“We interviewed him by phone. He lives in Moscow.”
Valentina gripped her fists in her lap. “But no interview in person?” she said. “How did he sound when you spoke to him?”
“As you would expect,” Ryakhovsky said. “Upset.”
Upset, the detective said. Distressed just as much as one might think he ought to be. Yet unwilling to come back to help search for his daughters. Valentina felt in her chest the welcome flush of certainty. She had always been able to know, to interrupt, when something was wrong. “Nikolai Danilovich, stop. This is it. The girls went with their father.”
Ryakhovsky looked at her. “No one reported seeing the father. There’s no record of him traveling in or out.”
“Don’t you know how easy it is to fake records or suppress reports? How much influence does this man have?” Ryakhovsky was listening now. She could tell from the narrowing of his eyes that he was interested in what she said. “Their mother works for the party,” Valentina said. “You’re aware of that, aren’t you? The children of someone with those connections don’t just fade away. But if their father is in touch with someone more powerful…”
“He’s an engineer,” Ryakhovsky said.
“An engineer living in Moscow,” she said. “So he’s rich. Everyone there is in someone else’s hand. And he’s from Kamchatka originally—he knows who to pay off here. He could’ve picked up the girls that afternoon, driven straight to a garage afterward, and arranged a boat off the peninsula. A private plane.”
The detective’s voice was low, focused. “Corruption.”
“Nothing else,” said Valentina. “After such a crime, a silence like this isn’t natural. You have witnesses out there who simply decided not to speak. Their mouths have been stopped up by cash.”
“Someone in this city knows something,” Ryakhovsky said. “That’s what I’ve been telling the major general all this time. And the father…”
“That’s precisely it,” Valentina said. “You’re right, somebody knows. Look at the father’s friends in Moscow, and start at the top, the ones with the power to pull a kidnapping like this off. That’s how you’ll discover the girls. They are right there in their father’s house.”
The detective’s eyes tight on her. Even thinking of that look now, Valentina was warmed. Her husband had only carried gossip about the case from his office; Valentina had actually influenced the investigation. That fact was enough to remind her: she ran a workplace and a household. She was powerful.
Dinner tonight, the dacha, the phone call with the detective to follow up. The sisters found and her colleagues awed. Picturing her future, Valentina saw her chest clear, blisterless.
She concentrated on that. The return to routine. Skin left without blemish. Only the tiniest scar, which would fade away by next summer. The documents grew damp in her hands, and the vinyl cushion bent to her weight. She practiced telling herself that everything was going to be fine.
At last the knock. The vision she had of a world set right was shuttered. “Yes,” Valentina called, as a doctor opened the door.
“Good afternoon,” the doctor said and turned to the empty counter, the locked cupboards. “Undress, please. Everything off.”
Valentina pinched the papers harder. Their edges were soft from her sweat. Then she stood up. She put the pages back in her purse and zipped it shut. Already half-naked without her bandage on, Valentina began taking off her clothes. She peeled off her boots and socks and put them in a corner with her purse, then folded her jacket and scarf and rested them on top. Then her sweater, her blouse, her slacks. Her back was to the silent doctor. The sooner she finished undressing, the sooner the exam would be over, the sooner she could go. She unsnapped her bra. The warmth from the lined cotton leached into her hands. Quickly, she took off her underwear, too, wrapped it with her bra into a neat little package, and set them on top of the pile.
She stepped back to sit up on the table. Her skin rubbed on it now.
As soon as Valentina was settled, the doctor turned around. She was dressed in white with a blue cap covering her hair. “No one’s with you?” she asked. Valentina shook her head. “And you didn’t bring clean clothes? A gown? That’s all right,” the doctor said. “It’s not so important.”
The doctor came close enough that they could smell each other: the doctor sharp with antiseptic wipes, cold circulated air, the waxed fruit flavor of lip balm tucked underneath, and Valentina slippery with nervousness. Valentina had skipped lunch. She was empty as a box bobbing in the sea. Bending, the doctor studied the blister; she touched it with her dry fingers. Then, carefully, she palpated Valentina’s neck, jaw, ears. She felt the span of Valentina’s chest and spent a long time pressing Valentina’s right armpit.
“What’s the matter?” Valentina said.
“We don’t know yet.”
Valentina studied the doctor’s face to see if that was a lie. “Dr. Popkov said it was serious.”
“Who?”
“My doctor. From the Medline clinic. He sent me here.”
The doctor straightened. Even hunched on the table, Valentina was a little taller. The doctor’s lips were pink and her cheeks were broad, giving her a sweet, apple-faced quality that belied the firmness in her fingertips. “He was right. We’re going to take it out,” she said. “Come with me.”
Valentina pushed herself off the table. She moved toward her clothes.
The doctor said, “No, we have to keep it sterile there. Leave your things in this room.”
But Valentina was exposed from her sagging neck to her frozen feet. Blister and breasts and ass and pubic hair. This was different from a bedroom or a bathhouse. Not even her husband had seen her like this—bare under fluorescent lights. Salt-covered. Filled with cancer—she could be filled with it. A naked patient in the regional hospital.
How many doors did she go through to get to this room? She could not remember. She wanted back the native nurse, who had looked at her humanely. The men waiting downstairs—had they also been shown into examining rooms? Were they sitting, round and jaundiced, just outside?
“I must have misheard you,” Valentina said. Her teeth were chattering.
“It has to stay sterile and you have no gown. It’s only a meter or two,” the doctor said. “Come on.” She was finished with Valentina’s body, ready to move on.
Valentina was not. “Shouldn’t I—”
The doctor was opening the door.
“I should bring my jacket,” Valentina said.
The doctor shook her head. “This is no time to be modest. You are going into the operating room.”
Naked, Valentina followed the doctor out into the short passageway with the red bins. If they walked straight, they would enter the hall, which had been empty before and now could hold—anything. Anyone. Instead they turned left, toward a double doorway. Valentina’s ID, her money, her keys, her clothing: all her things were in the room. She covered her chest with her arms but air poured across her hips and thighs. The doctor didn’t pay any attention.
Valentina held herself together as much as she could. Only two meters to cross. Under her feet, the passage’s floor was gritty. The number of dirty bodies that must have gone this way before. Was this how everyone else she knew had entered surgery—naked, frozen? At the limited mercy of authority. Even Valentina’s grandmother had died with more pride.