by William Ryan
“There’s no point in two of us being in a mess when one will do. If I need a friend, I know I have one and I’m grateful for it.”
Morozov took Korolev’s outstretched hand in his own and shook it once. Then with a grunt that seemed to be born of resignation more than anything else, he pulled the car over to the pavement.
Korolev watched his colleague walk away and was pleased that he didn’t look back as he did so. Then he turned his attention to the occupants of the Emka. They’d pulled in, not more than twenty meters back, and were sitting there—looking at him. The plump one smiled and touched a finger to his forehead in salute.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Korolev followed the cobbled drive until the trees opened up to reveal the imposing facade of the Anatomical Institute. Before the Revolution, the building had housed some prince or other and back then it must have been a sight to see. The years since might have left it a little the worse for wear perhaps, but it was holding itself together somehow, and in that respect it reminded him of certain other remnants of the years before the Revolution—himself included.
Chestnova was sitting on the former palace’s marble steps, enjoying the sunshine and engaged in desultory conversation with two burly men in white coats while she worked her way through a papirosa cigarette. As the car came to a halt she put a hand up to shade her eyes so she could see who’d arrived.
“Korolev,” Chestnova said, when he opened the car door. “I was expecting you before this.”
“I had to stop off at home.”
“Don’t worry. I found a pleasant way to pass the time.”
She took a step forward, squinting at his face then reaching a finger to pull the lid of his injured eye down. She shook her head slowly.
“I won’t ask.”
“That would be best.”
There was the sound of another car coming along the drive and Dubinkin’s Packard emerged from the trees. When it came to a halt, the Chekist stepped out wearing a neat gray suit and an open white shirt. Korolev wouldn’t necessarily have spotted him as a Chekist, but perhaps the two fellows in the white coats were better judges of that sort of thing. By the time Dubinkin had taken two more steps, they’d disappeared—leaving only the faintest wisp of smoke to show they’d ever been there.
“Comrade Lieutenant,” Chestnova said, glancing at the space where the two men had been. “It’s always a pleasure.”
“And for me, Doctor.”
“You two know each other?” Korolev asked.
“Comrade Dubinkin and I have come across each other once or twice.” Chestnova spoke in a carefully neutral tone.
“On other matters, Korolev,” Dubinkin said, “but I’ve never seen the good doctor wield a scalpel. I’m looking forward to it.”
“I’m sorry to disappoint you then. I do the autopsies as soon as possible in the summer—they’ve both been completed. I informed your Colonel Zaitsev, of course.”
“I see.” Dubinkin looked disappointed.
“Will Colonel Zaitsev be joining us?” she asked.
“No.” Dubinkin’s negative was final.
Chestnova turned her gaze to Korolev and he found himself shrugging his shoulders.
“Let’s get on with things then,” the doctor said, and flicked away the cardboard tube that was all that was left of her papirosa.
* * *
Korolev hadn’t seen the grand entrance hall of the Anatomical Institute before—he normally came in the back way when he visited—but this time Chestnova pushed open one of the large oak front doors at the top of the steps, and he followed. Inside, he found himself gazing at magnificent decoration that rose to the roof itself. Columns, turrets, alcoves and the Lord knew what else soared upward, all framed by two magnificent curving staircases. The hospital’s management had done its best to adapt the entrance hall to the current regime, however, and a banner exhorting the workers to meet their Five Year Plan in four years was hung across a balustraded landing, while busts of Stalin, Lenin, Engels and the like now filled the delicately crafted alcoves that must once have been filled by the original owner’s aristocratic ancestors. They didn’t look too out of place.
“Rococo,” Dubinkin said.
“I don’t doubt it, Comrade,” Korolev said in a tone that he hoped conveyed his disapproval of everything the old aristocrats had stood for.
Chestnova led them along a corridor toward the back of the building and Korolev kept his eyes fixed on the white cotton of the doctor’s coat where it stretched across her broad shoulders, and tried not to think about death and corpses and autopsies. He’d never liked them.
“Certainly instantaneous,” Chestnova said, when she’d ushered them into one of the autopsy rooms and pulled a sheet away to reveal the professor’s naked body lying face down, his body sadly mutilated, and not only by the killer.
“He must have been dead before his head hit the desk. The bullet entered here, high on the skull and to the left, and never came out. I found it lodged at the back of the right jawbone.” She rattled a lead slug in a metal receptacle.
By the look of it, she’d found it by cutting off half the professor’s head and extracting most of the contents. Korolev felt the familiar flood of saliva at the back of his cheeks and he swallowed several times—his hands in his pockets forming into fists.
“No gunpowder residue on the entry wound, which suggests the muzzle wasn’t too close—I would expect to see some scorching or burning if the muzzle was less than three or four feet away. It depends on the weapon, of course. Then again, if something was used to muffle the sound it might have absorbed it—but I haven’t found fabric or anything similar inside the wound, so probably not. Did your men come across anything?”
“No.”
“Well the bullet isn’t in bad shape. Big. I’d have expected it to make more of a mess. I’d also have expected it to exit—but again, it didn’t. And that’s consistent with something your forensics man pointed out—that the other bullet barely penetrated the table top. He thought that might mean a low-velocity weapon—I’d tend to agree with him.”
Chestnova handed the slug to Korolev. “You can take it away with you.”
Korolev put it in his pocket, not really wanting to think about the contents. Meanwhile, Chestnova was pointing to a purple graze on the dead man’s white shoulder—close to his neck.
“This is where the other bullet grazed him. I’d guess it was fired after the professor had slumped forward, the wound is across the top of the right shoulder, as you can see. And there’s tearing to his jacket as well. You can see the bullet hole on the desk, here.”
Chestnova picked up a file from a side table and took from it a photograph of the professor’s upper body lying across his desk.
“Yes,” Korolev said, taking the picture from her.
“Well—that’s it, really. I’ve had his clothes packed up for you in case the forensics men can make something more of them. I’ll run you through the report anyway.”
“Thanks,” Korolev said, unpleasantly aware of his entire body being covered with perspiration, as Chestnova ran them through the dead man’s age, weight, and overall medical condition. All of which came down to this—a man who could have lived for another thirty years had been snuffed out. Instantaneously.
A pause seemed to have developed around him, and Korolev looked away from the curling white hair on the professor’s chest to find Dubinkin and Chestnova’s eyes on him.
“Is there anything you’d like to ask?” the doctor asked, her expression kindly.
Korolev forced himself to look back at the body once again. He wasn’t going to be sick, he told himself—he was just a little unwell. Things would be better if he could put a handkerchief over his mouth to take away the smell of death. At least in the winter the bodies stayed cold when they were out of the refrigerated cabinets. He swallowed and pointed to the photograph Chestnova had given him.
“You see there’s a pen in his right hand—here—and a d
ocument onto which his head has fallen—here. I’m thinking if he was writing, which it looks like he was, and sitting upright, which his body position would indicate, and if you say Azarov was five foot nine, so not a small man, and the fatal bullet wound is high on the skull…”
“Yes,” Chestnova said patiently.
“And there’s no muzzle residue on him either. And no sign of a pillow or anything being used. Well, then the fellow who did it must have been a giant, surely? He must have been about eight feet tall.”
Chestnova shrugged.
“I just give you facts—it’s your job to pull them together into what actually happened.”
“Azarov could have been leaning backward,” Dubinkin said, “talking to someone in front of him whose job was to distract him.”
“That’s a possibility,” Korolev managed to say, his nausea forgotten, as he wondered whether that was how State Security went about things when they didn’t want a fuss made.
“It’s only a thought,” Dubinkin said.
The Chekist stroked his mustache and, to cover his unease, Korolev wrote “Trajectory” in the notebook he’d opened.
“Have you any other questions?” Chestnova asked.
Korolev shook his head. They both looked to Dubinkin, who smiled and shook his head also.
“Very good, I need to find a porter to help me prepare Dr. Shtange,” Chestnova said, giving Korolev a sympathetic glance. “If you’d like to go outside for a few moments, take a walk around, then I’ll be ready by the time you’ve finished. There’s no need to wait here in the meantime.”
Such a woman, Korolev thought to himself, such a wonderful woman—as he walked toward the door as quickly as his pride would allow him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Tell me, Korolev,” Dubinkin began, when they were standing on the institute’s steps once again, with only a haze of tobacco between them and the sun.
“Tell you what?”
“I’m curious, you see. I’ve been through your file and you must have seen more bodies than most—in the German War. Against the Whites. In Poland. I’m surprised how squeamish you are. Why is it, do you think? You must see plenty of them in this job as well.”
Korolev wasn’t sure whether he should be more concerned that Dubinkin had spotted his squeamishness or that there was a file with his name on it somewhere in the bowels of the Lubyanka. But then again, he’d known there must be. The lieutenant was looking at him the way a chess player might after an opponent had made a surprising move.
“I’m not sure…” Korolev began.
“Oh, don’t worry about the file. Everybody has a file on them,” the Chekist said. “Everybody who is worth having a file on, at least. Anyway, yours is nothing to worry about, believe me—exemplary, is how I’d describe it. You’ve never failed in your duty to the State and your abilities are valuable to us. An occasional weakness and the odd bad association aren’t so important in those circumstances—after all, no one’s perfect.”
“What do you mean by bad associations?” Korolev asked—not so much because he wanted to but because he had the impression that Dubinkin had used those words for a reason. And, sure enough, the Chekist had an answer for him.
“Your former wife might be such an association.”
“Zhenia?”
“Have you more than one?” Dubinkin asked, pretending to look shocked. Personally, Korolev thought it wasn’t a subject for humor.
“No, only Zhenia. Is she in trouble? With you people?”
Dubinkin pulled the cigarette he was smoking from its silver holder and dropped it to the ground. He considered Korolev for a moment, then shrugged.
“She might be. There’s a file on her certainly.”
“My son told me her apartment was searched.”
“So I believe.”
“I haven’t been able to get through to her on the phone. People have been hanging up when I call her building.”
The Chekist shrugged again.
“She hasn’t been arrested yet, not that I know of. But she’s being investigated—that does tend to make neighbors nervous.”
It occurred to Korolev that something about the conversation didn’t quite make sense.
“Why are you telling me this?”
The Chekist smiled and nodded to himself, as if pleased with the question.
“Let’s say that we feel you should know that we know—about your wife, that is.”
“But I know you know,” Korolev said, wondering whether he was being made fun of. “It’s you who are investigating her.”
“That’s where you’re wrong. A different part of State Security is investigating her. But we know they’re investigating her and that might be a good thing for you.”
“You might intervene?”
“Colonel Rodinov values you highly,” Dubinkin said—as if that were answer enough. Korolev realized how a mouse must feel when played with by a cat. Still, if he understood correctly what Dubinkin was saying about this different part of State Security, then there was something he should tell him.
“Well, if you know all that, Comrade—then you should know some people came to my home today and searched it.”
Dubinkin exhaled a narrow stream of smoke.
“What kind of people?”
“Careful people, your kind of people—everything was left almost exactly as it was, but I’m certain they were there. And there’s more, I was followed here. But that they didn’t bother to hide.”
“You see, this is why we want to be so open with you—so that you’re open with us. It would seem the Twelfth Department aren’t pleased the investigation has been taken from them. Just so you know, we’re pretty much certain they’re the ones who took the doorman, Priudski. At least, no one else seems to have. We’ve been through the records for all the Moscow prisons—nothing. It’s possible they’ve put him in under another name, so we’re checking further. But most likely they have him somewhere else altogether.”
Korolev sighed—he’d been temporarily assigned to the NKVD, without his having been given much choice in the matter, and now, as a result, he was being investigated by them.
“It feels like I’m a football being kicked around a field.”
“An excellent analogy,” Dubinkin agreed. “Except one side wants to puncture you while the other want to keep you in play and use you to score a goal. Which side do you hope wins?”
“Christ,” Korolev said.
“He’s not playing. He’s not even the referee—Ezhov is. It’s as well to be clear about things—if we aren’t successful in this investigation of ours, things will not go well. Not for you, not for Sergeant Slivka, and probably not for me either.”
Dubinkin didn’t seem too bothered by the prospect, inhaling a lungful of smoke with a contented expression.
“Chestnova should be ready by now. Shall we see?” he said eventually.
* * *
She was. They found the doctor hovering over Shtange’s pale corpse like a white-coated carrion bird. She looked up at them, nodded her greeting and without further ado began to describe the man’s condition. While she did so, Korolev made his own examination—shocked by the number of wounds. They covered his arm, chest, face, and shoulders. Deep incisions, a big knife by the look of it.
“There’s one particularly interesting thing about the wounds,” Chestnova said.
Korolev waited—he doubted she’d need any encouragement to tell them and, sure enough, she smiled, as if reading his thoughts.
“You see these ones…” She flicked a finger back and forth across the blue-lipped cuts that Korolev had been looking at.
“Stab wounds?” he asked.
“Oh yes, I’d say as much. And enough to do the job five times over. A big blade—eight, maybe ten inches. In places it went right through his body.”
“I can see that.”
“But what do you make of this?”
Chestnova pointed to a long thin cut a couple of centimet
ers in front of the dead man’s ear, precise and clean.
“A different weapon?” Korolev asked, comparing it to the other puncture marks.
“Yes, Korolev. And this weapon, I would almost stake my life on it, was a surgical scalpel. What’s more, in my opinion, this wound was made some time after Dr. Shtange was already dead.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Korolev approached the Hotel Moskva from the Teatralnaya Square side, parking at the end of the cab rank on Okhotny Ryad and showing the babushka in charge of it his identity card when she gave him the evil eye. The identity card didn’t stop her looking at him with a malevolence that felt like it could blister paint—but at least she stopped waving her hands in his direction and insisting he parked elsewhere. That was all he asked for. And that the Chekists who had pulled in a few car-lengths behind would go and bother some other poor citizen.
The Hotel Moskva was an enormous building. It had opened two years before and dwarfed the National Hotel and the Metropol—its near neighbors. If the newsreels proclaimed that Moscow was being transformed into a city that the whole world would envy, then the Moskva was the building to prove that they weren’t just talking hot air. Its hard lines and brutal simplicity might not be to everyone’s taste, but it was certainly impressive.
A warm-looking doorman in a long coat pushed open a door as high as a double-decker tram and Korolev made his way across a lobby as wide and as long as some football fields he’d played on.
“Korolev,” he said when he reached the reception desk, handing his identity card over. He glanced back at the red carpet he’d marched the length of to get there and allowed his gaze to take in the small clusters of foreigners and bosses, huddled together in encampments of leather armchairs, talking in low tones. They looked insignificant in among the square marble columns and the wide expanses of space.
“How may we assist you, Comrade Captain?”
He turned back to the receptionist—a fat head above a frock coat with a cravat to round it off, no less. He appeared to be trying to look down his nose at Korolev but, as Korolev was a good six inches taller than him, he was failing. All the same, his nose looked like it was planning to recoil back into that plump face in horror at the fact that an honest cop like Korolev should wander in unannounced. Korolev was about to become annoyed when he remembered what his face must look like. He shrugged inwardly. The fellow probably had a point.