Archangel

by Robert Harris

  The girl was sitting erect now, staring about her, beginning to guess where she was. The militia man levered his big frame out of the front seat and came round to open her door. She didn’t move. It was Suvorin who had to take her gently by her arm and coax her out of the car.

  ‘They’ve had to convert this place. And there’s another warehouse out in Elektrostal, apparently. But there you are. That’s the crime-wave for you. Even the dead are obliged to sleep rough. Come on, Zinaida. It’s a formality. It has to be done. Besides, I’m told it often helps. We must always look our terrors in the eye.’

  She shook her arm free of him and gathered her coat around herself and he realised that actually he was more nervous than she was. He had never seen a corpse before. Imagine it: a major of the former First Chief Directorate of the KGB and he had never seen a dead man. This whole case was proving an education.

  They picked their way through the refuse, past a goods lift, and into the back of the warehouse – the militia man in the lead, then Zinaida, then Suvorin. It had been a cold store originally, for fish trucked north from the Black Sea, and there was still a slight tang of brine to the air, despite the smell of chemicals.

  The policeman knew the drill. He put his head into a glassed-in office and shared a brief joke with whoever was inside, then another man appeared, shrugging on a white coat. He held back a high curtain of thick black rubber strips and they passed into a long corridor, wide enough to take a fork-lift truck, with heavy refrigerated doors off to either side.

  In America – Suvorin had seen this on a video of a cops-and-robbers programme Serafima liked to watch – the bereaved could view their loved ones on a monitor, comfortably screened from the physical reality of death. In Russia, no such delicacy attended the extinct. But, there again, in fairness to the authorities, it had to be said that they had done their best with limited resources. The viewing room – if approached from the street entrance – was out of sight of the refrigerators. Also, a couple of bowls of plastic flowers had been placed on a covered table, on either side of a brass cross. The trolley was in front of these, the outline of the body clear beneath the white sheet. Small, thought Suvorin. He had expected a larger man.

  He made sure he stood next to Zinaida. The militia man was beside his friend, the morgue technician. Suvorin nodded and the technician folded back the top part of the sheet.

  Papu Rapava’s mottled face, his thin grey hair combed back and neatly parted, stared through blackened eyelids at the peeling roof.

  The militia man intoned the formal words in a bored voice, ‘Witness, is this Papu Gerasimovich Rapava?’

  Zinaida, her hand to her mouth, nodded.

  ‘Speak please.’

  ‘It is.’ They could hardly hear her. And then, more loudly: ‘Yes. It is.’

  She glanced sideways at Suvorin, defiantly.

  The technician began to replace the sheet.

  ‘Wait,’ said Suvorin.

  He reached out for the edge of the sheet that was closest to him and pulled, hard. The thin nylon whisked away, billowed clear of the body and settled on the floor.

  A silence, and then her scream split the room.

  ‘And is this Papu Gerasimovich Rapava? Take a look, Zinaida.’ He didn’t look himself – he had only a vague impression, thankfully – his eyes were fixed on her. ‘Take a look at what they did to him. This is what they’ll do to you. And to your friend Kelso, if they catch him.’

  The technician was shouting something. Zinaida, yelling, reeled away, towards the corner of the room, and Suvorin went after her – this was his moment, his only moment: he had to strike. ‘Now, tell me where he is. I’m sorry, but you’ve got to tell me. Tell me where he is. I’m sorry. Now.’

  She turned and her arm flailed out at him, but the militia man had her by her coat and was pulling her backwards. ‘Eh, eh,’ he said, ‘enough of that,’ and he spun her round and on to her knees.

  Suvorin got on to his knees as well and shuffled after her. He cupped her face between his hands. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. Her face seemed to be dissolving beneath his fingers, her eyes were liquid, blackness was trickling down her cheeks, her mouth a black smear. ‘It’s all right. I’m sorry’

  She went still. He thought she might have fainted but her eyes were still open.

  She wouldn’t break. He knew it at that moment. She was her father’s daughter.

  After maybe half a minute, he released her and sat back on his heels, head bowed, breathing hard. Behind him, he heard the noise of the trolley being wheeled away.

  ‘You’re a madman,’ said the technician, incredulously. ‘You’re fucking mad, you are.’

  Suvorin raised his arm in weary acknowledgement. The door slammed shut. He rested his palms on the cold stone floor. He hated this case, he realised, not simply because it was so damned impossible and freighted with risk, but because it made him realise just how much he hated his own country: hated all those old-timers turning out on Sunday mornings with their pictures of Marx and Lenin, and the hard-faced fanatics like Mamantov who just wouldn’t give up, who just didn’t get it, couldn’t see that the world had changed.

  The dead weight of the past lay across him like a toppled statue.

  It took an effort, pressing hard on the smooth stone, to push himself up on to his feet.

  ‘Come on,’ he said. He offered her his hand.

  ‘Archangel.’

  ‘What?’ He looked down at her. She was watching him from the floor. There was a frightening calmness about her. He moved closer to her. ‘What was that?’

  She said it again.

  ‘Archangel.’

  HE held on to the tails of his overcoat and carefully lowered himself back to the floor and sat close to her. They both had their backs propped up against the wall, like a couple of survivors after an accident.

  She was staring straight ahead and was talking in an odd monotone. He had his notebook open and his pen was working fast, tearing across the page, filling one sheet then flicking it over to start another. Because she might stop, he thought, stop talking as suddenly as she’d started –

  He had gone to Archangel, she said. Driving. Gone up north, him and the reporter from the television.

  Fine, Zinaida, take your time. And when was this?

  Yesterday afternoon.

  When exactly?

  Four, maybe. Five. She couldn’t remember. Did it matter?

  What reporter?

  O’Brian. An American. He was on the television. She didn’t trust him.

  And the notebook?

  Gone. Gone with them. It was hers but she didn’t want it. She wouldn’t touch it. Not after she had worked out what it was about. It was cursed. The thing was cursed. It killed everyone who touched it.

  She paused, staring at the spot where her father’s body had been. She covered her eyes.

  Suvorin waited, then said, Why Archangel?

  Because that was where the girl had lived.

  Girl? Suvorin stopped writing. What was she talking about? What girl?

  ‘LISTEN,’ he said, a few minutes later, when he had put his notebook away, ‘you’re going to be all right. I’m going to see to that, personally, do you understand me? The Russian government guarantees it.’

  (What was he talking about? The Russian government couldn’t guarantee a damned thing. The Russian government couldn’t guarantee its president wouldn’t drop his pants at a diplomatic reception and try to set light to one of his farts –)

  ‘Now what I’m going to do is this. Here’s my office number: it’s a direct line. I’m going to get one of my men to take you back to your apartment, okay? And you can get some sleep. And I’ll make sure there’s a guard outside on the landing and one in the street. So no one’s going to be able to get at you and harm you in any way. Right?’

  He rushed on, making more promises he couldn’t keep. I should go into politics, he thought. I’m a natural.

  ‘We’re going to make sure Kelso is sa
fe. And we’re going to find the people – the man – who did this terrible thing to your father, and we’re going to lock him up. Are you listening, Zinaida?’

  He was on his feet again, surreptitiously looking at his watch.

  ‘I’ve got to set things moving now. I’ve got to go. All right? I’m going to call Lieutenant Bunin – you remember Bunin, from last night? – and I’ll get him to take you home.’

  Halfway out the door he looked back at her.

  ‘My name is Suvorin, by the way. Feliks Suvorin.’

  THE militia man and the morgue assistant were waiting in the corridor. ‘Leave her alone,’ he said. ‘She’ll be fine.’ They were looking at him strangely. Was it contempt, he wondered, or a wary respect? He wasn’t sure which he deserved and he didn’t have time to decide. He turned his back on them and called Arsenyev’s number at Yasenevo.

  ‘Sergo? I need to speak to the colonel … Yes, it’s urgent. And I need you to fix some transport for me … Yes – are you ready? – I need you to fix me a plane.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  ACCORDING TO HER Party record, Vavara Safanova had lived at the same address for more than sixty years, a place in the old part of Archangel, about ten minutes’ drive from the waterfront, in a neighbourhood built of wood. Wooden houses were reached by wooden steps from wooden pavements – ancient timber, weathered grey, that must have been floated down the Dvina from the forests upstream long before the Revolution. It looked picturesque in the winter weather, if you could close your eyes to the concrete apartment blocks towering in the background. There were stacks of cordwood beside some of the houses and here and there a curl of smoke rose to lick the falling snow.

  The roads were broad and empty, guarded on either side by sentinels of silver birch, and the surface in the snow was deceptively smooth. But the roads weren’t made. The Toyota plunged into potholes as deep as a man’s shin, jarring and bouncing down the wide track, until Kelso suggested they pull over and continue the search on foot.

  He stood shivering on the duckboards as O’Brian rummaged around in the back. Across the street were a dozen railroad freight cars. Suddenly a homemade door in the side of one of them opened and a young woman climbed out, followed by two small children so thickly bundled against the cold they were almost spherical. She set off across the snowy field, the children dawdling behind her and staring at Kelso with solemn curiosity, until she turned and shouted sharply for them to follow her.

  O’Brian locked the car. He was carrying one of the aluminium cases. Kelso still had the satchel.

  ‘Did you see that?’ said Kelso. ‘There are people actually living over there in those freight cars. Did you see that?’

  O’Brian grunted and pulled up his hood.

  They trudged down the side of the road, past a row of patched and tumbledown houses, each tilted at its own mad angle to the ground. Every summer the land must thaw, thought Kelso, and shift, and the houses with it. And then fresh boards would have to be nailed over the new cracks, so that some of the walls had skins of repairs that must date back to the Tsars. He had a sense of time frozen. It wasn’t hard to imagine Anna Safanova, fifty years ago, walking where they walked, with a pair of ice skates slung around her shoulders.

  It took them another ten minutes to find the old woman’s street – an alley, really, no more, running off the main road, behind a clump of birch trees, and leading to the back of the house. In the yard were some animal coops: chickens, a pig, a couple of goats. And looming over it all, ghostly in the snow, a slab-sided fourteen-storey tower block, with a few yellow lights visible on the lower floors.

  O’Brian unlocked his case, took out his video camera and started filming. Kelso watched him, unhappily.

  ‘Shouldn’t we check she’s in first? Shouldn’t you get her permission?’

  ‘You ask her. Go ahead.’

  Kelso glanced at the sky. The flakes seemed to be getting bigger – thick and soft as a baby’s hand. He could feel a knot of tension in his stomach the size of his fist. He picked his way across the yard, past the hot stink of the goats, and started to climb the half-dozen loose wooden steps that led to the back porch. On the third step he paused. The door was partially open and in the narrow gap he could see an old woman, bent forwards, two hands resting on a stick, watching him.

  He said, ‘Vavara Safanova?’

  She didn’t say anything for a moment. Then she muttered, ‘Who wants her?’

  He took this as an invitation to climb the remaining steps. He wasn’t a tall man but when he reached the rickety porch he soared above her. She had osteoporosis, he could see now. The tops of her shoulders were on a level with her ears and it gave her a watchful look.

  He tugged down his hood and for the second time that morning he launched into his carefully prepared lie – they were in town to make a film about the communists; they were looking for people with interesting memories; they had been given her name and address by the local Party – and all the time he was appraising her, trying to reconcile this hunched figure with the matriarch who featured briefly in the girl’s journal.

  ‘Mama is strong, as ever … Mama brings me to the station … I kiss her dear cheeks …’

  She had opened the door a crack wider to get a better look at him, and he could see more of her. Apart from her shawl the clothes she wore were masculine – old clothes: her dead husband’s clothes, perhaps – with a man’s thick socks and boots. Her face was still handsome. She might have been stunning once – the evidence was there, in the sharpness of her jaw and cheekbones, in the keenness of her one good blue-green eye; the other was milky with a cataract. It didn’t take much effort to imagine her as a young communist in the 1930s, pioneer builder of a new civilisation, a socialist heroine to warm the hearts of Shaw or Wells. He bet she would have worshipped Stalin.

  ‘And Mama, yes, it is a modest house! Two storeys only. Your good Bolshevik heart would rejoice at its simplicity …’

  ‘– so if it would be possible,’ he concluded, ‘for us to take up some of your time, we would be very grateful.’

  He transferred the satchel uneasily, from hand to hand. He was conscious of the snow settling in a cold clump on his back, of water trickling from his scalp, and of O’Brian at the foot of the steps, filming them.

  Oh God, throw us out, he thought suddenly. Tell us to go to hell, and take our lies with us: I would if I were you. You must know why we’re here.

  But all she did was turn and shuffle back into the room, leaving the door wide open behind her.

  KELSO went in first, and then O’Brian, who had to duck to get through the low entrance. It was dark. The solitary window was thickly glazed with snow.

  If they wanted tea, she said, setting herself down heavily in a hard-backed wooden chair, then they would have to make it themselves.

  ‘Tea?’ said Kelso softly to O’Brian. ‘She’s offering to let us make her tea. I think yes, don’t you?’

  ‘Sure. I’ll do it.’

  She issued a stream of irritated instructions. Her voice, emanating from her buckled frame, was unexpectedly deep and masculine.

  ‘Well, get the water from the pail, then – no, not that jug: that one, the black one – use the ladle, that’s it – no, no no –’ she banged her stick on the floor ‘– not that much, that much. Now put it on the stove. And you can put some wood on the fire, too, while you’re about it.’ Another two bangs of the stick. ‘Wood? Fire?’

  O’Brian appealed helplessly to Kelso for a translation.

  ‘She wants you to put some wood on the fire.’

  ‘Tea in that jar. No, no. Yes. That jar. Yes. There.’

  Kelso couldn’t get a handle on any of this – on the town, on her, on this place, on the speed with which everything seemed to be happening. It was like a dream. He thought he ought to start taking some notes, so he pulled out his yellow pad and began making a discreet inventory of the room. On the floor: a large square of grey linoleum. On the linoleum: one table
, one chair and a bed covered with a woollen blanket. On the table: a pair of spectacles, a collection of pill-bottles and a copy of the northern edition of Pravda, open at the third page. On the walls: nothing, except in one corner, where a flickering red candle on a small sideboard punctuated the gloom, lighting a wood-framed photograph of V. I. Lenin. Hanging next to it were two medals for Socialist Labour and a certificate commemorating her fiftieth anniversary in the Party in 1984; by the time of her sixtieth, presumably, they couldn’t run to such extravagance. The bones of communism and of Vavara Safanova had crumbled together.

  The two men sat awkwardly on the bed. They drank their tea. It had a peculiar, herbal flavour, not unpleasant – cloudberries in it somewhere: a taste of the forest. She seemed to find nothing surprising in the fact of two foreigners arriving in her yard with a Japanese video camera, claiming to be making a film about the history of the Archangel Communist Party. It was as if she had been expecting them. Kelso guessed she would find no surprise in anything any more. She had the resigned indifference of extreme old age. Buildings and empires rose and fell. It snowed. It stopped snowing. People came and went. One day death would come for her, and she would not find that surprising, either, and she would not care – not so long as He trod in the proper places: ‘No, not there. There…’

  WELL, yes, she remembered the past, she said, settling back. Nobody in Archangel remembered the past better than she did. She remembered everything.

  She could remember the Reds in 1917 coming out on to the street, and her uncle wheeling her up in the air, and kissing her and telling her the Tsar had gone and Paradise was on the way. She could remember her uncle and her father running away into the forest to hide when the British came to stop the Revolution in 1918 – a great grey battleship moored in the Dvina and runty little English soldiers swarming ashore. She played to the sound of gunfire. And then she remembered early one morning walking down to the harbour and the ship had gone. And that afternoon her uncle came back – but not her father: her father had been taken by the Whites and he never came back.