The Man Who Walked Like a Bear by Stuart M. Kaminsky

Author:Stuart M. Kaminsky
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2012-09-19T21:21:00+00:00

NINE

WHEN ROSTNIKOV ARRIVED at Petrovka the next morning, the sun was not yet up. The armed uniformed guard inside the door stood behind a plastic shield, his machine pistol at the ready. His eyes met Rostnikov’s with recognition and returned to the front door.

The sixth floor was not exactly bustling with activity, but neither was it absolutely quiet. A trio of inspectors was using one of the glass-enclosed rooms. Their heads were close together, and they looked tired. One, a man known as Walchek the Pole, was shaking his head no while the others entreated. Walchek looked up when Rostnikov passed and nodded.

Karpo at his desk, pen in hand preparing a report, did not turn around when Rostnikov entered his office, but Rostnikov knew he had been noticed. Tkach and Zelach arrived almost an hour later, Tkach looking tired, Zelach silent and slouching. When the four men met in Rostnikov’s small office moments later, Porfiry Petrovich was lost in thought and concentrating on a sketch he was making of neat tubes of various sizes connected in an intricate pattern.

“Reports,” he said, putting a final touch of shading on a tube and standing up.

Karpo and Tkach placed filled-in forms on the desk, and Rostnikov glanced at them.

“And now,” he said, “tell me what is not in these reports.”

“The man who was found shot, Tolvenovov,” Tkach said, “was killed on a bus, probably our missing bus, probably by Turkistani separatists, probably led by a man in his late forties. If we find the man, Kostnitsov can positively identify him through DNA. The dead man grabbed the man’s wrist.”

“When you find him, Sasha, when, not if,” said Rostnikov, leaning forward, hands on the back of his chair. “To say if is to prepare yourself for defeat. So what will you do to catch him, Sasha?”

“Computer,” said Tkach, holding back a yawn. “Identify and locate Turkistani separatists or those who know the Turkistani community, try to get a lead if it was Turkistanis.”

Tkach was seated in the corner, Zelach standing behind him. Karpo stood in the other corner.

“You had trouble sleeping, Sasha?” Rostnikov asked.

“My mother,” he said, brushing his hair back. “She … we talked most of the night.”

Outside the cubicle the sixth floor was coming to life. A pair of uniformed officers flanked a smiling man whom they jostled forward between the desks, and toward the room where Walchek the Pole and the other two investigators were still seated. The prisoner was ridiculously thin and looked as if he had some disease.

Rostnikov grunted and looked at Karpo.

“I believe Yuri Vostoyavek and a young girl are planning to murder Andrei Morchov,” Karpo said.

Zelach shuffled in his corner and Rostnikov picked up Karpo’s report. There was nothing about a conspiracy to commit murder in the report because, as Karpo had just said, he “believed” but did not know. He would not put his beliefs in a report, only his certainties. Besides, if his beliefs seemed to be well founded, the case would be taken from the Wolfhound’s investigative team.

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