Stuart Kaminsky: Murder on the Trans-Siberian Express

But he was not listening. He was studying the contents of the closet door he had opened.

“It is supposed to snow today,” he said, looking from his down jacket to his black wool coat.

“I think I’ll kill someone today,” Inna said softly, starting to gather the breakfast dishes.

“I think the jacket,” Viktor said. “It comes down low enough to cover my suit jacket.”

“On the subway,” Inna said, across the room in the tiny kitchen, putting the dishes in the sink. She carried each dish in her left hand. The pain in her right wrist had subsided but she was afraid to put any pressure on it. Her father had not noticed that she had avoided using the hand. She had not expected him to notice even if she dropped a plate.

“Here,” Viktor said, turning, jacket on, buttoning it. “How is this?”

“You look very handsome,” she said. “Distinguished. Perfect.”

Inna knew that if she looked in the mirror, which she seldom did, she would not see a distinguished, perfect person. She would put her face close to the glass, watch a small circle of steam appear and fade, and look at the permanent mask she did not want to wear.

“I’m going,” he said. “Be good. Take your medication. Put on your coat if you go out.”

“I’m going to take a ride on the metro,” she said.

“Where?” he asked, a hand on the door.

“Shopping,” she said.

He made a sound and left the apartment. The sound of the closing door remained in the room as Inna returned to the sink to finish cleaning the dishes.

Her mother, plump, resigned, appeared at her side as she carefully soaped and rinsed each plate, cup, knife, and fork. Her mother often reappeared to talk to her daughter, give her advice and support. Occasionally her mother preached, but generally she gave her approval to Inna’s plans.

“You are going on the metro again?” her mother asked as Inna finished a cup, rinsing it with running water.

“Yes,” Inna said.

“And you will try to kill him again?”

“Yes,” Inna said. “For you and for me.”

“I do not need him dead now,” said her mother, standing with folded arms, leaning close. “He will be dead soon enough. I am in no hurry.”

“I must,” Inna said, without looking at her mother.

“Your wrist?”

“It will be all right,” Inna said, finishing the last dish and placing it in the metal rack next to the sink.

“You hate him that much,” her mother said.

“No,” said Inna. “I love him that much.”

Inna looked at her mother now. She did not question whether her mother was a ghost or a creation of her imagination. Inna simply accepted.

“Wear something warm,” her mother said. “It is supposed to snow tonight.”

Inna dried the long, sharp carving knife.

“I will,” Inna said.

For breakfast, Pavel Cherkasov ate a large platter of frankfurters and sliced tomato with three cups of coffee. The breakfast had been brought to his room at the Hotel Rossia. It cost the equivalent of twenty American dollars. Pavel didn’t care. It wasn’t his money.

He ate slowly, watching the television screen, on which a serious-looking American policeman with a mustache was giving orders in dubbed Russian to a pair of underlings, one of whom was black, the other a thin, pretty Chinese woman.

Pavel poured more salt on his tomatoes. His blood pressure was high, but what good was food without salt? What good was life without pleasures? Food was Pavel’s principal pleasure but not his only one. He liked to make people laugh. He longed to be a comedian, to stand in front of a crowd of people and make them laugh with his stories and jokes. He had told one of his jokes to the man who had brought his breakfast.

“I should take my Vitamin B-I pill for my memory with this meal,” he had said in earnest deadpan, “but I forgot where I put the bottle.”

The dour man in the white jacket and bow tie had smiled, a smile that could have indicated sympathy for Pavel’s misfortune or quiet appreciation of the joke.

Pavel had given him only a moderate tip.

In his pocket Pavel carried small lined note cards on which he wrote jokes that he thought of, incidents he viewed that he thought were funny, humorous things said on television or in the occasional movie he attended.

Some of Pavel’s best jokes he could never use except in particular company. They were not sexual in content but dealt with the comic aspects of the violent world with which he dealt. He had seen a humorless Mafia hit man park carefully and legally in a zoned area on Gorky Street when Pavel had pointed out the man’s target. The hit man, known only as Krestyaneen, “the Peasant,” had explained that there were too many accidents on the streets of Moscow and one had to obey the parking laws. The man had not been joking. The Peasant had gotten out of the car, crossed the street, shot one of two men who were deep in conversation. Three bullets to the head. Then the hit man had returned to the car and very carefully pulled out of the space, avoiding even the slightest touch to the rear of the Lada parked in front of him.

The story was funny, but only if you knew it was true.

Pavel had never performed the entire, ever-evolving stand-up routine he had been working on for more than five years for anyone but himself, though he regularly tried individual jokes on waiters, shopkeepers, clerks, and people he met in bars or restaurants. He had taped the routine and kept reworking the lines and delivery. He had tried copying the styles of various comics and settled on a mix of Yuri Obleniki and the American George Burns.

When he received his pay for this job, he would take a year off, go on stage in amateur clubs, work on his timing. Deep inside he yearned to be noticed, given a part in a movie, perhaps a role on a television series.

It was possible. Russia had become a land of opportunity for enterprising people like Pavel Cherkasov.

Pavel finished his breakfast and moved across the room to pull his suitcase from the shelf next to the bathroom. Later he would retrieve the blue duffel bag he had locked in a box at the train station. Now, however, he put the suitcase on the bed and opened the drawers of the small dresser on which the television sat. It was a day early, but he liked being prepared well in advance. There really wasn’t much to pack. His clothes, already folded neatly, could be washed in a sink and dried on a hanger on the train.

Pavel had long ago discovered the American company Travel-Smith, which provided clothes and gadgets for people who traveled a great deal, people who wanted to travel light and live out of one carry-on. Pavel was one of these people.

He spoke six languages, none of them but Russian particularly well, all quite passably. He had passports in a variety of names and nationalities. These he carried inside a box of expensive Dutch-chocolate candy, which he replaced frequently.

He selected the passport under which he would be traveling the next day. The stamps were right. The photograph was good. It was under the name on this passport that Pavel Cherkasov had purchased his ticket on the Trans-Siberian Express.

One of the nice things about traveling by train was that it was so easy to carry a gun aboard. Of course he could smuggle a weapon onto an airplane. He knew employees, flight attendants, baggage handlers, people at the machines that checked the handheld luggage, even airport janitors and concession workers at the major airports in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, who could be bribed to cooperate.

Tonight, before he headed for the Yarolslavskiy train terminal, Pavel thought as he finished packing, I shall eat at an Uzbekistani restaurant on Neglinnaya Street. Tkhum-dulma, a boiled egg inside a fried-meat patty, shashlik marinated over hot coals. No, wait. First he would have a maniar, a strong broth with rice and meat, with hot Uzbek bread. Everything would be served on and in the finest Uzbek porcelain and pottery: And the wine? He was particularly fond of the Aleatiko. A bit sweet but perfectly suited for the meal.