by James L. May
Petrovich coughed a little. His voice sounded more normal. “All right. All right. I need to go in. But I will come to the infirmary this evening, when the office closes.”
“Wait. One more thing. Why did the Chekist suspect those men? Where did he get the names on your list?”
“I was never sure. He wanted me to find out whether they had anything to do with Antonov’s murder. Or really, not whether, but what. We were supposed to learn where they were at the time, whether they had alibis, whether any had seen him recently. Infosec thought they were on to something, I could tell that much. When he turned up dead in the bay, it alarmed them. They had been letting it play out, to see where it led, maybe. Afterwards, they thought there was something going on they didn’t understand. I assumed an informant had given them the names.”
“Another informant.”
“Another informant.” The glance he gave me was bloodshot, but its combination of blear and sharpness still unnerved me. Even after all of that, the old man wasn’t toothless. “You are sharp as ever. Maybe I was wrong not to let you go by your detektivy all along.” He opened the door to the office. “All right. I’ll come for you this evening. At the infirmary.”
The rest I barely remember. Pain and weakness carried me, the way they sometimes do when your strength fails and you still require something to go on with. I’d lost a lot of blood. Somehow I made it out of Administration, and I must have showed my pass to get through Nikolski.
At the infirmary, they did what they could. I remember the rush of agonized sensation into my hand when they removed the tourniquet. After that I recall the smells of blood and iodine, the pricks of a needle.
I believe I dreamed, or half-dreamed. It was like consciousness, but with every thought and perception reconfigured as nonsense. The pain in my hand somehow became a line extending across an infinite, featureless plane, then a series of parallel lines, then one line again. The line was also the men who, I knew, lurked somewhere out in the kremlin’s yards. The line had killed Foma, and it was coming for me.
And what was the plane? I don’t remember. In the wound dream, these things were meaningful, but I remember the sense of their meaningfulness without having any access to the meanings.
When I came to, I was in a cot, with another patient in another cot breathing on the other side of the room. His back was to me, and I couldn’t make out anything about him other than his wheezing gasp. My hand had been wrapped in layers of gauze and yellowed bandages, through which a red blot had already begun to seep.
It was cold and, except for the other man’s breathing, quiet. I couldn’t have said how long I lay there, drifting in and out, before I heard the voices.
“Bogomolov here?”
“Who?”
I’d been aware for some time that an attendant of some sort was in a room on the other side of a door. I’d come into the place through a vestibule, and I thought he was stationed there as a kind of receptionist. He’d come in to check on me once or twice as well.
“Zek named Bogomolov. Anatoly Pavelovich. Thirteenth Company. Got hurt today. Someone said he cut off his finger.”
I didn’t recognize the other voice at all. For a dim and stupid moment I let myself hope Petrovich had sent someone to check on me.
“Oh. Our new patient. I believe he’s sleeping. Should I wake him?”
“Nah. Just wanted to know where he’d ended up.”
I heard a door bang shut. Beneath my pain and exhaustion, panic turned over.
Foma’s killers had found me.
26
They were saying in the administration building that Comrade D. V. Uspenski had been the one to pull the trigger. The morning after the executions, the man had been seen at one of the hand basins down the hall from KrimKab, still drunk, washing blood from his boots.
So Petrovich told me, when he came to collect me from the infirmary. But information of my earlier visitor forestalled any more conversation on that topic until we were safely away.
Our plan had always called for me to go with him that evening. But we hadn’t realized there would only be one way in and out, or that an attendant would be posted on the infirmary door. We’d assumed it would be easy to walk out: zeks typically looked for ways to get into medical beds, not escape from them, so why set a guard? And now, with Foma’s killers having found me already, the problem had become extremely pressing.
As we hurriedly plotted, our voices dropped to whispers. Along with news, Petrovich had brought me the green cardigan from Antonov’s chest, so that I could walk about without drawing attention with blood-covered clothes. The old man went out to handle the attendant, while I changed into the clean sweater, then put the bloody one and my coat back on over it. When I emerged, they were arguing.
“It’s a serious injury,” the other man was saying. “The order said he was to stay overnight.”
“I’ll bring him back by curfew,” Petrovich lied. “He can sleep here. I only need to take my young friend to his cell.”
“He lost a lot of blood. When he came in, he was hardly coherent. I can’t have him collapsing out there when he’s supposed to be in here.”
“I’m feeling much better,” I said. “All I needed was a rest.”
“For a severed finger?” The medic shook his head and turned back to Petrovich. “I have to account for the prisoners who are assigned here, understand? What if I let him go with you and he goes missing?”
“Where could he go? Neither of us is allowed to leave the kremlin. I told you, they won’t let me into his floor to fetch him clean clothes. They said he has to come himself. You see what a mess he’s made. He’ll be more comfortable with a clean shirt. And maybe your sheets won’t be smudged with so much blood.”
The man glanced back at my hand, then gave me a knowing look. “You understand, if they see you walking around and saying you’re feeling much better in your old group, they may put you right back to work? I don’t know how any of this happened. But maybe the whole effort will have been wasted. Do you see what I mean?”
“My axe slipped,” I said. “That’s all. I need a clean sweater.”
He scoffed, then shrugged. “Fine. Do as you like. Only, if they don’t revoke your medical pass, be back here by curfew.”
Outside it was dark. I waited until we had gone around the nearest corner, then stipped off the bloody sweater and tossed it into the shadows.
We would not be returning to the infirmary. It was a shame: I’d hoped to be able to take to my sickbed again after Petrovich and I had done what needed doing this evening. But if I wanted to stay ahead of the men who were after me, that was no longer an option.
As we passed through the courtyard, Petrovich resumed the subject of D. V. Uspenski. He quickly reviewed what he’d told me already, showing unusual animation: the execution, Uspenski in charge, drunkenness, blood on the man’s boots. Whether Uspenski’d shot all the victims himself or let the guards have a turn was debated, the old man declared. Word was the whole undertaking had been as haphazard and unruly as one expected at SLON. Though all agreed that he’d been drunk, opinions also differed as to his reasons for drinking. Some proposed he lacked the stomach to do the work sober. Others considered the man so depraved that his killing mixed smoothly into a single spree with his boozing.
Then there was the question of why Uspenski had been made responsible for the executions at all. As head of the Culture and Education Section, he need not have counted it among his regular duties. Had he volunteered? It seemed possible. By the official account, he had even volunteered for assignment to the island, making him one of the few Chekists who, instead of discharging a sentence, received pay.
According to Petrovich, however, the truth was a weak and horrible sort of camp joke. Rumor had it Uspenski had murdered his own father. His motives for this were lost to hearsay (though of course patricide has its own primordi
al associations). Since Uspenski-the-Elder was a priest (perhaps only a deacon, according to some), the State regarded his death as a casualty of necessary class warfare, and Uspenski-the-Younger got off. But the Cheka could not help being embarrassed by an agent apparently in the grips of a frenzy more Freudian than Marxist. And so some other pretense was found for shipping him to Solovki, where he would be out of sight.
Hence the joke: “You killed your father as a class enemy, now shoot some real class enemies.”
This sort of thing does not have to be funny to be laughed at. A pariah must take on dirty jobs without complaining. Of course he couldn’t say he wasn’t willing to kill.
KrimKab was nominally a unit within EduCultSec, and their offices were on the same floor as Uspenski’s. By listening for activity out in the hall, Petrovich had been able to catch him as he came out his door.
“Sometimes an ambush is what’s best. That way you don’t give your subject the chance to think about lying. Or refusing. I simply asked, ‘Comrade Uspenski, during the events two nights ago, were there coffins for the executed men? Were they painted?’ At first he turned to look at me and I thought he’d knock me down, there in the hall. Then a strange look passed over his face and he said there had been coffins, but he didn’t know what I meant by painted. I left it at that. I didn’t want him to ask why I was asking.”
Delivering an explanation of his questioning methods restored some of the bristle to the old man’s mustache. He looked more lively than he had that afternoon. “The point is,” he continued, “you might be wrong about the coffins being made from Antonov’s icons. Uspenski didn’t remember seeing them. Then again, by all accounts the man was soaked as the sole of a shoe. It’s possible he simply missed them.”
He was right: here was a new uncertainty to take into account. I could feel the cold air on my face focusing my mind, but I was still thinking slowly.
“My other piece of news is about Zhenov,” Petrovich was saying. “They say he’s been drinking in the officer’s club ever since he learned about the executions. Making enough of a scene for people to talk, even among my crowd of schoolteachers in KrimKab. That’s where we’re going. I want to talk to him.”
“That’s good. We have a lot to discuss.”
“Yes.” He hesitated. “Listen, Tolya. It so happens that I still have that list of Whites the Chekist gave me. Force of long habit prevents me giving up documentary evidence until I’m forced to. But we need to go forward with this carefully. We’ll be on thin ice, even if we do find out something we can take to Infosec.”
“Didn’t you just hear me describe a murderer coming to locate me? And when I don’t come back to the infirmary tonight, that orderly will start asking questions. Who knows how long we have? We’re past being careful.”
He stopped. I had not given him my arm to lean on, but I turned anyway. “You wanted my help, didn’t you?” he said. “This is my advice. This is how I judge we solve the case and keep our skins.”
The sun had gone down, and the wind that blew in the courtyard was freezing. Anger slipped in with it, under my coat. But no. I had asked for his help; we were allies again.
I shrugged. On we went.
The old man directed us to one of the buildings along the west wall; I hadn’t known there was an officer’s club. The sun had gone down. He seemed to find the path hard going, but he didn’t take my arm.
A short set of stairs led to an exterior door, then another door that opened off an entrance hall. Inside, the club occupied a room that must always have been intended as a parlor. Its wainscoting and greenly arabesqued wallpaper showed signs of wear, but that they were there at all was remarkable. The place hadn’t been constructed for the monks, or any life ordered by monastic rule.
A guard stationed by the door jerked his thumb when I said we needed to talk to Valery Zhenov, indicating the other side of an enameled screen. At one end of the room, a little ceramic stove emanated waves of heat, and the perfume of tea wafted from a samovar on a nearby table. Near the stove, a group of men were playing cards and talking. One noticed as we went over to Zhenov. He tapped his neighbor’s shoulder and gestured.
“Subcommandant,” said Petrovich. “A word, if you please.”
The screen sealed Zhenov away from the tea-scented rest of the room, in his own sour atmosphere. He slumped in an upholstered yellow armchair, one elbow on the table in front of him. Next to the elbow a bottle of brandy, two-thirds empty, then a glass. The stub of a cigarette smoldered in an ashtray. We hadn’t talked about what we would ask him, but I suppose it was clear enough between us what we were there for.
“Who—?” he said, his eyes swimming into focus. Behind him, a tall bookshelf built into the wall was a deserted city. The volumes that were there showed a disordered mix of gilt-leather spines and paper wrappers. “You two. What do you want?”
“My colleague looked for you at the warehouse this morning,” said Petrovich. “We have a few more questions.”
“Your questions,” said Zhenov, slurring. The surface of the table, I saw, was covered in ash. In places where he’d spilled his drink, the varnish was swollen. “You may think I am a man of no account, but I am a gentleman and a patriot. The devils are in charge. Russia has been plunged from the earth into hell. If I am to be put to death, I will clutch my honor to my heart.”
The man was absurd. All he was saying, really, was that he had spent the day indoors, with tobacco and alcohol close to hand. No one on Solovetky could ever summon such rhetoric otherwise. Meanwhile the place where my finger had been throbbed. “The men who were executed,” I said. “They were associates of yours.”
Petrovich put a hand on my arm. “You’ve had a difficult day, Tolya. Why not let me ask the questions?”
“We don’t have time to hear about his honor!”
Zhenov squinted at me, his face red and hostile. I was not attempting to conceal my bandage, but he took no notice of it. “That’s what brings you snuffing after me now, then? You’ve heard that every side suspects me of something different, and you want to hang your murder around my neck as well?”
“That’s not it,” said Petrovich quickly. “Tell me, did you know that Ivan Kologriev was an urka before he came to work for you?”
The other man poured a drink, not answering. Only his part of the room was a mess. Across the parquet floor, a piano stood in a corner. There were photographs in frames on the green walls, dozens of them.
When he spoke again it was into his glass, hunched over. “I assumed the murder investigation was done with, when I heard nothing from you after I came back from Anzer.”
“Not yet,” I said.
“No, not yet,” said Petrovich. “Shall we take it that you did know about Kologriev’s past?”
“Isn’t this a prison? Aren’t we all criminals of one sort or another?”
Petrovich shrugged. “Suppose so. It didn’t worry you, to have a man like that working under you?”
“Why should I answer any questions of yours?”
The look the old man gave me meant I should be quiet. “We are still trying to find out who murdered Gennady Antonov,” he said. “We may find something that vindicates your honor as well. What about Kologriev?”
Zhenov huffed. “He wouldn’t have been working with me if he’d still been an urka, would he? Decent fellow, Kologriev. Decent. Knew how to do hard work. Where’s the thief who does that, eh?”
“You weren’t worried about theft?” said Petrovich.
“Insubordination. That’s the trouble, not theft. Man like that, with a little competence and the respect of the rabble around him—he’ll talk back to his superiors, always. But theft, no. He never was a bad worker. I only came four months ago. He was helpful when I first arrived and was learning how things worked with supplying Anzer. Helped me grasp quickly how things were organized.”
“Yes,”
said Petrovich, “you mentioned that he’d informed you that requisitioning icons was a possibility, didn’t you? You want timber, and because the Bolsheviks are Marxists they think it is funny to give you holy paintings to build with. But these things aren’t just wood, no matter whether Lenin’s ghost says so or not. It would be easy for a little ‘timber’ to be misplaced in a carpenter’s shop, wouldn’t it? I think you said you had a system to make sure none of them went missing?”
“There was a system,” said Zhenov.
“All right. Good. What was it, then?”
Zhenov sniffed and screwed up his mouth. The brandy had made his features smaller, and they swam in the vacancy of his face. “They’d sent along a diagram—sent it down on the train for me. Simple, two yards on a side—” He stopped himself.
“The diagram was for coffins, wasn’t it?” I said.
The drunk man gulped. “Yes,” he whispered.
“All right,” said Petrovich. “We knew as much already. Tell us how your system used the diagram.”
Zhenov was silent, then proceeded in a different voice, haltingly. “Two long, wide icons joined together at one end for the lid, then the same again for the floor. Then two smaller joined at either end, and the walls made of however many it took to make the right length. Fill in whatever gaps resulted from irreg—” He hiccuped. “Irregularities in the painting’s measurements with scrap wood. Would have been easy. Easy to count the icons, be sure they were all used up. Only they were ordered down early.”
“What do you mean, ‘ordered down early’?”
“A telegram. It came while I was still on Anzer. The … the finished products were not to have been delivered until much later. Tomorrow, in fact. But the order came to move up the date. I had to make arrangements for the men to bring them directly from the train, deliver them to where … where they would be used.”