Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

The train was full. It was rush hour, but through the standing bodies, Valery’s eyes met those of the woman in black. She glared at him. He smiled back.

Vera had left to him how Yuri Kriskov was to be killed. She didn’t care, as long as it was soon.

She had urged him to be careful. He wanted to think that she was concerned about him. He knew that, at least in part, she was afraid that if he were caught, she too would be caught. It was understandable. The queen had to be protected. The game would end when the black king was dead.

It was hot in the metro car. Valery was standing, holding a metal pole, crunched between people. An old man with bad breath was almost staring him in the face. A woman pressing into his side made grunting sounds whenever the train jostled or stopped. He felt warm, very warm. Perhaps he was coming down with a fever.

He suddenly decided to get off at the next stop and forced his way through the crowd. He was short and powerful and well equipped for entrance to and from train cars.

On the platform of the Novoslobodskaya station he stood on the floor of black-and-green marble rectangles, breathing deeply. It was cool deep underground on the platform, but he was perspiring. People jostled past him as he stood looking without seeing at the familiar stained-glass illuminated panels depicting traditional themes and life rather than the revolutionary artwork that decorated many of the other familiar platforms. He didn’t know quite why but he felt an impulse to run up the stairs. He paused for an instant in front of the panels where a stained-glass man in a stained-glass black suit, wearing a red tie, sat at a desk looking at a large document in his hands. A globe with Russia in the center stood on the man’s desk. Rows of books faced him. The man’s stained-glass brown wooden chair supported him, and squares of windows floated in an eerie green-white light. The man’s office was neat, permanent. Valery was fascinated. The man reminded him of Kriskov. In fact, Kriskov could have been the model for this encircled depiction.

It was like being in a church.

Valery had to get somewhere, do something. Was he doubting his enterprise? Was the promise of Vera Kriskov an illusion? No. He turned from the panel. A feeling of power, almost of flight, ran through him. He pushed past people, slowed, still moving, to drop a few kopeks into the hand of a begging old woman sitting cross-legged at the entrance, and then ran to the phone.

He dropped in a coin and dialed.

“Yes?” answered Yuri Kriskov tentatively.

“You made a wrong move,” said Valery in his disguised voice. “You are now in check. End game.”

“Look,” said Yuri. “I can …”

“Say nothing or I call checkmate,” said Valery, hanging up.

He didn’t run, but he did move quickly past people heading away from the metro entrance. The police would be converging on the phone within a few minutes. He wanted to draw no attention by hurrying. He walked past the begging woman and reentered the station, now able to breathe. He got on the first train and by the time he got to work he was ten minutes late.

“Do we have the negative back?” he asked Nikita Kolodny as he entered the door of the editing room and breathed in the celluloid smell.

“I don’t know,” said Nikita. “Svetlana Gorchinova is looking for you. She is more crazy than usual. Be careful.”

With that, Svetlana entered the room, looked at him and glared.

“You are late,” she said.

Valery smiled and Nikita stepped back in near terror. No one smiled at Svetlana Gorchinova when she chastised, not even Levich or Kriskov.

“I have a fever,” said Valery, still smiling.

Svetlana looked at his pink face and the drops of moisture on his upper lip.

“Then why are you grinning like a fool?” she said.

“Am I grinning? I didn’t know. Perhaps I have a secret,” he said.

“Perhaps you are delirious,” she said, moving to her chair in front of the Avid editing machine.

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “You know, you look like the pilot of a Klingon warship, sitting in front of the editor. The light hits your face eerily. You look determined and formidable.”

She turned in her chair and looked at him. “Go home,” she said. “You are sick. You are talking like an idiot.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” he responded.

Nikita had turned his back and moved to a corner, where he pretended to examine a long-nosed pliers.

“Well,” she said. “I am not perfectly fine having you here. There isn’t that much to do until … there isn’t that much and I don’t want to go through the day with you acting like a maniac.”

“I am perfectly sane,” he said. “A bit feverish perhaps, but …”

“Go home,” she shouted. “Or don’t go home. But go.”

Valery shook his head knowingly and said, “I’ll go.”

“Then go, you fool, and don’t return until and unless you can behave, be quiet, and take orders.”

Valery shrugged and moved to the door. “When I return,” he said, “it will not be as a pawn to take orders, but as a king.” And out the door he went.

Svetlana muttered something and ignored Valery’s parting words.

Nikita Kolodny did not. Nikita suspected that Valery Grachev had taken the negatives. This behavior had made him more than suspicious. But Nikita was a coward. He had come from a long, long line of cowards who rose no higher than their intelligence or lack of it and their desire for safe anonymity would permit. There was no way Nikita would risk his safety and job by reporting what he believed. There were no rewards to be gained and, even if there were, risking Valery’s wrath would not be worth stepping forward. No, Nikita would stand back in the corners of his life, watching, listening. Perhaps if Valery were caught, Nikita might move up to first assistant. That was as far as he aspired to. It would be enough.

Vera Kriskov comforted her husband with no success while the two policemen made calls and tried to trace the man who had just telephoned. The children were at school and, thank God, she thought, they didn’t have to see their father nearly hysterical.

“He’s mad,” said Kriskov, reaching for a cigarette, unable to light it with his shaking hands. Vera helped. “What was he talking about? Chess games? This isn’t a chess game. That bastard is going to destroy my negatives, destroy me. He is going to kill me.

“He is not going to kill you,” Vera said, knowing that the younger of the two policemen in the room had been admiring her since he came into the house. “He will stay away. The police will not let him get close.”

“Like they were going to catch him with the bag of strips of paper,” Yuri said, leaning over to put his head in his hands. “He’s probably burning the negatives now, right now.”

“Why would he do that?” she said. “He’d have to be mad. The negatives are worth money to him. He will call back. He will make a deal.”

“He is mad, Vera,” said Yuri, looking up. “Crazy, crazy mad.” He pounded the sides of his head with the heels of his hands. “A lunatic.”

Vera thought her husband might well be right. Valery Grachev had not done what they had agreed upon. The second call was not just a mistake, it was an act of madness. There was no point to it. Perhaps she should cut her losses, kill Valery, let the police discover the negative, drop the whole idea.

But there were two reasons why she could not seriously consider this. First, she could not imagine killing Valery or anyone else. What would she use? A gun? There were two in the house, but she couldn’t. And then there was Yuri sniveling next to her. She put her arm around him soothingly under the eye of the envious young policeman.