by Glenn Meade
Lukin could feel a wave of heat from the next room, pleasant after the icy air in the freezing streets outside. On one of the wooden benches were Pasha’s clothes. On another lay an enamel basin of hot steaming water, obviously left for Lukin. He undressed and laid his clothes neatly on one of the benches. He left the metal hook strapped to his arm; it looked ugly and awkward. He placed the cotton towel over his head and soaked the birch leaves in the basin of hot water. Then he opened the glass door and stepped into the scented mist.
Pasha lay naked on a damp stone bench, looking terribly pale, a white cotton towel around his shoulders, a patch of blood on his bandaged wound. A bearded, elderly Uzbek wearing a towel around his waist stood over him. The Uzbek was vigorously flaying Pasha’s sweating legs and buttocks with a bundle of damp birch leaves.
On the floor lay a small enamel tub of hot water, fresh sponges, and a small pile of mint leaves laid out on a wooden tray. Next to the tray was a bottle of vodka and two glasses, and beside them Pasha’s worn leather briefcase. The Uzbek stopped flaying and looked around at Lukin. Slit eyes squinted out of a cautious face.
Pasha stirred and raised his body painfully from the stone bench. He saw Lukin and turned to the Uzbek. “Leave us, Itzkhan.” The Uzbek nodded and went out. Pasha waited until he heard the outer door close, then gestured to one of the stone benches. “Sit down, Yuri.”
There was something odd in his tone, but Lukin removed the towel from his head and put it around his waist, then sat on a bench opposite. The steam room was hot. He put down the birch leaves; he was too tired to flay his skin.
Lukin watched as Pasha picked up one of the sponges and soaked it in hot water and began to sponge himself, his face strained with pain, although he seemed in no hurry. Lukin said impatiently, “You said this was important, Pasha.”
Pasha studied his face. “You look desperate. As if you haven’t slept much in a week.”
Lukin felt on the verge of collapse. “Both true. How’s your wound?”
“It could be worse. The morphine the doctor gave me to ease the pain is wearing off. But this place helps me to relax.”
Pasha stopped sponging his body and stood. He crossed to a hot-water tap in the corner, filled an enamel basin with steaming water, and crushed a handful of mint leaves into the basin. He came back and cupped Lukin’s chin in his hand. For several moments he studied Lukin’s face oddly, like an examining physician, then handed him the basin and a fresh sponge. “Your adrenaline’s flowing like sweat. Here, soak yourself and inhale the steam. You know what we old bathers say: ‘The steam bath makes you sweat to get tough and get slim. It cleanses the body and the devils within.’ ” He smiled faintly at the old Moscow rhyme. The smile faded, and his face became more serious. “You look like you have devils in your soul, Yuri.”
Lukin lifted the basin and inhaled. The aroma of the hot fragrant water was like a balm. He dipped the sponge in the steaming basin, closed his eyes, and slowly ran it over his face. The scent of mint filled his nostrils, the fragrant liquid soothing on his skin. He stopped sponging, opened his wet eyes, and saw Pasha staring at him. “The mint helps?”
“A little. Tell me what’s so important. Much as I need to calm down, I don’t have time for this.”
Pasha stood and picked up his leather briefcase. He nodded toward the door that led to the dressing room. “Come, let’s go inside. There’s something I have to show you.”
• • •
When they stepped into the dressing room Pasha closed the door. He crossed to the wooden bench and undid the straps on the briefcase, removed a red-covered file, and looked back. “Did anything about the Wolf strike you as strange?”
Lukin frowned. “What do you mean, strange?”
“For one, we know there were several pages missing from the copy of his file. Like I said before, it’s usual that an investigator be given access to all information for the case he’s working on.”
“Look, what’s this about, Pasha?”
Pasha paused. “I’ve known you a long time, Yuri. I’ve always liked and admired you. We’ve seen good and bad times together.”
Lukin said irritably, “Will you tell me what all this is about?”
For several long moments Pasha’s eyes seemed to search Lukin’s face, then he said, “You were right when you said you didn’t trust Beria. You were right to doubt why he picked you. And tonight I found out why.”
“I don’t understand.”
Pasha sat next to him on the bench. “You’re a good man, Yuri Lukin. And a good investigator. However, they’ve fooled you.”
“Who has?”
“Stalin and Beria.”
Lukin frowned in confusion and searched the Mongolian’s face. He saw fear there. Pasha wasn’t hesitating in order to prolong telling him. He seemed genuinely afraid. As he handed the file over, his hands shook. “I want you to see this.”
“What is it?”
“It came from Alex Slanski’s original file.”
“Pasha, you fool.”
“Don’t lecture me, Yuri. We’re desperate. We’re down a dead end, so I went to the Archives office and stole a key and had a look for the original file. I was seen by one of the clerks who came in, but not before I managed to get the file.”
“Pasha—”
“Listen to me. It couldn’t get any worse for me if I was caught. It couldn’t get any worse for both of us. We’re in deep enough trouble. Me, I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.”
“Pasha, you’ve put yourself in real danger.”
“No more than I’m in already.” Pasha hesitated. “Yuri, there’s something in the file you were deliberately not allowed to see. And there’s more, but first you should examine what I’ve given you.” Pasha stood and crossed to the door, opened it softly. He looked back at Lukin, a wistful look on his face. “I’m going to leave you alone now. Look and read carefully, Yuri. Afterward we’ll talk.”
The door closed, and Pasha was gone. Lukin opened the file. There was a single photograph and a single, faded flimsy page inside. He looked at the photograph first. It was old and yellowed, and its edges were frayed. It showed a man and a woman, laughing at the camera. The man was handsome and clean-shaven, with a fine chiseled face and dark, soft eyes. The woman was blond and quite beautiful, with high cheekbones and a strong, determined face. She sat on the man’s knee with her arms around his neck. They looked happy and very much in love.
From the style and cut of the couple’s clothes, Lukin guessed the photograph had been taken sometime in the late twenties or early thirties. He flipped it over and saw a blue ink stamp in the lower right-hand corner that gave the name of a photographer’s studio on Marx Prospect. There was something familiar about the couple’s features, and he guessed they were Slanski’s parents. He had the odd feeling he had seen their faces somewhere before. They could have been well-known Party members.
He put the photograph aside. The single page gave brief details of Slanski’s family background. His real family name was Stefanovitch, and his father had been a rural doctor living in Smolensk. The report stated that the OGPU, the precursor to the KGB secret police, had called to arrest him and his family. But no reason was given.
According to the report, the doctor had resisted arrest and had been killed trying to escape. His wife had tried to assist his escape and was shot also. The three children were arrested, and the order stated they were to be shot. The death warrant for the doctor and his wife had been authorized personally by Joseph Stalin.
It didn’t make sense. How had Slanski survived if he was one of the children?
Again, Lukin read the file carefully. In many ways the information seemed unimportant. The tragedy made him better understand a powerful motive of revenge on Slanski’s part, but little else. But there was nothing there that could really help his investigation. Nothing that would point a way for him. No names of family friends Slanski might try to contact in Moscow. And it did not explain how Slanski had
survived while all the other members of his family had perished.
That puzzled Lukin. For a long time he sat thinking. He lit a cigarette and watched the smoke curl in front of his face. He stood with a sense of urgency, ready to head for the door and find Pasha. There had to be something in all this he didn’t see. Had to be. But what?
And why? That was the question. Why had Pasha given him the file?
• • •
The door opened and Pasha entered. He carried the bottle of vodka and the two glasses.
Lukin said, “I told you I’ve no time for this, Pasha.”
The Mongolian ignored him, poured a generous measure into each glass before putting the bottle down on the bench and handing one of the glasses to Lukin. “Take it. Drink.”
“I told you—”
“You’re going to need it.”
“Why?”
Pasha studied Lukin’s face. “Did you find nothing familiar in what you just read and saw?”
“In what way familiar?”
Pasha stared back, unblinking. “I meant the way the information in the file fits together like a puzzle.”
Lukin shook his head, confused. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Pasha sat down opposite. He placed his glass beside him and sighed. “Nothing in the file about Slanski’s parents struck you as odd? Who they were? What happened to them?”
“What happened to his father and mother happened to many people during the purges. What I don’t understand is how Slanski survived. The file said the entire family was to be killed.”
Pasha slowly shook his head. “That’s not what I meant, Yuri. Let me remind you of something about Stalin, something all of us in the KGB know. Some evil streak in him gets delight in inflicting a very personal form of punishment. It was especially so during the purges in the thirties. When Stalin’s victims were parents, their children over the age of twelve were killed also.
“The younger ones were not spared if Stalin saw fit, but usually they were sent to the orphanages controlled by the KGB. Many of the boys, when they came of age, were inducted into the same KGB. And so they became what their parents would never have wanted: dedicated to Stalin, the sword and shield of the Party, members of his secret police. Most likely to become the same kind of man as the one who arrested and killed their parents. Stalin finds it cruelly amusing.”
He paused. “You see, there’s another reason you were chosen to find and kill this American, but you still haven’t figured it out. A reason why the page and photograph were missing from the Wolf’s file.”
“Why?”
A look of concern crossed Pasha’s face. “Stalin probably told Beria not to let you see them. Because once you did you’d see through his sick joke. It was no doubt Stalin’s idea to pick you to hunt down and kill Slanski. He had a perverted reason that amused him.
“Think back, Yuri. Like me you were an orphan. What happened to my parents could have happened to Slanski’s. Think back to your own life, before you were sent to the orphanage. Think back to your family.”
“I . . .I can’t remember.”
“You can. But you don’t want to. You’ve tried to blot everything about your past from your mind, and you were made to do so at the orphanage, just like me, weren’t you?” Pasha removed another flimsy page and a photograph from his tunic pocket. He handed the photograph over. “That was also in Slanski’s file. It’s a photograph of the couple’s children.” He held up the page. “So was this—the second missing page. It says the order to kill the children was rescinded at the last moment. Instead, they were sent to an orphanage in Moscow. It says two of them, a boy and a girl, were later given different names. One of the names you know well. Study the photograph closely, Yuri.”
Lukin looked down at the photograph. It was of two small boys and a very young girl with blond hair. They stood together in a wheat field laughing at the camera. The oldest of the three, the one in the middle, was obviously Slanski as a child. He had his arms around the smaller children protectively.
Suddenly the two other faces in the photograph jolted Lukin. The girl was aged no more than four or five, her pale face angelic. And the second boy, his face was suddenly and frighteningly familiar. Lukin felt a shock go through him and looked up.
Pasha said, “The little girl’s name was Katya. She was your sister. The couple in the photograph were your parents. The boy on the right is you, Petya Stefanovitch, before you were given the name Yuri Lukin. You were seven years old.”
Lukin turned white. Not a muscle moved on his face as he stared back at Pasha, his body numbed with shock.
Pasha said, “Alex Slanski is your brother.”
• • •
Lukin signed in at the entrance hall of the Officer’s Club on Dzerzhinsky Square and climbed the winding marble staircase to the second floor. The large room he entered looked like a miniature palace, with its marble columns and gilded chandeliers and red-carpeted floors. The air was thick with cigarette smoke and a babble of voices. Lukin pushed his way through the crowd to the bar and ordered a large vodka, but as the white-coated orderly poured he said, “I’ve changed my mind. Give me the bottle.”
He took the bottle and glass to an empty table by the window. Lukin was hardly conscious of the noise at the bar behind him as he filled the glass to the brim and swallowed. He had swallowed three glasses and poured a fourth before he noticed he was shaking. He felt icy cold and sweat poured down his temples. He felt anger and a terrible feeling of confusion. He felt . . .
He didn’t know what he felt.
Fear for Nadia certainly, but it was much more than that. Lukin looked out the window. The massive form of the KGB Headquarters stood on the far side of the square, lit up by the soft white glow of the security arc lamps. For a long time he stared out at the building in a daze.
Suddenly he felt tears welling up and a powerful feeling of distress overcame him. He could hardly believe what Pasha had told him.
The man and woman in the photograph were his parents.
The little girl his sister Katya.
Alex Slanski his brother, Mischa.
Lukin’s own name was Petya Ivan Stefanovitch.
But now that he had read the second missing page from the file he knew it was true. A wave of anger rose and almost smothered him. He swallowed the fourth vodka in one gulp and poured another.
His mind fogged. Then cleared. Lukin racked his brains for memories from his past, a past he had always been forced to forget at the Moscow orphanage. Now he could do nothing but remember.
That day he had gone to collect Anna Khorev’s daughter and saw the urchin faces at the orphanage window he had shuddered. He had reacted because he was seeing his own past. He remembered always looking out of the window after his brother had escaped, always hoping Mischa would come back. Hoping Mischa was still alive. But they told him Mischa was dead.
He had been lied to. Katya had been lied to.
Lukin felt so overcome with emotion he thought his brain would burst a blood vessel.
He had a vague recollection of the man who had been his father but a stronger memory of his mother. Lukin was a small boy. She was walking with him in a wood. It was summer. She was picking flowers. One of her hands held his; another held his brother’s. The woman smiled down at him . . .
Think. Remember.
And then he saw his brother’s face clearly, as if a curtain had lifted inside his head. The same face as in the photograph. Slanski. He knew there was something oddly familiar about the face at the checkpoint in Tallinn.
A fog rolled away. He remembered the day the wolves came and he had run to his father’s arms. “Wolves, Papa!”
“Bah! He’s afraid of everything,” Mischa laughed.
“Then why did you run, too?”
“Because you ran, little brother. And I couldn’t stop you.”
His father carried them into the warm, happy house, and his mother fussed over them. And afterward, that same night, ly
ing in his bed, the storm came and he heard the wolves again, howling in the woods, and Mischa’s voice saying across the darkened room, “Are you afraid?”
Lightning flashed, and thunder rolled beyond the bedroom window. Lukin had started to cry then, fearful of the noise and light, and the wild animals in the woods baying in the terrible storm.
“Don’t be afraid, little brother. Mischa will protect you. Come, sleep beside me.”
He had snuggled in beside his brother, still crying, and Mischa’s arms went around him and hugged him close.
“Don’t cry, Petya. Mischa will always protect you. And if anyone or anything ever tries to hurt you I will kill them. You understand, little brother? And when Mama has her baby, Mischa will protect baby, too.”
And all through the night Mischa had held him close, warm and safe and comforted. Mischa—
“I’m surprised you find time to relax. Enjoy it while it lasts, Lukin.”
He started at the voice behind him and turned, not even aware of the tears at the edges of his eyes. Romulka stood there, a mocking grin on his face, a glass of brandy in his hand.
Lukin wiped his face and turned away. “Get away from me, you thug.”
Romulka smirked. “Now that’s no way to speak to a fellow officer. You ought to be more respectful. What’s wrong, Lukin? Worried what might happen to you and your wife when Beria learns you’ve failed him? I just thought you’d like to know the Frenchman still hasn’t talked—he’s holding out remarkably well.” He held up his glass and grinned. “It’s thirsty work, and I need some refreshment before I really go to work on him. But if a little more torture fails, then I have something in store for Lebel that’s certain to loosen his tongue. That can only mean one thing, Lukin. Once I find the American you’ll be finished, and the woman will be my responsibility. Besides, your forty-eight hours will soon be up.”
“I said get away from me, Romulka.”
“Something bothers me. I hear you had the woman transferred to Lefortovo this evening. But you know what’s odd? The prison has no record of receiving her. Now why is that?” When Lukin didn’t reply, Romulka leaned in closer and said threateningly, “If you’re trying to hide her from me I’ll make you shorter by a head. Where’s the woman, Lukin? Where is she?”