Fall of a Cosmonaut by Kaminsky Stuart M

Author:Kaminsky, Stuart M. [Kaminsky, Stuart M.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Detective
ISBN: 9781453266359
Publisher: MysteriousPress
Published: 1999-12-31T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

VALERY GRACHEV WAS HALFWAY HOME when the boy in the park began to signal that there was no money in the gym bag in front of Elena Timofeyeva. He knew the bag contained paper and nothing else. Vera had confirmed it. The wooded areas, he was sure, were streaming with police moments after the boy signaled. While Sasha Tkach was rushing madly through the park searching for him, Valery was on the metro going to work, where he had parked his motor scooter very early in the morning. Valery smiled at a woman across from him. She was well dressed, a black suit, short hair, made-up, and carrying a black handbag. She was reasonably pretty but not nearly a match for Vera Kriskov.

Valery was under no illusions. Well, perhaps he was under one illusion. He knew Vera did not love him for his looks, but he thought she did because he was both smart and a satisfying lover who was eager to do what she wished done.

What she wished done now was to have him kill her husband, a task he had been quite willing to accept. He had even purchased a weapon through someone he had met in the same park from which he was now traveling. The man, a very bad chess player with very bad teeth and a smoker’s cough, though he was no more than thirty, had bragged that he “had connections.” He knew Valery only by his nickname, Kon, and when Kon had expressed an interest in purchasing a particular kind of weapon, a rifle he could fire accurately from a distance of two hundred yards, the man with bad teeth had confidently and confidentially said that it could be arranged for the right price.

Valery, with money given to him by Vera, had paid that price, and the weapon was now in the rented closet of a bicycle shop, alongside the two sets of negatives he had taken, plus a pistol he had also purchased from the man in the park with bad teeth. The pistol was clean but it looked a bit old to Valery, who knew little about firearms.

“It’s a classic,” the man had confided, using his back to shield the weapon from the view of anyone who might be approaching. “Put it in your pocket. Here’s a box of ammunition. It’s a nine-millimeter Makarov. Powerful. Simple to fire. Effective. I won’t lie to you. It is not the perfect weapon for long distance, but you have the rifle for that, complete with the best scope that can be had.”

Valery had learned to distrust anyone who said, “I won’t lie to you” or “trust me.”

The train was full. It was rush hour, but through the standing bodies, Valery’s eyes met those of the woman in black. She glared at him. He smiled back.

Vera had left to him how Yuri Kriskov was to be killed. She didn’t care, as long as it was soon.

She had urged him to be careful. He wanted to think that she was concerned about him.

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