The Red Gods

by Christopher Nicole

  The only time when there was no pain was when they were allowed to fall into deep, exhausted and dreamless sleep. The guards were standing to attention as a woman entered the barracks, nose wrinkling against the stench. She was a tall woman in her late thirties, and if her features were heavy they were also handsome, she had tawny golden hair. Her uniform had insignia on her shoulder straps, a revolver was strapped to her waist. “I am the new commandant of this camp,” she told them. “I am Comrade Steklova. You will address me as Ma’am.” Slowly she walked down the ranks of prisoners, and stopped before Joseph. “Bring this one,” she said.

  Joseph gave Rotlewi a despairing glance as he was led out of the cell-block and into the crisp night air. He did not know if he was going to return. He was marched across the compound and into the commandant’s office. Comrade Steklova was seated behind her desk, sifting papers. Behind her was a female, also in uniform. Comrade Steklova looked up. “You stink,” she said. “Take a shower. Valentina!”

  Joseph looked over his shoulder; his guards were withdrawing through the door. Comrade Steklova smiled. “Do not get any ideas, Comrade Cromb, Valentina is an expert shot and trained in unarmed combat. In your condition, she would break you in two before shooting you. Go and shower.”

  Joseph went round the desk and into the lounge, where Valentina was waiting for him. Like her mistress, Valentina was tall and powerfully built, and she too wore a pistol on her belt. “In there, Comrade,” she said.

  Joseph stripped off his clothes and stepped under the shower. Nothing had ever felt so good. There was even soap. For the first time in several years he was going to be clean. Comrade Steklova drew the curtain to hand him a towel. “You look half-starved,” she remarked, as he dried himself. “But your brain appears unaffected. Come and eat with me. I am hungry also. I have been travelling for five days to get here.”

  Valentina wrapped him in a robe and he went to the table. “Vodka.” Comrade Steklova indicated the bottle. Joseph poured. He had to be dreaming. Comrade Steklova sat opposite him. “You do not know who I am,” she remarked.

  “You are Comrade Steklova.”

  Comrade Steklova smiled. “We did meet, you know, Joseph. Many years ago, when we were both children. I did not like you.”

  Joseph frowned at her. “My God!” he muttered, as memory started to return.

  “I was Dagmar Bolugayevska,” she agreed.

  “But you were at Bolugayen, when it was overrun. Your mother...”

  “Mama was murdered, yes. They all were, or should have been. I escaped. I took a horse from the stables and galloped away. For Poltava, indeed, anywhere.” Joseph could only gape at her. He had indeed met her, in St Petersburg, in 1911, during the great scandal that had resulted in Sonia’s divorce. Dagmar had been about sixteen then, he recalled, and as the daughter of Prince Peter Bolugayevski — Uncle Alexei’s elder half-brother — and the Princess Nathalie, had actually had some claim to Bolugayen. But the Tsar had allowed the estate to go to the eldest surviving male, rather than the direct, female, descendant of the dead Prince. Rumour had had it that not only was Princess Nathalie one of the monk Rasputin’s ‘ladies’, but that she had placed her daughter in the lecherous staretz’s grasp as well. “I didn’t make Poltava, of course,” Dagmar said, drinking vodka, while Valentina placed better quality food than Joseph had seen for a long time on the table. “I was dragged from the horse and raped, several times.” She shrugged. “I rather enjoyed it. The poor fools had no idea who I was. I screamed that I was only one of the maids and when they were tired of me they let me go.”

  “That was seventeen years ago,” Joseph said. “And you survived?”

  “When you can’t beat something, you join it,” Dagmar said. “Or you do not survive. It wasn’t easy. I was even tempted to throw myself on the mercy of Aunt Sonia. I knew all about her. But she had always hated me, because she hated Mother. So I decided to stick it out, telling everyone my name was Steklova. There was no way of checking up on people in that chaos. I joined a woman’s battalion and got myself raped again, a few dozen times. But I stuck it out, and got promotion, and then a transfer into the prison service, and so here I am. You are not eating.”

  “Frankly, Comrade Steklova, I am too bewildered.”

  “You may call me Dagmar, Cousin Joseph. As long as you are in here.” Joseph had never actually believed in miracles. That his long-lost cousin-by-marriage should turn up, in command of the very camp in which he was imprisoned...Dagmar smiled. “You do not believe in coincidences, Joseph. Neither do I. Being in the service, I have access to the prison rolls. And so I saw your name. I had to be patient. I was already carrying out an assignment. I had to apply for this camp when my term of duty was up. It has taken me three years to get to you, Joseph.”

  “Why?”

  Dagmar made a move. “I thought it might be interesting to have Patricia’s son as my prisoner. I was very fond of Patricia. She searched for physical sensation. Like me, she was a disciple of Rasputin.” She glanced at him. “You did not know this?”

  “No.” But could he deny it? His mother had indeed spent her somewhat brief life searching for sensation.

  Valentina placed a bowl of fruit on the table for dessert. “Your servant...” Joseph ventured.

  “We have no secrets from each other, Valentina and I. There is nothing to be afraid of. Tonight. Are you feeling replete?”

  “Very. I do not know what effect it is going to have on my digestion.”

  “Well, then, before it does, you had better fuck me.”

  Joseph knew that to refuse her would be to land him in even deeper trouble than he was already. And not only was she actually quite attractive, in a horribly vulgar fashion but she was his lifeline out of here. “I find you very attractive,” he said. “But after so long, I do not know if I will be able to perform.”

  Dagmar chuckled. She made him think of a lioness crouched over her prey. “Valentina and I will make sure of it.”

  When Dagmar had claimed she and her assistant shared everything, she had meant what she said. For all his aches and pains and his suddenly overloaded stomach, he found that he could again enjoy the sensation of being enveloped in two voluptuous bodies. It was Dagmar who claimed the prize, and she seemed perfectly satisfied. When he rolled on his back, panting, Valentina got up and went to the bathroom for washcloths. “I hope you enjoyed that,” Dagmar said.

  Joseph equally enjoyed the sensation of being washed by Valentina. The evening had been like a dream. “What happens now?” he asked. “Do I go back to my barracks, to be beaten and starved?”

  “No.” Dagmar said. “You do not go back to your barracks.” Naked, she rolled out of bed and went into the other room; she was certainly worth looking at. “You will go to a cell, for a few hours.”

  Joseph sat up. Could she really be going to help him? “And then?”

  Dagmar reappeared in the doorway. “At ten o’clock this morning, you will be shot.”

  Joseph goggled at her, and heard a click. He knew that Valentina stood behind him, and that she had cocked her pistol. Desperately he tried to think. “Just like that? And after...”

  “Such a good fuck?” Dagmar asked. “It really wasn’t such a good fuck for me, however enjoyable it was for you.”

  “I can do better, given time. You don’t have to shoot me.”

  “You know something,” Dagmar said. “You have guts, Joe Cromb. My shooting you has nothing to do with your sexual performance.” She waved a sheet of paper. “I have this month’s list here. Twelve of you. And your name is on it. Not my decision. Someone who matters has decided that you’re no longer worth keeping alive. Having requested this assignment to meet you, I was very disappointed when I saw your name on the list. That is why I determined to have you immediately. But I cannot alter what is on the list.”

  Joseph licked his lips. She was speaking in such matter of fact tones. But, the killing of people who got in the way, however unluckily, or even more inad
vertently got on a death list, meant absolutely nothing to these people. “So get dressed,” Dagmar commanded. “And keep thinking about just now for the next six hours. That way you’ll die happy.” She was an utter monster. But this revolution had a habit of throwing up people like that.

  “And what about when this superior of yours finds out that you have had me before shooting me?”

  Dagmar giggled. “He will probably promote me. In any event, what I do within the walls of this gulag is my business. I am supreme. As long as I do not alter the list.”

  So this was the end of his long fight for life. He got out of bed and walked towards the doorway. Dagmar’s back was turned to him, she knew Valentina was behind him. But if he was to die, Joseph thought, then why not have it happen now, offstage, as it were...and when he could take her with him!

  The evening had been Dagmar’s mistake. Part of the principle behind keeping the inmates of the gulag half-starved and in a state of constantly anticipating the next beating had been to prevent them ever having either the energy or the morale to consider rebellion. But now he had been wined and dined and for two hours been treated as a human being.

  It had restored him to a human being instead of a slave, even if only for a few minutes. And he could think too. She had said she was supreme here. She might be the key to more than just a glorious death.

  He reached her so quickly that Valentina was left helpless, although she was pointing a loaded gun at him; to shoot him would almost certainly mean hitting Dagmar as well. Dagmar heard him and turned, but he was already chopping a blow into her shoulder. She might be right that Valentina could take him apart, but he was a trained fighting man himself. Dagmar gasped and sagged, and Joseph turned her in his arms, with her back to him, his left hand twisting her arm between them, his right closing on her throat.

  Valentina still levelled her gun, but she was undecided. “You are breaking my arm!” Dagmar panted.

  “I can snap your neck,” Joseph told her. “Tell her to put down the gun.” Dagmar gave a violent shake and his fingers tightened on her throat. “It’s now or never,” he said. “Remember, I have nothing to lose.”

  Dagmar gasped for breath. “Put down the gun,” she told Valentina. Valentina threw the gun on the bed.

  “Now come over here, nice and slow,” Joseph said.

  Valentina advanced. At least, as both the women were still as naked, he knew she had no concealed weapons. “On the floor,” he said, when she was more than six feet away from the bed. “On your belly, legs and arms spread wide.”

  Valentina obeyed, trembling with fear and humiliation and, he suspected, anger. Joseph pushed Dagmar forward into the bedroom, to the other side of the door from Valentina. He reached the bed and released Dagmar’s throat for a second while he picked up the gun. Instantly Dagmar spun round, freeing her arm and striking at him. He brought up his right hand, which held the gun, striking her on the side of the face and tumbling her right across the bed to the floor. Valentina started to get up, and he put his foot on her back and pushed her flat again.

  Valentina’s entire body surged as she panted. Dagmar began to groan as she recovered consciousness. Joseph was going to have to be as ruthless as any of them, as ruthless as Trotsky when he had destroyed the two women in Yelets, as ruthless as Andrei Gosykin had ever been. These people held life cheap; he did not doubt they had already carried out the requirements of several death lists. He stood above Dagmar and kicked her in the stomach. She retched and drew up her legs, hugging them against herself. She would be incapable of movement for several seconds. Joseph grabbed at Valentina’s hair, dragged her up, the pistol pressed against the nape of her neck. He pushed her into the kitchenette. “Open the drawer.” She obeyed and he glanced at the array of knives. “That one.”

  The blade was about eight inches long, very sharp. “Take it,” Joseph commanded, “by the blade.” Valentina hesitated, then reached for the haft. Joseph tightened his grip on her hair, and she gasped with pain. “I said the blade.”

  She picked up the knife by the blade, holding it between thumb and forefinger. “Back in there,” Joseph commanded. Valentina returned into the bedroom; Dagmar was just sitting up, still holding her stomach and gasping for breath. “Drop the knife,” Joseph said. Valentina did so. “Now lie down again, as you were before.” She obeyed, lying on her face and stretching her arms and legs wide. She was obviously thinking only in terms of survival, no matter what she might have to suffer beforehand; but there was no hope of survival for her.

  Joseph moved behind Dagmar and gave her the same treatment, twining his fingers in her hair, and pulling her head back. “Pick up the knife,” he said. “Use the haft.” He pressed the muzzle of the revolver against her ear. “Anything stupid, and your brains will decorate the ceiling.” Dagmar crawled forward, on her hands and knees, Joseph beside her, still holding her hair. “Wrap your fingers tightly round the haft,” he said. Dagmar obeyed.

  Joseph put his lips against her ear. “Cut her throat,” he said. Dagmar’s body stiffened. “Do it, or die yourself,” he said. “Grab her hair, pull her head back, and cut her throat. Now!”

  Valentina jerked her head up, and in the same instant Dagmar seized her hair and drew her head back, passing the knife across her throat. There was a gush of blood, and when Dagmar released Valentina’s head, it flopped forward and struck the carpet; Valentina herself made no sound. Dagmar panted. “Drop the knife,” Joseph said. She obeyed. He dragged her to her feet, “Now go into the bathroom and wash off the blood,” he said.

  Dagmar looked at her hands for the first time. Both were covered in blood, and some had splashed on to her thigh. She went into the bathroom, washed her hands, and showered. She did not speak, he could tell she was regaining her nerve from the way she was looking at him. While she was in the shower he dressed himself, the revolver close to hand. “Now dress yourself,” he told her. “I assume you have a car at your disposal?”

  “How far do you think it will take you?” she asked, dressing.

  “It will take us a long way, Comrade,” he said. Her head jerked. “You are going to drive me out of this prison,” he said. “And before you start to think, I wish you to concentrate on two matters. The first is that I will have this gun trained on you all the way, and I will kill you if you make the slightest attempt to betray me. The second is that even if you manage to betray me, you are going to be hanged for murder. Everyone in this camp knows you took me out of the barracks last night and brought me up here. No one will doubt that you intended to share me with Valentina. Now she is dead, killed by a knife with your prints on it, clearly as a result of a quarrel over me. You can deny it as much as you like, and you can have me tortured; the NKVD tried that before, without any success. You can then have me shot. You still won’t have proved your innocence of Valentina’s murder, and you must know as well as I that to be under suspicion in Soviet Russia is the same as being convicted. Or perhaps you enjoy having electrodes stuffed up your anus.”

  Dagmar licked her lips. “And you do not think that driving out of the camp with you beside me will be thought suspicious?”

  Joseph grinned. “Right now they’ll just think you’re kinky. Your word is law in this camp, isn’t it, Dagmar? You said so. By the time they start to wonder why you have not come back we will be a long way away. I am at least giving you a chance at life.”

  “Where could we go?”

  “The Chinese border isn’t all that far.”

  “You will take me with you into China? Will you swear to that?”

  “You’ll have to trust me, cousin dear,” Joseph said.

  *

  “Just one more step,” Jennie said. She held Andrei’s remaining arm, while Tatiana hovered behind her father, braced for a stumble or a fall. Tatiana was twelve, and already a big, strong girl, a true Bolugayevska.

  “I will be all right,” Andrei mumbled. He kept muttering reassurances, but it was clear that he was not all right. He was weak and emac
iated. Jennie pushed the door open and she and Tatiana got him into the lounge. The larger apartment they had been given since Andrei’s promotion was much more airy and lighter than Jennie’s original Moscow home. Today it was filled with flowers, but none were from friends or admirers. Andrei had no friends or admirers. Jennie had bought them all herself.

  The two women got Andrei across the room and seated on the settee. Tatiana tried to stop staring at the empty right sleeve pinned across her father’s tunic; in hospital, where he had been wearing a voluminous pair of pyjamas, the loss of the arm had not been so obvious. “I have a bottle of champagne,” Jennie said. “Would you like some?”

  Andrei gave a wan smile. “Always the aristocrat,” he remarked.

  “If you’d prefer vodka...”

  “I would like the champagne.” He beckoned Tatiana, and she sat beside him to have her head stroked while Jennie wrestled with the cork. “Have you spoken with Stalin?”

  “No. I haven’t been able to. The most dreadful thing has happened. I thought you might have heard.”

  Andrei stopped stroking his daughter. “What has happened? They never tell you anything in hospital.”

  “Sergei Kirov has been murdered. Uncle Josef s very best friend. He is quite devastated.”

  Kirov! Andrei thought. Who could possibly have murdered Kirov? “Have they caught the assassin?”

  “Oh, yes. Some thug named Nikolaiev. They say he was a member of the NKVD who bore a grudge.” Jennie at last got the cork off, and champagne bubbled. “Bother! Did you know Nikolaiev.”

  “I have heard the name,” Andrei muttered, trying to think. Leonid Nikolaiev had never done a thing in his life not personally commanded by himself. For him to have committed such an act of madness...he took the glass from Jennie’s hand.

  She gave one to Tatiana as well. “We drink to your safe return, and to your restoration to health.”

  Andrei drank, absently. He couldn’t afford to be depressed. “You say Stalin refused to see you?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. He asked me to come to him some other time, when he has got over his grief. And his anger. They are saying that he interrogated this Nikolaiev personally.”