by Child 44
—Take off your jackets. Get a fire started.
All three took their jackets off, wrapping one around Leo and the other two around Brodsky. That wasn’t going to be enough. They needed a fire. The three officers looked for wood. There was a picket fence some distance away and two of the agents ran toward it while the third began ripping the sleeve of his coarse cotton shirt into strips. Leo remained focused on his prisoner, hitting him to keep him awake. But Leo was also feeling sleepy. He wanted to rest. He wanted to close his eyes.
—Hurry!
Though he’d meant to shout, his voice was barely audible.
The two officers returned with planks ripped from the fence. They cleared an area of ground, kicking aside all the snow and laying timbers across the frozen soil. Upon these timbers they positioned the strips of cotton. Building around these strips, they balanced thin wooden shards, creating a pyramid. One of the officers took out his lighter, tipping the fluid over the cotton. The flint sparked, the cotton caught alight, began to burn. The wood smoldered. But it was damp and refused to catch. Smoke spiraled upwards. Leo couldn’t feel any heat. The wood was taking too long to dry out. He ripped the lining from the inside of the jacket, adding this to the fire. If it went out they’d both die.
Between them they only had one lighter remaining. The officer carefully pulled the components apart and tipped the last of its fuel over the struggling fire. The flames grew, aided by a crumpled cigarette carton and shredded cigarette papers. All the officers were on their knees, stoking the fire. The timbers began to burn.
Anatoly opened his eyes, staring at the flames in front of him. The wood was crackling in the heat. Despite his desire to die the warmth felt wonderful on his skin. As the flames grew and the ambers glowed red, he realized with muddled emotions that he was going to survive.
Leo sat, his gaze concentrated on the fire’s center. Steam rose from his clothes. Two of the officers, keen to recover his approval, carried on collecting firewood. The third officer stood guard. Once there was no danger of the fire burning out, Leo ordered one of the men to return to the house and make preparations for their return to Moscow. Addressing his prisoner, he asked:
—Are you well enough to walk?
—I used to go fishing with my son. At night we’d build fires just like this and sit around them. He didn’t much like to fish but I think he enjoyed the fires. Had he not died he would’ve been roughly the same age as you are now.
Leo said nothing. The prisoner added:
—If it’s all right with you I’d like to stay a little longer.
Leo added some more wood to the fire. They could wait a little longer.
ON THE WALK BACK none of the men spoke. The distance Leo had covered in less than thirty minutes took them almost two hours to retrace. Each footstep seemed heavier and heavier as the methamphetamines disappeared from his system. Only the fact of his success sustained him now. He’d return to Moscow having proved himself, having recovered his status. He’d stood on the brink of failure and stepped back from it.
Nearing the farmhouse Anatoly began to wonder how they’d found him. He realized that he must have mentioned his friendship with Mikhail to Zina. She’d betrayed him. But he felt no anger toward her. She was only trying to survive. No one could begrudge her that. Anyway, it was irrelevant. All that mattered now was convincing his captors that Mikhail was innocent of any collaboration. He turned to his captor:
—When I arrived last night the family told me to leave. They wanted nothing to do with me. They threatened to call the authorities. That’s why I was forced to break into their barn. They thought I’d gone. The family has done nothing wrong. They’re good people, hardworking people.
Leo tried to imagine what had really happened last night. The traitor had sought his friend’s help but that help had not been forthcoming. It was not much of an escape plan. It was certainly not the escape plan of a competent spy:
—I have no interest in your friends.
They reached the perimeter of the farm. Just ahead of them, lined up on their knees outside the entrance to the barn, were Mikhail Zinoviev, his wife, and their two young daughters. Their hands were tied behind their backs. They were shivering, freezing cold in the snow. It was obvious they’d been positioned like this for some time. Mikhail’s face was battered. There was blood dripping from his smashed nose; his jaw hung at an awkward angle. It was broken. The officers were in a loose, uncertain ring around them. Vasili stood directly behind the family. Leo stopped walking, about to speak, when Vasili uncrossed his arms, revealing his gun. He lined up the muzzle and fired a shot into the back of Zinoviev’s head. The sound rang out. The man’s body fell forward into the snow. His wife and daughters remained motionless, staring at the body before them.
Only Brodsky reacted, making a noise, an inhuman noise—no words but grief and anger mixed together. Vasili took a step to the side and positioned his gun behind the wife’s head. Leo raised his hand:
—Lower your gun! That’s an order.
—These people are traitors. We need to make an example.
Vasili pulled the trigger, his hand recoiled, a second shot rang out, and the woman’s body slumped into the snow beside that of her husband. Brodsky tried to break free but the two officers escorting him kicked him to his knees. Vasili took another sidestep, positioning the gun behind the head of the elder daughter. Her nose was red with the cold. Her body was shaking slightly. She was staring at her mother’s body. She would die in the snow beside her parents. Leo drew his gun, pointing it at his deputy:
—Lower your gun.
Suddenly all his tiredness disappeared, not as the result of some narcotic. Outrage and adrenaline swept through him. His hand was steady. He closed one eye and took careful aim. At this range he wouldn’t miss. If he fired now the girl would survive. Both girls would survive—no one would be murdered. Without thinking about it the word had sprung into his head:
Murdered
He cocked his gun.
Vasili had been wrong about Kiev. He’d been duped by Brodsky’s letter. He’d assured the other men they were wasting their time going to Kimov. He’d hinted that tonight’s failure would result in him becoming the new boss. These embarrassing mistakes would all be in Leo’s report. Right now Vasili could sense the other officers watching him. His status had been struck a humiliating blow. Part of him wanted to see if Leo had the nerve to kill him. The repercussions would be severe. Yet he was no fool. He knew in his heart that he was a coward just as surely as he knew that Leo was not. Vasili lowered his gun. Pretending to be satisfied, he gestured to the two children:
—The girls have learned a valuable lesson. Maybe they’ll grow up to be better citizens than their parents.
Leo moved toward his deputy, passing the two dead bodies, leaving a boot print in the bloody snow. In a swift arc he swung his gun, cracking the edge of his weapon against the side of Vasili’s head. Vasili fell back, clutching his temple. There was a trickle of blood where the skin had broken. But before he could stand up straight he felt the barrel of Leo’s gun pressing against his temple. Except for the two girls, who were staring down, waiting to die, everyone watched.
Very slowly Vasili tilted his head and looked up, his jaw quivering. He was afraid of death, this man to whom the death of others was so casual. Leo’s finger touched the trigger. But he couldn’t do it. Not in cold blood. He would not be this man’s executioner. Let the State punish him. Trust in the State. He holstered his gun.
—You’ll remain here and wait for the militia. You’ll explain what has happened and assist them. You can make your own way back to Moscow.
Leo helped the two girls to their feet and walked them to the house.
Three agents were needed to carry Anatoly Brodsky to the back of the truck. His body was slack as though the life had been sucked out of it. He was muttering incomprehensibly, insane with grief and oblivious as the other officers told him to shut up. They didn’t want to listen to his crying
.
INSIDE THE HOUSE the two young girls said nothing, still unable to comprehend that the bodies lying outside in the snow were their parents. At any moment they expected their father to make them breakfast or their mother to return from the fields. Nothing felt real. Their parents were their entire world. How could the world exist without them?
Leo asked if they had any other family. Neither girl said a word. He told the elder girl to pack—they were coming to Moscow. Neither of them moved. He went to the bedroom and began to pack for them, looking for their things, their clothes. His hands began to shake. He stopped, sat on the bed, and looked down at his boot. He clumped his heels together and stared at the thin, compact ridges of blood-soaked snow that fell to the floor.
VASILI WATCHED FROM THE ROADSIDE, smoking his last cigarette, as the truck pulled away. He glimpsed the two girls sitting in the front beside Leo where he should’ve been. The truck turned and disappeared down the road. He looked around. There were faces at the windows of nearby farms. This time they didn’t shy away. He was glad he still had his machine gun. He walked back to the house, glancing at the bodies lying in the snow. He entered the kitchen, warmed up some water, and brewed some tea. It was strong and he sweetened it with sugar. The family had a small pot of sugar, probably meant to last for a month. He poured almost all of it into his glass, creating a sickly treat. He sipped it and suddenly felt tired. He took off his boots and jacket, went to the bedroom, pulled back the covers, and lay down. He wished it were possible to choose his dreams. He’d choose to dream of revenge.
MOSCOW
16 FEBRUARY
EVEN THOUGH IT HAD BEEN his place of work for the past five years, Leo had never felt comfortable in the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the MGB. Casual conversations were rare. Reactions were guarded. All this was hardly surprising considering the nature of their occupation, but to his mind there was something about the building itself which made people uneasy, as though fear had been factored into the design. He accepted his theory was nonsense insofar as he knew nothing of the architect’s intention. The building pre-dated the revolution, existing as nothing more than an insurance office before being taken over by the Bolshevik secret security force. Yet he found it difficult to believe they’d by chance chosen a building whose proportions were so unsettling: neither tall nor squat, wide nor narrow, it was somewhere awkwardly in between. Its façade created the impression of watchfulness: rows and rows of windows crammed together, stacked up and up, rising to a clock at the top which stared out over the city as though it were a single beady eye. An invisible borderline existed around the building. Passersby steered clear of this imaginary perimeter as if fearful they were going to be pulled in. Crossing that line meant you were either staff or condemned. There was no chance you could be found innocent inside these walls. It was an assembly line of guilt. Perhaps the Lubyanka hadn’t been constructed with fear in mind, but fear had taken over all the same, fear had made this former insurance office its own, its home.
Leo handed over his identity card, a card which meant not only that he could enter the building but also that he was able to leave. The cardless men and women led through these doors were often never seen again. The system might carry them into the Gulags or to a building just behind this one, on Varsonofyevsky Lane, another State Security compound fitted with sloping floors, log-paneled walls to absorb bullets, and hoses to wash away the rivulets of blood. Leo didn’t know the precise execution capacity, but the numbers were high, up to several hundred a day. At those levels practical considerations, such as how easily and quickly human remains could be cleaned away, became an issue.
Entering the main corridor, Leo wondered how it would feel to be led down to the basements with no leave to appeal and no one to call for help. The judicial system could be bypassed entirely. Leo had heard of prisoners who lay abandoned for weeks and doctors who served no other purpose than the study of pain. He taught himself to accept that these things existed not just for their own sake. They existed for a reason, a greater good. They existed to terrify. Terror was necessary. Terror protected the revolution. Without it, Lenin would’ve fallen. Without it, Stalin would’ve fallen. Why else would rumors concerning this building be deliberately spread by MGB operatives, muttered on the metro or on tramcars as strategically as if they were releasing a virus into the population? Fear was cultivated. Fear was part of his job. And for this level of fear to be sustained it needed a constant supply of people fed to it.
Of course the Lubyanka wasn’t the only building to fear. There was Butyrka prison with its tall towers and squalid wings filled with cramped cells where inmates played with matchsticks while waiting for their deportation to the labor camps. Or there was Lefortovo, where criminals under active investigation were transported for interrogations and where screams could be heard from neighboring streets. But Leo understood that the Lubyanka held a special place in the people’s psyche, representing the place where those guilty of anti-Soviet agitation, counterrevolutionary activity, and espionage were processed. Why did that category of prisoner strike particular dread into everyone’s heart? While it was easy to comfort yourself that you would never steal or rape or murder, no one could ever be sure they weren’t guilty of anti-Soviet agitation, counterrevolutionary activity, and espionage, since no one, including Leo, could ever be sure exactly what these crimes were. In the one hundred and forty articles of the criminal code Leo had just one article to guide him, a subsection defining the political prisoner as a person engaged in activity intended to:
Overthrow, subvert, or weaken the Soviet Power.
And that was more or less it: an elastic set of words stretching to accommodate anyone from top-ranking Party officials to ballet dancers to musicians to retired cobblers. Not even those who worked within the Lubyanka’s walls, not even those who kept this machinery of fear ticking, could be certain that the system they sustained would not one day swallow them too.
Despite the fact that Leo was indoors he was still wearing his outdoor attire, including leather gloves and a long wool overcoat. He was shivering. When he stood still the floor seemed to rock from side to side. Dizzy spells came over him, lasting for several seconds. He felt as if he was going to collapse. He hadn’t eaten in two days yet the thought of food made him sick. Even so he stubbornly refused to consider the possibility that he was ill: he was a little cold certainly, tired perhaps, but that would pass. In the post-amphetamine crash, he just needed to sleep. There was no way he could take a day off. Not today, not when there was the matter of Anatoly Brodsky’s interrogation.
Interrogations were technically not part of his duties. The MGB had specialists who did nothing but interview suspects, moving from cell to cell, extracting confessions with professional indifference and personal pride. They were motivated, like most employees, by simple things such as the prospect of a performance-related pay bonus, rewarded if the suspect signed promptly and unconditionally without amendments. Leo knew a little of their methods. He knew none of them personally. Interrogators formed something of a clique, working as a team, often sharing the same suspects, combining their particular gifts to attack resilience from a variety of different angles. Brutal, articulate, disarming: all of these qualities had their place. Outside of work these men and women ate together, walked together, shared stories, and compared methods. Though they looked more or less like anyone else, it was for some reason relatively easy for Leo to point them out. Many of their more extreme operations were confined to the basement where they were able to control environmental elements such as heat and light. In contrast, Leo’s role as investigator meant he spent most of his time either upstairs or outside. The basement was a world he rarely descended to, a world he’d closed his eyes to, a world he preferred to keep under his feet.
After a short wait Leo was called in. Unsteady, he entered Major Kuzmin’s office. Nothing in this room was accidental: everything had been meticulously planned and positioned. The walls were decorated with framed black-and-w
hite photos, including one in which Stalin was shaking Kuzmin’s hand, a photo taken at the Leader’s seventieth birthday. Surrounding these were a selection of framed propaganda posters collected from different decades. Leo supposed the age range was intended to suggest that Kuzmin had always occupied this office even during the purges of the nineteen thirties, which was not the case; he was in army intelligence. There was a poster of a plump white rabbit in a cage. EAT MORE RABBIT MEAT! There were three powerful red figures smashing their red hammers against the heads of sulky-looking unshaven men. FIGHT LAZY WORKERS! There were three smiling women heading into a factory. TRUST YOUR SAVINGS TO US! The US in the last poster didn’t refer to the three smiling women but rather to the national savings account. There was a poster of a bulbous man dressed in a suit and top hat carrying two bags brimming with money. CAPITALIST CLOWNS! There were blocky images of docks, shipbuilding, railways, smiling workers, angry workers, and a fleet of locomotives all in honor of Lenin. BUILD! These posters were rotated regularly and Kuzmin was fastidious about showing off his extensive collection. Equal care was spent on his book collection. His shelves were stocked with all the appropriate titles, while his copy of The History of the All-Union Communist Party: Short Course, the text ushered in by Stalin himself, rarely left his desk. Even the wastepaper basket contained only rigorously selected items. Everyone from the lowliest clerk to the highest-ranking officer understood that if you genuinely wanted to dispose of something you snuck it out, discreetly getting rid of it on the way home.
Kuzmin stood by the window overlooking Lubyanka Square. He was squat and wearing, as he tended to do, a uniform one size too small for his frame. His glasses were thick and often slid down his nose. In short he was a ridiculous-looking man and not even the supreme power of life and death had bestowed upon him any gravitas. Although, as far as Leo was aware, Kuzmin no longer took part in interrogations, it was rumored that in his day he’d been something of an expert, preferring to use his small, fat hands. Looking at him now, it was hard to believe.