Stuart Kaminsky - Tarnished Icons

He turned his head away and held the bucket tightly. The muck was almost to the top of the bucket when the flow suddenly stopped.

Rostnikov carefully removed the bucket, which gave off a foul odor that got even Sharakov’s attention.

“What is that?” he called.

“I think it best not to know,” said Rostnikov.

He wanted to replace the two sections of pipe with two of the new plastic sections he had brought, but he checked his watch. He did not have the time. He did, however, replace the rusted connecter with a new plastic one. Then he put the plate that covered the piping back in place and replaced the old screws with new plastic ones.

Sweat-drenched and dirty, Rostnikov gently eased his way out from under the sink, grabbed the countertop, and pulled himself up. The girls were looking in the bucket.

“I think I see a bug, a big bug,” the younger child said.

“It would not surprise me,” said Rostnikov, washing his hands in the sink and drying them on his sweatshirt. He would wash off thoroughly in the shower when he got back to his apartment.

“I’ll be back when I can to put in new piping,” Rostnikov said as he and the girls moved past Sharakov, who grunted and continued to watch his melodrama.

Rostnikov had to carry the bucket. It was very heavy now and dangerously near to overflowing. He let each of the girls carry two sections of the relatively lightweight plastic pipe. They managed with difficulty and dignity.

“Go tell the Hungarians that their drain is fixed,” he said to the girls, who nodded like solemn, dutiful soldiers. “Then bring the pipes back to our apartment. You have done good work.”

Both girls smiled and hurried away.

By the time he got back to the apartment after going downstairs and outside to dump the putrid mess directly into the sewer, the girls were already in their night-clothes, men’s extralarge black T-shirts with the words THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE printed in English across the front.

Sarah finished getting the girls ready for bed while Rostnikov removed his left leg, placed it nearby, and showered using the heavy-duty grainy Chinese soap that went through even the dirtiest grease. He shampooed with just the right amount of American liquid Prell and was dry, leg back on and fully dressed, in ten minutes. He said good night to each girl and thanked them for their help.

“I’m going to dream about that bug,” said the older girl.

“It wasn’t a bug,” Rostnikov lied. “It was a piece of black rubber.”

The child sighed with relief, and Rostnikov went into the living room, closing the door behind him. Sarah sat at the table, a cup of tea for her husband in front of the empty chair across from her.

Rostnikov sat, sipped some tea, and said that he had to go back to work. He didn’t know for how long. Maybe an hour or two, maybe most of the night. He told her he still had almost two hours before he had to leave. Then he waited for her to tell him what was troubling her.

Sarah spoke softly, calmly, telling him what she felt and thought and what her cousin had said.

“I’ve been having seizures,” she explained. “I have medication from Leon that should stop them, but I may have more. I go blank. I think I shake. I wet myself. I don’t want the girls to see this happen. I don’t want you to see it happen, but you should be prepared. I should tell the girls and Iosef.”

“Yes,” said Rostnikov, reaching across the table to touch his wife’s hand. “I was wondering why I got chicken tabak tonight.”

“I will survive,” Sarah said, a confident smile on her full lips and pale face.

“And we will endure,” said Rostnikov. “Surviving and enduring are what Russians do best. We have almost made an art of it.”

“If the medication doesn’t work,” Sarah said calmly, “we will try another medication. If that, too, fails, the woman who operated on me, removed the tumor, will conduct a procedure to relieve the pressure in my brain. It is not an operation in the same sense as the one I had. This is a simple procedure that is almost certain to work and poses no threat to my life.”

Rostnikov said nothing.

“Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said softly, “Leon would not lie to me.”

While Rostnikov had been lying on his back under the pipe holding the plastic bucket, Valentin Spaskov was sitting in the unmarked car across from the Moscow Television News office. The engine was off. Spaskov did not want to draw any attention. He had signed the vehicle out for surveillance of a suspected illegal arms dealer.

He watched each person exiting the building, waiting for Magda Stern. He knew she was inside. He had called from a public phone five minutes before he parked across from the building and asked if she was there. The woman who answered said she was, but she was in a meeting. Spaskov said he was Inspector Tkach and asked to leave Magda Stern a message that the new photographs would be ready for her to look at the next morning.

Valentin hardly noticed the cold. He was wearing civilian clothes and a lightweight jacket so he could move quickly when the time came. In the holster under the jacket was a fully-loaded Colt Delta 10mm Gold Cup that he had taken from the Trotsky Station evidence room. After he killed Magda Stern, he would clean the weapon and return it to the evidence room on a shelf containing dozens of weapons.

He had decided to use it because the killing might then be linked to a shooting in front of Moscow Television News almost a year ago. A popular newscaster and commentator had been shot as he exited the office. The man had, on the air, been critical of both the government and the rise of extremists. Valentin had no idea what Magda Stern’s political position might be. He simply planned to kill the woman nearby in the hope that it would be blamed on the same people who had committed the earlier murder and had never been caught.

If this were his district, he would have carefully supported such a suggestion. But this wasn’t his district, and he wasn’t at all certain whose district it was, considering the recent drawing of districts by the Ministry of the Interior. On more than one occasion, Valentin had been called upon to step in to negotiate jurisdiction over a crime because both Trotsky Station and another station claimed the territory.

The detectives from the Office of Special Investigation would, he was sure, not accept such a motive. The death of Magda Stern the night before she was to look at new photographs in the hope that she could identify her attacker would be too much of a coincidence. The detectives would conclude that her attacker and murderer was in one of the photographs. But which one? They would check, to the best of their ability, where each man photographed this day was at the time of each rape and beating. They might even eventually grow suspicious of Lieutenant Valentin Spaskov.

He would remain calm, cooperative. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that he would now, this night, have to murder an innocent woman. The problem was that he did not know if he was capable of stopping his attacks. And now he considered that once he had murdered Magda Stern he might well murder his next victim.

She came out of the building walking quickly, pulling the collar of her coat around her neck to temper a winter wind that came out of the darkness carrying drifts of snow from the street and sidewalk. A few people came out with her. If she went somewhere with them, he would follow and have to kill her elsewhere, but the group went to the right and she moved alone to the left. The group was moving toward the nearby metro station. She was walking into a darkness that was barely relieved by streetlights blurred by blowing snow. She was cooperating fully in her own murder.

Valentin got out of the car quietly, normally, looking like a man who had someplace to go in the area. He crossed the street and slowly followed the woman. He remembered her cool, pale, pretty made-up face. He remembered her tall body and erect posture.