“Maria Vladimirovna. May we continue our talk later?”
“Wait.”
“Your husband will be home soon.”
Maria’s hand was on his arm, her grip tightening as he tried to pull free.
“Little rat.”
He looked away from her face, suddenly too close to his as she pulled herself toward him, her words hissing in his ear.
“That’s what my schoolmates called me. Little Rat. And Stock Bones, for the packets of bones they sell for soup at the meat shop. Only twelve kopecks a kilo. Around here, my neighbors feed it to their pet dogs and buy chicken hearts for their fucking cats. But that’s what I am, a bag of bones. A little rat.”
Her grip eased, and Vasin sat back down heavily on the edge of the bath.
“I see what you think. The Director’s young, well-dressed wife, she gets whatever she wants. She lives in this huge apartment, spoiled as a butcher’s cat. She’s got no real problems, so she invents some of her own. I saw you eyeing those pill bottles. A hysteric. A junkie.”
“I don’t see why you were on the roof. There is no obvious road from here”—Vasin glanced about the spotless bathroom—“to the Kino. The reason is hidden, to me. As are you.”
Anger kindled in her pinched face.
“You think this is me? Think I want of any of this? I do it for him. I wear these beautiful, foreign clothes from some commission shop on Oktyabrskaya for him. For Adamov. All of these vanities are his way of saying he will protect me from the world. And he tells the world, ‘This woman has power. Respect her.’ You have your uniform with stars on your collar. My husband has his own stars on his chest. I have my French clothes. You have no idea how much the other wives hate me. I can feel their glances on me, flung like spit. But I never show weakness. I learned that a long time ago. The pack always turns on the weakest, and then they die.”
“You’re the weakest?”
“Obviously not. Otherwise I wouldn’t have survived.”
“Survived what? Leningrad?”
Masha stiffened.
“You’ve been spying on me?”
“Your friend Pavel Korin is very concerned about you.”
“Where on earth did you find him?”
“Where you told me I would find him. When we had coffee at Korin’s barrack.”
Masha folded her arms tightly across her chest.
“Christ. You told him that I’d brought a Chekist to his house?”
“Not sure I mentioned that part.”
Masha curled her lip in frank disbelief.
“I’m sure the next time you gentlemen get together to chat about the welfare of crazy Masha, you’ll get around to it.”
“We weren’t chatting about your welfare. We were talking about a death. Which is why I am here in Arzamas. Maybe you forgot. Perhaps you have things on your mind. Perhaps Fyodor was the thing on your mind.”
“Is this an interrogation now? How nice. I should have let you leave.”
“Korin told me how you and Adamov met in Leningrad, Maria. About your childhood. The siege.”
“So you know all there is to know about me then.”
“I’m starting to realize how little I know about you. For instance, I don’t know why you had an affair with Fyodor Petrov.”
Her face became hard.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“On the roof, you called me Fedya.”
“Those pills turn you inside out. I must have been raving.”
Vasin saw steel in her gaze, cold and steady.
“So you and Petrov were never lovers?”
“Believe what you want. You already have your theories.”
Maria’s gaze was defiant. A flash of the ferocity he had seen on the roof of the Kino the previous night played across her face.
“That’s not ‘no.’ ”
“Are you trying to frighten me, Major? If you think you can use what happened at the Kino against me, you can’t. My husband will not be shocked by anything you can tell him. This is none of your business.”
“This is precisely my business. Fyodor Petrov dies under, let’s say, unusual circumstances. The last people to see him alive were you, your husband the Director, and Colonel Korin. He was your lover, and a week later, you swallow a bunch of pills and try to jump off the roof of a cinema.”
“You’re wrong. It’s private and…unconnected.”
“Fine.” Meaning—enough.
Maria had broken off her gaze and was staring down at her own stockinged feet. When she looked up again, she had rearranged her face. She was suddenly calm, absolutely in control of herself, her anxiety wiped away without a trace. They might as well have been discussing the weather.
“Thank you, Major Vasin, for what you did last night. I still believe that you are a good man. It’s good to have someone to talk to. I don’t, you see. All the men in my life have their great deeds to accomplish. No time for the likes of me. Which is fine. But…Do you talk to your wife, Major? I mean really talk. You do have a wife, don’t you?”
He began to answer, but she reached up and covered his mouth with her small hand. It smelled of medicinal spirit.
“Let’s do something normal tomorrow. Not complicated. Not clever. Will you take me for an ice cream in Lenin Park? I can be there at eleven.”
It took a second for it to register. Will you. The familiar form. Something very simple, but also shockingly intimate.
“Yes.”
This time she allowed him to stand and leave. He let himself out.
It would not be normal, Vasin knew. Or uncomplicated.
II
The light in the living room windows, bright and artificial as orange soda, proclaimed that Kuznetsov was at home. As Vasin mounted the stairs, he heard the record player cranked up, filling the stairwell with a plaintive Ukrainian folk melody. He opened the door into a pall of cigarette smoke. Kuznetsov sprang to his feet, spilling the contents of a full ashtray onto the carpet.
“For fuck’s sake, Vasin! Where the hell have you been?”
“Good evening to you too. I hopped on a plane to Olenya.”
“You are joking.”
“I wanted to see Korin.”
Kuznetsov’s hands flew to his temples in a pantomime gesture of incredulity.
“Without permission?”
“I thought Adamov’s authority was all that one needed in Arzamas.”
Kuznetsov made a strangled sound of exasperation.
“Don’t. Don’t even move. Stay there.”
Kuznetsov picked up the telephone and dialed a four-digit number, his eyes fixed on Vasin as though he might disappear once more if he took his eyes off him.
“He just showed up….Olenya…Yes. Olenya…Leave my mother out of this, Efremov. Yes, I will. Of course…Understood.”
He replaced the receiver with an exhausted sigh and flopped back down on the sofa.
“You.”
“I know. I didn’t mean to get you into trouble. What did Efremov say?”
“Nothing repeatable. Zaitsev wants to see you. Tomorrow.”
Vasin leaned on the doorpost to tug off his tall service boots.
“Got any dinner for me, old man?”
“Help yourself.” Kuznetsov sighed. “The kontora won’t let you starve.”
When Vasin emerged from the kitchen holding a deep bowl of steaming solyanka, he found Kuznetsov studiously absorbed in a pile of papers that covered the coffee table. He settled into one of the armchairs and ate hungrily.
“Good soup.”
“General Zaitsev will be so delighted to hear you’re enjoying our hospitality.”
Vasin continued spooning soup and eyed K
uznetsov steadily until he deigned to look up.
“Whatever you think you are up to, Vasin, it’s not going to work. Not the way you’re doing it.”
“What exactly am I doing?”
“You are not in Moscow. You can’t just disappear. This is Arzamas, six days before the biggest nuclear test in history. The kontora is going nuts over security. The Institute is a madhouse. Nobody is sleeping. The whole city’s burning truckloads of fucking lightbulbs, working round the clock. And then there’s you. Barreling around, pulling the top brass away from their jobs. Trying to start some half-assed murder investigation. Hitching rides to Olenya. I mean, what planet are you on, Vasin? How do you think this bull-in-a-china-shop act is going to help you? You’ll just get yourself shut down, and pronto.”
“Zaitsev wants to shut me down anyway. Today was meant to be my last day, as you know.”
Kuznetsov did not reply, but instead scooped his papers aside, revealing a pair of heavy shot glasses. He fished a foreign-looking bottle out from under the table.
“Drink? Rum from Cuba. All the rage since Comrade Castro’s visit.”
He poured two glasses, brimful.
“Our Latin comrades drink it with the juice of limes and coconuts. But until we get a fraternal delivery of those, we’ll have to drink it our way.”
Kuznetsov raised his glass. Vasin, after a moment’s hesitation, followed suit.
“To us.”
Kuznetsov breathed out sharply, made his mouth an O, and knocked back the liquor.
“Good stuff. Sorry, again. If I got you into any trouble.”
“Ah, Vasin. Don’t say things like that. I’ll start to worry you’re doing something you shouldn’t.”
“I should have told you about Olenya.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. Not if you wanted to ever get up there. I would have had to tell the kontora, and they would have stopped you. But you already knew that.”
“I knew that.”
Kuznetsov poured another round. Vasin noticed that half the bottle was already finished.
“Do I feel a serious man-to-man conversation coming on so you can advise me to go home?”
Kuznetsov ignored the question. He pointed at the shiny Melodiya record player.
“Be a good sport and turn it over. It’s the music from Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka. Great film.”
“I haven’t seen it.”
“Excellent adaptation.”
“Are we going to talk about the short stories of Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol this evening?” Vasin returned to his chair and picked up his brimming glass. “That would be most pleasant.”
Kuznetsov grinned, gestured silently with his glass, and knocked it back.
“So what did our lugubrious friend in Olenya have to say? I’ve always found Colonel Korin rather mysterious, myself.”
“He told me to go fuck my mother.”
“That may even be true.”
“Hasn’t got much time for the likes of us Chekists, as he puts it.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“Of course what?”
“There’s not much love lost. You can understand. So many of them…you know.”
“So many of them sat?” Vasin didn’t need to finish the phrase. Sat always meant sat in jail.
“Right.”
“You knew about Korin?”
“He has that look, if you know what I mean.”
“Who else from the Citadel was in the Gulag?”
“I don’t think Fyodor Petrov spent much time felling trees in the Arctic.”
“Be serious, Kuznetsov.”
“I don’t know. Honestly. You’d have to visit the library and look it up.”
Kuznestov winked theatrically.
“Good to know you’re keeping abreast of things.”
“Did it happen to any of yours?”
“It?”
Kuznetsov and Vasin both sat forward, facing each other like chess players across the coffee table.
“The repressions. The purges. Was anyone from your family arrested?”
Kuznetsov shook his head.
“No, nobody? Or no, you don’t want to tell me?”
“Both, I suppose. Nobody ever asked, apart from the personnel department when I joined up. How about yours?”
“My wife’s grandparents. Razkulachevenny.” Meaning they had been arrested during the campaign against wealthy peasants. It had happened to so many that it had become a verb.
Kuznetsov grunted indifferently.
“What the devil are we talking about this for?”
“I don’t know. Maybe because nobody ever talks about it. Maybe because it’s still important to some people.”
“Nobody talks about it because it’s ancient history. Five years since we played out that historic blame game. Khrushchev’s big speech.” Kuznetsov slipped into the General Secretary’s distinctive southern peasant drawl: “ ‘Comrades, the Party made a mistake. There was some overzealousness in the elimination of enemies of the people.’ ”
Vasin cracked a smile at the outrageous irreverence, but Kuznetsov’s voice became urgent and confiding.
“He was right. It was understandable. We were fighting for survival. Deadly enemies were all around, determined to sabotage our glorious October Revolution. Some innocents suffered. Regrettable. Investigations were undertaken, thousands of victims rehabilitated. And pardoned, posthumously. Soviet justice has been restored. Our worthy leaders have cleansed the record. That is their gift to us. Our generation is blameless, and the older generation guilty. And the only men who are called upon to atone for their sins lie safely in their graves. Some of them in the same mass graves as their victims. Some of them in the Kremlin wall. Case closed. We are free of guilt, free of the past, free to build the future. Why dig that up?”
“I don’t think Korin is free of the past.”
“I thought he didn’t talk to you.”
“Just got that impression.”
Kuznetsov snorted and flopped back on the sofa. He fumbled for a cigarette and blew smoke at the ceiling.
“You’re amazing, Vasin. I’m watching with bated breath to see what you do next.”
“Nice to have an appreciative audience.”
“First you make it obvious that you’re planning to turn the Petrov case into a murder inquiry. Then you take an unauthorized jaunt to one of the most sensitive military installations in the Motherland. On the day of a test flight. Like you’re some secret agent sent to spy on the program. Then you start asking questions about who sent who to the Gulag. Where do we take things from here? Start asking around about who’s fucking the General’s wife?”
It took Vasin’s rum-addled wits a second to work out that Kuznetsov must mean Zaitsev’s wife, not Orlov’s. Zaitsev’s wife. There was a terrible thought. Vasin reached out to pour the last of the rum.
“What did you mean, ‘who sent who to the Gulag’?”
“You know what I meant, Vasin. Everyone in that generation denounced each other. Kill or be killed. Wolves’ laws. That’s how it was.”
“And you don’t think that kind of betrayal can echo down the years?”
“Maybe it can. But it’s not our job to listen to echoes.”
“I thought we listened to everything.”
“I can tell you what my job is. To secure the future of our country against our enemies. Or don’t you think that we have enemies?”
“We have enemies.”
“And traitors? There are no traitors? How about saboteurs?”
“Don’t speak to me like I’m a child, Kuznetsov.”
“Okay, you’re not a child. But you’re an idealist. You’re pursuing the truth, as you see it, wit
hout regard for the consequences. I call that naïve. And dangerous. I told you what the stakes were. The jeopardies that threaten the work here. Zaitsev and the military goons waiting to tear the cloud dwellers down. So whatever it is you think you are doing, for God’s sake remember that. Don’t do the bastards’ work for them. The past is gone. Let it lie.”
Vasin and Kuznetsov sank back into the soft upholstery, exhausted as an old couple after an argument. Both lit cigarettes and smoked in silence. The only sound was the soft, rhythmic hiss of the record as it turned on its endless inside loop.
“What was the Kharkov Institute of Physics and Technology?”
“Vasin, go to hell. You’re impossible.”
“We’re on the same side.”
“If you say so.”
“You can help.”
“Help you put someone in jail for Petrov’s murder and put another bar on your collar? Do you mind if I don’t?”
“I understood what you said about the Citadel. I’m not a fanatic. But it’s more complicated than you think.”
“Mate. Can you do me one favor? One? I don’t want to know. Really. Please, keep your fucking complications to yourself.”
CHAPTER SIX
WEDNESDAY, 25 OCTOBER 1961
FIVE DAYS BEFORE THE TEST
I
Vasin rose through layers of sleep like a thrashing diver, struggling upward through water. He awoke tangled in unfamiliar blankets in a strange room to the rising wail of a siren.
“Kutuz…Kuznetsov!”
He skidded into the kitchen, his bare feet sliding on the smooth linoleum. He caught himself on the doorframe.
“Slow down, Young Communist. Don’t break your neck. It’s only an air raid.”
Kuznetsov’s voice came from inside his room, from which he emerged a moment later with unlaced boots and a winter overcoat over flannel pajamas. In his hand he held a sheaf of notes and a dog-eared reference book.
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