The Holy Thief

by William Ryan

  Rodinov leaned to whisper in the commissar’s ear, and Ezhov nodded his agreement and took a seat at the back next to a pretty brunette in mourning black. A man joined them and Korolev felt a shiver raise the hairs on his neck as he recognized Babel. The writer nodded to him, and Korolev could have sworn he saw a twinkle in his eye as he turned his attention to Ezhov’s wife.

  Rodinov had by now reached a small lectern beside the coffin and set about unfolding a sheet of paper from his pocket. He was dressed in a suit that looked specially bought for the occasion.

  “Comrades,” the colonel began, looking up, “thank you for coming here today to mark the passing of the loyal Komsomol and Soviet citizen, Ivan Ivanovich Semionov. I thank you on behalf of his family, his Comrades and his fellow Komsomol members.”

  There was a sob and Korolev turned to see a middle-aged woman buckled with grief. He recognized an echo of Semionov’s features in her tear-streaked face, and prayed he would never have to bury his own son.

  “What more can be said about our beloved Comrade, other than that he was a cultured man, a true believer in the historical imperative of international socialism, a diligent worker in the construction of the Soviet Union, a true and loyal Komsomol who lived in a genuine fashion?”

  There was more it turned out. Much more. But eventually Rodinov folded his sheet of paper and turned to the Komsomol guard of honor with a nod. The young men looked at each other in momentary confusion that closely resembled terror, and then one of them made to lift one end of the coffin lid with a questioning look. Rodinov nodded again, this time with visible irritation and, with fumbling hands, his Comrades shut poor Semionov away in his lonely pine box forever.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  People stopped in the street to watch the young Chekist’s coffin pass, surrounded by the guard of honor, who clung to the timbered sides as the truck bounced over potholes. Some took their hats off and one or two crossed themselves. More looked at the long cortège of shiny black cars that followed it with open curiosity. Korolev couldn’t help but smile. This was a secret funeral for a Bolshevik hero and yet it couldn’t have been more visible.

  Ezhov didn’t come to the cemetery. At some point his car must have turned off and taken the commissar to a more important engagement. Of the hundreds who’d attended the dry Bolshevik funeral ceremony in the church, not more than eighty persevered to the graveside.

  There were some additions to the mourners, however. Schwartz stood, slightly removed from the main group, and Korolev spotted Valentina Nikolaevna by the graveside, along with Shura and Babel’s wife, and wondered where poor Natasha was—the girl had barely spoken since the terrible events of two days before. At least Valentina Nikolaevna seemed composed—and he cursed himself for the hundredth time that morning for the horror he’d brought into their lives.

  It was also apparent that not one of the presumed Chekists was still in attendance, and that the atmosphere had changed as a result. Women sobbed openly and a gaggle clutched at Semionov’s mother, whether to support her, or be supported, it wasn’t clear. It was Popov’s turn to speak now, and he stood in the priest’s spot at the head of the grave. He organized the guard of honor with quiet instructions, so that they slung thick canvas bands underneath Semionov’s coffin and, when the general nodded, began to lower the body slowly into the grave. As Semionov descended, inch by inch, Popov began to speak.

  “Life continues, Comrades. We are nothing more than a stage in the evolution of history. If we wish to remember our fallen Comrade, let us do so by continuing Ivan Ivanovich’s work for a better future for the proletariat. Let us carry on that struggle, and let us be prepared to give our lives for our Comrades, as Ivan Ivanovich was prepared to give his. His memory will remain alive in our efforts. We will finish what he, and many others who have given their lives for the Revolution, began. He was of the People, and the People move forward with his shining example to guide them.”

  Popov’s voice was a deep rumble, remorseless and yet gentle, not dissimilar to a priest’s voice in fact, and when he’d finished, Korolev saw more than one of the mourners make the sign of the cross.

  He turned, and saw Schwartz standing beside him.

  “Hello, Jack,” Korolev said in greeting.

  “Alexei. I’m sorry about Vanya. He was a good kid.”

  “He was a good man, in the end. You should be grateful to him for that.” Schwartz’s brow crinkled in inquiry. “If it hadn’t been for him, Gregorin would have visited you in the Metropol. He wasn’t a happy man—seemed to think you’d double-crossed him. That you’d stolen his icon.”

  Which wasn’t entirely true, but he was curious to see Schwartz’s reaction. If there was one, it was well enough hidden for Korolev to miss it. But, of course, that in itself was revealing.

  “The icon?”

  “Oh, come on, Jack. If I wanted to cause you trouble, you’d be in a Lubianka prison cell. And that’s somewhere you don’t want to visit, believe me.”

  Schwartz took a slow look around, as though he suspected he might be caught in some kind of trap.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this why you left the message at the hotel today? To question me again?” Schwartz’s face remained calm, however, and anyone watching would have thought they were having a solemn conversation about poor Semionov.

  “My questions aren’t official, Jack—but when a man nearly gets himself killed as many times as I have in the last week he becomes interested in the reasons why. And perhaps I owe it to Vanya to get to the bottom of it all.”

  “And you think I can help you to do that?”

  “Call it an investigator’s hunch. You’ve told me yourself the Church asked you to buy the icon, you traveled on the train from Berlin with Nancy Dolan, and the late, not much missed, Colonel Gregorin was trying to sell the icon using your services. In a way you link the main actors in this drama as much as the icon does. It wouldn’t surprise me if you turned out to be Count Kolya’s brother-in-law, to top it all.”

  Schwartz shrugged his shoulders in a dismissive gesture.

  “And you haven’t asked me about the icon either. If I were in your shoes—” and here Korolev couldn’t help looking wistfully down at Schwartz’s sturdy brogues—“it would be my first question.”

  “Do you know where the icon is, Alexei?” Schwartz asked dryly, and Korolev wondered if he was making a joke.

  “No, Jack, but I’ve an idea I might just find it if I whistled up twenty Militiamen and started doing a bit of poking round in your vicinity. Would you like me to do that?”

  “I’m guessing that might make leaving the country tomorrow a little difficult.”

  “So you’re leaving us? That also makes me curious. Why would you be leaving if there was still a chance of purchasing the icon? I presume you take a percentage of the purchase price—don’t you? Even a small percentage of a million dollars must be worth waiting round for.”

  Schwartz frowned.

  “Is that what you want, Alexei? Money?”

  “Money, Jack? I don’t think so. Kolya was right, I’m not quite the Soviet citizen I thought I was, but I’m not for sale either. I just want a few answers. Just for myself. My discretion is evidenced by the fact that you’re not being questioned by less polite people. Not to mention that the city isn’t being torn apart brick by brick to find her.”

  Schwartz smiled, as if at a half-forgotten joke, then nodded. “I have a car by the main gate. Why not come back with me to the hotel?”

  Korolev nodded, “Give me five minutes.”

  “Of course,” Schwartz said.

  Korolev watched him walk away before approaching the grave. Two diggers—thick-handed peasants from some far-off province—were filling it in with shovelfuls of earth and he watched the last visible corner of Semionov’s coffin disappear.

  He felt sadness, he supposed—not only for Semionov, but also for himself. To lose a friend and kill a man were both hard things, and he’d do
ne both in the last two days. He didn’t regret Gregorin’s death, but he wished someone else had pulled the Walther’s trigger. It hadn’t even been a good shot—Korolev had been aiming for Gregorin’s chest and hit him just above his left eye—but it had snuffed out the colonel like a candle all the same. To end a man’s life so suddenly, well, it made you think about your own mortality, and that was never a comfortable thing to do.

  Perhaps it was the memory of Semionov lying dead in the corridor that made him do it, he couldn’t rightly say afterward, but his right hand raised up as if of its own volition and executed a perfect sign of the cross, for all the world to see, and, for a moment at least, he felt no fear of the consequences, and a total peace.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  They didn’t speak in the car—partly because of the driver’s presence but also because there didn’t seem to be much to say—nor did conversation start up when they entered the Metropol. The silence was only broken when Schwartz opened the door to his room.

  “After you,” he said.

  Korolev walked inside and, despite the shadows within, he was able to make out the huge bed, the elegant lines of a pair of chairs, a writing desk, dark wallpaper, the pile of packing crates that stood in front of the window, and the faces that stared up at him from the floor.

  Icon after icon after icon leaned against the high skirting board that circled the room, golden halos reflecting the weak sun that streamed through the half-closed curtains. Korolev turned slowly, his eyes running round the wall at devout renderings of Christ at every age, saints and, of course, the Virgin Mother herself.

  There were nearly twenty representations of the Virgin—in many of the traditional forms—but, of these twenty, five were Kazanskayas. They all had the appearance of great age and he looked at them in silence for several moments, intrigued by the small variations and then seeing how the thing was to be done.

  “Clever,” he said in a low whisper.

  Schwartz nodded in confirmation.

  “I’m packing them up now—they’ll come with me by train to Hamburg, and from there I sail to New York.”

  It was brilliant—what better way to hide an icon than among icons? He looked at the Kazanskayas once again.

  “And?”

  “We’ll never know for sure. It’s a question of belief, not truth—it always has been. But there’s enough truth here to base belief upon.”

  Korolev felt the eyes of the Mother on him as if she were in the room. He wanted to ask which icon was the one, but he didn’t. He didn’t need to. There was no doubt in his mind—there was only one of them that it could be. The one that looked into his soul. But he didn’t kneel, or cross himself, or pray. “But what will they do with her in America?”

  Schwartz considered the question. “D’you know my guess is, they’ll do nothing. Wait, I think, until things change.”

  Korolev considered the icon, nodded and then held his hand out to the American.

  “Have a good trip, Jack. Perhaps we will see you again in Moscow. One day.”

  “Perhaps,” Schwartz said, and then Korolev was closing the door behind himself as he left.

  He took his time walking back, rehearsing what he’d say when he arrived. He had it all worked out by the time he opened the door and saw Valentina Nikolaevna standing by the table, as if she was waiting for him, and so he came straight to the point.

  “Valentina Nikolaevna, I’ve thought it over. I can’t forgive myself for being the cause of those men coming into your home, and for what happened here. I’ve decided the best thing will be if I leave this apartment. I can stay with my cousin and I’ll say nothing to Luborov or anyone else. You’ll have the whole place to yourself, if I’m still down as living here. It’s not enough, I know it, but it’s something at least.”

  She considered him for a time and then shook her head.

  “Thank you for your offer, Alexei Dmitriyevich. It’s kind of you, but unnecessary. It wasn’t you that brought the men here, they came themselves. You’re not responsible for the evil of others.”

  “But—” he began.

  “Enough, please. I mean what I say. And anyway, Natasha wouldn’t hear of it. She will only come out to Gorky Park this evening if you’ll be there as well. So, you see? I can’t do without you.”

  And then she smiled at him.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I’ve done my best to recreate 1930s Moscow accurately in this book, but it should be remembered that it remains a work of fiction and that I’ve allowed myself some flexibility from time to time, particularly with regard to the interiors of buildings. For any mistakes that aren’t deliberate, I apologize.

  Those curious about the period might find the following of interest:

  Anne Applebaum. GULAG—A History of the Soviet Camps. Allen Lane, 2003.

  Danzig Baldaev (and others). Russian Criminal Tattoo Encyclopedia, Vols 1–3. Steidl/Fuel, 2003; Fuel, 2006; Fuel, 2008.

  Robert Edelman. Serious Fun—A History of Spectator Sports in the USSR. Oxford University Press, 1993.

  Orlando Figes. The Whisperers. Allen Lane, 2007.

  Sheila Fitzpatrick. Everyday Stalinism. Oxford University Press, 1999.

  Sheila Fitzpatrick. Tear off the Masks—Identity and Imposture in Twentieth-century Russia. Princeton University Press, 2005.

  Véronique Garros, Natasha Korenevskaya and Thomas Lahusen. Intimacy and Terror—Soviet Diaries of the 1930s. Trans. Carol A. Flath. New Press, 1995.

  Jukka Gronow. Caviar and Champagne—Common Luxury and the Ideals of the Good Life in Stalin’s Russia. Berg, 2003.

  Jochen Hellbeck. Revolution on My Mind—Writing a Diary under Stalin. Harvard University Press, 2006.

  Marc Jansen and Nikita Petrov. Stalin’s Loyal Executioner—People’s Commissioner Nikolai Ezhov. Hoover Institute Press, 2002.

  David King. Red Star over Russia—A Visual History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Death of Stalin. Tate, 2009.

  Hiroaki Kuromiya. The Voices of the Dead. Yale University Press, 2007.

  Catherine Merridale. Night of Stone—Death and Memory in Russia. Granta, 2000.

  Simon Sebag Montefiore. Stalin—the Court of the Red Tsar. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2003.

  A. N. Pirozhkova. At His Side—the Last Years of Isaac Babel. Steerforth, 1996.

  Vitaly Shentalinsky. The KGB’s Literary Archive. Harvill, 1993.

  Frederick Starr. Red and Hot—the Fate of Jazz in the Soviet Union. Oxford University Press, 1983.

  I was fortunate enough to complete a Masters in creative writing at St. Andrews University and remain indebted to Douglas Dunn, Meaghan Delahunt, Don Patterson and John Burnside for their patience, insights and guidance, and, above all, to A. L. Kennedy, who not only taught me a great deal about the nuts and bolts of writing but also included my short story “Denmark” in a German collection she edited—which was tangible encouragement when I very much needed it.

  I’m also thankful to David Wilkinson, Kuhan Tharmananther, Jonathan Thake, Sue Turton, Bryan Hassett, Ken Murphy, Ed Murray, Ian Iqbal Rashid, Melanie Richmond and my wife, Joanne—all of whom read the book at various stages—and Larisa Ivash, who proved an invaluable source of information on subjects as diverse as pre-war Soviet cigarettes and the starting motor of the GAZ M-1. My agent Andrew Gordon at David Higham Associates helped make this book much better than it once was, as did my editor Maria Rejt and my US editor Lyndsey Sagnette at St. Martin’s. Their suggestions have always been valuable and their corrections always correct, and Maria’s attention to detail and care have made me weigh each word, which is probably how it should be. Thanks also to Liz Cowen for her precise and careful copyediting.

  Above all though I’m grateful to my wife Joanne. This book is dedicated to her in acknowledgment of her patience, and other things.

 

 

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