Stuart Kaminsky - Black Knight in Red Square

She walked slowly from the store into the late afternoon crowds and turned in the direction of the apartment. One more night, she thought. Just one more.

Rostnikov had washed, shared a drink with Sarah from the bottle of Mukuzani No. 4 wine they had been saving, and now sat at the table looking at his trophy. Plenty of late afternoon sun came through the windows, so they had not turned on any lights.

“Shall we call Iosef?” he asked.

“We can try,” Sarah said, looking up from the book she was trying to read. “He would like to know about the trophy.”

The look they exchanged made it clear that there was more they would like to tell their son, but that, for the present at least, it would have to remain unsaid.

“I probably can’t get a call through to Kiev,” he said.

“If you don’t try, you’ll never know.”

There was no arguing with that logic. Rostnikov had already put together the packet he had been working on, had already wrapped it into a small bundle and taped it. It would be bulky in his pants pocket but it would fit. He had considered hiding it, but there was no point in that. There was no safe place. He would simply carry it in his pocket.

“I’ll try to place a call,” he said, starting to get up.

Before he could take a step, there was a knock at the door. Rostnikov and his wife looked at each other. Her eyes peered over the tops of her round glasses. The knock was urgent and authoritative. Rostnikov himself often knocked just that way.

He gestured to her and held up a hand before crossing the room and reaching for the door. He resisted the urge to touch the packet in his pocket. If he did so now, he might do it without thinking later. He opened the door and found himself facing Samsanov, the building manager, a thin, sad-faced creature.

“I must talk to you, Comrade Rostnikov,” he said seriously.

“Talk,” growled Rostnikov.

“Can I come in?” said Samsanov, nodding toward the interior of the apartment.

Rostnikov backed up to let the thin man enter and closed the door behind him. Samsanov nodded at Sarah, looked around the room and back at Rostnikov. The building manager wore a dark, worn suit and white shirt with no tie. His neck was speckled with gray hairs and made him look rather like a sorry chicken.

“You fixed the toilet and disturbed the Bulgarians,” Samsanov said, his eyes narrowing.

Rostnikov could see that the man had been drinking, perhaps building himself up for this moment.

“I did,” said Rostnikov, “and let me remind you that I am a chief inspector of the MVD and that I have given you certain tokens of good faith for you to do something about the toilet and that you failed to do so.”

Samsanov raised a placating hand as Rostnikov had hoped he would. The ploy was to start an offensive before he could be attacked.

“I have not come to complain,” Samsanov said. “I’ve come to see if we can reach an understanding.”

“Understanding?” asked Rostnikov, moving toward the building manager and looking over at Sarah.

“You seem to be good at repairing the plumbing. You know something about it,” said Samsanov softly. “People who need such repairs are willing to pay to bypass the normal procedure. I thought that you and I might-”

“That we might make a profit by illegally doing plumbing repairs,” Rostnikov said.

Samsanov looked at the door and back at Sarah.

“I’m not talking about illegal profits,” he said soothingly. “I’m talking about helping people.”

Samsanov clearly had no idea that the apartment was bugged, had not been part of it. The KGB could have used him but had chosen not to. Rostnikov’s near certainty about the apartment being bugged had been confirmed the night before when he found one of the devices and marveled at how incredibly small they had become.

The KGB was almost certainly uninterested in the petty profiteering of a building manager, but Rostnikov was amused at the possibility of telling Samsanov that he was proposing a punishable offense and that his proposal was being recorded by the KGB.

“Out,” said Rostnikov. “I have a good mind to arrest you.”

In truth, Rostnikov was not at all offended by Samsanov’s proposal. He was rather flattered, but he enjoyed acting out the scene for Sarah, who smiled, and for whoever was listening.

“I didn’t mean-” Samsanov said, moving toward the door.

“You meant,” said Rostnikov, opening the door. “Out.”

“Remember,” Samsanov said, trying to regain control as Rostnikov gripped his arm and urged him into the hall. “You violated the order of the committee.”

“I will be most happy to address the committee on the subject,” said Rostnikov, making no effort to keep his voice down. “In fact I would welcome it. Please let me know when it will be.” He shut the door firmly on Samsanov.

Karpo was up by five on Sunday morning. The streets were almost empty, and the sky was still dark. It was his favorite time of the day, and he enjoyed the long walk to Petrovka Street.

Even at the noisiest of times, Moscow was comparatively quiet; the noise level was comparable to that of Saumur, France, or Waterloo, Iowa, rather than that of New York, Rome, Tokyo, or London. Part of this was due to the smaller number of automobiles, but part was due to the relative quiet of Muscovites. From time to time foreigners have attributed this quiet atmosphere to the fear of the people in a totalitarian state, but they have only to read accounts of Moscow streets before the current century to know that this is not true. No, while Muscovites can be given to hearty laughter and heated argument and even madness, they are essentially a private people. They drive their emotions inward where they build, rather than outward where they dissipate. And Russians are fatalistic. If a person is run over by a car, it is terrible, horrible, but no more than one can expect.

This tendency to keep things inside is perhaps to a large degree also responsible for the heavy consumption of alcohol in Moscow. The emotions have to be diluted, tempered, and released, or they might explode. Karpo had seen such explosions many times. He accepted it as the human condition. Every once in a while a human being, an imperfect mechanism at best, would malfunction, and clog up the machinery of the state. Such flaws had to be repaired or removed. They simply couldn’t be tolerated. Karpo saw himself as an expert in the maintenance of the commonweal.

As he walked, Karpo’s left arm began to throb slightly from the movement. He had several options. He could take one of the pills, which might affect his alertness and would do only a little to ease the pain. He could seek public transportation, a rather difficult thing to find so early on a Sunday morning. Moscow was the center of a godless state, but the concept of the Sabbath was so much a part of the Russian psyche that the government had eased its rules on Sunday and had gradually allowed it to become a day of rest. Karpo could have called Petrovka and had them send a car for him. After all, he was on official business, but to ask for a car would be an indication of weakness, and that would never do. He chose instead to accept the pain and walk on. He would think through the pain.

By six he was at his desk. The long, narrow room was not yet full, but Kleseko and Zelach were at their desks, and in the corner fat Nostavo was eating a piece of dark bread and talking to a uniformed officer, who stood nearby acknowledging the sage advice he was getting. Eating at one’s desk was forbidden, but many inspectors did so. The practice offended Karpo, who regarded any infraction of the rules as a threat to the entire structure. Lenin had said the same thing most clearly, and had led a most ascetic life. If one is willing to break a small rule, how will he know whether the next rule is also a small one when he breaks it? Soon the line between small and large is a blur and the individual becomes a detriment to the state. But Karpo did not report such offenses. There were too many of them. There were too many bribes, too many inspectors who took advantage of their privilege.