Stuart Kaminsky - Black Knight in Red Square

Rostnikov pleaded with the woman with his eyes, and finally she nodded to indicate that the lift was complete. He dropped the weight as easily as he could and pulled his bad leg back out of the way as the bar bounced against the mat as if alive. The two spotters bent over to stop it, and Rostnikov straightened up, a slight ache in his back. It was at this point that he realized the cluster of people around his mat were applauding.

“Why did you do that?” asked the man with glasses, a look of awe on his face.

“It was too heavy for me to snatch,” Rostnikov answered, bewildered.

“You weren’t supposed to snatch it,” said the man. “That was the weight for the dead lift. It was more than three hundred pounds. You were just supposed to lift it off the mat. No one has ever cleaned and jerked that much in this competition.”

Rostnikov’s eyes widened. So he was doing all right after all. Then again, he knew that Alexiev and Pisarenko and a handful of Americans, Poles, East Germans, and Bulgarians could clean and jerk almost 600 pounds.

Then things began to move quickly. Rostnikov developed a retinue led by the man with glasses, who became his guardian through the competition.

“Did you breathe?” asked the woman back in the warm-up building when Rostnikov returned between events. She sat cross-legged, red-faced, rubbing her cheek.

“I breathed,” he said.

“I forgot,” she said, getting to her knees and reaching for a blue bag. “Good luck.” And she was off.

With the help of the man with glasses, Rostnikov found out not only what the weights were but how he stood in the competition as the morning moved to afternoon. For the final rounds of each event, there was but one mat, and things moved more quickly.

Rostnikov’s snatch proved to be his weakest event, and there was even a moment of consultation among the judges when they had to decide if his awkward thrust counted.

One of the judges stepped forward, a young man with enormous shoulders and white-blond hair.

“How did your leg get like that?” the young man asked.

“The war,” Rostnikov explained. “Battle of Rostov.”

The young man nodded, looked at his pad of paper, bit his lower lip, and returned to the other two judges. They consulted briefly and announced that Rostnikov’s lift, good enough for third place, would stand.

In the dead lift, however, there was no problem or question. His 560 pounds won easily as did his 300 pounds for the clean and jerk. His totals for the three events were enough to give Rostnikov the championship.

“I knew it,” said the man with glasses, taking Rostnikov’s sleeve and leading him back to the platform to receive his awards. “I knew we could do it.”

Then applause, and lights. Rostnikov blinked back the sweat and wiped his face with his sleeve. He knew he should smile, but the serious look would not leave his face. He held one arm up to acknowledge the applause. It was too much like a dream, and the most amazing part of the dream was Alexiev. Rostnikov could see him now, but it was a strange Alexiev wearing a suit. He had never thought of Alexiev wearing a suit, only the shorts and light shirt or blue sweatshirt, but it was Alexiev, and he was applauding-applauding for Rostnikov. It was a moment to savor. Rostnikov tried to shake himself out of the dream and enjoy the moment, but his mind would not respond. He walked as if in a heavy fog.

When the moment came to accept the silver trophy, Rostnikov solemnly shook Alexiev’s massive hand. He wanted to say something, but it seemed too little to say, “You inspired me” or “This is the great moment of my life.” So, cursing himself, Rostnikov said, “Thank you.”

“If you were twenty years younger,” Alexiev said clapping his shoulder, his dark face just as serious as Rostnikov’s, “you’d be giving Anatoli and the East Germans worries.”

And then Rostnikov smiled. And in that smile came the idea of abandoning his plan. But before the thought was fully formed, while Alexiev still grasped his hand and Rostnikov clutched his trophy to his chest, he saw Sarah in the crowd. He had not expected her to come, for he’d never told her how much this competition meant to him. But she was there, her hair pinned back, a broad smile on her face matching his own, and his resolve returned. He held out the trophy for her to see, and she cocked her head as she often did, feigning deep concentration. Then she nodded and laughed, and Rostnikov laughed.

When he finally escaped from the man with glasses and the reporters from the weight-lifting magazine, who took his picture, and from the other contestants, who congratulated him, Rostnikov changed into his trousers and a clean shirt.

“You did very well, Porfiry Petrovich,” Sarah said, touching his arm as they walked outside. Rostnikov had wrapped the trophy in his sweatshirt, not wanting to draw attention as he went home.

“It was a good feeling,” he admitted.

“Are you sure you want to go ahead with it?” she said. A trio of soldiers passed them, one bearing a resemblance to their own Iosef.

“I’m sure,” said Rostnikov. “And I must stop to make a call. Would you like an ice cream?”

Sarah found an ice cream vendor while he entered a phone booth and dropped some coins into the slot. He attached the tape recorder to the phone, shifting the trophy. It took a few minutes to reach Drozhkin at Lubyanka. It was Saturday, but the colonel was at his desk, just as Rostnikov had assumed he would be.

“What is it, Rostnikov?” he said impatiently.

Good, thought Rostnikov, the pressure from above is on him. Now it was a question of correctly gauging the size of the man’s ego. A wrong guess at this point would destroy Rostnikov’s plan.

“Colonel,” he said, “I suggest that you arrest and detain the German Bintz and the Englishman Willery. I believe they are involved in the plan to assist World Liberation by committing terrorist acts.”

“Inspector,” Drozhkin hissed, “have you taken leave of your senses? This is a telephone conversation.”

“I understand,” said Rostnikov, “but the situation is urgent.”

“My respect for your abilities has diminished, Inspector,” sighed Drozhkin, showing signs of impatience. “We will watch these men. You will be responsible for watching them also. We will wait for them to make some move. They are foreign nationals. We cannot simply arrest them.”

“But they might get away,” Rostnikov persisted.

“Inspector,” said Drozhkin with barely concealed fury, “if they give any sign of their involvement, they will not get away. I suggest you get about your business, and let me get back to mine. I did not waste my morning and much of my afternoon playing games in the park.”

With that reminder that the KGB was watching him, Drozhkin hung up. Rostnikov removed the rubber cup from the phone, put it in his bag, and went in search of Sarah.

Though Rostnikov did not know it, others besides the KGB were aware of his participation in the competition. Sasha Tkach had heard about it from Dmitri Gregorich in the records office. Gregorich heard about it from a switchboard operator at Petrovka who happened to overhear Rostnikov when he registered for the competition months earlier. Tkach had planned to witness Rostnikov’s efforts since he was well aware of his superior’s strength, but circumstances do not always favor the well-intentioned.

Instead of watching the weight-lifting competition, Tkach sat in People’s Court, Leninskii District, City of Moscow. The courtroom was small, old, stuffy, and crowded. There was a single bare light bulb, aided by July sunlight spilling through the two double-paned windows. The judge, a man with a sharp, pinched face that would never quite look shaved, put a finger behind his neck to loosen his slightly frayed collar, then sat down at the battered desk.