White Pawn on Red Square

by Hugh McLeave

  “I told her not to. We didn’t know which member of the group night be working for the KGB, and how they might use the information about the crypt.”

  “Harasho (Good)…What happens now they know everything?”

  I pondered whether to tell him what we had done in the crypt and about my visit to the embassy; I thought better of it, realizing that from now on, I could perhaps trust Larissa and nobody else. Instead, I disclosed I was meeting Larissa at a metro station that night.

  Shapirov stayed silent for a minute then began that sibilant whistling. I recognized it this time—Chopin’s Funeral March which the Russians played at all their big funerals. Suddenly, he grinned. “It was a crazy scheme, anyway.” He was still wearing his militiaman’s greatcoat from the previous day and, to my amazement, pulled out what I recognized as a regulation automatic pistol; he hefted it in his hand. “I think we’ve all got to take our own chance and go our separate ways,” he said.

  “Where’s that?”

  His small eyes blinked behind his dark lenses. “I’ve a car, I might make for Finland and cross the frontier there. Or I might go south.” He snapped the cartridge clip open and checked it was loaded. “One way I’m not going—east to join the boys in Kolyma.” He pointed the pistol into his open mouth and mimed pulling the trigger in a way that gave me the creeps. “Another thing, they won’t shoot me like a dog in some prison dungeon. If I have to go, I’ll take as many of the bastards with me as I can.”

  He found me a razor and while I washed and shaved, he brewed coffee, boiled eggs and toasted bread. We ate in the tiny kitchen, talking softly in case we disturbed his parents the other side of the partition wall. “We’ve got to check up on Roskov and Rasputin,” he said, using Vanya’s surname and his nickname for Kolya.

  “How do we do that?”

  “I know where Roskov lives—two streets from his girlfriend. He broke off a hunk of black bread and cut himself some cheese which he chewed then washed down with coffee. “The priest’s difficult. It’s no good going down to that church near the university.”

  “Kolya knew where the dummies were hidden.”

  “Dummies …what dummies?”

  Through his hissing and whistling, I explained how I’d brought in the dummies and met Kolya for the first time. “If it’s him, he’d have told them about the statues,” I said.

  "You’re right, Englishman.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll do Roskov, and you and Reeza do the statues, and we’ll meet at the dacha. OK?”

  I nodded. On his insistence, we washed and stacked the dishes and he went round verifying we had left no trace in case the KGB came to question his parents later that morning. “Of course, Englishman, you could head for the British Embassy and lie low until the dust settles, but you’re sweet on Reeza, aren’t you?” He helped me on with my coat. “I’ll wait till you’ve turned the corner at the square, give you five more minutes then follow you. Watch your step, and good luck.” We shook hands before he edged the door open and signed to me to make no noise.

  Outside, in the wan light, nothing stirred at that hour. I crossed the road so that Shapirov could keep me in sight, and trudged towards the small square at the end. Nearing it, I heard a car on a gunned engine approaching at right angles. I glanced over my shoulder and sighted another car, a black Zil like the one outside Raya’s, about a hundred and fifty yards away at the street intersection.

  Without thinking, I ducked into the doorway of the flats on my right just as the first car, another Zil, swerved round the square, passed within two yards of me and stopped thirty yards my side of the Shapirov flats.

  From his window, Shapirov must have seen them, and I wondered what he would do. Not counting the drivers, there were six KGB officers dressed in dark gabardine coats. Two went into the flats while two others took up positions either side of the door, and the remaining two went round the back. Remembering Shapirov’s gesture and threat less than an hour before, I held my breath. I imagined the KGB pair knocking and old Shapirov stammering that he hadn’t seen his son. But it couldn’t have happened like that.

  Even a hundred and fifty yards away, I heard the five shots distinctly. In a flash, both officers at the front door disappeared into the building and one of the remaining men left his car to guard the door.

  Other people had heard the shots. Windows were opening and heads appearing all over the housing scheme. Within five minutes, a crowd was gathering round the front door, controlled by the KGB men. I risked leaving my hiding-place and walked towards the block. People hastened past me on their way to the scene, but I loitered until the sixth man had disappeared into the building before joining the edge of the crowd of about fifty people round the entrance.

  Nobody had any information and nobody speculated or asked questions. Everyone stood silent. After ten minutes, an ambulance arrived and four men went upstairs with stretchers. They and the KGB men brought down three bodies on stretchers; two of them showed glimpses of their KGB uniforms, bloodstained; although the third was well covered with a blanket, I recognized him by the limp, scrawny hand and the watch on the thin wrist of the arm dangling from the stretcher.

  Shapirov had kept his promise, and I had no need to wait for the hearsay version of the facts. He had fired two shots into each of the KGB men then blown his own brains out. I pitied his parents who would be spending today and many other days in Lubyanka Jail, and like their son, would never see or feel the soil of Israel.

  Chapter 15

  That day seemed interminable. I trudged round the suburbs to keep warm until the metro opened and I could take a train to the exhibition. I went through a side gate with my pass, spine prickling in case I was identified. Inside the immense park, I lost myself among the eighty-odd pavilions, restaurants, amusements and recreation rooms. When I had eaten stew and mash in a self-service canteen, I walked out to a small cinema off Peace Street. I sat three times through a film version of the Swan Lake ballet.

  Larissa once told me Brejhnev had seen Swan lake four hundred and twenty-two times, which is perhaps why he looked the frozen-faced way he did. It was growing dusk when I left the place.

  I had one dangerous call to make. It took me on foot to Pushkin Street, past the beer stall which the KGB always had under surveillance, to the public lavatories. In the Number Four toilet cistern I hid the plastic-wrapped package that I had tied round my waist under my shirt the evening before. I rode the circle line to Gorki Park and walked to the Lenin Stadium subway.

  Trains were disgorging spectators for the Russia-Algeria match. But eight o’clock came and went without her. I gave her another quarter or an hour and wondered whether I should hang around longer and risk being spotted. She walked past me, wearing one of her wigs under a fur chapka. I followed her to the south-bound line and alighted at the station beyond the university. She was waiting in a shop doorway.

  Walking to the car, I told her about Shapirov. She did not break stride, but merely said, “At least, he did not suffer much.”

  Her callous, neutral tone nettled me. “He was your lover,” I said.

  “Now he’s dead.” She shrugged. “We’ll probably envy him before we’re finished.”

  “They haven’t caught us yet.”

  “No, not yet.”

  Larissa was down, dispirited. Should I explain what I intended to do? No, I thought better of it. Who knew? She might be caught, tortured, forced to confess. “Did you get the films developed?” I asked.

  “Only the snapshots. We collect the others tomorrow night or later.”

  She had parked the Moskovich behind the university building. As we went, I told her about Raya and Anastas. “It could be Anastas, the traitor.”

  “We shall probably never know.”

  “At least we can go and see if Kolya was the Judas.” I explained the priest would have tipped off the KGB about the Lenin effigies in the church if he had betrayed us.”

  “All right. If he hasn’t we won’t find a better hiding-place.”r />
  To avoid police patrols, Larissa kept to the side roads round the city. Once on the Yaroslavi road, she handed me a small bottle of Russian brandy. It went down like paint-stripper, that raw spirit, but I felt warm for the first time that day. We hid the car near the church which lay in total darkness. Larissa unlocked the door and lit us into the crypt and along to the niche where we had concealed the wax models. Both Harrods cases were still there.

  Larissa turned to me. “I told you, Kolya would never betray us and only he knew about the church.”

  I was playing my torch round the cases. Something intrigued me. Lifting those cases into the alcove, we had not disturbed the damp earth. But now, I noticed the earth and limestone floor had been scuffed. “Those cases have been moved,” I commented. She agreed when we found a squashed papirosa cigarette by the crypt entrance.

  “Then why weren’t they here, waiting for us?” Larissa asked.

  “Maybe for the same reason they left the wax dummies in place. They want us to assume they know nothing about the plot or this or other hiding places, so they can pick us all up together.” I reasoned they could afford to take their time since they had thwarted our attempt to steal Lenin. As we squelched through the birch forest to the car, I was turning over several ideas.

  “Larissa, where were we due to meet when we had Lenin?”

  “At the dacha to hand him over to Kolya.”

  “I was just thinking, since they haven’t moved the two suitcases Kolya might still be in the dacha.” I explained my reasoning. They had covered up Kolya’s betrayal by leaving the evidence in place. Which might mean they intended using the priest to bait a trap for the rest of us. We could have concluded the Lenin from the mausoleum was merely undergoing routine inspection and retouching. And Kolya would convince us we had nothing to fear so that we might convoke the others to the dacha and make everything easy for Kolya’s KGB friends. Larissa did not seem very enthusiastic about my theory.

  We groped back to the car and headed along the country road then branched off for Shapirov’s dacha. Again, we deserted the car half a mile away and slogged through deep snow to the house, circling it once in case the KGB were lying in ambush. Leaving Larissa in the woods, I crept up to the building to open the door with her key and slip inside. When I had searched all the rooms, I called her.

  From the damp chill, the dacha not been heated since we left it two days before. We lit the two butane lamps and got the kitchen stove working. We then raided Shapirov’s well-stocked larder for tins of food and potatoes. Inside half an hour we were sitting down to stew, potatoes and tinned peas followed by rice pudding. She found Shapirov’s liquor cache and brought brandy to spike our tea.

  For the first time in two days, I saw some color return to Larissa’s cheeks; from what she said, she had eaten nothing but tea and sandwiches since we left the dacha. While we drank our fortified tea, she fetched her handbag and produced thirty-six of our snaps. With two exceptions, slightly over-exposed, they were perfect, especially the sequence where we looked as though we were dismembering Lenin’s body.

  “Pity it’s not the real thing,” she commented.

  “They’ll still come in handy—particularly if we can get the cine-film to go with them.”

  “If you think you can use these to blackmail the KGB, they’ll laugh at you.” She shook her tawny head. “Nobody has ever got away with it.”

  “There’s always a first time.”

  She knew nothing about my British Embassy visit, or what I had done with the Lenin dummy, the flags and the other film. Not that I didn’t trust her, but like all of us, she had been living on her nerves and had nearly given way in the crypt, so I couldn’t risk her divulging my plan. My watch said a few minutes before midnight. We switched on Shapirov’s transistor radio for the news. It told us nothing about ourselves, about Lev Davidovich Shapirov’s death, about his parents’ arrest, about Vanya, Anastas, Raya, Kolya; it reeled of a speech by the Party secretary to collective farmers, and said the late thaw would continue. I switched off and turned to Larissa. “I vote we stay here tonight.”

  “Where would we go, anyway?”

  “We can light a fire, a real fire.”

  “Why not?” Her shrug meant she had given up all thought of escaping, or saving her brother.

  While she washed up, I went to the outhouse and brought in several armfuls of pine and birch logs; with magazines scraps and some dry kindling I soon had a blaze warming the living-room. Larissa lit her way upstairs with a flash-lamp to bring down bedding; I heard her open the lavatory door on the landing then her long, sharp cry, like a stricken bird, echo through the whole building. I ran upstairs. She was holding her face in her hands to blot out the sight, and sobbing.

  Kolya swung from one of the rafters; he had thrown a rope over it, tied one end to the door frame and fashioned the other into a noose; he appeared to have stood on the chemical toilet and kicked it from under him. Larissa had spotted the chemical liquid spilling under the door and staining the floorboards, so she had pushed the door open.

  I took her hand and led her downstairs to the fire then went to cut Kolya down. Something puzzled me. A careful man, he would have placed the rope under his beard, so why had it become entangled? Another thing: with this form of slow strangulation, his tongue would have been a foot long and his eyes as big as door handles.

  I laid the body on one of the beds, got the butane lamp and examined him in its strong light. His chest was covered with burn marks, probably made by lighted cigarettes or cigars; on his neck and wrists, I found similar livid circles. One eye was a mess of purple, puffed flesh and had probably been blinded before he died. And those rope marks on his throat had been made after death, for there were no blood bruises and no torn flesh. Kolya was no Judas.

  I went down to Larissa. “Kolya didn’t betray us,” I said. “They tortured him into telling them where the statues were, and probably other things. They strangled him then made it look as though he had hanged himself.” I built up the fire and heated water for more tea. “So, it was either Anastas or Vanya.”

  “What does it matter now?”

  “Kolya should be given a decent burial.”

  She shook her head. “We bury him here,” she said. “His church won’t want to know what has happened to him in case they are compromised. The same thing with his family and relatives. Nobody will even report him missing for fear of being accused of complicity. That’s the way we do things here.”

  So, we wrapped and tied Kolya in blankets, a quilted nylon coat and two plastic capes and buried him under the dacha outhouse where at least his grave was marked and safe from wild animals. It was two o’clock when we covered him over with a pile of firewood. “We should have offered a prayer,” I said.

  “It is not too late.” Larissa murmured the Lord’s Prayer in its beautiful, fluid Russian Orthodox version, her voice quavering, her eyes moist.

  I shut the upstairs bedrooms, the kitchen and hall doors, sealing off the living-room. We had brought down two mattresses, sheets and blankets and arranged them in front of the fire which had filled the big room with heat and the perfume of burning pinewood.

  As we both sat there, smoking a final cigarette, the same unspoken thought was crossing our minds: How long will it take them to catch up with us? They had tortured Kolya and extorted information and probably the second Lenin dummy, yet they had still garroted him to death. Why? Because they had decided to obliterate every trace of the plot, and that meant eradicating everyone and everything. Vanya, or Anastas would end like Kolya. A hit-and-run accident, a faked suicide, a disappearance. As Larissa said, who would care or dare to ask questions. So, Raya would vanish, too. And Larissa. Only I might give them trouble as a foreign diplomat, but they would find ways of silencing me as well. Larissa seemed to be debating similar thoughts.

  “Alan, why don’t you let me take you to the British Embassy? They can get you out somehow.”

  I shook my head. “They might lan
d me in it deeper than I am already. If you want to make a run for it, I’ll go with you. If you don’t, I stay here and take my chance.”

  “I’ve nothing to run for if Sasha is not set free.”

  Never had Larissa so much as mentioned another country or her future if the plot succeeded; she seemed to have set her sights on one thing only, freeing her brother and his friends. Yet, knowing her, she had some plans. “Where would you have gone if you’d got out with Sasha?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I would have taken time and looked around.”

  “America didn’t tempt you?”

  “No, I’m not interested in money, and anyway it is too full of European and Russian social casualties already.”

  “England?”

  She turned to look at me, then put out a hand to caress my head and my face. “Yes, I would have liked to know England—the bit where you grew up and where you lived. I would have liked to meet your family and your friends and to let you show me everything.”

  “I have a cottage in Richmond that belonged to my mother. I wanted you and Sasha to have that, rent-free, until you decided what you should do.”

  “I think Sasha would have chosen somewhere like India, or some part of Africa—away from everything. Somewhere with not too much government, not too many laws and therefore not too many policemen.” She lit another cigarette and filled her tea glass while I stoked the fire with more logs. “He had medical training for five years until they accused him of subverting other students and kicked him out. He could have used his training.” She scythed such thoughts away with a gesture. “Now we’ll all rot in their camps or prisons—you as well, Alan. What use will we be in twenty years when we get out of Potma or some other gulag, if we ever get out?”