Stuart Kaminsky - A Cold Red Sunrise

"Get out," Major Zhenya said evenly.

Karpo stood, said nothing more and left the room, closing the door gently behind him. One of the two men who stood outside the door of the major's office handed him his travel bag. Karpo noted that the zipper was almost fully closed, not one-half of an inch open as he had left it. They had been through his things, probably already copied his duplicate notes on the investigation of Commissar Rutkin. There was nothing in the notes to compromise Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov.

When he reached the front of the building, Karpo checked his watch and found that it was slightly after five. It was also Wednesday. He had slept on the plane to Moscow and needed no further rest. He would work on several outstanding cases if there were no new assignments on his desk. And that evening' he would be seeing Mathilde Verson. Emil Karpo came very close to smiling.

Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, meanwhile, had arrived at the clinic where a very thin woman in white, with a voice that reminded him of a teacher he had had as a child, met him as he came through the door. She had been called by Dr. Yegeneva and had been waiting for him.

The woman chattered away in a whisper and led him down a short corridor and pointed at a door on the left.

"First bed. Doctor said no more than half an hour." She went on smiling at him.

Rostnikov nodded, went through the door and put his case on the floor. The early morning sun was bursting brightly through the window on the three beds in the room. An older woman in the bed furthest to his right snored gently. In the center bed, a woman, possibly a child, lay curled up on her side, her dark hair covering her face. She breathed gently, asleep. In the third bed, the bed nearest him, lay his wife, her head covered by a turban of white bandages. Sarah lay on her back, eyes closed, hands at her sides.

Porfiry Petrovich moved to the side of the bed and reached down to hold Sarah's hand. It was cool. She stirred, her mouth moving, and her eyes fluttered open and found him. She smiled weakly and squeezed his hand and then closed her eyes.

Rostnikov touched the bridge of his nose, glanced at the other two sleeping women and reached into his pocket. He leaned over, kissed his wife gently on the forehead and under her pillow placed a very small, slightly odd smelling red sack of reindeer hide.