Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

Elena moved away from the table with the bag. The first man to sit removed a bag from his pocket, opened it, and began to set up the chess pieces. Elena placed the blue bag on a more-or-less dry patch of grass before her.

About two minutes later a boy of about twelve came through the trees not far from where the two new players had come. He wore dark pants, an oversized orange T-shirt, and a school bag over his shoulders. When he was closer, Elena could see that the boy had a smooth, pink face, dark straight hair, and an angry, defensive scowl. He was thin and short and in a hurry.

He came directly at Elena but did not look at her. His eyes were on the bag. Without a word or acknowledgment of her presence, the boy unzipped the bag and looked inside. He moved the newspaper pieces around and then stood up and turned away from Elena. The boy began crossing his arms in front of him and shaking his head no.

Elena moved next to the boy to see where he was looking, but the boy’s eyes were looking upward, over the trees, toward the sky. Elena scanned the path, the trees on all sides, even looked back at the men playing chess. The first old man at the far end of the bench, the one who had watched Elena, now watched the boy.

“Stop,” said Elena to the boy.

He didn’t stop.

“I am a police officer,” she said. “Stop now.”

She reached into her purse and removed the stiff leather square that held her identification. She held it in front of the boy with one hand and stayed one of his arms with the other. The boy stopped and looked at her.

“Who are you signaling?”

“The man,” he said.

“Quickly, tell me what man and what he told you to do. I am the police,” she said, knowing that Sasha had seen the boy, watched him signal, and was now scurrying to find someone else who might be watching and waiting. But Sasha would have no idea of the direction in which he should look. There were two uniformed police with Sasha. They would spread out as best they could, but Elena knew the task was close to hopeless.

“He gave me this,” the boy said, reaching into his pocket. “One hundred new rubles. You’re not going to take it away, are you?”

“No,” said Elena, looking at the bills, which, in exchange, would have brought about five American dollars, probably less in a day or two. “You can keep the money.”

The boy relaxed.

“I was on the way to school,” he said. “The man came up to me. I looked around. There were other people. Not many, but a few. I thought he might be one of those dirty men. There are some who come here. My friend Gregor kicked one of them in the balls only two weeks ago.”

“The man,” Elena said. “What did he look like?”

“Not big. Wide like …” The boy opened his arms to indicate the width of the man’s body. “His face … he wore a cap pulled down to his ears. A cap like the men on the riverboats wear. And he had a short beard, black. And a Band-Aid on his nose.”

“What was he wearing?”

“Wearing? I don’t remember. Pants. A shirt. I think they were dark or something.”

Elena knew the beard, the Band-Aid, and hat were probably gone by now. Even if he had the description from the boy, Sasha could walk right past the man.

“And he told you to do what?” Elena said.

The boy pursed his lips and paused. “Will you give me thirty rubles if I tell you?”

“If you don’t tell me, and quickly, I will give you the day to think about the consequences of not telling a police officer what you know. The day will be spent in a cell. If you are lucky, you will be alone.”

“He told me to come here, to the lady with the blue bag. That I should open the bag, and if there was anything but money in it I was to make that signal with my hands and shake my head.”

“Be quiet,” grumbled one of the two big men playing chess behind them.

“Did he tell you what this was supposed to be about?” Elena asked, ignoring the men.

“He said you and he were playing a game.”

“You believed him?”

The boy turned away. “He gave me one hundred rubles.”

“Would you recognize him again if you saw him without the cap, without the Band-Aid, without the beard?”

The boy shrugged and said, “Maybe, no. No, I don’t think so.”

“Even if I gave you another hundred rubles?”

“No,” said the boy. “I know what police do. You would have a lineup, and if I identified some policeman as the man, you would put me in children’s detention.”

“Go to school,” said Elena. “Now, fast.”

The boy ran, back in the direction from which he had come.

Elena suddenly felt a presence behind her. A hand touched her shoulder. She drew her pistol from her purse and turned, backing away a step.

One of the two big men who had been playing chess behind her stood looking at her and the gun. There was a look of surprise on his face, which quickly turned to resignation. He shook his head.

“Am I to die at the hand of a pretty young lady in the park just because I want to have a quiet chess game?” he said. “Yevgeny Savidov, this was a day to make deliveries, not to die.”

Elena put the gun away and said, “I’m sorry. Finish your game. I’m going.”

The man with the tough face nodded and moved back to the table.

Elena picked up the blue bag and began to walk back to the car. Sasha appeared before her, out of breath.

“Nothing,” he said.

Elena nodded and kept walking. “Something is wrong,” she said.

Sasha walked at her side. He had not exercised in weeks and he had a slight pain in his side.

“What do you mean?”

“Why didn’t he do this at night?” she asked.

“Who knows? Maybe he works at night or has a wife who knows nothing about his extortion.”

“Maybe,” said Elena. “But he sent the boy and told him to signal if there was no money in the bag.”

“So?” asked Sasha.

“Would it not have made more sense for the boy to nod or bow to indicate if the money was there?”

They were almost at the street now.

“It could go either way,” said Sasha.

The pain in his side was gone and he could breathe normally now. He would have to start exercising again. He was the youngest member of the Office of Special Investigation, and everyone, with the possible exception of Pankov and the Yak, was in better condition than he was.

“What if he expected the bag would not contain the money?” she asked him. “He gave Kriskov a little over a day to raise two million American dollars in cash. Why didn’t he give him more time? Raising that much would be difficult, if not impossible.”

“Our man didn’t know that,” said Sasha. “He just thought Kriskov was a millionaire movie producer with big backers. Why would he want Kriskov to fail to raise the money?”

“I don’t know,” she said, facing Sasha. “Maybe he just wants an excuse for killing our movie producer.”

“And the negatives?” asked Sasha.

“I don’t know,” said Elena. “I think we should talk to Porfiry Petrovich.”

When the boy was waving his arms in Timiryazevsky Park, Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was in an aisle seat near the front of the airplane. He was reading a tattered paperback of Ed McBain’s Sadie When She Died. The book was in English.

Rostnikov was aware of several things on the airplane as they headed for St. Petersburg, but these things did not stop him from enjoying the book, though it was the third time he had read it.

He was aware of his son, Iosef, seated next to him at the window, looking out at dark clouds below, chin resting on one hand, thinking of something important, something about which he had to make a decision. Porfiry Petrovich was aware of the vibrations of the plane and the hum of the jet engines. He was aware of conversation among the hundred or so other passengers behind them. But foremost in his awareness was the man seated fourteen rows back, on the aisle. It was the same man who had been in the crowd looking at the body of the murdered cosmonaut. The man was even carrying an umbrella, probably the same one he had when he looked up at “window the night before.