I was particularly interested in anyone who had been raised in a children's home – there were two of those – and anyone with a stroke through the columns headed 'Father' or 'Mother'.
There were eight of those.
I laid these files out in front of me and started studying them closely.
Immediately I weeded out one ex-orphanage boy who, to judge from his file, had criminal connections. He had been out of the country for the last year and, despite appeals from law enforcement agencies, had no intention of coming back.
Then I sifted out two from incomplete families.
One of them turned out to be a weak Dark Magician known to me from a trivial old case. The Dark Ones were bound to be giving him the third degree already. If they hadn't come up with anything, the guy was in the clear.
The other was a rather well-known variety artiste who, I knew – again quite by chance – had been touring for the last three months in the USA, Germany and Israel. Probably earning money for the finishing work on his apartment.
That left seven. A good number. For the time being I could focus on them.
I opened the files and began reading them closely. Two women, five men . . . Which of them might be worth considering?
'Roman Lvovich Khlopov, forty-two, businessman . . .'The face didn't arouse any associations. Maybe he was the one? Maybe . . .
'Andrei Ivanovich Komarenko, thirty-one, businessman . . .' Oh, what a strong-willed face! And still fairly young . . .Was it him? Possibly . . . No, impossible! I set the businessman Komarenko's file aside. A man in his early thirties who donated serious money like that to building churches and was distinguished by 'intense religious feeling' wouldn't want to be transformed into an Other.
'Timur Borisovich Ravenbakh, sixty-one, businessman . . .' Rather young-looking for his age. And if he met Timur Borisovich, even the strong-willed youngster Andrei Ivanovich Komarenko would have lowered his eyes. The face was familiar, either from TV, or somewhere else . . .
I set the file aside. Then my hands started to sweat. A cold tremor ran down my back.
No, it wasn't from TV, or rather, not only from TV, that I remembered that face . . .
It couldn't be!
'It can't be!' I said, repeating my thought out loud. I poured myself some cognac and tossed it down. I looked at Timur Borisovich's face – a calm, intelligent, slightly eastern face.
It couldn't be.
I opened the file and started reading. Born in Tashkent. Father . . . unknown. Mother . . . died at the very end of the war, when little Timur was not even five. Raised in a children's home. Graduated from a junior technical college and then a construction institute. Made his career through Komsomol connections. Somehow managed to avoid joining the Party. Founded one of the first construction co-operatives in the USSR, which actually did far more business trading in imported paving stones and plumbing fixtures than constructing buildings. Moved to Moscow . . . founded a firm . . . engaged in politics . . . was never . . . never a member of . . . was never employed as . . . a wife, a divorce, a second wife . . .
I'd found the human client.
And the most terrible thing about it was that I'd found the renegade Other at the same time.
The discovery was so unexpected, it felt as if the universe had collapsed around me.
'How could you!' I said reproachfully. 'How could you . . . boss . . .'
Because if you made Timur Borisovich ten or fifteen years younger, he would have been a dead ringer for Gesar, or Boris Ignatievich as he was known to the world, who sixty years ago had lived in that region . . .Tashkent, Samarkand and other parts of Central Asia . . .
What astonished me most of all was not my boss's transgression. Gesar a criminal? The idea was so incredible, it didn't even provoke any response.
I was shaken by how easily the boss had been caught out.
So sixty-one years earlier a child had been born to Gesar in distant Uzbekistan. Then Gesar had been offered a job in Moscow. But the child's mother, an ordinary human being, had died in the turmoil of war. And the little human being, whose father was a Great Magician, had ended up in a children's home . . .