Stuart Kaminsky - Death Of A Russian Priest

While the Gray Wolfhound, full of morning energy, paced the floor of his office Pankov hurriedly took notes. “World experts now believe all of humanity is on the edge of a new epidemic of drugs. Last year in the Soviet Union we destroyed more than one hundred thousand farms on which drug-bearing plants were being grown. No sooner do we tear them down than two of them spring up like a …”

“Hydra,” Pankov offered.

The colonel shook his head indulgently. “Too obvious. Like bamboo.”

“Yes,” said Pankov enthusiastically as he wrote. “Bamboo.”

“In Kazakhstan they triple. Afghan crude opium spreads through our open borders through Central Asia. And now there are those calling for the legalization of all narcotics. When the walls began to fall,” the colonel said, pushing against an invisible wall with well-formed, extended fingers, “chaos flooded in and now threatens to drown us all.”

The phone rang. Pankov looked at the colonel, who said, “Answer it. And give me a list of facts about narcotics. Get it from … you know where to get it.”

Pankov got up from the conference table and quickly left the room, closing the door behind him gently.

“Special Investigations, office of the commander,” Pankov said, lowering his voice in the hope of approaching an official alto. “Yes … yes, sir.”

He put the phone down gently, went back to the door, and knocked.

“Come in,” called the colonel. The Wolfhound was pacing, his hair glistening in the morning light through the window.

“Colonel Lunacharski of state security,” said Pankov.

“Lunacharski?”

“I believe he has replaced Major Zhenya in the Department of Internal Affairs. Zhenya who had an … an accident last-”

“Put him through, Pankov,” said Colonel Snitkonoy with a wry smile that would have suggested to any but those who knew him well that he was fully prepared for this call. Pankov hurried to his desk and put the call through. He wanted to listen. He would have given his annual vacation to listen. Well, not all of his vacation, but certainly a day or two if the devil suddenly arrived with the offer, if there was a devil, which there certainly was not.

Had he listened, he would have heard the following:

LUNACHARSKI: Colonel Snitkonoy, I have some information which may be of value to you on two cases your office is investigating.

WOLFHOUND: Good, Colonel, please forward it to me at once, or if you like, I will send someone-

LUNACHARSKI: I would prefer it if you would receive the information yourself and not in writing.

WOLFHOUND: Then, Colonel, please come to my office.

LUNACHARSKI: That is very kind of you, but it would be impossible to meet in your office. I hope you understand.

Colonel Snitkonoy understood very well. The former KGB officer had something to say that he did not wish to have recorded, and he assumed, quite correctly, that the Wolfhound would record the conversation, just as the Wolfhound assumed Lunacharski would have recorded the conversation in his office in Lubyanka. As it was, there was no assurance that both men would not record the conversation no matter where they met, but there were ways to make it more difficult.

“The Seventh Heaven Restaurant on the TV Tower. We can have a light meal and I will be near my afternoon appointment,” said the Wolfhound. “If that is convenient for you.”

The TV Tower in Ostankino was convenient to neither man, but the restaurant, over three hundred and twenty-eight meters high in the needlelike building, rotated once every forty minutes. It would be difficult to record the conversation by directional microphones.

“Six-thirty,” confirmed Lunacharski.

Colonel Snitkonoy hung up first. Then Lunacharski hung up the phone, rose, and moved to the window. He would have to arrive at the restaurant very early to be sure he would be seated so that the tall, lean figure of the Gray Wolfhound, a figure almost every Muscovite recognized from hundreds of pictures in the newspapers and on television, would not tower over him. Lunacharski would be required only to rise partially from his chair.

It was the best he could do. The entire scene would take place in a location where the Wolfhound was comfortable. Major Lunacharski tried to think of a way to avoid this disadvantaged meeting, but there was none. He had decided on this direction and this direction it would be. He would allow himself to be humiliated, but he would gain control. Then he would sit back and monitor the results. The reports he would bring to General Karsnikov would mark the first step back toward respectability and possible promotion.

And if this failed, he would simply have to try again and again until he succeeded in discrediting Snitkonoy and his staff.

Lunacharski considered what to do with the remaining hours of the morning and afternoon. It was almost certain that at this hour his wife would not be home. She dreaded being home in the late morning. In addition, her lover was in town. Lunacharski would go home, get four hours of sleep, and then confront the Wolfhound.

He checked the buttons on his suit, adjusted his tie, and examined his reflection in the small mirror he kept in his drawer. Vladimir Lunacharski was not vain, nor did he think himself particularly handsome, but he would not risk a tuft of wild hair or a misbuttoned shirt.

“You should be home in bed,” Elena Timofeyeva said to Sasha Tkach, who sat at his desk opposite her on the sixth floor of Petrovka.

Investigators, clerks, technicians glanced at him as they walked by. Sasha scowled them away until one man with a broad homely face and a satisfied smile leaned over and whispered something to him, then sauntered away laughing.

“What did he say?” Elena asked.

“He asked if you sat on my face last night,” said Sasha, and she could see from the small normal part of his face that Tkach was telling the truth.

Then she told him again that he should be home in bed. He laughed.

“You think I will get rest at home? My mother will rant and scold. My daughter will pounce when I dare close my one good eye, and my wife will be quietly sympathetic, so sympathetic, and that will be the worst of all.”

He looked up at her with a challenge in his good eye and Elena laughed. She had not meant to laugh, but he looked so pathetic and his self-pity was so sincere that she could not help herself. She laughed and tried to hold the laugh down, but it came out in a spit and a sputter.

Sasha tried to feel angry. Her laughter was the final blow. It proved that she was not suited to work with him, that he was right about his own misery. But instead of feeling angry he found himself smiling and then laughing, too, a laughter that hurt his ribs and stretched his swollen eye with stinging pain, but still he laughed.

Zelach was still on leave. Both Karpo and Rostnikov were in Arkush. No one would see him, no one but Elena, and she had begun the laughter. It was safe and he laughed. There was no reason to laugh, but he laughed and watched her laugh.

“I must stop,” he said. “It is too painful.”

“All right,” said Elena, wiping her eyes. “All right. We will stop.”

She did her best and it was almost good enough, but she couldn’t stop. Finally they sank back and caught their breath. It was at this point that for the third time she said, “You should be home in bed,”

“I will feel less pain and feel less stupid about my actions last night if I work,” he said. “We will go gently.”

“Gently,” she agreed, and knew that they had broken through to some understanding. It would not be perfect from this point on, but it would be better. “I have the names Tatyana gave us. Some have no last names and will be impossible to find, but a few are not so bad. I think I found the right Katrina Velikanova. The others, either she had the last names wrong, or …”