Stuart Kaminsky - Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

“I couldn’t …” she began.

“No,” he said. “Plumbing is my pleasure.”

“But it might not be simple.”

“That would be even better,” he said.

“We will talk again,” she said, rising and offering her hand. He took it.

“That would be pleasant,” he said.

The woman turned and left the car. Rostnikov turned his eyes to the window, finding the last village lights before the plunge into darkness. In the reflection from the window a few seconds later he saw Sasha Tkach, who sat where the woman had been.

“Who was that?” Sasha asked.

“A very beautiful woman.”

“That I could see. What did she want?”

“To find out if I am a plumber,” said Rostnikov.

“If you are a plumber?”

“Yes. I believe she knows who I am.”

“Why would she approach you?” asked Sasha.

“A very good question. She wants me to know that she knows.”

“Then she doesn’t believe you are a plumber?”

“No,” he said. “She was playing a game. Like chess. She begins the game with a small move of a pawn. She asks me about a plumbing problem she does not have. I think she was pleasantly surprised that I was able to answer her question.”

“What does she want?” asked Sasha. “Is she the one with the suitcase?”

“Perhaps. I don’t think so. The question is, Why does she want me to know that she knows who I am?”

Sasha shrugged. It was the sort of problem Rostnikov relished.

“She has something to gain by my knowing of her presence.”

“FSB?” asked Sasha.

“Very likely,” Rostnikov answered.

FSB, the Federal Security Service, Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, the heir to most of the empire of the former KGB. The FSB was even headquartered in Lubyanka, in Derzhinski Square, the former headquarters of the KGB.

The FSB, established in April of 1995, is overseen by the procurator general of Russia and has over seventy-five thousand agents. The FSB’s primary mission is civil counter-espionage, internal Russian security, organized crime, and state secrets. Terrorism, international borders, drugs, and various other classified areas are the province of the Russian Security Ministry, MBR, Ministertvo Bezopasnosti Rushkii. The MBR has more than one hundred thousand agents. That leaves the SVR, the Foreign Intelligence Service, whose numbers are unreported.

“And she did tell me something which may be important,” Rostnikov said.

“What?”

“That the transaction will almost certainly not take place before we reach Novosibirsk.”

“She told you that?”

“I believe so. It will be an interesting trip. Do you want to try to sleep?”

“Too noisy in my compartment,” said Sasha.

“Mine too,” said Rostnikov. “Let us talk about your mother and her impending marriage.”

Rich man leave your wealthiness

Wanderer, your solemn dress

Seafarer, the sea’s caress

Beowulf, your angriness

Time to take a second guess

Time to make a pact with death

Trans-Siberian Express

“IT IS A BAD idea,” Elena Timofeyeva said. She had almost used the word stupid instead of bad but had caught herself in time. She was standing in the doorway of the apartment she shared with her Aunt Anna. Her right boot was resisting her efforts to make it take leave of her foot.

She looked up at Iosef Rostnikov, who had both of his boots off and had entered the apartment.

“You want help with that?” he asked.

“No.” she said, and with an awkward effort and a mighty pull the boot came off, taking the long woollen sock with it. She almost fell. Perhaps her diet plan needed reconsideration.

Anna Timofeyeva sat in her comfortable chair near the only window in the room. She had been looking into the snow-covered courtyard in the first light of dawn. The children bound for school had not yet made tracks across the field of white that came up to the level of the seats of the benches circling the center of the covered concrete square.

Her cat, Baku, had been sitting on her lap. When her niece and Iosef had opened the door, the cat had lazily leaped to the floor and gone over to sniff at them.

Anna had never been bitter over her tragedy, the heart attacks which forced her to retire as procurator of Moscow before she was fifty-five. Anna had worked her way up from assembly-line worker to Communist Party leader for her factory, to regional assistant procurator, to her final position in Moscow. She had regularly put in fifteen-hour days, frequently worked days at a time fueled by duty, coffee, thick soups, and sandwiches of fatty meat.

The Soviet Union had prided itself on the equality of women. Movies, newspapers, posters showed women as leaders, workers, soldiers, the equal of men. The truth, as she had learned early in life, was the exact opposite. Women were considered inferior, and often those put in token positions of authority were chosen because of their party loyalty and a nonthreatening lack of intellect. Anna Timofeyeva had been a notable exception. She had taken pride in her achievement, but she had taken enormous satisfaction in her work.

And then, so suddenly, it was all over. The brown uniform that she had worn for sixteen years was traded for bulky skirts and sweaters; the large office for a small one-bedroom apartment.

Anna had never married, had never shown or had any interest in men as anything but people for whom she worked or who worked for her. She showed no greater interest in women as friends, companions, confidants, or lovers. She had tried sex with two men and one not particularly pretty but quite slim woman many years earlier. None of the three encounters had given her any satisfaction.

And so Anna sat in her apartment, read, and welcomed the company of her niece, which she would soon be losing when Elena and Iosef married. From time to time Porfiry Petrovich would visit, either to ask for her advice or simply to sit with her and drink some tea. All too often she was visited by Lydia Tkach, Sasha’s mother, who had an apartment down the hallway and around the corner.

It was Porfiry Petrovich whose idea it had been for Lydia to move into the apartment complex. Anna could still pull some strings. Lydia could have afforded much better, but she was content to move half a corridor from Anna and to knock at the door uninvited so that she could relate her woes in a very loud voice to the captive former procurator.

Recently, however, there had been great respite from Lydia. Lydia was seeing a man, a painter named Matvei Labroadovnik. She had told Anna all about him. Anna would have bestowed a medal, one of the dozen or so she had in her drawer in the bedroom, to the man if he were to end Lydia’s daily visits. But, at the same time, she felt uneasy the single time the man had come with Lydia to be shown off. Intuition, which came from years of talking to liars on multiple sides of the law, had taught her when someone was wearing a mask. The man had been wearing a mask of satisfied contemplation. Behind the mask, Anna was certain, was a racing mind. But that was Lydia’s problem. For the moment, he was Anna’s ally.

“Tell Aunt Anna what you want to do,” Elena said to Iosef, moving to the seat opposite her aunt.

Elena and Iosef had been up all night, meeting with the dozen uniformed officers assigned to their case, trying to come up with an idea they could present to the Yak, talking to Paulinin, who, they discovered, was even stranger than usual after the hour of midnight.

Paulinin had kept his right hand reassuringly on the head of the naked corpse of Toomas Vana during their entire conversation in the laboratory. From time to time Paulinin had looked down at the mutilated face of the dead man and smiled reassuringly.