Lieutenant Valentin Spaskov, with whom Elena and Sasha had met the day before, took the call from Director Yakovlev and assured him he would see to it that all uniformed officers under his command would be present at noon. He would pass this on to Major Lenonov, his immediate superior and the head of the district station. Off-duty officers would be called in.
Igor Yakovlev thanked the lieutenant and hung up.
The director of the Office of Special Investigation had not told Spaskov the reason for the gathering, but there was only one conclusion Spaskov could draw. The woman he had attacked the night before had seen him and was willing to identify him. Lieutenant Valentin Spaskov was determined that such an identification would not be made. He would set up the meeting, but he would not be present, nor would the major. Valentin, second in command of the station, a twenty-year veteran, would be occupied at the Ministry of the Interior. He and the major were certainly above suspicion.
When he hung up the phone, Spaskov ordered his hands not to shake, ordered his brow and the pits of his arms not to sweat. They refused to obey, so he sat in his small office waiting for the tremor to stop as he thought.
He could be identified. It was possible the two young inspectors could even find sufficient evidence, by going back through the files, that someone had altered the information on each attack and that the alteration had begun at Trotsky Station. He had been careful, but he and the major, along with the three officers who did most of the paperwork, would be the most likely suspects.
Valentin knew that if he escaped identification this time he should stop the attacks. Eventually he would make another mistake. He would have to stop. He thought of his wife and of his daughter, and he told himself again that he had to stop.
But a wordless voice that communicated to him with only impulses and vague feelings told Valentin that he could not stop, that if they did not catch him this time he would wait a week, possibly a month, and then the compulsion would once again be too great. It would swell within him, driving him half mad, though only his victims would know that. He would have to attack again and again. The only difference was that now he knew that he would have to kill any future victims, and he would have to find and kill the woman he had attacked the night before so that she could not identify him.
Getting her identity from the two inspectors, Tkach and Timofeyeva, would not be difficult, and finding her would not be difficult. There would be no point in trying to make it look like an accident. It would come too close after her visit to the police with the information that she could identify him.
He would have to protect himself and his family.
Valentin had killed before. Not any of his rape victims-he had not wanted them to die. He had not even wanted them to suffer, but the need had been there so long and it had grown within him.
He had killed at least two members of a local gang of teens and young men in their twenties. It had happened during a raid. The gang had been responsible for extortion and murder. The major had sent an armed squad in bulletproof vests with automatic weapons to bring the gang in for questioning. He had also made it clear to Valentin in private that he was certain the gang would resist arrest. Valentin had understood and he had conveyed to his squad of six that resistance was to be expected and that if he began firing, they should do the same.
In fact, when the squad had gone through the door, one of the gang, a scrawny mad-looking kid with an orange mohawk, had reached for a gun in his pocket. Nine members of the gang had died in the spray of bullets that followed. The youngest was fourteen. The oldest was twenty-three, the leader. Four of the gang had not been in the room, but afterward, when they heard what had happened, they disappeared, knowing that the police had marked them for death.
The only other time he had killed had been when he was on patrol a dozen years earlier. He and his partner spotted a man being beaten. They had stopped their car, pulled their weapons, and ordered the man doing the beating to stop. He paid no attention. The victim was old. The man doing the beating was no more than forty and huge.
The policemen repeated their order for him to stop. He continued the beating and both officers were sure that he would soon kill the old man. Valentin had hit the big brute in the head with his pistol. The man turned in pain and anger and hit Valentin with his fist. Valentin had gone down shooting. He fired all the bullets in his gun, and the huge man fell dead against his whimpering victim, who turned out to be his father.
Valentin still carried a scar on his upper lip from the dead man’s blow. It was shortly after this that he had made his first attack. The victim was an old woman who had seen his face and would certainly remember his scar. He had grown a mustache to cover the scar and managed to resist attacking another woman for almost four years. When he did resume, he made sure that his victims didn’t see him.
Now killing would be necessary, and it would start with the woman last night, the woman whose name, he would soon learn, was Magda Stern. Before he even arranged the gathering of his officers, he knew where she worked and where she lived.
He called in Sergeant Koffeyanovich and told him that there would be some people coming and that all officers should be gathered in the meeting room. They should come whether or not they were ill or off duty. Those who did not show up, if any, should have their names and addresses turned over to the inspectors who would be arriving soon. Meanwhile the sergeant should give the lieutenant’s apology that he and the major were not available to help them, since both he and Major Lenonov were at an important meeting at the Ministry of the Interior.
The sergeant, a veteran near retirement, simply said da and left the office. Spaskov called a friend in the Ministry of the Interior and requested a few minutes of his time for some advice. The flattered friend immediately agreed. Spaskov had more than enough cases in the district about which he could ask advice.
As he put on his coat to leave, Spaskov debated how and where he would kill the woman. He decided it would be with a knife on the street as quickly and quietly as possible. He would wear gloves, take her purse, remove her money, and drop the purse in the street no more than a block from the stabbing.
Perhaps it would be taken for coincidence, but probably not.
A number of journalists who had attacked mafias, corrupt officials, and politicians of the right had, over the past year, been threatened, terrorized in their homes. One popular television journalist had even been shot down.
Perhaps the investigating officer, who if Spaskov had his way, would be him, would accept the crime as a chance robbery or a politically motivated assault.
At this point, Spaskov had no choice.
The couple, probably in their late fifties, sat straight-backed next to each other as if they were about to have their photograph taken. The man was tall, lean, and clean-shaven, with dark thick gray-flecked hair. He wore a spotless pair of dark trousers, a blue shirt, and a dark pullover sweater. The woman at his side had hair cut short and growing gray much faster than that of her husband. She was less thin than he and bore an air of confident superiority.
Rostnikov and Zelach sat across from them drinking tea. The apartment looked like something preserved from a previous century, from the well-polished old furniture and sparkling tea service to the chairs that would have seemed at home in an aristocrat’s parlor. Iosef had seen such things in history books that illustrated the decadence of a previous age. And the walls. On one wall was a framed double-eagle-head flag from the czarist era. Next to it was a portrait of a man in uniform, his dark hair parted in the middle, his mustache finely groomed. A white sash ran across the man’s chest and he wore three medals. His look was one of determination, not unlike that of the man who sat before the two detectives.