Since Karpo did not have the imagination for such a task, the Yak had given the assignment to Pankov, who would certainly stain any hard copy with sweat. He would sweat, but he would do a good job.
The General nodded to show his approval.
“It will have to be accomplished soon,” said the Yak.
“You have a person in mind for the task?” asked the General.
“Yes,” said the Yak, deciding he could drink no more of this coffee in a cardboard cup, listen to no more of the babble of boys, the chatter of women, the laughter of girls.
“You approve then?” asked the Yak.
“Yes,” said the General, rising.
Protocol and his superior rank meant that the General should choose his moment of departure and that the Colonel should remain in place till the higher-ranking officer had left.
“You have not finished your coffee,” the General added.
“Perhaps in a moment or two.”
Another nod from the General and he made his way through the evening crowd and out the door.
Yaklovev left as soon as he could, dropping his half-full cup in a trash container whose lid opened greedily.
Igor Yaklovev had written nothing, but he had come well prepared. Before the meeting he had carefully gone over the Bitsevsky Maniac files pulling out names, searching. An hour before the meeting with Misovenski, the Yak had narrowed the list down to five. Half an hour before the meeting his list was down to two, and now, after this meeting, the list was down to one.
The only problem might come from Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov or one of his people who might get hurt or even killed. It would be tragic but acceptable, though the Yak would far prefer not to lose Rostnikov. The Chief Inspector was vital to the Yak’s plans, but even that could be dealt with.
He had decided who would kill Aleksandr Chenko.
Two dented cans of Norwegian salmon.
In twelve years, Aleksandr Chenko had not been responsible for a single dented can, not one can. Nor had he broken a jar or caused a hole in a box of cereal or noodles or anything else.
He had watched the blue-and-white cans roll across the aisle. He had heard them clunk to the floor and wobble in three directions. Customers had been present. He wanted to tell them that nothing like this had ever happened to him before, never, but he said nothing, just chased down the cans and gently dropped them in the carton on the flatbed before starting to return them to the shelf with great care.
That was when he had found the two dented cans.
He would have to tell Juliana Horvath, the storeroom supervisor. He hoped she would not make the dented cans a subject of extended conversation, but he knew she would acknowledge this event in some way. And she did.
Juliana Horvath was just over fifty, stocky, homely, with short, straight dyed yellow hair. She was neither too smart nor too stupid for her position, and she took it seriously.
Aleksandr had carefully restacked the cans in the same display form as before, replacing the dented cans with new ones. Everything was even, symmetrical. A customer would sooner or later remove a can, but that did not matter. Aleksandr would have done his job.
As it turned out, Juliana Horvath had simply accepted the two dented cans and made a small x on the bottom of each so that they could be placed in the reduced-price bin at the front of the store. The saving would be small. The store would still make a profit.
“You look pale,” said Juliana Horvath in her slightly hoarse cigarette-destroyed voice.
“I am fine,” Aleksandr had said.
“You do look a bit-” Ilya Grosschekov had started to observe, but Aleksandr had cut him off with an uncharacteristic firm, “I am fine.”
“It is just two dented cans,” said Juliana Horvath.
They had no real pride in their work. They came, did the job, collected their pay. Aleksandr took pride. What was the point of working eight or ten hours a day if one did not derive satisfaction from what one did? As it was for cans of Norwegian salmon, so it was for the lost souls in the park.
When he checked out later, Aleksandr had walked slowly, full cloth grocery bag in hand, containing the two cans of Norwegian salmon that he had purchased, to Bitsevsky Park. He had come there earlier, on his lunch break, on this cool, clear, crisp day, in search of the policeman with the artificial leg, but the policeman had been at none of the benches. Aleksandr had eaten his cheese and lettuce sandwich on a fresh roll while he searched. No policeman.
Maybe he was ill. Maybe he had been taken from the case, as had been the previous police detective Aleksandr had approached. That policeman had taken Aleksandr into custody, put him in a room for many hours, asked him hundreds of questions, and then released him, causing Aleksandr to lose half a day of work. His mentioning a family connection to Putin may have helped. Aleksandr lied extremely well and was proud of his ability to do so.
The policeman with the artificial leg could not be gone. He was to complete the task. He was, if possible, to be the sixty-fourth sacrifice. Aleksandr planned to approach the washtub of a detective, lure him into the bushes with the excited promise of evidence accidentally uncovered, and then crush the man’s skull from behind with a skilled blow with the hidden hammer. He would do all this in broad daylight, probably on his lunch hour, this time leaving the bloody hammer next to the body, and return to work.
As he now walked through the park looking for the policeman, he considered that the man might not be Number 64. Aleksandr had been counting the first two he had killed, the young man he had pushed from the window and the girl he had strangled and buried far from the park. Maybe he should do more than fill the board just to be sure.
It was the girl who had started him on this path, given him the idea after she had kissed him twelve times in eighteen days and told him that she liked him. Then she had said her boyfriend had come back. Come back from where? No boyfriend had been mentioned. They were in the park. She was being kind and sincere. Aleksandr had strangled her with hands grown strong from honest, hard work. He had buried her and then sought out the boyfriend and pushed him from the window.
Those two were the impetus Aleksandr needed to start the task, and now he had almost achieved the goal. Maybe he would be caught when he finished. It would not matter greatly. If they did not catch him, he might stop, but then again he might not. He might start a fresh 64. He wanted to win this game and then be recognized as the champion, the record holder, the one who stood in a steel cage at his trial imagining a gold medal around his neck.
Aleksandr took the path he almost always took and went winding toward the street and a block of Stalin-era high-rise apartment buildings. Twilight was upon him. There were adult couples and trios and joggers. Few were alone in Bitsevsky Park as the hooded sun sank under gray clouds. Later there would be the drunks, the mad elderly, the occasional fool who had not heard of the Bitsevsky Park killer. He did not like being called “Maniac,” but he had little choice and, besides, it had a satisfying frightening echo to it.
Stepping out onto the sidewalk, Aleksandr looked both ways at the light traffic and crossed in the middle of the street directly in front of his apartment building. He took out his key as he moved and opened the outer door to the cigarette smell that would never go away. He opened the inner door with the next key to what most considered the sickening-sweet odor of strong cleaning liquid. He did not find it distasteful.
He did not wait for the unreliable elevator. He never did. He climbed the stairs to the fourth floor, strode to his apartment, opened the door, went in, and locked the door behind him. Then, eagerly, he moved to the small kitchen area, where he removed two slices of fresh lake trout from the newspaper in which they were wrapped. He put a pan on the larger of the two burners atop his stove and prepared the pan with a generous dollop of real butter. He kept the fire very low and, after washing the small potatoes he had brought home thoroughly, cut them into slices and carefully placed them around the rim of the large pan. Finally, he placed the two slices of fish in the pan and seasoned them with salt and pepper.