Georgi moved from foot to foot, rubbed his gloved hands together, kept retying his scarf around his face, and waited till the shift ended. The workers began coming out. There were more than Georgi anticipated, but he was sure he would see Yevgeny.
The only problem was that Yevgeny did not come out. He waited almost twenty minutes more, but Yevgeny never emerged. Had Leonid warned him? Was he still inside? He had no idea that the partner he had come to murder had left before Georgi had arrived.
Not only had he left two hours before Georgi showed up-Yevgeny had headed directly for Georgi’s apartment after he was certain he was not being followed. He expected Georgi to be at work. His plan had been to write a simple note saying “tonight,” slip it under the door, and go to the apartment to be sure the police had not found the Kalishnikov automatic. He doubted they had. They would have arrested him, or at least said something. There was something unsettlingly odd about the crippled policeman who asked questions about colors and seemed to be thinking about other things besides the man across the table.
Yevgeny didn’t even bother to knock. As he leaned over to push the note under the door, he thought he heard a sound on the other side. He pressed his ear to the door and thought he could hear what sounded like sobbing or whimpering. Georgi did not sob or whimper. Yevgeny could do both on demand, but not Georgi. Georgi didn’t have the skill, intelligence, or imagination.
Who was inside the apartment?
Yevgeny hesitated and then slipped the note under the door. Almost immediately, he heard a gasp in the small apartment. Yevgeny quickly left the building and crossed the street so he could be seen by anyone looking out of Georgi’s window. He went around the block, making his way among strolling pedestrians carrying colorful and not-so-colorful plastic shopping bags covered with ads for Dockers and Mitsubishi cars, people wandering, most with nowhere to go. He completely circled the block and crossed to the same side of the street as Georgi’s apartment, being careful this time to stay out of view of Georgi’s window. He spotted a darkened doorway across the street from where he could see Georgi’s window. He went back to the corner and crossed along with a group of bundled people, half of whom walked down the sidewalk across from Georgi’s building. When he got to the darkened doorway, Yevgeny stepped into the shadows, acting as if he were reaching into his pocket for keys.
His back to the corner, Yevgeny gazed up at Georgi’s window. He was cold. After five minutes, Leonid appeared in the window, looking out nervously. He appeared for only an instant. In the next twenty minutes, he repeated the move to the window five times, looking as if he were trying to decide something, staying back in what he hoped were the shadows of the room.
Finally Georgi came walking down the street and entered his apartment building. Georgi should have been at work. Yevgeny watched for twenty minutes more. When Leonid failed to come out of the building, Yevgeny carefully joined a passing group of pedestrians and moved slowly, averting his head from Georgi’s window, striking up a conversation with an old man about the elections.
Not long after, Yevgeny was in his and Leonid’s apartment. He took off his coat and boots and lay down on his bed after assuring himself as best he could that the room had not been searched. Later he would check on the Kalishnikov. He put his hands behind his head and began to plan, to figure out the puzzle.
It was not a difficult puzzle to figure out. The question was what would he do about it and when.
Yevgeny could not put aside the visit of the one-legged policeman who had convinced him that the move had to be that night. There was something about him, something that made Yevgeny feel that the older man might be able to see through his act. But that, Yevgeny decided as he lay in bed, was almost certainly a wrong interpretation. The policeman was like all the others he had deceived, probably not as bright as some he had dealt with.
Yevgeny closed his eyes now, trying to convince himself that he was confident, that his intelligence and willingness to kill would see him through, that he could handle Leonid, Georgi, and the police. What he needed now was a little luck, not much, just a little for the job that had to be done tonight. He had enough information from Igor’s letter. He would use Leonid and Georgi to help him find the prize, and then, before they could move on him, he would kill both of his friends, kill them where they stood, and have the rest of the night and part of the morning to make his way to Belarus, pay a few bribes, and continue to Poland and then Germany, where he would become rich enough to call himself a prince and live like one.
Alexi Monochov, in his saggy and faded blue prison uniform, sat at the table in the small room. Across from him sat the same three men who had thwarted him at Petrovka only a day earlier. The one in the middle, the one with the artificial leg, pursed his lips and tapped on a large envelope he held before him. The man to the right was the erect pale vampire in black whose face showed nothing. To the left sat the large-headed nervous man with glasses, the one who had figured out that Alexi’s first detonator was a decoy. It was of this man that he was most wary. There was a look on the third man’s face that Alexi could not read.
“Alexi Monochov,” Rostnikov said, “you are a clever man, a prankster, a man with a true Russian sense of irony.”
Alexi allowed himself only a small smile of satisfaction.
“Your fake bomb at the American embassy fooled us all,” Rostnikov said, returning Monochov’s smile. “In addition to your sense of humor, you are a man who professes to care greatly about lives and little or nothing about individual life.”
Alexi wondered if a few of the hairs on his balding head might be out of place. He refrained from patting them. He had dignity to maintain.
“To save the lives of many,” he said, “it is sometimes necessary to take the lives of a few, a guilty few.”
“But,” said Rostnikov, “according to you there are many who are guilty, many you thought deserved to die.”
“Few and many are relative terms,” said Alexi.
Rostnikov nodded as if in understanding.
“Your goal was to make a point about the dangers of nuclear research, weapons, power plants. You thought you might help make the public aware of the danger.”
“Yes,” said Alexi. “As the Unabomber did in the United States. These people are careless, stupid, and greedy. They can destroy most of mankind. We need more bombers, more protests.”
“Nuclear research caused the death of your father,” Rostnikov said, looking at Alexi with sympathy.
“Yes,” said Alexi.
“But not before he blackmailed some very important people who have taken care of your mother, your sister, and you,” said Rostnikov.
“We’ve been over this,” said Alexi.
“And you do not intend to give us the names of these people and the crimes they committed because you want your mother and sister to continue to receive this tainted money from men you think should be dead.”
“Yes,” said Alexi.
“That is a contradiction,” said the gaunt man unexpectedly. “You are doing the same thing that you want stopped. You are profiting from the criminal acts of others involved in the very enterprise you wish to end. You are a hypocrite, Alexi Monochov.”
“I have arranged for the sixteen names to be given to the police and the press when my mother dies,” said Alexi. “She is an old woman. With my mother’s help, we have put away enough for my sister, who has a good job.”
“And you?” asked Karpo.