by Glenn Meade
The guards escorted her along the hallway until they entered a small, airless room with patterned yellow wallpaper. A single lightbulb was on overhead, casting a faint glow about the dim chamber, with only a small, round table and two bentwood chairs. Another pair of double doors was set in the far wall.
Suddenly the door behind her banged shut and the guard was gone.
“I’m Inspector Viktor Kazan of the Cheka. Sit down,” a voice said hoarsely.
A bald-headed man stepped out of the shadows, causing her heart to skip.
He wore black clothes, a sinister air about him. Several fingers of his left hand were bandaged. He indicated one of two chairs next to the table. “I said sit.”
“I prefer to stand.”
He grabbed hold of her arm and pushed her into a chair with considerable force. “And I told you to sit. Your formal interrogation will take place tomorrow. But for now, I just want a chat.”
“My … my parents are concerned that I’m being questioned.”
“Too bad.” He unfolded a page from his pocket and laid it on the table. “Tell me the truth about the note.”
“What truth? What are you talking about?”
Suddenly Kazan’s fist slammed down hard on the table, the noise booming about the room, his mouth twisting. “No games. I’m a harsher man than komendant. If I have to break bones to get the truth out of you, I will. Do we understand each other?”
Anastasia didn’t reply but fear ignited in her eyes.
“I asked you a question.”
Her lips quivered. She looked faintly overwhelmed, a nervous seventeen-year-old faced with the threatening presence of a brutish thug, but there was no mistaking the resolve in her voice. “You—you’re a callous, cruel man.”
Kazan struck her a blow across the side of her skull with his palm. The slap rang around the chamber. Her head jolted sideways but before she could cry out, Kazan slammed a hand over her mouth. “Call out or make another sound and I’ll hit you even harder.”
She struggled fiercely but Kazan kept his hand firmly in place and leaned in close. “Nod if you understand.”
Anastasia stopped struggling. She nodded.
Kazan took his hand away.
She stared up at him in shocked disbelief, and for a moment she looked not like a young woman but a child in distress, and it took her to the brink of tears. “How … how dare you …”
Kazan grabbed her by the hair, thoroughly enjoying himself. “Listen to me, you little witch. I could beat you to within an inch of your life and not leave a scratch on you. Tell me the truth about the note, or there will be serious repercussions for all your family. Out with it, before I lose my temper and this turns nasty.”
Sorg moved along the white-tiled passageway, holding the lamp high. Condensation dripped from the walls and he stepped over puddles. Twenty yards farther on he was faced with a dead end—a brick wall.
He knelt and felt the cement between the bricks pointing—as Markov said, it had been removed and the bricks loosened. He thought he heard faint voices.
They seemed to come from beyond the wall. He considered a moment, wondering if he should go any farther, then he carefully removed over a dozen bricks, revealing a hole big enough to crawl through.
He crawled past the hole and found himself in a dusty storeroom. Stacked around the bare walls were ancient wicker chairs and a broken display cabinet, its glass shattered. The far wall was covered with a crisscross of planks nailed into a wooden door frame. He crawled over, his nerves taut as piano wire.
Underneath the nailed planks was a pair of double doors. Muted sounds came from behind them. Sorg dimmed his lamp to the barest flicker, then stood and placed it on the ground behind him.
Light filtered through a crack between the doors. He peered through. A room lay beyond. He could hardly believe his eyes.
Anastasia.
For a moment he could barely breathe, his stomach knotting with excitement, and then his heart felt like ice.
She sat at a table, her face lit by the wash of an electric light. Kazan stood over her. On the table was a slip of paper.
Suddenly Kazan’s fist slammed down hard on the table, the noise booming about the chamber.
“I asked you a question.”
“You—you’re a callous, cruel man.”
Anastasia’s voice was filled with confidence, but there was no mistaking the emotion. What happened next filled Sorg with fury. Kazan slapped Anastasia hard across the side of her head, and the noise rang around the chamber.
Her head jerked sideways and she nearly cried out, but Kazan forced a hand over her mouth, cutting off her scream. He seemed to be strangling her as she struggled fiercely.
Sorg felt helpless.
“Call out or make another sound and I’ll hit you even harder.”
Anastasia stopped struggling and Kazan slowly took his hand away.
She muttered something inaudible and the next thing Sorg knew, Kazan grabbed her savagely by the hair. His voice came in snatches.
“Listen to me, you little witch … I could beat you to within an inch of your life … Tell me the truth about the note … Out with it …”
Sorg’s chest pounded. The note. So that was it—What have I done? It was his fault Kazan was interrogating Anastasia. Guilt devoured him, his frustrated rage like molten lava.
What can I do? Break down the door and kill Kazan? He felt for the Toledo steel pen in his pocket. That was what he wanted to do. What he felt he ought to do.
But that would give the game away.
He saw Kazan twist her hair even tighter and heard Anastasia stifle a scream.
Sorg put an arm over his eyes and stepped back, unable to look, the image too painful.
As he did so he knocked over the lamp behind him.
Its light flared a second before it smashed on the ground, the glass shattering, and then the lamp rolled away. The metallic noise echoed loudly throughout the passageway. Sorg’s nerves jangled like an electric bell.
A second later the lamplight extinguished and the storeroom plunged into total darkness.
Kazan heard the noise and his head jerked up, his senses alert.
It sounded as if someone had kicked a tin can and it rattled over cobblestone. The racket came from somewhere beyond the second pair of double doors in the far wall. Kazan stiffened. He saw from the look on the girl’s face that she’d heard the noise, too. He let go of her hair and strode over to the doors.
Putting his ear to the wood, he thought he heard the noise wash away. He tried the door handles: they were locked. He pushed his shoulder to the wood but still they didn’t budge.
He crossed back to the entrance doors, opened them, and called out, “Guards!”
Three men rushed in with rifles. Kazan pointed to the far wall. “Where do those doors lead?”
“Nowhere, Inspector. They’re blocked up. There’s some kind of storage room beyond, so I hear.”
Kazan crossed the room in a fit of rage and kicked at the doors with his boot. “I heard a noise from behind. Get over here, help me. One of you get some lamps.”
Two of the guards smashed at the doors with their rifle butts, and when that didn’t work, they pried at them with their bayonets until the lock gave. The doors opened a few inches and Kazan saw crisscrossed planking beyond, nailed firmly in place. “Force your way in,” he ordered.
The men obeyed, using their shoulders, and they crashed into a darkened storage room packed with old furniture.
A guard returned with three lit kerosene lamps. Kazan held up a lamp and saw that shards of glass littered the floor. A gaping hole yawned in the brickwork in the far wall. He strode over, his feet crunching on the glass.
He knelt, waved his lamp, and peered into an empty passageway patched with water puddles. “Take the girl back upstairs. Where’s the komendant?”
“Asleep,” one of the men said.
“Wake him. Tell everyone to be extra vigilant. We may have intrude
rs.”
The man dragged Anastasia away.
Kazan removed his revolver and crawled into the passageway, the other two guards following. He heard a noise—the clatter of fleeing feet, splashing through water puddles.
“Come with me,” Kazan ordered the guards, and he plunged into the passageway.
77
Sorg hurried through the pitch-dark tunnel, feeling his way along the moist walls.
The lamp was still extinguished and he stumbled in compete darkness. The lamp’s glass cowl was missing, and the wick felt drenched with kerosene from rolling on the ground. He heard the slosh of liquid—at least he still had fuel.
Behind him came the sound of crashing wood, and it echoed throughout the tunnels like gunshots. It sounded as if Kazan was breaking down the doors.
Sorg came to a halt as his head cracked into something solid—he felt a painful ringing sensation in his skull and staggered back, seeing stars.
He’d hit a wall.
He felt like vomiting and put a hand to his skull and massaged it. Gritting his teeth in agony, he closed his eyes and took slow, deep breaths. He knew he was panicking, but every instinct told him to get far away as fast as he could.
He fumbled desperately in his pockets for the box of matches, dropping them in the darkness.
No!
He knelt and frantically searched the ground for the matches.
His hand splashed in a puddle. He swore, fumbling until he found the box.
It felt wet.
He carefully placed the lamp on the ground to his right, still unable to see anything. Removing one of the matches, he struck it on the box.
Nothing happened. Sorg felt the coarse striker on the box’s side—it was wet to the touch.
Behind him came the deafening crash of wood splintering, then muted shouts and orders.
Raw terror jolted Sorg’s heart. He fumbled to find the lamp in the pitch darkness and then stumbled on.
Kazan plunged through the passageway, clutching his revolver, his lamp throwing shadows on the damp walls.
Moments later he halted. In front of him two archways led in different directions, one left, the other right.
The guards rushed up behind him, their boots splashing in puddles.
Kazan hissed, “Be quiet, both of you. Don’t make a sound.”
The guards fell silent.
Kazan listened, his ears cocked, but heard only silence.
He jerked a thumb at one of the guards.
“You go left.”
The man obeyed, his rifle leveled as he held up his lamp.
Kazan nodded for the second man to follow him, and they plunged into the passageway on the right.
Sorg was beginning to panic. He halted and tried to strike three more matches but none worked.
He heard the echo of voices and footfalls behind him.
Kazan.
He knew he couldn’t go on in complete darkness. He put down the lamp again and tried to light another match. Nothing—the striker still felt damp.
In frustration, he tried once more, this time striking a match on his trouser knee. He felt a slash of heat as the match ignited and illuminated the passageway.
Thank God.
Sorg knelt and touched the match to the saturated wick. It flared instantly, throwing shadows around the walls. He thought he recognized where he was. Another hundred or so yards and he’d come to the turret exit.
He stood, elated.
More noises echoed from behind: the sound of splashing, hurrying footsteps.
His heart thudding in his chest, Sorg shielded the lamp’s naked flame with his hand and hurried on.
Kazan came to two more archways veining off in different directions.
He swung his lamp and spotted a scattering of spent matches on the ground. He knelt, felt the warm tips. A noise echoed down one of the passageways: footsteps, no question.
Kazan grinned.
Sorg was completely lost.
He couldn’t find the metal turret. In his panic, he must have taken the wrong turn. The passageways were a maze. He felt utterly confused, his chest throbbing with stress pains.
A scraping noise sounded behind him, like a boot on concrete.
He spun round but saw no one—and heard only dripping water.
He turned and kept going, his feet drenched by deep puddles. When he rounded the next bend his spirits soared.
Somehow he had ended up in a main channel—a passageway that ran down to the pond or river, the distant water glinting with silver lunar light, a faint breeze wafting up, soothing on his face. At last.
Archways bled off from the passageway every twenty yards or so, feeding into the main tributary. As he went to move on, he heard a faint rush of feet and his heart stuttered.
A figure stepped out of an archway, five yards ahead.
Sorg felt a stab of fear and froze.
Kazan stood holding a lamp, a triumphant grin on his face.
“Going somewhere?” He stepped closer, his question echoing around the chamber.
Sorg grabbed wildly for the steel pen in his pocket.
Kazan’s fist smashed into his jaw, he felt a lightning bolt of pain, and a second later he drowned in darkness.
PART SIX
78
The train rattled through the night.
Yakov sat at his desk, the table lamp on as he finished writing a letter. A knock came on the door and Zoba entered. “Don’t you ever take a break?”
Yakov folded the written page, sealed it in an envelope, and tossed it on the desk. He stood, rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Where are we?”
“Still a long way from Ekaterinburg. I ordered the driver to halt at the next major town. We can cable Moscow to find out if there’s been any sighting of Andrev.”
Yakov undid the top buttons of his tunic, then cracked open the carriage window and a rush of cool air blew in. “Pour me a drink. Help yourself.”
Zoba went to the cabinet and poured vodka into a pair of tumblers. He handed one to Yakov and bleakly raised his own. “Here’s to a quick death. If we’re lucky, that’s what we can expect, Leonid.”
“How is she?”
“Confined in one of the carriages, as you instructed. The child’s asleep. Why do it? Why take them with us? Why risk our necks by defying Trotsky’s orders?”
Yakov nodded at the envelope on the desk. “I’ve put it in writing that my decision was mine alone. If anything goes wrong, you’re covered.”
“We will be when this is over. We’ll be six feet under.”
Yakov swallowed his drink and grimaced. “Bring Nina here.”
Andrev drove into the outskirts of a desolate-looking village, the motorcycle engine throbbing in the darkness.
The place didn’t look like much, an unpaved main road with some abandoned-looking buildings either side. The remains of a railway station were riddled with bullet holes.
“Where are we?”
Andrev halted and pulled up his goggles “It’s a village near Kovrov, almost two hundred miles from Moscow. There’s a minor rail track into the village to serve the local mines, but they’ve been closed since the war.” He slapped the gas tank and heard a hollow echo. “If we don’t find more gasoline soon we’re in trouble.”
“And you think we’ll find it here?”
“There’s a military depot around here somewhere, if I’m not mistaken. It used to serve the transports heading east.” He nudged the motorcycle round a corner. “That’s what we’re looking for.”
Across the street was a military garage dimly lit by the motorcycle headlight, a half-dozen trucks and private vehicles trucks parked outside. Two more trucks were inside a big workshop, the doors open wide. One truck had its wheels up on wooden blocks, half a dozen soldiers working away, the workshop lit by kerosene lamps.
Lydia said, “They’re the first troops we’ve seen for the last two hours.”
“The Red Army’s stretched a bit thin once you
leave Moscow. They’re a ragged bunch. Take a look at their uniforms.”
Lydia saw that some of the soldiers wore full field-gray uniforms and carried rifles and grenades on their belts. Others wore partial uniforms mixed with scruffy civilian garb. They were a tough-looking lot, in need of a wash.
“They look like bad luck. Is this really wise, Uri?”
He loosened his holster flap. “We need more fuel. Where else are we going to get it?”
He revved the engine and drove over toward the garage forecourt, halting by a village water pump. The soldiers stopped working, all eyes suddenly on their visitors. Andrev climbed off. “Who’s in charge here, comrades?”
The men looked wary of Andrev’s leather jacket. An older man said, “How can we help?”
Andrev produced his letter. “Commissar Couris. I’m acting as a special courier for the Kremlin. I’m heading east and need fuel.”
The man shrugged. “There’s not much of that here. We barely have enough for ourselves.”
“I’d suggest you find some.” Andrev handed the man the letter.
He studied it, scratching his jaw, then turned to address the others. “It looks official, signed by Lenin himself, no less. It says that the commissar’s to be assisted in every way possible. Anyone who hinders him will be shot.”
Andrev said, “I’d appreciate it if you could find that fuel, comrade.”
“Not so fast.”
Andrev turned as a giant of a man with thick eyebrows and a bushy beard appeared behind him. His beard was flecked with food, as if he’d been interrupted eating supper. “Let me see that letter.”
Andrev handed it over.
He read the page, then regarded Lydia, before he said, “It seems to be in order, right enough. Better give the commissar the fuel he needs.”
“Thank you, comrade.” Andrev removed the gas tank cap.
One of the soldiers came forward with a gasoline can, and the man with the mustache said, “Do you need lodgings for the night, comrade?”
“No thanks, we’ll press on.”