‘We’ve done it?’ Beziki asked.
The commissar looked down at him. ‘Yes,’ he said, clapping the boy on the shoulder, ‘we’ve done it. Now, stand still …’
Digging into the backpack Beziki carried, the commissar found the loaf of black bread and chunk of cheese the boy had stolen that morning when he thought no one was looking. Nodding at the Romanian girl, he said, ‘Take your little friend somewhere and share this. I’m sure she’ll be grateful.’
When Beziki got back, the commissar was questioning a nondescript German in an ill-fitting uniform. The man was carrying a rabbit rifle.
A woman came down the steps of the house crying, wrapped her arms round Dr Schultz and held him so tightly he might as well have been straitjacketed. After a moment, his hand came up to stroke his wife’s hair and she buried her face in his neck and began wailing. Behind her, a blond boy of about fifteen and a girl a few years younger looked on, embarrassed. They’d had a day or two to adjust to being safe and to turn back into children. Although the manicured lawns of the strange concrete house, the blossom on the neatly pruned cherry trees and the neat rows of peas in the vegetable garden suggested that the war had never come that close.
The only person who didn’t look happy was a hard-faced woman in her sixties dressed entirely in black, who didn’t bother to hide her contempt either for the returning man or for his new Russian friends. Eventually, Dr Schultz peeled his wife’s arms from around his neck, took her hand and led her inside. When they reappeared an hour later, he was freshly shaved, his mismatched uniform had gone and he was wearing a dark suit, white shirt and red tie. She was smiling.
‘My turn,’ Lieutenant Golubtsov said. He dug into his pocket for a notebook with a pencil pushed into the gap between the sewn pages and the spine. When he flipped it open, the commissar was surprised to see the pages were empty.
‘You’ve memorized the questions?’
The boy looked embarrassed, as if the commissar had just said something stupid. ‘There aren’t questions, as such, Comrade Colonel. I simply need to make sure our German understands his physics, that the answers he gives me make sense.’
‘And you’re qualified to judge that?’
‘Oh yes, sir. I mean … I hope so.’
Having misplaced them, the commissar found Golubtsov and Dr Schultz two hours later in the garden, drinking tea from china cups and eating pepper biscuits, with their heads bent together as if they were old friends. The notebook that had been empty was now full and Golubtsov was grinning.
‘He’s the real thing?’
‘Oh yes, sir. Very definitely. He’s absolutely brilliant. I’ve just been telling him how much he’ll enjoy life at Moscow University.’
‘You’ve explained the travel arrangements?’
‘Yes, Comrade Colonel …’
The German would leave on a flight from Tempelhof to Moscow first thing next morning. The rest of his family would follow by train within the week. That would allow them to take their prized possessions.
‘And the poodles?’ the lieutenant asked. ‘He really can’t take the poodles?’
‘They’ll be well looked after,’ the commissar replied, knowing he’d shoot the animals the moment the family was gone. When the lieutenant asked something, Dr Schultz nodded firmly, patting his pockets.
‘What did you just ask?’
‘If he had all his working notes. Those are to go with him on the plane. My father was quite firm about that.’
‘Your father?’
The boy named a high-ranking member of the NKVD, a man whose position gave him direct access to Beria, possibly to Stalin himself.
‘Who else knows of this?’
‘That my father’s Beria’s right-hand man?’
The commissar winced.
‘Kyukov asked. Then Dennisov. I thought they were being funny. I thought you knew. People always know.’
‘Well,’ the commissar said, ‘we didn’t. You can travel on the same plane. Dr Schultz will need someone to babysit him. I’m sure you’ll do fine.’
An hour later, the general who had given the commissar the job of retrieving Dr Schultz called. Having praised Colonel Milov’s success, and saying that he’d never doubted for a minute the colonel’s competence, loyalty or ability, he added that he’d be happier if Lieutenant Golubtsov remained in place. His father would also regard it favourably. The boy spent too much time wrapped up in his books. It wouldn’t hurt him to get a little experience of the real world …
What he meant, the commissar realized, was that it wouldn’t hurt for the boy’s father to be able to say his son had been in Berlin. After the battles were done, of course. But why mention that? The boy could go back to his university with a handful of medals and a couple of photographs of himself in uniform.
Glittering careers had been built on less.
‘Comrade General …’
‘You do know who his father is, don’t you?’
‘I do now,’ the commissar said.
There was silence on the line.
‘I mean,’ said the commissar, ‘I can think of nothing better than the chance to fly home, to be safe with my family.’
‘Your wife is dead. Your father is dead. I was under the impression that your lover was with you …’
‘Russia is my family. I was speaking figuratively.’
‘Of course you were.’
The line went dead.
The next time the commissar saw Golubtsov he was with Dennisov and Kyukov and they were heading out in the lend-lease Jeep. The lieutenant had a borrowed helmet pulled low over his face, a hunting rifle jutting from between his knees and a bottle of champagne in his hand.
Kyukov was grinning.
‘Sir … Sir …’
The commissar came awake without even realizing he’d pulled the Tokarev from under his pillow until Beziki twisted away and threw up his hands as if to ward off a bullet. Dropping out the magazine, the commissar worked the slide to eject the round he’d jacked into the chamber on instinct.
‘We’re under attack?’
‘No, sir.’
‘The war’s ended?’
The boy shook his head.
‘Stalin himself is on the phone?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Then why the fuck are you waking me at whatever time of night this is and who the fuck said you could enter my room without knocking?’
‘Sir. I think you’d better come.’
‘What is it?’
‘You’d better see for yourself.’
At the front door, the commissar found Dr Schultz, his wife and son being prevented from leaving by Maya and a sergeant he only vaguely recognized.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came to see you,’ Maya said. ‘Unfortunately for me.’
Telling the sergeant to keep the family inside, she led the commissar down the steps. For all its brutalist concrete and glass, Dr Schultz’s house looked so peaceful at night in its tended gardens the commissar wondered if Allied pilots had been told not to bomb it. The Red Army had certainly had.
‘Golubtsov’s missing,’ she said. ‘Kyukov and Dennisov have taken the jeep. They’ve gone to find him. They sent Beziki to Golubtsov’s room to see why he’d gone to bed early and Beziki found … He found a blood-covered dagger. One of those swastika ones. You’re not going to like this.’
She led the commissar between the cherry trees towards a stable block beyond them. Beziki stood by the stable door, looking green in the light of the hurricane lamp he held in his shaking hands. There was vomit at his feet.
‘Who’s in there?’
‘No one, sir.’
‘No one?’
‘Except …’ Turning aside, the boy spewed what was left of his supper on to the cobbles of the stable yard. He was still apologizing when the commissar said: ‘Give that to me.’
Taking Beziki’s lamp, he pushed open the door.
Inside was hotter than hell. Ba
les of straw piled against the walls generated their own heat. It took him a moment to notice anything wrong. For a split second after that, his mind simply refused to accept what he was seeing.
Hanging by her heels from a rafter, Dr Schultz’s younger child was a flayed mockery of everything that had once been human. It was only when he got closer that he realized she was still alive. Raw flesh glistened with lymph from where her body had fought to protect itself.
Her eyes watched him get closer, her shoulders hunching at the sight of his uniform.
Black blood at her mouth made him realize her tongue had been cut out. Stepping back, he lifted the lamp to force himself to look at her and managed only a moment. Then he flicked open his lock knife, put his hand to her back, wincing as she arched away with a silent scream. As his blade slid between her ribs, she stiffened and then her body went slack.
37
Questions and Answers
‘The boy tied to the chair is Golubtsov?’
‘It destroyed his father. Destroyed us too. We simply didn’t realize it at the time. For a month or two we thought we’d got away with it. No one else knew the truth. There was no reason why they should. Then things got complicated … We have no choice. That was what the commissar said.’ Beziki sounded sick. ‘You know Milov’s daughter killed herself? I lost my sons. Vedenin’s boy is dead. Your friend Dennisov refuses to have anything to do with his father. We brought this on ourselves.’
There was such despair in Gabashville’s eyes that Tom wondered what he was missing. The man in front of him was thinner than Tom remembered, his face almost hollowed out with misery. Skin and flesh folded over nothing inside.
‘You gave him a clean death?’
‘You know we didn’t. You don’t tie people to chairs if you intend to give them a clean death. You put them against a wall.’
‘It was war,’ Tom said. ‘Bad things happen.’
‘You don’t understand …’
What didn’t he understand? Tom thought of Beziki at Vladimir Vedenin’s funeral, on the edge of things, and wrapped in his sable coat, like the ghost of Hamlet’s father. Vedenin’s tight politeness to the other old men. The bitterness with which General Dennisov watched the proceedings. The way the commissar ignored the general entirely. What should that tell him? Apart from the fact that they seemed more like a family trapped by old hatreds than the rulers of one of the most powerful states in the world.
Trapped …
That was the answer.
What could trap men like these?
‘It wasn’t really him?’ Tom said. ‘Golubtsov wasn’t the killer?’
Beziki looked more haunted than ever. ‘We thought it was,’ he said. ‘For God’s sake, I found the knife in his room. What was I meant to think?’
‘You were meant to think that.’
‘Yeah. Only Golubtsov was untouchable. But then another flayed body turned up and the commissar decided he wasn’t untouchable after all. So we did …’ Beziki reached blindly for his glass, realized it was almost empty and drank the drops in the bottom. ‘We did what the commissar said we had to do.’
‘And another flayed body turned up?’
Beziki gazed at Tom, owl-like.
It wasn’t that hard to work out though. If the murders had ended with Golubtsov’s death, all this would be a grim memory, walled off and consigned to wherever grim memories go to be ignored if they can’t be forgotten. The answer could only be that they’d killed the son of Marshal Beria’s deputy and the murders had kept happening.
‘They decided it was me,’ Beziki said.
‘But it wasn’t?’
‘The commissar thought it was. He thought I’d tricked him by blaming Golubtsov. I couldn’t believe it. I was their mascot. I thought we were friends.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Not me,’ Beziki said fiercely. ‘That’s the only thing I know for certain. Dennisov maybe. Vedenin. For a long time I thought it was the commissar. I figured that had to be his reason for trying to blame me.’
‘What happened to the Schultz family?’
‘Dr Schultz flew out the next morning, shaking and distraught that his daughter had been raped and strangled. That was what the commissar said had happened. His wife and son left the day after. Only his mother-in-law refused to go, said she wasn’t going to live among rapists and murderers. It didn’t matter that we told her renegade Nazis had done it. She was a Nazi. She didn’t believe us.
‘When the British took over our sector, the bitch went to them and reported her granddaughter’s death as a crime. For reasons I don’t understand, a young lieutenant decided to investigate. I’m told the commissar recently indicated that, purely for historic reasons, he’d like a copy of that report. London refused.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’
‘Work it out.’ Pouring Tom another chacha, Beziki took another for himself and pushed across the silver desk lighter when Tom reached for his papirosa.
‘Want one?’ Tom asked.
‘I prefer these.’ Beziki extracted a robusto from his burr walnut humidor, lighting the cigar slowly. ‘They were good boys, my sons. Better than me at that age anyway. I know you were there when Misha died. My contacts are good. I knew within half a day. So, tell me what happened.’
Looking at the revolver on the desk, Tom wondered if that would be wise.
‘Please,’ Beziki said.
‘Your boy was in a turret with a rabbit rifle. Single shot, lever action, small calibre.’
‘A tenth birthday present. I’d have given him mine, the one I first used to shoot Germans, but it was lost in the war.’
‘He was good,’ Tom said, knowing that was important.
‘I taught him myself. We shot pumpkins, then melons, then apples.’
‘It was dark when we arrived. Spetsnaz had been watching the house since the afternoon. It was surrounded on all sides and they’d been told, at least I was told that they’d been told, it was occupied by a cult.’ Tom hesitated. ‘I’m sure Vedenin thought Alex Masterton was there.’
Beziki had been in enough battles to know it stank before Tom was halfway through his story. Tom stressed how good a shot Beziki’s son was, how one boy with a rabbit rifle pinned down Internal Troops.
‘Briefly,’ Beziki said.
‘Yes,’ Tom said. ‘Briefly.’
He told the man how his son had kept fighting to the end, how an officer had closed the boy’s eyes in death and covered him with a curtain as a mark of respect. Beziki listened and Tom had no idea what he thought, because his eyes were shadowed and his face hidden behind cigar smoke the light from the alley wasn’t bright enough to cut through. When Tom reached the part about the locked door to the cellar, Beziki leaned forward, listening intently.
‘They were told they were having a day out,’ Beziki said.
That was when Tom knew Beziki’s contacts really were good.
There’d been no mention of the siege in the press. No mention of children missing from any orphanage or children’s home. Nothing about a cult, a deserted house, an attack by Internal Troops or a dead delinquent found on a landing below an octagonal wooden turret. From what Tom had heard, Beziki had been summoned to the central morgue and invited to identify the multiply-shot boy on the slab as his son.
It was an intentional cruelty.
The state killed the boy and the state buried the boy and his father’s involvement simply extended to being invited to identify a corpse and being notified of the time of his son’s funeral. ‘He was given a choice,’ Beziki said. ‘My life or his.’
Picking up the revolver, he looked down its barrel, shrugged and spun the cylinder, which clattered like a rattle. ‘There are people you should kill the first time you meet them. People you do kill but shouldn’t have. Both of those will come back to haunt you.’ He looked at Tom and smiled sadly. ‘You know this. Of course you know this. Some people kill from hate, some from duty. Some love the thrill. Others do it to keep bored
om at bay …
‘I couldn’t give up my comrades. Not even for my sons. My sons wouldn’t give me up. I don’t know what they told my first boy. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps they simply killed him and dumped him in front of the Kremlin. But I know they told Misha that if he fought they’d let me live. If he didn’t, they’d kill him and kill me anyway.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Someone told me.’
‘Beziki. Which someone?’
‘He’s in a cellar, tied to a chair.’
Erekle Gabashville – gangster and father, veteran and renegade – thumbed back the hammer on his revolver and flipped the cylinder.
‘They?’ Tom said.
‘Is that your question?’
Beziki lifted the revolver, the heavy desk a barrier between them. His thumb found the hammer and his finger threaded through the trigger guard. His gaze was clear and his hand surprisingly steady. ‘Let’s assume that’s your question.’
He pointed his revolver at Tom.
Its hammer fell in a dry click.
‘Beziki …’
Into the silence that followed, Beziki said, ‘There’s only ever been one “they”. You should understand that.’ He tossed a newish Party card on to the desk between them. It flipped open on a youthful face Tom didn’t recognize.
‘He’s nobody,’ Beziki warned. ‘Ask who and waste a turn.’
‘Do you know where Alex is?’
Spinning the cylinder, Beziki lifted the revolver to his head and, without giving himself time to hesitate, pulled the trigger.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I do.’
‘Where?’
‘That’s a different question. My turn. Did you kill Vladimir Vedenin?’
‘Beziki, for God’s sake …’
‘Do you want to find this girl or not?’
What glued him to this chair, Tom wondered. A certainty that it would end like this? As if he had ever imagined it would end like this. The fact he didn’t want to appear a coward? The fact he was getting too drunk to stand? Or was it that he wanted to find Alex? He wanted that more than anything in the world. Beziki pulled the trigger while Tom was still wondering.
Moskva Page 26
