The Body Outside the Kremlin

by James L. May

  Vasily-the-tank-commander says, “No man must be destroyed for uttering the voice of conscience. There are retrograde elements in the Party, yes, but they will be reformed. It takes courage to build a socialism that truly acknowledges and supports the life of the people.” No man must be destroyed. But men have been destroyed by the millions for far less than uttering the voice of conscience. Their families, colleagues, and even their basement-dwelling, peripheral acquaintances have been destroyed. Even if I believed Vasily Feodorovich about the Party’s desire for reform, I would ask: What about socialism for the dead? What sort of a State will we build for them, who proved unable to buy survival at any price?

  He asked once about my finger. I told him I lost it on Solovetsky. He has not asked again.

  He is putting me in danger. He is in danger as well. I do not know what to do.

  Things were proceeding, but not everything was going according to plan. As I made my way to Warehouse Three, I was thinking about what Veronika had said: that, even if she convinced them to make an exception to the usual rule that only monks were permitted at the Herring Gate, the brothers wouldn’t let me through without authorization. The Chekist was out, of course. Where else could I find a patron?

  Outside the warehouse, there was someone at work hammering a runner back onto a sledge. “Is Zhenov in his office?” I asked.

  From the way the man looked at me, I could tell he recognized me from our search of the warehouse the day before. I didn’t remember him. He was middle-aged but weathered, with a heavy black stubble.

  “No.” His jaw barely moved when he spoke, but his Adam’s apple bobbed wildly.

  “When will he be back?”

  “Don’t know.”

  I’d mastered myself a little on the walk back from the fishery, and was feeling more capable than I had with Veronika. The man was not disposed to be friendly, clearly, but I couldn’t let that stop me.

  “He was to take the train to Anzer, check on your supply chain. Surely he’s back from that trip by now?”

  “He’s back. Haven’t seen much of him since then, though.”

  “Why? What happened when he came back?”

  “He heard about that shooting.”

  “Why should that matter to him?”

  “The ones they killed, all Whites. All friends of his, I hear.”

  “He thought he’d be linked to the men they killed?”

  The man shrugged.

  I tried to connect it up. Zhenov had issued a requisition order, one whose consequences Antonov was meant to be dealing with when he was killed. That had set our investigation in motion. Now, it emerged, the same investigation had been halted just as Infosec was preparing to round up and shoot a group of officers associated with Zhenov. Petrovich hadn’t even entertained the possibility of its being a coincidence that our papers were burned on the day of the executions.

  But what did those things have to do with each other? I couldn’t see it—not quite. During my first year at the university, there came a time when I realized I was not an exceptional mathematician, only a competent one at best. It had been when I tried to work problems in multivariant calculus. I could understand enough to feel the equations clicking in my mind, wanting to complete themselves. I could not understand enough to do it. This was like that.

  “A group of your men took some paintings from the museum, then sent them up to the cabinetry workshop on Anzer,” I said. “Has what they made with them been shipped back down to the kremlin yet?”

  “I don’t track everything that’s shipped.”

  I call it perverse, I’d heard someone say, prettying up the box you’re going to drop a man you shot into. That was a click. “They were the coffins, weren’t they? The coffins they used for the executions.”

  “How do I know who they stuck in them?”

  But I was right: they were coffins, and they had returned from Anzer. “Were you expecting them? Were they due to arrive that day?”

  “Came early,” he said reluctantly.

  Another click. I couldn’t say what this meant any more than the last, but the circle drew tighter.

  “The things we were looking for the other day, here in the warehouse. Have they been found? Has Zhenov looked?”

  He shook his head, jaw rigid. “Don’t know anything about that. You want to ask any more, I’ll fetch Ivan Kologriev. He’s in charge while the boss’s out. He’s about here somewhere—been seeing to a shipment of salt. You ask him.”

  Kologriev. The urka past we’d learned about from Golubov made him more suspect, but more dangerous, too. I thought of the way he’d lifted the crate from Luka, of his laughter and violence. I didn’t care to meet him. I’d probably stood exposed in front of the warehouse for too long already.

  “No,” I said. “No, that’s all right. It’s not important.”

  The wind began to build as I turned back towards the kremlin, raising chop in the water’s icy slush. What, so far, had I gotten back in trade for my finger? Freedom, yes. Information, yes. But I still needed something I could parlay into an investigation that would continue after I’d committed myself to the infirmary. Simply returning to Quarantine with more knowledge than I’d had when I left would do nothing: knowledgeable and dead was still dead.

  Beneath the snow that clung to the big stones in the kremlin wall, I could make out patterns of brown lichen. The pain in my hand was keeping me from thinking purposefully. I hunched against the wind and tried to concentrate. Instead of turning off the road to follow the path around the south end of the kremlin, the most direct way to Nikolski, I continued along the water. On the north side of the bay, the administration building loomed, a constant white presence.

  The problem was leverage. I did have something on Vinogradov. The accession numbers might buy his help, or blackmail him. Antonov had given them to Veronika for just that purpose, to bargain with. And the museum director had been able to write Antonov a pass out of the kremlin. He could write me one as well, maybe even keep me out of Quarantine.

  The trouble, of course, was that the man might very well himself have been behind Antonov’s killing. Could I risk putting myself in the very hands I was trying to escape?

  I looked again at the dead windows of the administration building. If nothing like what had happened to Foma had happened to him, Petrovich would be there, in the Criminology Department offices.

  I admitted it to myself: I wanted his advice. He would know how to go forward, how to turn the information I’d gathered into something more. I needed, at this moment, not the deductive genius of a Holmes nor the violence of a Nat Pinkerton—my imitation of those had taken me as far as it would—but someone who knew how to use knowledge as a hammer. Someone who knew how to break off new pieces of this case.

  Yes, and with a partner, I’d have someone to secure my safety if I went to Vinogradov. But would Petrovich be willing to help?

  My hand hurt. Every so often it surprised me how much. Out at sea, gray clouds moved in endlessly, appearing over the horizon and disappearing past the kremlin walls.

  The old man had brought me along when he collected his temporary discharge, on the first day of our investigation, so I knew where KrimKab’s offices were. They occupied two good-sized rooms on the third floor—not, luckily for me, in one of the secure wings. I was able to make my way up a stairwell and down the hall to the door without being challenged.

  His cough reached me before I saw him. The old man’s hacking snaked around a corner, through a door, and past a large, out-of-place wardrobe filled with cartons of files. I mentioned his name and was duly waved through, my hand hidden in my pocket.

  There were two windows in the back room, along with five desks. The old man sat at one. Of the others, only two were occupied, over against the other wall. Out the window, the wind continued moving the bay and gray clouds around.

  �
��Tolya.” His swollen eye had opened again. Blue as ever, it flicked to the door, looking for anyone who might come through behind me. When no one did, he continued. “Wasn’t expecting you.”

  The bruise from where the urki had hit him seemed to have slipped down his face, as sometimes happens when the blood moves under the skin. Now it was the lip beneath his white mustache that showed lurid brown and purple. Under his breath, he said: “What are you doing here? If the Chekist hears we’ve been seen together—”

  “Who’d tell him? Does someone else in this office share your special relationship?”

  He glanced to the other side of the room. The other men hadn’t looked up from their desks. “We’ll talk out in the hall. Come.”

  He took his cane, and we proceeded back out the way I’d come in. A few heads turned, but he only uttered a quick excuse to his department head as he closed the door, then turned to me. The hall was empty. “All right. What do you want?” His eye caught on the tourniquet’s slat as he looked me over. “What have you done?”

  “I need your help.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “You’re making a mistake, Tolya. I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but you’re being stupid. You put us both in danger. I told you the other day, didn’t I? You have to keep your head down, act like you don’t know anything. Coming here, leaving your own work—it’s the worst thing you could have decided on.”

  Now that he was in front of me, I was angrier than I’d expected. “You asked what I’d done?”

  He hesitated. “Yes.”

  He waited silently while I extricated my wounded hand from its pocket. He must have known already—he was nothing if not observant. Still, his expression was gratifying. I gave him time to examine the damage.

  “They came for me last night, after lights out,” I said finally. “Four or five. A hammer and a chisel. I’m only standing here now because they had the wrong bunk.”

  “The wrong—?”

  “I’d switched. A coincidence. The man below me—his name was Foma.”

  “He was killed?”

  “He was my friend.”

  He grimaced, looking away. “I see. And today you arranged to be removed from your platoon before they came again.”

  “That’s right.”

  “You have more grit than I gave you credit for.”

  The hall was narrow and dim, the only light a square window at one end. The faint sound of voices drifted out from one of the other offices. “How long do you think I’ll be safe in the infirmary?” I leaned forward, close to his face. Where I grabbed it above the elbow, his arm was driftwood wrapped in fabric, brittle and light. “How long do you think you’ll be safe? In Company Ten you may be harder to reach than I am in the cathedral, but any zek on this island is fragile as an egg. And anything I know, you know as well.”

  He pulled away, but I didn’t let go. “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe. But there’s nothing I can do for you that won’t make it worse.”

  “You don’t know all I’ve learned. Those executions: Antonov is connected to them in too many ways. There’s something off about it. At the cabinetry workshop they made his icons into coffins that were shipped down the day of the execution.”

  “Then you think you’re going to solve our case.”

  “We are, you and I. The men they executed, the ones who went into the painted coffins—they were the Whites on the Chekist’s list, weren’t they? That was your hypothesis. I’m sure you’ve confirmed it by now.”

  He nodded grudgingly. “Yes. I wasn’t positive the other day, but I am now. Just listening in on the gossip in this building, I’ve heard the names of three men I spoke to.” He hemmed loudly, rasping at his throat, then smoothed the mustache.

  “There’s something to that,” I said. “You must see it. And it’s the only move. Who would have sent men to hammer a chisel into me except Antonov’s killer? Someone connected to him, maybe, but in any case they’re afraid of something we found out. What defense do we have, other than to figure out what it is?”

  At the other end of the hall, a door opened and someone walked to the stairs. Petrovich’s eyes darted after him. I released his arm, waited.

  “Damn it, Tolya,” he said after the man’s footsteps had died away. “What do you want from me? What do you think I can do? My pull with the Chekist burned up with the investigation papers. He hasn’t contacted me since. I can only scramble to keep the boot off my neck, the same as every other worthless zek.” He looked down at his hands. The way he hunched over them reduced him, turned him inward. His shoulders enfolded his thin chest. “I appreciate the warning. Maybe it’s more than I deserve, for you to come. If there’s anything I can do for you here, I will. But keep chasing the killer, after being told not to in as many words? It’d be as much as my life and yours are worth if the Chekist knew we’d even talked about it. And what do you even think we could accomplish, without a pass?”

  Perhaps the betrayal was not necessary for the way I felt. Perhaps every good student feels such anger for his teacher, submerged somewhere, latent. Why learn anything, if not to prove that your subordination in knowledge and skill was temporary, accidental? If not to annihilate the authority that sets the instructor above you? Petrovich had taught me something about interrogations, something about moving within the world of the camp. He’d certainly taught me something about betrayal. I understood better, now, the uses to which one human being could put another.

  “If you won’t help me protect myself,” I said, “maybe your colleagues here at KrimKab will. They might be interested to learn that they have a slug sharing their office.” He looked at me. I had expected the blue eyes to flash with their old sharpness, but they didn’t. Back inside my coat, my mutilated hand felt gigantic with pain, as if the opening of the pocket led to a much larger space. A barn, or a gymnasium. A hot, sour worm of nausea wriggled in my esophagus.

  “It’s your fault,” I said. “You gave him my name.”

  He sighed. “I did. But Tolya, I didn’t know what it would mean. That’s the truth. The first time I head anything about an escape was after he brought me to look at Antonov’s body. Before that, he only wanted updates on my cellmate—who he met with, where he went. Often enough, nothing comes out of these things. When I saw you standing there over the body, I knew I’d gotten you mixed up where you didn’t belong. But mostly you looked unhealthy. I thought I’d be doing you a favor by getting you away from Quarantine for a while.”

  “Was it doing a favor to report on me to him?”

  “By then I thought it would be better to continue. I never told him you were involved. From the first, I said I doubted it. When we met the men on the list, I was supposed to watch you, see if you gave any sign of knowing them. I thought I could get a read on you by seeing how you helped with the investigation, as well. And we calculated it would be an easy way to keep an eye on your movements. But it was obvious you knew nothing about it! He wasn’t happy when I let you go off to Kostrihe alone, but by that time I was convinced you had nothing to do with it.”

  “That was good of you,” I said bitterly.

  We stood in the half light of the hallway, not looking at each other. I was turning the meaning of what he’d just said over in time with my hand’s throbbing, and it almost surprised me when he spoke again, his voice thin and distant. “When I joined the force, Tolya …” He trailed off, then picked up his thread again. “When I joined the force, I was younger than you are now. They assassinated Tsar Alexander in Saint Petersburg when I was thirty-one, all those years ago. So in Odessa we dug into our own anarchists. Found out what they’d been saying, sent them away. Then on my fiftieth birthday they made me chief inspector for murder investigations, and I heard everything that happened between violent men and their women, their drinking partners. For fifty years, I was the police. Now I am supposed to be a criminal. It isn’t so easy to make the c
hange … Closing in on the truth becomes a habit. You see? Then, maybe, a compulsion. So now, seventy-six, I am on Solovetsky. I report what happens among the zeks around me. It hasn’t felt so different. It’s felt like—like a return to my life. Does that sound strange? Twelve years I spent, buried in my daughter’s kitchen.”

  The tone was more hesitant, more uncertain, than I’d ever heard from him. I let him wait for an answer. After a minute he went on, defending himself now: “After all, all I’ve reported is the truth. A man in the first big cell they put me in would make up misdeeds for you if he didn’t have anything to tell when they called him in. That was a slug. Or there are the ones who entrap you, the way you ended up here. That I’ve never done, not under the tsars and not now. Burrowing in towards the truth, that’s all I am good for.”

  “That is—” I stopped. My anger had receded. “It’s what we need. You’ve taught me a lot. But I can’t do the rest alone. I need your help.”

  He hemmed, a sound from deep in his chest. “We don’t even have a pass that will let us move around to make inquiries. What is it you think we can do?”

  I told him, as succinctly as I could. First what I’d learned about the accession numbers from Veronika, then what had emerged about Zhenov’s acquaintance with the White conspirators during my encounter with Luka. Finally I explained what I thought could be done.

  Petrovich listened. “Lucky Vinogradov is coming back to the kremlin this evening,” he said reflectively after I was done. “It all depends on your being right about him.”

  “If I’m not, I’ll be the only one in danger,” I said. “You’d be in a position to provide the Chekist some information he’d find interesting. That might be worth something to you.”

  The KrimKab door opened, and one of the faces that had watched us leave peered out. “Yakov Petrovich, are you —?” The man’s eyes widened when they fell on my hand. Without my noticing, it had emerged from my pocket again. I maneuvered it back in. “Oh. I—Aleksander Nikolayevich had a question. Just—come in when you’re finished.”