One Night in Winter

by Simon Sebag Montefiore

  ‘Did Rosa mention death?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Would you say it was likely that they’d agreed to a suicide pact?’

  ‘No. Never!’

  ‘Would you say it is possible that Nikolasha killed her and then himself?’

  Vlad’s face was in his hands. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘That evening on the Stone Bridge, did you see them close up?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re lying.’

  The door flew open as if kicked in, and a lieutenant general of State Security entered the room. The word ‘swagger’ might have been invented for this bull of a man, thought Vlad miserably. He seemed too bulging, too bright, too big to be real. An array of precious rings sat on fingers as fat and hairy as grubs. And Vlad thought that the muscles of his arms, let alone his legs in their striped britches, seemed as thick as his waist.

  ‘Comrade Kobylov!’ Mogilchuk stood to attention.

  ‘Sorry to interrupt your gentle chat.’ Kobylov brought his fleshy, olive-skinned face very close to Vlad. He was wearing an eye-wateringly strong cologne and smelled of cloves. ‘I warn you, if you lie to me, you may never get out of here. No matter who the fuck your parents are!’ He smashed his fist on to the table, and Vlad jumped with fright.

  ‘So Nikolasha shot Rosa?’ Kobylov said.

  ‘If you say so, maybe. Yes.’

  ‘Where was the gun?’

  ‘I never saw it!’

  Kobylov rolled his eyes at Mogilchuk. ‘He never saw a gun!’ he imitated Vlad in a girlish intellectual voice. ‘You’ll spit it out in the end.’ He ruffled Vlad’s hair and chuckled. ‘Mogilchuk, a word!’

  The two MGB officers stepped outside. General Bogdan ‘Bull’ Kobylov was Beria’s right-hand man, and Colonel Mogilchuk, standing to attention in his blue shoulderboards and tunic, hurried to light Kobylov’s cigarette.

  ‘Comrade colonel,’ Kobylov said, ‘remember Comrade Beria’s orders?’

  ‘A murder. A conspiracy. To be solved without regard to rank or position. The very words of the Instantsiya.’ Mogilchuk paused. ‘But they’re just kids.’

  ‘You milksop! You’re getting soft. There are two children with gunshot wounds on Professor Schpigelglaz’s slab right now down at the Kremlevka. And not just any teenagers either. Did you ever hear about the Lakoba case in Georgia?’

  Mogilchuk pretended that he hadn’t.

  ‘Well, I’ve got some experience of working with kids,’ said Kobylov modestly. Comrades Beria and Kobylov had killed the Abkhazian leader Lakoba and then they had inflicted unspeakable torments on his young sons, but they couldn’t be executed until they were twelve so they were kept alive. On the day they celebrated their twelfth birthdays, Kobylov shot one and beat the other to death. ‘Comrade Stalin says, “You can’t make a revolution with silk gloves,”’ he went on. ‘But so far the order is: no French wrestling, and that suits me. I don’t want to hurt a bunch of kids either.’

  ‘So what do you suggest, comrade general? Should we wait for Schpigelglaz’s post-mortem?’

  ‘The Instantsiya wants this solved fast, Mogilchuk. It’s obvious what happened. Let’s just tie it up quickly and get on with some real work.’ Kobylov took a drag on his cigarette and then kicked open the interrogating-room door.

  Vlad, startled, recoiled, knocking his chair over backwards and crouching in the far corner.

  ‘Hey, easy now! Not so jumpy, eh? Come on. Sit down again.’ Kobylov coaxed Vlad back into his chair. ‘Who else was in this poetry-reading, transvestite, cock-sucking, arse-licking, Pushkin-duelling strip club?’

  ‘It wasn’t like that at all, I promise!’

  ‘Look, just cough up the names and you can go home. Who helped Nikolasha plan the murder? Or did he do it alone?’

  Satinov’s bodyguard, Losha, collected George from the football game later that evening.

  ‘What’s news, Losha?’ George asked anxiously as he got into the car.

  ‘On the shooting case? Nothing yet. Chinese saying: Never worry worry until worry worries you!’

  George nodded. ‘How are you, Losha?’

  ‘Sizzling, son. Now, have you kissed that girl yet?’ He accelerated through the traffic in the Packard.

  ‘Which girl?’

  ‘Minka Dorova, you sissy. She’s your girl, ain’t she?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so, but I haven’t kissed her.’

  ‘What are you, a sissy or a man?’ Losha boomed. ‘She’s longing for a Georgian man. You can tell by the way she’s always looking around under those long black eyelashes. It’s time you kissed her. Now you’ve got to kiss her tonight. Or I’ll . . . shave off half my moustaches in protest!’

  ‘You’re joking, Losha!’

  ‘No, I swear. Everyone will say, “Losha, where’re your whiskers,” and I’ll tell ’em what a sissy you are. Ask her for a walk in Sokolniki Park. Give her a full meal. With girls, a full stomach goes straight between their legs. Kerboosh! Like a train when you put coal in the furnace. The train builds up steam and, kerboosh, it toots its whistle! Add a few shots of cognac. Losha knows. Call her now.’

  George thought for a few moments. Losha was right. He did like Minka. He dreamed of her. It was now or never. ‘Drop me off at the House on the Embankment.’

  ‘Kerboosh! Attaboy!’

  George, still in his Spartak football strip and white shorts, watched the limousine speed away across the bridge. He peered up at the eighth floor of the eastern wing of the modernist complex beside the Moskva. The lights burned in the Dorov apartment. He prayed Minka’s father, the Uncooked Chicken, wouldn’t answer: with any luck he would be at Old Square bullying his staff as usual. And surely her mother Dr Dorova was at the Kremlin Clinic? Ludmilla the housekeeper would be cooking supper for Senka, Demian and his own adorable Minka. He picked up the phone in the public phone booth, listening to it ringing, then he dropped the kopeck in.

  ‘I’m listening.’ Victory! Minka’s voice, soft as the buzz of a bumblebee.

  ‘What’s news? It’s George. My parents are driving me mad about . . . about the case. What about you?’

  ‘Same here. Papa says the club was un-Bolshevik, a bourgeois heresy. He thinks everything’s a conspiracy. But Mama says that’s nonsense. The school’s seething with rumours. It’s ridiculous! Shall we ask Andrei and Serafima to join us somewhere? I called Andrei earlier, and said we might . . .’

  George panicked suddenly. Losha would have to shave off half his moustaches. Courage!

  ‘No, let’s just be the two of us tonight. There’s so much to discuss.’

  A pause. Had she guessed? ‘Oh, all right. Are you inviting me to supper?’

  George made a thumbs-up: Kerboosh! A full stomach!

  ‘I’m at the phone on the embankment. Looking up at your window. How about meeting in the usual place?’

  ‘Give me ten minutes. I’d better put on a nice frock. See you soon!’

  With his back against the phone box, George settled down to wait. Not long now.

  Minka came out of the lobby of the House on the Embankment in a red summer dress that she knew she looked good in. But as she stepped into the breezy evening air, two men in suits took her arms with such smooth momentum that she found herself sitting between them in the back of a boxy Volga, the car of the middle bureaucracy, before she had even had time to say anything.

  ‘What’s this? Who are you?’ she whimpered as the car sped into the night.

  The man in the passenger seat turned round. ‘Just a few questions,’ he said. ‘You’ll be back for your hot date before you know it.’

  Across the street, the boy in the Spartak football strip standing next to a public telephone had seen it all.

  ‘Minka! No,’ said George, as he too was almost lifted off his feet and guided into a little Emeka car. As it accelerated into the traffic and crossed the river, he kept saying to himself: Losha will have to shave off his moustaches . . . This was just about the deaths on the bridg
e, he told himself a few minutes later. He had nothing to hide. The Organs had to investigate it, and he would answer all their questions.

  But if it was so straightforward, why was he so afraid? Why was his football shirt soaked with sweat? And why was he worried for Minka too? Surely his father would get him out soon enough. Then he remembered overhearing his father say to his stepmother: ‘At this rate, I’ll have to take them and pick them up every day until this blows over.’ George had often heard them whispering behind the doors of the bathroom and though the main part of the conversation was always inaudible, it virtually always ended with the words: ‘Say nothing to anyone. Carry on as normal.’

  His heart was thudding in his ears. This could only mean one thing: his father would do nothing.

  High in his kommunalka apartment, Andrei was planning the evening. Losha was on his way to pick him up, and then he would meet up with George and his friends.

  ‘Have fun,’ said his mother. ‘But be careful too. Watch your tongue.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Mama. See you soon.’

  But when he went downstairs, it wasn’t Losha at the wheel, but another driver entirely.

  ‘Hop in, boy,’ said the driver. ‘We’ll have you with your friends sooner than you think.’

  ‘But this isn’t the way to Granovsky Street,’ said Andrei, five minutes later, as the car swept into Dzerzhinsky Square where the buildings seemed like colossal granite tombs.

  ‘You’re not going to Granovsky Street,’ replied the driver.

  Andrei closed his eyes for a moment and experienced the terrifying feeling of falling into an abyss without end.

  ‘You’re not surprised, are you, kid?’ asked the driver.

  Andrei shook his head. He was not sure he could have spoken even if he had wanted to. He felt the joints in his arms and legs were made of jelly and his blood ice cold.

  ‘My . . .’ He could not say it.

  ‘Your mother? She’ll be fine. After all, she’s used to this, isn’t she?’

  The Aragvi Restaurant that night. Maître d’ Longuinoz escorted Sophia Zeitlin and some of her friends from the Mosfilm Studios to her favourite table just below the band. He held her wrist a second longer than necessary: he knew something important.

  ‘Go right ahead to the table,’ she called to her friends. ‘Order me a cosmopolitan.’ As she lingered beside the maître d’, Longuinoz whispered: ‘More on holiday. Up the hill.’

  ‘Up the hill? How many? Who?’ she replied breathlessly, her mouth close to his ear with its pearl earring.

  ‘One Yak fighter plane. Second model. Check-up at the local doctors. Two o’clock appointment.’

  Her heart raced: ‘Oh God,’ understanding his code instantly.

  On holiday meant arrested. Up the hill was Lubianka Prison. Yaks were the brand of fighter plane built in Satinovgrad. Therefore ‘Yak’ was Satinov. ‘Second model’ meant second son – George. ‘Local doctors’ – Dr Dorova. ‘Two o’clock’: second child, i.e. Minka.

  Sophia guessed that Longuinoz knew this because he performed discreet favours for the Chekist ‘responsible workers’, favours no doubt involving food, girls and information. He was safe provided the information only went one way.

  Longuinoz raised two hands as if to say: Sorry, but it’s routine. As he showed her to the table, he whispered, ‘A bit of advice, Sophia. Pull your horns in, darling!’

  That night, Sophia could not eat her food. Would this touch her Serafima? she thought. They say I’m Stalin’s top actress and he loves Constantin’s scripts. Or am I believing my own publicity? Comrade Satinov is Stalin’s favourite and that hasn’t protected George. Stalin demoted his son Vasily and disowned his other boy Yakov when he was captured by the Germans. The lesson? The shooting would be investigated, whoever was involved. And she could not help but remember those terrible years at the end of the 1930s when her beloved cousin Sashenka had vanished with her husband and children, vanished off the face of the earth.

  She thought about her own life: her love affairs, her wartime movies, her hotbloodedness inherited from her incorrigible father, her addiction to those intrigues that made bearable the daily grind of the worthy institution that was marriage. But what if they arrested Serafima? Could she bear it?

  15

  THE SCHOOL RUN: eight fifteen the next morning. In the car park at Granovsky, Sophia Zeitlin got into the Rolls with Serafima.

  ‘Why do you have to come? I hate you coming.’ Serafima frowned at her mother. ‘It’s embarrassing enough to be in this car.’

  ‘I’m just doing my maternal duty,’ answered Sophia. She was dreading the scenes at the school gates. ‘Look! There’re the Satinovs.’

  They watched Hercules and Tamara Satinov get into their car with Marlen and Mariko. Tamara looked terrible. She had black circles around her eyes, her skin seemed tight across her narrow cheekbones – and the poor woman now had to teach classes in which her own stepson’s chair was empty.

  Serafima looked at her mother urgently. ‘Where’s George? Mama, you know something, don’t you?’

  ‘Good morning, Khirochenko,’ Sophia said loudly to their chauffeur. They drove on in silence.

  At the Golden Gates, Sophia read the parents and the missing children in a glance. The other parents moved too quickly, too skittishly, looking around but afraid of what they might find. Whose child had vanished into the maw of the Organs? The small crowd outside the school gates, formerly so fashionable and sociable, seemed suddenly despondent and doom-laden.

  She met Hercules Satinov on his way out, Tamara having taken the children in with her.

  ‘Hercules!’ said Sophia. ‘Aren’t we good parents dropping off our children so dutifully!’

  ‘Duty. My second name,’ replied Satinov.

  The Titorenkos passed them, greeting Sophia and Satinov.

  ‘Yes, comrades, a beautiful day, isn’t it?’ Satinov responded.

  Sophia tried to imagine how the Titorenkos must be feeling, and realized that their apparent warmth was a mixture of solidarity and relief. Now that the Satinovs and Dorovs were in the same boat, their Vlad was no longer alone.

  Sophia stood in the queue to shake hands with Director Medvedeva. The Dorovs were just ahead – with Demian and little Senka but no Minka. Dashka wore no make-up and her black hair was pulled back in a bun but she still looked lovely in a loose flowery blouse, and she had the chutzpah to chatter frivolously as if nothing was wrong.

  ‘Doesn’t the banquet seem an age ago,’ said Sophia.

  ‘Several lifetimes,’ answered Dashka, bustling around her children. ‘Now, did I remember all those textbooks? Every day there’s more and more to remember! They want me to organize a charity quiz night. They seem to have forgotten that I have my own work to do. Oh, Demian, did I forget the maths homework? Right, off you go.’

  Dashka usually just gave Demian a peck but today she hugged him.

  ‘Get off, Mama.’ The seventeen-year-old wriggled out of her arms. ‘You’re like a boa constrictor.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ sighed Dashka. ‘I got that wrong.’

  ‘You can kiss me as much as you like, Mama,’ said Senka. Being a little boy, and therefore in love with his mother, Senka gave himself to Dashka, closing his eyes with a beatific smile – until Genrikh poked his wife’s shoulder.

  ‘Don’t throttle the child,’ said Genrikh sharply. He was paler and more shrivelled than ever. ‘I’ve told you before. You indulge that boy too much. That’s not how we Bolsheviks do it.’

  ‘I can’t get anything right today.’ Dashka shrugged, smiling bravely.

  At the front of the line, Director Medvedeva offered her hand. ‘Good morning, Comrade Dorov, Dr Dorova, I see not everyone’s in today. Summer colds are the worst, aren’t they, doctor?’

  ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t spread,’ agreed Dashka.

  ‘Oh Madame Zeitlin, good morning,’ Director Medvedeva greeted Sophia. ‘We do have a full turnout of parents today. It must be the sunshin
e.’

  But Sophia was not listening. She was watching her daughter disappear down the school corridor.

  Serafimochka is safe, she was thinking. So far.

  In the interrogation room at Lubianka Prison, Kobylov leaned over the desk to smell Minka’s thick hair.

  ‘You even smell sweet. Like honey. What shampoo do you use? I want to tell my girls what to use. They could use a lesson from a little princess like you.’

  Minka shrank from him, afraid of this bull of a man with his rings, and his cologne so strong that she could taste the cloves on her tongue.

  She had no idea who else was in prison being interrogated.

  At first, as she lay awake all night in the cell that stank of detergent and urine, she had worried about George: had he waited for her? Had he thought she had stood him up? But then she realized that her arrest had been planned. Either the Chekists had been listening to her parents’ phone or George had lured her out to be arrested. But surely he couldn’t have done that. Not George.

  By the morning, by the time the warders collected her slops bucket and then doled out the watery kasha and the thin tea with half a sugar lump, her date with George seemed a century ago. And then there were her parents. Did they know where she was? They seemed far away too. Even after a few hours of Lubianka, she was becoming a different person.

  A warder opened the eyehole in her cell door that prisoners called ‘the Judas port’, and then the locks ground open and she was marched along the corridors, up the stairs, down some metal steps, through a padded door with more locks, into a new building without the smell of urine and detergent and the room where she was now sitting in front of a Formica desk with a single light. Moments later, the door had opened and this giant with general’s stars on his shoulderboards and kinky oiled hair had appeared to stand, hands on hips, looking at her.

  ‘Minka,’ he said now. ‘Help me tie this up. Tell me about Rosa and Nikolasha.’

  ‘They were together.’

  ‘As a couple? Did they fuck?’