“Yes,” said Rostnikov.
“Are you here for the reason I think?” Bintz said.
“I believe I am,” said Rostnikov.
“Would you mind telling me what that is so I won’t make a complete dummkopf of myself?”
“World Liberation,” said Rostnikov. “I have reason to think you are involved in a terrorist act.”
Bintz shrugged, sending out a circle of waves.
“Ha,” laughed Bintz, but there was no mirth in his laughter. “Bintz doesn’t kill real people. Bintz is known for the many he has slaughtered on film. For me, destruction and violence are ritual acts. When my people fall, they rise to act again another day, and my audience knows this. I know difference between movie blood and real blood. Movie blood washes away. This is exhausting my English.”
“What were you supposed to do?” Rostnikov went on.
Bintz looked around the pool for the first time and then back at Rostnikov.
“I was supposed to blow up this pool,” he said. “Can you imagine such a thing? There are children in this pool.”
“How were you to do this?”
“A button,” Bintz said. “A little black box, just like in an English movie.”
“When?”
“At seven.” Bintz shrugged. “The woman calls and says I am to do it at seven. I never saw her.”
“If you do not plan to set off the bomb,” Rostnikov said, sidestepping a man with glasses who floated by on his back, “what are you doing here?”
“I came to find the bomb and dispose of it. If I have a black box with a button, others might have a black box with a button. You don’t believe me?”
“I believe you,” said Rostnikov. “I found your black box in your hotel room. If you meant to use it, it would be here, not there. You could have told the police,” he added, crouching down in the water and then floating on his back.
“It will be difficult enough to remain alive when that woman finds that I do not blow up this pool. I don’t also confess to Russian police that I am involved with terrorists. But what difference? You have me. I swim, and we go.”
“The bomb?” asked Rostnikov.
“I am a maker of movies,” said Bintz with pride. “I work with pictures and spaces. I found the bomb by moving along the edge of the pool and reaching into all the drains. It is now inside my bathing trunks.”
Rostnikov stopped floating and looked at Bintz.
“I’m very cool, nein?” said Bintz. “Like Charles Bronson.”
“Very cool,” agreed Rostnikov.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I take great care. Even if one of them watches me, I have an hour. I must swim long enough so all of those trailing behind me single file can see that Bintz really wants to swim and is not here just for some mischief. But so…you are going to arrest me?”
“No,” said Rostnikov. “I’m going to save you. Let’s leave, and I will explain. I trust Comrade Konvisser will not follow us into the men’s changing room?”
“Unfortunately, you are right,” Bintz sighed. “Let’s give them a sight, you and I, and get out of the pool together, huh? The level will go down an inch, and small children will stand at the shallow end with their noses above water.”
It was with some difficulty that Bintz managed to get Comrade Konvisser to leave him with Inspector Rostnikov for the day, but she finally agreed, and as they changed clothes in the men’s room, Rostnikov outlined the details of his plan. Bintz gave him the enormous swimming trunks containing the bomb.
“Then you are agreed?” Rostnikov said, slipping on his trousers.
“The risk is mostly yours,” said Bintz. “A young man helped me take my pants off when I came in, but I am for obvious reasons unable to get them back on. Chief Inspector, if you would…”
“Of course,” said Rostnikov and, with the bomb jiggling under his arm, he helped the massive man get dressed.
Outside the pool, Rostnikov found a sewer outlet and bent to tie his already tied shoes. He dropped the trunks he had obtained from Bintz and let them tumble through the hole. It was most likely that neither of the KGB agents noticed. It was clumsy, but Rostnikov did not relish the idea of carrying the burden any farther.
They found a taxi and headed for a restaurant that Rostnikov had chosen carefully. In the cab, they didn’t speak nor did they turn to see if their entourage was behind them.
Rostnikov had eaten in the restaurant once and had bad reports on it from others. In a city where service was generally poor in restaurants, the Destrovya on Arbat was in a class by itself. The meal would take several hours to serve. Best of all, Rostnikov knew from experience, there was a rear exit near the rest rooms.
“I think we will catch her,” said Rostnikov once they were seated by a surly waiter. “The woman who threatened you.”
Bintz shrugged and reached eagerly for the menu.
The service was almost as slow as Rostnikov remembered it. The KGB men had discovered each other and were watching from a far table. The restaurant was not at all crowded.
“We shall see,” sighed Bintz.
In the next hour, Bintz managed to eat an amount that awed Rostnikov, who could eat with the best. The German downed a crab salad, kholodets-a beef, veal, and chicken gelatin appetizer-an order of chicken Kiev, a bottle of white wine, and a whole loaf of bread.
When Rostnikov returned from the bathroom, Bintz had finished Rostnikov’s remaining beef Stroganoff and had ordered a special dessert.
“I’d like to stay for the dessert,” he said, wiping his mouth and rising as Rostnikov sat.
“I’m afraid not,” said the chief inspector. “The exit door is to the right of the men’s bathroom. I’ll eat your dessert.”
“Thank you, and good luck,” said Bintz, putting down his napkin and walking toward the rear of the restaurant. He carried himself with great dignity in spite of his weight.
Rostnikov ate some more bread and made sure that neither of the KGB men had followed Bintz. Why should they? The man had simply gone to the men’s room before his dessert was served.
The ride to the airport was approximately 32 kilometers. In five minutes, if he had no trouble finding a taxi, Bintz would be on the Leningrad Highway. He would pass the massive Dynamo Sports Stadium and go by the Petrovsky Palace where Napoleon had once stayed after being driven out of the Kremlin. Then, Rostnikov imagined, he would pass the monument in honor of the Moscow defenders who drove off Hitler’s army, speed by the few remaining isby, or log cabins, and pull in to the airport.
If Rostnikov had timed it correctly, even allowing a margin for error, Bintz should make the plane and be well on his way to West Germany at about the same time that the KGB men began to wonder why he was staying so long in the bathroom.
Again, assuming nothing went wrong, Bintz would land safely in West Berlin before the KGB even thought of checking his room, let alone flights out of the country.
When the KGB man with the balding head showed the first signs of concern, Rostnikov beat him to it by examining his own watch, rising with annoyance, and stalking toward the rear of the restaurant. This caused the KGB man to sit down. Rostnikov checked his watch once more and slowly returned to the table.
Still looking annoyed, he called the waiter and asked for the nearest phone. His KGB man followed, leaving Bintz’s man to head for the toilets. Rostnikov’s first call, well out of earshot of the bald man, was to the airport. The flight, he found, had just left. His second call was to Sarah, as planned.
“Yes,” she said.
“I will be home soon,” he said and hung up. If they asked whom he called, they would have no trouble confirming the call home.
It was done. He paid the check, which was more than he had ever paid for a meal in his life, and went home. It was seven o’clock, the very moment Bintz was supposed to have detonated the bomb.