-What was that for?
-It"s a tonicto help him sleep.
-He needs no help with that.
The doctor didn"t reply. He couldn"t be bothered to think up a lie. The drug administered in the guise of a medicine was in fact the doctor"s own creation: a combination of a barbiturate, a hallucinogenic and, to disguise the taste, flavoured sugar syrup. Its purpose was to incapacitate the body and mind. Administered orally, in less than an hour the muscles went firstbecoming slack, relaxed to the point where even the slightest movement felt like unimaginable hard work. The hallucinogenic kicked in shortly after.
An idea had taken hold of Zarubin: it had taken shape in the kitchen when Raisa had blushed and crystallized into a plan the moment he"d smelt soap on her hands. If he reported that Leo wasn"t sick, that he was faking his leave of absence, then he would almost certainly be arrested and interrogated. With all the other doubts surrounding his behaviour there would be a heavy weight of suspicion. He"d most probably be imprisoned. His wife, his beautiful wife, would end up alone and vulnerable. She"d be in need of an ally. Zarubin"s status within the State Security forces matched or even surpa.s.sed Leo"s and he felt sure he could offer an acceptable, comfortable alternative. Zarubin was married but he could take her as a mistress. He was convinced that Raisa"s survival instinct was highly tuned. Yet all things considered there might be a less complicated way of getting what he wanted. He stood up.
-Can we speak in private?
In the kitchen, Raisa crossed her arms. There was a furrow in her browa tiny crinkle in her otherwise perfect pale skin. Zarubin wanted to run his tongue along it.
-Will my husband be OK?
-He"s suffering from a fever. And I would be prepared to say that.
-You would be prepared to say what?
-I"d be prepared to say that he was genuinely sick.
-He is genuinely sick. You just said so yourself.
-Do you understand why I"m here?
-Because you"re a doctor and my husband is ill.
-I"ve been sent to discover if your husband is genuinely ill or if he"s merely trying to avoid work.
-But it"s obvious that he"s sick. Doctor or not, anyone could see that.
-Yes, but I"m the one who"s here. I"m the one who decides. And they"ll believe what I say.
-Doctor, you just said he was sick. You said he was suffering from a fever.
-And I would be prepared to say that, on the record, if you were prepared to sleep with me.
Remarkably she didn"t even blink. No visible reaction. Her coolness made Zarubin want her even more. He continued: -It would only be once, of course, unless you took a fancy to me, in which case it could continue. We could come to some arrangement: you"d be rewarded with whatever you wanted, within reason. The point is that no one need ever know.
-And if I said no?
-I would say that your husband was a liar. I would say that he was desperate to avoid work for reasons unknown to me. I would recommend that he be investigated.
-They wouldn"t believe you.
-Are you sure of that? The suspicion is already there. All it needs is a slight push from me.
Taking her silence as acceptance of his offer, Zarubin stepped towards her tentatively pressing a hand against her leg. She didn"t move. They could have s.e.x in the kitchen. No one would know. Her husband wouldn"t wake. She could moan with pleasure, she could make as much noise as she liked.
Raisa glanced sideways, disgusted, unsure what to do. Zarubin"s hand slid down her leg.
-Don"t worry. Your husband is fast asleep. He won"t disturb us. We won"t disturb him.
His hand moved under her skirt.
-You might even enjoy it. Many other women have.
He was so close she could smell his breath. He leaned towards her, his lips parting, his yellow teeth nearing her as though she were an apple he was about to bite into. She pushed past him. He grabbed her wrist.
-Ten minutes is hardly a high price to pay for the life of your husband. Do it for him.
He pulled her closer, his grip tightening.
Suddenly he let go, raising both his hands in the air. Raisa had a knife against his throat.
-If you"re unsure of my husband"s condition, please inform Major Kuzmina good friend of oursto send another doctor. A second opinion would be most welcome.
The two of them sidestepped around each other, the knife against his neck, until Zarubin backed out of the kitchen. Raisa remained at the entrance to the kitchen, holding the knife at waist height. The doctor took his coat, leisurely putting it on. He picked up his leather bag, opening the front door and squinting as he adjusted to the bright winter sunlight: -Only children still believe in friends and only stupid children at that.
Raisa stepped forward, s.n.a.t.c.hing his hat from the peg and tossing it at his feet. As he bent down to pick it up she slammed the front door shut.
Hearing him walk away, her hands were shaking. She was still holding the knife. Perhaps she"d given him some reason for thinking she"d sleep with him. She ran the events through her mind: opening the door, smiling at his ridiculous joke, taking his coat, making tea. Zarubin was deluded. There was nothing she could"ve done about that. But maybe she could"ve flirted with his proposition, pretended that she was tempted. Maybe the old fool only needed to think that she was flattered by his advances. She rubbed her brow. She"d handled that badly. They were in danger.
She entered the bedroom and sat down beside Leo. His lips were moving as though in silent prayer. She leaned closer, trying to make sense of his words. They were barely audible, fragments which didn"t match up. He was delirious. He gripped her hand. His skin was clammy. She pulled her hand free and blew the candle out.
Leo was standing in snow, the river before him, Anatoly Brodsky on the opposite side. He"d made it across and was almost at the safety of the forests. Leo stepped after him only to see that under his feet, locked within the thick sheet of ice, were the men and women he"d arrested. He looked left and rightthe entire river was filled with their frozen bodies. If he wanted to get to the forests, if he wanted to catch that man, he had to walk over them. With no choiceit was his dutyLeo quickened his pace. But his footsteps seemed to bring the bodies to life. The ice began to melt. The river came alive, writhing. Sinking into a slush Leo now felt faces under his boots. It didn"t matter how fast he ran, they were everywhere, behind, in front. A hand caught his foothe shook it free. Another hand grabbed his ankle, a second, a third, a fourth. He closed his eyes, not daring to look, waiting to be dragged down.
When Leo opened his eyes he was standing in a drab office. Raisa was beside him, wearing a pale red dress, the dress she"d borrowed from a friend on the day of their wedding, hastily adjusted so that it didn"t look too big on her. In her hair she wore a single white flower picked from the park. He was wearing an ill-fitting grey suit. The suit wasn"t his: he"d borrowed it from a colleague. They were in a rundown office in a rundown government building, standing side by side, in front of a table where a balding man was hunched over paperwork. Raisa presented their doc.u.mentation and they waited whilst their ident.i.ties were checked. There were no vows, no ceremony or bouquets of flowers. There were no guests, no tears or well-wishersthere was just the two of them, wearing the best clothes they could manage. No fuss: it was bourgeois to make a fuss. Their only witness, this balding civil servant, entered their details into a thick, well-thumbed ledger. Once the paperwork was completed they were handed a marriage certificate. They were man and wife.
Back at his parents" old apartment, the place where they"d celebrated their wedding, there were friends, neighbours, all keen to take advantage of the hospitality. Elderly men sang unfamiliar songs. Yet there was something wrong with this memory. There were faces that were cold and hard. Fyodor"s family was here. Leo was still dancing but the wedding had become a funeral. Everyone was staring at him. There was a tap at the window. Leo turned to see the outline of a man, pressed up against the gla.s.s. Leo walked towards him, wiping away the condensation. It was Mikhail Sviatoslavich Zinoviev, a bullet through his head, his jaw smashed, his head battered. Leo stepped back, turned around. The room was now completely empty except for two young girlsZinoviev"s daughters, dressed in filthy rags. Orphans, their stomachs were swollen, their skin blistered. Lice crawled across their clothes, their eyebrows and in amongst their matted black hair. Leo closed his eyes and shook his head.
Shivering, freezing cold, he opened his eyes. He was underwater and sinking fast. The ice was above him. He tried to swim upwards but the current was pulling him down. There were people on the ice, looking down at him, watching him drown. An intense pain burned in his lungs. Unable to hold his breath, he opened his mouth.
Leo gasped, opening his eyes. Raisa was seated beside him, trying to calm him. He looked around, confused: his mind half in the dream world, half in this one. This was real: he was back in his apartment, back in the present. Relieved, he took hold of Raisa"s hand, whispering in a hurried unbroken stream.
-Do you remember the first time we saw each other? You thought I was rude, staring at you. I got off at the wrong metro stop just to ask your name. And you refused to tell me. But I wouldn"t leave until you did. So you lied and told me your name was Lena. For an entire week all I could talk about was this beautiful woman called Lena. I"d tell everyone, Lena"s so beautiful. When I finally saw you again and convinced you to walk with me I called you Lena the entire time. At the end of the walk I was ready to kiss you and you were only ready to tell me your real name. The next day I told everyone how wonderful this woman Raisa was and everyone laughed at me saying last week it was Lena this week it"s Raisa and next week it"ll be someone else. But it never was. It was always you.
Raisa listened to her husband and wondered at this sudden sentimentality. Where had it come from? Maybe everyone got sentimental when they were sick. She made him lie back and before long he was asleep again. It had been almost twelve hours since Dr Zarubin had left. A slighted, vain old man was a dangerous enemy. To take her mind off her anxieties she made soupa thick chicken broth with strips of meat, not just boiled vegetables and chicken bones. It bubbled on a slow heat, ready for Leo when he was able to eat again. She stirred the soup, filling a bowl for herself. No sooner had she done so than there was a knock on the door. It was late. She wasn"t expecting visitors. She picked up the knife, the same knife, placing it behind her back before moving closer to the door.
-Who is it?
-It"s Major Kuzmin.
Her hands shaking, she opened the door.
Major Kuzmin was standing outside with his escort, two young, tough-looking soldiers.
-Dr Zarubin has spoken to me.
Raisa blurted out: -Please, take a look at Leo for yourself- Kuzmin seemed surprised.
-No, that isn"t necessary. I don"t need to disturb him. I trust the doctor on medical matters. Plus, and don"t think me a coward, I"m fearful of catching his cold.
She couldn"t understand what had happened. The doctor had told the truth. She bit her lip, trying not to let her relief show. The major continued: -I"ve spoken to your school. I"ve explained that you"ll be taking leave in order to help Leo recover. We need him fit. He"s one of our finest officers.
-He"s lucky to have such concerned colleagues.
Kuzmin waved this comment aside. He gestured at the officer standing beside him. The man was holding a paper bag. He stepped forward, offering it to her.
-This is a gift from Dr Zarubin. So there"s no need to thank me.
Raisa was still holding the knife behind her back. In order to accept the bag she"d need both hands. She slipped the blade down the back of her skirt. Once it was in place she reached forward, accepting the bag, which was heavier than she expected.
-Will you come in?
-Thank you, but it"s late and I"m tired.
Kuzmin bade Raisa goodnight.
She shut the door and walked to the kitchen, putting the bag on the table and taking the knife from the back of her skirt. She opened the bag. It was filled with oranges and lemons, a luxury in a city of food shortages. She shut her eyes, imagining the satisfaction Zarubin was enjoying from her feelings of grat.i.tude, not for the fruit, but for the fact that he"d merely done his job, for the fact that he"d reported that Leo was genuinely sick. The oranges and lemons were his way of saying she should feel indebted to him. Had another whim taken him, he might have had them both arrested. She emptied the bag into the bin. She stared at the bright colours before picking out every piece of fruit. She"d eat his gift. But she refused to cry.
19 February This was the first time in four years that Leo had taken an unscheduled leave of absence. There was an entire category of Gulag prisoner convicted under violations of work ethic; people who"d left their station for an undue amount of time or who"d turned up for their shift half an hour late. It was far safer to go to work and collapse on the factory floor than to pre-emptively stay at home. The decision whether or not to work never resided with the worker. Leo was unlikely to be in any danger, however. According to Raisa he"d been checked on by a doctor and Major Kuzmin had paid him a visit, giving the OK to take time off. This meant that the anxiety he was feeling had to be about something else. The more he thought about it the more obvious it became. He didn"t want to go back to work.
For the past three days he hadn"t left his apartment. Shut off from the world, he"d stayed in bed, sipping hot lemon and sugar water, eating borscht and playing cards with his wife, who"d made no allowance for him being ill, winning almost every hand. For the most part he"d slept and after that first day he"d suffered no more nightmares. But in their place he"d felt a dullness. He"d expected the feeling to fade, convinced that his melancholy was a side effect of the methamphetamine slump. The feeling had got worse. He"d taken his supply of the drugseveral gla.s.s phials of dirty white crystalsand tipped it down the sink. No more narcotic fuelled arrests. Was it the drugs? Or was it the arrests? As he"d grown stronger he found it easier to rationalize the events of the past few days. They"d made a mistake: Anatoly Tarasovich Brodsky had been a mistake. He was an innocent man caught up and crushed in the cogs of a vital and important but not infallible State machine. It was as simple and as unfortunate as that. A single man didn"t dent the meaningfulness of their operations. How could he? The principles of their work remained sound. The protection of a nation was bigger than one person, bigger than a thousand people. How much did all of the Soviet Union"s factories and machines and armies weigh? Compared to this the ma.s.s of an individual was nothing. It was essential that Leo keep matters in proportion. The only way to carry on was to keep things in proportion. The reasoning was sound and he believed none of it.
In front of him stood the statue of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, in the centre of Lubyanka Square, framed by a patch of gra.s.s and circled by traffic. Leo knew Dzerzhinsky"s story by heart. Every agent knew his story by heart. As the first leader of the Cheka, the name of the political police created by Lenin after the overthrow of the Tsarist regime, Dzerzhinsky was the forefather of the NKVD. He was a role model. Training manuals were littered with quotes attributed to him. Perhaps his most famous and often referenced speech described how.
An officer must train his heart to be Cruel.
Cruelty was enshrined in their working code. Cruelty was a virtue. Cruelty was necessary. Aspire to Cruelty! Cruelty held the keys that would unlock the gates to the perfect State. If being a Chekist was akin to following a religious doctrine then cruelty was one of their central commandments.
Leo"s education had been centred on his athleticism, his physical prowessa fact that had so far helped rather than hindered his career, giving him the guise of a man who could be trusted in the way that a scholar was to be suspected. But it did mean that he was forced to devote at least one night a week writing out in laborious longhand all the quotes that an agent should know by heart. Burdened with a poor memory, a condition exacerbated by his drug use, he was not a bookish man. However, an ability to recall key political speeches was essential. Any slips showed a lack of faith and dedication. And now, after three days away, as he approached the doors to the Lubyanka and looked back at Dzerzhinsky"s statue, he realized that his mind was patchyphrases came back to him but not in their entirety and not in their correct order. All he could remember exactly, out of the thousands and thousands of words, out of the entire Chekist bible of axioms and principles, was the importance of cruelty.
Leo was shown into Kuzmin"s office. The major was seated. He indicated that Leo should take the chair opposite.
-You"re feeling better?
-Yes, thank you. My wife told me that you visited.
-We were concerned about you. It"s the first time you"ve been ill. I checked your records.
-I apologize.
-It wasn"t your fault. You were brave, swimming in that river. And we"re glad you saved him. He"s provided some critical information.
Kuzmin tapped a thin black file at the centre of his desk.
-In your absence Brodsky confessed. It took two days, two camphor shock treatments. He was remarkably stubborn. But in the end he broke. He gave us the name of seven Anglo-American sympathizers.
-Where is he now?
-Brodsky? He was executed last night.
What had Leo expected? He concentrated on keeping his expression still, as though he"d just been told it was cold outside. Kuzmin picked up the black file, handing it to Leo.
-Inside you have the full transcript of his confession.
Leo opened the file. His eyes caught the first line.
IAnatoly Tarasovich Brodskyam a spy.
Leo flicked through the typed pages. He recognized the pattern, opening with an apology, expressing regret before describing the nature of his crime. He"d seen this template a thousand times. They varied only in the details: the names, the places.
-Would you like me to read it now?
Kuzmin shook his head, handing him a sealed envelope.
-He named six Soviet citizens and one Hungarian man. They"re collaborators working with foreign governments. I"ve given six of the names to other agents. The seventh name is yours to investigate. Considering you"re one of my best officers I"ve given you the hardest. Inside that envelope you have our preliminary work, some photographs and all the information we currently hold on the individual, which, as you will see, is not very much. Your orders are to collect further information and if Anatoly was right, if this person is a traitor, you"re to arrest them and bring them here, the usual process.
Leo ripped open the envelope, pulling out several large black-and-white photographs. They were surveillance photographs taken at some distance from across a street.
They were photographs of Leo"s wife.
Same Day Raisa was relieved to be nearing the end of the day. She"d spent the past eight hours teaching exactly the same lesson to all her year groups. Normally she taught compulsory political studies but this morning she"d received instructions posted to the school from the Ministry of Education ordering her to follow the enclosed lesson plan. It seemed these instructions had been sent to every school in Moscow and were to be implemented with immediate effect, ordinary lessons could resume tomorrow. The instructions stipulated that she spend the day discussing with each cla.s.s how much Stalin loved his country"s children. Love itself was a political lesson. There was no more important love than the Leader"s Love, and consequently, one"s Love for the Leader. As part of that Love, Stalin wanted all of his children, no matter how old they were, to be reminded of certain basic precautions which they should make part of their daily life. They were not to cross roads without looking twice, they were to be careful when travelling on the metro and finally, and this was to be emphasized particularly, they were not to play on the railway tracks. Over the past year there had been several tragic accidents on the railways. The safety of the State"s children was paramount. They were the future. Various faintly ridiculous demonstrations had been given. Each cla.s.s had concluded with a short quiz to make sure all the information had been absorbed.