It was with difficulty that Chislenko concealed the shocked dismay of recognition. Of course! This was the legendary Yuri the Survivor, that shadowy figure who had started his career under Beria and survived his passing and that of Semichastny, Shelepin, and Andropov, in the process making that most dangerous of transitions from being a man who knows too much to live to being a man who knows too much to destroy. Now nearly eighty, he was officially designated Secretary to the Committee on Internal Morale and Propaganda, which sounded harmless enough, but this was not a harmless man. Either through flattery or blackmail, he always picked his protectors well and for many years now he had been under the ægis of the powerful Minister of Internal Affairs, Boris Bunin, which explained his presence but not his purpose in the MVD Headquarters. Bunin at 65 was young enough to have very large ambitions. Serebrianikov with his vast store of knowledge and his still strong KGB connections must have been, and might be again, a tremendous help to him.
Chislenko bowed in his direction.
‘It is an honour and privilege to meet you, Comrade Secretary,’ he intoned.
‘Thank you, Comrade Inspector,’ replied the old man. ‘Now in the matter of this trivial and absurd incident at the Gorodok Building, you are perhaps wondering what my interest is? Let me tell you. I am old now, and should (you are perhaps thinking) be spending my time in my dacha at Odessa, watching the seagulls. But some old horses miss their harness, as perhaps one day you will find, and the Praesidium – in their kindness and to satisfy an old man’s whim – permit me to preserve the illusion at least of still serving the State.’
This was dreadful, thought Chislenko. No man could be so humourously self-deprecating except from a base of absolute power.
‘What I do is sometimes watch and sometimes listen and sometimes read, but mainly just sniff the air to test the mood of the people. Internal morale is the fancy name they give it. I watch for straws in the wind, silly rumours, atavistic superstitions, anything which may if unchecked develop into a let or hindrance to the smooth and inevitable progress of the State.’
‘But surely this silly business at the Gorodok Building could hardly do that!’ burst out Chislenko, winning an angry glare from the Procurator, but an approving smile from Serebrianikov.
‘Possibly not, in certain circumstances,’ he said. ‘Had, for instance, the initial response not been so attention-drawing. I do not hold you altogether responsible for the other services, but is it not true that your policemen surrounded the building and arrested everyone trying to leave?’
To explain that this had not been his idea at all was pointless; only results counted in socialist police work.
Instead Chislenko countered boldly, ‘Had we not done that, Comrade Secretary, we should not have apprehended the witness, Rudakov.’
‘True,’ said the old man. ‘But with hindsight, Comrade Inspector, do you not think it might have been better if you hadn’t caught Comrade Rudakov?’
This precise echo of his own feelings was perhaps the most frightening thing Chislenko had heard so far.
‘At least the Comrade Engineer appears a man of discretion,’ continued Serebrianikov. ‘Unlike Muntjan who is a drunken babbler, and the woman, Lovchev, who is a garrulous hysteric. Yet there might have been means to restrain these, too, if you had avoided conducting the initial interrogation in public!’
‘In public! No!’ protested Chislenko.
The old man took out a small notebook and held it before him, like a Bible aimed at a vampire.
‘Would you like me to recite a list of those who admit to overhearing the whole of your initial interviews, Inspector.’
Chislenko remembered the firemen and the medics, the corridor draughty with open doors, the stairways crowded with curious ears.
I wish I were dead! he thought.
‘I apologize most sincerely, Comrade,’ he said formally. ‘My only excuse is that I was misled into thinking a serious incident had taken place in a government building.’
‘I should have thought that those circumstances would have urged greater discretion, not less,’ murmured the old man.
‘No, Comrade, what I meant was that, realizing I had been misled, perhaps even hoaxed, I momentarily lost sight of the need for discretion. Indeed, Comrade Serebrianikov, with permission, I would like to say that even now I am at a difficulty in understanding what all the fuss is about. I mean, if there had been an incident and there had been any need to hush things up, well, not to put too fine a point on it, I’d have made damn sure that everyone in the entire building, in hearing distance or not, knew that if they didn’t keep mum, they’d have their balls twisted till they really had something to make a noise about!’
The transition from formal explanation to demotic indignation took Chislenko himself completely by surprise, and made the Procurator close his eyes in a spasm of mental pain.
Serebrianikov only smiled.
‘You are young and impetuous and see your job in terms of fighting the perils of visible crime,’ he said. ‘That is good. But when you are as experienced and contemplative as age has made me – and the Procurator here –’ this came as an afterthought – ‘you begin to appreciate the perils of the invisible. Let me give you a few facts, Inspector. It is now a week since this alleged incident. What will you find if you visit the Gorodok Building? I will tell you. So many of the personnel working there refuse to use the lift in question, which is the south lift, that long queues form outside the north lift. When a directive was issued ordering those in offices on the south side of the building to use the south lift, many of them started walking up the stairs in preference. Furthermore, this incident is still a popular topic of conversation not only in the Gorodok Building but in government offices throughout the city, and presumably in the homes and recreational centres of those concerned.’
Chislenko started to speak, but Serebrianikov held up his hand.
‘You are, I imagine, going to dismiss this as mere gossip, trivial and short-lived. I cannot agree. Firstly, it panders to a particularly virulent strain of superstition in certain sections of our people who, despite all that education can do, still adhere to the religious delusions of the Tsarist tyranny. But there is worse. All families have their troubles and these can be dealt with if kept within the family. Our sage and serious Soviet press naturally do not concern themselves with such trivia, but several Western lie-sheets have somehow got wind of the story and have run frivolous and slanderous so-called news items. And only last night at a reception to celebrate the successful launching of our Uranus probe, I myself was asked by the French ambassador if it were true that ghosts were being allowed back into the Soviet Union. The man, of course, was drunk. Nevertheless …’
The pale blue eyes fixed on Chislenko. He felt accused and said helplessly, ‘I’m sorry, Comrade Secretary …’
‘Yes,’ said Serebrianikov. ‘By the way, Comrade Inspector, you’re not related to Igor Chislenko who used to play on the wing for Dynamo, are you?’
‘I’m afraid not,’ said Chislenko.
‘A pity. Still, no matter,’ said the old man with sudden briskness. ‘Procurator Kozlov, I think we understand each other, and I have every confidence this young officer can establish the truth of this matter, explode the lies, and bring the culprits to book. I shall expect his report by the end of the week, shall we say? Good day to you.’
With a benevolent nod, Serebrianikov left the room, his step remarkably light and spry for a man of his age.
The Procurator remained at his desk, his head bent, his eyes hooded. Chislenko remained in the posture of attention to which he had belatedly snapped as he realized the old man was leaving. After perhaps a minute, he said cautiously, ‘Sir?’
Kozlov grunted.
‘Sir, what is it precisely that the Comrade Secretary wishes us to do?’
The Procurator’s head rose, the eyes opened. The voice when it came was almost gentle.
‘He wishes you to scotch all those wild stories a
bout what happened in the Gorodok Building,’ said Kozlov. ‘He wishes you to show that not only was there no supernatural manifestation, but also that the whole affair has been stage-managed by subversive elements, encouraged and supported by Western imperialist espionage machines operating out of certain embassies, with the ultimate aim of bringing the Soviet state into disrepute.’
‘But that’s absurd!’ protested Chislenko. ‘I don’t mean the bit about Western imperialist espionage, of course. I’m sure the Comrade Secretary is quite right about that. But what’s absurd is expecting me to set about disproving a ghost!’
Kozlov smiled.
‘Do you wish me to inform Comrade Serebrianikov that his confidence has been misplaced?’ he asked, almost genial at the prospect.
‘No! No indeed, sir!’
‘Then I suggest you get to work! And you would do well to remember one thing, Chislenko.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘There are no ghosts in the Soviet Union!’
4
When a Soviet official is given what he regards as an absurd and impossible task, he knows there is only one way to perform it: thoroughly! Whatever conclusions he reaches, he must be certain at least that no matter how finely his researches are combed, there will be no nits for his superiors to pick at.
Chislenko saw his task as dividing into two clear areas. First: disprove the ghost. Second: find a culprit.
It might have seemed to a non-Soviet police mind that success in the latter would automatically accomplish the former. Chislenko knew better than this, because he knew what every Russian knows: that when it comes to finding culprits, the authorities have free choice out of about one hundred and thirty million candidates.
In this case, of course, there was a short-list of four. And here was another reason for delaying the hunt for the culprit.
Rudakov looked pretty invulnerable. Even his attempt to leave the scene of the incident pointed to his innocence. Unless he’d managed to get up someone important’s nose, he looked safe.
Mrs Lovchev was even safer. Who the hell could accept a fat old widow from Yaroslavl as a subversive? In any case it would be impossible to implicate her without dragging in her daughter also.
Natasha was a pretty good bet, regarded objectively. Young upwardly mobile professionals were just the group that tended to throw up the dissenters, the dissidents, the moaners and groaners about human rights. Serebrianikov would probably be delighted to be given one to squeeze publicly to encourage the others.
Chislenko shuddered at the thought. It mustn’t happen. The KGB mustn’t be allowed even a sniff of Natasha. If there had to be a culprit, he would do all he could to make it that poor bastard, Josif Muntjan.
Meanwhile, he had to accomplish task one and scotch the ghost. It was of course absurd that the State should need to disprove physically what it denied metaphysically, but there was no doubt that the best way of convincing that great mélange of logic and superstition which was the Russian mind that there’d been no ghost in the Gorodok Building was to prove that there was nothing for there to be a ghost of!
The strength and the weakness of Soviet bureaucracy is a reluctance to throw away even the smallest scrap of paper. The whole life of the Gorodok Building was there to be read in the archives of the Department of Public Works.
There were two ways of gaining access. One was to write an official request which would be dispatched to the office of Mikhail Osjanin, the National Controller of Public Works. The request, of course, would never get anywhere near the Controller himself, who had far more important things to do (mainly, according to rumour, brown-nosing top Praesidium people, in pursuit of his own high political ambitions). But one of his minions would doubtless consider it, ask for clarification, consider again, and finally accede. It might, if Kozlov countersigned the request, go through in only a week.
The other way was for Chislenko to check his own mental archives, which were in their way merely an extension of this same Soviet bureaucracy.
Yes, there it was, the half-remembered scrap of information. Six months earlier he had interrogated several men detained after a raid on a gay bar near Arbat Square. It was not a job Chislenko liked and he was easily persuaded that most of those he questioned had been in the bar accidentally or innocently. One of them had been called Karamzin and he had given his job as records clerk in the Department of Public Works.
Chislenko went to see him.
The frightened little clerk nearly fainted when he recognized the Inspector, but once he grasped the reason for his visit, his cooperation was boundless, and within minutes rather than days, Chislenko had at his disposal all he required.
The Gorodok Building had been projected in 1947, approved in 1948 and erected in 1949, under the guiding hand of a project director called M. Osjanin.
‘This Osjanin, is that the same one who’s your boss now?’ inquired Chislenko of the hovering clerk.
‘Ultimately, I suppose,’ said Karamzin. ‘In the same way as Comrade Bunin’s your boss.’
Chislenko knew what he meant. The only time he ever saw the Minister for Internal Affairs was on television when he stood in the rank of hopefuls on the saluting platform in Red Square.
‘I take your point,’ he answered.
‘Naughty boy,’ said the clerk coquettishly, then a look of such consternation spread over his face that Chislenko almost laughed out loud.
‘What about the building’s maintenance history?’ he asked.
‘Over here.’
They spent an hour going over this. There was no reference to anything other than routine maintenance with regard to the lifts or indeed to any other part of the building.
He thanked the clerk formally, resisting a strong temptation to wink, and continued his researches among the records of the emergency services, principally fire and police. Again nothing. Finally he composed a memo to the Chief Records Officer, KGB, beginning it further to an inquiry authorized by Y.S.J. Serebrianikov, and sent it across to the Lubyanka, uncertain whether it would produce the slightest effect. To his surprise, a reply came back within the hour. KGB records had nothing on file about any sudden death or violent incident in the Gorodok Building during its whole existence.
The speed of the reply confirmed one thing. Comrade Serebrianikov was no old buffer put out to grass till he went to the Great Praesidium in the sky.
His task now finished so far as scotching the ghost was concerned, Chislenko drafted out the first part of his report. It was a job well done, but now the time had come when he could no longer delay beginning the second part of his investigation. The proof of Serebrianikov’s continued authority in the KGB had been a salutary warning of just how delicately he would have to tread in keeping Natasha Lovchev safely out of the official eye. He made a vow to himself that, whoever else might suffer, he would at all costs protect Natasha.
An hour later he found himself arresting her.
It happened like this.
Deciding that it made sense to start his new inquiries with the Lovchevs (and also feeling a sudden longing to see that all-weather beauty again), he set out for the girl’s tiny apartment. When he got there, he found Mrs Lovchev preparing to return to her home in a village close to Yaroslavl on the banks of the Volga, about two hundred and thirty kilometres away. She greeted him like an old friend and demanded to know if he’d found out anything more about ‘the ghost’, adding that she’d always thought Moscow folk a bit standoffish, but since she’d started talking about her experience in the local shops, she’d found them just as friendly and curious as the folk back home.
‘And she can’t wait to get back home and tell them there that it’s not all motor-cars and concrete here in the big city, can you, Mother?’ laughed Natasha.
She looked and sounded delightful when she laughed, but Chislenko was too horrified at what had just been said to fully appreciate her beauty. Surely he’d warned them to keep quiet about the incident? Fears for the Lovchevs’ and f
or his own future mingled to make him speak rather brusquely to the garrulous old woman. Natasha intervened sharply, the laughter dying in her eyes. He replied with equal sharpness in his best official tone, but this only provoked her to a slanderous if not downright subversive attack upon the MVD and all its works.
Jesus! thought Chislenko. If Procurator Kozlov could hear this …
And then the dreadful thought occurred that perhaps worse people than Kozlov could be listening. What more likely than that Serebrianikov would have arranged for all those involved in the Gorodok Building affair to be bugged?
It was at that point that he arrested Natasha.
White-faced – with anger, he guessed, rather than fear – she let herself be thrust into the passenger seat of the little official car he was using. Normally ‘pool’ cars were as hard to come by as Western jeans, but in the last few days he’d found one permanently set aside for him, proof again of the strength of the Serebrianikov connection.
After he had been driving a few minutes Natasha burst out, ‘Where are you taking me, Inspector? This isn’t the way to Petrovka?’
‘No, it’s not. But we’ll get there, never you fear,’ said Chislenko grimly. ‘I just want a quiet word with you first. I’m going to give you some advice and I think you’d be wise to take it.’
‘What do you mean?’ she said, looking at him with contempt. ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, is that it?’
‘What do you mean?’ he demanded in his turn, growing angry.
‘I’ve seen the way you look at me, Comrade Inspector,’ she retorted. ‘But I warn you, I’m not one of your little shop-girls to be frightened out of her pants by an MVD bully!’
The suggestion horrified Chislenko. Was this really how his admiration of Natasha’s lively spirit and gentle beauty had come across – as unbridled lust?
Holding back his anger with difficulty, he said, ‘Listen, Natasha, for your mother’s sake if not for your own. This business at the Gorodok Building, it’s not wise to talk about it. It’s certainly been very unwise of your mother to go spreading tales of ghosts and ghouls all over Moscow, and it would be even unwiser for her to fill the Yaroslavl district with them too.’
There are No Ghosts in the Soviet Union Page 3