"Nobody Will Cry" by Polina Dashkova, summary

The thrilling psychological detective novel "Nobody Will Cry" was published in 1998. This book is a fast-paced crime drama set in the 1990s, where a chance coincidence of phone numbers connects the destinies of honest people, fugitive mafiosi, a ruthless hitman, and a lone avenger. The story unfolds simultaneously in Moscow and Prague, revealing the hidden dynamics of organized crime and the price of human life.

Murder in Prague and a Mysterious Fax

In late May, in Prague, a young Russian entrepreneur, Denis Kurbatov, tries to escape a black-mustached Turkish hitman. A year earlier, Denis had accidentally crossed an international drug cartel when he managed to escape Turkish gangsters and their Swedish accomplice, Karolina. Minutes before his death, Denis runs into the office of his school friend Agnieszka Bem’s travel agency. He manages to send a handwritten fax to Moscow to his company, Star-Service, before burning the original. In the next room, the hitman shoots Denis in the back of the head with a pistol fitted with a silencer.

In Moscow, Denis’s older brother, thirty-year-old Anton Kurbatov, is hiding from gangsters and the tax inspectorate in the apartments of his wealthy mistresses. The brothers’ brokerage firm for Czech real estate has gone bankrupt, its basement office has been closed, and the telephone number has been transferred to another subscriber by the telephone exchange. Having learned from the Czech police of his brother’s death, Anton flies to Prague to identify him. In Agnieszka’s office, he discovers that Denis sent his last message to their previous Moscow number, unaware of the firm’s closure.

The new owner of the phone number turns out to be thirty-year-old translator Vera Saltykova. She lives with her mother, Nadezhda Pavlovna, a pediatrician, and is struggling with a fifteen-year affair with the egotistical writer Stas Zelinsky. Vera has been tasked with urgently translating documents for an environmental conference, so she has a work fax machine installed at home. Among hundreds of pages of international manifestos, she accidentally finds a handwritten note from Denis in Czech, mentioning the town of Karlštejn, the coffee variety "Mocha," and the mysterious Brunhilde.

The hunt for a million

Meanwhile, a hunt for the missing money begins in criminal circles. Ilya Andreevich Golovkin, the modest head of the supply department at a pasta factory, secretly serves as the treasurer for a gang led by a brutal robber nicknamed "Skvoznyak." Not long before, Golovkin had received a million dollars from a criminal stash in Prague. That night, robbers broke into the supply manager’s hotel room. Rescuing the cash, Ilya Andreevich threw the briefcase onto a neighboring balcony. Denis Kurbatov, who lived next door, took the briefcase and then hid the currency in a secret compartment.

Having lost a million, Golovkin returns to Moscow. Skvoznyak demands the money be returned down to the last penny. The treasurer tries to track down Denis Kurbatov and learns that the deceased had a brother, Anton, who owned the company "Star-Service." Golovkin calls the company’s old number and sends a test fax, confirming that the line is working.

Skvoznyak is Nikolai Kozlov, who grew up in a boarding school for mentally retarded orphans, where he was mistakenly sent as a child. From an early age, he suppressed any signs of compassion. Later, he was taken under the wing of an old thief in law, Zakhar, and trained by the brutal karateka, Mongol, in deadly hand-to-hand combat. Skvoznyak cold-bloodedly murdered Mongol, created his own gang, killing witnesses during apartment robberies, and then went underground himself.

Having learned from Golovkin about the events in Prague and the change of phone numbers, Skvoznyak decides to approach Vera Saltykova personally. He discreetly takes her red setter, Matvey, from the yard. A couple of days later, the bandit returns the dog, posing as a random passerby named Fyodor, who supposedly protected the dog from a pack of stray dogs.

The Trap Behind the Groom’s Mask

Skvoznyak quickly gains the trust of the gullible Vera and her mother. He poses as a modest security guard who fought in Chechnya. Skillfully playing the role of a caring and thrifty man, the bandit fixes the plumbing and electrical wiring in the Saltykovs’ apartment, takes Vera to a restaurant, and proposes marriage. At the same time, he steals the spare key to the front door.

Ten-year-old Sonya Loginova, the daughter of Vera’s close friend, is temporarily staying at the Saltykovs’ house. Sonya possesses a keen sense of observation and immediately senses the falseness in her new acquaintance’s behavior. The girl notices a feral glint in Fyodor’s eyes, and a neighbor boy tells her how he saw a man forcibly drag a resisting setter out of the yard.

Skvoznyak soon concocts a cover story for Vera. He claims that the Star-Service company allegedly sold his younger sister, Natasha, into slavery abroad. The bandit convinces the translator that the company’s owner, Anton Kurbatov, is a dangerous criminal. He asks Vera to forward all incoming faxes to him and promises to personally attend a meeting with Kurbatov.

Revenge and death of witnesses

Volodya, a young metro construction worker, has been hunting Skvoznyak for three years. In 1994, Skvoznyak’s gang brutally murdered Volodya’s parents and grandmother during a raid. Volodya set up a home laboratory, learned how to assemble compact explosive devices, and began methodically tracking down his family’s killers. Having identified Treasurer Golovkin, Volodya placed him under surveillance during meetings with Skvoznyak.

Soon, the supply man, Golovkin, dies in his own apartment: two random women poison him with a lethal dose of clonidine in order to commit robbery. Upon learning of the treasurer’s death, Skvoznyak loses access to the remaining savings and accelerates his search for the Prague million.

That evening, Stas Zelinsky unexpectedly arrives at Vera’s apartment. He tries to dissuade Saltykova from rushing into marriage and suddenly recognizes her fiancé as the man he saw three years ago on the landing, the night of Marina Vedeneyeva’s murder. Sensing a mortal threat, Skvoznyak escorts Zelinsky to his home. That night, the bandit opens Stas’s apartment door with a stolen key, stabs Stas’s drunken wife, Inna, in the neck, and kills Zelinsky with a kitchen knife, making it look like a domestic dispute between the spouses.

Police Major Yuri Uvarov and Captain Georgy Maltsev investigate Zelinsky’s death and quickly prove Inna’s innocence: the placement of the fingerprints on the knife handle contradicts the trajectory of the blow, and a hematoma is found on Inna’s neck from a professional blow to the carotid artery. The detectives track down Vera Saltykova, with whom Stas spent his last evening.

Sonya’s abduction and the bloody end

Anton Kurbatov calls Vera. Hearing about a Czech text with an address in Karlštejn, he arranges an urgent meeting at the Mayakovsky monument. Vera goes to the meeting in the pouring rain, shaken by the news of Zelinsky’s death. She hands Anton a soggy sheet of faxed paper. After comparing notes, Kurbatov and Saltykova realize that the fiancé, Fyodor, is an accomplice of the drug dealers, hunting for the hidden money.

They turn to the experienced and veteran lawyer Semyon Izrailevich Katz for advice. He immediately contacts the police general, demanding that a raiding party be dispatched to the Saltykovs’ apartment.

Meanwhile, Skvoznyak, through his friend from the boarding school, Sasha Sergeev, arranges for Sonya Loginova to be kidnapped from her yard. The girl is gassed and taken to the Moscow region. Volodya, who was on duty near Vera’s house, notices the abduction and gives chase in his car. On a country road, Sonya escapes from the kidnappers’ car, and Volodya cold-bloodedly shoots the bandits with a pistol he bought. Taking the rescued girl into his car, he rushes back to Moscow to beat Skvoznyak to it. Volodya leaves Sonya near her house, giving her his grandfather’s antique gold watch as a souvenir.

Anton and Vera return to the apartment, where an armed Skvoznyak is already waiting for them. The bandit demands the computer passwords, claiming the child is in the hands of his henchmen. Realizing he’s been exposed, the criminal knocks Anton unconscious and begins methodically beating Vera. Anton, who regains consciousness, hits the bandit over the head with a heavy marble paperweight, but Skvoznyak knocks him down and begins strangling him.

Volodya bursts into the room and shoots Skvoznyak in the shoulder. A fierce hand-to-hand fight ensues between them. Realizing that the wounded bandit is physically stronger, Volodya forces him onto the fifth-floor balcony and detonates a miniature grenade on his belt. The explosion shatters the balcony railing, and both combatants fall to the pavement, dying instantly.

Major Uvarov, led by detectives, enters the courtyard. A tearful Sonya shows the major a gold onion-shaped watch, which the detective uses to finally identify the deceased vigilante.

Karlštejn treasure

After completing the interrogations, Anton and Vera fly to Prague. They find a friend’s old, abandoned house in Karlštejn. In the dusty attic, under a plywood box with the Mokka logo, lies the treasured leather briefcase, stuffed with wads of hundred-dollar bills.

However, the joy is short-lived. At the exchange office at the Prague train station, it turns out that all the currency in the briefcase is counterfeit. Bank Slavyanka paid the gang’s treasurer with counterfeit money before its liquidation.

While Anton and Vera sit distraught in a street café, an unknown thief steals the unattended briefcase containing the counterfeit million. Left with almost no money, Vera and Anton rent a modest room in a small hotel attached to Karlštejn’s tavern with their last few crowns. The trauma they’ve experienced brings them closer, paving the way for a new love amid the ruins of their former illusions.