Death Is My Comrade Read Online Free PDF Page B

and whoever had followed him had shot him before he’d had the chance to frisk the office. Or Ilya, looking around, had decided that the only place for the envelope, unless I had it on me, was the safe. So Ilya had waited—for death.
    And the killer? The killer had followed Ilya here to silence him, because of course Ilya knew what was in the envelope. Not just a .22, then. That was the other possibility. A .22 with a silencer attached. The more I thought of that, the more it made sense. I’d showed up before the killer could get away. With one murder on his hands, I was as likely a candidate for a bullet as Ilya. Not only might I have seen what was in the envelope, but just plain physically I was in the way. But I’d been sapped, not shot. Why?
    I knelt near Ilya. Touched his hand. The flesh was cool, but not yet room temperature. Ilya had been dead only a few minutes. Near his limply outstretched right hand was a Luger. He had probably used it to smash the pebbled glass of the door. It hadn’t been fired.
    Walking better now, I went to the water cooler and had a half-dozen paper cups of ice-cold water. Then I looked at Ilya Alluliev again. A man with a fast line of chatter, a man with a smile five miles wide and a quarter of an inch deep, a man who can kick doors in verbally if he can’t kick them in any other way, that’s a private detective. A man who grins at death?
    I tasted bitter bile in my throat. Stepped over Ilya’s body and went to the safe. My fingers shook so much from the after-effects of the slugging that I couldn’t work the combination. I got the Jack Daniels from the deep drawer of the desk and had a slug straight from the bottle. I went to work on the safe again. The envelope had been just an envelope, so far. Now Ilya had died for it.
    The safe swung open. I took the envelope out, slit it.
    A single sheet of paper, folded twice to fit. And several typewritten lines, in English. They said:
    What you have heard about Vasili Rodzianko since he was awarded the Nobel Prize last year is all lies. Vasili Rodzianko did not wish to repudiate the Prize. He does not reject having written his book, Comrade Shendrikov. As he does not wish to repudiate the Prize, he will not repudiate the book. He does not turn his back on the West. Nor did he opt to remain in Russia when the government gave him the choice of leaving the country. He was given no such choice. He is a prisoner under house arrest. If he refuses to recant, he is in grave danger. And he will not recant.
    That was all. It wasn’t signed.
    I knew the name Vasili Rodzianko, of course. Anyone who read the papers or the news magazines or listened to the radio within the past six months knew Rodzianko’s name. He had capped a long literary career in Russia as a poet and a translator—mostly from English—with his novel, Comrade Shendrikov. Last November, in recognition of his lifetime of literary achievement, and specifically mentioning Comrade Shendrikov , the Swedish Academy had offered the Nobel Prize for literature to Vasili Rodzianko. As far as the world knew, Rodzianko had rejected it, saying his masterpiece had been misinterpreted and used for propaganda purposes in the West.
    The contents of Ilya’s envelope denied this.
    But what did a wheeling-dealing financier named Mike Rodin have to do with it?
    Picking up the phone, I called District Homicide and asked for Captain Malawister. I asked for Malawister because he was a pretty brainy guy and we had worked a couple of cases together, and he didn’t think private eyes are two parts con-man and one part thief. Also because he knew Jack Morley, whom I was going to call next, and would cooperate with him.
    The desk sergeant told me: “Captain’s on vacation till the first of July.”
    â€œWho’s holding down his desk?”
    â€œLieutenant Creel.”
    I didn’t know Creel, but I asked for him.
    â€œCreel,” he introduced