by Glenn Meade
The woman shrugged. “The Lubyanka prison. Or Lefortovo. But most likely the Lubyanka, because it’s part of KGB Headquarters. Why?”
Slanski didn’t reply as he removed his jacket and shirt and stood bare-chested as he handed them over. “You’re certain I’m safe here? What about the neighbors?”
“Perfectly safe. Most of the dachas around here are never used in winter. They’re owned by army officers and Party officials.” The woman smiled. “And if anyone asks, you’re my cousin come to visit. Whether they believe it or not is another matter, but they won’t bother us.”
“I’ll need transport.”
The woman crossed to the stove and poured thick solyanka soup into a bowl and placed it in front of Slanski, cut more bread, and poured another vodka for him. “There’s an old Skoda under a tarpaulin in the woodshed. Viktor brought it back from Poland in ’41, along with a mistress and a bad case of syphilis. The car still works perfectly well, and the tank’s full.”
“Can you drive?”
The woman nodded. “I was a driver in the army during the war. I sometimes take the Skoda into the city.”
“Can you show me around Moscow?”
“Will it be dangerous?”
“I doubt it. Just a nice leisurely drive to help me get my bearings. You have a map of the city?”
“An old one, from before the war.”
“That’ll do fine.”
The woman stood. “I’ll get the map. Have your soup before it gets cold.”
“One more thing.”
The woman looked at his face, and Slanski said, “What do I call you? Madame Dezov?”
Her eyes took in his bare chest as she laughed. “You? Anything you want. But Irena will do for now.”
40
* * *
MOSCOW
FEBRUARY 28, 2 P.M.
The small park off Marx Prospect was empty that afternoon.
With its ponds and landscaped gardens and wooden pavilions, the park had once been a favorite haunt of Tsar Nicholas until the KGB had decided to acquire it for its own private use. Tall birch trees protected it from the prying eyes of passersby, and an armed militiaman constantly guarded the wrought-iron gate.
Lukin was sitting in the BMW outside when he saw the Emka pull up in front of the gate.
Two plainclothes KGB men climbed out of the back. Anna Khorev was handcuffed to one of them. Someone had given her a man’s overcoat, and it hung loosely over her shoulders.
Lukin climbed out of the BMW and crossed to the men. “You can take off the handcuffs. That’ll be all. I don’t need you anymore.” When the handcuffs had been removed the two men left.
Lukin saw the confusion on Anna’s face. In the oversize coat she looked vulnerable. He nodded to the militiaman to open the gate, then looked back at her. “Come, let’s walk.”
Silver birch trees lined the narrow walks, and the place was peaceful apart from the faint hum of traffic. As they strolled toward a pond, Lukin pointed to one of the wooden benches. “Let’s sit, shall we?” He brushed away a dusting of snow, and when they had sat down he looked at her. “How are you feeling?”
“Why have I been brought here?”
“Anna, I told you my job is to find Slanski dead or alive. I’m going to be honest with you and tell you so far our searches have turned up nothing. He could be dead, of course, but I believe he’s still alive. He’s a very resourceful fellow. By now he could even be in Moscow. You’re the only one who can help me find him. I told you I’d give you time to consider your situation. But I have to be frank and tell you my superiors are becoming impatient. They want answers, and they want them fast. If I can’t get you to talk, then they’ll use someone who will. The kind of brute I told you about.”
“You’re wasting your time. I told you already, I can’t help you.”
“Can’t or won’t? You know the people who helped you on your journey to Moscow. And there may be other things that could offer some clue to help me find Slanski.”
“I have nothing to say.”
“Anna, I’m asking you to think again. Even if Slanski is alive and in Moscow, it’s impossible for him to succeed. The Kremlin and Stalin’s villa can’t be breached. And make no mistake, sooner or later Slanski will be caught. It would be better for your sake if you played a part in that by helping me. I know you won’t break easily under pressure. Anyone who has suffered as you did has nerves of steel. But in the Lubyanka cellars even a strong woman would talk eventually. These people have drugs, implements of torture. They’ve made braver and more stubborn people than you confess to crimes they didn’t even commit.”
He hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t want you to have to suffer that. It’s not worth it, Anna. Not for someone who’s going to be caught.”
Something in the tone of Lukin’s voice made Anna look at him. That same look of compassion was discernible in his soft brown eyes. “Do you mean it when you say you don’t want me to be hurt?”
“Of course. I’m not a beast, Anna. But if I don’t succeed, you’ll be tortured. Much more terribly than you can imagine.”
“Then if I asked you to kill me to save me from that pain, would you do that?”
“You know I couldn’t do that.”
“You know what I think? I think you just want me to believe that you’re half human. And that way you think I’ll confide in you.”
Lukin sighed and stood. He took a deep breath before he looked down at her. “My father, you know what he used to say? Begin with the truth. He was a principled man. Perhaps far too principled for this life. I’ve tried to begin with the truth. I’ve tried to tell you what will happen if you refuse to talk. You know that your position is impossible. But there may be a future for you if you help me.”
“You know I won’t be set free.”
“True, but any alternative to death is a welcome one.”
“What alternative?”
“If you help me, I’d ask the prosecutor to consider penal servitude in the Gulag instead of a death sentence when your case comes to court.”
For a long time Anna said nothing. She looked at the trees and the snow on the ground, then she looked back. “Have you ever been in the Gulag, Major Lukin?”
“No.”
“Death is a better alternative. There’s nothing but brutality and hunger and slow death. You’re treated worse than a pack animal. I can’t tell you what you want to know, because I really don’t know where Slanski might be if he’s alive. Whether you believe me or not is up to you. And even if I did know, I wouldn’t tell you. Your friends in the cellars can do what they want, but the answer will be the same. As for those who helped us, they knew nothing of Slanski’s plans. To tell you their names wouldn’t help you find Slanski but simply expose them to suffering and death.”
“But you can still reveal what you planned to do when you reached Moscow. You can still tell me their names.”
“I’ll only tell you one thing: leave me alone.”
Lukin saw the angry defiance on her face as she turned away. “I’m sorry it’s come to this. I admire your bravery, but I think you’re being a foolish woman. Foolish because your bravery is unnecessary, and because you have a choice. Help me, and I will try to help you. It may mean having to face a life sentence in a camp, and that’s not pleasant, I agree, but it’s surely better than death.” He paused. “But whatever your decision, I want you to have this moment.”
She looked back at him and frowned. “What do you mean?”
Lukin nodded to the militiaman at the gate. A moment later Pasha appeared. A little girl clutched his hand. She was very pretty. She wore a red winter coat and a woolen hat and gloves and tiny brown boots. She looked about her uncertainly.
When Lukin turned back he saw the shock on Anna Khorev’s face. Disbelief and confusion, a look of both joy and pain. Her cry shattered the silence of the park. “Sasha!”
The little girl started at the sound of her name, and her face looked a mas
k of confusion. She stared over at her mother uncertainly, then her lips trembled and she began to cry. Pasha let go of her. Anna ran to her daughter and swept her up. She smothered her in kisses, touched her face, and stroked her hair, washed away all the confusion the child felt, until finally the little girl had stopped crying and her mother held her tightly.
Lukin stood watching until he could bear it no longer. He looked at Anna. Her wet eyes met his. “You have an hour, Anna. Then we talk again.”
• • •
Slanski unfolded the street map and stared out beyond the Skoda’s windshield as Irena drove.
The broad boulevards of Moscow were jammed with yellow trolley buses and covered trucks spurting black clouds of exhaust. Droves of small Emka taxis whizzed by, and a few shiny black limousines, Soviet officials sitting stern-faced beside their drivers.
Irena drove the little gray Skoda erratically, paying no heed to the icy slush that covered the streets as she wove in and out of the chaos of traffic. It was anything but a leisurely drive, but Slanski noticed that most of the other vehicles seemed to be driven just as carelessly. Irena explained that because most cars had no heaters, drivers often drank vodka to keep out the cold.
The pavements seemed crowded with a million different faces: Russians and Slavs, dark-eyed Georgians and flat-faced Tartars and Mongolians. When they reached the Arbat, the old merchant district of the city, Slanski saw the golden domes and cupolas of the Kremlin in the distance. Waves of raw-plastered apartment blocks lay beyond in the suburbs on either side of the Moscow River.
They drove around the city for another half hour, Slanski referencing the streets to the map, until Irena said, “Now what do you want me to do?”
“Drive to KGB Headquarters on Dzerzhinsky Square and drop me off.”
Irena looked at him in disbelief. “Are you crazy?”
“Pick me up outside the Bolshoi Theater in an hour.”
Irena shook her head in horror. “Definitely, your brain has to be missing. The KGB are looking for you, and you want me to leave you outside their front door?”
“That’s the last place they’ll look for me.”
A car honked as Irena cut recklessly across its path. She honked back and shook her fist in an angry gesture. “Idiot!”
“What did you drive in the war, Irena? A tank?”
She looked over and smiled. “A Zis truck. Don’t laugh—I was a good driver. I told you, most of the madmen on the roads are drunk. At least I’m sober.”
“The war’s over, so take it easy on the accelerator. The last thing we need is a militiaman troubling us for speeding.”
“Bah! You can talk about trouble! You’re the one who wants to be left at Dzerzhinsky Square.”
The Skoda left the Arbat, and then Slanski saw the red walls and the mustard-yellow buildings of the Kremlin. On a broad cobbled street in front stood St. Basil’s, its candy-colored towers soaring into the skyline. Minutes later Irena had turned into a series of narrow cobbled streets near the Bolshoi Theater and finally came out onto a massive square.
A giant metal fountain stood in the center, the water turned off in the icy temperature in case it froze and cracked the metal, and traffic and trolley buses hurtled around it. Directly across the square stood a huge seven-story yellow sandstone building. Irena pointed to it. “Dzerzhinsky Square. KGB Headquarters. The place once belonged to an insurance company before Felix Dzerzhinsky, the head of the secret police, took it over.”
Slanski saw a pair of massive brown oak doors set in the front entrance. Searchlights ringed the top, and uniformed militiamen patrolled the pavement around the building.
Irena said, “The entrance to the Lubyanka prison is around the back. There’s a pair of big black metal gates and security is tight—no one’s ever escaped. Anyone in Moscow will tell you that.” She looked at Slanski’s face as he studied the building. “Even if your friend’s in there, you’re wasting your time if you think you can rescue her. You’d be a nutcase to even try.”
“Let me out over there.” He pointed to a huge wrought-iron archway on the left side of the square opposite the KGB building. A sign above the archway said “Lubyansky Arcade.” The pavement was crowded with people entering and leaving the arched entrance, and beyond it Slanski saw lines of drab-looking shops down either side of the arcade.
Irena drove over and pulled in but kept the engine running. “Only the KGB could think of having a public shopping arcade next to a house of torture.”
Slanski opened the passenger door. “An hour from now, at the Bolshoi.”
Irena touched his arm. “Be careful.” He smiled at her as he climbed out, and then he slammed the car door and moved onto the crowded pavement.
• • •
Lukin looked at Anna Khorev’s face as they sat on the park bench.
She looked miserable, and her eyes were red from crying. The park was empty again. Pasha had taken away the little girl. Lukin saw the grief on Anna’s face when she refused to let go of her daughter. She had clung to the child as if her life depended on her. The little girl was confused and upset and had started crying again, and the militiamen at the gate had to help Lukin hold her mother down while Pasha took the child to the car.
Sobs racked Anna Khorev’s body as she saw the car drive away. Then she slumped onto the bench, inconsolable. Lukin felt overcome by guilt. He had put Anna through a terrible trauma; she had not seen her daughter in well over a year. He had given her the child and taken her back again. He imagined Nadia in such a situation, having to endure the same scenario, and he felt sick.
He understood Anna’s pain, wanted to tell her so, but knew she wouldn’t believe him. It was pointless. Besides, he was becoming emotionally affected, not a good thing. He took a handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed her wet face. She pushed him away. He touched her arm. “Anna, before I take you back to the Lubyanka we have to talk.”
She pushed him away again. “Don’t touch me!”
Her tears had stopped but she seemed in shock, her eyes glazed, and he wondered if she had gone over the edge. There was something deeply disturbing about the look on her face, and he wondered if he should take her to a doctor. “Anna, look at me.”
She didn’t look back at him as she spoke, the red eyes staring into space, pain in her voice. “Why have you done this to me? Why have you put me through this?”
“No matter what happens I thought you would want to see Sasha again.”
“Because I’m going to die?”
“I told you the alternative. And if you help me, I’ll do all I can to make sure that you be allowed to take your daughter with you.”
She looked at him, grief in her face. “And what sort of life would that be for my daughter? Living in a frozen penal camp in the Arctic Circle—you think she’d survive that?”
“At least you’d be together.”
“She’d survive in the orphanage. In a camp she’d be dead within a year.”
Lukin sighed, not knowing whether to say it, seeing the desolation in her face. “Anna, if you don’t talk, it’s not only you who’ll die. Sasha may die with you.”
He saw her face turn white as she stared at him. “No . . .you couldn’t do that. She’s . . .she’s only a child . . .”
Lukin stood and looked down at her. “It’s not up to me, Anna. But I know Beria. And I know Romulka, the man who will interrogate you if I fail. They’ll do it if they can’t make you talk. I’m going to be honest with you: Beria’s given me until tomorrow night. If I fail, I hand you over to him. He’ll break you, Anna—be certain of it. And once you’re out of my hands I’ll have no say in the matter.”
He looked down at her wet eyes. “Help me, Anna. For Sasha’s sake, help me find Slanski.”
• • •
As Slanski walked through the crowded Lubyansky Arcade, bodies pressed in on him, people bustling past and jostling to squeeze into the tiny shops that lined the arcade. When he came out of the arcade at the far end he w
as in a narrow cobbled street. He turned right and came around onto the street opposite the side entrance of the west wing of KGB Headquarters. He saw another pair of tall double oak doors like those at the front, but here there was no guard. Twenty yards beyond the doors he noticed a cobbled street at the back of the KGB building. It was crowded with parked military trucks and a couple of civilian cars.
Slanski saw a pair of massive black gates set between the stone walls and guessed it was the entrance to the Lubyanka prison. Two uniformed guards stood beside a sentry hut, rifles slung over their shoulders. Powerful searchlights ran the entire length of the top of the building, and every window had steel bars.
The place looked impenetrable.
Suddenly the guards stood back and the gates swung in, and a covered Zis truck thundered out and turned left into the traffic.
Slanski glimpsed a courtyard inside and ranks of parked trucks and cars, and then the gates swung shut again. As he stood watching one of the guards on the gate noticed him. He turned around and walked back along the square.
One whole side of the square seemed to consist of dingy cafés and restaurants. As he passed the window of a café he saw a number of men in dark blue uniforms sitting inside. He guessed from their appearance and uniform markings that they were guards from the prison on their break.
Slanski went inside the café and got in line to pay for a glass of tea, then took his receipt to a stoutly built woman serving behind the counter. She handed him the glass in a metal cup, and he took it to a table near the prison guards. He made a mental note of the guards’ rank and uniform markings. They were a hardened-looking bunch of men, talking in whispers among themselves. He wondered if any of them were guarding Anna. If she was alive.
There was a burst of coarse laughter from behind. When Slanski glanced around he saw a flash of color. Half a dozen small, wiry men, their Uzbek faces brown and wrinkled, were leaving their table and heading toward the door. Wisps of beards dangled from their chins, and their short-cropped heads were covered in brightly colored skullcaps. Some wore brightly dyed silk or cotton gowns over their shoulders, and they chatted in a dialect Slanski couldn’t understand. They looked like a flock of exotic birds in the drab surroundings.