Dusk in Kalevia

by Emily Compton

  “Commander Joensuu can fill us in on the details of the incident,” Kuoppala said, and yielded the spotlight to the main act.

  The commander rose unsteadily to his feet and cleared his throat. As Demyan watched him fumble with his papers, a fat droplet of sweat crept down his temple and vanished into his starched collar.

  Demyan inhaled slowly, savoring the last dying gasps of the man’s ambition.

  “In the early morning, sometime around four o’ clock, counter-revolutionary saboteurs attacked an army supply station on the Northern rail line near Lieksalla. Not only did it cause a costly loss of munitions and disrupt rail traffic to the entire region, but it unfortunately resulted in the death of a serviceman.”

  A rumble of indignation issued forth from the ministers as they warmed up for the assault.

  “How could you let this happen?”

  “This is the third time in as many months that we’ve had such an attack! ”

  “What’s going on up there?”

  The commander’s eyes darted about, searching for a sympathetic face; Demyan knew he found none. He continued, barely managing to hold his voice steady.

  “Forgive me. I accept full responsibility for the lack of adequate protection, but it’s impossible to know where they’re going to strike next. We’ve posted extra units at all the critical outposts, but without questioning the perpetrators of the last incident...”

  “So you mean tell us that you have no leads?”

  “And no arrests have been made? Unacceptable!”

  “I can assure you have my best men on it!” Commander Joensuu protested. “Again, I apologize.”

  The Chairman cleared his throat, and all fell silent.

  “Who are they?” the Chairman asked.

  The commander paused. Minister Kuoppala interrupted.

  “They call themselves the Forest Clan.”

  There was a collective intake of breath, a murmur of recognition. Demyan glanced over at Kuoppala. He sported the calm smile he always wore when in control.

  “It’s been a while since I’ve heard that name!” said the Minister of Defense.

  “I thought they were all dead!”

  “They were! We put them down for good in ’48.”

  “Let’s be honest,” said the Minister of the Interior, spinning his pen in a thoughtful way. “We all knew there might be dissidents still out there, but it’s easy to forget uncivilized malcontents squatting in forest mud-holes. They haven’t tried anything for years.”

  The Chairman looked from one advisor to another, at a loss for words.

  “Then why start again now?”

  None present were brave enough to say it, but the unspoken implication hung heavy in the air.

  Because you’re weaker than Rautainen.

  Juuso Rautainen had inspired such fervent adoration and terrible fear in the hearts of the nation, he had transcended the role of mere politician and become an icon--a symbol of Communist Kalevia. The current Chairman had been head of state for a mere three years, and the memory of the old leader still cast a long shadow on his administration. While he had proven himself a master of diplomacy, many perceived a softness in his methods, a weakening of resolve.

  The partisans are growing bold, Demyan mused. Testing their boundaries in the hope that the new Fearless Leader isn’t as iron-fisted as his predecessor.

  “Another rebellion, then!”

  “Should we ask for military assistance?”

  “The Russians? Why don’t you ask Comrade Chernyshev what he thinks?”

  “Settle down,” ordered Minister Kuoppala. His strong, even voice cut through the bickering like a knife through butter. “No need to get our friends in Moscow involved yet.”

  He rose and walked slowly to the head of the table, casually taking command of the room. He was still smiling. Demyan imagined that he probably looked that way right before he killed someone.

  “We at State Security have been gathering intelligence on this so-called ‘Forest Clan’ for quite some time. I can say with certainty that at this point, a mobilization of troops is ill-advised.”

  “You've got intel on them?” someone cried, indignant. “And when did you plan to tell us?”

  “To have revealed this information sooner risked blowing some of our more delicate operations in the region. The enemies of socialism are everywhere. Ferreting them out requires patience, finesse; we have to bide our time and wait until we have them completely within our grasp. And then--”

  He clapped his hands suddenly and loudly. Commander Joensuu jumped.

  “We strike--and end them once and for all.”

  Now Kuoppala stood opposite the Chairman, speaking only to him, staring directly into his face from across the table.

  He isn’t nervous at all, thought Demyan. The goddamn balls.

  “Your Excellency,” Kuoppala went on, “I previously warned you about this threat in general terms, but spared you the details. Now it’s time. With your permission, I propose to create a special task force under the control of State Security to remove this threat to Kalevia.”

  A silence fell over the room.

  All at once, the table erupted in controversy, discordant voices warring to be heard as everyone spoke at once. The Chairman banged both hands on the table to call them all to order. He spoke harshly, affecting the dictatorial tone expected of him under the circumstances.

  “First,” he bellowed. “Comrade Joensuu. I am appalled at the lack of command you’ve shown dealing with this threat. I will arrange for you to be removed from active duty, and transferred to Requisitions and Supply. You’re dismissed.”

  Joensuu’s mind went bright with relief.

  He wasn’t going to die! He wasn’t going to die!

  Demyan snared him then--pulled his spirit deep into the clutches of his shadow and drank.

  The man was so unreasonably happy, and the warmth flowed freely from him, blossoming in Demyan’s chest like sips of mulled wine. When elation faded to a somber acceptance of his new fate, Demyan released Joensuu from his coils, leaving him as a hearth banked, but still flickering with a few glowing embers.

  Commander Joensuu saluted mournfully. He took his leave, closing the door behind him.

  The Chairman turned to his Minister of State Security.

  “Comrade Kuoppala,” he warned. “Never keep me in the dark again. I expect a full report of any threat to national security, no matter the level of confidentiality involved. However...”

  The leader of Kalevia slowly nodded his head in sincere respect.

  “You will have your task force.”

  **

  In the car, Kuoppala lit a cigarette.

  “He got off easy,” he said, blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth. “The lucky bastard. A slap on the wrist. His career’s finished, of course, but it’s nothing like the old days.”

  As expected. Soft.

  Demyan caught his drift. If Rautainen were in charge, that would have been the last anyone would have seen of Joensuu. Not just in the flesh, either. He would have disappeared from public records and photographs, erased back to the day he was born--and only unspoken memories and a bloodstain on the wall of some godforsaken gulag would have remained as proof that he had existed in the first place.

  Kuoppala tipped his head toward Demyan. “So you’ve been here, what, three years?”

  “Give or take.”

  ”What do you think of Chairman Uusitalo? Nice guy, eh?”

  “He’s popular in Moscow. Khrushchev likes him.”

  “Oh, come on,” Kuoppala pushed. “Just between us.” He trotted out the superficial smile.

  Demyan hit him with his blankest stare, both barrels, black as night. How stupid did this son-of-a-bitch think he was? Between us, he says. The head of the goddamn secret police!

  “He’s an exceptional leader,” Demyan said flatly.

  “Ha, Chernyshev, so serious!”

  Kuoppala took another long draw on his cig
arette and stared out the window, chuckling to himself. Suddenly, he whipped around to face Demyan, his eyebrows down and his voice low with a hint of menace.

  “When you put in your report to the Kremlin, I want you to stress that we have it under control. Understood?”

  “The special task force?” Demyan asked, maintaining the stare.

  “Et Fucking Cetera.”

  “Fine.”

  “Good man.”

  They rode the rest of the way in silence. Demyan watched Kuoppala’s face in profile out of the corner of his eye; the man didn’t look especially angry as he puffed away, but Demyan could feel it, swirling around his body like the smoke from his cigarette.

  Demyan couldn’t remember the last time he’d met someone so difficult to read. The Minister of State Security was always lit up like a flash-bang, and Demyan couldn’t pin down why. Here was a rare man who wasn’t afraid of him, who wasn’t afraid of anybody, who lived his life like fear and despair were some vague malady to which he was immune.

  Hope? Kuoppala was a cynic; he didn’t care about hope. He wasn’t particularly happy--annoyance seemed to be his default emotion--and he certainly wasn’t overwhelmed with goodwill toward his fellow man. Confidence? The man was certainly sure of himself. But no, there was something else there--something bright and hot and hungry coiled tight in every fiber of his being.

  Ambition. That was it.

  What was he striving for? Demyan’s shadows unfolded and branched, creeping like vines toward the core of Kuoppala’s mind--but there it was again, the sickening wall, forcing him back.

  Well, if Kuoppala was going to fight him, then let him fight. To hell with Demyan’s prohibition against going after people on his side--Kuoppala was on no one’s side but his own. If the poker-faced State Security leader was a ticking time bomb, Demyan would do his best to make him explode.

  Long before they arrived, Demyan could pick out the colorless block of the State Security Complex in the distance. Another of Vainola’s walled fortresses, the gray monolith had none of the manufactured majesty of the Council buildings. It stood vigil over the city, artless and grim, with all the architectural beauty of a clenched fist. Citizens avoided the area out of fearful respect for the Watchers behind those arrow-slit windows, and tried to ignore the unmarked vans that vanished into its back gates.

  Demyan was probably the only person in the country who couldn’t wait to arrive. He fidgeted in his seat, trying to block out Kuoppala’s noisome smoke and temper, and thought about the report from his raven. He hoped the bird had been right about this.

  Unlike most liaison officers, Demyan refused to merely be a paper-pushing overseer for his KGB masters. After regularly following up on the arrest of dissidents and assorted troublemakers, he’d built up a reputation in the Kalevian service for being talented at interrogation. The Kalevian officers marveled as he spurned any sort of physical brutality, and merely talked to the suspects in his low, calm voice until they poured forth volumes of tearful confessions. “Bring in Comrade Demyan,” his colleagues said, “and they always crack.”

  The idea that at that very minute, the enemy could be sweating it out in one of those interrogation rooms--just waiting for Demyan to march in and pull the big reveal--seemed almost too good to be true. Demyan could almost imagine the look on the poor angel’s face upon realizing that he or she had played right into the hands of Shadow. Welcome to the lion’s den, he thought, and felt a smirk tease at the corner of his lips.

  The car finally passed through the checkpoint; their driver dropped them by the front entrance to the building. Kuoppala muttered a trite pleasantry and hurried off, leaving Demyan standing by the revolving doors, smelling the air. The modern concrete structure was barely a few years old, but it already smelt like a cellar: a damp, chilly odor that permeated the halls and offices.

  There was something different about the building today, however. Something swirled like the high winds of a warm front, like risky spring weather approaching off the water. Demyan stared at the icy pavement, still stuck in the depths of the winter freeze, and knew exactly what he was feeling. It meant there was still time.

  Inside, the feeling was stronger--gusting about, glinting here and there in people’s moods like fireflies. Even the huge glass globes of the modern chandelier seemed to glow a little brighter. Demyan started to search, sending his shadow through the great gray building, rushing through the walls trying to pinpoint the source of the thaw.

  Where? Where was the other angel?

  Demyan focused his every thought on the hunt, and found--to his surprise--that his target was alarmingly close. A burning, luminous warmth brushed by him in the dark, and Demyan reached out for it with a sudden, intense yearning.

  But it slipped by, leaving Demyan grasping at the void. Around him, the ceiling lights dimmed and the basement chill returned. The feeling was gone, just as quickly as it had come.

  Demyan stood there for a few seconds, consumed by aching need. The Light, so ephemeral in humans, led him on through the years like a will-o’-the-wisp--a warmth that vanished in his cold embrace. All he wanted, just once, was to experience it in its pure form, but he knew such things were impossible. Light was the essence of the enemy, denied to him until the end of time.

  The angel’s leaving, Demyan realized, and bolted back outside.

  He scanned the yard for some clue as to where the angel had vanished. Black cars pulled up and drove away with assembly-line regularity, and he despaired for a moment of ever finding his mark among them, until he felt a soft breath of warmth off to the left.

  His eye caught a blonde head disappearing into the back of a Volga. A squat, smiling man with a mustache shut the door before it drove away.

  Demyan flew down the steps, coat streaming out behind him, shouting at the top of his lungs.

  “Stop that car!”

  But it was too late. It was out past the wall and on its way, and Demyan was surrounded by guards and passersby wondering what all the fuss was about.

  He waved them off and turned back inside, undeterred. This will not end here, he thought. There was always another way.

  **

  The archives were down in the basement of the State Security building, below even the detention cells. Officers joked that Archives got the basement because no floor in existence could structurally support that much weight; they told apocryphal stories of new recruits that had been lost for days within the labyrinth.

  Demyan stepped off the elevator and into the library quiet of the subterranean file rooms. He saw that today, the Cerberus at the gates was an old hand--a matronly woman who recognized him immediately. Demyan liked her, partly because she was snappish and didn’t startle easily.

  “Well, here’s the liaison officer!” she declared. “What can I do for you?”

  “I need copies of any Foreign Visitor Registration interviews conducted today.”

  She consulted her book and nodded.

  “Yes, you’re cleared for that. I’ll have those up for you right away.”

  She rang a bell on her desk and sent one of her drab underlings scurrying into the warren in search.

  While he waited, Demyan wandered into one of the long, dim aisles, hemmed in on either side by rows of locked drawers. The dank cement odor was much stronger down here, and mingled with the acidic scent of the paper--a grassy, musty tang of forgotten letters and dusty bookshops. He closed his eyes and felt the immense scale of it: miles and miles of filing cabinets reaching up to the ceiling, holding millions of sheets of paper, an epic monument to Surveillance. Everyone in Kalevia was said to have a file here--a portrait of daily life composed of intimate details, from the time of your morning commute right down to the number of fillings in your teeth. The Watchers hired the rubbish men to sort through your bins, and paid off the little old lady next door who liked a bit of gossip. They knew you better than anyone else in the world; they were privy to every one of your neurotic habits and your irrational fears, you
r sexual conquests and your failed dreams.

  He heard the clerk calling him. He returned to her desk, where she looked at his identity card and noted the numbers of the files he was checking out in an immense log.

  “Here you are. Fresh from this morning,” she said briskly, handing him two folders. “Now, I’m sure you know this, but these copies are not to leave the building, and clearance is level 3 and above. Please return them when you’ve finished.”

  He clutched the files to his chest as he rode back up to the surface, hastened to his office, and locked the door behind him. As he laid them on his desk, he shook his head at how easy it would be to find his enemy this go-around. It was like the whole bureaucratic system had been created for the express purpose of uncovering the spook’s identity, cutting out the long process of searching by intuition alone. Who was the angel come to lead an army against him by winning the hearts and souls of the nascent rebellion? Who had come to kill Fear?

  He opened the first file. Erland Vestergaard: Danish production engineer, here to assist in setting up the line at a boat factory. The picture showed a paunchy, balding man with heavy glasses and a face like a basset hound; he didn’t seem a likely candidate to inspire hope in anyone, let alone an army. Demyan set it aside, and, pulse pounding, picked up the remaining folder.

  Toivo Valonen. Journalist.

  Demyan looked at the photograph and felt a prickle of recognition creep up the back of his neck. It was the face of a beautiful stranger, all soft hair and luminous skin that made a simple ID photo feel like portraiture. In his centuries on earth, Demyan had never seen this man before, but there was something else there--something familiar beyond the eyes that peered out at him and sent him reeling.

  The memory rushed through Demyan like electricity. It was something about the man’s facial expression, as though he fought to be brave despite carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Demyan suddenly knew exactly when he’d last looked into those wide, sorrowful eyes as they faced down oblivion.