“She saw what? Alexey!”
“She saw that it wasn’t him, any longer. It was no longer his features, his face.” His eyes were full of a nameless horror. “Helen – the face – it was – it was mine.”
This was a crossroads for them. Just as in the forest. She could try and comfort him with lying words. She could stay silent and hold him, and hope her love would be enough. But that would be wrong. She knew that. So she said, “Did … did Mrs. Feshina explain what it meant?”
“She only said he was – restless, unquiet. She said that she … that she could not tell me precisely what the dream meant. Not because she didn’t want to but because she couldn’t. Its message was meant for me and it was up to me to understand what he was saying.”
“But I think it’s a warning, Alexey.” The words burst from her, as if a flash of lightning had suddenly lit up the truth.
He looked at her, startled. Then he whispered, “Yes. You see it too, don’t you? It’s a warning. That I will – become like him. That I cannot escape it. That one day I will turn into my father – with blood on my hands, and destroyed lives on my conscience.”
“No,” she said, desperately. “No. That is not what I mean. I – I think you are looking at things the wrong way. The face she saw – you say it was yours.”
“Mrs. Feshina said it.”
“But she might be wrong, Alexey. Because she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know about your grandfather.”
He stared at her. She went on, hurriedly, “I saw a photo of him the other day, remember. I know you look just like him.”
He faltered, “Oh Helen … What – What are you saying?”
“Your father – if it was him she saw –” She gulped, as she realized the true import of what she was saying. She, a girl brought up in the clarity and logic of a secular society where such things as ghostly visitations were dismissed as superstition, was giving her allegiance to quite another world. Her head felt tight, her skull booming with the weird knowledge flooding her like the icy water of truth, which must be told, no matter what the cost. So she went on, “I think your father is trying to warn you – to tell you – that what happened … it goes back – it goes back to your grandfather. Remember what Mrs. Feshina said, the other day, about you being haunted by a sorcerer – like your father before him? It’s him, Alexey – him. Your grandfather. Remember Maxim telling us that the psychic your father first went to see – Lev Kirov – he told your father the power of the sorcerer had come to him from the blood. Which means, from his family. And his father – well – you told me yourself what Maxim said he’d heard from that old KGB guy Nevsky. Your grandfather saw into people. Into their souls. If he gave off that kind of power, people would think that, wouldn’t they? Feel it, instinctively. And even his – colleagues, they’d fear that. Give him a wide berth. Even in those times, when you weren’t supposed to believe in anything like that. He was a sorcerer, Alexey. A real one.”
There was a long silence. Then Alexey said, in a hard voice. “Yes. Yes. And that power of his – it – it wasn’t good. He was … the darkest of dark sorcerers. Using his gift, his power, to see into people’s souls – not to heal them, not to help them, not even to seek the truth – but to hunt them down, to devour their hearts, dismantle their minds. To destroy them utterly.”
She said, gently, “Perhaps he didn’t see it that way. Perhaps he thought he was doing the right thing. That he was really seeking the truth. That he was destroying evil.”
“He might have told himself that, but it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true, Helen. He was a monster. It wasn’t only his victims who suffered, but their families. Their friends. Suffering and pain, rippling out from him for decades. God, how he must have been hated and feared. And yet he died in his bed …” He broke off, and then went on in a rush, “That catchy media phrase – the Rusalka Curse – that’s alluding to death by drowning, and the fact Rusalka week is before Trinity, but you know, the rusalki – they want to avenge things that were done to them, when they were alive, when they were human. They are avengers of dark crimes, never admitted and never acknowledged. But they don’t necessarily go for the one who did it, anyone will do, if they can’t get him.”
She stared at him. “You mean …”
“Yes. Maybe it was my grandfather who did the bad things, but he was dead, beyond hurting now, and Dad … maybe it was in the very excitement of his own discovery – in the exploration of his newly revealed psychic power – the power that had come through his accursed father – that Dad woke up those ghosts.”
Helen said, heavily, “It might even have been the Koldun project that triggered it. Someone – someone they interviewed for the unit – must have discovered your father’s … origins. Someone who was – one of your grandfather’s victims. Or at least a member of their family.” She shuddered. “It’s awful to think that such evil could come of such suffering. That victims would turn into killers, visiting the sins of the father on the innocent, on your father – and on his friends. Because what had they done? They weren’t associated with your grandfather in any way, were they?”
“No. They’d never met him. Their families weren’t acquainted at all. But they were from KGB families too. That might have been enough. And besides they were – they were the weak link. They were the way to my father. Killing them off one by one … This person – I think they wanted my father to suffer. Not just to kill him straight away, that would have been too easy. They wanted him to be afraid. To look over his shoulder. To lose his friends. To wonder who … how … why … And all the time they were hunting him they made him look in the wrong direction – he’d think gangsters, rivals, were after them, or someone wanting to steal his ideas – his Koldun project – which is why he destroyed those papers and hid that card. Even then, he must not have suspected who – why … He must not have known until the very last moment. When it was too late. But he would have been made to see then. Because the killer would want him to know. They’d want him to die, knowing. To go into the afterlife with that awful knowledge, with that stain on his soul.” His voice broke. He was trembling all over.
She took him in her arms and held him tight, hard, without speaking, hugging into him her warmth, her love, the deepest urges of her soul, every ounce of her being; wrapping him with a steady, glowing strength she hadn’t even known she had until that moment. She’d been so in awe of him before, as if he’d been an invulnerable hero in a fairytale. But now she knew better. He needed her, too. He wasn’t a hero in a fairytale. He was a real, vulnerable human being, and her own true love. This was no one-way street. In the darkness of this terrible revelation – in the painful, horrified understanding of what his father must have gone through – he really needed her. She held him, wordlessly sending him every bit of her strength, her total love and trust and understanding, and after a moment, he stopped trembling, put his head on her shoulder and wept. And as he did, she felt the dreadful tension slowly easing from him, the horror ebbing, the bitterness of his old feelings for his father transforming, not into sweetness – that would have been too much, too soon, and perhaps could never be – but into a real sorrow that was the beginning of healing.
Presently, he grew calm. They hugged in silence; then, arms around each other, walked slowly back to the house. It wasn’t until they went in through the gate and had walked up the path to the front door, that he stopped and said, “Helen – I know where we must look now.”
For a moment, she didn’t know what he was talking about. “What?”
“Lev Kirov,” he said. “He was the right age. That is why he must have been killed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I mean, Kirov was about the right age to have known someone who was a victim of my grandfather’s. Or a relative. According to Maxim’s informant Kirov was troubled after seeing a picture of my father and his two partners in the paper, after the death of Semyon Galkin, and learning what Dad’s real name was. Perhaps it clicked then. The con
nection with Dad’s father – to someone whose history he knew.”
Helen breathed, “Yes – and maybe he tried to confront them about it.”
“That’s why they killed him. Because they thought he’d denounce them. Or maybe he didn’t confront them but they suspected anyway that he was on to them – and got rid of him, just to be safe. Either way, I think, Kirov must have been the only person who knew the truth about their background. They must have hidden it.”
“But why would you hide the fact you or your family had been a victim?”
Alexey sighed. “I know, it doesn’t seem right, does it? But lots of people do it. It’s wanting to forget, it’s shame, it’s fear. Even now, when the Russian state talks openly about remembering victims, not forgetting their suffering – when we have a national remembrance day for Stalin’s victims, for instance – there’s lingering unease. But in the past, it was much, much worse, in my grandfather’s generation of course, but also in my father’s. It doesn’t surprise me at all that someone would want to hide such a history. Especially as – as there never really was any justice meted out – and those who profited by the system … well, they survived and prospered, and so did their children, and their children’s children.” A spasm crossed his face, and she knew what he was thinking, and she cried out, “Yes, and that’s unjust – unfair – that people who did bad things wouldn’t be punished. But their children and their children’s children aren’t responsible. To kill them just because you can’t get at the real perpetrators anymore – that’s worse than unjust. That’s evil. And there is no excuse for it.”
“No, of course there isn’t,” he said, softly. “No excuse, and no forgiveness. But understanding, yes. I don’t mean to say that my father deserved to die, and neither did his friends. But I need to understand what I am up against if I have any chance of knowing the truth. I feel as though I’ve been just glimpsing things in a fog, and now I can see ahead clearly.” He paused, and his voice changed as he went on, grimly, “I don’t intend to rest until we find this person, Helen. To hunt them down, as they hunted down my father. But not to kill them. To bring them to justice. So that my father – so his spirit can go to rest. Do you see?”
“Yes,” she said. “I do. But, oh – Alexey – I’m scared. This person – they must be insane. But they must also be so – so cunning. So clever. And they must also have underworld connections, to set up those attacks on the Trinity offices. You remember how Grisha said that your father had hired him?”
“Yes. I do. And that stupid card they sent. They’re playing mind-games. Trying to spook me. But also trying to make me look in the wrong direction – just like they did for Dad and his friends. To make me think it’s Trinity they want. To hound me until I crack and then …”
“Don’t,” she said, sharply, “don’t. Oh Alexey – you know what it means – they had Grisha killed so he couldn’t tell you anything. And now they could send a hitman to –”
“No,” said Alexey, firmly. “I don’t think that’s their style at all. If they’d wanted to kill me like that, they’d have done it in Moscow. They knew I was there – they’d have heard that from Grisha’s mates. You’re right, I think they must have underworld connections. But I am certain they did not use them to kill my father and his friends. There was no third party, no hitman involved. However they did it – it was up close and personal. This person knew how to approach each of their victims, without suspicion. Each time, it would have had to be different. Tailored to each individual. For me, once they think I’ve been nicely softened up – I think I’d get an approach about the attacks on Trinity. An offer of information. Or maybe even an offer to help crack the Koldun code. Something like that.”
He spoke quite calmly and steadily. But Helen shuddered. She said, “Oh God – what are we going to do now?”
“We’ll call Nikolai. And Maxim. Tell them what we’re thinking. And take it from there.”
Chapter 31
When his phone rang, Maxim had not long left the Trinity cryptographer Foma’s apartment. The cryptographer hadn’t cracked the Koldun code so far, but he had some useful ideas. He was working on the notion of “Koldun” itself, he explained. Looking to see if the code might be based on, say, stories of famous sorcerers. Like the one from Russian folklore, Koschei, who had kept his soul deeply hidden in different objects, so that he could not be killed. That had struck him at once, Foma said, because it was such a perfect metaphor for cryptology itself. But no, he went on, it was not as simple as that. Churn the data as he might, number-crunch as diligently he could, try as he might to find as many editions of the story as he could, he’d come to the conclusion that the Koschei story did not fit the template of the code.
Still, he didn’t look at all dejected by that, and indeed Maxim suspected he’d have been disappointed if it had been so easy. He was going through many other possibilities, he told Maxim: stories of sorcerers from Voldemort to Sauron, Dr. Faustus to Merlin, Rasputin to Simon the Magus and lots more. And even if that failed, there were all sorts of associated possibilities. Hundreds, thousands of them. A lesser man might have blanched at the prospect. Not Foma; he was thrilled by the challenge, determined in his bloodless bloodhound way to track down his elusive quarry without fail.
Just as Maxim reached the Metro station, his phone rang. “Ah, it’s you, Alexey Ivanovich,” he answered. “I am glad to have you on the line. I have just come from Foma’s, and though he hadn’t made a breakthrough yet with Koldun, there’s something I …”
“Wait, Maxim Antonovich,” Alexey said, in Russian. “There’s something I must tell you first.” The young man spoke gravely, quietly for a little while, and when he’d finished, it was the older man who found himself quite without words.
Recovering after a moment, Maxim said, “You are quite right. This is a most promising line of inquiry. And I should have seen it myself.”
“But it was you who put us partly on this track,” said Alexey, “going to see that old KGB man. So you must have had an instinct about it.”
“Perhaps, but I didn’t follow it to its logical conclusion. Truth is, I had decided it was a dead end and I’ve been concentrating on the coded document today.”
“But that’s important too,” said Alexey, “especially if it proves to be records of interviews and lists of names for the psychic unit. Maxim Antonovich, you were going to tell me something about it. What is it?”
“Nothing definite,” said Maxim, “just a possibility.”
“Something Foma discovered?”
“No. Something that I thought afterwards. It was because of that Koschei story – Foma’s been trying to fit it to the code, without result – but it got me thinking about a secret hidden in several layers. And I wondered if perhaps we persuaded ourselves too easily that the Koldun project was in fact a plan for a secret psychic unit.”
“What do you mean?”
“If you think about it, the level of secrecy seems excessive – it’s not as though such units have never existed. But more cogently, I have not found any evidence yet to suggest candidates being interviewed. For instance, I was told that neither Lev Kirov nor Josef Oberlian, the aura-reader I interviewed today, were approached about such a job. And yet they were supposed to be among Moscow’s finest, and Trinity’s first port of call, you’d think.”
“Perhaps they’re lying.”
“Perhaps, and in view of what you’ve told me just now, I will certainly make further inquiries. But I wonder if the project could have been about something else. Something connected with psychic phenomena, yes; but in a different way.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“We’ve been assuming that the heading on that cover sheet – Koldun psychic unit – refers to a group of psychics Trinity were setting up as a work unit. But what if it they were developing some kind of device or process that would actually enhance psychic power? Oberlian told me that’s the Holy Grail of psychic research. And worthy of complete secrecy until w
hatever it was could be released.”
“Could such a thing exist?”
“Oberlian seemed quite skeptical, but not altogether dismissive. And it is only an idea. A vague one at present. In any case for the moment we should leave the Koldun file to one side – nothing can be done there, and nothing known for sure till the code’s broken – and concentrate on this much more urgent matter you have raised.”
“I’ve spoken to Kolya too,” said Alexey, “and he thinks we should put together a list of people whose careers overlap both the psychic and criminal worlds. You might need to go and see your original informant again.”
“You mean the person who told me about Kirov?”
“Yes. And Maxim – I’m sorry – but I need to know who this person is.”
Maxim hesitated. Then he made a snap decision, and said, “Of course you are right. She’s an ekstrasens by the name of Anna Feodorovna Dorskova, she practices under the name of Skorpia.” He explained how he had first come to meet her. “And that is why I think that we can cross her off any list of suspects,” he finished. “And it’s not because she says she was a good friend of Kirov’s, but because she was so determined to profit by Kirov’s story as to come and see us and then, rebuffed, sell her story to the media. The killer would not have done that; not drawn attention to himself in such a way. It does not fit the psychological pattern at all. An attention-seeking killer would have made damn sure there would have been some sensational clue left at each crime scene – might even have left some kind of calling card. The fact they didn’t, even after the media started dubbing it the ‘Rusalka case’, after Barsukov’s death – suggests a very different sort of mind. Vengeful, discreet, secretive, ruthless. Certainly not a boaster or a seeker after glory. Not like poor Dorskova.”
Trinity: The Koldun Code (Book 1) Page 26