Now he sat waiting while Rostnikov talked on the phone.
A few hours earlier Oleg Selski had finished his breakfast: a bowl of barley soup, some bread, and a cup of strong, hot tea. Oleg was a man of average height and weight, forty-five years old, with a head full of hair that always needed cutting and a wife and a ten-year-old daughter.
Oleg was an editor of Izvestia who had grown comfortable with the new openness of Russia. His job was no longer simply a bore, concerned with only the rote tasks of editing and selecting stories to be published after approval, of course, by the senior editor from the Party. That had changed. Though it had lost millions of readers to the newer, bolder Russian newspapers, Izvestia had also been liberated, and Oleg had found causes, crusades, and corruption. His salary had increased, not enough to make him and his family financially secure, but enough to give them some comforts. All in all, life was good for Oleg Selski.
He was just finishing the last of his bread when Katrina, his daughter, came in with a letter. Selski occasionally received letters at home from his brother in Volgograd or from sources who didn’t want to write to him at the news office.
This letter was a bit bigger than the rest.
“Can I open it?” Katrina asked.
Oleg threw the last of his bread into his mouth and washed it down with the last of his tea. He smiled at his daughter, pigtailed, in her blue-and-white dress, her pink face aglow.
And then something struck Oleg. He wanted to speak, but he choked and spat out bread. He could be wrong, must be wrong. His instincts were not always right, but he was a cautious man who had learned how to survive.
Katrina, a smile on her face, was already opening the letter when he finally shouted no. His shout startled the girl, who dropped the half-opened letter to the floor, where it instantly exploded.
SIX
The call Rostnikov was taking was from the bomber. Emil Karpo was listening in on the phone in his cubicle across the hall. Iosef stood next to Karpo drinking coffee and waiting. There was a definite winter wind rattling the window in the next cubicle, the one that had belonged to Iosef’s father before he had moved across the hall.
“Did it happen?” asked the bomber.
“It happened,” said Rostnikov, calmly sitting up in his chair and doodling on his pad of paper.
“Do you want to know why he opened the letter?”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov, drawing a cube on top of another cube. He knew he would draw a simple bird inside each cube, but he had no idea why.
“He’s not on your list,” said the bomber smugly.
A car horn beeped angrily over the phone.
“I’m calling from a pay phone. I’ll make this short and be gone before you get here if you even have access to the technology for locating where I am.”
“Your reason for selecting Oleg Selski?” Rostnikov asked calmly.
“His newspaper, instead of spewing Communist lies, now spews capitalist ones,” said the bomber. “He has approved stories, editorials about the need for nuclear power plants. Chernobyl is operating again, a bomb far more destructive than any I have sent, destined to go off again, and he approved.”
“So you sent him a bomb?”
“Yes.”
“I assume that means anyone in Moscow could receive a bomb if they believe in or use nuclear energy,” said Rostnikov.
“Chernobyl is still operating,” said the bomber excitedly. “And yes, you are right. Even you, you are helping them by trying to catch me instead of helping me. You could get a bomb. The package I sent you could just as well have been a bomb. Any policeman could get one. You can’t protect the entire city. Did you read my statement?”
“Yes,” said Rostnikov. “I gave it to my superior with your demand.”
“What did you think of it?”
“Well written but trite,” said Rostnikov. “If any station carried it, viewers would be bored after the first paragraph. There is not a citizen who has not been brought up on the simplicities of propaganda.”
“I know,” said the bomber soberly. “But I owe it to my father. I owe it to the victims. I owe it to my mother. I am the last in my family. The name dies with me.”
“You plan to die soon?” asked Rostnikov.
“Slowly, gradually, like my father unless you catch me first, in which case I will kill myself,” he said.
“The letter bomb you sent today,” Rostnikov said, easing his new leg into a less uncomfortable position, “it was not opened by Selski. It was opened by his ten-year-old daughter. Would you like to know what happened to her?”
Silence from the bomber.
“She started to open the letter,” Rostnikov continued. “Her father suspected something. He told her to drop it. She is in the hospital. Critical but expected to live. She lost her toes and part of her right foot. Her father was unharmed. Tell me, what is your favorite color?”
“My fav-I have none. The girl will live?”
“So I am told.”
“This is not a trick?”
“No,” said Rostnikov.
“I believe you,” the bomber answered so softly that the inspector could barely hear him.
“Your statement will not be read on television,” said Rostnikov.
Silence from the bomber. Then he hung up.
“Come in, Emil,” Rostnikov said to Karpo on the other end of the line. He looked at his watch. It was still early. School would not be out for hours. He had told Sarah that he was taking the girls after school.
The door to the office opened. Karpo and Iosef entered. Iosef closed the door and said, “There’s a man waiting to see you in the hall.”
“I know,” said Rostnikov, looking at the notes he had written on his pad. The pad also contained a diagram of the large room of Belinsky’s synagogue. While he was talking, Rostnikov had made drawings, in pencil so he could erase them, of possible configurations of tubing.
“The tape worked?”
“Perfectly,” said Karpo, holding up a cassette.
Karpo stood at near attention, hands folded before him. Iosef, almost as tall as the pale man at his side, looked around the room and then at his father. Something more than anger paled his face.
“So, what do we know now?” said Rostnikov. “Iosef?”
“We’re dealing with an educated psychopath,” he said. “He thinks nuclear energy is killing us all, so he takes the ironic position that if he kills those who produce it or support it, he is making a statement against self-annihilation. The irony is that he would, if he lived and wasn’t caught, eventually murder most of the population of Russia. At least that would be his goal. I say, find him, kill him on the spot.”
“A soldier’s answer,” said Rostnikov.
“I was a soldier. I saw what terrorists and lunatics can do,” answered Iosef.
“Emil?” Rostnikov asked, now looking at the impassive man before him.
“First, the bomber is on our contact list. He himself has something to do with nuclear energy. He knew that if Oleg Selski had been on the list, he would not have allowed his daughter to open the letter. The bomber’s father was involved in some aspect of the production or use of nuclear energy. He may have been a scientist or a technician, but well educated, judging from his son’s speech and his proclamation. The father died as a result of nuclear accident or contamination, or at least his son believes so. He is probably right. In spite of this, the bomber also works or worked in nuclear energy research, production, or technology, probably studied the field because of his father. The bomber has radiation poisoning or believes he does and wishes to make a statement before his death. He lives with his mother, is probably around forty-five.”