Stuart Kaminsky - Tarnished Icons

It was little more than the cell of a monk. Karpo, in fact, had set up the room to resemble that of Lenin’s original Moscow room. Emil Karpo had zealously believed that Marxism would eventually weed out the corruption of individuals and that Communism would unite the world. He had been certain of his convictions from the first meeting he went to as a small boy holding his father’s hand, when he saw the red banner with the hammer and sickle covering the large wall behind the speakers who stood on the low platform and shouted with passion of the transformations that Soviet Communism would bring to the world. On that night, at that meeting, the workers, except for his father and a few others, had shouted till it hurt the boy’s ears. His father, whom he now resembled, had simply squeezed the boy’s hand.

Karpo had become a policeman in order to help stop those who broke the laws of the state and impeded the progress of the Communist dream. The Party, flawed as it might have become, had been his religion. Now the Soviet Union was gone and a group of opportunists calling themselves Communists were threatening to take over the government in free elections. But Karpo knew theirs was not the Communism in which he had believed. That was dead. These new Communists said they would rid Russia of the mafias and reunite the Soviet Union. Karpo, who was on the cold concrete floor doing pushups, knew that it was too late. The people had exchanged the corruption of Communism and its promise for the corruption of capitalism and its inflation, lack of direction, and the growth of a wealthy criminal element. The bribes were still necessary. The food was more scarce. The political promises now were more hollow.

It was not Communism that had failed. It was humanity. The animalism of humanity, the weakness of people, the ease of corruption, the lack of real commitment from top to bottom, had destroyed the dream that could have been a reality. It had all relied ultimately on faith, not on God and not on the system, but in people, the Russian people, the Soviet people, to commit themselves to Communism and its ultimate promise. Karpo now had little faith that the people had the ability to escape centuries of corrupt survival under any system. Capitalism was not the savior. It was only another facade behind which the weak and uncommitted-almost everyone-could hide.

Only Mathilde had helped him through, and the example of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, who behaved as if nothing surprised him, as if society was mad regardless of who controlled it, as if only individual people-women, children, the innocent and relatively innocent-counted. Rostnikov’s attitude had frequently gotten him into trouble with the MVD, the KGB, and military intelligence, but he had managed to survive. Karpo had decided early in his career that he would stay with and respect this limping eccentric man who frequently smiled at the folly of the world.

Karpo finished his one hundredth push-up, rolled onto his back, put his legs up on his bed, and began to do his several hundred abdominal crunches. He had no need to count. His body told him how many he had done. Next he propped himself on his arms so that his long legs could reach into the air. He began pumping his legs, bicycling, slowly for a minute or two, then faster and faster. He continued for fifteen minutes and was barely breathing hard when he stopped and rose. He had worked up a very slight sweat, and in spite of the coldness of the room, he was warm. He got a towel from his bottom drawer, one of the three towels he owned, took the blue plastic box with the bar of soap inside, wrapped the towel around himself, and went into the hall. It was not yet six. The narrow hallway with the dull gray walls was empty. Even those who had to be at work early waited for the policeman to take his morning shower and get back to his room before lining up to douse themselves in the trickle of quick cold water. No one wanted to run into the Vampire. It was an unwritten rule of the building off Vernadskogo Prospekt. Many wondered why a policeman, a detective, chose to live in a place like this when he could certainly do much better, but he had been there as long as any of them could remember.

Back in his room, Karpo, fully dry, hung his towel on a bar next to the window and slowly dressed. His watch told him that he had two hours to work on his computer. Already he had uncovered some interesting data that he wanted to discuss with Porfiry Petrovich. Karpo had a possible lead in the case of the person who had been sending letter and box bombs to seemingly unrelated Moscovites. One of the victims had died. Eight had been seriously injured.

He focused on this as he worked on his computer. All else was blocked out, even the call the night before from Pankov, the small, quivering assistant to the director of the Office of Special Investigation, Colonel Snitkonoy, the Gray Wolfhound. Pankov had simply said that the director ordered the appearance of all members of the office for a meeting the next morning at nine. The morning briefing was always scheduled, and Karpo thought briefly that there must be something of great importance at issue if a call had to be made. He knew better than to ask Pankov what the issue might be. He would know soon enough.

Elena Timofeyeva sat at the table in Colonel Snitkonoy’s office between Porfiry Petrovich and Emil Karpo. To the right of Karpo sat Sasha Tkach, who looked decidedly tired. To Rostnikov’s left sat Akardy Zelach, who looked more than uncomfortable. The hulking, stoop-shouldered creature who was known for his loyalty but not his intellect, looked decidedly concerned. To Zelach’s left was an empty chair, and this struck Elena as most unusual. That was the place of Major Gregorovich, the second in rank in the office, the man who everyone knew disliked Rostnikov, thought the Wolfhound a fool, and leaked information to other investigative offices. Gregorovich had been responsible for particularly sensitive cases involving the military or other investigative agencies. Officially he was assigned to the office only temporarily, but the assumption was that he was there to watch the Wolfhound and, at some point in the future, as a reward for his reliable revelation of the investigations of the Office of Special Investigation to other agencies, to take over when the Wolfhound moved on or retired.

But the major was now missing from the table. Elena assumed the man must be ill, on a secret assignment, or dead. The latter possibility did not cause her distress. To the left of the empty seat sat Pankov, almost a dwarf, notebook open before him, stack of reports rising like a small fortification before him to ward off the director’s wrath. Pankov fidgeted, as always, and tugged at the too-tight collar of his familiar gray suit.

It had also not escaped Elena’s attention that a new member of the office had joined them. There was not enough room behind the table except for Major Gregorovich’s empty seat, so a chair had been placed at one end of the table next to Sasha. In the chair sat Iosef Rostnikov, Porfiry Petrovich’s son. He smiled at Elena, who resisted smoothing her hair and looking at him. Iosef, tall, broad like his father, and with a handsome face and curly dark hair, had begun to smile more like his father. For more than a year after being released from the army and serving in the purgatory of Siberia or the battleground of Afghanistan, Iosef had devoted himself to drama, antigovernment plays in little theaters, plays that Iosef often wrote and acted in. At some point, a change had come to Iosef Rostnikov. He had given up the theater and applied for the National Police which was a bit reluctant to take on the son of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, who might pass information on to his father. However, they were offered little choice. He was qualified and a directive came down from the Ministry of the Interior that he should be hired. Iosef had been on patrol with a taciturn young partner calming drunks and feuding families, rousting teenagers, taking notes on beatings and robberies, and learning what he could. The National Police had been only too happy to let the younger Rostnikov join his father in the Office of Special Investigation when the request had come through.