by James L. May
The old man paused when he saw my expression. “But, after all,” he muttered, “under certain circumstances, too close a look can be unhealthy. I’m glad you’re all right.”
My muscles still shivered. It was after curfew, and we were in our cell. We were not supposed to have a light, but Petrovich had turned the lamp on the windowsill down low. Bent over it, his face glowed. Each wrinkle, each unshaven hair, cast its own distinct shadow. From behind the mask of his bruise, one eye looked out, pink-rimmed and flat.
After I’d described the chase, he wanted to know the details of my conversation with Veronika.
“She admitted to being Antonov’s lover,” I said. “They slept together.”
“We as good as knew that already.”
“Yes, but she confirmed it. That’s new. And she was more open about how they had met.”
He nodded. There was no need for either of us to say it wasn’t what I’d hoped for. It was not a new revelation that would keep Petrovich from going to Spagovsky. I could hardly even say if I wanted that anymore. What if the old man was right? What if she’d told the men in the forest where to wait for me?
After we put out the light, it took me a long time to fall asleep.
Each morning the inmates of Company Ten awoke, waited in line, then performed the necessary morning ritual standing shoulder to shoulder at an open stone gutter in the basement of their barracks. The flow of piss through a drain at one end trickled and splashed a mazurka into the cistern below.
That morning, as I stepped up to take my turn, I felt myself panic. The men standing to either side of me were too close, a danger. That there should be lavatories inside the kremlin was a result of the same sophisticated monastic drainage system I’d encountered at the canal the night before. My hands shook, spattering, as I felt myself there again. I hurried back upstairs to the cell as soon as I was done.
Petrovich was calmly reading a piece of paper when I came in. “Change of plans,” he said. “Before we question Spagovsky, we’re going back to the sauna.”
While I had been trudging to the fishery last night, the old man had gone to see his colleagues at KrimKab about Golubov. The gold leaf was the kind of thing the urka might have heard of, if it had come up for sale. At any rate, it would be worth asking him. Our first meeting had gone poorly, of course, but there were other ways. The mistake, he said, had been to think that their connection in Odessa would allow him special access to the urka—approaching Golubov along with all his men had forced his hand, obliging him to make a show of force. Doing that again was out, but given their desire to resolve the situation without violence, the Administration Section had to have a private channel of communication with the sauna’s leader. Asking among the criminologists had duly yielded someone who thought he could get Golubov a note via contacts in their office. The response had come while I was downstairs.
“I wrote that I had more questions, and notwithstanding my treatment last time, my offer was good. Told him we should meet privately. He writes here for us to come this morning.”
In fact the note simply read, Saturday, 7 a.m. Side door. Three knocks. “It could be a trick, couldn’t it?” I said. “Are you so sure he’s willing to let bygones be bygones? He didn’t seem like the type last time.”
“I tell you, that was theater, to impress his rabble. Golubov may not care for me, but he knows how to advance his interests.”
“What if those two were his men, waiting for me on the road last night?”
“It wasn’t. What reason would they have? We need to hurry. Come on.”
I wasn’t reassured—my hands still shook, and Petrovich’s face looked worse than ever—but could think of no way to delay. Bread had already been issued, and it was getting light. Seven would be here soon.
We found the side door Golubov had mentioned on the opposite side of the building from the stairs we’d gone down last time. Petrovich delivered the requested three knocks with his cane.
After a minute of waiting there was the sound of a bar being raised, and Golubov himself opened to us. Still wearing only an undershirt and drawers, he shivered in the cold air.
“Come on, then. I don’t have all day,” he said.
We followed him down a stairwell. The density of the blue-black ink that stormed over the urka boss’s skin surprised me; somehow my memory had erased a large number of his tattoos. The word INDIAN was still there, blazoned across his cheeks. There was no forgetting that.
The room he brought us to was at one end of a hall. I thought the other end might lead to the barracks we’d been in before, where the other men stayed. It was all connected, at least; you could tell that by the stink. Smelling the place again was like having an animal squirm through your nostrils and nest in your throat.
Inside, Golubov sat down at a table, where a young blond woman waited for him. In contrast to his dingy underthings, she wore a blouse and a skirt with stockings, along with a heavy jacket. As he began to peel an egg, she leaned against him, her cheek on his shoulder, her body half-covering the image of a ship under full sail on his arm.
“So, Inspector,” he said. “Here we are, together again. What the fuck do you want? Wasn’t I clear last time about not telling you anything?” He gestured with the egg at Petrovich’s bruises. “Your face says I fucking was.”
Petrovich took the remark in stride, along with the girl’s presence, and I tried to as well. Frightened as I’d been last night, the chase hadn’t put the boldness of my talk with Veronika from my mind altogether. Still, a moll waiting attendance on her half-naked gangster had no precedent in my experience.
“Oh, come, Golubov,” the old man said. “There’s no one here but us. Why let us in if you weren’t interested?”
“You want something from me? You want to do business? Make me an offer, something we can actually trade. Don’t be a silly cunt. Don’t try to put my cock in with the pickles. Fuck your mother, how do I even know you can deliver anything from Infosec?”
“All you have to do is listen. Perhaps take a look at something. If, after that, you feel like talking to us, you can, and I’ll report that you were helpful. Otherwise, we’ll go away.” Petrovich gestured at me with his chin. “Tolya heard about some stolen goods the other day. We thought that might be in your line.”
Both men looked at me. The blond girl, paying no attention, sat forward and helped herself to a piece of bread from the table.“Our friend Gennady Antonov,” I said. “The one who was killed. He worked restoring icons in the museum collection. I heard from his boss that some supplies were taken from his desk shortly before he died. Alcohol, turpentine, some brushes. What seems like it would come up for sale is a book of gold leaf.”
Golubov looked interested despite himself. “The fuck you say. Restoring icons? Here? I figured they would have thrown that stuff on the fire years ago. Or sold it off, at least. What do you mean by icons?”
“Just like your poor grandmother used to pray for your soul in front of,” said Petrovich. “There’s a whole chapel-full above the Holy Gates.”
“I don’t fucking believe it. They can’t have saved that stuff. The Communists would get their dicks tied in a knot all trying to piss on it at once.”
“It’s true,” said Petrovich. “Have you heard anything?”
If a man with writing tattooed on his face can look mild, Golubov looked mild. “If I were saying anything to you, I’d say I haven’t heard a fucking thing about it.”
“What about a man named Zhenov?” said Petrovich. “Military—a former White. He manages a warehouse that supplies Anzer Division. He ever sell surplus to your boys?”
“Think I keep track of all the tsar’s son-of-a-whore lieutenants who ended up in this camp and got bent? Who’d have the time?”
Petrovich sighed. “You’re determined to be difficult. All right. Just one more thing.” He handed him the list we’
d gotten from Kologriev with the names of the men who’d collected the icons on it. “Recognize any of the names on that list?”
Golubov glanced over it languidly, then started and held it up. The N on his cheek twitched. “Ivan Kologriev? That prick? Him I know. I know he’s lucky to fucking be alive.” Hardening, his face receded behind the letters on it. Anger made him less of a man and more of a word.
“What do you know about Kologriev?” said Petrovich excitedly.
“Didn’t notice the tattoos, Inspector? Should have been a fucking giveaway.”
“You’re saying Kologriev’s an urka?”
“Something like that.”
Petrovich stroked his mustache. “He buttons his shirts at the wrists and neck.”
“Waste of his old man’s spunk, is what he is. How’s he mixed up in this?”
Petrovich smiled. He said: “You’ll help us, then?”
“All I know about is Kologriev. How did you two come across him?”
“He’s Zhenov’s foreman,” I said. “It’s like you said, some of the higher-ups in the OGPU don’t like the icon collection. Others protect it, but evidently they can’t always. Zhenov seems to have gotten permission to use some of the icons we were talking about for boards at the Anzer cabinetry workshop.” Golubov frowned, so I explained. “They’re painted on wooden panels. Kologriev was in charge of going to the museum to go and pick them up. The gold leaf we’re looking for went missing around then. He might have taken it.”
Golubov looked down at his undershirt and brushed an invisible speck of dirt from its shoulder. When he looked up at me, he looked human again. “This business with the museum is all news to me.” He took his glass from the table and waved it at the girl, who poured vodka into it. “But Kologriev—I never worked with him, but I know him. He was a stick-up artist in Moscow. One of us. No fucking longer, though.”
“When did he start grafting?” I asked.
“Picking up the lingo, are you, schoolboy?” He tossed off the vodka. “It was spring before last. The camp bosses started offering deals to any urka who’d whore for them. Sweet positions, extra rations. Trash like that.”
“They’ve got to be able to say they’ve reformed you,” said Petrovich.
“That’s what gives them a hard-on. Kologriev teased them just right. One day he’s one of us, next he’s transferred to a new unit and works for them with a grin like he’s figured out how to get his prick into his own mouth.”
“In Odessa,” said Petrovich, “anyone who tried leaving the life like that wouldn’t have lasted long.”
Golubov spat. “Goddamn right.” He lowered his voice. “But we aren’t in fucking Odessa, are we? Word came around that if anything happened to the sorry cunts who took their offer, these Cheka fucks would put certain of us in the ground, regardless of who’d done it. They aren’t so stupid.”
“Don’t you have a tattoo somewhere that means you care less about life than the honor of thievery?” muttered the old man.
“Fuck yourself. That stuff’s for children. You think anyone who gets to be as old as I am believes that? Why do you think I’m talking to you?” He looked down at his uninked palm, then turned it over to the symbol-speckled back of his hand. “Point is, Kologriev’s protected. I had someone go talk to him at his new place. Just talk. Next day a prick from Infosec showed up in a leather jacket, gave me to understand that if anything happened to young Ivan, I’d be screwed with a splintered table leg. No debate about it. They don’t want us fucking with the grafters, but even for a grafting fucker, Kologriev has special connections.”
The girl looked supremely bored. She had a few tattoos herself, I noticed, one of a heart with wings above her wrist, another that I couldn’t identify peeking from beneath the neck of her blouse. “You think he might have taken the gold leaf?” I asked, looking purposefully at Golubov and not her. “He’s the kind of man who could kill our friend Antonov?”
“Sure. Cock-gobbling graft artist, but he used to rob for a living. He’s a killer. He’d fucking do it without looking, just by feel.”
“Anything else we should know about him?”
He looked thoughtful. “Before all this, he was trusted. Did time in work camps under the tsar. Even broke out of two of them, made his way back to his people in Moscow. Smart guy. Tough. Only he turned out not to be worth more than a dead dog’s prick.”
Petrovich and I exchanged a look. “All right, Golubov,” said Petrovich. “This has been useful. I’ll put in a good word for you, and I’ll let you know what happens.”
From the expression he looked at us with, the urka might never have smiled in his life. “I wish you luck. Nail his balls to the roof of Sekirnaya, and his cock somewhere else.”
Outside, we hurried towards Nikolski. Petrovich thought we should try to get as much as we could before meeting the Chekist at ten. There was still Spagovsky to talk to. Then Zhenov, to see whether he had anything to say. Finally we would go to Kologriev, try to press him with Golubov’s new information.
In the courtyard, where waiting zeks snaked out from the gate in a line, a monk who had been sitting on the stoop of one of the buildings stood up and hurried over to us. “Bless you,” he said abruptly. “I am Brother Kiril. I am looking for a Yakov Petrovich, along with an Anatoly Bogomolov. You are they, yes?”
The man’s beard was a breastplate that covered his chest. It tapered into matted points as it met the flapping belly of his robe. Except for the odor of fish, he might have stepped out of an anchorite’s crypt-adjacent cell, with the eleventh century’s dirt smudging his wide face.
“That’s right,” said Petrovich.
“You are known to me. You’ve come to speak with Veronika Filipovna at our fish house several times.”
“You were looking for us?”
“A letter for you.” The man moved his mouth like he was tasting something he didn’t much like, eyeing me suspiciously. “Usually she keeps a decent silence, but this morning I found her outspoken and insistent. She demanded I bring you this. An errand of mercy, she said. But women are easily led into sin.”
Petrovich was suspicious. “Why hasn’t she come herself?”
“She knew that my brothers and I can use the Fish Gate.” He gestured towards Nikolski. “She would not have been allowed through here. It was important that I find you at your cell as soon as I could, she said. Not finding you there, I decided I would wait to see whether I would recognize you here.”
“Fine,” said Petrovich. “I’m glad you found us.”
Brother Kiril nodded but held back the letter. “I regard Veronika Filipovna as a soul in my care.” The way he peered back and forth between me and Petrovich suggested he was trying to decide who would be more likely to drag his charge down the road to licentiousness.
“That’s not what this is,” I said hotly.
He stayed in case we would let him see what the letter said, but left when I shot him a look.
It began, To the Hon. Detectives Petrovich and Bogomolov:
I am ready to tell you what I know, though I expect it will be less than you hope. It has nothing to do with Boris and little enough to do with me. Nevertheless, perhaps you will find it helpful.
I have sent the monk to give you this so that you will not say anything to Boris before talking to me. I will return to the Women’s Dormitory at the regular time. If you care to wait, I will speak to you there. Otherwise, you do not seem to have had any difficulty finding me at the fishery in the past.—V.F.F.
“You see,” I said to Petrovich, who was reading over my shoulder. “I told you she’d be on our side.”
“That’s what you think, eh?” He kept squinting at the note, as though something new might swim up out of its seven sentences. “To me this looks like what a woman would do if she knew her man’s attempt on you last night had gone wrong. You may be wrapped arou
nd her finger, but someone needs to ask hard questions about this secret of hers. About your chase, too. We’ll need to go through it again before we see her. From the beginning, in as much detail as you can remember.”
“We don’t know Spagovsky was one of them,” I said.
“No. But we don’t know this new forthcomingness means she’s on our side either.” He shrugged. “She’s bought herself some time, at least. Spagovsky will have to be postponed until we see what she has to say.”
The line for Nikolski was not excessive, and we soon drew to the front. The two guards on duty were the same ones we’d interrogated on the first day—Vlacic, with the goiter, and his friend, who’d smacked his lips. They worked slowly, uttering queries and commands as they checked papers and made entries in their book.
“You’re them,” said Vlacic as we stepped forward. I’d retrieved the gate pass from my coat and given it to Petrovich, and the guard snatched it as the old man presented it. He looked at it and nodded, but didn’t hand it back. “Basil, go and get him.”
“What is this about?” asked Petrovich tiredly.
Ugly anticipation clenched in the other man’s face like a muscle. “You just wait.” Zeks shuffled about us, creating a little zone of emptiness to separate them from the scene they sensed developing. “You made trouble for us the other day. Word came down we were to leave you be.”
“Did it?”
“We’ll see how smart you are now.”
Petrovich began to say something, then didn’t. He and I didn’t look at each other while we waited.
When they had come to arrest me, back in Petersburg, during that family dinner, the officers had graciously allowed me a final few bites of my meal before carting me off. Dinka held my hand, the secret policemen looking on with strange courtesy while my fork clinked against my plate. Objects in the dining room somehow folded in on themselves that evening, as though the surfaces I could have touched were being turned away and replaced by identical surfaces inaccessible to me: the lamp hanging from the ceiling, the tablecloth, the bow in my sister’s hair. A tureen, a pitcher on the sideboard.