Red Chameleon (15 page)

Rostnikov shrugged rather indifferently.

“We must deal,” she said.

Her eyes were fixed on the inspector as Tkach slowly edged behind the Volga and moved behind her.

“What can we do?” Rostnikov said gently. “Would you believe my promises? You let go of that and we have you. You might crush me, it's true. I don't think I can make it out from under here in time, but what do you gain? You don't leave here free.”

“But,” she said, “I'll have the satisfaction of smashing one bear of a policeman and destroying someone important's beloved car.”

Rostnikov glanced up at the car slowly spinning over his head and remembered Procurator Khabolov's look of concern about his beloved white Chaika.

“I don't like cars,” Rostnikov said softly, conversationally. Moving slowly, carefully, Tkach knew that the inspector was stalling, giving him time and cover to move. Marina's grip on the hoist lever was firm, and for a horrible instant Tkach considered that his life might well be easier if he shouted, and let her crush Rostnikov, who had seen him naked and compromised. He could then simply murder Marina and— But it was only the next level of guilt upon guilt. He knew it was not in him to act on the evil thought. It came, went, was gone. He crept forward, very carefully.

“You are going to die, policeman,” Marina said with a laugh. “Do you know that?”

“You mean I'm going to die eventually or now? The former I am well aware of and have come to terms with. Of the latter, who knows? The scene is not yet played.”

Tkach was now about seven or eight feet away from her. He crouched next to the fender of the dark car. He could see the woman's fingers slipping on the lever and knew that whatever was to be done must be done quickly. If Rostnikov were to be crushed, would Sasha wonder if he had purposely made the wrong move?

“Policeman,” she said with some admiration, “you are mad.”

Rostnikov put up a hand—his left hand, with the sleeve that had been cut by Ilya's saw—and let it sweep the room.

“You are standing there with a dancing car threatening to kill me. Bodies are strewn over. You have no chance to get away, and you call me mad.”

“Perhaps we are both mad,” she countered.

“We are both Russians.” Rostnikov sighed. “You will do what you will do.”

The man with the crushed shoulder decided to let out a small whimper, and Ilya stirred slightly against the wall. The other man Rostnikov had thrown lay quite motionless.

Tkach tried to signal to Rostnikov as he stepped away from behind the dark car. He wasn't sure the inspector saw him, but he had no time to check.

“Marina,” he shouted.

She turned quickly toward him, her hand touching the lever. The Chaika began to spin wildly as it jerked to a stop.

“No,” she screamed, and Sasha stopped no more than four feet from her, hesitating, watching her hand on the lever, but she was too late. She turned quickly toward the space under the car and realized that Rostnikov had stepped back, limped just beyond the shadow of the massive weight dangling from the chains.

Her eyes met those of the inspector and asked a question. Tkach glanced at Rostnikov, who looked up at the car and shrugged.

Marina's hand pulled back as Tkach lunged for her, and the Chaika dropped on screeching chains, dropped with a massive crash, its front end hitting first and then its rear. Glass and metal exploded through the room, and Tkach threw himself to the floor. The Chaika and the car-theft operation were no more.

The pain was much worse that day than it had been the day before, but Vera had expected that. Actually, she welcomed it, for she had already committed herself, found meaning to the end of her life. If she were suddenly and miraculously to be cured, to discover it had all been a mistake, then the policeman and the others she had killed would have died for nothing. Well, not for nothing. The corruption would still have existed, but there would have been an irony she did not want to face. There was just so much irony a human can take, she thought as she finished putting the rifle in the trombone case, snapped the flimsy latch, and glanced over at her mother, who had fallen asleep over her sewing.

Adriana Shepovik snored gently, a slight breeze touching her face through the open window. Vera felt nothing for her. Then the pain in her stomach punished her and told her to feel. She tried, tried to imagine her mother alone, as she would be, but Vera could feel nothing but its truth. Vera would not be, and her mother would. Her mother would live without meaning, but she would live and suffer. She was good at suffering, had turned it into an old woman's art.

Vera took seven or eight deep breaths and then a series of short ones before taking five of her pills. She had bought the pills from a clerk in the medical-supply store. He had been furtive, demanded extra money, refused to give the name of the pills, insisting only that they would temporarily eliminate pain. He guaranteed it. He was right, but the pain stayed away for only short periods, and more and more pills were required to relieve it.

Vera made her way to the metro station and glanced at the sky as she went. There was the possibility of rain, which would be fine. Her original plan was to wander around till night and move to the station she had picked out, but the pain might come again. She didn't have much time. Maybe if it rained, if the rain came, it would grow dark, would provide an artificial night. She had a sense of incompleteness. It was like reading a newspaper. If a word from a story caught her eye, she had to read the whole story even if the subject didn't interest her or the story would haunt her. Things once begun had to be finished, and she had decided within herself that she must destroy at least one more soldier or policeman, one more at least. Was that too much to ask after what she had been forced to suffer? If a God existed, would he not grant her this wish, look down at her and say she deserved that satisfaction? If a God existed, he could simply take the soul of the policeman and do with it what he would do, anyway, at some point, as he would do with Vera's soul if one existed. Vera didn't think one existed. One's satisfactions and rewards and revenge came in this life, no other.

She tried to look at no one as she rode the subway, not even at the two sailors who talked in the far corner. She stood, swaying slightly with the movement of the car, trying to hold her upright trombone case close to her so no one would feel its weight and sense its shifting contents. At the Kropotkinskaya metro station, groups of young people carrying little bags jostled past her, hurrying toward the huge Moskva Swimming Pool. She let them flow by her and began her walk and her wait, wishing the sky to darken, hoping she could put off taking more of the pills, which, she knew, created a pleasant disorientation that might hamper her aim and shake her resolve.

She walked around the outside wall of the pool, listening to the screams and voices within. At the Kropotkin embankment beyond the pool she leaned over the stone wall and watched the boats going down the Moscow River. She watched for perhaps ten or fifteen minutes, grew restless, felt the pain returning, and started back toward Volkhonka Street. People sped past her now, but she moved across the massive Pushkin Fine Arts Museum. She knew the story of the museum, had visited it frequently, particularly as a child in school when it was thought she had some artistic talent. The building had been erected at the turn of the century. It was, she knew, the largest museum in the Soviet Union outside of the Leningrad Hermitage.

She clutched the trombone case to her, ignoring the looks of guards and visitors. The crowd was large, and she let herself wander, seeing but not absorbing the Greek and Roman collection, the stone statues that would be there long after she was gone. Before she could begin to hate them, she wandered into the picture gallery where she stepped on the foot of a small boy, who screamed.

The boy's mother looked at Vera, ready to fight, but something in Vera's face stopped her, and she settled for, “That's all right, Denis. Some people are blind pigs.”

Vera walked on past Botticellis, Rembrandts, Rubenses, Van Dycks, Constables, Gauguins, Picassos, and Van Goghs. Once they had given her satisfaction. Now they sickened her with their suggestion of timelessness. Vera would leave nothing behind her, no Olympic records, no paintings, her only art of creation one of destruction, a protest.

She had to take more pills. There was no help for it. She shifted the trombone case to her other hand and pulled the bottle out of her pocket. There were not many of the green pills left, perhaps a dozen or so. She would have to go back to the man who had sold them to her, the man who sickened her with his corruption. She placed the case between her legs, poured out some pills, threw them into her mouth, and forced them down dry. It was painful, but the pain in her dry throat distracted her from the pain in her stomach. She stood while people moved about her, the practiced move of Muscovites who watched without making it clear they were doing so. Everyone gave the impression of minding their own business except for a heavyset
babushka
who walked over and said, “If you're sick, you shouldn't be walking the streets. You should be home, not giving diseases to other people.”

Vera looked at the angry old woman, who was saying exactly what her own mother would say to a stranger on the street. Either pretend the other person isn't there or walk right up to them on the street and chastise them for not sharing your moral commitment.

Vera looked at the woman with vague curiosity. She stared down the old woman, who eventually backed away, shrugging and angry.

The sky was darker when she stepped back outside, and she felt some sense of hope. It was going to rain. No doubt. It would rain. She felt dizzy, slightly dizzy, but also somewhat euphoric as she crossed Kropotkin Square and was almost struck by a bus at the corner of Gogol Boulevard. When she started down Kropotkin Street and passed the entrance to the Soviet Peace Committee Building, the sky rumbled distinctly.

“Let's hurry,” a man growled at a young woman in high heels who gave him an angry glare as they passed Vera.

The street was filled with people, many people, especially soldiers. There were policemen, too, an ample supply. The trick would be to get to her destination, set up, and pick her target just before the rain came or just after it ended. During the rain people would get off the street. She would have to be clever, precise, careful. She would have to remember everything her father had told her about shooting.

She hurried, as well as her failing body would allow, toward her destination, ignoring the people she passed, thinking only of her task, trying to forget the painting in the museum. It had been by some minor English realist. She couldn't remember what the subject had been, a landscape surely, but what had been in it? It gnawed at her, told her to turn around, go back, complete it, but she didn't have the time. Not now. Not today. Perhaps later or tomorrow, if there was a tomorrow. There had to be a later or tomorrow. She could not end her life without knowing what was in that painting and without taking her father's rifle out one more time and finding the right target.

Even had she not been absorbed in her thoughts, even had she glanced back as the sky rumbled and darkened even further, it is doubtful that she would have noticed the tall, vaguely Oriental, pale man behind her with his right arm in a black sling.

Earlier that morning Emil Karpo had been sitting at his desk at Petrovka going over his file and waiting. He had prepared his description carefully and felt confident that it was more than guesswork. Rostnikov was nowhere to be found, and time was passing. He could have gone directly to the Gray Wolfhound, but he had no time or patience for clowns, and so he prepared his description and took it directly to each of the militia supervisors for each district, making it clear that they were to give it not only to those assigned to the various buildings but to all the police on the street, all the uniformed guards in public buildings, and all the officers who had taken up positions on key rooftops.

Emil Karpo was not a man to be ignored. Seven of his supervisors had simply accepted the description and agreed to pass it out quickly. They had no desire to prolong conversation with the Vampire, the Tatar with the dead brown eyes. It was easier to do what he requested. Besides, they might be the next victim of the Weeper, and it would be best to cooperate. A few of the military supervisors balked or sulked, but eventually they all agreed, and Karpo went back to his desk to drink cold tea and wait. The description had been simple. Look for a man or woman, of recognized size and strength, carrying a case long enough to hold a rifle. It might be a music case, a fishing case, anything. The person would probably be alone and might behave erratically.

By seven in the morning the reports had begun coming in. Karpo listened, believing it was too early in the day for the Weeper to appear but not taking any chances. He had actually dispatched two cars to pursue leads by noon, but they had proved negative. One had turned up a carpenter going to work, another a member of the ballet orchestra. At nine he discovered that the Gray Wolfhound had ordered the rooftop surveillance to begin at six that night, since the Weeper always struck at night. Karpo tried to reach Colonel Snitkonoy to get the surveillance to begin immediately, but the colonel was out. And then the call had come from the guard at the Pushkin Fine Arts Museum, and he was on his way after telling the guard to follow the woman and call her whereabouts back to the museum office where Karpo was heading.

The dispatcher of automobiles was surprised to get a call from Inspector Karpo. He couldn't remember a single time Karpo had ever ordered a car. The legend was that Karpo thought it a waste of Soviet dollars that could be better spent on real needs. The dispatcher, who felt uneasy even hearing the voice of the Vampire, responded without a word and assigned the driving task to one of the older officers whom he wanted to punish for a minor act of assumed insolence.