by William Ryan
“I’m sorry, brother,” he said, then pointed his gun, closed his eyes and fired. Volodya’s body jerked once and the kicking stopped. The red puddle around him spread a little faster.
Korolev’s back, meanwhile, had found the wall and there was nowhere further for him to go. He straightened up and began to pray in silence that the Lord would forgive him his sins. Then the muzzle of Gregorin’s gun was a black hole aimed straight between his eyes.
“This was all your fault,” Gregorin said.
Korolev closed his eyes and waited for the bullet. He hoped he’d feel nothing and that the Lord would hear his prayers and spare Valentina and Natasha.
Click. Click. Click.
Korolev opened his eyes at the sound of the trigger pulling on empty chambers. The colonel was looking at the gun in mild confusion, then he looked at Korolev and shook his head in disbelief. After a long moment the colonel dropped the empty gun onto the floor and limped to the door. As he left the apartment, Korolev saw him pull Volodya’s gun from his pocket and hold it straight down his wounded leg. In the distance a Militia whistle shrieked, and Korolev wondered why on earth the colonel hadn’t shot him.
He stood absolutely still, listening to the receding footsteps and then the sound of the colonel going down the stairs. It wasn’t fear that kept him immobile so much as amazement that he was still alive. But he was, and that meant he had to do something. He shook himself, then walked into the kitchen and reached into the drawer where Valentina kept a sharp knife.
“Valentina Nikolaevna, pay attention,” he said as he cut the cord that held her wrists, and then pressed the hilt of the knife into her freed hands. “I need you to do some things for me.”
She nodded, although her eyes were still wide with terror.
“First, you have to call the Lubianka and ask for Colonel Rodinov. Tell him that Colonel Gregorin has shot Semionov. Ask him to send an ambulance. Inform him Gregorin may be making his way to the Metropol and I’ve gone after him. Then, and only then, see to Semionov and Natasha. Understood?”
“Yes,” she managed to say when he pulled the gag off, and the effort of speaking seemed to calm her. He touched her face for a moment and she moved her head around so that her lips rested against his wrist. They held each other’s eyes for a moment and then he stood.
With a grunt of exertion, Korolev managed to turn Volodya’s body, and he pulled his Walther out of the dead driver’s coat pocket. Semionov lifted a hand as he left the apartment and he stooped down to him.
“His car. Emka. On Vorontsovo Pole. That’s how I knew. To come back.” The words came out in bubbles of blood that left Semionov’s lips crimson.
“Help is coming, Vanya. Hold on, friend.”
Korolev went down the staircase four steps at a time. White faces stared from half-open doors as he hurtled past and then he was out of the front door, looking up the alley toward the church for which the street was named. He thought he saw Gregorin turn the corner but couldn’t be sure. Two Militia uniforms were running toward the building and he held up his identity card.
“Korolev. Petrovka Street. You, come with me. You, there’s a wounded man on the first floor. See he gets taken care of. There’s a dead one, too.”
One of the Militiamen ran into the building while the other stood there with his hand on his holster. Korolev turned to the four or five curious neighbors who’d emerged from the surrounding buildings and raised his voice.
“A dark-haired man in a leather coat came out that door not more than a minute ago. Who saw where he went?”
The elderly Lobkovskaya, his downstairs neighbor, stepped forward from the group and pointed up the lane toward the church.
“He went off that way, Alexei Dmitriyevich.”
There was no sign of the limping figure, but then Korolev spotted a trail of dark red drops along the lane.
“Your gun, Sergeant. Make sure it’s ready for use.”
The uniform’s nervous fingers moved to the flap of his leather holster as he followed Korolev. The church sat in its cobwebbed splendor on the right-hand side of the alley, and he tried to think ahead as he ran toward it, his Walther pointing skywards and the safety catch off. Semionov would have turned left at the end of the alley if he were driving back toward Petrovka Street, or the Lubianka, he decided, so that’s where he must have passed Gregorin’s Emka. The colonel must be heading for the car to make his getaway. He sure as hell wouldn’t walk far with a bullet in his leg.
Korolev duly moved to the left-hand side of the alley as he approached the junction. There were already numbers of pedestrians heading along the bigger street toward Red Square for the parade, and a line of slogan-slung parked buses and trucks had parked up to the right, having dropped their loads of activists and workers. A group of drivers stood, and one of them pointed at him as he stopped at the corner. The Militia sergeant arrived beside him, breathing heavily.
“What’s this all about, Comrade?” the uniform asked in a low voice.
“A bandit. He killed a man back there and wounded a Chekist—he mustn’t get away.”
There was silence as the sergeant took the information in. In the meantime, Korolev lowered himself to his knees and let his Walther lead his head round the corner. In his peripheral vision, he sensed the drivers backing away and pedestrians moving quickly into doorways as the presence of men with guns finally registered.
When the rest of the street came into view, Korolev saw an Emka parked about thirty meters down the street, a figure hunched in the front seat. But there was no sound of an engine. He turned to the sergeant.
“There’s an Emka just to the left. I think it’s our man.”
The sergeant nodded. He was about Korolev’s age, a broad face underneath his peaked cap, his blue eyes calm as he squinted across the street. He indicated a kiosk with his revolver.
“How about I make a run over there, Comrade? That way we’ll have two angles of fire.”
“I’ll cover you,” Korolev said and took a bead on the Emka, although now the hunched figure was gone, the driver’s door hanging open. He stood up to get a better view and then, when the uniform was in position, advanced along the wall toward the car, his Walther out in front of him. The car was empty except for broken glass and smeared blood on the driver’s seat. Of course, Volodya would have had the key. He waved the uniform forward and was just turning round when a bullet thwacked into the wall behind him, spraying fragments of plaster and stone. He dropped to his knee, trying to work out where the shot had come from and then heard the uniform’s pistol bark twice. There was another shot and he heard a shout of pain from behind him. The uniform was clutching his right arm, his heavy revolver lying at his feet, and his face twisted in pain. He’d taken cover behind the kiosk.
“On your side. There’s a yard entrance. About forty meters,” the uniform shouted, and Korolev nodded in acknowledgment. He could hear running feet and turned to see more Militiamen coming at a brisk trot, their guns out. He waved to them to keep low and then ran the few meters to the parked car and crouched behind it, feeling it vibrate as a bullet clanged into its side.
Further down the road Militiamen scattered for cover and the street was suddenly empty, the only noise that of an idling truck engine. He slipped to the ground and lay flat, looking toward the yard entrance, spying a knee-high boot with a dark stain running down its length. He aimed carefully and fired, seeing the boot and its twin jump away from the cloud of dust that erupted on the wall beside them. He stood up to take another shot and felt a bullet whip past his ear, and the simultaneous sound of breaking glass behind him. If he were a cat, it occurred to him as he dropped to the ground, he’d be down to his last couple of lives.
In the quiet that followed he heard the uniforms working their way closer and also the stop-start rhythm of a limping man’s boots as they broke into a run. He lay there and thought about leaving the uniforms to it when it occurred to him—if Gregorin made it as far as Yauzski Boulevard, he might we
ll slip away into the crowd. It was enough to get him up. Gregorin was moving away at a surprisingly quick pace and, as Korolev stood up from the ground, he looked back and raised his pistol. Korolev was already moving but he fired in Gregorin’s direction, to remind the colonel that he was there if nothing else, and was gratified to see him duck. But Gregorin was already close to the column of soldiers, and the inflatable kolkhoz village strained against its ropes as white faces turned in the direction of the gunfire. Gregorin fired again and panic began to buckle the orderly ranks. There was another shot from behind Korolev and the village’s smithy lunged upward as two of its anchormen fell flat to the ground. The remaining men struggled to hold the balloon, but another shot weakened their resolution and the smithy soared with surprising grace toward the morning sky.
Korolev threw himself into an already occupied doorway as Gregorin lifted his gun to fire once again, still moving away as he did so. Curses greeted Korolev as he crashed in on top of a well-fed man in a fine fur hat. The curses stopped when Korolev’s Walther went off in his hand, causing lumps of plaster to drop down onto the doorway’s occupants.
“Sorry, Comrades,” Korolev muttered as he stepped back out into the street. Ahead of him Yauzski Boulevard was in chaos, the entire inflatable village now bumping its way up through the trees and along the side of the tall apartment buildings that lined the road, and brown-uniformed soldiers were scattering in all directions. Korolev ignored the chaos and took careful aim at the limping colonel, missing him and seeing men and women fall to the tarmac around the fleeing man, their hands over their heads as they crawled on their elbows toward more substantial cover.
Korolev’s shot must have been close because Gregorin stopped and turned, lifting his weapon. Korolev made no effort to take cover and aimed the Walther at the traitor’s chest. He saw the blaze of Gregorin’s shot even as he pulled his own trigger, and pain surged along his right arm as his body was shoved sideways by the impact of a bullet. He was hit, yes, but still standing and he still had the Walther in both hands—so he clenched his teeth and looked for Gregorin, ready to fire again.
But the colonel was just a crumpled heap of clothing lying motionless where he’d fallen.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Semionov’s open coffin had been laid out in the Komsomol club, of which he’d been a member, attended by an honor guard of six of his young Comrades. It wasn’t until he’d arrived that Korolev had realized that the club was one he was familiar with, located as it was in the church where Mary Smithson’s body had been found. Even more extraordinarily, the coffin had been placed on the very same altar on which the nun had died. Visible stains still marked the white marble, despite the wreaths and flowers that surrounded the coffin. For a moment Korolev wondered whether the symmetry was deliberate but then dismissed the thought. This was a mis-communication, that was all—because of the special circumstances surrounding the funeral. No one had that dark a sense of humor—not even the Chekists.
He stood at the entrance to the sacristy, conscious that his appearance was causing a stir. He wasn’t surprised, his winter coat had had most of the blood cleaned out of it by Shura, and the rip caused by Gregorin’s bullet had been neatly sewn up, but it had been shabby to start with and now looked shabbier still. If he’d been allowed to wear his Militia uniform, he might at least have looked presentable but, even then, with his bandaged head and his arm in a sling, he suspected he’d still have drawn stares. He sighed and consoled himself that at least beneath the knee he was resplendent, wearing, as he was, a pair of the finest boots he’d almost ever seen, even if in a way the boots were causing him the greatest discomfort of all.
It wasn’t just the blisters on his heels, although the new boots felt as though they’d rubbed their way down to the bone on the walk to the church. It was more the mystery of how he’d found them, wrapped in brown paper, when he’d opened the apartment door that morning. There was no explanatory note accompanying them, but his name had been on the package. And when he’d unwrapped them, and seen them standing there in the early sunlight that came in through his bedroom window, one name came to mind and that was Kolya’s. So the smell of new leather wafting up to him caused him as much guilt as pleasure—but what was he to do? Give them away? It was a relief when Popov arrived and, without a word, took his arm and walked him over to the side of the room.
“The Devil, Captain. I’ve seen healthier-looking corpses.”
“I got knocked about a bit, it’s true.”
“How’s the arm?” Popov asked, pointing his pipe at the sling in which Korolev’s right arm hung.
“The bullet went straight along it, from elbow to shoulder; a flesh wound.” He stopped for a moment, remembering that any mention of the “incident” had been forbidden by Colonel Rodinov when the NKVD man had visited him in the hospital. On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly pretend he hadn’t been injured, so he continued.
“My arm was stretched out, so it ran the length rather than hit anything. I was lucky.” Korolev tried not to think about what would have happened if the bullet had been half an inch better aimed, not while he was in the same room as Semionov’s corpse anyway. Nor did he want to think about the sound of the trigger hitting the empty chambers of the colonel’s gun, nor the inexplicability of the colonel leaving the apartment without finishing the job. The Lord had been merciful—that was all there was to it.
They joined the queue to view the corpse. This being a Bolshevik funeral, there would be no priest, nor any ceremony as such. Popov and others would make speeches at the graveside, of course, but there was no set form to mark Semionov’s passing. The only thing that was certain was that Korolev’s involvement would be minimal. He was under strict instructions in that regard.
“You’re not speaking, are you?” Popov asked, as if he could hear Korolev’s thoughts and the question sounded more like an order than anything else.
“I’ve been advised that my health does not permit it.”
“Indeed,” Popov said, running his finger absent-mindedly down a mosaic. “I’ve been told to keep it short, myself.” He nodded toward the stained altar and the coffin. “If I’d been consulted, of course, I might have advised against having it held here. Did you know?”
“No.”
“Nor did I—just a number and the street on the announcement. You’d have thought he would have mentioned he was a member here when we found the nun—but then he didn’t tell us much, as it turns out, did he? A pity, this whole affair—he’d have made a useful investigator if he’d been allowed to continue with us.”
Their conversation had led them to the coffin and Korolev found himself contemplating Semionov’s gray face, thinner than he remembered and now soft, almost flabby, except where the cheekbones and nose held the skin taut. He leaned down and kissed the boy’s forehead, and then pushed a loose hair away from the smooth skin. Without a soul, Semionov’s body was nothing—an empty box that smelled like the sea at low tide. He felt a tear itch the corner of his eye and wondered at the futility of such a young life coming to a full stop.
The room had filled up, he saw, as he moved on from the coffin. And he couldn’t help but notice the grim-faced men in good-quality military-style tunics muttering in the corners—Chekists, Korolev presumed.
“There’ll be a medal for him. And for you. They’re trying to decide what.” The general smiled. “They want to reward you for unmasking the traitors, but quietly. The shoot-out on Vorontsovo Pole never happened, as you know.”
“Colonel Rodinov informed me.”
The general sat down in one of the ranked chairs and pointed Korolev to another.
“You’re to forget about the whole business. The NKVD will be tying up any loose ends. And this time, Alexei Dmitriyevich, please understand this is an absolute prohibition.”
“I understand,” Korolev said, although there was one loose end he planned to deal with personally, whatever anyone said.
“Good. You don’t know how
lucky you are, Korolev. Ezhov wanted everyone concerned with the case shot—just to avoid contamination. If God existed, which of course he doesn’t, I’d say he was on your side. Do you know what happened? Stalin was out walking in the Kremlin gardens when the kolkhoz village floated overhead and it amused him. That’s all. That was the dividing line between life and death. If it hadn’t amused him, or if Gregorin had run the other way, or if the soldiers had held onto the ropes, or if a hundred other things had or hadn’t happened—well, you’d be dead. And so, almost certainly, would I.”
Korolev tried to imagine Stalin laughing at an inflatable village floating across Moscow and found it difficult.
“We were lucky a breeze blew up later on, though,” the general said, almost to himself. “He probably wouldn’t have stayed amused if they’d had to cancel the air force’s contribution to the parade.”
Korolev nodded, remembering squadron after squadron of bombers flying above Moscow—a demonstration of Soviet strength on the nineteenth anniversary of the Revolution. They sat in silence, contemplating the ridiculous nature of fate.
“What happened in the end? To the village?” Korolev asked.
“They shot most of it down. Apparently one building got away. There are sightings of it. They say it’s heading toward Finland.”
“I wonder if it will make it,” Korolev said, thinking of Gregorin’s plans to cross the Finnish border.
There was a shuffle of movement near the entrance and they followed everyone’s gaze to see who had caused such a stir. Korolev recognized Rodinov immediately and, at first, thought the reaction of the crowd was for the colonel, but then he noticed the small man beside him, walking with a swagger that seemed out of keeping with his diminutive size. Commissar of State Security Ezhov’s bony face peered out from under a military cap and his yellow teeth flashed in a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Everyone rose to their feet, but Ezhov waved them back down with that special gesture Stalin used—modest, but aware of his power.
