Zugzwang

by Ronan Bennett

  ‘I want to write a note to my daughter,’ I said.

  Berek Medem considered my request but shook his head, with some regret it seemed to me. But I could see there was no point in asking again. ‘At least let me say goodbye to Rozental.’

  ‘Be quick,’ Medem said.

  I went over and got down beside my former patient. He turned to me momentarily, his eyes large and vague.

  ‘I can’t find it anywhere,’ he said.

  As a child, Catherine was always misplacing the things she wanted most – a book, a colouring pencil, a favourite toy – and wailing to the heavens that they were lost forever. I reached behind the base of the standard lamp and quickly located the missing rook. Rozental took it from me, examining it the way Catherine used to inspect the things I retrieved for her, as if some magic inhered in them. How else could the vanished thing reappear? Relief flooded into his eyes. I helped him to his feet.

  ‘Good luck tomorrow, Avrom,’ I said. ‘Try to get some sleep.’

  I hugged him, which only confused him, the way we are disconcerted when a nodding acquaintance embraces us with sudden sentimental warmth.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ Medem said. ‘You forget that I need him to be at his best.’ He turned to Kopelzon. ‘See that he eats and gets to bed. Bring him to the tournament tomorrow yourself. Make sure he arrives on time.’

  I took a last look at Rozental. He was already back at the board, setting out the pieces.

  Kopelzon stood aside to let me pass. ‘I’m sorry we never got to finish our game. Let’s call it a draw,’ he said. He put out his hand. ‘I’m sorry, Otto. You may not believe me, but I am – very sorry.’

  He took on a self-pitying and harassed look. In that instant I came to despise him. Anger welled up inside me.

  ‘If you were sorry you wouldn’t stand by and let me go to my death. If you were sorry you wouldn’t let these people destroy Rozental. Because whether your attempt works or not, the police will arrest him. They will throw him in jail. They will torture him –’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘They will put Rozental on trial,’ I continued with heat. ‘They will take him to the gallows. They will put a hood over his head and a rope around his neck and they will hang him – that man!’ I said, pointing at the pitiful figure bent over the chess board. ‘You’re going to kill him just as surely as if you were to cut his throat with your own hand. Tell me now that you are sorry, Reuven.’

  ‘For the greater good, sometimes sacrifices must be made,’ he said, reining in his instinct to shout me down. ‘Despite what you say, I am sorry – but what’s one man’s life weighed against the future of a whole nation?’

  ‘It won’t be just one man,’ I said, clenching my fists in pure rage. ‘The Black Hundreds will rampage through the villages and towns of the Pale. Thousands – tens of thousands – will die. Jews will die lynched and defiled – and you, Reuven, and your friends, will be responsible.’

  ‘We die every day, Otto. What’s new?’ Kopelzon said, turning away.

  For all that I hated him at that moment, I could not bring myself to hurt him. I unclenched my fists and dropped my shoulders.

  Berek Medem indicated the door and said, ‘It’s time to go, Dr Spethmann.’

  Twenty-Three

  There were two men waiting in the corridor, both younger than Medem but with the same ferocity of purpose written into their features. After a terse exchange in Polish, which I only half-understood, one of them took my arm and we started to march away from the elevators towards the stairs at the back of the building. The deep carpet was springy underfoot. My heart pounded in my chest.

  Medem walked beside me, holding his gun so the barrel was parallel to the seam of his trousers and pointing at the floor. The casual observer would notice nothing out of the ordinary.

  ‘The double will never escape,’ I said. ‘He will never get out of the Peterhof alive if he makes an attempt on the tsar.’

  ‘He knows that,’ Medem replied.

  ‘You are prepared to commit suicide to achieve your goal?’

  ‘Is it somehow more repugnant to your sense of morality that the doer of the deed should die as he strikes?’ Medem countered.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The repugnancy lies in the imagination that can contrive such a thing.’

  ‘What does the just man do, Spethmann? This is the question we cannot avoid. What does the just man do when there is injustice all around him? You know that Poland has been invaded, occupied and partitioned?’

  ‘I know my history,’ I said.

  The sign for the stairs indicated that we should turn left at the end of the corridor.

  ‘So how do we improve the lives of our children and those of the unborn generations? What is the way forward?’

  The door to one of the rooms opened and a large man in a grey overcoat and hat stepped out. I did not shout for help. What was the point? The man would die. I would die. The few minutes of life I could yet live were mine only so long as I colluded with my abductors. Indifferent to what he undoubtedly took to be a group of hotel guests either returning to their rooms or leaving them, the man bent to lock the door behind him.

  ‘What is your answer?’ Medem said. ‘What is the way forward?’

  ‘I am not a politician,’ I said. ‘I do not have an answer.’

  ‘That is your defence?’ Medem whispered as we approached the man, who seemed to be having trouble with his key.

  ‘Of what am I accused?’

  ‘You are accused of apathy, Spethmann,’ he said. ‘You are accused of opportunism, selfishness and cowardice.’

  The man in the grey overcoat straightened as we were about to pass. I felt the grip on my upper arm tighten and Medem moved closer to me, ready to block any attempt to flee.

  The brim of the man’s hat was pulled low and the collar of his coat concealed most of the lower part of his face, but I had recognised him. His shape and bulk gave him away.

  There was a moment – a split second, no more – when the five men in the corridor, positioned so closely together that each could have put a hand out to touch the rest without even having to stretch, knew what was about to happen before it happened. Then it was a simple matter of who moved fastest.

  A bullet leaves the barrel of a pistol at a velocity in excess of a thousand feet per second. The human eye cannot see it. Perhaps a muzzle flash, perhaps smoke; and then, if the aim is true, the projectile strikes. Once the shock has subsided, the primary senses are no longer concerned with vision but with pain. But I saw the bullet. I saw the tiny disc the colour of tarnished silver erupt from the barrel of Kavi’s gun in a white-grey cloud and come spinning towards me.

  And I remember thinking, So this is what it’s like to be shot.

  An age later a deafening bang followed in the bullet’s wake, as though someone had let off a firework a fraction from my ear. I felt the grip on my arm suddenly relax as the man who had been holding me collapsed to the floor.

  The door from which Kavi had appeared swung violently open and a second gunman materialised, crouching as he came. Lychev! He fired twice.

  Simultaneously, Kavi swivelled to turn his gun on Berek Medem. There was another deafening report by my ear and I felt myself yanked back. The last shot was from Medem’s own gun. He locked his arm around my throat to use me as a shield.

  There were more shots. Pops and bangs, wilder, more random than the first. I was aware of blood on the walls. The corridor filled up with smoke that gave off a horrible, sharp stench. Someone was shouting but it came to my ringing ears as an echo. I stumbled. Medem pulled me up as we retreated to the stairs. I was choking. I brought my hands up to fight his hold, to fight for the air I desperately needed.

  The shooting stopped. I saw Lychev’s lips move to shout commands my ears could not hear. He and Kavi were half-crouching near one of the mahogany tables, their gun arms outstretched, their faces taut, eyes wide.

  Something new, some new sensation. Something
hard pressed to my temple and from behind I now heard words and curses and threats.

  ‘Let him go …’

  ‘I will kill him …’

  ‘Let Spethmann go and we won’t come after you …’

  ‘Stay back …’

  ‘We don’t want you. You can go. As long as you don’t hurt him …’

  Immobilised and suffocating, the barrel of the gun at my head, my feet barely on the carpet. Lychev and Kavi inching forward with wary half-steps, manoeuvring past the bodies of the two men they had killed. A terrified guest opening the door and closing it in an instant. Broken glass from an electric lamp. Spilt water from an overturned vase. A white rose petal stuck to my left shoe.

  Medem grunting with the effort.

  ‘I will kill him …’

  I brought my hands up and pulled at his arm to ease the pressure on my throat. Medem tightened his grip and pulled me back.

  It would be too much to say it was a conscious decision. Perhaps it was nothing more than the instinctive recognition of a momentary advantage. Or perhaps simple desperation. Sensing Medem off-balance, just for a second, I tensed my left leg and heaved with all my strength, driving him into the wall. There was another loud crack. Dust and fragments of plaster showered us from the ceiling where Medem’s bullet had struck.

  I spun round and, bending low, rammed him in the chest, trying at the same time to pull him down. He managed to step back and fire over my back at Lychev and Kavi, forcing them down behind a table.

  Unbalanced now, I was thrown aside by Medem. I went crashing to the floor. He turned and sprinted to the door for the stairs.

  Before he reached it, the door flew open and Tolya appeared, his pistol trained on the terrorist. Berek Medem was faster and more ruthless. Tolya went down as though his legs had been kicked from under him. Medem fired again before leaping over Tolya’s body and disappearing through the door.

  Kavi raced to where Tolya lay. He looked to Lychev and shook his head. Dead.

  ‘What a mess,’ I heard Lychev mutter as he surveyed the devastation. Then he said to Kavi, ‘Disappear. Now!’

  Kavi kneeled down beside his dead friend. I heard him say, ‘Goodbye, Comrade,’ before getting to his feet and going through the door to the stairs.

  Lychev helped me up. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

  ‘We’ve been keeping an eye on Rozental. Tolya saw you in the lobby and telephoned me. I came as soon as I could. I had an idea you were getting yourself into trouble.’

  A guest opened the door to his room a fraction and poked his head out.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Lychev said. ‘I’m a policeman. There’s been an attempted robbery. Close the door and stay inside your room until you’re informed otherwise.’

  The frightened guest was quick to oblige.

  ‘Attempted robbery?’ I said.

  ‘There’s no need to panic people even more,’ Lychev said. ‘Is Kopelzon still with Rozental?’

  We hurried to Rozental’s room, Lychev repeating his orders as more guests hesitantly emerged into the corridor.

  Rozental’s door was ajar.

  ‘Is Kopelzon armed?’ Lychev asked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  Nevertheless, when Lychev burst in it was with his pistol at the ready. I followed, only to find Rozental still staring at his chessboard. He had once again set up the critical position from the Marshall–Capablanca game. This alone had meaning for him.

  Lychev searched the bathroom and closets. Kopelzon had fled. ‘The police will be on their way,’ he said. ‘Stay here until I come for you.’

  ‘Won’t the police want to talk to me? To ask me questions about Berek Medem?’

  ‘Some thieves were trying to break into a room. Unfortunately for them I happened to be in the hotel at the time. Do not say anything different. Do not mention Berek Medem.’

  ‘Who are you, Lychev?’

  ‘I’ve already told you my name, I think.’

  ‘Your name is not in doubt. Your priorities and loyalties are not so clear.’

  I tried to push past him but he blocked my way. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘There’s someone I have to see,’ I said.

  ‘Not now,’ he said, pushing me back. ‘I mean it. Do not come out of this room until I come for you.’

  He left without another word.

  ‘Why did he exchange the rooks?’ Rozental mumbled, shaking his head. ‘It makes no sense.’

  I found a bottle of vodka and poured myself a tumblerful. I poured a second. None of it made sense.

  Every now and then policemen knocked to check that we were safe. The hotel’s manager arrived, mortified, to apologise in person for the unfortunate events, and offering food and drink and assurances that nothing like this had ever happened before and expressing his hope that it wouldn’t spoil the guests’ stay.

  I used the telephone to call the apartment on the Bolshoy. There was no answer. I called home. Again there was no answer. I began to get very worried. Where was Anna? Where was Catherine?

  There was a high-pitched whine in my ears. I tried pressing a finger to them and blowing my nose. After a while they began to ache.

  Shortly after 2 a.m. Lychev returned. I had just got Rozental to bed; he had fallen asleep instantly and was already snoring lightly.

  ‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said.

  ‘I said there’s someone I have to see,’ I said.

  ‘Who?’ When I did not reply he said, ‘I have just saved your life, Spethmann. I had hoped that would convince you I have your welfare at heart.’

  ‘I’m going to see Anna Ziatdinov,’ I said.

  He considered for a moment. ‘I’d better take you.’

  Twenty-Four

  The streets were all but deserted and we were soon on Palace Bridge. The black water of the Neva sparkled in the moonlight and the electric lights shone all along the embankment.

  ‘Did Medem escape?’ I asked.

  ‘Apparently,’ Lychev replied.

  ‘You don’t seem very concerned. Why did you tell Kavi to disappear?’

  ‘There was no reason for him to stay.’

  ‘Kavi is not a policeman, is he?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘He’s a Bolshevik.’

  Lychev cast me a sideways look.

  ‘And so are you,’ I said.

  He shrugged, a nonchalant acknowledgement.

  ‘A Bolshevik spy in the St Petersburg bureau of detectives,’ I said. ‘I seem to recall you telling me you were born the same day Tsar Alexander II was murdered? You came into the world to prevent such a thing happening again, so you said.’

  ‘If one is to play the part,’ Lychev said with a shrug, ‘one must learn the lines.’

  ‘A servant of justice?’

  ‘That line is for real.’

  ‘I seem to be surrounded by just men,’ I said, ‘which is odd.’

  ‘Why odd?’

  ‘Because I find just men utterly terrifying.’

  We had turned on to University and were passing the Academy of Science. We would be at the apartment in less than five minutes.

  He said, ‘How would you characterise this plot of Berek Medem’s?’

  ‘I would call it amateurish,’ I said.

  ‘Go on,’ he said.

  ‘Kopelzon is an amateur,’ I continued, ‘so it doesn’t surprise me that he came up with something so unlikely. But Berek Medem is a professional. He’s also ruthless and, from what I saw of him, highly intelligent. I find it hard to believe he ever really imagined it would work.’

  Lychev smiled as if at a promising student, and, helping me to the correct conclusion as a good professor does, he asked leadingly, ‘But if he didn’t think it would work, why did he go to so much trouble?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  ‘Because someone wants him to succeed,’ Lychev said. ‘Someone powerful whose interests coincide with his, on this issu
e at least.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Where do you think the Okhrana have been all this time? Do you think they don’t know about Kopelzon and his political opinions? Or his sudden friendship with Rozental? Why do you think Colonel Gan placed an agent in your office building? Why do you think Semevsky was following you and Rozental that night?’

  I was lost.

  ‘It isn’t Kopelzon’s plot. He didn’t dream it up. Gan did.’

  It was a moment before I could take this in. ‘What are you saying? Why would the head of the Okhrana want to kill the tsar?’

  At the Imperial Academy of Art, Lychev turned right. Ahead was the junction with Bolshoy Prospect. We passed a droshky, the driver whipping the little pony briskly. Apart from that there was no one on the streets.

  ‘Gan is a pro-German reactionary,’ Lychev went on. ‘He is conspiring with his friend Zinnurov and the Baltic Barons and their pro-German allies to kill Nicholas, who is pro-French and who, in their eyes, isn’t up to the job of defending the autocracy. It doesn’t matter how many mistakes Kopelzon and Medem make. They are being given a free hand.’

  ‘Does Medem know he is being used by Gan?’

  ‘Medem is highly intelligent and it’s possible he’s worked it out. It wouldn’t change things. Either way both he and Gan get what they want – to kill the tsar.’

  ‘What about Kopelzon? Does he know?’

  ‘Your friend has known from the start.’

  ‘Then why hasn’t he told Medem?’

  ‘Because he doesn’t want Medem to know that he’s an Okhrana agent.’

  I spun round to look at him. He flicked a careless glance at me.

  ‘Kopelzon has been spying on Polish émigreé groups in Paris, Berlin and London. Wherever he goes on tour he makes sure to meet Polish exiles. He’s a hero to them and naturally they’re talkative. And when he comes back to St Petersburg Kopelzon goes to meet Colonel Gan and tells him everything.’

  ‘Why is he doing it? What does Kopelzon get out of it?’

  ‘Money,’ Lychev said simply. ‘Your friend likes to live well – or hadn’t you noticed?’

  I thought of all the expensive meals we’d shared at A l’Ours and the Contant. Kopelzon was recklessly generous. Did he give away his money out of guilt?