Black Knight in Red Square by Stuart M. Kaminsky

he asked.
    â€œThe essence. Let me see.” She tapped her even white teeth with a neat fingernail and seemed to be thinking. “He wanted to know if Pierre and I were lovers, if I had ever made any nude films, if we were thinking of bribing or trying to bribe judges. He was not a particularly nice man.”
    â€œAny other details of the interview? Did he seem…”
    â€œAroused?” she asked.
    That was enough. Tkach closed his notebook and looked at her. She looked back. There was certainly intelligence in the brown eyes, intelligence and amusement and something else.
    â€œI haven’t been much help, have I?” she said, rising slowly.
    â€œYou’ve told me what was necessary.”
    â€œIf you’d like to come back tonight after dinner and ask more questions,” she said, taking a step toward him, “I’ll be right here.”
    Now Tkach smiled, and his smile stopped her. The game-playing halted, for she had seen something that told her things had not gone as she had guided them. That smile was quite knowing and much older than the face of the good-looking young detective.
    â€œI have to work tonight,” he said, stepping past her. “But I may have more questions. And perhaps next time you will answer with the truth.”
    Without looking at her he crossed the room, opened the door, and stepped into the hall, closing the door behind him. At this point, he had no idea whether or not she had told the truth. He’d had no reason to be suspicious until he gave her the knowing smile he had been working on for four years. He thought of it as the Russian police smile, which says, I know what you are hiding. Tkach didn’t know that it was the smile of all detectives from Tokyo to Calcutta to San Francisco to Moscow. He had seen her play her scene out, then had given her the knowing smile, and for an instant she had broken, showing that there was something more behind those eyes and that lovely facade. He had no idea what she might be hiding or why. He would simply give the information to Rostnikov and let him worry about it.
    Meanwhile, Sasha knew of a store that supposedly had received a shipment of coffee. If he was lucky, and if he hurried, he could get there while there was still some left. It would get him home late and cost more than he should really spend, but it would be a welcome treat for Maya and his mother.
    The coffee was indeed there. The wait was long, and Sasha arrived home late but quite content at a few minutes after eight, precisely at the moment that the dark-eyed foreigner had put the third and final bomb in place behind the screen in the Zaryadye movie theater in the Hotel Rossyia.

SIX
    T HE THIN FILAMENT OF WIRE attached to the bottom of the door to Emil Karpo’s apartment was just as he had left it. An intruder, even if he or she located the strand, could not replace it at exactly the right point. No one, Karpo was sure, had ever broken into his apartment. No one, as far as he knew, had any reason to do so, but on the slight chance that it might happen someday, he religiously attached that filament each time he left his room.
    Inside the room, Karpo turned on the light over his desk in the corner, removed his notebook from his pocket, and carefully copied his notes as he always did. He put the copied pages into a dark book, made additional notes for cross reference, and shelved the book with forty similar books. There was no such thing as a closed case for Karpo. If a criminal—an enemy of the state—was not caught, the MVD might forget about it, but for Karpo the case would remain active. He had twenty-five such active cases, some dating back sixteen years, and he devoted a specific time each month to each of those cases.
    The case of the bookstore skewer took a precise thirty minutes of his time every two weeks. In 1968, on a Tuesday afternoon, in the midst of dozens of people, someone had driven a sharp saberlike object through