Arkhip answered. “Senior Investigator Mishkin.”
“What exactly are you doing?” his captain asked.
“I am not understanding you,” Mishkin said. “You will need to be more specific.”
“Do you have any idea who the man was that you arrested?”
“None,” Arkhip said, lying.
“He is a former KGB and FSB officer who now works special projects for the Kremlin.”
“And what exactly is a special project? Painting?”
“Don’t be insolent, Mishkin. I just got off the phone with Lubyanka and was told that you had interfered with an FSB operation to capture a man of the highest order.”
“How could I have known such a thing? With whom did you speak?”
“The deputy director of counterintelligence. He advised me that you are to close your file and not to interfere in this operation again.”
“Which operation?”
The captain groaned. “The operation to bring in an American spy, Charles Jenkins.”
“I have no interest in Charles Jenkins the American spy. However, Charles Jenkins is the only man who can tell me what happened the night Eldar Velikaya died. I cannot close my file until I speak to him.”
His captain’s voice rose and Arkhip could hear the frustration with each word. “Eldar Velikaya was shot by Charles Jenkins, Mishkin. We have the medical examiner’s report.”
“The medical examiner’s report is a fabrication. I saw the body. Velikaya was shot in the back, not the front. Therefore, the shooter could not have been Charles Jenkins.”
“That is no longer your problem, Mishkin. It is a Lubyanka problem.”
“How am I to close my file?”
“Consider it closed. Do not interfere again, Mishkin. Let Lubyanka handle this matter and retire in peace, or I will consider terminating you. You don’t want that now.”
No, he did not. But he also could not retire, not if he wished to retire in peace. Not without speaking to Charles Jenkins. “What of the other three men who were arrested?” Arkhip asked.
“A case of mistaken identity. They were waiting for a friend in one of the apartments.”
“With weapons?”
“I know nothing of any weapons, Mishkin.”
“Where are they at present?”
“How should I know? I told you they were released.”
How very convenient, Arkhip thought.
The brakes of the train hissed. Arkhip felt a jolt as the train moved backward, then rolled forward. “Where are you now?” his captain asked.
“At home, of course.”
“What is that noise in the background?”
“The kettle. I am making a cup of tea.”
“Listen, Mishkin, you don’t have long and then you will be retired. You have earned it. Relax. Take it easy until that day arrives.”
Take it easy, Arkhip thought. And do what, exactly? “Thank you. I think I will take the next few days off. I believe I have accrued enough vacation days to do so. Yes?”
“Good. See. Already you are learning how to relax. Don’t think about work. Think about all the things you are going to do once you are retired. Maybe take a long-awaited trip.”
Arkhip looked out the window as the train pulled from the station. “Maybe sooner than we both know,” he said. He disconnected the call and removed the fur hat he had also purchased in the kiosk, then put it back on his head and considered his reflection in the mirror mounted on the inside of the cabin door. The hat added another two to three inches in height. He could hear Lada now, a chuckle in her voice. A man who wears a hat to look taller is hiding a certain failing in another area.
Arkhip quickly removed the hat.
39
Trans-Siberian Train
Maria Kulikova awoke with a start. She quickly sat up, confused by her surroundings. Her heart raced, and she had soaked her shirt with sweat. She looked to the clock on the nightstand, but the nightstand wasn’t there.
She was not home in her bed.
The gentle rocking of the carriage and uneven sound of the train rolling on the tracks pulled her back to the present. She took deep breaths and looked to the window. It was dark outside. Night.
She looked at her door. Jenkins had applied the deadbolt. Through the interior door to the adjacent cabin, she saw that Charles Jenkins slept on his side on one of the two berths, his face turned toward the wall. He looked like Svyatogor, the giant warrior in Russian mythology and folklore, trying to sleep in a child’s bed. Heavy, rhythmic breathing. She envied him; it was a rare night Maria slept so soundly, or until morning. The good nights, she slept in spurts, awakened by her thoughts, but most nights she was able to keep those thoughts from spinning out of control. Reading sometimes helped, as did exercise.
The bad nights, such as this, she awoke in a panic, her shirt drenched in sweat, her heart racing, unable to slow or rationalize her thoughts that she had been discovered, that men were coming for her. She slept with her pen beside her and, on more than one occasion, she had contemplated biting down on the capsule concealed in the end.
She had lost her pen in the Neglinnaya River. She felt naked without it.
She looked at the small confines of her room and concluded that exercise would be cumbersome and likely wake Jenkins. Chamomile tea helped, and the samovar was just a few doors down in a cubby at the front of the carriage car. She looked again at Jenkins and thought about what he had said, about a better life awaiting her in America. She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe that maybe, once forever free of the person she had allowed herself to become, she would find her true self again. She felt the onset of tears but pushed them back. Maria Kulikova, she told herself, was a good and decent person, and she would find her again.
If she made it out of Russia alive.
She thought of her earlier conversation with Jenkins and the way his face had lit up when he spoke of his wife and his family. She had been surprised to learn he was not only married but had two young children. It made her realize that he, too, had sacrificed, maybe not for as long as she had sacrificed, as each of the seven sisters had sacrificed, but perhaps just as deeply, maybe more so. Maria never had anything to lose, except her sense of self. When the time came to end her life, she would be comforted by the thought that no one would miss her. Her parents were gone. She had no siblings. No children. Helge would have missed only the luxuries she provided, the apartment and the clothes. He would not have missed her.