The Margin of Evil!

by Simon Boxall

  The rooms, by Moscow 1919 standards, were very Spartan. There was a chair by the window and a table next to it. By them was a pile of books he had found on the street; a straw mat lay in front of the fireplace. Over by the far wall underneath the mirror was an old battered settee. Many were the times, and too exhausted to go to bed he had come back from work and slept on the settee. The bedroom next door was sparsely furnished. There was an old wooden bed, if you could call it that. Georgii thought it reminded him of a fat trestle table with sheets on it. Opposite was a huge wardrobe that dwarfed everything else in the room. On the other wall was a basin with a tap that spewed out brown water when it felt like it.

  He fixed himself some black bread and soup and then went to bed. Bed was the best place to be in January. Simply because the place was so cold, and, also if he sat by the window, the noise of the writer typing away up stairs on his typewriter always annoyed him. It stopped him thinking.

  The dream was always the same; it seldom ever changed. It was a hot summer morning on the steppe. The horizon disappeared into heat haze. In the distance there was the sound of distant thunder, but the rumble just got louder and louder. Georgii was standing on the far bank of the river. On the other side he could see men women and children laughing and playing. All the time the sound was getting louder. Now he could see that shapes in the distance were becoming visible. Men were riding on horseback. He could see now that they were Cossacks and their sabres were drawn. There was nothing that Georgii Radetzky could do, as he was standing on the wrong side of the river. Everything moved in slow motion. The people looked up and the riders smashed into them killing all the men women and children. It was all over in a flash. The Cossacks left as quickly as they had arrived. There was only silence. All that could be heard was the distant cries of a baby carried, on the wind.

  Georgii woke up. He was soaked through with sweat. He got up, smoked a cigarette then went back to bed.

  The next morning Georgii woke up late. It was still dark outside and the flat was freezing cold. He got up, washed and got dressed whilst trying to eat some scraps of food. Breakfast consisted of a stale piece of black bread. He walked out of the dingy flat, replaced the tiny paper ball, shut the door and left for work.

  The station was reasonably quiet, he checked in at the reception and then went upstairs to his desk. He sat down and killed time and prepared himself for the daily staff briefing. Vasiliev pointed over to an office within the office. Over in the far corner was a very attractive, middle-aged woman. Georgii knew her from somewhere, but he could not put his finger on where he had seen her before. He turned and asked Vasiliev who she was. He said that she had arrived last night and they had taken 'Old' Timoshkin away, apparently he had been escorted off site and driven off in a waiting car. Vasiliev reckoned that she was a Bolshevik stooge, put in place to make sure that they did not - the remaining staff - develop any dated 'Old World' bourgeois tendencies. What was it that Georgii had remembered from the meeting with Gerhardt? 'Criminals were still criminals. Only the uniforms had changed! 'Cultural criminals indeed, he thought. The thought amused him and he savoured it for a moment.

  'Everyone to my office.' The woman's voice said.

  He got up and walked over with Vasiliev. She was standing behind Timoshkin's old desk eyeing everyone that entered her office. They sat down.

  'My name is Comrade Trofimov. I am now in charge of this Militsya/ Cheka station.'

  'Where's Comrade Timoshkin?' A voice behind Georgii asked.

  'On a need to know, you don't need to know,' her icy voice replied.

  'On whose authority was he replaced,' another said.

  'He was replaced by the authority of the Central Committee,' Trofimov replied. There was a hint of sarcasm in her voice. 'Now, down to business. It has come to the party's notice that things have been run shoddily, especially in this station. Things will change with immediate effect. From now on all of you will file regular reports. You will tell me what you are working on when you are here and where you are working. Failure to comply with these orders will result in immediate disciplinary action…, you will all see me with your reports during the course of today.'

  Georgii walked back to his desk. He thought about the Bolsheviks' concept of, and their implementation of, disciplinary action. It went hand in hand with public humiliation, trial and summary execution. He sat down and lit up a cigarette. He looked back towards Trofimov's office. Vasiliev was in there waving his hands around. She was repeatedly jabbing her finger at him. Whereas he looked desperate, she remained composed. He got on with his work and thought about his up and coming meeting with Gerhardt. The best plan of action was - and this had always served him well in the past - keep your head down and do not draw attention to yourself. He looked up, Vasiliev shaking his head, was walking back towards their shared desk.

  'Georgii, that bitch wants you in there right now! No wonder they call her Lenin's whore!' Vasiliev sat down and wiped the beads of perspiration off his forehead.

  'Gave you a right going over did she?'

  'Shouldn't laugh to soon Radetzky. She'll soon wipe that cheeky grin right off your face!' Vasiliev said.

  Georgii got up and walked over to her office. He knocked on the door and waited. He peered through the window; she was in there with some lackey. He knew her from someplace, now where was it…

  'Comrade Radetzky, come in,' she said.

  She sat there behind Timoshkin's old desk. Georgii could see that she had made herself at home. She was leafing through some papers. Trofimov looked up and fixed him with her steely gaze.

  'You don't remember me do you?' She said.

  It was true he couldn't quite remember her, but he knew the face.

  'No I don't,' he replied.

  'You should Georgii Radetzky, you should!' She pushed a file towards him.

  He reached forward and opened the old Okhrana[5] file. There was a photograph on the first page. It was Trofimov and she looked a lot younger. He read on. She had been a Menshevik in the early 1900s. It had been rumoured that she had been both the love interest of Martov and Lenin. Lenin apparently had won out. He apparently, in those days, had used her for the execution of personal assignments. Her loyalty to him was unquestioned. On several occasions agents of The Okhrana had penetrated to the heart of the party. But always they had come to a sticky end. The coincidence was, and this really amazed him because in a flash he realised, (only after he recognised that the report had been written by his own hand), from where he knew her. Agents always started to disappear when Anya Trofimov was in town. Liaisons with this woman had proven to be fatal for most Okhrana agents.

  Georgii had been part of the team that had tried to arrest her in 1910. Again they tracked her down in 1913 and again during the turbulent July and August of 1914. Then the war had broken out and attention was turned towards 'The Central Powers', spies and other agent’s provocateurs. Anya Trofimov had promptly disappeared and was soon forgotten. He looked on through her file. Georgii remembered now that she had been arrested after 1905. She had been interrogated and quite badly tortured. During these interrogations she had lost the use of her right eye. He looked up and looked at her. She was staring intently at him.

  'Read on 'Comrade' Radetzky,' she said.

  He carried on reading. Apparently she had spent a lot of time with the Lenins in Switzerland. She had negotiated with the German government on behalf of the Bolsheviks. She had later travelled through Germany on the sealed train and subsequently through Sweden and Finland. One case officer had written in the margin that this woman was poison; all those whom came into contact with her sooner or later fell by the wayside. He was right. For a moment Georgii pondered on his own fate, as probably had the war not intervened, he would have gone the way of all the others.

  Georgii remembered her Okhrana nickname and snorted, 'It was 'The Granite Faced Slag'. He also remembered the time when she had told him that she had loved him. He had come to arrest her. He had told her that the
game was up and then she had made one last request. 'The right', she had told him, 'of all condemned prisoners' and then she had slipped right through his fingers. She had had connections in very high places. When it was convenient she used them to hide behind the law. They had pulled strings and had engineered her escape. Or, as he seemed to remember at the time, when Gerhardt had broken the news to him there were other things going on of which he, Georgii, was to know nothing. His investigations and those of others were interfering with other matters of national importance. So be it, he'd thought at the time, no use crying over spilt milk, if that is the way they wanted it, that was the way it was going to be! After all, he reasoned, the 'Big-Man' gets to call the tune.

  'You're not a fellow traveller are you Georgii?' She said in a mockingly seductive tone.

  'A Bolshevik you mean? he replied.

  'Yes.'

  'No ... But I'm a patriot!' He felt that she was playing with him.

  'I see ...' she pondered his comments. Then added. 'So you think that we're not,' Trofimov said throwing the cat right amongst the pigeons.

  'I didn't say that! I said that I'm a patriot. I want what's best for Russia,' he said, adding indignantly, 'maybe something good will come out of this rotten mess.'

  'So do we, Comrade Radetzky!' She then changed her tack; 'I've often thought about you Georgii, what became of you in recent years. I've often regretted not saying goodbye ...' She banged her finger down on an open page.' I see you worked with Brusilov ... The pair of you almost won the war - shame that no one in the Imperial Army backed you up. I suppose they were all too busy curtseying to Alexandra and hanging onto the Tsars coat tails whilst Rasputin[6] danced a merry jig around all of them,' she said mockingly. 'Just as well for us that you didn't. Which brings me as to why I’ve asked you, in here, for this informal chat? I know you are not one of us but the sad thing is we need the help of people like you. That's fine, Georgii Radetzky, but you play by our rules and those rules are that whatever you are working on you run by my aides or me first. I want daily updates from you, and we will be, as of now, assigning cases for you to work on, we reserve the right at a moment's notice, to veto, or take over any investigation that you might be working on. If you do not abide by these rules, I will personally see that you and others like you will share the fate of The Traitor, Timoshkin!' She gave him one of her legendary stares.

  'Timoshkin was no traitor! He wanted what was best for everyone. He didn't discriminate,' he said.

  'Then why was he caught helping bourgeois non-citizens flee Moscow?' She said curtly.

  'People are leaving Moscow every day. The city is virtually surrounded by the Whites. There is no food: rations are reduced on a daily basis! Why would anyone in his or her right mind want to stay? The only food you can get is on the blackmarket ... conditions are worse than they were during the war!'

  'Why do you stay Georgii?' She said.

  'Because I've got nowhere else to go, that's why! Why do you keep that file ...?' He retorted.

  'Well then, beggars can't be choosers can they? As for the file, I keep it as a reminder! Of better times when I had two eyes,' she hissed. There was a brief pause while she composed herself, then she carried on. 'Look! This is what you and your kind did to me!'

  He watched as she took her right eye out of its socket. She then bounced it on the table twice and then coolly replaced it. 'Okay you've made your point,' Georgii thought.

  'Tomorrow at dawn, I want you to be part of a raid I'm organising. Briefing will be at four thirty in the morning. The raid will be at six. Radetzky you may go but remember, I will be watching you and one mistake and it will all be over for you! Remember that! You may go and get Popov.'

  Georgii sat down at his desk. Vasiliev was on the phone. He thought about the meeting with Trofimov. The boot was most definitely on the other foot and he would definitely from now on have to mind his 'Ps' and 'Qs'. He would just have to take extra care on whatever he did. He went home.

  Next morning the streets were almost deserted. He looked at his watch. It was three o'clock in the morning. Georgii made his way to the Militsya station. Snow had fallen in the night and this had made walking difficult. These days there was no street lighting. He could make out distant shapes scurrying around in the darkness but no one bothered him. He persevered on with his journey. There was a damp sensation in his boots. They were beginning to leak. Georgii sighed; he would have to go down to the city mortuary to see if he could get hold of another pair. Arriving at the station, he found that the place was a hive of activity. Red Guards were receiving and giving orders; other people were milling around. Georgii pushed his way through the throng and went on up to the first floor. For once in his life he was early. He sat down at his desk. He could see that Trofimov was in her office. She was busy talking to a Red Guard.

  Vasiliev came in and the pair waited until they were called. They did not have to wait long. Trofimov summoned them all to the centre of the office. She explained exactly what she wanted. The Guards would go in first and then the Militsya/ Cheka team would follow on behind. Acting on intelligence received there were some non-citizens who planned to leave Moscow within the next 24 hours. Their intentions were to smuggle out artefacts of national importance. The orders came from the top and they had to be stopped at all costs. She then gave a long boring speech on how remnants of bourgeois and intelligentsia had organised themselves, with the soul intention of robbing the proletariat of its cultural heritage. They all synchronised their watches, then set off for their destination.

  The motorcade set off and soon parked up a couple of streets away from their objective. The street was like any other in Moscow at six o'clock in the morning. The snow had erased everything on the pavement. It was virgin snow. There were no lights on - no signs of life. The house looked as though it had been transported back ten years in time. Georgii thought to himself that the street seemed relatively untouched by the madness of the last two years. They crouched down and waited. He watched. A whistle blew and some Red Guards ran up to the front door and forced it open with a battering ram. They disappeared inside; he could now hear a commotion going on inside the house. He ran into the house. The scene that greeted him was one of unimaginable chaos being created within the environs of order. The noise had moved on to an upper floor. Vasiliev ran upstairs. Georgii stayed on the ground floor. He looked around. The house was immaculate, there were pictures on the wall and the carpets were not soiled. It was a perfect picture of order. There was an old woman in her nightclothes remonstrating with the Guards. They ignored her and started to help themselves to whatever they wanted. Georgii went up to her; she turned around and spat into his face. Suddenly, there was a loud deafening bang.

  He ran upstairs to where the sound had come from. Vasiliev stood there his back towards him, then his legs crumpled and Vasiliev's body fell backwards. Georgii looked down and saw that there was a scorch mark right between the eyes; blood was slowly seeping out of it.

  Standing between the body and the fireplace was a young boy. The boy was holding a loaded revolver. He was now pointing it at Georgii.

  'What's your name?' Georgii said.

  'Fyodor,' the boy replied.

  'Give me the gun.'

  'No ... I won't.'

  Georgii reached out to the boy with his open hand. He could see that the child was terrified. The boy's hands were shaking and the whites of his eyes were stained with fear. They stood looking at each other. Georgii sensed that they were not the only people present in the room. Again he reached out towards the boy. This time he could see that the boy was about to surrender the weapon to him. The boy lent forwards and was about to hand him the revolver when there was a second deafening roar and, in slow motion, he saw the boy blown backwards by the force of the bullet ... landing bodily in the grate of the fireplace. Georgii looked away; at the same time he fought back the urge to be sick. Two lives in two minutes. What a waste!

  He turned around and saw Trofimov standing be
hind him holding a smoking revolver. He pushed past her and made for the street. He was appalled by his complicity in, and by the actions of, the new socialist state. He threw up on the virgin snow.

  'Do you want a lift back to the station?' He heard Trofimov's voice say.

  'No it's alright I'll walk. Thanks.' He stammered.

  'You sure?'

  'Yeah I'm sure,' he said.

  With that he turned the collar of his coat up and started walking. He was lost in thought; he lamented the loss of Vasiliev and the boy he never knew. What a tragic waste of life he thought. He walked on. It was now getting light. People started to scurry around the streets. He headed for the river.

  In times gone by Georgii Radetzky had always wandered down to the river. He liked the river. In the past he had watched the barges queue up to off-load and pick up other cargoes. Ten years before the Stevedores worked day and night through summer and winter.