He emerged from the booth like a boxer staggering from the ring. Now it was only a matter of time before the matter worked its way through the sluggish bureaucracy of Vera’s pathetic Party committee to the ears of the kontora. And to Orlov himself. The fatal blow was coming. He was finished.
“That bitch,” he hissed to himself.
He staggered out of the portals of the post office. Self-loathing replaced his fury, piercing his thin mackintosh like a cold hand. If he were honest with himself, part of Vasin would have welcomed punishment. Vera’s contempt was nothing more than he deserved. The contempt of her mother and her idiot friends, too, would have been fitting. The female sex, turning their collective backs on him. As they should. But to have his betrayal, his weakness exposed to Orlov—receive his deserts from him. That was too much to bear. To find himself guilty before men whose own guilt was so much more profound, and infinitely more vicious. That offended his sense…of what? Of fairness?
“Justice is mine, sayeth the Lord,” Orlov had once told Vasin in the sarcastic, mincing tone he reserved for biblical quotations. “None of us may choose the manner in which we meet justice, Vasin.”
Screwing the boss’s wife. Not that Orlov screwed her himself, by Katya’s own account. But this would be a matter altogether more serious than screwing. It would be about property and propriety, hierarchy and respect. Vasin had violated them all. He shuddered to think of how Orlov would choose to repay him.
With a violent effort of will, Vasin tore his thoughts away from Vera, Nikita, and the catastrophe that was unfolding back at the place that until this moment he had called home.
The death of Fyodor Petrov. Vasin guessed that the only thing Orlov cared about more than his own pride was his power over other men. Powerful men.
And finding a murderer in the Petrov case, serving up a guilty name for Orlov to lock away in his safe could, possibly, give Vasin a glimmer of hope.
IV
From a phone box on Lenin Square, Vasin dialed a list of numbers he had copied out from the Institute’s phone directory. He eventually tracked down Axelrod at the calutron lab.
“It’s your friend from Moscow. We need to meet. At your place of work, perhaps?”
The Citadel, Vasin’s only almost-safe haven. A pause.
“Come to the accounts department on the ground floor. Room 109. Quarter past six.”
That gave him the whole afternoon to lull his tails into boredom, then perhaps try to lose them. And to change. As evening fell Vasin, glad to be back in anonymously civilian clothes again, lingered by the street display of newspapers, glancing around him to assess how much manpower Zaitsev had assigned to him. He saw nobody obvious. Which meant a truly enormous team.
Vasin waited for three trams of commuters to come and go, looking out for fellow loiterers. There was no sign of Sailor from the yards, at least, or anyone like him. Only a handful of grim-suited labor heroes and war veterans, their breastplates of medals jingling in the twilight, scanned the papers for want of something better to do. At six o’clock a crowd of women, chirruping like a flock of starlings as they adjusted head scarves and exchanged weekend plans, poured from the doors of the Institute. Vasin waited until the steps had cleared and hurried inside.
Axelrod had chosen wisely. The rest of the Citadel hummed with busy activity, but the accounts department was empty. Vasin found room 109, but no light showed through the window above the door. He tested the handle and found a desk-filled space darkening in the twilight. There was a strong smell of mixed women’s perfumes, overlaid with the sticky odors of glue and ink. During the few seconds it took Vasin’s eyes to adjust to the gloom, he thought he was alone. But then he made out the solid shadow of Axelrod’s back, perched stock-still against a desk and watching the light drain from black trees outside the window.
Vasin crossed the room. He pushed aside a slide rule and an electric calculating machine the size of a shoe box to make space for himself on the desk alongside the scientist. Axelrod had hardened his face like someone preparing to take a lashing.
“What now?”
“I have the summary of the audit that the kontora made of the reagent records detailing every milligram of thallium Petrov removed from the lab.”
“Quick. Let me see it!”
Vasin’s eyes flickered from Axelrod’s face to his hands, then back to his face, checking the telltale places. Either Axelrod was a brilliant liar, or he was truly excited. He seemed to truly believe that the records would prove his lover had not taken his own life.
Vasin pulled the transcripts from the lab inventory out of his coat pocket and flourished them in front of Axelrod’s face.
“You have the experiment file reference numbers? If you don’t, it’ll take the two of us weeks to track them all down.”
Axelrod opened the document to a random page and ran his finger down the left-hand column.
“Thank God.”
Vasin could barely keep up as Axelrod flew down the stairs into the basement. By the time they reached Laboratory Zh-4, home of the calutron, both were panting. But Axelrod hurried past the double doors of his own lab and continued down the twisting underground corridor before swinging left into a door marked REGISTRY. A young clerk, pimply and bespectacled, looked up in surprise from a thick textbook. Axelrod fumbled for a purple-striped identity card, which evidently indicated sufficient seniority to bring the clerk to his feet.
“I need file request forms. Lots.”
Axelrod’s demeanor had become almost commanding. He snatched the sheaf of blank forms from the startled boy and led Vasin to a library table.
“Read out every entry for thallium under Petrov’s name. Date, then experiment reference number, then reagent batch.”
Vasin began obediently reading off the ledger numbers on Zaitsev’s inventory as Axelrod filled in the forms, his pencil scurrying impatiently across the paper. When they were finished he called for the clerk, who scurried over at a run.
“We need to see these inventories. Now.”
“All of them, sir? Could take a while.”
“All of them.”
Vasin and Axelrod walked to the smoking area at the bottom of the stairwell. Axelrod’s fingers fumbled to strike a match, so Vasin lit his French cigarette for him. Neither spoke as they smoked. When he was done Axelrod crushed his cigarette out viciously, holding it down long after it had ceased to struggle. The reagent inventory for a single month of Laboratory Zh-4’s work occupied nearly forty volumes, which the clerk wheeled out from the stacks on a trolley. Without Zaitsev’s painstaking report, finding the discrepancies would have been like looking for a lost coin on a stony beach. But now Axelrod had the exact references and quickly found the relevant entries. Experiment by experiment, he and Vasin compared the quantities taken out with the amount used, recorded in the lab technician’s careful hand—how much thallium was used, how much lost, how much returned.
They both saw it at the same moment. A crude enough forgery, an entry for 300 milligrams turned into 800. Vasin carried the volume to a desk lamp and raked light obliquely onto the page. There was no doubt. The page had been written over. They found another in an entry two days later, where 100 became 400. And again and again. In total, two thousand supposedly missing milligrams of thallium, falsely logged and transcribed by Zaitsev’s team.
“Your colleagues have doctored the record,” breathed Axelrod. “We need to get a citizen to witness this. Comrade!”
The registry clerk approached them, thoroughly alarmed by Axelrod’s urgency.
“Wait,” hissed Vasin. Then to the clerk, “Can we see who else signed out these records? Over the last two weeks?”
The cards were soon found in the index. Axelrod scanned the list. His own name, the ink barely dry, was the most recent. Before that, for four days in succession just before Vas
in’s arrival in Arzamas, a KGB Lieutenant Girkin, evidently Zaitsev’s man. And before that, just a day after Petrov’s death, another person accessed the Zh-4 records.
Korin, P. A.
“Pavel Korin,” Axelrod said. “Professor Adamov’s oldest comrade and fellow jailbird.”
“You’re very well informed.”
“Korin’s a bomb engineer. Payloads, detonators, altimeters are his area of expertise. There’s no legitimate reason for him to be rooting around the experimental records of the calutron. Korin must have forged the thallium records.”
To Vasin’s discomfort, Axelrod’s logic was racing ahead as fast as his own.
“Korin and Adamov, they killed my…they killed Petrov, and now they are covering it up. I told you before, they are saboteurs. They had to get rid of Petrov because they would not be able to change the design of the bomb with him alive. This proves it. This is treachery.”
Axelrod’s voice was becoming high and hysterical.
“Wait. Pull yourself together, man. Think. What exactly do you plan to do with this theory of yours?”
“I’m going to lodge my concerns with the appropriate authorities. And denounce Yury Adamov as a saboteur and murderer at tomorrow’s daily briefing.”
“There are…considerations, Dr. Axelrod.”
“You sound like you do not wish me to proceed, Major.”
Vasin thought of Kuznetsov’s arguments. The city of cloud dwellers, the jeopardy that stalked them from the vicious careerists of the Party and the kontora. And he thought of Korin’s words. The generals who itched to use every weapon ever made for them, who could not contemplate the end of war, forever. Axelrod was a scientist blinded by straight lines. He had spent his life negotiating the world of the concrete. His affair with Petrov was the single evidence that he had ever plunged into the tides of madness and human emotion. And he had been rejected. Then betrayed. Then bereaved. Axelrod’s fury was cold, and its logic was unstoppable.
“You are right, Comrade Axelrod. You have your duty as a Soviet citizen.”
V
Nightfall brought a freezing fog, rising from the Sarovka River and creeping along the sidewalks like a ghost. Frost had settled on the trees that lined the boulevards. If clear cold is action, Vasin told himself, fog is thought. It was nearly time for his appointment with Adamov.
What he and Axelrod had found in the records clearly implicated Korin. And probably the Professor too. Even if Axelrod was wrong that his feud with Fyodor over the tamper had led to murder, Vasin knew that Adamov had another, far stronger motive for revenge against Petrov’s father. And if both of them were involved, it was almost inconceivable that Masha wasn’t also involved.
If it was Korin and Adamov, their fate would be out of his hands soon enough. At the very least, as soon as Axelrod made his report, the fact that Petrov had been murdered would be released from its vault and out in the world, and even Orlov himself would be powerless to lock it back in his green safe. Only Adamov could save himself now. He could somehow explain away the revelation of Korin’s meddling in the files. Or he would be condemned.
The streets were nearly empty as Vasin strode toward Adamov’s apartment. A couple of cars passed, but no tails were in evidence. A bad sign. The kontora had thrown its circle invisibly wide and almost inescapable.
In the foyer of Adamov’s house an unfamiliar man sat in the concierge’s lodge reading a copy of Sports News, or at least holding it. As he passed up the stairs, Vasin heard the soft purr as the watcher picked a telephone receiver up off its cradle.
Vasin found Adamov alone in his cavernous apartment. He wore his formal Party tunic, unbuttoned at the collar, and his decorations. He had evidently just come from a meeting with the top brass. His deeply lined face was gray with exhaustion. Without a word, Adamov led his visitor through to the dining room. Like actors in a drama, they took their old places at the table.
“Did you get your bomb built, Professor?”
Adamov’s answer came as a low rumble in his throat, barely audible.
“It is done.”
The expression on the Professor’s face was of an almost menacing firmness of intention. The mask that Vasin had seen slip the previous day was back in place.
“Comrade Professor, you asked me here because you have something to tell me.”
“Aren’t you going to tell me that I have nothing to fear if I have nothing to hide? That used to be the most terrifying statement in the Russian language. When my interrogator said that to me, I would experience all the terrors of the abyss. And here you are, come to convict me again.”
Vasin shifted uncomfortably in the hard chair. The moment of denial came and went. He glanced toward the telephone that sat on a side table.
“Worried about your kontora’s little ears? Don’t be. A man from the radio laboratory disconnected your pathetic bugs. He checks this place every week. I will be filing a complaint with the Committee for State Security. The things discussed around this table are not for the ears of your blundering-fool colleagues.”
Vasin absorbed the insult without comment.
“Comrade Investigator, I am not the one who harmed Fyodor Petrov. That is the truth.”
“Petrov’s father’s betrayal cost you your wife and daughter. They both repudiated you. No one would blame you for your revenge, Professor. A child for a child.”
“Not all things that are logical are true. With limited data, it is logical to conclude that the sun revolves around the earth. No. Arkady Petrov and I have had our own reckoning. I knew he denounced me, but to refuse to do so would have been his own condemnation. In truth, he also saved me. After my conviction, Academician Petrov officially declared that I was a vital worker with specialist skills. As a result I was transferred from the mines to a sharashka, a scientific workshop staffed by Gulag inmates. Some of the best work on the Soviet nuclear program was done by men like me, sitting in our padded prison uniforms. The great Sergei Korolev, who just put Major Gagarin into space? He spent the war in a sharashka, too. It was still the Gulag, but without Petrov I’d have died, like Korin nearly did in his hellhole in Vorkuta. So you are mistaken. I have no ancient scores to settle with Petrov, or even his son.”
“Did you ask me here to tell me that Fyodor Petrov’s father saved your life?” Vasin thought of his own interview with Fyodor’s father, a great man broken by grief. Indeed, he had mentioned nothing about Adamov or their shared history.
“I wanted to explain.”
“Professor, what happened to Fyodor?”
Adamov leaned back slowly into the darkness.
“You have had my answer. I did not harm him.”
“Who did?”
“He harmed himself.”
“He committed suicide? Or he brought about his own death?”
“You have a good brain, Major. And no, I am not avoiding an answer. I would say those things were synonymous.”
“No more word games, Professor. Vladimir Axelrod says that you changed the design of the tamper of RDS-220 right after Petrov’s death. He believes that you have deliberately and maliciously sabotaged the bomb and wants to denounce you for anti-Soviet inclinations.”
A grim smile spread like a surgeon’s incision across the Professor’s face.
“Fyodor’s boy. Of course.”
“He has evidence against Colonel Korin. And some compelling evidence against you, Professor.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Dr. Axelrod has made a computer model of the projected yield of your new design. You have deliberately cut the power of RDS-220 by at least half.”
For the first time, Vasin saw emotion on Adamov’s face.
“And they were not easy to access, but the records of the calutron lab we looked at a few hours ago also proved to
be quite surprising,” continued Vasin. “The log tracking Petrov’s experiments with thallium and supposedly showing that two thousand milligrams are missing? They have been doctored. Your trusted colleague Pavel Korin checked out the records the day after Petrov’s death. Axelrod has found his patriotism and demands you both be punished. He is taking his information to the authorities tomorrow.”
Adamov, usually so still, jumped up and began to pace the room.
“Am I to be arrested?” His voice had become dry and bleak. “Is this some kind of Chekist’s courtesy call?”
“No, sir.” Vasin paused.
Ever since he’d arrived in Arzamas, everybody he met had told him to back off. Zaitsev, Kuznetsov, Efremov, Korin—they’d all had their various reasons for telling him to leave it alone. But what if they all had been ultimately right? The idealist in Vasin wanted the truth. The coward in him wanted salvation from the consequences of his own betrayal. Both those paths led to Korin’s certain ruin, maybe Masha’s too. And Adamov’s. But what if Korin was right, that Vasin was just an ape in the laboratory? What if there was some great, overarching truth that he had been missing? He remembered Orlov’s words. What if a crime is committed to prevent a greater crime? What if the stakes were higher than his own survival?
“No, sir. Not courtesy. But Korin told me some things. About you. About the device. The importance of your work. I need to know if there has been any…mistake. Before it is too late for you.”
Adamov’s hands closed slowly on the high back of the chair opposite Vasin’s. The Professor’s hard, clever eyes roamed over him, as though searching for the answer to a question that Vasin had not posed. The last color had drained from Adamov’s face, leaving only ash beneath his skin.
Adamov picked up the telephone and dialed.
“Pavel. Thank God I reached you. We have a serious problem. It’s Axelrod. Yes. Fifteen minutes? Good. Vasin is here with me. Yes, him. Vasin the Chekist.”
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