Fall of a Cosmonaut
Chapter One
One Year and Five Days Later
Porfiry Petrovich Rostnikov, chief inspector in the Office of
Special Investigation, had not witnessed such a sight in his more
than half century of life.
He had been heading across Petrovka Street after getting off the
bus. The central police headquarters, two ten-story, L-shaped
buildings surrounding a landscaped garden protected by a black metal
fence, was no more than fifty steps in front of him.
It had been raining lightly when he kissed his wife, Sarah, and left
his apartment on Krasikov Street. The rain had grown worse,
out-of-season rain blamed by the television weather people on
something called El Nino or La Nina.
When he got off the bus, it was coming down heavily and he could
hear the crack of thunder. To ... read full excerpt from Fall of a Cosmonaut ebook
