‘Is this the sort of thing you get to eat in the Kremlin?’ said Barikada coldly. They were never going to be friends but Barikada had been especially distant with him from the first day back at school.
Misha thought about taunting him, telling him about the roast goose they had eaten yesterday, left over from a Kremlin banquet for visiting diplomats from the British Embassy. But he understood why Barikada was angry, and he didn’t want to make his friends feel bad either.
‘The Soviet leaders share the people’s hardships,’ he said, and felt like a creep.
Barikada gave him a look of burning hatred. Misha averted his gaze. He wanted to tell him to be careful. But it would sound as though he were threatening to denounce him to the NKVD.
That evening as Misha helped his papa tidy a conference room in the Senate, there was some rare roast beef on the table, left over from a snack the catering staff had brought in while the generals and ministers worked on the latest strategy to stem the Nazi advance. Without a second thought, Misha wrapped it in a fresh white napkin and popped it in his pocket.
At lunchtime the following day, as they sat round the table with another lukewarm grey mince and potato dish, a furious row broke out between Nikolay and another boy in his class, Spartakus. In their previous lesson the politics tutor had been lecturing them on the achievements of the Soviet Union. Moscow’s underground railway, he told them, was one of the great wonders of the world, and there was nothing like it in the capitalist countries.
Nikolay had said nothing during the lesson, but now he was bursting to share his real thoughts. ‘I read a railway book a few years ago that said London and Paris had underground railways built in the previous century. There were pictures, and everything, with tunnels and electric trains.’
‘Capitalist propaganda,’ huffed Spartakus. ‘You are a class traitor, duped by imperialist jackals.’
Nikolay bristled. ‘Well it was published by the People’s Commissariat for Education. And as far as I know, they produce their books in the Soviet Union, and I don’t think they are written by imperialists. Besides, these imperialist jackals are our allies now, aren’t they?’
Spartakus was growing increasingly angry. ‘No one has an underground system, apart from the Soviet Union. And the British imperialists might be our allies for the moment, but they will betray us as soon as it suits them.’
Barikada had come over and Misha wondered if he would join in. But he just sat there, his face a brooding scowl.
Misha tried to calm things down. ‘Hey, never mind that. I’ve got something to share.’ He pulled out the napkin and spread out the slices of beef on the table. If he’d got out a Fabergé egg, it would not have had a greater effect. Nikolay went to grab a piece. ‘Hold on, I’ll cut it up for us all,’ said Misha.
He divided the beef into six more or less equal slices and passed them round so they could each take a piece. But when Misha got to Barikada the boy spat into the meat. Nikolay stood up and pushed him so hard he fell off his seat. ‘Someone could have eaten that, you imbecile,’ he shouted.
Barikada got to his feet and Nikolay stood up too, expecting to have to defend himself. But it was Misha Barikada turned on. Shaking with rage, he said, ‘You think you’re so special, don’t you, Mikhail Petrov. You up there in the Kremlin with the rest of them who’ve betrayed us all. You with your fancy foods while we eat muck you wouldn’t give to a dog. Well, enjoy it while you can. When the Nazis get here, they’re going to nail you all to the Kremlin gates. And I’ll be there to applaud.’
The cafeteria had come to a standstill. If Barikada had stripped himself naked and slashed his wrists, he could not have drawn more attention.
Barikada turned on his heels and walked out. The rest of them sat in stunned silence. No one said it, but they all knew they would never see Barikada again.
Valya had been teaching that afternoon and she and Misha walked back slowly to the Kremlin at the end of the day. It was still warm, with no hint of the autumn to come.
‘I heard about Barikada,’ said Valya.
Misha nodded.
‘I wonder when they will come for him,’ she said. ‘Will they leave him a few days, or will they come at once?’
‘Well, I won’t inform on him,’ said Misha. He was feeling a little nauseous now, knowing that he had done something that was going to contribute to the arrest of one of his schoolmates.
‘It was stupid of him to talk like that so publicly. But people do stupid things when they’re upset.’
‘Maybe no one will say anything,’ said Misha hopefully.
Valya looked at him and he knew she was about to say something crushing. ‘Oh, Misha. Do you honestly think that no one in the entire canteen will go to the NKVD and tell them what happened? The Komsorg, the hall monitors, the canteen staff . . . the NKVD probably heard about it before the lunch break had ended.’
‘But he didn’t really do any harm, and he’s not even eighteen.’
She looked at him with a twisted smile. ‘Look at Beria. Look at Zhiglov. They are people who do not understand the meaning of mercy. The NKVD probably get paid or promoted by the number of arrests they make, the number of executions . . . the lower functionaries, obviously, I’m not talking about Beria, or Zhiglov here. I wouldn’t want to be in Barikada’s shoes.’
They had reached the great bridge across the Moskva and a slight wind was blowing off the water. Valya pulled her coat tight around her. ‘You and I are luckier than most,’ she said. ‘We trust each other enough to talk. We know we will never betray each other to the NKVD.’ She drew Misha closer and leaned her head on his shoulder. He longed to kiss her.
‘Oh, Misha. I know it will never come to that. You are safe with me. I will never betray you.’
But that night, as he lay in bed, thinking about how it felt when she held him close, he realised that what also bound them was fear. It made him feel sad. Then he felt angry. Angry with this country that could make friends fear each other. He knew he would never deliberately betray Valya. But, though she might say she had no intention of betraying him, if they tortured Valya, Misha realised, she would say anything, eventually. And, in his heart, he knew he would too.
Chapter 16
End of September 1941
There was a knock at the door around nine in the evening. It sounded like Valya, which surprised Misha because she did not usually visit at that hour, unless she was coming with her father for a meal.
Sure enough, it was her.
‘Guess what! I’ve received my call-up papers. I must report to Central Aerodrome at the start of December, and in the meantime I have to carry on teaching and stay fit and healthy.’
Misha hadn’t seen her looking so happy for months – not since before the war. ‘I think they will train me to fly the transport planes. Big ones like the Lisunov Li-2. That’s the one they build under licence from the United States. I’ll feel safe flying that. Unless I have to fly into battle with parachute troops. But that will be exciting. A story for my grandchildren . . . It’s a marvellous aeroplane. Two Shvetsov nine-cylinder, air-cooled, radial engines, three hundred kilometres an hour, two thousand kilometre range . . . Misha! Pay attention!’ She hit him on the shoulder. ‘These things can fly from Moscow to London without stopping. Imagine that! And after the war I’ll be all ready to be a civilian pilot.’
She could tell he was trying to stifle a yawn. ‘I’ll tell you a secret,’ she continued. ‘You know the hydroelectric dam on the Dnieper? The one that was the largest in Europe . . . the one that took ten years to build?’
Misha nodded. Every Soviet child had been told it was the greatest engineering achievement of the Soviet era. ‘Well, they blew it up. We did it, to stop the Nazis getting it. Papa almost cried when he told me.’
Misha gasped. ‘All the effort that went into building it, all that sacrifice, for nothing.’
She sat at the dining table and Misha made her a cup of tea. He got out the best bone china, the set they h
ad been given when they first arrived at the Kremlin, which they’d been told had once belonged to Tsar Nicholas’s cousin. Suddenly she seemed more serious.
‘Misha, I also have bad news,’ she said as she took her first sip of tea. ‘The Germans are at Kiev. Isn’t that where your brother works?’
Misha nodded. ‘Papa thinks Viktor will join the partisans.’
‘But if they’re at Kiev they are heading down to Stalingrad. And the oilfields beyond. Leningrad is yet to fall. I keep hoping they have bitten off more than they can chew, but they keep pressing forward. And the weather is still mild. Maybe it’ll be several weeks before the rain and the mud of the Rasputitsa. Who knows where they’ll be by then? They already have the territory between Leningrad and Moscow – you can’t get the train up there any more.’
‘But what will happen if the Nazis get here?’ asked Misha. ‘Won’t Comrade Stalin have to take the government cadres with him to the east?’
‘I suppose. But it will be chaos, Misha. Everyone fleeing just as the winter starts to bite. It will be a catastrophe. They say the cruelty of the Hitlerites is breathtaking. In the conquered territories there are reports of mass shootings. Murder on a colossal scale. You know what they call us, don’t you?’
Misha didn’t.
‘“Untermensch.” That’s a German word. It means subhuman.’
Misha laughed at that. It was almost too ridiculous.
‘Do you think we will stop them?’ he said. ‘I always believed we had the greatest army in the world.’
‘I used to think that too. But I don’t think it matters how good your soldiers are, if your generals are making the awful mess of it . . .’
There was a loud knock at the door. This was not the sort of knock a visiting neighbour would make. They both sat bolt upright and waited in silence. ‘Don’t answer. They might go away,’ said Valya. ‘Do you think your place is bugged? We’ve been saying things we shouldn’t have.’
Misha picked up on her fear and began to feel very frightened himself. He realised they had not taken his papa’s usual precaution of turning on the radio.
There was more knocking – louder and more persistent.
‘I’ll go. They know we are in, and the lights are on. They might take this as an admission of guilt.’
He went to open the door. Zhiglov was standing there, smoking a cigarette. His eyes lacked their usual focus and Misha could tell at once he was drunk. He reeked of alcohol.
‘Young Comrade Petrov,’ he said with mock familiarity, ‘may I come in?’
Misha stood to the side and gestured for him to enter. He went to sit at the dining table where he stared for a moment at Valentina Golovkin. ‘So this is why you took so long to answer the door,’ he said with a sly grin.
He seemed confused. He opened his mouth to speak and then stopped. Misha had never seen anyone in the NKVD behave like this. It made him immensely uneasy.
Then Zhiglov stood up, swaying slightly, and said, ‘Petrov, I would like you to come to my apartment later tonight.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Around ten thirty? There is a matter I wish to discuss with you.’
With that, he turned on his heels and slammed the door behind him.
‘What on earth was that about?’ said Valya.
‘I don’t know,’ Misha said. ‘Will you come with me?’
She looked at him directly. ‘Misha, you saw the way he looked at me. He’s been cold with me since I saw him driving Beria’s car. He quite transparently didn’t ask me to come. I think you have to go alone. I could wait here until you get back, if you like? When do you think your papa will get home?’
‘Sometime after midnight most likely,’ Misha answered without looking at her.
‘Don’t be angry with me, Misha,’ she said firmly. ‘You know I can’t come.’
‘I’m not angry, Valya,’ he lied. ‘I’m just frightened.’
Valya went back home to leave a note for her father telling him where she was and returned to Misha’s apartment just after ten. They sat at the dining table again, wondering what Zhiglov was going to say.
‘Maybe he wants to recruit you to the NKVD?’ said Valya.
‘But my mother is an enemy of the people.’
‘Foreign Secretary Molotov’s wife is an enemy of the people. Chief Secretary Poskrebyshev’s wife is an enemy of the people. Comrade Stalin’s own son and his family are enemies of the people. There are so many enemies of the people it doesn’t matter.’
When the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower clock chimed the half-hour after ten, Misha took a deep breath and stood up. ‘I will see you very soon, I hope,’ he said.
She put a hand on his arm and squeezed. ‘I’ll wait until you get back.’
Misha took the short walk down the corridor to Zhiglov’s apartment. He knocked quietly on the door, aware of the late hour. It was flung open. ‘You are late,’ said Zhiglov. He was nursing a cup of black coffee and his hair was wet from a bath or shower. Misha was amazed at the transformation from drunk to the seemingly sober figure that stood before him.
‘Come and sit down,’ said the Kapitan and beckoned Misha into a plush sitting room, with armchairs and a bright red leather sofa. Neither he nor Valya had ever been invited into the apartment when they used to collect Galina and Misha was surprised to see how bourgeois it was. Oil paintings adorned the walls. A beautiful marquetry cabinet stood in the space between two large windows. An intricate Persian carpet lay on the floor. It looked like a wealthy merchant’s house from a painting in the pre-Revolutionary rooms at the State Tretyakov Gallery. Clearly, Kapitan Zhiglov knew some very well connected people.
Without asking, Zhiglov poured them both a large measure of vodka. ‘To our health and happiness!’ he said with a sardonic grin, knocking back his drink in a single mouthful. Misha shifted uncomfortably on the sofa, the fabric making an embarrassing squeak as he moved.
Misha took a sip of his vodka. He was no expert but even he could tell it was of the highest quality.
‘Come on, knock it back,’ scoffed Zhiglov. Misha did as he was told and coughed as the fiery liquid settled on his stomach. He placed his glass on the table and Zhiglov immediately filled it again.
‘How is Galina getting on in Kuybyshev?’ Misha asked.
Zhiglov ignored him. ‘You know, my family come from the Ukraine,’ he said.
Misha had guessed as much. Valya’s father came from the Ukraine and spoke in a similar accent. It was how they pronounced their ‘r’s that told you.
‘I have heard terrible stories from my comrades in Kiev.’
Misha shuddered and wondered if Zhiglov had news of his brother.
‘Tales of base treachery. The people greet the Nazis with salt and bread. They dress in their peasant finery and throw flowers at them. I’ve seen the photographs in the foreign magazines. I’m sure they aren’t fakes.’ He paused to light a cigarette. ‘But I suppose we deserve it.’
Misha sat there flabbergasted and wondering what to say. Was this some kind of test? But Zhiglov obviously wasn’t expecting a response.
‘I was in Kiev during the worst of the famine,’ he continued. ‘You know about the famine?’
Misha shook his head.
Zhiglov wasn’t convinced. ‘Come on, Mikhail. Tonight we can be honest with each other.’
‘I remember seeing a boy and girl at school when I was younger,’ said Misha carefully, ‘who had come from the west, probably from the Ukraine. They were very thin, sickly. They disappeared. We wondered if they had been too weak to live.’
‘The ones who came to Moscow were lucky,’ said Zhiglov. ‘Millions of them died. Those paintings you see in the galleries, photos in magazines of happy peasants on the collective farms celebrating the harvest . . . It’s all just propaganda. In Kiev I saw bodies in the street every day, scores of them, flies buzzing around their eyes. People who had just dropped down dead from hunger. There was one time we were called out . . . Some peasant muzhik with his grimy beard and filthy
grey overcoat and a tattered rope for a belt, there he was on the street, selling dismembered little children for meat, from a market stall.’
Misha felt sick.
Zhiglov filled his glass again.
‘It was all deliberate of course – the famine, I mean,’ he said. ‘To punish the peasantry for their devotion to their god, and for their petty greed, and for their failure to support the Revolution. “Extermination by hunger”, Beria called it. No wonder they welcomed the Nazis with open arms. And I would have done too, if I’d been one of them.’
Misha knew the Soviet leaders had made terrible mistakes, but he had never imagined they might be capable of such calculated wickedness.
‘But it’s got worse for them now. They’ve found out the Nazis are even crueller than we were. I heard this morning they’ve been rounding up the Jews, and there are a lot of Jews in Kiev. They’ve been killing them all – tens of thousands shot in a couple of days in a ravine outside the city. And if they are doing that in the Ukraine, then I am sure they will be doing it everywhere else in Soviet territory they have captured. Galina’s mother was Jewish. Does that make Galina a Jew? I think the Nazis would say so. Personally, although I know the Vozhd is wary of the Jewish people, I don’t care. Some of our greatest revolutionaries were Jewish.’
Zhiglov poured another shot of vodka and downed it. ‘But here’s the thing. I thought the Nazis were better than that. I used to liaise with the German border forces in 1939, after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. We used to dine together sometimes, us officers. They were good hearty fellows, those men. Decent in their own way. I thought I could work with them if they came – and we all knew they would one day. So I started to do some little things for them, passing on the odd titbit from Moscow. I let them know how unprepared we were. How easy it would be to overrun us. I dare say I wasn’t the only one.’
Misha listened with growing horror. He went to sip his vodka and realised his glass was empty. Zhiglov filled it up. He looked at Misha with a steady eye. ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ he said. Misha didn’t know whether he meant the vodka, the life he was leading or talking to him there that evening. An uneasy silence fell over the room.
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