Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

“In the center, yes. I was there, but I didn’t kill Bolskanov. I was in my office and then in my sleep laboratory, working.”

“Your shoes,” said Karpo.

Boris looked up, clearly unnerved by the situation and the pale, unemotional man before him.

“My shoes,” Boris said almost to himself. “I don’t … I took them off for a while. I slept. Sometimes I work for two, three days without sleep and then I nap for an hour or two. I must have been asleep when Sergei was murdered.”

“In your laboratory?”

“Yes, asleep.”

“You took your shoes off?”

“When I sleep, yes. I took my shoes off. Put them on the floor next to the bed.”

Karpo looked down at him for what may have been a minute. Zelach stood quietly. Boris turned to look at Zelach for sympathy. Zelach did not return his look.

“You are suggesting that someone came into the sleep laboratory while you were napping, took your shoes, put them on, murdered Sergei Bolskanov, made an attempt to clean the shoes, and then put them back where you had left them,” said Karpo.

“I … I suppose. Yes, that is what I must be saying. Though I don’t …”

“That someone took your shoes, wore them, murdered, and returned them,” said Karpo.

“I don’t … yes, that must be.”

“Perhaps you walked in your sleep and killed Sergei Bolskanov without knowing it,” said Karpo.

“No,” said Boris. “That is not possible. I do not walk in my sleep.”

“It would explain the blood,” said Karpo. “Possibly give you an excuse for what took place.”

“I did not commit murder while asleep. I did not commit murder while awake. If there is blood on those shoes, someone else wore them.”

“Why?” asked Karpo.

“I do not know,” said Adamovskovich, pounding the table with both fists. “I do not know.”

“I am sorry I’m late,” said the man with the umbrella, standing in the middle of the muddy street of Kiro-Stovitsk. “I was fortunate in having the opportunity to attend the annual services for the burial of Czar Nicholas and his family in St. Petersburg.”

The people of the town were lined up as the lean man in a business suit, umbrella tucked under his left arm, walked directly up to Rostnikov and held out his right hand.

“Primazon,” he said. “Anatoli Ivanovich Primazon.”

“Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov” Rostnikov replied, taking the man’s hand.

Primazon’s face was pink and smooth, his hair freshly barbered and white. His smile was of a man hoping for a reaction. “And this,” said Primazon, “is your son, Iosef.”

Primazon’s hand went out again. Iosef took it.

Rostnikov did not ask how the man with the umbrella knew his son’s name. He did not have to ask.

“And …” Primazon went on looking around at the small gathering. “Which one is Vladovka’s father?”

Boris stepped forward. He did not extend his hand, but he did introduce his son and Alexander Podgorny.

Primazon nodded politely and said, “Porfiry Petrovich, is there somewhere we can talk?”

Rostnikov looked at Boris Vladovka, who nodded toward the meeting hall they had just left.

“Thank you,” Primazon said with sincerity to Vladovka. “Official business. It shouldn’t take long.”

The man with the umbrella led the way into the former church, and the Rostnikovs followed. Iosef closed the doors and there immediately came the sound of people outside talking. It was likely, thought Iosef, that this was the singularly most interesting event they had witnessed in years, possibly in their lifetimes.

Primazon looked around with approval.

“They probably show movies here,” he said. “Old movies. I love old movies. I collect videotapes. Mostly American, but I like the Russian biographies. The admirals, scientists. All long, ponderous. You can live a lifetime watching one of those old biographies. Shall we sit?”

Primazon had taken over, serving as host, smiling genially.

Porfiry Petrovich moved back to the table where they had sat and joined Anatoli Primazon, who had already sat and placed his umbrella on the table. Iosef chose to stand.

“I must thank you, Porfiry Petrovich,” he said, leaning forward and, for no reason Iosef could discern, speaking in a whisper. “If you had not come to St. Petersburg, I would not have had the opportunity to attend the burial services. You know Putin was there? He spoke, apologized for the murders, more than eighty years ago, all murdered. Official Russian Orthodox service. Priests with those tall white hats with the crosses pinned in the center. Everyone stood. The service was, as you may have guessed, long. Have you ever been inside St. Peter and Paul Cathedral?”

“No,” said Rostnikov.

“No? You should stop on your way back. Beautiful. Glass chandeliers. High-domed ceilings, Pink-and-blue walls. And pomp? Gold-robed priests, black-suited descendants of the Romanovs, all holding the thin candles. A choir sang the Orthodox requiem for the dead, priests filled the air with incense. At the original burial several years ago, royalty from all over the world, the English sent the Prince of Kent. And the nineteen-gun salute when they lowered Nicholas’s coffin. Only nineteen instead of twenty because he had abdicated. An irony there? We force him to abdicate and then when we repent we fire only nineteen shots. The shots echoed off the buildings, frightened birds flew, thousands watched. The Neva wept. I exaggerate, but it was a scene to remember, to tell one’s grandchildren. Unfortunately, I have no grandchildren, but I do have a son, a teacher in Minsk.”

“It sounds as if it was a moving experience,” said Rostnikov, adjusting his leg.

“I did not kill Vladimir Kinotskin,” Primazon said, suddenly quite serious. “As you can tell, I have great reverence for history, for the past. History is my passion. What else is there but family and history? I would not kill a man before the house of Lermontov.”

“Would the lobby of the Russia Hotel be an acceptable location for murder?” asked Rostnikov.

“Oh yes, certainly. It has no history, not yet. We will all be long gone like the czar and his family before it deserves such reverence,” said Primazon.

“But you know who did kill Kinotskin?” asked Rostnikov.

“I know why,” the man said with a smile, “and I am waiting for you to find out who. ”

“Then,” said Rostnikov, “let us now ask why. ”

“Splendid,” said Primazon, sitting back, still whispering. “Then that will leave us only who. Perhaps I should tell you who I am and what I do.”

“Perhaps,” agreed Rostnikov.

“My task is not to kill cosmonauts but to protect them,” he said. “My small group is part of the Space Security Organization. We protect the launch sites and villages where cosmonauts and visiting astronauts and others are trained and housed. My small group is assigned to the present and past cosmonauts.”

“Who would want to harm cosmonauts?” asked Iosef.

Primazon looked up as if he had forgotten the younger “presence.

“Who? I think we have ample evidence that someone would, don’t we? We have a murdered cosmonaut and others who have died under some suspicion. Why would one want to harm cosmonauts? Terrorism? Insanity? Revenge?”

“Revenge for what?” asked Iosef.

Primazon shrugged. “We have a list of hundreds in the space-exploration program, a list that goes back before 1957. Hundreds have been terminated for incompetence, mental illness, as scapegoats for missions or experiments that went wrong. See, I am being honest with you.”

“I appreciate that, Anatoli Ivanovich,” said Rostnikov.

“Then I will be even more honest,” the umbrella man said, still whispering. “I have not done a particularly good job in the current situation. Only one cosmonaut remains in Russia of the six involved in that troubled mission. The two who are out of the country are being protected by my colleagues.”