Stuart Kaminsky - Blood and Rubles

“And now?” asked Karpo.

“And now?” Semionov poured himself coffee. “We will have to find ways to neutralize this information.”

Karpo nodded. “Bribes? Blackmail? Threats?”

“Actually,” said Semionov, “you have done us a great favor. You have bought us some time to act instead of surprising us with a series of arrests. Or letting our North Korean partners find out before we do. Have a roll. Fresh. Smell them.”

Semionov himself smelled one of the rolls, tore it open, and slathered it with butter. He offered it to Karpo, who declined it.

“She would be alive if you had not murdered the German,” Karpo said.

“Oh, yes, I see your point,” said Semionov, popping the roll into his mouth and chewing for a few moments. “But there is little more you can do. You’ve turned in the disk. Are you going to start killing us all? There are more than eighty of us,” he said, tapping the printout in front of him. “And you don’t even have the most important names. Kuzen didn’t know them. Look at it this way. Had your system not fallen, we could not exist. If we did not exist, your … What was her name?”

“Mathilde Verson.”

“Mathilde Verson,” Semionov acknowledged with a wave of his hand, “would be alive today. Blame Yeltsin. Go shoot Yeltsin. Or if your fucking Revolution had not been corrupted by lunatics like Stalin and the fat thieves and alcoholics who followed him, there would have been no need to overthrow Communism. Go dig up Stalin, and Brezhnev, and … You see my point?”

“I see,” said Karpo. “Everyone is responsible.”

Semionov nodded in agreement, chewing amiably. “Now, I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’ve got a lot of work to do to try to contain this. I’m not fool enough to offer you money or to threaten you. You’ve studied me. I’ve learned a bit about you.”

“Responsibility rests with the one who commits the act and the one who orders it,” said Karpo.

“Is that a quote?” asked Semionov, reaching for a second roll.

“Lenin,” said Karpo.

Semionov shook his head sadly. “Yes, I heard you were one of those. When I was in prison, I read Lenin, Marx, Engels, Gorky, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol, Moliere, Shakespeare, Nietzsche. I read. I thought. And you know what I concluded?”

“I do not,” said Karpo.

Semionov waved the fresh roll in front of Karpo. “I concluded that I had no power, but that power was essential to me. It was as important as the blood that flowed through my veins. I concluded that life is short and meaningless and that killing neither damned me nor made me feel remorse. I concluded that all that would satisfy me was power. Not women, not a big house, not food. Only power. To tell people to act and have them obey without question. There is nothing more worthwhile in life. All else is lies to keep the system working.”

“Though they could not express it so well,” said Karpo, “that is just what most of the criminals we question believe.”

“Yes,” said Semionov with a smile. “But they do not understand why they want this or how this need has pervaded human history. I understand.”

“And therefore,” said Karpo, “you are far more dangerous.”

“Precisely,” said Semionov.

They sat silently for a few moments while Semionov ate and drank and thought and looked across the table at the rigid detective.

“I’ve changed my mind about you,” said Semionov. “I think I shall have to have you killed. I think you are determined to kill me. Am I right?”

“You are right,” said Karpo.

“There are tribes, those of New Guinea, who believe that you take on the power of the warrior you kill, especially if you eat his heart and liver. Perhaps I will eat your heart and liver, though I think they will be rather bitter. Leave now. You are depressing me.”

Karpo turned and found himself facing the man who had followed him. The man was shaking his head no.

“You know what that shake means?” asked Semionov. “It means no one but Panushkin has followed you. And of this, Panushkin is certain, for it would mean his life if he were not.”

Semionov placed a gun on the table, a gun that had probably rested in his lap during their entire conversation.

Karpo slowly put his hand to the lapel of his jacket and turned it over. A metal pin about the size of a kopeck was attached to the back of the lapel.

Semionov smiled and shook his head.

“Hubris,” he said. “That feeling of power that makes you miss things. Who is on the other end of what we have been saying?”

“Does it matter?” asked Karpo.

Semionov shrugged, lit a fresh cigarette, and said, “If this is still private, we still have room to negotiate.”

“There was never room to negotiate,” said Karpo.

The door to the restaurant opened behind Karpo. The man who had followed him turned quickly, and two men came out of the darkness near the kitchen. Semionov sat patiently.

“We’ve got it,” said Craig Hamilton evenly.

The men who had come out of the darkness raised their hands above their heads. Karpo turned to face the FBI agent and six heavily armed plainclothesmen.

“Karpo,” Hamilton cried suddenly, looking past Karpo at Semionov.

Karpo’s gun was out and he turned in a crouch, aiming at Semionov and firing. The gun still sat in front of the startled gangster, who had started to reach for it when Karpo’s bullet tore into his chest.

The hands of the other gangsters went up even higher.

“He was reaching for the gun,” said Hamilton behind Karpo.

Semionov had bounced back against his chair and then slumped forward, overturning coffee, rolls, butter, and a full ashtray. Hamilton, an automatic weapon in one hand, moved forward quickly to the table and touched Semionov’s neck.

“Dead,” he said.

Karpo put his gun away under his jacket and looked at the FBI man, who said, “He was definitely going for the weapon.”

There was no surge of power for Karpo. No sense of justice. No particular feeling. A man was dead. Mathilde was dead. Karpo turned, brushed past the man who had followed him less than an hour earlier, and walked to the door of the restaurant and out into the early winter.

There were twenty-seven criminal hearings set that day for this room in the House of Justice. That meant that the hearing boards had about fifteen minutes to decide if each case should go to trial. Eleven of the cases involved murder. The early cases would be heard by a board of three judges, none of whom was professionally trained in the law. By the afternoon wear and tear reduced the number of judges to one or two. The room was barely larger than a closet.

The eighth hearing took place slightly before noon. It was held before a panel of two men and one woman. The men were both around sixty. One was stoop-shouldered and tall. The other was short and thin and sat reasonably erect. The woman was much younger, perhaps as young as thirty or thirty-five. She was wearing a suit not much different from her colleagues, who sat on each side of her. Though he could not see her clearly, Sasha thought she was good-looking, dark, and a bit too thin for his taste.

Sasha’s mouth was dry. Upon advice from the Procurator’s Office, he had dressed but not changed the bandage on his head. There was a distinct patch of blood, and it was evident to anyone who looked his way that the nice-looking young man with the bandage was having trouble focusing.

“Are you all right?” asked Zelach, who sat next to him in the hearing room full of police and the accused.

“No,” said Sasha, “but I will make it.”

Two cases were called after Sasha arrived. Both were taken care of quickly. Two resulted in the accused being turned over for trial on cases of assault and vehicle theft. The third, a girl accused of theft and prostitution, was allowed to go because there was no evidence other than the testimony of the policeman. The victim had refused to appear. In the old days the word of a policeman would have been enough. Times had changed.