When the corpse of a distinguished general and presidential adviser is found, attached to an advertising balloon, lieutenant Viktor Slutsky is sent in to investigate. Meanwhile, KGB officer Nik Tsensky arrives in Kiev for a secret mission. A larger-than-life hitman, bombs under furniture, a hearse, a deaf-and-dumb blonde and a stash of KGB gold all play a part as Kurkov evokes a world of secret militia not seen before in Western fiction.
TRANSLATED FROM THE RUSSIAN BY
George Bird
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Andrey Kurkov
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Copyright
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Epub ISBN 9781446483381
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VINTAGE
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Vintage is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
Copyright © 1999 Andrey Kurkov and Diogenes Verlag AG Zurich
English translation copyright © George Bird 2003
Andrey Kurkov has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
First published in 2000 with the title Igra v otrezanny palets by FOLIO, Kharkov and Moscow
First published in Great Britain in 2003 by The Harvill Press
Published by Vintage 2009
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780099455257
Andrey Kurkov was born in St Petersburg in 1961. Having graduated from the Kiev Foreign Languages Institute, he worked for some time as a journalist, did his military service as a prison warder in Odessa, then became a film cameraman, writer of screenplays and author of critically acclaimed and popular novels, including the cult bestseller Death and the Penguin.
Death and the Penguin
Penguin Lost
A Matter of Death and Life
The President’s Last Love
Kiev, night of 20th–21st May, 1997
Sergeant Voronko of the State Vehicle Inspectorate loved his snug little glass booth on Independence Square in the heart of Kiev, and never more than in the small hours, when Khreshchatik Street was free of traffic, and nipping out for a smoke was to experience a vibrant, blanketing silence very different from the fragile night stillness of his home village. Kiev lay open before him, not frightening as to most at that hour, but stirring feelings of affection and pride. He was its protector, security officer, bodyguard; solicitous proprietor of a vast and varied domain embracing the Central Post Office, the fountains, even the red Coca-Cola balloon tethered near where the Lenin monument once stood.
At 1.30 a.m. he got out his laptop, a token of gratitude from a Tax Police friend for supplying documentation for a top-range Opel Kadett illegally imported from Germany. A small favour between friends, which is, after all, what friends are for.
So, to the nocturnal enjoyment of Khreshchatik Street deserta, he now added that of playing cards with the computer, and since it was just a computer, no shame attached to losing. The hand it dealt him tonight was a peach, but no sooner had he played his first card than a bulb on the panel in front of him flashed and a tinny Seven! Proceed at once to Eleven! intruded on the peace and quiet of the booth.
Voronko acknowledged the message, slipped the laptop into his briefcase, and set off in his SVI Zhiguli.
Post 11 was Pechersk, reasonably close. He could be there and back, and still get a few hands of cards in before his relief arrived.
He had not been gone five minutes when the Coca-Cola balloon heaved itself slowly up into the Khreshchatik Street sky, and dangling from it was a body.
Seven! Attendance no longer required. Return to post, Tinny Voice instructed over the car radio as Pechersk Bridge came in sight.
Shaking his head in disbelief, Voronko performed a u-turn and made his way back to Khreshchatik Street and the prospect of three hours’ cards.
Kiev, 23rd May, 1997
“A rest’s what you need, Nik,” Ivan Lvovich observed as they drew away from the station in a dark blue BMW.
It was true, after seven days’ travel on top of a hectic month selling a flat, packing and seeing off a container of family effects.
Tadzhikistan now seemed remote, alien. Tanya and Volodya were safe with relatives in Saratov, where it would be pleasant enough now, in summer, with the Volga to swim in or fish, and good Slav faces around instead of the furtive, unsmiling Tadzhik variety.
“Kiev can wait,” said Ivan Lvovich. “First, a spell of recuperation at a nice little place with all mod cons. And while you’re there I can brief you.”
The “nice little place” recalled Granny’s chalet with garden near Zhitomir, where Nik had spent whole summers with his mother until his parents’ deaths in ’65. From then on home was with his father’s people in distant Dushanbe. There he finished his schooling, and graduated from the Institute of Military Interpreters. After a spell at HQ Military District, two postings to Africa. On his return, marriage to Tanya. They had a son, Volodya, and all had gone well until Tanya’s sacking by a boss who took Independence to mean a Geological Scientific Research Institute cleansed of non-Tadzhiks. Later, he rang and apologised. Anyway, they’d be better off in Russia, he said. But would they? Dumped in Saratov, like Tanya and Volodya, on folk with scarcely a kopek to their name?
His chancing to meet Ivan Lvovich had been most fortunate. He’d been coming from Border Guards Admin., seething at having his transfer to Russia refused, when a middle-aged colonel asked the way to the Hotel for Officers, and he’d offered to show him. As they walked, they talked.
That evening, over a meal in a Turkish restaurant, Ivan Lvovich mentioned a new Service being created in Ukraine, and the possibility of getting in at an early stage, especially given the plus of a Zhitomir granny. There would, of course, be help with move and accommodation, though it would take time to organize.
“Beer drinker?” Ivan Lvovich asked, as they shot out into a blaze of sunlight on the river embankment.
“Yes.”
“Stop at the crayfish,” Ivan Lvovich ordered the driver, spotting a cardboard notice, two buckets, and a young man on a collapsible stool in swimming trunks and sun glasses.
“How much?”
“Fifty kopeks each.”
“I’ll have twenty.”
Ten minutes later they were clear of the city, in a lofty pine forest.
Nik thought suddenly of his friend Lyoshka’s “Life is Chance”, a dictum never far from his lips, until Zaire, where his, not Nik’s, was the vehicle that went over the land mine.
“That’s it,” said Ivan Lvovich indicating a Finnish chalet approached by a gravel path. “Old Party-high-up retreat.”
It had three rooms, a kitchen and a veranda.
“Saucepan for the crayfish, beer from the fridge, and we’re in business,” said Ivan Lvovich.
Going through to the bedroom, Nik rummaged through his cases for the leather-wrapped antique Turkish yataghan bought in a Samarkand market.
“A small gift for getting us here,” he said, presenting it to Ivan Lvovich.
“Bloody hell!” he exploded, brandishing the elegantly curved blade. “This in your kit all the way from Dushanbe! They only had to find that at any one of the frontiers and your feet wouldn’t have touched!”
“Sorry,” Nik said wearily. “It couldn’t go in the container – containers get the full treatment – and I didn’t want to ditch it.”
“Anyway, thank you, Nik. We’ve been lucky.”
He poured beer.
“Lovely thing. It’ll go well with my wall carpet. I’m sorry, too. Still a bit on edge. Worried we might be under observation. But happily, Security’s up to its eyes. Some clever sod’s used an advertising balloon to dump a corpse on their roof. Twenty surveillance cameras and not one looking skywards! Balloon hanging. Something of a novelty. And some corpse! Retired general, Presidential Defence Adviser.”
“Why knock off an old chap like him?”
“Old chap be damned! Forty-seven. Early retirement. State Security, then Min. of Def. – where one year’s desk counts as three of actual service. So it’s him we have to thank for smoothing our arrival!”
They clinked glasses.
“Now for the crayfish.”
Half an hour later Ivan Lvovich left, saying Nik should have a good rest, and he’d be back in a day or two.
Nik drank another beer, took a shower, and drawing the curtain of the tiny window, lay on the wide bed, and to the rhythmical swaying of a train, fell asleep.
25th May 1997
It was a fine, starry night, and Viktor Slutsky made short work of the long, lonely walk from the metro station to his high-rise block of flats. In contrast to most tenants of the month-old block, he walked without fear, brand-new warrant card in his pocket, Tula Tokarev automatic holstered under his arm. He’d had, to date, no occasion to produce either, on duty, or walking this tortuous kilometre of building sites. The curious logic of starting to build at a point furthest from the metro eluded him. But at least he, Ira and their three-month-old daughter were no longer cooped up in a hostel.
Now, up to the eighth floor, and supper. The lift had yet to be installed, a fact for which tenants, except perhaps the elderly couple on the twelfth floor, were physically the fitter. Pause to accustom his eyes to the dark.
Hearing his key in the lock, petite, peroxided, teenager-like Ira looked out into the corridor, carrying their daughter.
“Remembered the butter?”
His cheerful smile vanished.
“Plain potatoes for you then,” she said calmly. “And when fat’s what you need, being so thin.”
“Is there any?”
“There’s lard, in the freezer.”
“Let’s have that.”
Ira returned Yana to her pram, and they sat down at the kitchen table.
Viktor ate in silence. Lard and potatoes, he reflected, might be the more palatable for frying, though this was not the right moment to say so.
“Come on, out with it,” Ira prompted, seeing Viktor still wearing the ghost of a smile.
“I’ve been given a case.”
“When’s the ration hand-out?”
“That’s all you care about,” sighed Viktor. “Actually, there’s butter tomorrow, a whole kilo.”
“What else?”
“The usual: buckwheat, condensed milk, tinned herring …”
For a while they ate in silence, then with a dog-like look of devotion she asked guiltily, “What sort of case?”
“Murder.”
“God! Isn’t that dangerous?”
“It’s terrific. Perks, promotion, pay increase …”
“Who’s been murdered?”
“Don’t know. Only heard this evening. I’m getting the file tomorrow …”
Looking at him with a mixture of love and pity, she wondered how anyone so weak, insignificant yet adorable, could possibly be given a real murder to investigate. Film sleuths were always tough, boozy, beefy.
“Put the kettle on while I feed her,” she said, as Yana’s wailing penetrated from the living room.
“How many cases have you got?” Major Leonid Ivanovich Ratko, known affectionately as Ratty, asked Viktor next morning.
“Twenty-seven.”
“Anything serious?”
“Seven lift muggings, four flat burglaries, one trading-stall arson. The rest’s small stuff.”
“Five Militia Academy cadets arrive tomorrow, so you pass that lot to them, having selected one to assist you.”
A major still at fifty, a major Ratko would remain till the day he died, being of those who give not a damn for their futures, and vaunt as much in scruffiness and scant use of the razor. Whether promotion to lieutenant colonel would have reformed him was hard to say. The odds were against it. At Ratko’s age old habits died hard.
“Here’s the file, have a look, then come back,” he said wearily, indicating the door.
Back in his tiny office with its cracked and draughty window, Viktor eyed the two vacant desks opposite. The occupant of one was under investigation and not likely to return; the other was away on detachment. Peace and quiet, then, in which to concentrate.
First came photographs of a corpse whose neck bore the telltale marks of hanging, and as he proceeded to read he remembered his pal Dima Rakin, now of Special Branch F., who had looked in yesterday to see Ratko, saying something about a retired general taking a fatal balloon flight.
“Get the picture?” asked Ratko, having knocked and entered.
“Not yet, Chief.”
Taking a chair from one of the other desks, Ratko sat opposite Viktor.
“Any questions?”
“I’ve not read to the end.”
“None so far, then. Well, that’s odd, because I’ve got some.”
“For me?”
“For whoever kicked this one our way … Got a kettle? Make tea, and we’ll talk.”
But it was the Major who talked, eyes fixed on Viktor.
“One: it’s too fresh a case to write off as a dead ender. Two: seeing it’s a Government corpse, it’s logically a job for some big nob and a whole team of investigators. But no, we get it. Our patch was where he took off from, so OK, regardless of where he came down. Nothing in the papers. No obituary. So there’s a clampdown.”
Viktor nodded agreement.
“Why the order to give you the case?”
“Me?”
“You personally, the chap on the phone said … So we’ve got connections, have we? But they’re what you need to keep clear of this sort of thing.”
“Maybe Dima’s something to do with it. He’s always popping in.”
“He’s your pal – ask him. At least find out how best to tackle it. Right, I’ve sat here long enough. Read to the end, then come and see me.”
Viktor was alone again, fanciful ideas as to the whys and wherefores of being assigned the ballooning general cruelly shattered. His mood was now one of gloom. Disinclined to read, he spread the photographs on the desk, leant back, and gazed out at a grey, diagonally cracked glass rectangle of city.
Awakening to the caress of warm sunlight on his face, Nik might have been back in Granny’s little chalet near Zhitomir, where his bed was under a window.
He showered, shaved, and investigating the fridge, found it thoughtfully stocked with cheese, sausage, vegetables, and three eggs, enough for a decent omelette.
He wondered how Tanya and Volodya were getting on and what they were eating. He’d left them a thousand of the six thousand dollars he’d received for the flat, telling them to go easy, as they’d need money for here.
After breakfast he dressed, went out, and walked until he came to a gate, at which a soldier was asleep on a chair. He was unarmed. Ukraine, in contrast to Tadzhikistan, was a land at peace. He’d done well to come.
Exploring further, Nik found himself looking down on a meandering willow-bordered river with ducks. He went down some steps to where there were boats moored, then followed the towpath, revelling in the keen morning air.
“Any luck?” he asked quietly, coming upon a fisherman.
“Some, but it’s slow work.”
Feeling a need to talk, Nik inquired if he was from these parts.
“I live just up there. You on holiday?”
“Since yesterday. Are there any shops?”
“You’ve got a food store on site, and there’s a couple of shops in Koncha-Zaspa, twenty minutes from here. You’re not from Kiev then?”
“Tadzhikistan. Left my family in Saratov, and come on ahead to find a flat. What are prices like?”
“In Kiev, upwards of ten thousand dollars for a one-roomer.”
Nik was aghast.
“Against six thousand dollars for a three-roomer in Dushanbe …”
The fisherman looked sympathetic.
“You didn’t check beforehand?”
Nik said nothing, suddenly remembering that he’d no local currency, just the dollars for the flat, and must ask Ivan Lvovich about the promised removal expenses.
“As the fish are no longer biting, how about coffee at my place?” said the fisherman.
Nik watched him reel in, but his thoughts were elsewhere. The idea of cheap accommodation had been central to his plans for their future in a new country, and here was a complete stranger upsetting all that and inviting him to coffee.
“Not to worry, affordable,” had been Ivan Lvovich’s response when he’d asked about prices. Affordable, but not to him.
“You coming?” the fisherman inquired, standing with his rod and a can containing his catch.
“Thanks, I’d like to.”
They went up a steep track, through a gate, and on past a massive, old two-storey house.
“My mother-in-law’s place,” said the fisherman. “And that,” indicating the fine three-storeyed brick-built house ahead of them, “is what I built. With help from my son and some locals.”
“So you’re a builder.”
“Writer. It’s a writers’ colony here. Like Peredelkino outside Moscow.”
The entrance led straight into a vast kitchen. A long pine table stood before a long, old-fashioned high-backed leather sofa.
Nik ran his hand over the table’s polished surface.
“Made that too,” said the fisherman over his shoulder, lighting the stove, and setting the coffee mill whirring.
At that moment a woman in only a nightdress started down the stairs, went back, then reappeared, now wearing a housecoat.
“Svetlana, my wife,” said the fisherman. “I’m Valentin.”
“I’m Nik.”
“I asked Nik back for coffee,” Valentin explained. “He’s from Dushanbe.”
“I’ll have some too,” said Svetlana. She was tall, graceful, wide-eyed and vaguely aristocratic, very different from Nik’s earthy, countrified Tanya.
“We were late to bed,” Valentin explained. “We had friends from Kiev and sat up drinking till two. Which always means I wake at five, and there’s nothing for it but to go fishing.”
“Caught anything?” Svetlana asked.
“Seven roach.”
Nik found an agitated Ivan Lvovich waiting outside the chalet.
“Thought something had happened,” he complained. “You couldn’t possibly have slept through my knocking!”
“Back in a day or two, you said.” Nik reminded him, getting out the key.
“Yes, but situations can change, and fast. You go and sit down, I’ll put on the kettle.”
Nik dutifully went and sat down in the sitting room.
“Found a bug behind my kitchen radiator,” Ivan Lvovich continued, joining him. “Someone’s digging. You haven’t, I trust, been fraternizing with the natives.”
“No,” Nik lied.
“See that you don’t. Things are moving, and we must get our skates on. No more recuperating.”
He went to attend to the kettle, and when he returned with the tea his hands were shaking slightly.
“To be honest, we had not intended to brief you straightaway,” he said. “At least, not fully. Now we must. Our former KGB is facing reforms which aren’t to some people’s liking. But what matters is, that we have the President’s go-ahead.
“Top priority is the setting up of a Ukrainian Federal Bureau along the lines of the FBI. What’s needed are two services in place of the one, so as to ensure greater control over the loyalty and accountability to the government of both.
“Official moves in this direction have been killed off by Parliament. Not to their advantage, they say. Heads would roll. You see, at present, Ukrainian Security has the monopoly of incriminating evidence to exploit as it sees fit, regarding its interests as identical with the State’s. But a monopoly shared is a monopoly impaired – hence the antagonism.
“So what’s the problem?” Ivan Lvovich continued. “Simply that we do not have the funds for setting up a Federal Bureau. Funny, if it weren’t so serious! I’m Security old style. What I see being recruited nowadays is garbage. Straight in off the street. No principles. Out, at best, to make a career; at worst, to use Security for cover. Our Federal Bureau, when achieved, will be to Ukrainian Security what the KGB once was to the militia – more above board, and dedicated to the State’s interests. Would, I ask you, anyone in the old days have got away with trying to kill the Prime Minister? Or gunning down a deputy at the airport and calmly driving off?”
Raising his cup to his lips, he blew on it before taking a gulp.
“All this goes no further, and for reasons other than your being duty-bound to secrecy. It’s bigger than us. It’s dangerous, potentially fatal, stuff. It’s State’s interests über alles now, human frailty included. Sentimentality, emotion, they’re out. Absolute devotion to duty, instant, unswerving obedience, they’re what’s needed. As in any security service.
“As to funding: Russia, as you’re probably aware, has appropriated all Soviet property abroad, acting as self-styled lawful heir of the Great and Indivisible. But that other Great and Indivisible, the KGB, was possessed of even more property and investments abroad which have never been heard about. KGB colleagues of mine from former Soviet republics tried to raise the matter officially. I didn’t even make it to their funerals. I was advised against going. It’s a delicate subject which no-one at State level will touch, even though Ukrainian Security’s fair share of the proceeds is conservatively estimated at not less than a billion dollars.
“In the main, it’s active property: banks, businesses, factories, hotels – at least one in Switzerland – all operationally financed originally, and thereafter generating income, even spawning independent operations. One per cent of that lot would put us in business.
“Still, enough for today. Chew it over. Relaxing’s done with. You’ve work to do.”
“What?” Nik asked.
“Tell you later. That all?”
“How about a flat? And when my family joins me?”
“The flat will have to wait. Something decent’s what you want, and your present funds don’t run to it.”
“There’d be something affordable, you said!”
“To the Federal Bureau, yes, when funds materialize and we’re up and running. Meanwhile, you’ve got this place free.”
“How about our container?”
“No sweat. That’ll hole up in some customs warehouse, and we’ll pay storage. But put your feet up, have a think. I’m going for a stroll.”
The ensuing silence seemed cheerless, alarming. His future was veiled in obscurity.
The prospect of work held no terrors. Indeed, the degree of trust implicit in the Colonel’s proposal was flattering and a plus. As also the Colonel’s chancing to select him just when he was doing his damnedest to get out of Tadzhikistan. His one anxiety was the prospect of extended separation from Tanya and Volodya. He wondered how they were, how they were eating, what they were doing.
Lying back on the sofa, he closed his eyes. What better than to spend his coming fortieth birthday with Tanya and Volodya? He could fly to Saratov. It would be a month or so before he found a flat.
Viktor bumped into Dima Rakin unexpectedly, while taking a breath of fresh air.
“Out and about in working hours?” Dima challenged.
“Looking for you, as a matter of fact.”
“A likely tale.”
“No, seriously.”
“Let’s go somewhere and sit down.”
The Grey Tom basement bar was empty, and Dima had to rap the counter with a coin before a girl appeared.
The marble table top was icy to the touch, and after the sun outside the bar seemed distinctly chilly.
“Tell me all,” said Dima.
“As I expect you know, I’ve got a murder case.”
“Your big chance. Well done!”
“Not so sure.”
Dima affected surprise.
“It feels like a setup. Petty crime’s what I deal with. Not murdered Presidential Advisers!”
“Is that you speaking, or Ratko?”
“What’s the difference?”
Dima pulled a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket and lit one.
“It was me suggested you,” he said quietly between puffs. “I’ll explain, so far as I can, but it doesn’t amount to much, if I’m honest.”
He crushed the partially smoked cigarette into the ashtray.
Viktor got himself another coffee, and for some minutes they sat in silence. Dima crushed out a second cigarette.
“I thought you’d be good at the incidental lines of inquiry.”
“Such as?”
“External pressure, involvements, anonymous tip-offs … the normal stuff. Nothing to worry about. Make a good job of it and you could find yourself in a nice warm office with a proper window … Read the file? Well, what are you waiting for? Get marching, singing as you go! Like in the army!”
“Can a good job be made of it?”
Dima grinned ruefully.
“Depends … But don’t worry, you won’t be out in the cold. Help and advice will be forthcoming. You’ll see. And I’m there on the phone.”
He gave Viktor his card.
After the subterranean bar, the sunny side of the street was doubly pleasant.
Ratko greeted him with a knowing wink.
“Phone call from the Ministry. You’re big time, it seems. I’ll have to watch my step.”
“Balls! Big-time luck is what I need.”
“Anyway, you won’t get brained by a brick – you’ve got wheels. Or will have within the hour. A Mazda, one of ten, gift to the MVD from the Ukrainian Transport Bank! Democracy in action. Quite right, too. Better than two per general! What news from his nibs? Or were you just taking a breather?”
“What Dima said was –”
“Don’t want to know. You’re the blue-eyed boy. I’ve got an officeful of cadets. Come and feast your eyes.”
The five skinny, lookalike young cadets in militia uniform were, like most of their generation, pale, pimply, wary.
“All keen to get cracking, eh?” demanded the Major.
The “Yes, Major!” was unenthusiastic and not in unison.
“Lieutenant Slutsky, here,” he continued, giving Viktor a grin, “will now address you and give you your case files. After which, all questions to me. Stupid questions will forfeit rations. OK?”
Exit Ratko, grinning.
“I’ll fetch your files,” said Viktor before darting out after him.
“Address them? What about?”
“Got to be an address. It says so in regs. And it’s not for an old cynic like me to witter on about honesty, probity, duty … Shoot ’em the odd slogan, bung ’em their case files, and pick an assistant. He can brew your coffee, fetch beer, but that’s about the best you can expect.”
He spoke for three minutes – the limit of their attention span – and as he gave out files, noted down names: Polishchuk, Petrov, Plachinda, Kovinko, Zanozin.
“Any questions?”
“The waiting list for a flat, how to get on it?” one asked, clearly speaking for all.
“Question for the Major,” Viktor said calmly. “All been assigned offices?”
“One between the lot of us,” someone said.
“To your office then!”
He went over to the window. From first-floor level the city looked surprisingly green and peaceful. Kids playing, as if it were high summer.
“Picked your man?” Ratko asked from the door.
“Not yet. I haven’t seen enough of them.”
“I’ve grabbed your spare desks … Post mortem findings due twenty minutes from now, so don’t go sloping off.”
“Post mortem?”
“Even dead generals have to have one. And now, having warmed my office, do the same to your own.”
Returning to the file and photographs, Viktor read:
Bronitsky, Vadim Aleksandrovich, b. Kresty, Donyetsk Region, m., one son. Address: Kiev, Suvorov St, 26, Flat 133.
Surprisingly, there was no mention of service or place of employment, and while Viktor pondered the fact, gazing at sunlit foliage seen through cracked glass, the phone rang.
“Come.”
With Ratko was a man in civilian clothes. He handed Viktor keys and a plastic folder of vehicle documents, and advised taking it easily at first, as he’d find the Mazda livelier than the Zaporozhets.
“Nose back to grindstone then,” said Radko when the man had gone. “Show ourselves deserving of the high trust reposed in us.”
Death from cardiac arrest