoided him, preferring mediocrity in their investigation to the prospect of having to deal with the man who now patted the arm of the dead man on the table.

“What has he been telling you?” asked Iosef.

“Ah, this one does not speak Russian very well, and my other guest speaks no Russian.”

“How do you. .?” Zelach started and then stopped himself. Too late.

Iosef folded his arms and waited patiently.

“This one was tortured. Slowly, slowly. His mouth, throat, lungs, vocal cords were unharmed. Someone wanted him able to speak. In his pocket were receipts, notations. No rubles. The money was taken. I know because he was well if not expensively dressed, very good serviceable English shoes. He would not be walking around without money. He was a man who didn’t have to be bereft of funds. His friend. .”

Paulinin turned and patted the arm of the other dead man reassuringly.

“His friend here had no rubles either, no notes or bills or receipts in Russian. He relied on his friend for all necessary conversation and transactions with Russians. He was not tortured, only murdered, which shows that a knowledge of the Russian language is not always a blessing.”

Paulinin seemed to be waiting for confirmation.

“It is not,” agreed Iosef.

Zelach wanted to get out of the alcoholic and chemical smell, the dark corners, the glaring specimens enlarged by the glass bottles that surrounded them, the two dead men to whom Paulinin spoke.

“Can you imagine what it would be like to have a tube forced down your nose, rubbing the lining raw and bloody all the way to your stomach, and have food forced down the tube?”

He was looking at Zelach.

“No I cannot,” said Zelach.

Paulinin shook his head and scratched his neck.

“Old KGB torture,” he explained. “Many are the afflicted who were feasted so inside Lubyanka, but a long walk or a short Metro ride from where we now stand.”

“Our torturer is former KGB?” asked Iosef.

“Perhaps still secret police,” Zelach tried.

“No, they know how to rid themselves of bodies.”

“Anything else?” asked Iosef.

“Small, very sharp knife. The torturer was not tall, maybe five feet and eight inches. The tortured man was seated. See his ankles, the rope burn around his groin. The highest wounds indicate the man’s height. Other wounds indicate that our man with the knife was nervous, attention deficit disorder or something like that. He kneels, stands upright, crouches, keeps moving. His hair is dark brown and long. He is alcoholic.”

“How. .?”

Zelach again.

“Hair samples on both bodies. Not the victims. DNA,” explained Paulinin. “I called in favors. The men and women in the DNA laboratory owe me. There is a faint but detectable smell of alcohol on both of my guests, though neither of them has the slightest trace of alcohol in his stomach.”

“Did your guest talk to the Russian?” asked Iosef.

“Oh yes. The torture stopped abruptly. The tale was told, but not the end. The end depends, I think, on the third man.”