by James L. May
“And the supplies we were looking for,” said Petrovich. “You never found any sign of them?”
“No, no.”
I looked at the old man, but he was staring at Zhenov, who in turn heaved a sigh and pointed his face away. Into their hesitation, my frustration and fear erupted. What would Nat Pinkerton have done? He wouldn’t have let the man’s self-pity delay him. He’d have charged forward at the truth. “Tell me, Subcommandant Zhenov. Do you have any idea who they put in those coffins?”
“Yes.”
“They were for those late associates of yours, weren’t they? Fellow officers, executed by the Administration of this camp.”
He covered his eyes with one hand. “Oh God …”
“Show him the list, Yakov Petrovich.”
“Tolya,” said Petrovich warningly.
I went on: “Yakov Petrovich has a list of men Infosec was interested in in connection with our case.”
Reluctantly, Petrovich unbuttoned his coat and reached into it. He put the document he withdrew on the table in front of Zhenov. “Are any of your associates’ names on this list?”
Zhenov glanced at the paper as though it might scuttle towards him. He couldn’t have read every name with such a sidelong glance, but he gave a small nod.
“It’s quite a coincidence, isn’t it?” I said. “The coffins you helped build were used for your friends. And now those friends prove to be involved in the matter—a murder!—that we had already spoken about to you. Don’t you find it odd?”
“Tolya,” said Petrovich again.
Zhenov snatched the bottle from the table and drank from it before covering his eyes with his hands again. “Oh God … ,” he moaned.
“You never questioned what these coffins would be used for?” I said.
Zhenov shook his head. “I should have told you—” He stopped and took his hands away to look at the bottle, but didn’t drink any more. “It’s predictable. When a special order comes in for coffins, adding to the normal production schedule—it always means that something is planned by the main Administration. They make it a high-priority job. Whenever one of those orders come in from main Administration I—I know that they are contemplating it. Do you see what I mean? I didn’t think I should let it be known what they were planning. If you’d been supposed to know about the coffins, you would have already.” His eyes swung frantically back and forth between Petrovich’s face and mine. “But I didn’t know who they meant to put in them! I did not betray my comrades! I have my honor, by God!”
Not seeing what he hoped to see in our expressions, perhaps, he put his fist to his mouth. A gesture of sorrow, yes, but on his reddened, drunken face it was ridiculous, as though he were stifling a belch. He began to cry. On the other side of the screen, the card game erupted in laughter. I couldn’t tell whether it was in response to Zhenov, but he released a racking sob and laid his head down on the table. His flattened mustache spread on the tabletop beneath his cheek and lip, where it grew damp with tears.
It stopped me. How to handle this total collapse? After we’d stared at his slumped form for a moment in silence, Petrovich said quietly: “How is the encyclopedia of your scalp progressing?”
“Yakov Petrovich!” The subcommandant’s book of lost hairs struck me, at the moment, as worse than trivial.
“Damn it, you’ve asked your questions, let me ask mine.” Zhenov made no move to respond, and the old man went at him again. “Come, I want to hear about your project. What was the German professor’s name? Glockenbauer?”
“Gruenewald,” muttered Zhenov.
“Of course. Dr. Gruenewald. I see that you’re under some stress. I hope you are still maintaining his regimen.”
“Not since it happened,” muttered Zhenov.
“Not since it happened,” repeated Petrovich. “But isn’t this one of those times when you should be looking to your hair for guidance? If your record is ever worth anything, it should be worth something now, when your constitution is unbalanced.” He frowned down at the other man. “Not to say deranged. The key to general health, you said.”
“Go on, mock,” said Zhenov, his voice choked. “No one cares how you treat me, so why not?”
Petrovich shrugged. “I am only half mocking. I like to see a thing like your notebook of hairs carried through once it’s started. Maybe you’ve had a break of a few days in your record keeping. You should start again.”
Zhenov raised his head. “‘A break of a few days.’ You don’t understand. Gruenewald’s clear on this point. Regularity—it’s the only value of such a record. ‘How are we to rationalize upheavals in today’s follicular headscape without reference to that of the day immediately prior?’ That’s what he writes. Take it back up now, it means starting from the beginning again. What would be the point?”
I was on the verge of saying something, but a sudden wave of exhaustion overcame me. The urge to sit down, to close my eyes, was very strong. The pain in my hand, improved since being bandaged, had begun to get worse again as well. Let Petrovich talk about nonsense with the man. At least he’d induced him to raise his head from the table.
“A shame,” the old man was saying. “Even so, you must start over somewhere, eh?”
“Yes. Yes, I suppose.”
“Your friends, the ones on the list I showed you. They were all White officers, like you, I think.”
Zhenov sounded dazed. “Yes. Fellow officers. It’s not good here, to try to go it alone. We did each other favors as we could.”
“How did you come to know those men in particular? There are many Whites in the camp.”
“Adrian Albyertovich—surname Batishchev. His name was on your list.”
“Yes,” said Petrovich. “I spoke to him a few days ago.”
“We knew each other in the army. Fighting the Teutons. Artillery commander. Fine soldier—how I admired him! He wrote a letter that somehow reached me, telling me to come and join the Volunteer Army under Kornilov. By the time I was able to join them, Kornilov—Kornilov had been killed—in Ekaterinodar, you know—and Denikin was in command. Well, both of us ended up here. He introduced me to several others. A man of wide acquaintance.” He hiccuped sadly, then blinked and huffed, laboring to breathe through his fug of brandy. “Now he is dead and rotting. One of those they killed. And Nail Terekhov! He has been missing for days, they say. He was not one of the executed. He is only gone!”
Petrovich caught my eye and shook his head. I supposed he was right. I could think of little to be gained by confronting Zhenov with what had really happened to Terekhov.
The old man cleared his throat. “The rumor is they were making plans to escape. A plan to leave the island somehow, perhaps flee to Finland. Had you heard about anything of the sort?”
Zhenov nodded slowly, making a face. “Yes. I began to hear of it when I came back from Anzer. The morning after they’d been … But all of that’s nonsense. Idiocy. They would never have been so foolish. They were bold men, military. Capable. Not stupid. What chance would they have had to escape? In that case why would they have tried it? And if there had been such a plan, I’d have known.”
“All right,” said Petrovich. “But if someone set up your friends, who’d have known they were all in communication with each other? Could they have been meeting somewhere you didn’t know about?”
“They wouldn’t have kept it from me,” Zhenov insisted. “Anyone—anyone might’ve known. I do well here, or I used to. I would lay out a table of pickles and herring in my office, if I could manage it. I met them, often, in my office or my quarters. Or here, for a cup of something, tea or vodka. No secret about it. About our acquaintance.”
“Did any of your friends ever mention Antonov? Our victim?”
“No. No. Why would they have done? I didn’t lie before, when I told you I’d never heard of him.”
Zhenov began
to sob again. He did it quietly this time, but with little hiccups and embellishments—it was elaborate weeping. The tears ran into the fuzz on his cheeks. At first he tried to wipe them away, but after a moment gave up and cried freely, jamming his fingers up into his hair. Under the assault of whatever grief he was feeling, his mustachioed face creased and distended until it resembled the portrait of an infant.
When the storm of weeping had passed, he appeared to realize what he was doing to his scalp. He removed his hands gingerly from his head and patted the bent hairs back into shape, sniffling. Tears still ran from his eyes.
“Why do I bother?” he said. “Now that my record has been disrupted, it is pointless.”
“All you can do is start again,” said Petrovich.
The way Zhenov gulped, you could hear the slick muscles of his throat moving. “They’ll kill me, too,” he whispered. “Soon they’ll kill me, too.”
It was probably true, but I didn’t care to stay and commiserate. We’d heard enough. I could hear the old man’s cane thumping behind me as I left. When we had reached the courtyard I felt his grip on my arm, familiar and weak.
“Tolya, wait. You need to listen to me. We won’t produce the best results simply by charging forward. Even with these dangers bearing down on us, you won’t be able to bully your way to a solution. Tease out information, then put it to use. Understand? If tonight you approach Vinogradov the way you tried with Zhenov, you will be finished.”
“I don’t need your lecture,” I said. “And I thought bullying people into talking was part of your program.”
“Of course it is. Only not all of the time. You have to be able to see when someone like Zhenov needs to be allowed to go on about his favorite subject.”
I wanted him to be wrong, but what he said made sense. Zhenov was a fool, but Petrovich had kept him talking and gotten us more information—even if it still wasn’t clear in what manner it could be put to use.
Nat Pinkerton be damned—Petrovich was who I had. Whether I liked it or not, there was no one to trust but him.
27
The stairwell was dark, but at the top a little light came under the door onto the landing. That meant the usual small group had gathered at the museum. They would be chatting quietly, or working separately at their desks. It had been like this the times I’d come to meet with Antonov. For a moment, it was as if he was waiting for me on the other side of the door. But only for a moment. Under layers of glove and bandage, cold knotted my throbbing hand.
I’d left Petrovich back at Company Ten. The plan depended on his staying safe there while I caught up with Vinogradov. Neither of us knew where the museum director quartered, but it seemed likely he would come directly to the museum upon his return to the kremlin. If he didn’t, I hoped I’d be able to get one of the museum’s workers to take me to wherever he had gone. If no one would—well, it wasn’t an option.
I had to find Vinogradov tonight. My breath came short at the thought of what I would need to do, how I would need to work on him. The plan had seemed straightforward when I’d concocted it that afternoon, but now I wasn’t so sure.
It was Ivanov who answered my knock. Again his smallness surprised me. He held a lamp, which he raised to my face as he peered up at me. “You. You were here with the old man the other day. What do you want?” Behind him the room was dim. Light from the lamp glinted on gilt and polished wood. Its beams shone back from the painted eyes of saints.
“Bogomolov. My name is Bogomolov. Your director returns tonight. Is he here?”
He stuck out his chest. “No. His sledges haven’t arrived yet.” His hand stayed on the door.
“I’ll wait,” I said.
“There’s no time for that tonight. Come back tomorrow.”
“No. It has to be tonight. He’s going to want to hear what I have to say.”
The Anti-Religious Bug. The name had seemed amusing the other day, but popping into my head now, it only aggravated me. He looked me over again. “Where’s the old man?”
“I told you,” I said. “Vinogradov’s going to want to hear. I spoke to him the other day, on Kostrihe.”
For another moment or two I could hear the breath in my nose while we stared at each other. Then he took his hand from the door and turned back for his desk. “The director will decide that himself. You can sit. Don’t touch anything.”
I shut the door deliberately, wounded hand still in my pocket. There were fewer men inside than I’d pictured. The faces that registered my entrance were smudges in the gloom. Two or three more lamps made little pools of light, limited to the desktops they sat on.
Ivanov must have noticed me stepping over to the arched window left of his desk, but he declined to acknowledge it, and took the seat from which my knock must have disturbed him. I stared down into the courtyard, then let my forehead rest against the cold glass. With the light behind me, no one looking up from the dark below would be able to tell who I was. But now that I was inside I could feel my heart racing. The short walk from Company Ten had been harrowing, every silhouette passed on the path outlining a possible enemy. I reassured myself: no one had been watching as I opened the little door to the museum’s stairs, there by the Holy Gate. The man who’d asked after me that afternoon would still believe I was in the infirmary.
“I say. Bogomolov, wasn’t it?”
It was Sewick, head cataloger and aspirant conspirator. In his way, the man was guileless. The need to know everyone’s business perched on his face like his glasses. I nodded.
“Of course, of course.” His gaze darted at Ivanov, whose frown pointedly ignored us. “May I offer you a seat? There is a chair, you see, there, over at my desk.”
Sewick’s was one of the desks with a lamp on it. A heavy, loden-green coat hung over the back of his chair. Behind that, the catalog’s three scuffed cases hinted at geometry in the dim light.
“I see the assistant director continues to throw up obstacles to your inquiries,” Sewick said. “That’s to be expected from him. He’s a personally difficult man, but you must not make too much of his obstructionism. Of course I am not privy to all that you’ve learned. Maybe from your perspective… ?” He trailed off.
“Listen,” I said. “I need to check something in your catalog.”
He sat to attention. “Of course. I’d be happy to help you find anything. What is it you’re looking for?”
“I can’t say yet. Maybe I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Well.” He was nonplussed, and for a moment visibly weighed complaining. “Yes, of course. Make free. Do let me know if you locate anything of use.”
To my relief, finding 7.38 was not difficult. Vinogradov’s collection encompassed more than I’d realized, its thirty-four categories ranging from “1: Manuscripts” and “2: Icons” to “22: Biological Specimens—Flora” and “34: Artistic and Literary Productions of SLON Inmates.” “Chapel Paraphernalia” was the seventh. Within each grouping, items appeared simply to have been arranged in the order the museum staff had happened on them. I could have gone directly to the correct drawer, but I was aware of Sewick glancing over his shoulder to see what I was doing. Veronika’s accession number would be less valuable with Vinogradov the more people knew about it. To throw him off the track I spent ten minutes flipping through drawers I had no interest in.
When I finally came to 7.38, it communicated little to me. Rizi. Set of two. Silver. 88 zol. Unident. (smith) Pavel Dmitriyev (assay) Saint Petersburg 1845. Provenance unknown. An expert might have gleaned more. But this was enough. Rizi were icon covers, used to protect and conceal the surface of a painting. Usually they would leave a cutout to show a saint’s face, and perhaps the hands as well. I’d asked Antonov once whether he didn’t resent having his repairs hidden away, but he’d said it was respectful to protect the holy work. What mattered was that it was there, and revered, not that anyone saw the paint.
I shook my head. No, what mattered was that the things were silver. “Zol.”—zolotniki—were a measure of purity. I seemed to recall that 88 was a high grade. Item 7.38 would be valuable, even melted down.
I opened a few more drawers in one of the other cases, then made an excuse to Sewick about needing to check on something among Antonov’s papers. At his desk, the icon of Saint George was still there. The dragon writhed as it had before, porcine and smoke-tendriled. The princess’s red thread still bound its neck.
Finally the sounds of unmusical clinking and men’s voices rising and falling came from outside: the expedition’s sledges were being drawn up below us. Ivanov rose and hurried down the stairs. Before long he returned, trotting at Vinogradov’s heels like a bulldog.
The director stopped when he saw me. “Anatoly Bogomolov, wasn’t it?” he said. “From Saint Petersburg University. Mathematics. Ivanov tells me you wish to speak to me.”
“I wanted to know about one of the items in your collection.” I said it quietly, so only the two of them could hear. “Accession number 7.38.”
“7.38?”
“A pair of silver rizi.”
His narrow mustache twitched minutely while he thought it over. It was not quite as square as when I’d seen it before, and on the whole his face appeared more human, less molded or fashioned, than it had when we’d met on the cape. He looked tired. “All right. Ivanov and I have a few matters that must be discussed, but I will be with you shortly. Wait here.”
The two men were shut up in the office for perhaps twenty minutes. When Ivanov came out, he still looked sour.
“You can go in,” he said.
Vinogradov’s office was, in fact, the chapel’s sacristy. A short hall separated it from what had been the sanctuary. Inside, the little room was neat but crowded with objects on every surface: a delicate porcelain cup patterned and blue around its rim; a lion cast in bronze; a minute enameled box whose lid showed a peasant girl on a black field, surrounded by vines with red and yellow leaves. Three high filing cabinets filled one wall completely. Leaning against them was a stack of five or six canvases. They were evidently modern paintings, not icons. I could make out only the topmost, a kind of brown, cubist portrait that was difficult to decipher.
