Stuart Kaminsky - A Cold Red Sunrise

"Cold," said Sokolov as they looked across the small field at the houses with about three feet of snow on their roofs. The airport building was a wooden structure in front of which sat several small airplanes mounted on skis.

"The air here is good," said Karpo. "It is easy to breathe. The frost is intense, but it is much easier to bear than in Russia."

"Easier to bear?" Sokolov said as a man in a flowing coat moved forward to meet them and they moved toward the airport building. "You find Siberia easier to bear than Russia?"

"I was quoting Lenin," Karpo said as they walked. "In a letter to his mother. He was on his way to three years of exile in Novosibirsk as a political agitator."

"Of course," said Sokolov as the man from the terminal came face-to-face with them and guided them to one of the small planes with skis. They scrambled into the plane, nodded at the pilot and took off following the Yensei River north into darkness toward Tumsk.

At the moment Inspector Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov was landing just beyond the town of Tumsk in Siberia, Sasha Tkach sat at his desk in Petrovka writing a report and trying not to look up at Zelach who sat across from him in pursuit of thought, an almost hopeless venture.

"We can wait at his house, at the shop," Zelach said.

"You can," Tkach said still looking down at the report.

"Yes," said Zelach, "at the shop and the house."

Zelach looked at Tkach who brushed back his hair and suddenly met Zelach's eyes. It was not Sasha Tkach who had lost the buyer of stolen goods. He had indicated to Zelach how they should go about the arrest and it had almost come to pass. They had entered the shop on Gorkovo after looking in the window at a particular piece of jewelry which interested neither of them. Carefully, without letting his eyes appear to wander, Tkach had searched without success for their man. Finally, they found a salesperson, identified themselves as policemen and asked for Volovkatin. The saleswoman had said that Volovkatin was at a nearby stoloviye, luncheonette, and had given a description from which they might be able to identify him.

They had moved swiftly to the stoloviye, stepped in and looked around. In the back of the crowded shop, not far from the cafeteria line, Tkach spotted a man who fit the description of Volovkatin. He was about thirty-five, average height, with his dark hair brushed straight back. He was smoking a cigarette in a holder and nodding sagely. Working their way through the crowd would be a bit difficult and Tkach could see a rear door a few feet from their man who was talking animatedly to two women who sat with him as he ate from what looked like a bowl of cabbage soup.

Zelach spotted the man too and said, "There he is."

"Quiet," Tkach said. "Get in line. Get something to eat. Look around for a table."

Zelach moved to the counter, ordered a meat-filled kotleta and a side order of potatoes with a glass of kvass. Tkach, moving behind him and keeping his eyes on Volovkatin, ordered nothing, but when the waitress behind the counter reached over for payment Zelach had already begun to move away with his hands filled with food. Tkach paid the two rubles and turned to find Zelach and Volovkatin staring at each other.

There were three tables with several standing people between the two policemen and the suspect. Zelach looked over at Tkach and, Volovkatin followed the look while one of the women with him said something to which he nodded his head.

No doubt now. The man knew he was spotted, that two men, probably policemen, were moving toward him.

"Now," Tkach said to Zelach.

"My food," Zelach whined.

Tkach tried to push past a fat man who stood between him and Zelach and as he did so Volovkatin stood, dropped his cigarette holder and took a quick step toward the rear door.

"Where are you going?" Tkach heard one of the women ask Volovkatin.

He didn't answer and Zelach, who was closer to him than Tkach, looked around for an open table on which to place his food.

"Get him," called Tkach past the fat man.

Zelach looked back at Sasha, looked down at his food and shrugged.

"Drop it," Tkach shouted. "Get him."

Volovkatin had his hand on the door and was starting to open it when Zelach, who could not handle two ideas at the same time, finally dropped his plate and glass in the middle of the nearest table. The kvass spilled on a matronly woman who got up screaming. Tkach managed to get past the fat man but Zelach was still closer to the suspect who was now going through the rear door. Zelach made a lunge past the table at the closing door but he was too late. Zelach turned the handle on the closed door as Tkach leaped over a fallen chair and joined him.

"Locked," Zelach sighed.

They had worked their way back out of the store with Zelach pausing to retrieve his kotleta from in front of the matronly woman who cursed him and demanded money to clean her dress. He shoved the meat pie into his mouth and followed Tkach toward the street where, after fifteen minutes of searching the area, they failed to find Volovkatin.

"Two rubles," Tkach said as he looked across his desk.

Zelach looked at him blankly. Two rubles was far too modest a bribe for keeping quiet about the disaster Zelach had caused.

"For the food," Tkach explained, seeing Zelach's confusion.

Zelach understood and reached into his pocket with enthusiasm to find the money which he quickly turned over to Tkach.

"What are you writing?" Zelach asked. "What are you going to say?"

"I'm going to lie," whispered Tkach. "I'm writing lies because both of us will look like fools if I write the truth."

"Good," said Zelach blowing a puff of air in relief as a pair of detectives moved around the desk talking about someone named Linski.

And so Sasha Tkach finished the report, read it, realizing full well that it was unconvincing. He considered their next step. He would probably do what Zelach had suggested, but he doubted that they would catch Volovkatin who probably had false identity papers and was on his way to the Ukraine. Most likely, if he were a reasonably clever and careful criminal, "Volovkatin" was probably not his real name and he was on his way somewhere with his own quite legal identification papers. The report Tkach has just written would surely go to the KGB and there would surely be hell to pay for letting an economic criminal get away.

Tkach signed the report and handed it to Zelach to sign. Zelach read it.

"Looks good," Zelach said with a grateful smile.

"It's terrible," said Tkach.

As he took the signed report back, a clerk came down the aisle between the desks and paused at Tkach's desk to drop off a file and a note. He recognized the neat handwritten notes as soon as he opened the file.

The note said that Tkach was to replace Inspector Karpo in the investigation of the young men who were intimidating visitors to the USSR Economic Achievements Exhibition. Not only was he to investigate but he was to go undercover that afternoon and evening as an ice cream salesman, which meant that his daughter Pulcharia would be asleep when he got home and his wife Maya would be up to remind him that he had been promised a regular day schedule when the strong-arm case ended.

"Good news?" asked Zelach.

"Wonderful," Tkach sighed sourly.

"I'm glad," said Zelach. "You want to get something to eat?"

The name Siberia means "sleeping land" and for more than a thousand years while the rest of Europe and Asia were developing a history most of Siberia slept. Beneath the sleeping giant whose five million square miles could swallow all of the countries of Western Europe and could hold almost two countries the size of the United States lay vast riches including coal, oil, iron, gold, silver and diamonds. On the sleeping giant's back grew millions of square miles of timber in the sprawling taiga, the forests which even today serve as massive havens for wolves, tigers and bears who have never experienced civilization and know nothing of its existence. Other animals, fox, mink, sable, roamed and multiplied and still roam wild.