Patriots

by Kevin Doherty

*

  Serov drove straight to his own apartment. There he went from room to room as a cat would pace out its territory. It was his habit after any absence. He didn’t check anything in detail so much as sense the atmosphere.

  All was in order.

  His packing was quickly done. Suits, formal shirts and ties for the meeting and afterwards. These he packed with care, putting them neatly into a separate suit carrier. Then he filled his grip bag with a more or less random selection of informal clothes.

  Next he went to one of the built-in bookcases and swung back the hinged section that concealed the wall safe. He unlocked it and took out the Aganbegyan report, tossed it on top of the packed clothes and zipped the bag shut.

  That left only the call to Zavarov, back by now from Afghanistan. He tried the marshal’s dacha first, reasoning that he would be resting there after the homeward trip. The assumption proved correct.

  The marshal was wary when he heard Serov’s voice; he became apoplectic when he heard the proposition that Serov had for him.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ he shouted down the line, ‘He won’t come! How the hell can I make him?’

  ‘That’s your problem.’

  Serov hung up and was back in his car five minutes later. He’d left it on the road to save the time it took to get in and out of the garage under the building. But it was past school hours and a little gang of children had gathered about the car. Big cars always had that effect; adults could be just as bad, if the car was rare enough. If it wasn’t an official one the windscreen wipers and a wheel or two could sometimes be gone.

  Galina was in the studio, painting, when he arrived. The picture was a new one that he hadn’t seen before, a city skyline with heavy clouds and small, tired people. It seemed as bleak as her mood: further evidence, perhaps, that she still hadn’t shaken off the after-effects of the Tretyakov incident.

  ‘I wasn’t expecting you,’ was all she said when he walked in.

  ‘I have to go out of town for a few days. Maybe a week. I came to let you know.’

  He draped his greatcoat over an empty easel and moved beside her, peering over her shoulder at the painting. Her hair was drawn back in a ponytail, exposing her neck and ears. He bent to kiss her warm throat. She didn’t draw away but equally she made no response to his touch. When he stopped kissing her the brush resumed jabbing at the canvas in short, harsh strokes.

  ‘When do you leave?’

  ‘I’ll go from here. I’ve already been to my own place to collect what I need.’ He straightened up and looked again at the canvas. ‘What a strange painting.’

  ‘It’s just a city.’

  ‘Not a happy one.’

  ‘Cities can’t be happy or sad. Only the people.’ She put the brush down and wiped her fingers on a rag.

  He took her gently by the shoulders and turned her to face him. ‘Galya, about what happened at the concert –’

  ‘I told you – I don’t remember much.’

  Her voice was flat, her eyes expressionless, as if she were somewhere beyond his reach. Today he badly needed to find her.

  ‘I won’t see you for a while.’

  ‘We’ve been apart before.’

  But she turned and crossed the floor into the bedroom. He followed, his fingers brushing the cloth over his bust as he passed it. She undressed without a word while he stood watching. Then she slipped his jacket from his shoulders and hung it in the wardrobe. She left its door open and he watched in the mirror as she stripped him garment by garment.

  *

  An hour later he was on the road again, thinking that the sensible thing to do was to turn west at once. He didn’t. He headed east, picking up the one-way that took him along Petrovskiy, then up past Kazan Station and the Yaroslavl, still the last view of Moscow for those who were off to the Siberian gulags.

  When he reached the familiar tumbledown streets his car was the only thing moving in them. Until he got near the top of the hill. Then he saw the sidelights of the first militia car, drawn up by the kerb. The occupants stayed sensibly warm inside as he cruised past. He knew they’d be radioing his approach to their colleagues further up, so there was no point in turning back; his registration would have been noted anyway.

  Sure enough, around the next corner a swinging lantern indicated the two policemen who were awaiting his arrival, standing beside their car in the cold air. Behind them the derelict street ran straight up to the Church of the Saviour. Another fall of snow was getting under way. Through it and the darkness his headlights picked out the long, dark bulk of the articulated truck that was parked by the church door. Its tailgate had been thrown open, forming a sloping ramp to the ground. Men were carrying boxes over it into the deep trailer. A group of three other men, all bundled in heavy parkas, stood near the truck. Their backs were to him. One of them, a short, pudgy man, turned for a moment as Serov’s headlight beams swept over them. Serov recognised him as the man called Chernavin, the one who’d been interviewed on the news programme, Vremya. The one who’d come so close to getting what he needed from Gulyaev.

  When Serov opened his window to talk to the policemen, he could hear the rumble of a pneumatic drill from deep inside the church. Chernavin was about to have Yezhov’s body to add to his perplexing investigations.

  Serov identified himself and the officers rebuttoned the flaps of their pistol holsters.

  ‘I heard the activity from down the hill and wondered what was going on.’

  ‘I could ask one of the inspectors to come across, comrade General.’

  He shook his head. ‘Don’t worry. I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t anything untoward.’

  He reversed the car and made his way back down. None of the three men in parkas bothered to turn around again.

  He cleared the city as fast as he could and settled back for the long cross-country haul to Byelorussia. It might take until breakfast the next day before he arrived, depending on the condition of the roads.

  He didn’t mind. There was plenty to think about.

  *

  The last indignity for the old man was not even being able to go to the toilet properly. He had to do it under the sheets into a cardboard bottle.

  He struggled onto his side and grappled to get the hated contraption into position. It needed huge effort and left him panting with exhaustion. But the alternative was to send for a nurse: even more humiliating.

  He lay still and let his bladder begin to empty. But he noticed something strange. Instead of the usual sense of relief as the pressure eased, exactly the opposite was happening. It was as if a massive force were swelling inside him, making his ribcage ache to let it burst out.

  Vaguely he realised that it was the same as something that had happened before but he couldn’t be quite sure when or what it had been. Everything was muddled, and the pain made it impossible to think.

  Aah! It was tearing his chest apart now. Why wouldn’t it stop? It was like a slow explosion, billowing up within him.

  Then he recognised it. A curtain moved aside in his mind, that pain had drawn closed, and he knew when he’d felt this before and what it was. The cardboard bottle tumbled to the floor and rolled over, discharging its contents over the shiny linoleum.

  Genrikh Kunaev was dead.

  *

  Galina lay for a long time in the darkness. From the bowels of the apartment block she could hear the communal lift rising and falling, its motor humming, its doors thudding. The working day was ending and the building’s other residents were returning home.

  After a time the lift stopped. Cooking smells wafted into her bedroom. Then they too faded.

  The wardrobe door was still open. Finally she rose and switched on the dressing-table lamp. The mirror reflected the light against the far wall. Its pattern swept across the wall as she opened the door wider and reached into the wardrobe.

  She’d hung his jacket beside a heavy cotton smock of hers. It hadn’t been difficult to transfer his keys into the smock as she hung the
jacket up. Now she reached into the smock’s pocket and took them out. There were four of them on a leather fob. She turned them over in her fingers. One was for a standard cylinder lock. Another looked like a mortice key. The third and fourth she wasn’t sure about. She’d find out when she got there. All she needed was the courage to go. A week, he’d said. That was how long she had …

  As she returned the keys to the smock her eyes fell on the wardrobe mirror. He had left the light burning in the kitchen. It fanned across the studio floor, catching the bust of Katarina.

  She went through to the studio. Next to her mother’s bust was Nikolai’s, still hidden by the damp cloth. Now she tugged tentatively at its bottom corner and it slid slowly down, clinging to the contours of the damp clay. First the hair appeared, then one blank eye, then all of the face.

  Yes, Nikolai, you asked me if I remember other things, and I do. Like the binoculars you let me carry the night of the concert. Let me carry? Made me carry. You did that when I trusted you. You used me. You were counting on my trust. It made the whole thing possible. I was perfect – not looking guilty, not drawing attention to myself. Especially the state I was in. I suppose that made me all the better.

  All the better too if I’d been caught. No arguments – how could I argue when I wouldn’t even have understood? I was perfect.

  ‘Look what I bought for us today, Galya. Just what we need for tonight. I got a set for each of us.’

  And if I had been caught – what then, Nikolai? Would you have let me take the blame?

  You were planning it right from the moment you bought the binoculars. Planning it when you brought them home.

  ‘A pair for you and a pair for me. So we can get a better view.’

  Was that the real reason why we went to the concert, Nikolai? Not for my sake, but because it suited your purposes?

  So calculating, Nikolai. All that planning, counting on my trust, using me.

  What else have you been planning, Nikolai? Planning for years, perhaps. Because I remember many other things now. Such as when Mama was still alive. How you used to look at me, even then. And I understand the look now, because it’s the way you look at me now. How guilty that look made me feel! – because I thought it was my fault. I thought it was my body betraying me, changing, not a child’s any more. Making you something other than the father you’d been to me – making you less … safe.

  Was that why Mama died, Nikolai? Had to die?

  My dear, kind Nikolai, Mama’s kind Nikolai.

  Galina picked up a heavy cleaver and brought it down with all her might on the skull. It split the clay asunder and tore through the fine chickenwire former underneath.

  One blow.

  *

  It was the Englishman. Gramin decided on a four-man net to cover his movements. A tried and tested number. Fewer and the subject was likely to start noticing familiar faces; more were tricky to coordinate.

  He appointed himself anchor. The others were street informers and KGB casuals who couldn’t care less about the dividing line between official and unofficial jobs, provided they were looked after. These days booze and Western videos, the raunchier the better, were the preferred currencies.

  Already the Englishman had dragged them across half of Moscow: dosshouses, drying-out parlours, wastelands of apartment blocks which even Gramin would have thought twice about walking through on his own, whorehouses, infirmaries. Whatever he was looking for, he hadn’t found it yet; but not for want of trying.

  Finally, at just gone midnight, he returned to his hotel. He was putting himself up in style, in the Nevskiy.

  ‘Our bird’s home,’ one of the casuals reported over the radio telephone. ‘He won’t be out again tonight.’

  A block south, Gramin turned his car engine off and looked around the street in which he found himself. He was just on the edge of the pedestrianised Arbat area.

  ‘He’s burned up some shoe leather, that’s for sure.’ Gramin rubbed his flattened nose, thinking. He lifted the radio telephone again. ‘All of you – you can knock off now. But stay close to a phone in case I need you fast.’

  A few minutes later he arrived on foot at the Mariya restaurant. It was tucked away up one of the cobbled backstreets, where not even the tourists could find it.

  It was all locked up; the card on the door said it closed at eleven thirty. But Gramin knew the Mariya better than that and a dim light still glowed at the back. He hammered on the door with his gloved fist until it was opened. A big Turkish-looking type with a full beard glowered down at him.

  ‘What do you want? We’re shut.’ The Georgian accent gave him away as an immigrant. Some of them would sell their mothers to get a Moscow resident’s permit.

  Gramin pushed his yellow KGB card under his nose and the man shut up. He took a step back and opened the door just enough for Gramin to get through.

  ‘Be nice,’ Gramin said. ‘Or I might ask to see your residency permit – and the rest of your stinking family.’

  The Turk led him past one or two groups of huddled diners and drinkers. No one looked up as they passed. The business done in the Mariya didn’t invite friendliness or curiosity. They came to a dark corner and the Turk took the chairs down from a small table. Gramin sat down.

  ‘Vodka and two glasses. A menu. I want my food fast.’

  Half an hour later he’d consumed some cheap red caviar on warm rolls and was hunched over a plate of salted herrings when the Turk reappeared, followed by a short-necked man in the brown and gold uniform of the Nevskiy.

  ‘He says you’re expecting him,’ the Turk growled at Gramin.

  ‘It’s true.’ Gramin nodded towards the other chair and the man sat down. The Turk lumbered off.

  ‘Take a drink.’ Without lifting his eyes from his food, Gramin pushed a glass towards his visitor with the back of his hand. The man filled it himself from the bottle.

  ‘Your friend the Frenchman,’ he said.

  Gramin grunted and munched on. He’d seen no reason to enlighten anyone on the subject’s true nationality.

  ‘He seems to have packed it in for the night.’

  ‘Bed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Alone?’

  ‘Him and a bottle.’ The man’s eyes brightened. ‘He tips well. Slipped me five roubles to get the vodka up to him.’

  ‘Seen his registration card? How long is he here for?’

  ‘Four days.’

  ‘Get back now. I’ll be here for an hour or two. We’ll pick him up again in the morning.’

  The man seemed reluctant to go. His thick neck bulged over his collar as he gazed down at his drink.

  ‘What’s your problem now?’ Gramin asked finally.

  ‘You said you’d pay tonight. Upfront, you said.’

  ‘Ahh!’ Gramin put his fork down and reached into his back pocket. He counted through a wad of notes and threw some onto the table. The man quickly scooped them up.

  ‘It’s short,’ he announced. ‘By five roubles.’

  Gramin belched. ‘That’s all right, then.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘That’s the five Frenchie already gave you. Now piss off.’

  *

  The bottle was half gone but the ache was just the same. In his room in the Nevskiy Knight stretched out on the bed, setting the bottle on the side table, and swallowed another glassful. His throat was now numb when at first the liquid had stung him like salt in an open wound.

  Such fallible creatures, men and women. Strings of neurons that could so easily make the wrong connections. Wrong connections that led to errors.

  He had erred. All those years ago.

  But didn’t everyone? Didn’t everyone make errors? Wasn’t that how we were supposed to learn?

  Yes, but some errors weren’t like that, weren’t the kind that could be over and done with. Sometimes when an error was made, sometimes it just stayed made.

  He closed his eyes and lay back against the pillow. Yes, some errors s
tayed made.

  Made flesh.

  Now lost.

  14

  Soviet Socialist Republic of Byelorussia

  The farm lay hidden among the hills and pine forests west of Minsk. Molodechno was the nearest town, a haphazard muddle of old timbered houses and more modern concrete buildings. Halfway between the town and the farm was a small airfield, hardly used since the war but still capable of being pressed into service. Two hundred and fifty kilometres to the west lay the Polish border.

  On the farm’s highest ground, deep within its boundaries, stood a stone-built house. It had once belonged to a cousin of the old tsar, used by him as a dacha.

  It was nine in the morning when Serov arrived. He was met at the door by Sinsky, a slow-moving beast of a man who stood a full head taller than him.

  ‘Get me some breakfast,’ Serov told him. It was now over twenty-four hours since he’d eaten. ‘I’ll have it upstairs. Then prepare the ash room.’

  He went straight to his suite on the third floor. By the time he’d washed and shaved, Sinsky had delivered the food. Serov ate ravenously before flopping on top of the bed and falling asleep at once.

  In the late morning he awoke, washed again to clear his head, and went downstairs. The ash room was at the rear of the house, and was so called because of its whitewood panelling. It was spacious and bright, and overlooked the snowy fields and forests to the east. A roaring fire, Sinsky’s handiwork, was blazing in its huge stone fireplace.

  Here Serov stayed, night and day, for the rest of the week. The only person he spoke to was Sinsky, when he sent him to the kitchens for food or ordered him to build up the fire. He slipped into a time zone of his own, eating and snatching sleep when his body could no longer go without. He went back to his suite to wash or change his clothing. He smoked heavily but touched no alcohol.

  There wasn’t just one idea; there were half a dozen, each capable of four or five different applications. On the long drive to Molodechno he’d seen the permutations spin out. He could set in motion any option but their final outcomes were dependent on the responses of the people involved. These were what he had to second-guess.