Stuart Kaminsky - Red Chameleon

“What’s all this?” bellowed a woman in a white coat, striding toward them, a black file folder under her arm. She was of no known age. Her size was small, her hair was pulled back tightly, and she wanted control.

“Visitors,” said Rostnikov.

The woman eyed Mathilde, appeared to discern her profession, and turned to Karpo.

“They are parasites,” shouted the man with no balls.

“Hah,” croaked the lungless one. “You can’t even keep your insults straight. You are the parasite.”

“Quiet,” shouted the woman. She turned to Karpo, and Rostnikov hesitated so he could listen. “You are awake.”

“I am awake,” agreed Karpo.

“I am Doctor Komiakov,” she said, opening the worn, dark folder and examining it. “I’m afraid I have some difficult news for you. Your right arm is infected and will have to be removed. I would rather not be so abrupt with this information, but you must know that the situation is severe, and you are a police officer. The surgery will be performed sometime tomorrow, and you should be functioning several weeks after that. There is even the possibility of a prosthetic device. Do you have a question?”

“Yes,” said Karpo, trying to sit up. His head was light, and he felt dizzy. He realized that the first touches of an aura indicating a migraine might be on him. “How do I get my clothes?”

The doctor looked at Rostnikov, who offered her no support, so that she had to turn to Mathilde, who smiled.

“You are a very sick man,” the doctor said.

Karpo was up now, his feet dangling over the side of the bed.

“My clothes,” he repeated,

Outnumbered, the doctor closed her notebook with a slap. “That is your right as a citizen,” she said grimly. “But I warn you that the infection is almost certain to kill you. You’ll have to sign papers indicating that you chose to leave the hospital in spite of my warnings.”

Mathilde held out a hand to help Karpo, who had managed to retain his dignity in spite of the absurd hospital gown. At first he rejected her offered hand and then took it.

The two debating patients behind them argued at a somewhat lower level the relative merits of leaving the hospital.

“It may take a while to get your clothes,” Rostnikov observed. “I’ll wait.”

But as it turned out, he could not wait. After five minutes, Sasha Tkach entered the ward, looked around, spotted Rostnikov, and hurried over.

“Karpo,” he said, brushing his straight hair back from his forehead. “How are you?”

“He is well, fine. We are waiting for his pants,” said Rostnikov. He didn’t introduce Mathilde, though Tkach stood waiting for an introduction. “Why are you here?”

“Posniky,” he said with a smile. “We found him. He’s a guest at the Metropole Hotel. He has a plane ticket to New York for this evening. I left Zelach to watch him. He’s with a younger man.”

“No one approached them?”

Tkach couldn’t stop looking at the woman helping Emil Karpo to stand, but he tried not to look at her, to wonder. Karpo had always been a puzzle to him, a person to stay away from unless they were forced together for an investigation. Emil Karpo and this woman did not fit together.

“No one approached them. They don’t know they have been identified, are being watched.”

“Good, fine,” Rostnikov said, sighing. “Then you and I will drive to the Metropole for a little drink. Emil,

Comrade Verson, you are on your own. I’ll give you Alex’s address this evening.”

Emil Karpo lifted his head to speak, realized there was nothing to say, and watched his two fellow officers of the state as they left the ward and the smell of alcohol behind them.

There was no real excuse for going to the Metropole. Rostnikov was off the case, had been told to stop the investigation. There was almost no way out of this if it came to a confrontation with Procurator Khabolov. His only hope was to bring in the killers, apologize for having them accidentally fall into his hands, and back away, taking the consequences. He could do one other thing. He could simply let Tkach turn them in and take no credit at all, simply disappear, but it was not in Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov to disappear. He had tried it before and failed.

Tkach and Rostnikov rode in a bumpy taxi. It was hot all over Moscow, but a breeze through the open car window felt good. Rostnikov watched the streetlights go by and said nothing as they turned down Marx Prospekt.

“You want me to go with you to their room if they’re in?” asked Tkach to the back of Rostnikov’s head. “They are probably packing to leave.”

Rostnikov grunted a barely audible no.

For the rest of the trip, Tkach was silent.

Rostnikov was quite familiar with the Metropole. He had investigated murders committed there, thefts, interviewed suspects.

There was an Old World seediness about the old hotel. One expected to encounter criminals in its dusty halls and shabby restaurant. The food was awful, the service terrible even by Moscow standards. Criminals of some stature were, however, almost obligated to make an appearance at the Metropole. On the staircase leading up to the mezzanine of the hotel stood a large bronze statue of two naked children passionately kissing. The statue symbolized the hotel and had become a good-luck charm for the bolder criminals who touched the eternally embracing underage couple.

Rostnikov liked the Metropole. It was like stepping into the past. He could, at least for a moment, imagine himself Dostoyevski’s Porfiry Petrovich, for whom he was named, could imagine himself fencing verbally with a rapidly wilting Raskolnikov.

When the cab stopped, Tkach paid the driver, and Rostnikov moved ahead, not even glancing back across Sverdlov at the Bolshoi where, he knew, Swan Lake would soon be starting.

Zelach was seated conspicuously in the lobby, his hands folded on his lap, his eyes looking toward the entrance to the restaurant. He spotted Rostnikov and stood to greet him.

“They are in the restaurant,” Zelach said.

“Fine.”

“I’ll point them out to you.”

“I think I’ll know who they are,” said Rostnikov.

Tkach had now joined them. “Zelach, place yourself at the entrance of the restaurant,” he said. “I don’t care if they see you. In fact, it would be better if they do. Sasha, you make your way to the door by the kitchen. Just stand there looking like a policeman.”

Tkach had no idea of how to look like what he was, but he nodded and watched Rostnikov move slowly, pulling his reluctant leg behind him. The several people in the lobby worked hard not to watch the scene, but watch they did.

As he entered the restaurant and let his eyes take in the various tables, he was grateful that the regular orchestra was not there. It was too early, but they were loud and terrible at any time. He did not want to shout over them.

There were a few dozen people in the room and at one table a man and woman Rostnikov recognized. The man had been imprisoned for beating another man who filled beer vending machines. The man pretended not to see the policeman.

Then Rostnikov saw the two men he was looking for. They were seated near the marble fountain in the center of the room in front of the stage, where there was no orchestra. The light from the fountain played on the stained-glass window behind the stage, and Rostnikov felt quite comfortable as he made his way to the two men and listened to the gentle splashing of the water in the fountain and the murmur of voices in the room.

The two men did not look up until he was standing next to the table. Even then only the younger of the two raised his head. The other man, the old man with the white hair, looked at his drink.