Were his hat not so tightly pulled against his ears, Commissar Rutkin might have heard the sound, the slight wooshing sift of snow, but he did not hear and so the sudden apparition was all the more startling.

"Wha…" Rutkin cried at the hulking animal-like figure before him. The creature had risen from the snow like an extension of it, a massive snow man.

Illya Rutkin was startled but not frightened. He was a practical man who represented the Soviet Union. He faced the creature and waited for it to move away or speak, but it did neither. It stood facing Rutkin.

"What do you want?" Rutkin said.

The creature said nothing.

"Are you drunk?" Rutkin went on. "I am a Soviet Commissar. I am conducting an important investigation and you, you are in my way."

The creature did move now. It moved toward Illya Rutkin who stepped back, clutching his briefcase protectively to his chest.

"What do you want?" Rutkin shouted. "You want trouble? You want trouble? That can be arranged."

The creature closed in on him.

"Stop," Rutkin shouted, hoping someone in one of the shuttered houses on the square would hear and come to his aid, but no one responded and the statue of Ermak continued to point east.

The creature did not stop and fear came to Commissar Illya Rutkin.

"Stop," Rutkin repeated, seeing something now in the hand of the creature, something that made him want to run, run to the safety of the People's Hall of Justice.

He tried not to think about dying. Not here, he thought, not here. All thought of the hearing, of his future, was gone.