A Single Spy

by William Christie

  Alexsi set his revolver on the sand and pushed the wooden toggle out of the loop to open the large lower pocket of his coat.

  The Shahsavan lived by rifles. Machine guns were a wonderful modern novelty but frowned upon for the way they gobbled up scarce and expensive ammunition. And the crate of Model 1914 hand grenades from the Great War that turned up in one shipment they regarded only as exciting toys. With instruction provided by one tribesman, a deserter from the Red Army who left immediately after castrating his Russian lieutenant for the unpardonable insult of striking him, they passed an enjoyable afternoon throwing the grenades in the desert: exclaiming loudly at the explosions and nearly blowing themselves up because they had no tradition of throwing things and were barely able to get the bombs far enough away to keep from being killed.

  But Alexsi had kept his, thinking it might come in handy.

  The grenade was shaped like a small bottle with a stick extending from the narrow end, except it was all made from sheet metal. Remembering the huge explosions that came from those metal sticks was making his hand shake. Alexsi put the grenade down and flexed his finger to make it stop. He picked it back up, grasping the handle and depressing the spring-loaded priming lever. There was a metal safety ring that went around the handle to keep the lever from flying up and activating the fuse, and he made sure that was between his third and fourth fingers. He armed the grenade by turning the safety catch away from the hammer at the end of the priming lever.

  Quickly, before his hand could start shaking again, he reared back, judging the distance, and hurled the grenade at the top of the rise. As it left his hand the ring between his fingers slipped off the handle and let the lever fly up, completing the firing sequence.

  There was a loud pop from the grenade in midair as the primer ignited the powder train, and someone up on the hill fired a nervous shot in response.

  Alexsi hadn’t been counting on that. The Shahsavan instantly shot back, and the entire hillside around him erupted in muzzle flashes. There had to be more than a hundred Russians.

  This was bad. Russian bullets cracked overhead and Shahsavan bullets exploded into the ground all around him. Alexsi stuck his nose into the desert sand and curled up into the smallest shape possible. Bullets cracked like cart whips around him. Their passage was so close he could even feel the air move. The sound of so many guns was deafening. Now his hand was shaking so badly he was afraid he’d pull the revolver trigger without meaning to. So much time seemed to go by he thought he’d made a mistake with the grenade, and it was his only hope.

  Then there was a huge bang followed by screaming atop the hill. That was it.

  It seemed like the whole world was pressing down on him in an effort to keep him there against the ground. The last thing he wanted was to get up but he knew it was certain death to stay there as the Shahsavan found the range.

  He lurched up, even though the usual strength had drained away from his legs. He scrambled up the hill, clawing the sand with his free hand while the other held the revolver. He could practically feel the flames from the Russian muzzle flashes. He definitely felt the Shahsavan bullets remorselessly lashing the air all around him.

  Reaching the top, Alexsi ran into the billowing black smoke cloud from the grenade, which was the only place there wasn’t any shooting going on. He stepped on a soft body that screamed in response, and as he recoiled away from it violently collided with someone running in from the opposite direction. The impact slammed him onto the ground and nearly knocked him senseless.

  Alexsi struggled to both get his breath back and find his feet again. The other party loomed over him, wearing that silly Red Army budionovka felt hat with the high central peak that looked like he had a funnel on his head, and bellowed, “Watch where the fuck you’re going!” Then looked down a little closer through the smoke and said, “Hey…”

  Alexsi shoved the revolver in his face and pulled the trigger. The muzzle blast shocked him—he had never fired the pistol at night—and seemed to set the Russian on fire. The Russian fell backward over his legs. Alexsi frantically kicked him off so he could get up. As he did, he snatched up the budionovka hat with his free hand and swung the revolver around, ready to keep shooting.

  But the noise of all the Russians on the hill firing their rifles was so deafening that his pistol shot had been swallowed up in it. As the grenade smoke thinned out, Russians were running around. They were probably screaming, but it was impossible to hear them.

  Alexsi slapped his own lamb’s fur papak hat off his head, replaced it with the dead Russian’s hat, and came up off the ground right into a dead run. As he went over the top of the hill, someone close by shouted in Russian, “Come back here, coward!” A pistol shot zinged by him, but it only made him run faster.

  He picked up speed going down the reverse slope, so fast that he nearly got ahead of his legs and fell on his face. He leaped over scrub bushes and was concentrating so hard on his footing in the dark he almost didn’t see the Russian holding the six horses.

  The Russian’s rifle was slung so he could grasp all the reins. “What’s going on?” he shouted to Alexsi in his Russian cap.

  “Bring up the horses!” Alexsi yelled back in Russian, rapidly closing the distance between them.

  “What?” the Russian called out, just as Alexsi slammed into him and smashed the butt of the revolver between his eyes.

  The Russian crumpled to the ground, breaking Alexsi’s fall. He dropped his pistol and lunged for the horses’ reins before the startled animals could realize they were free and run off. One of them got away from him, but he had the other five. Then he frantically scrambled over the ground to reclaim his pistol. It seemed that every time he reached out his free hand the excited horses he was holding in the other would rear up and yank him back.

  He was just about to abandon the effort when his hand touched metal in the darkness. Alexsi jammed the revolver back into his holster and swung up onto the saddle of the nearest horse. He spurred it into a gallop, pulling the rest of the animals along behind.

  When he reached the nearest rise the desert lit up faintly as the Russians began firing flare pistols over the Shahsavan’s heads. Alexsi could see the Russian muzzle flashes all around them, except for in the rear where they had ridden in, and he knew that the Shahsavan would be following their usual drill when in trouble and scattering to the four winds, only to rendezvous at a prearranged place later. He thought he might still be able to convince them that the first shot had been his and he’d tried to warn them.

  As if to prove him both right and wrong, firing broke out at the rear of the Shahsavan column. But there were at least two Russian machine guns, and Alexsi was awed by the sight of them firing some kind of special bullets that made paths of light in the darkness, telling them where to aim. The spitting lines of light crisscrossed along the rear of the Shahsavan column, sealing off the only escape route.

  Alexsi turned and spurred his horse even faster, knowing his smuggling days were over. There were no canteens on the Russian horses, though he had enough water in his own skin bag to make it. He thought briefly about a life in Iran, then turned the horses back toward Azerbaijan and what he knew.

  He galloped his horse until it collapsed from exhaustion. He left it splayed out on the desert sand, blown, ribs heaving, and jumped onto the next one, which had had a much easier time running without a rider. When the third went down he kept the last two at a steady trot, alternating between them whenever one tired. As long as he stayed away from the roads, the Russians, with one man to a horse, could follow his tracks for as long as they liked but would never be able to catch up with him.

  2

  1936 Baku, Azerbaijan

  Alexsi crossed Khagani Street into the shade from the morning sun and didn’t bother looking up at the statues of the poets in the stone arches above. At first he’d wondered what it took for anyone but a general or a ruler to have a statue carved in their image, so he made sure to find out their names an
d read their works. Some were good, and the others probably knew someone.

  He trotted up the white stone stairs, as always feeling small against the sand-colored columns that towered up to the next floor and the glass skylight above. Turning right and through another door, he stopped and drew a breath. He loved the way libraries smelled. And the General Library was not only the biggest in Baku, but the biggest in all Azerbaijan.

  They didn’t let you take books home, but that was all right. At the lending libraries you had to give your name and show your papers, and he had no intention of ever doing either. At the General Library you found the books you wanted in the card files, then gave a list to one of the librarians in the reading rooms who went and fetched them. In this particular room there was a very pretty young librarian who was always friendly. If she was there today, and still friendly, he was going to ask her to lunch. He’d tell her he was older than he looked, and she would have to be impressed that he had the rubles to pay.

  The reading room was always half full of pensioners this time of the morning. There were three long rows of plain wood desks and chairs, enough for about five hundred people. The ceilings were very high, and most of the light came from the outer wall that was all equally high arched windows. It reflected off the sand-colored walls, which glowed almost pink from the morning sun.

  Ah, yes, his librarian was there behind the desk. She was speaking to one of the others, but when she looked up and saw him instead of the usual shy smile there was fear on her face.

  Alexsi froze, just for an instant, then immediately whirled about and sprinted for the door. When he was only halfway there it crashed open and two burly men in suits, obviously cops, charged through to block his escape.

  Alexsi skidded to a halt, grabbed an empty chair, and slung it at their legs to slow them down. He whirled about again and dashed toward the librarian’s desk, the only other exit. A skinny middle-aged man in an even worse suit than the cops’ stepped out into the aisle, his hands outstretched. He said, in that reasoning adult voice Alexsi always found so annoying, “Now, stop—”

  Without even breaking stride, Alexsi punched him square in the nose.

  With a cry of surprise and pain, the man crumpled to the floor. Alexsi ran right over him. Should have minded his own business.

  He was almost to the librarian’s desk when two more cops suddenly appeared around that.

  Alexsi halted again, trapped. Another instant of indecision, then he grabbed an empty chair and ran toward the windows. He leaped onto a desk, trampling the newspaper of a bearded old man who looked up at him wide-eyed, and hurled the chair at the glass panels of the arched window.

  But instead of going through the window and opening up a path to the outside ledge, as he’d planned, the chair only cracked the glass and bounced right back into his face. The chair hit before he could get his hands up, and he slipped on the slick wooden desktop and fell flat on his back. Now people were screaming loud enough to make his ears hurt. Before he could move again the end of a club rammed into his stomach just below his ribs. It forced all the air out of his lungs and folded him up into a tight ball.

  Helpless, Alexsi gasped for breath but was unable to draw any in. A fist slammed into his ear and he was dragged off the desk and onto the floor. His arms were expertly pinned behind his back, which only made his breathing problem worse. Thinking he’d die of suffocation, he violently thrashed about, more to get some air than to break free. But before he could do either the club cracked into the back of his head and the world went black.

  3

  1936 Baku, Azerbaijan

  Alexsi woke up with his cheek pressed against a damp concrete floor. He tried to lift his head but it felt like it was tied to an anvil. He then tried to roll over but was halted by a crushing pain in his skull. His vision was fuzzy; he couldn’t seem to focus his eyes. Unable to do anything else, he lay there waiting, hoping really, that some or all of that would change for the better. It had been a long time since he’d felt that way. Since he’d gotten free of his father. Until now a beating had just been a bad memory.

  He knew he was in a prison cell—he didn’t need a clear head to figure that out—but he had to concentrate hard to remember how he got there. Bit by bit, it came back to him.

  The legs of a table were right in front of his face. There was a stool next to it. Those two things, and his body—which was not fully extended—took up the entire floor space of the cell. Not a cell, really. More a cubicle. No room to lie down straight. Definitely no room to move around. The walls were white. And when he was finally able to roll over, very slowly, he saw that the light, so brilliant it hurt his eyes, was coming from a bulb dangling from the ceiling inside a protective wire cage. It had to be at least 200 watts.

  Since it was too painful to do anything else, Alexsi took stock of his pockets. His knife was gone, as was his money and his lock picks. His papers, too. The only thing they’d missed was the five hundred rubles he’d sewn into the lining of his coat. And the little folding knife in the pocket he’d sewn to his underwear right above his cock. That was another Shahsavan trick; the police always balked at searching you thoroughly down there.

  After a great deal of effort he made it up to the stool, though it felt like being stabbed in the head over and over again. On the table was a metal plate with half a small loaf of black bread and an enamel mug of water. Alexsi forced himself to eat all the soggy bread and drink all the water. But as soon as he finished he had to piss, and there was no latrine bucket in the cell.

  Alexsi pounded on the steel door, each blow echoing inside his head. He shouted, “Hey! I have to use the toilet!” He kept pounding until the metal flap covering the peephole in the door opened up. The glass of the peephole was set back in a little cone-shaped receptacle in the door, so you couldn’t reach the glass and they could see the whole cell. The door had to be at least seven centimeters thick.

  “Why are you banging?” an official voice demanded.

  “I have to use the toilet,” Alexsi replied into the peephole.

  “Step away from the door,” the voice ordered.

  Alexsi complied, even though it only took two steps back to reach the opposite wall.

  Two guards blocked the doorway. They wore the secret police red collar tabs with raspberry piping around the edges.

  “If you bang on the door for any reason you will be punished,” said the shorter of the two. “Remember this.”

  “I have to go to the toilet,” Alexsi repeated.

  “It is forbidden to shout,” the guard replied dispassionately. He couldn’t have been more bored, as if he gave this same speech all day, every day. “If you need to call someone, wait until the peephole opens and hold up your finger.”

  Alexsi held up one finger in front of them.

  “A humorist,” the guard stated. “You’ll do well here. All the humorists do.”

  “Place your hands behind your back, and keep them there,” ordered the junior guard. “Move.”

  They led him down the hall and shoved him into a tiled closet with a hole in the floor and iron foot stands. Water bubbled in the hole. Alexsi had been hoping for at least a tap where he could drink more water, but no such luck. Not wanting to waste an opportunity that might not come again for some time, he squatted over the hole and tried to shit. There was a scrape of metal, and the peephole in the door opened up. Alexsi sighed.

  All he could manage was a small hard turd. He raised and buttoned his trousers carefully—this was not the time for the knife to come clattering out onto the floor.

  They walked back, and a sergeant was by his open cell door, holding a folder full of papers. “Where have you been?” he demanded. “We’re waiting for him.”

  “It was an emergency,” the senior guard said. “He had to take the world’s smallest shit.”

  The junior guard laughed loudly, but he was silenced by a hard look from the sergeant with the papers. “Move,” he ordered Alexsi.

  They walked
down empty hallways, pausing at steel doors where women guards peered through peepholes and turned keys to let them through. Finally they came to a door that a guard opened to reveal bright sunlight.

  Alexsi stopped short. One of the guards gave him a hard shove between the shoulder blades, and he stumbled through the doorway. Having to keep his hands behind his back made him fall flat on his face. He looked up, and there was a double row of rifle-carrying secret police lining the way to the open rear door of a gray van.

  A hard kick encouraged him up off the ground, and a rifle butt to the kidney sent him into the back of the van.

  So this was what the inside of a Black Maria looked like. There was a narrow center aisle with four steel cabinets on each side. A seat for a guard at the end of the aisle. One cabinet door nearest the end of the van was still open, and as Alexsi climbed up over the bumper another hard shove sent him into it.

  He fell onto someone, who shoved him away. His head hit the back wall, and the cabinet door shut hard, ramming his feet inside.

  It smelled like piss and puke. Alexsi felt his way in the darkness onto a metal bench seat. His eyes hadn’t adjusted yet. One other person was in the cabinet with him, sitting opposite. The one who had shoved him away. The space was so small their knees were touching.

  The Black Maria was moving now. It bounced so much you had to hold on to your seat or your head would keep hitting the roof.

  Alexsi wasn’t about to be the one who started any conversation. Being talkative just made people think you were afraid.

  Though his eyes were now used to the darkness, all he could see was the black outline of the person opposite him. He heard him shift in his seat. Then a hand grabbed him by the throat. A raspy voice said, “Sit still and shut up, and you won’t get hurt.”