“A pocket full of them,” Genrikh replied with a boisterous laugh. “Now it would be a rich man that could afford you, eh Katia?”
She tossed her head. “Rich indeed! The next time you’re there you tell him my bed is not for the likes of him!”
The butcher grinned. The men tended to look out for her. “Oh I will, I will. Have no fear!”
For Genrikh‘s sake she affected a casual smirk, but her heart was pounding and her blood had turned cold. A pocket full of rubles—the code phrase!
It took Genrikh far too long to finish his gossip and leave Ilia’s shop. Katia controlled the sudden stirring of her nerves and did her work, leaving the men to their prosaic chat, going about her business with her usual intensity. Finally, after almost an hour, Genrikh left. It’s a wonder he gets any work done at all.
Ilia was leaning on his cash register again, gazing out the window at the dirt street in the absent way old men have. A few workers were passing by, shielding their eyes from the chill wind that was whipping dust through the village. It was cold outside today. “Ilia,” she said, coming up to the front of the shop, “I’d like to go Kyzylorda and do a bit of shopping. Do you think you could take me this afternoon? There doesn’t seem to be much business today.”
“Well, I suppose,” he grunted affably. “What do you want there that I don’t have here?” But he was joking. He was her usual mode of transportation when she needed to go to the larger town to the southeast and he didn’t mind a bit of shopping himself.
“Woman things,” she chuckled, “and exactly what things are none of your business!”
He rolled his eyes. “Oh. That. What, am I out?”
“You don’t carry the kind I like.” Kyzylorda did not have a GUM, one of the big state-run department stores—you had to go all the way to Alma-Ata to find one of those—but there were a number of small shops where goods could be bartered for or purchased. “And I want some other things too. Besides, I’m in the mood to go to town.”
“Hmm. All right, we’ll go. Perhaps I’ll pick up some good electrical wire and repair that light in the back, eh? We’ll close up shop after lunch and go.”
The time remaining until noon crept agonizingly by. She could have pushed Ilia to take her sooner, even immediately, and although she was tempted that would not do. She would be patient. And finally the time came that Ilia would usually lock up his store and retreat into the back rooms to fix himself a bowl of borscht, a potato or two and some vodka for lunch, a custom he had observed without fail for decades. She would normally hang up her white apron on a peg in the back of the store and go home herself, to fix herself a small lunch and maybe have a rest. But not today. She didn’t feel like eating anything, nor did she feel like sleep.
Her hut was small, a simple earthen structure perhaps the size of a studio apartment, but it suited her. And here in Tyuratam she did not have to share her house with another family, as was the case farther north where most of the exiles were sent. She had a tiny kitchen and living area, a small bedroom, a well in the front yard and that was all. There was no running water yet, so she had to fetch a few buckets at a time from the well, nor was there indoor plumbing. An outhouse met that need. An apartment in the city would have had more comforts and amenities, but city life brought complications that she did not have to worry about out on the frontier. For one, the cities out West had KGB. They always seemed to be around; she always felt as if she was being watched, her life scrutinized. One could never tell when they might appear, hissing the dreaded words you’re under arrest. They didn’t even need a reason. They would interrogate you until you would gladly confess to whatever they had in mind. That was how the KGB extracted most of their confessions. They had refined their methods of coercion over years of practice, methods that were guaranteed to break even the strongest and most resistant soul. And then, if you survived that process, you were shipped off to the gulag. It was doubtful you would survive that experience. And it went worse for women.
She was more than happy to trade some of those comforts and amenities for the relative obscurity of life on the Kazakh frontier—even if it was only for a little while. Her husband had paid some hefty bribes to grease the necessary wheels, and they had been allowed to relocate. Emigrating to Kazakhstan was a bit unusual—people were exiled here, they didn’t usually elect to come freely. But the bribes they’d paid ensured their true purpose would be neither questioned nor discovered and it had been worth it. Even though her husband hadn’t survived, it had still been worth it. For here she had found a measure, albeit small, of freedom. There were few comforts here, no state hospitals, few people and even fewer roads. Health risks were legion, for the rats here carried plague, contaminated water bore typhoid, and the nearest hospital was several cities away. That meant hours of travel time, if you could get there at all. Tyuratam was very much a frontier village.
She was willing to accept the sacrifices, even the loss of her husband. There had been issues there and she had not mourned as much as perhaps she might have; her marriage had been one of convenience rather than love. But that was neither here nor there now. What she could not accept was a compromise of her freedom. And she could not—she absolutely could not—accept the scrutiny of the KGB.
She lit a cigarette. She was smoking more than she liked today. From her wardrobe she selected a nice blouse and skirt but not too nice, for the women in this part of Kazakhstan typically did not dress up even to go shopping. Then she debated her selection of shoes. In a large city, a woman wearing flats was automatically suspicious for she might be preparing to run. Heels were better, but out here nobody wore heels. In the frontier towns, heels were more suspicious than flats for they suggested a woman of means. She selected her flats.
She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a woman of medium height, slender, her figure more attractive than her clothing usually let on. She smoothed some creases in her skirt where it lay over her hips. She ran her brush through her long, dark hair for a bit, then pinned it up into a bun. She debated wearing some makeup, maybe some lipstick and blush, but that again was not something typically done. She decided against the makeup. And besides, she’d have her shawl over her head.
She took a small sewing box from the top of the wardrobe and rummaged among the thread, needles and buttons until she found a small cigarette lighter, unremarkable, dingy chrome with a top that flipped back. She examined it for a minute, turning it over in her small hand, then dropped it into her purse. If she was discovered with the lighter and its true purpose ascertained, it would mean a lengthy interrogation followed by certain execution: she would go to the gulag if she were lucky. But she pushed the thoughts out of her mind. Her purpose was clear, her path set, her course determined.
She would not be discovered.
Baikonur Cosmodrome, Kazakhstan
It was late and Pavel Sergeivich Ushakov should have gone to bed. He was not accomplishing much sitting in his drab office smoking cigarettes and drinking vodka. But he was certain he would not be able to sleep. He had too much on his mind. There was a chill in the air of his office this night, and it appeared that an early winter was in the offing. The temperature suited his mood, though he was not looking forward to endless months of Kazakh snows.
Officially, the death of comrade Nikolai had been written off as accidental and the investigation closed. It should have been enough for him. But as the days passed his thoughts drifted again and again to the situation and the interrogations he had done. For him, the matter refused to stay closed. His suspicions opened the case again, night after night after sleepless night.
He was not a detective. His search of Loginov’s footlocker had proved that. As a chekist his duties had been strictly to extract confessions and nothing more. It was not for him to solve crimes, nor was he involved in anything that took place after the confession had been extracted and signed. His job was only to extract the confession in the most expedient way possible. But he wished that he had learned more abou
t the detective’s trade, for he needed that knowledge now. Even a detective novel would have helped, but he had none of those. The answer, he was certain, was staring right at him and he could not see it.
On the floor beside his desk sat the box full of comrade Nikolai’s personal effects, cleaned out of his locker. The answer was in there—somewhere. He was just too stupid to see it. Talk to me, damn it! Tell me what you were working on! Had you discovered something that got you killed? There was nothing untoward in the small box. Some letters from home, a few he’d composed and not sent, his party card, some certificates of appreciation, some notebooks containing mostly indecipherable scrawls on his project work, a book of poetry by Blok and not much else.
He turned in his chair and focused on the box. He’d been through Nikolai’s effects several times but had learned nothing. It was almost a nightly ritual lately. He picked up the book of poetry and leafed through it. He had come to appreciate the poet’s work. There was in it a lyric quality he had not foreseen himself admiring. Here Nikolai had underlined a stanza: my friends, if you only knew/the darkness of the days ahead. What had that meant to the dead chekist? Ushakov’s thoughts had not angled off on this track before. In today’s Soviet Union, the dark days were behind them. This was a new era, comrade Stalin’s “cult of personality” had been repudiated and their work was to bring the Party into the age of rockets. It was a glorious work. Why then had Nikolai seen these as dark days? There were the usual glooms of the scientists when they theorized—over vodka more often than not—that the rockets might be used to carry nuclear bombs, but for some reason Ushakov could not see Nikolai having that in mind. It didn’t fit the man’s personality; he did not seem the type to fret over the prospect of nuclear war. It was too theoretical a problem. He would fret over vodka, cigarettes and where his next homosexual encounter was coming from, but not illusory matters like nuclear war. Nikolai was more practical than that. So what else might he have worried about? His career? Yes…certainly that. Having been through the “cult of personality” years he might have fretted about being sent to the gulag or shot. So why would he have been worrying about that?
He thought about that. Homosexuality would have done the trick at one time, although nowadays he didn’t know if that would be sufficient, and in the dead chekist’s case the matter hadn’t actually been proved. It seemed possible that ‘dark days’ might refer to that, but unlikely. Ushakov leafed through the small book. What had the poet been writing about? Blok, he read in the introduction, had written a great deal during the Revolution and his poems reflected the changes taking place. That seemed somehow significant. So Nikolai probably felt kinship with some aspect of the subject matter. His underlining of the passage could imply this, for Ushakov did not really believe he would select some stanza at random and ignore the larger context of the work.
Why would your world be changing, Nikolai? What revolution did you fear? The passage seemed to reflect a man conflicted. A man in conflict. He turned the concept over and over in his mind, worrying at it. A man in a conflict he perceived as somehow on the scale of Blok’s work, revolution-level, a conflict of ways of life, perhaps of new orders versus old orders. The logic of his thoughts was addicting. Although the office was cold Ushakov was perspiring, eyes glassy as he stared unseeing out the dark window, following his train of thought avidly.
Maybe Nikolai had been turned.
Abruptly he threw the small book across the office in disgust. Now you’re reaching for things! You’re too stupid to find anything concrete or real, so you’re making shit up! He sat for a moment, raging at himself for his limitations. The stanza of poetry didn’t have to mean that at all, not by any stretch of the imagination. Only in his mind was the picture logical. Idiot! You are obsessed! You are so bent on your own fantasies that you must make illogical conclusions to see them through! He rubbed a hand over his burning eyes and tried to regain his composure.
The issue pierced him to the core of his being. He was certain, as certain as he had ever been about anything in his life, that something was amiss at the Facility. Kalyugin would have him leave the matter be and forget about it, but to do so was a frank admission that he was too stupid to figure it out. The thought shook him and he could not face it. But he had few options. The impossible course was to concede to Kalyugin’s wishes, somehow forcing himself to make the adjustment to this new appraisal of his abilities. But if the suspicions tormenting him were correct, then there was a plan at work at the Facility. If the death of Nikolai pointed to a scheme of the magnitude he suspected then he would be sent to the Lubyanka for failing to stop it. A swift execution would follow, for such was the fate of useless chekists. The risk to him posed by the course of inactivity was immeasurable; he could not do it. He had to take action, and if a single line of poetry was his only evidence then he would have to back that evidence as though he believed it fully. He would not be faulted as much for aggression as for inactivity. Overzealous searching for leads might lead to troublesome consequences, but that would be preferable to taking no action whatsoever.
Inactivity could be fatal.
Pavel Sergeivich Ushakov felt calmer. Now that he had decided on a course of action, he had to think it through. He had to go over the ramifications of his theory in as much detail as he could, if there was to be any chance of selling it to the Director. The only acceptable conclusion supported by the passage he’d read short minutes ago was that Nikolai had been turned, working for either the Americans or the British, and someone had killed him. He had to back that theory completely, no matter how unsound it might be, or abandon the whole matter. So if Nikolai had been an agent, he would have to have some devices in his effects—camera, maybe, possibly a small transmitter of some kind. Almost, he reached for the box again.
No, it was stupid. Whoever had killed Nikolai would have been smart enough to strip the body or the locker of anything so incriminating. For this theory to work there had to be another man. Nikolai could not have been acting alone. He didn’t have the strength of character for it. No, there had to be a handler. And he had a suspect that fit the bill perfectly: Yaroslav Ivanovitch Loginov. A tough customer, knowledgeable in the ways of coercion, smart enough in an interrogation to feed back static to throw him off the trail. But if Yaroslav was the handler, then who was running Yaroslav? He did not have an answer for that one. But the answer presupposed a deep penetration into the operation of Scientific Research Test Range #5.
How was that possible? He ran a hand wearily over his eyes. The holes in his theory were only becoming larger. The team had been assembled and brought to Baikonur almost overnight. The Imperialists would have had to know beforehand the details of the project and the names of the scientists to be selected. It was simply not possible that their intelligence was so good. Ushakov was not trained in the methods and theories of counterespionage, but he recognized that for his theory to prove valid, it meant a deep compromise of Scientific Research Test Range #5. He and Kalyugin would not be the only ones bound for the gulag, not by a long shot.
Was it truly possible? He backtracked. Suppose Nikolai acted alone. Then how did he die? An accident. If that was the case he had virtually no grounds for suspecting Nikolai to be a spy, and his hypothesis about the poetry was simply incorrect. But his conclusions about the poetry and the mindset they suggested seemed too coincidental to be completely false. Two men, then.Nikolai and a handler. So why is Nikolai killed? He thought about this for a while. Suppose Nikolai had doubts, got cold feet, perhaps even was getting ready to blow the entire operation. That would do it. His handler would have to kill him. The handler has to be here, on this Facility. So they get drunk together and the handler ensures Nikolai drinks too much, not very difficult to do, then walks with him out into the steppe where Nikolai falls asleep. The handler then pushes his tongue back into his throat and Nikolai is too drunk to do anything about it. And then the handler gets a comrade to go for a walk out into the steppe, ensuring the body is found and any i
ncriminating footprints are obliterated.
He felt a sense of despair. How could he ever sell that to the Director without evidence? And still, his theory fit the sketchy evidence. “Damn you, Nikolai!” he shouted to the box of the dead man’s possessions. “It is simply inconceivable that you walked out into the steppe alone to drink yourself to death. I will not just believe that and let it be. But all you leave me to go on are hunches and speculations!”
He ordered Kalyugin woken, and went to wait in the Director’s office. Presently the Director appeared in the doorway, dressed in a bathrobe and slippers and looking displeased at being awake. “It’s 1:30 in the morning,” he growled. “This better be worth hearing.”
Ushakov closed to door behind him and as the older man sat, proceeded to explain his theory. Kalyugin heard him out, his elbow on the desk propping his chin up. When Ushakov had finished his explanation Kalyugin heaved a sigh. “Pasha, you’ve got to get more sleep. Now before you get all upset, I hear what you say. Hell, it might even be possible. But you’ve based this analysis—this whole analysis—on one stanza from one piece of Russian poetry. Hell, all Russian poetry is depressing. But not everyone who reads it is a traitor!”
“I understand that, comrade Director…”
“No, I’m not finished yet. Secondly, there’s not a single scrap of evidence to support your theory. And given all that, you want me to file an official report and give you permission to interrogate this man Yaroslav again?” He threw his hands up. “On what charge, damn it, Pasha? Tell me! That we don’t like his face? That we believe him to be a spy because a chekist has the same taste in poetry as a million other Russians and drank himself to death—not implicating your suspect either by the way, but you don’t believe it? Do you think I have the power here to behave so boldly? Look, Pasha. I gave you one shot with this man. You had as much time as you needed then to find out the truth—note I did not say to extract a confession. Your job was to ascertain whether or not he knew anything about Nikolai’s death, and your official report to me was that he did not.”
A Cold Flight To Nowhereville Page 8