Stuart Kaminsky - Fall of a Cosmonaut

The truth now was that the men with guns would almost certainly kill Valery Grachev if they found him. The truth now was that this would suit Vera very well. It would be even better if it happened after Valery killed her husband. However, she now had little faith that Valery would have the skill, sanity, or patience to complete his part of the plan.

She looked at her husband, forced herself to touch his arm and try to act the concerned, loving wife. Yuri was showing definite signs of losing control.

“What have I done to deserve this?” he said. “Don’t answer. I’ve done nothing. Absolutely …”

“Nothing,” Vera confirmed.

“Nothing, exactly. I know it doesn’t matter if I deserve this or don’t deserve this. There is no justice. There is no God.”

“And this you learned from your Tolstoy research,” she said, drinking a very hot cup of tea, knowing that Yuri had done none of the research on the missing film, had read no Tolstoy biographies, none of Tolstoy’s stories or novels. Yuri was a hypocrite. Yuri was a producer.

“Perhaps,” he said. “From Tolstoy and from experience.”

One of the armed security men, weapon cradled in his arms, entered the kitchen. The man’s eyes were hooded like those of a boxer who had developed scar tissue from too many punches. He nodded and looked around.

“Would you like tea?” Vera asked.

The man said no and left the room.

“Prisoners,” she said. “Yuri, we are prisoners in our own home.”

“Yes, but not prisoners of these men,” he answered. “We are prisoners of a madman. I’m going upstairs to make some calls. I need privacy.”

You need, Vera thought, to call your mistress and explain why you aren’t coming to see her today. Vera didn’t care. She continued sitting and drinking and thinking as he left the room, pausing only to light yet another cigarette.

Yuri walked through his living room. One of the security guards followed him. The guard’s name was Yevgeny. He was a former military policeman trained in weapons, martial arts, and surveillance. He knew he was good at his job, but he also knew what all bodyguards knew: that a capable, determined assassin cannot be stopped. He may fail to kill. He may be killed after his attack, but stopping him required great luck or a serious mistake on the part of the attacker. Yevgeny had been at the side of a publisher who was shot as they stepped out of the elevator in his office building. The killer, who stood no more than a dozen feet away, had dropped his weapon and run. Yevgeny recovered quickly and fired at the fleeing man in spite of the other five bystanders in the lobby. Yevgeny thought he hit him, but he never knew. The man got away.

Yuri stepped into his bedroom and indicated that he wanted Yevgeny to wait on the landing outside the room. Before the door closed on him, Yevgeny checked the room and adjusted the curtains over the window. Only then did he leave. Yuri locked the door and went for the white portable phone near the bed.

As he talked to Katya, who was very understanding, he wandered absentmindedly to the window and played with the curtains. “I cannot explain,” he said. “And I cannot talk long. You must be patient.”

“I will be patient,” she said, actually quite pleased that she would be without his oppressive presence and massive ego for a few days. She was sure that when he did come he would bring a present of appeasement.

Yuri was, in some ways, a perfect lover. He didn’t like sex and he came to see her infrequently. He talked, expected and received great but feigned sympathy, and demanded nothing more than to be seen with her at the proper clubs and restaurants. Katya was very young, a dark, slender beauty who had perfected her walk and voice. She exuded sexuality. She trafficked in it.

“It won’t be long,” he reassured her, opening the curtains just enough to look out onto the street.

The street was empty.

It then, very quickly, occurred to him that he had probably been leaning too hard against the window and that it had suddenly shattered. He let the curtains close.

“What was that?” Katya said.

“The window broke,” he said.

He didn’t move. A second bullet came through the now-shattered window. This one missed him as had the first. And yet Yuri simply stood talking on the phone, not believing what was happening.

“I think someone is shooting at me. He is shooting at me.”

The bedroom door was kicked open. Yuri turned his head as Yevgeny rushed toward him, yelling, “Get down. Get down.”

“Shooting at you?” asked Katya, hearing the noise.

Yuri didn’t get down. He held the phone, fingers and knuckles turning white. The next two bullets tore through the curtains. The first hit him solidly in the chest. The second entered just below his right eye and exited through the top rear of his skull.

He went down, still clutching the phone.

Yevgeny crawled cautiously to the body, knew immediately that the man whom he was supposed to protect was quite dead, and very carefully made his way to the window. A fifth shot entered the room and shattered something against the far wall. The gunman could see nothing through the curtains. He fired once more. And then there was silence.

Yevgeny cursed his luck but did his job. He went to the window, peeked out carefully, and scanned the street. There were not many places to hide. There was no high ground, no real cover from trees, only houses which had been checked the night before.

A second guard entered the room and Yevgeny shouted, “He’s dead.”

“Shit,” the man shouted back.

“Shot came from low, not close. Go.”

When the man had rushed out of the room, Yevgeny pulled the small rectangular cell phone from his belt and pressed a button.

“No car,” he said. “Nothing is moving. The houses across the street. There’s a sight line from two houses on the street beyond, a gray house and a white one next to it.”

He sensed someone in the doorway behind him and turned, aiming his weapon. It was Vera. She looked at her husband and began to shake. She did not have to act. It was one thing to wish him dead and quite another to see his head blown apart.

“Get down,” Yevgeny shouted. “Now. Down.”

Vera, her eyes fixed on Yuri, sank to her knees as if in prayer.

Yevgeny took another look out the window and moved to her, placing his weapon on the floor. He put his arm around her, knowing she was going into shock. He had trained for this but had never had to do it before.

She looked over her shoulder as he started to lead her from the room. His hand accidentally touched her breast. She didn’t notice, but he felt a stir and damned himself.

“Wait,” she said, pulling away from him and moving to the body of her husband. She took the phone from his reluctant fingers and spoke to the woman on the other end.

“He is dead,” Vera said.

“Dead?” asked Katya. “You killed him?”

Vera hung up the phone. Yevgeny took it from her, put it down on the bed, and led her onto the landing and down the stairs.

The suggestion by Andrei Vanga that he accompany Karpo and Zelach to the apartment of Sergei Bolskanov was noted by Karpo with interest. Karpo had no belief in intuition and little faith in his own ability to detect the underlying feelings and motives of others. He tried to deal only in evidence based on a long career as a criminal investigator.

That experience reminded him of the many other instances in which people in major cases, often involving murder, had volunteered to assist in some aspect of the investigation. The morbid, the guilty, and occasionally the few who for emotional reasons wanted the crime solved and the guilty punished were the ones who volunteered. Occasionally, a person with a vested interest in the investigation would also cooperate. In Karpo’s experience, there had been no other reasons.