Stuart Kaminsky - Black Knight in Red Square

Zelach looked over at him, and Karpo nodded in recognition. Then Zelach looked away. Karpo picked up the phone and dialed.

“Kostnitsov, laboratory,” came the voice after a long wait.

“Karpo.”

“So, I’m here,” said Kostnitsov. “The sun is coming out over the Kremlin Wall, my wife is turning over for another few hours’ sleep, and my daughter is who the hell knows where.”

“Do you have the report ready?” said Karpo.

“Would I be in my laboratory now if I had no report? Would I have gotten myself up in darkness, cut an acre of my chin shaving in a daze, traveled without food to say I had nothing?”

“I do not know you well enough to answer such questions,” said Karpo.

“I’m talking human nature, not Boris Kostnitsov. Sometimes, Inspector Karpo, I despair of you. Come on up to my office. That is the least you can do. No, wait, the least you could do in addition to coming to my office is to bring me some tea.”

With that, Kostnitsov hung up. The assistant director of the MVD laboratory had no fear or awe of Karpo, no respect for his reputation. Others shied away from the Vampire and limited their contacts with him, but Kostnitsov had always treated him as he treated others, with no respect at all.

In a rather strange and inexplicable way, Karpo liked the man. So, as he would for no other-with the possible exception of Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, who would never ask-Karpo made his way to the darkened cafeteria, boiled some water, and made a cup of tea. Then he took the elevator to the lower level, which housed the laboratory.

There was no name on the door, only a number. Knocking was awkward. Karpo shifted the hot cup to his left hand, which he could only raise to his waist. He knocked with his right.

“Come in,” shouted Kostnitsov. “Come in, Karpo. Why are you knocking? I told you to come down. What do you think I’m doing in here? Performing lewd acts with laboratory specimens?”

Karpo opened the door, walked across the hard tile floor, and placed the cup on the walnut desk in front of Kostnitsov. Kostnitsov was somewhere in his fifties, medium height, a little belly, straight white hair, and a red face more the result of his Georgian heritage than of his intake of alcohol, which was moderate. He wore a blue lab jacket and was holding a gray envelope.

“Sit,” he told Karpo and reached for the tea, which he drank in a single gulp. “Not enough sugar. How am I to get through this morning without dextrose?”

“I don’t know,” said Karpo, taking a seat across from the desk.

Kostnitsov sucked in his cheeks and examined Karpo.

“Has anyone ever told you you are a most humorless man?” he asked.

“Four times,” Karpo replied. “You have a report ready for me.”

“And an image to protect,” Kostnitsov said with a glower. “You’ll have to tolerate my eccentricity. It is all I have to keep me going in this mausoleum. You know what I really wanted to be in this life?”

“No.”

“A soccer coach. Here is your report. Do you want me to summarize it for you?”

“Yes.”

“Death was definitely caused by an irradiated liquid dosage of psittacosis bacilli,” said Kostnitsov, looking at the report. “An unnecessarily flamboyant method for murder. The means available to someone to commit murder by poison without resorting to exotic potions smuggled into the country is almost infinite. Your murderer is a showoff. He is-”

“She,” corrected Karpo.

“She was signing her crime with a flourish,” said Kostnitsov.

“Where could she get this psittacosis material?” Karpo asked, commanding his arm not to throb.

Kostnitsov’s grin was broad and manic, revealing rather poorly-cared-for teeth.

“Only one place as far as I can tell,” he said, tapping the report before him. “The Suttcliffe Pharmaceutical Company in a place called Trenton, New Jersey. How she stole it or why is beyond my knowledge, but, as far as I know, Suttcliffe is where Dr. Y. T. Yui is working. He is the foremost authority on the disease which, incidentally, normally affects parakeets, parrots, and other jungle birds. It can be passed on to man, but this happens rarely. Of course you must understand that the strain which killed your Mr. Aubrey and the other three gentlemen was carefully nurtured for this destructive purpose. Suttcliffe is well known for its private work on biological warfare.”

“I see,” said Karpo when Kostnitsov paused to scan the report for other pertinent information.

“Has this charming woman used the poison since the murders at the Metropole?”

“I think not,” said Karpo. No, he doubted she would use it again. He understood her more with each bit of information. She considered herself a professional, perhaps even an artist in terrorism. Once she had used a method, she would not repeat it-at least not without introducing some striking variation.

“Karpo,” Kostnitsov said, handing the report to him, “that concoction appears to be amazingly virulent. I would guess that even if an expert in virology had been at his side the moment your victim took it, he could have done nothing to save him.”

“And if she is still carrying this or has given it to someone else to use-” Karpo began.

“Anyone ingesting it,” said Kostnitsov, examining the plastic cup for remnants of tea, “will be absolutely safe. I bred a culture of the bacilli taken from the stomach of the Japanese. Its life is incredibly short, four days at most. You or I could drink a cup full of her leftover psittacosis bacilli and suffer nothing worse than a bad taste in the mouth. Unless there are other side effects, though none would be-”

“Wait,” Karpo said. “Would it be possible from your study of the bacilli and the samples taken from the body to determine when it was created?”

“When the culture was created?” asked Kostnitsov with a puzzled look, which turned to one of enlightenment. “Of course, yes. You are a clever devil, Karpo. Five days ago, six at the most.”

“And,” said Karpo thinking aloud, “since it was cultured in the United States-”

“Could have been recultured elsewhere,” jumped in Kostnitsov, “or perhaps someone else is working on psittacosis. Perhaps even someone in the Soviet Union. The KGB would know.”

“But if it was taken from New Jersey and brought to the Soviet Union,” Karpo persisted, “the person who carried it would have to have arrived in Moscow on Wednesday, since the flight from New York takes a full day, with stopover and time difference, and then customs checks here.”

Kostnitsov nodded. “Thin, thin,” he said.

“Logical?” asked Karpo.

“Worth trying,” agreed Kostnitsov.

Karpo got up with his file and nodded at Kostnitsov. “You’ve been most helpful,” he said.

“I most certainly have,” Kostnitsov agreed. “Don’t forget the empty cup.”

Back at his desk, Karpo glanced at fat Nostavo and the uniformed policeman, who was still nodding. A new inspector, whom Karpo did not recognize, was seated at a desk across the narrow aisle. He was humming something that sounded vaguely French. Karpo had no ear for music and no interest in it. Right now he was interested only in flights from New York.

He called Intourist and was told that he could have a list of all passengers who had arrived on Wednesday and Thursday.

“Can I have a list of females between the ages of thirty and forty-five only, both Soviet nationals and foreigners?”

“Yes, but it will be long, perhaps two or three hundred names,” said the man from Intourist.

“I will come and get the list,” said Karpo. “Where will it be?”

“The Intourist Office, sixteen Karl Marx Prospekt.”

So far, it had been easy. Most Soviet institutions worked with painful slowness and indifference. Intourist, however, was a model of efficiency because it was on display to foreign visitors. Its efficiency carried over into its dealings with Soviet officials, including the police.