— Arkady Dmitrievich—
— You will turn your back on your home, yes, your home, because however fucked up this country is, it’s still home, and you’d abandon it for a bit of cunt—
— No.
— And you’ll abandon yourself. Kostya, you’re a Chekist. You’re NKVD.
— I am more!
— Everything you are is tangled up in the NKVD, and you’ll run to the British? They’ll interrogate you for weeks, and then they’ll fucking kill you.
— And if I stay, my own friends and colleagues will interrogate and torture me for weeks and then kill me. Oh, sorry, fucking kill me.
— No. No, Kostya, please.
— Arkady Dmitrievich…
Temerity got to her feet and crept around the edge of the room until she stood outside Arkady’s line of sight.
Unaware of this, Arkady drew his Nagant and pointed it at Kostya. —Don’t. Not after everything I…no.
Working to ignore the gun, Kostya took a shaky breath. —Then just give me her passport and papers. I’ll drive her there, and I’ll come right back and turn myself in.
The Nagant trembled. —Do that, and you’ve killed me, too.
— A British passport and travel papers. The name is Margaret Bush. She lost them here, at the dessert party.
— I don’t know what you’re yapping about.
— Yes, you do!
— Tatar, Tatar, listen to me.
Kostya perceived two forms moving around the edge of the room: Nadia, and Gavriil. Not got time for either of you right now. Please stand by. —Arkady Dmitrievich, please. I’ve torn holes in this house looking for that passport.
— That was you? I thought…I heard you in here one night. You scared me.
— I thought you’d gone out.
A glow distracted Kostya: the two small fiery holes of Gavriil’s eyes.
The ikons on Grandfather’s beauty wall.
This time the Angel Gavriil’s NKVD uniform bore a senior lieutenant’s insignia.
As Kostya raised his hands in surrender, a shadow changed. Arkady lifted his Nagant from Kostya and whirled to face Temerity.
She seized his arm, broke his grip on the Nagant, and flipped him.
The crash of Arkady’s heavy body on the floor seemed to rattle the whole house. His spectacles landed near Temerity’s feet, and the lenses shattered. Breathing hard, Arkady shifted his weight to rise. As he looked up, he saw Temerity aiming the Nagant at his forehead.
Kostya took a step back. —Nadia.
She kept her gaze on her prisoner.
— Nadia. Don’t. Please, don’t.
She kicked Arkady’s spectacles away. —Balakirev, where are my papers?
— I don’t answer whores.
— You may address me as Nadezhda Ivanovna Solovyova, or as Margaret Bush. Pick one. And then you may tell me the location of my papers and passport. After that, I will decide whether to shoot you.
Kostya paled. —Nadia.
She refused to look at him. —Kostya, I can’t rely on you.
— No, no, please, please understand. Arkady Dmitrievich can fix this. He knows people. He can fix it all.
Eyes still on Temerity, Arkady shook his head. —Kostya, Kuznets knows you took a woman home from the party in Yury Stepanov’s car. Peeked out a window at just the right moment, he told me, then put the rest together when Stepanov couldn’t find his car and you, of all people, signed it back in.
Kostya blinked a few times, then stared at Arkady.
Arkady could not meet his gaze. —He’s been saving the knowledge for just the right moment. But that’s all he knows about her.
A floorboard squeaked beneath Temerity. —Kostya, who is Kuznets?
Arkady answered. —Captain Boris Aleksandrovich Kuznets, Kostya’s immediate commander, and one of my party guests. He’d recognize you on sight.
Temerity held the Nagant steady.
Arkady admired her nerve. —Kostya, he came to me with a basic corruption charge against you, except, as I pointed out to him, any investigation into my last party would compromise him, too. He nodded and apologized for his folly, and I knew then he wanted more. He pressed me. I’m sure he pressed Vadym. I gave Kuznets the handbag, with the perfume and the cash in it, a mirrored compact, too, I think. Oh, and a cloisonné cigarette case, very pretty. Then he gave you the perfume and probably sloughed off the rest to a mistress. It wasn’t enough. He wanted you. He wanted to destroy you the way a perverse child wants to smash fine china. And while I was gone, he tore this house apart. He found nothing. Do you know why he found nothing, Tatar?
— Wait. Dima? He hurt Dima?
— The steppe gives up in patches to forest, and the forest gives up in patches to tundra.
Kostya said it with him. —Yet in places where you see no change, all the differences blend. Survive. Nadia, I want to kneel. Don’t shoot. I want to kneel down, next to Arkady Dmitrievich, yes?
Sweat shining on her forehead, Temerity nodded.
Click and swish of the flap: a cat arrived. Grind and squeak of the brakes: a car parked. Chatter and trill of the whistle: birds sang.
Kostya heard only his own voice, much the way he heard it in a Lubyanka cell, not always certain who spoke. —Arkady Dmitrievich, no more lies. No more games to distract me. Tell me why.
— Duty. Duty and compulsion
Duty and compulsion? Is that why I hurt Misha? —Tell me why!
— Why, what?
— Why did you save me in Odessa?
Cheeks burning red, Arkady looked from Kostya to the floor, then to Temerity. He could no longer ignore the sight of his own Nagant pointed at him, and when his voice broke, he sounded defeated, craven. —I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know!
Each man closed his eyes.
Arkady’s voice cracked again, leaving him hoarse. —Kuznets found nothing because I’ve got her passport and papers. I carried them with me. Kuznets searched my house, but no one searched my clothes. I outplayed him there, at least, and I kept you both safe.
— What the barrelling fuck? Arkady Dmitrievich, if anyone had found them on you—
— No one found them.
— Then just give them to me.
— I expect Kuznets is in the car outside. He’s had a surveillance detail on you. You did notice them, right, your little followers? Katelnikov in the flower bed? He might get a promotion for it.
Kostya stared at the worn edges of Arkady’s gymastyorka cuffs and the black hairs peeking out beneath them.
— You should have kept going, Tatar. You could be halfway across the bridge by now.
A clock ticked. Kostya’s heart pounded. He looked up.
Temerity had lifted the Nagant away from Arkady and toward herself.
Kostya leapt. The Nagant fired.
Efim ran in from the study, and Boris, Yury, and Matvei ran in from outside. As Arkady sobbed, Matvei and Yury wrestled Kostya from Temerity, and Efim shouted for better light. Boris knelt near Arkady and took his pulse, urged him to sit up. Yury and Matvei shoved Kostya into the big armchair. One of the cats, crouched and ready to retreat, watched the blood pool.
Eyes shut, Kostya heard much.
Train tracks rattled in the fever dream from 1918, and the rattle became laughter as Baba Yaga said, Welcome home, bezprizornik, welcome home.
Efim murmured, shouted. —God, she’s still breathing. Ambulance, now! I can’t see, too much blood. Stepanov, get over here, help me.
Boris’s deep voice rumbled into the telephone as he ordered the operator to send an ambulance, then almost sang as he asked Arkady the terrible question. —Who is she?
Arkady whispered. —Nobody. Nobody. No one at all.
Clothing rustled as Matvei pinned Kostya to the chair by his shoulders, leaning his full weight into his hands. —Keep still.
Kostya opened his eyes and glanced at Matvei’s hand pushing on his bad shoulder. —That hurts.
Boris stood before Kos
tya now, beside Matvei, interrupting the light. —It’s all right, Katelnikov. Take your hands off him. He’ll stay.
Kostya nodded. By my own free will, yet twice as much by compulsion.
[ ]
DO NO HARM
Friday 30 July–Saturday 31 July
Chance. The young NKVD guard, distracted by the pretty nurse, took no notice of Efim leaning over his patient to check the dressings over the new plate in her head. Efim blew gently in her ear, hoping to rouse her. Then he whispered. —I’ve got your blouse.
The guard heard the noise. —No talking.
Calm, Efim faced the guard. —Head wound patients mutter.
The guard gave a little snort, then resumed chatting up the nurse. —We could meet for a drink after work. When does your shift end?
Temerity’s whisper almost cracked. —Embassy. Say…flu.
Efim flinched, tried to hide it.
The nurse stepped away from the guard. —Wait, I’m to report anything she says.
Efim gave the nurse a sorrowful look. —Then report nonsense. The patient is still delirious after surgery. Her good eye is still bloodshot. You can make a note of that.
From behind, the guard grasped the nurse by the elbows.
She shook him off. —Pig.
— Hey, hey, don’t be like that. I can show you a good time. A really good time. I wouldn’t want to see you have a bad time, not because of some misunderstanding.
Ignoring the plea in the nurse’s eyes, Efim asked to excuse himself from the room, and the guard nodded his thanks.
The light in the hallway, so bright, hurt his eyes, and the bare white walls bounced back the echoes of so many voices. Efim heard suffering, patients and doctors alike as they confronted their own helplessness before some terrible disease, but he also heard compassion.
So very different from Laboratory of Special Purpose Number Two.
Several white lab coats hung from a coatrack near a closed door. Not breaking stride, Efim liberated a lab coat from a hook and shrugged it on.
No one noticed.
Then he almost gasped. For he’d found one: a telephone. On a desk. In an office. Door wide open.
So easy?
Shoulders back, he entered the office in all confidence. He eased the door shut, then picked up the telephone handset.
The switchboard operator asked for the number.
He said it with ease, not quite sure he said it at all. —British Embassy.
A pause. —Could you repeat that, caller?
— British Embassy, please.
Another pause, long enough, Efim reasoned, for the operator to make a note or start a recording of this strange call, too long for her to refuse outright.
Light glinted on a brass nameplate on the desk: Annenkov.
— Connecting you now, Comrade Dr. Annenkov.
The rings on a crackling line sounded so far away.
Answer, answer. Hurry.
Any moment, strong hands would grab his arms, strong voices would command him to come along. Any moment.
A male voice spoke in accented Russian. —Embassy of Great Britain.
— She…
Efim cleared his throat.
— She’s hospitalized with the flu.
— Say again, please.
He gave Temerity’s room number. Then he hung up.
Outside, in the corridor, boot soles tapped.
Efim emerged from the office to face his future.
The two NKVD officers ignored him, striding to some other task.
He found a lavatory in time. Dizzy, he washed his hands, lamented the lack of any sort of hand towel, and rubbed his fingers against the borrowed lab coat.
Olyushka…
As he returned to Temerity’s room, he noticed a woman searching the coat rack. The lab coat collar, now warmed by his neck, gave off a scent of Krasnaya Moskva. The woman called to her colleagues in banter, accusing them all of robbery, and then strode back into the office: Anna Novikova.
Efim almost called after her. Yet what to say? Anna, I thought you were dead. Anna, I thought you’d be arrested. She’d resigned from secret work at Laboratory of Special Purpose Number Two, and survived? Found another job? Still had her medical licence?
Who protects her? Is she just lucky?
Just outside Temerity’s room, the nurse, eyes bright with angry tears, nearly ran into him. The NKVD guard poked his head through the door, looking peeved. When he noticed Efim, he stepped aside to let him in. He spoke of frigid sluts and their moods, then resumed blocking the open doorway.
Efim sat beside Temerity’s bed, his feet nudging his doctor’s bag. As he bent over and retrieved the bag to check for the blouse and passport, still there, he whispered to her. —They know.
No response.
He snapped shut the bag, placed it by his feet, and stroked Temerity’s hand.
Starlings and crows swooped and dove in Moscow-Leningradksy Station, and a locomotive hissed. Efim remained beside the stretcher, near Temerity’s head. British men in suits and hats, very natty, spoke to him in decent Russian, and they spoke to one another in quiet English.
A crack in the floor jostled the stretcher.
— Have a care!
— Isn’t she sedated?
— Sedated, not comatose. Now be gentle!
A new voice, deep and rich, one Efim recognized from Balakirev’s house. —Comrade Dr. Scherba.
The British men, startled, stopped talking, then tightened their grip on the stretcher.
Efim only sighed. —Comrade Captain Kuznets.
— A word?
Efim touched one of the British men on the arm. —Take the utmost care getting her on that train carriage. Wait, what’s she saying?
— She’s asking for you.
Efim gave him a sorrowful look and stepped away from the stretcher.
Boris put his arm around Efim’s shoulders as they kept walking. —My balls are in a vise.
— Mine, too, Comrade Major, and I have a train to catch.
— And I have nothing left to lose. Do you understand me? Balakirev was my case to investigate. I expected some everyday cronyism, some favours done for Nikto, the business with his propiska and flat. Not this. Never this.
Efim looked back over his shoulder to the train for Leningrad, where the British men struggled with the stretcher. —Oh?
— My father always spoke in proverbs. I swear the man knew no other language. Laws, he said to me, laws catch flies, and hornets go free. That’s what this whole purge is about: find the hornets. I never even saw the hornet. I look incompetent.
Efim had nothing to say to that.
Boris gestured to the train. —And now I’m also overruled. The orders to get her home come from the highest diplomatic channels. It seems the Boss has a soft spot for women who shoot themselves. He’s full of surprises. And you want to go with her.
— By British request. It’s been approved. I witnessed the injury, and she needs medical escort.
— Aristarkhova needs her husband.
Efim felt only exhaustion. —How do I even know she’s still alive?
— She’s fine. There’s been some trouble with the post, but she’s fine. Waiting for any word of you.
— I can’t trust you on that.
— What will you do once you reach Leningrad, Dr. Scherba? Leap off the train, scream your goodbye in the street, and hope she hears the echo?
Efim noticed the approach of three other NKVD officers. Behind them, a cleaning crew dragged pails, brushes, and mops across the floor.
Boris waved them away. —You can’t go.
— The British are expecting me.
— The British can’t have you! The arrogance—
— It’s all been approved. Believe me, no one was more surprised than I was. And you said yourself, no one wants a diplomatic fuss, least of all Comrade Stalin.
— Over her, yes. You are a very different matter, and I’m surprised I need to explain that
.
The Leningrad train whistled, warning of departure.
— Dr. Scherba, you are still a Soviet citizen on Soviet soil. Answer me. You contacted the embassy, did you not?
Efim said nothing.
— And you made this call from a hospital telephone assigned to one Dr. Annenkov. You’ve never even met Annenkov. He’s in Lubyanka now, charged with treason, execution scheduled for tomorrow night. You’ve cost him his life. Don’t cost Artistarkhova hers.
Efim snorted. —I can’t protect her. If I’ve learned nothing else, it’s that I can’t protect her. I can’t protect anyone.
— Yet you’ll try to protect this foreign woman?
— She’s my patient.
— She’s a spy and a whore.
The train whistled a second time. One of the British men filled the carriage doorway, watching Boris and Efim.
Olyushka…
Efim recalled the touch of her cold fingers on his face just before she kissed him. Be a good doctor. She’d also said, Spare me a martyrdom. The night of the mistaken raid, when Kostya made the hot milk and spoke of his grandfather, Dr. Berendei: People came to the house all hours, and he treated them. He never turned anyone away. —Comrade Captain Kuznets, without medical oversight, perhaps even with it, that woman on the stretcher could die.
— Isn’t that what she wants? She did shoot herself. I’m sorry you’re entangled in this, Comrade Doctor, but I have a duty here.
— So do I. And I must go.
Anger glittered in Boris’s eyes. —Why?
— Because I’m a doctor.
After a moment, Boris took a few steps back. —Then go. As I told you, I have nothing left to lose. And I am not afraid of the paperwork.
— What?
— Go.
Legs weak, Efim wanted to grab onto Boris for support. Then he turned to face the train to Leningrad, where one of the British men waved at him. He nodded. Took a step.
Three steps.
— Comrade!
A stranger’s voice, male, commanding.
Not for me. Not me.
— Comrade, stop!
Not my business. Someone else. I’m free to go.
Third and final train whistle.
— Comrade, stop, or I’ll shoot!
The train lurched forward; Efim ran toward it.
A hammer blow: bullet to the thigh. As Efim fell, the train lurched again. Boot soles tapped as NKVD officers ran towards him, and a bucket clattered and clanked as the Special Clean crew dragged it over the floor.
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