by Ben Creed
The lieutenant took the round tin from his pocket. He opened it and placed the spool it contained inside the second, and seemingly newer, Magnetophon.
Then he took out two cigarettes, gave one to Vassya, who seemed more comfortable than him at their elevated position, lit them up – checked his watch again – sat back in his chair and waited.
*
Shostakovich looked, Rossel thought – even from this distance – more than a little self-conscious. As if he were hoping that no one could possibly believe the Pravda puff-piece about Vronsky – one which some Moscow hack had so obviously knocked off under orders from the Kremlin and attached the composer’s name to – was anything to do with him.
The composer stood in the middle of the stage, next to a large microphone. He had neat hair and brown-framed glasses, radiated anxiety, and was worryingly thin. It was Shostakovich’s task to deliver a faltering eulogy to Vronsky which, in its clichéd verbosity, had clearly been authored by the same hack who’d churned out the obituary.
Now, dressed all in black, and wearing a veiled pill-box hat, Madame Vronsky appeared. A young woman dressed in a Komsomol outfit handed the composer a large bunch of blood-red poppies. He, in turn, handed them to Vronsky’s mother. This morning’s All-Union First Radio programme had talked of how the deceased maestro’s grieving mother had requested this specific flower and colour as her son had always said it made him think of the ‘many children of our nation who gave up their lives for socialism in the Great Patriotic War’. As she accepted the flowers, the audience rose as one and applauded. After a minute, Shostakovich and Madame Vronsky left the stage and took their seats in the side section reserved for the most important members of the audience. The audience sat and the large orchestra – almost a hundred strong – began to wend their way on stage and tune up.
Rossel waited for the babble to die down. Finally, all that could be heard were the occasional parping of a tuba or the low griping of a violin – the last-minute checks that all was well with the instruments.
Nikitin had a new master now. The list detailing the extent of Beria’s depravity was safely in Malenkov’s hands. Of even greater interest, however, and far more incriminating, were the ledgers. According to Nikitin, Malenkov had perused them with delight before placing them under lock and key.
On the drive of Beria’s dacha, neither of Stalin’s seasoned henchmen had been brave enough to make their move, each man refusing to play a hand they could not be certain of winning. Even victory could be deadly: if either man succeeded in eliminating the other, the Great Leader was likely to interpret this as a move on his own position. No – the list and the ledgers were weapons for another battle at another time. For now, Beria and Malenkov would appear at the Party Congress, at speeches, dinners and concerts, smile and shake hands. And, by unspoken agreement, happily blame Vronsky for the unfortunate distraction of five dead bodies being found on the tracks and anything else that suited them both.
Rossel knew that he himself was unfinished business. A line in Beria’s own meticulous records under a column marked ‘pending’. Unless Major Nikitin could be persuaded to use some of his new-found influence . . .
The fortunes of the Vosstaniya Street station had been mixed. Gerashvili was still unwell. But he’d sensed the last time he had visited her that her keen investigatory instincts were starting to revive. Lipukhin had sworn never to touch another drop. Half the junior ranks had been released and some had already returned to their former duties. A few would need more time. Grachev, along with a dozen others, had been given ten years in the camps. Rossel doubted he would ever see the sergeant again.
In the days since Vronsky’s death, Rossel had pieced together the details of how the composer had ensnared his victims. As with Sofia, the maestro had matched his invitation to Krestovsky Island to each person’s different desires. For Maxim, he had proffered sanctuary from the labour camps and the chance of musical redemption – to collaborate on the creation of a new choral work. For Felix, a letter from Marina – written under duress, she had claimed between sobs – had hinted at the possibility of rekindling their old dalliance.
As for Shevchuk, ambition was the bait – the promise that Vronsky would use his influence to secure him a promotion. And Nadya had been the easiest of all. Money, jewels, Vronsky’s patronage at the Kirov. Each must have been in optimistic mood when they arrived on Vronsky’s island, buoyed by the promise of better days ahead.
Only one question remained.
‘Not for you, because . . .’
Rossel now knew how to complete the sentence. He understood, and so had already forgiven, her betrayal.
Rossel gazed down at Madame Vronsky, a tiny figure almost lost among the party bosses, military leaders and other dignitaries around her. The applause rose again as the saturnine figure of Mravinsky, the principal conductor of the Leningrad Symphony Orchestra, padded on stage. He bowed, and silence rolled over the hall once more.
Leningrad was listening.
High on the gantry, the lieutenant shrugged and leaned forward. Vassya pressed a red play button on the Magnetophon. They both watched as the spools began to whirr and, once satisfied all was working as it should, exited the hut and began the winding journey back to the service tunnel, catching snatches, as they descended, of the terrible recordings and the swelling uproar.
*
Leningrad, every inch of it, seemed to have been colonised by a mute army of giant black crows. As Rossel and Vassya stepped back out from behind the tarpaulin onto Mikhailovskaya Street, he felt, momentarily, as though the entire population of the city had assembled to greet him – not just on the square, but crammed onto every pavement for streets around. They were all dressed funereally to honour the maestro, just as Pravda had said they should, and standing, as one, under the light snow. A workers’ brigade of dark scarves, gloves, sables, greatcoats and fur hats. Each head raised and staring upwards at the microphones attached to the poles.
In places, people were packed fifteen-deep across the road. Unable to turn right off Nevsky, a queue of traffic had stopped. Now drivers and passengers were clambering out to hear better the noises coming from the loudspeakers.
Most of them were unfathomable unless you knew, as Rossel did, what the sounds really were. The light jangling of the railway switch on the bars, the ape-like hollering of the creatures inside the gently undulating cages, the screeches and moans of the tormented – it all played on and on.
Rossel loosened his greatcoat so his uniform became partially visible, took out his militia ID and raised it so he could clear a path. He had locked the gantry hut using the padlock he’d opened to access the metro tunnel. What could be heard inside the Philharmonic could also be heard all over Leningrad.
Intent on listening, the crowd hardly seemed to see them – every pale shocked face a study in concentration, every mouth pursed and closed. Rossel grabbed Vassya’s gloved hand in his, pushed his way past the main entrance to the Philharmonic Hall and headed towards the huge crowd on Arts Square.
They had got almost to the middle, hiding among the befuddled, upturned faces, when the voice on the tape became clearly audible for the first time. A collective gasp went up. It was so loud, Rossel thought, the combined exhalation of warm breath might rise up, as one cloud, and blot from view the dome of St Basil’s.
‘God is dead, Maxim,’ said Vronsky, ‘that’s what Dostoevsky tells us. God is dead. So, everything is permitted!’
In reply, Maxim bawled out his own hypnotic incantation. ‘My appetite was sin and of that sin I made a feast. And through that feast I came to know you . . .’
The tape played on for another thirty seconds. The beat of vicious blows clearly audible. The sound of men and women begging for mercy. Begging for death. The sound of Vronsky’s contempt. Caterwauls, clangs, roars and, finally, whispers.
Then, suddenly, Rossel heard another sound – a single pair of hands clapping. At first, they clapped on alone. Then, after
a little while, others inside the hall began to applaud too.
It’s her, Madame Vronsky, Rossel thought. It has to be her.
And, once she’d fully realised what was on the tape, he assumed, it had only taken her a minute or so to formulate her plan of action.
The story of this moment, Ekaterina Vronsky had instinctively understood, would not be written by the audience or the crowd in the street but by the same hacks from All-Union First Radio, Pravda and Izvestia who had obediently typed out all those fawning obituaries.
As Rossel and Vassya listened, the applause in the Philharmonic got louder. They would all be standing now. Once she’d made the generals and apparatchiks get to their feet with one of her looks – You think I’m finished, but I’m still close enough to Minister Beria, how close to him are you? – everyone else would have followed.
As they walked on, the noise grew thunderous and drowned out Vronsky’s tape. Now it was not just coming from the microphones on the poles. The applause had rippled out from the theatre and spread amongst the people standing in the square and on the streets. No one knew what, or why, they were applauding. Only that it was safer to applaud.
The noise followed the lieutenant and the Night Witch as they pushed their way down Inzhenernaya Street. It outpaced them all the way to the Griboyedov Canal.
Madame Vronsky had given Pravda exactly what they needed – a citywide standing ovation for her dead child. She had written tomorrow’s headlines for them – Leningrad stands as one and applauds Vronsky, Hero City’s most heroic son!
As they turned right, heading towards the massive gaudy green and gold baubles that topped the towers of the Church of the Saviour of the Spilled Blood, the sound of the clapping rose up from the opposite bank and the square beyond that. It now seemed so loud it would shake the foundations of every building in the city. The bovine masses, perplexed but always obedient.
‘It doesn’t matter what Pravda writes,’ he said to Vassya. ‘That’s not what these people will remember in ten or twenty years. Nobody can speak in public of what they listened to today. But everyone heard it.’
The clapping began to subside as they turned left onto a little metal bridge behind the church and kept on walking in the general direction of Station 17. Rossel thought he might like, for possibly the last time, to admire the carved seabird on the mantelpiece and offer up a final hopeful exhortation.
About the Author
Ben Creed is the pseudonym for Chris Rickaby and Barney Thompson, two writers who met on the Curtis Brown creative writing course.
Chris, from Newcastle upon Tyne, found his way into advertising as a copywriter and, after working for different agencies, started his own. He has written and produced various TV programmes for ITV and Five, and some award-winning experimental fiction.
Before deciding to pursue a career as a journalist, Barney spent two years studying under the legendary conducting professor Ilya Musin at the St Petersburg Conservatory. He has worked at The Times and the Financial Times, where he was legal correspondent, and is now an editor, writer and speechwriter at UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.
Acknowledgements
Any writers looking for inspiration from the realities of life under the murderous reign of Joseph Stalin would not be short of material. Yet, while we read and researched widely for City of Ghosts, this is not a history book. We have always felt at liberty to alter a few dates and places, and to reimagine political rivalries and human relationships, while trying to remain true to the essence of the era. Several people gave us excellent guidance on details ranging from cigarette brands to car models; any deviations and errors are entirely our responsibility.
We would like to thank:
Jon Elek at Welbeck for championing and publishing City of Ghosts, and our agent Giles Milburn, for having such faith in this book from the very beginning and – perhaps more importantly – for being the type of agent you can have a pint with.
Rosa Schierenberg at Welbeck, and Liane-Louise Smith, Georgina Simmonds and Sophie Pélissier at Madeleine Milburn for all their help and support.
Niamh Mulvey and Fiona Mitchell for their excellent editorial insights and suggestions, which improved the book immeasurably. Andrew Smith for the atmospheric cover design, and Clare Wallis and Rhian McKay for the meticulous copy editing and proofing.
The forensic pathologist Dr Ben Swift for his expert guidance on issues such as frozen – and defrosting – corpses, starvation, sedation, and other similarly gory matters. And Dr Jana Howlett, emeritus lecturer and fellow, Jesus College, Cambridge University, for spotting the many ‘intentional mistakes’.
Published in 2020 by Welbeck Fiction Limited, part of Welbeck Publishing Group
20 Mortimer Street London W1T 3JW
Copyright © Chris Rickaby and Barnaby Thompson, 2020
Cover design by: Andrew Smith
Cover images © Marina Pissarova/Alamy Stock Photo; Shutterstock.com
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners and the publishers.
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78739-494-0
E-book ISBN: 978-1-787-39-503-9