"Air Time" by Polina Dashkova, summary

The detective novel "Airtime" was written in 2000. The book is a stand-alone thriller, in which the investigation of contract killings in the capital’s media scene intertwines with the fate of the legendary Ural diamond "Pavel." The author reveals the underbelly of the television world of the late 1990s, exploring the hidden motives of people’s actions, the fear of exposure, and the destructive power of old sins.

Murder of TV presenter and arrest of suspect

Journalist Artem Buteyko hosted his own late-night television show, built on scandals, gossip, and product placement. After each episode, the reporter returned home, where an unknown assailant shot him in the temple in a darkened entryway. The weapon used was a Walther pistol.

On the landing next to the body, police officers find Alexander Anisimov sleeping. He was a former classmate of the deceased. The suspect is heavily intoxicated and suffering from retrograde amnesia, completely forgetting the events of the previous evening.

Investigators initially dismissed the incident as a simple domestic violence. The reporter’s mother, Elena Petrovna, claims Anisimov demanded repayment of a three-thousand-dollar debt and repeatedly threatened her son. Forensic experts found Alexander’s fingerprints on the seized weapon, and his initials were engraved on the handle.

The arrested man’s wife, Natalya, is convinced of her husband’s innocence. She recalls that on the eve of Artyom’s death, massage therapist Vladimir Mukhin secretly visited their apartment. Mukhin arranged a meeting between Alexander and a supposed German businessman named Klim at a restaurant, during which Anisimov was surreptitiously dosed with a synthetic hallucinogen.

The Legend of the Paul Diamond

The plot is woven into a flashback, beginning in the autumn of 1829. At the Krestovozdvizhensky gold mines of Countess Olga Porier, fourteen-year-old Pavlik Popov discovers the first Russian diamond. Soon, an old hen pecks another large crystal at the mine and carries it to a basket in the village of Kalininskaya.

The Countess took the find for herself and named the stone "Paul." In 1880, the elderly aristocrat commissioned a brooch in the shape of an orchid from the jeweler Le Villon. The craftsman affixed movable platinum petals with droplets of topaz and surrounded the pristine forty-carat diamond with oblong emeralds.

On the eve of the 1917 Revolution, the family heirloom passed to her great-grandson, Count Mikhail Porier. To escape debtor’s prison, the Count married the wealthy merchant Irina Bolyakina. The true love of his life was a young neighbor on their estate near Moscow, Sofya Baturina.

Driven mad by jealousy, Irina slips arsenic into nut jam and fatally poisons her husband. Dying, Mikhail gives the brooch to Sophia. Sophia’s father, Dr. Konstantin Baturin, helps his daughter bury the jewelry box in the park near a stone gazebo.

Irina’s father, merchant Tikhon Bolyakin, attacks the Baturins’ estate with armed bandits, demanding the jewel. The merchant and his attackers perish in the ensuing fire. Sophia and her father flee through Odessa and Constantinople to Paris, and then to America, where they become the Hollywood silent film star Sophie Poirier.

In the 1930s, a state farm worker named Kuznetsov excavated the foundations of a gazebo on the former estate and discovered a silver box. Half a century later, his fallen grandson tried to sell the treasure to jewelry store engraver Vyacheslav Buteyko, the father of the future TV presenter.

In the summer of 1985, Vyacheslav and his wife, Elena Petrovna, lured an alcoholic to Serebryany Bor. The couple suffocated the brooch’s owner with a plastic bag and hid the jewel in a secret hiding place. The resulting terror drove the craftsman to abandon his profession, becoming a simple adjuster at a shoe factory and suffering nightmares for years to come.

Transatlantic blackmail and the hunt for a relic

In the late 1990s, Dmitry Maltsev, a passionate jewelry collector and Deputy Finance Minister, and his brother, Pavel, an art historian, attempted to track down traces of the missing "Pavel." After discovering a youthful portrait of Sofia Baturina with a brooch and excerpts from her memoirs, the brothers reached the dacha village of Baturino.

An art historian hires the unscrupulous adventurer Anatoly Krasavchenko to interrogate the heirs to the generals’ dachas. The mercenary tracks down political commentator Elizaveta Belyaeva, whose family owned land in Baturin, in Montreal.

Krasavchenko drugs Belyaeva with a psychotropic drug that paralyzes her willpower and interrogates her overnight. Convinced that the TV presenter knows nothing about the hidden treasure, the adventurer decides to turn to extortion.

He hires a prostitute in a Montreal neighborhood, disguised as Belyaeva, and fabricates compromising photographs and video footage. The blackmailer demands that Elizaveta grant him live television coverage during prime time. Shortly after returning to Moscow, Krasavchenko is found shot to death in his car.

The progress of investigator Borodin’s investigation

The murder of Artyom Buteyko is assigned to senior investigator Ilya Nikitich Borodin. The experienced detective immediately notices inconsistencies in the crime scene. Residents of the building heard the roar of firecrackers, drowning out the gunshot, and saw a broad-shouldered athlete fleeing.

An examination reveals traces of a potent paralyzing substance in Anisimov’s blood. Borodin realizes that Alexander was deliberately tranquilized, driven to the victim’s apartment building, and a gun was placed in his hand, staging a drunken brawl.

An investigator is reviewing the videotape archives of a deceased television journalist. Among the recordings is a controversial three-year-old report about a fight in a restaurant, where police officer Vasily Sokolov injured a pop singer. Buteyko then instigated a high-profile campaign, which resulted in Sokolov receiving a three-year prison sentence.

After being released from prison, the former captain assumed the false name Klim. He devised a plan for revenge against his tormentors. Sokolov enlisted the help of the greedy masseur Mukhin, stole Anisimov’s pistol, and cold-bloodedly shot the reporter, framing him as a witness to his long-ago shame.

Borodin and Captain Kositsky trace the Buteyko family. In the hospital, the reporter’s terrified father begins raving about the stone’s owner, who died with a bag over his head. The investigator deduces the 1985 murder and connects the family secrets to Le Villon’s missing orchid.

Bloody denouement and finale

Sokolov seeks to infiltrate the personal security detail of official Maltsev. To this end, he stages a staged attack near an elite club: he sends Mukhin to shoot at the official from a vantage point, then feigns a rescue of the dignitary and apprehends his accomplice with the help of his German shepherd, Frida.

After his arrest, Sokolov injects Mukhin, who was wounded by his dog, with a lethal dose of the drug, causing the shooter to die in the ambulance. Maltsev’s young partner, Varvara Bogdanova, recognizes her savior as her longtime tormentor, Sokolov. She secretly collaborates with the crime boss Pnyri and immediately provides investigator Borodin with the coordinates of the country house.

During an attempted interception on the highway, Sokolov opens fire on police officers, wounding two operatives and dying in the ensuing shootout. Simultaneously, Pnyri’s militants break into the apartment of Buteyko’s parents. The bandits subject the elderly couple to brutal torture, kill them both, and steal the genuine "Pavel" brooch.

Alexander Anisimov is cleared of false charges. TV presenter Belyaeva exposes the falsification of the videotape by revealing the lack of allergic manicure on the double’s hands and restores peace in the family. Investigator Borodin visits Varvara at the university, realizing that the criminal chain will only be closed with the recovery of the fatal diamond.