Zaitsev opened and closed his giant, pistol-burned fists as though warming up for a fight. His pinkish eyes became a little redder and more fixed, those of a man sighting a natural enemy. Vasin met his gaze. I know you too.
“You’re weak and subversive, Vasin,” snapped Zaitsev. “Hid from the war. Got yourself a fancy education in Moscow. Had privileges. You may impress Adamov. You may even impress your man Orlov. I see you for what you are. You’re anti-Soviet. I can smell it on you.”
Vasin stiffened at the mention of Orlov’s name, but swallowed the insult. Did Zaitsev know about Katya? Vasin guessed not. The General would have blurted it out long before if he’d known. No, Zaitsev wasn’t a man to play a long game. He would grab every weapon available and swing them wildly. But right now he was standing his ground, immovable as a bull. Perhaps the stubborn old bruiser could be coaxed. With a supreme effort, Vasin willed down his anger and desperation and answered calmly.
“You have accorded me much courtesy here in Arzamas, General.” Vasin kept his eyes firmly on Zaitsev; he knew that if he looked at Efremov his voice would crack. “I will report truthfully that your investigation has been admirable and thorough and that you have cooperated fully. This will be recognized in Moscow at the highest levels. Why spoil all of this now, at the eleventh hour? You have agreed to give me the report. So do it, now. That is my final request. You have my word that I will leave for Moscow in the morning, and you will have the gratitude of all those who sent me.”
The General looked at Vasin more narrowly, as though weighing up his recognition in Moscow, his promotion, his decorations. Efremov cleared his throat, about to object, but his boss spoke over him.
“If you’re lying to me, Vasin, God help you.”
Vasin saluted smartly. As he turned to leave, he cradled the papers to his chest. And once he reached the corridor Vasin broke into a run.
II
The smooth soles of his little-worn uniform boots slipped on the slushy sidewalk as he hurried along Peace Prospekt. A board in the Univermag’s lobby announced that the toy department was on the fourth floor. He stopped a closing lift door with his boot and pushed his way into the crowded car, catching sight of his kontora tails panting in his wake. Good. Children’s toys would be the last department they would think to check.
Masha had ditched her electric blue mackintosh. He saw her dressed in a dark head scarf, crouching above a baby carriage and cooing over an infant. Vasin joined a scattering of men in the crowd of browsing young women and placed himself in Masha’s line of vision, pretending to admire some tin soldiers. She waved to the baby and walked briskly in the direction of the lifts. He followed. Vasin passed Masha in the lift vestibule, grabbed her arm, and swung her through the double doors that led to the stairwell.
“Through here. My fat boys won’t be taking the stairs.” He retreated to the top of the staircase, where he could observe the lift lobby through glass panels in the doors. He placed Masha in front of him as a barrier. “Stand there. I’m keeping watch over your shoulder. Tell me where we’re going.”
If Masha was alarmed by his evasion tactics, she made no sign.
“The basement.”
Vasin made a quick calculation. A uniformed man and a pretty girl would turn too many heads on the stairs. They’d take the elevator.
“Wait until one of them comes out.”
On cue, the lift doors opened and a heavyset man elbowed his way ahead of a gaggle of Arzamas matrons and headed toward the men’s clothes department. What was it about some kontora goons that made them as conspicuous as clowns in makeup? Pulling Masha behind him, Vasin darted into the downward-bound elevator car. They stood in opposite corners, avoiding each other’s eyes like cats, as the shoppers filed in and out on each floor.
In the basement corridor Masha took charge. Instead of turning toward the cafeteria, she banged through a pair of service doors marked NO ENTRY. She led him past a bank of industrial freezers and through a storeroom. No store clerks were in evidence. Presumably Guri’s doing.
Producing a key, Masha opened a steel door in the far corner and flicked a light switch. An iron staircase led down into another catacomb. There was a reek of damp, and of coal. Vasin closed and bolted the door before following her disappearing back down the steps. They reached an old stone vault, similar to Guri’s subterranean private office, and also stacked to the ceiling with more boxes of contraband. In one corner was an electric heater and a cot made up neatly, Army style.
Without speaking, Masha folded Vasin in a tight embrace. Vasin allowed himself to enjoy the feel of her in his arms before breaking off.
“Wait. I need to talk to you.”
Masha stepped away from him. Her eyes were green-gray and lucid and seemed, to him, dangerously innocent. A militant simplicity gazed out from them upon a complicated world. What it is to be untamed, he thought. She feels, therefore she is.
“More secrets, Sasha?”
“No. No more secrets.”
“Quite sure?”
Vasin hesitated. The lab report was stuffed conspicuously into his mackintosh pocket. Masha followed his involuntary downward glance, then met his eyes again. She smiled tightly, a twist in the center of her face.
“Fine. You have no more secrets. Thank God.”
“Masha, I…”
“Please, keep them to yourself. So you wanted to see me about electric train sets, apparently.”
They both smiled at the same time, in the same way.
“I like the casual look.” Her voice was teasing. “You took time out of your busy day to meet. You’ve been missing me.”
Vasin looked down at his unpolished leather pistol holder, creased tunic, mud-splashed boots.
Masha turned and bounced a couple of times on the bed, testing the springs.
“You said you trusted Guri. How do you know he doesn’t have this place bugged?”
“No wires.”
She nodded toward the iron staircase and the bare vault. A single, antique electrical cord snaked down the unplastered stone wall to a metal lamp. Masha was right—not a modern, plastic wire in sight, and nowhere to hide one.
“Smart girl.”
“Heard it said.”
“About your last dinner with Petrov. I want to know what his mood was. Tell me what happened.”
The teasing tone of Masha’s voice had become strained.
“Korin arrived first, grim, as ever. Then Adamov and Fyodor came together. They were exhausted too. Everyone’s always exhausted around here. We had made potato soup, and the men talked bombs. Like always.”
“Do you remember if they mentioned the design of the tamper?”
Something behind Masha’s face closed like a trap, but she kept her voice deliberately light.
“They talk of nothing else but uranium and tampers and deuterium and lithium-hexa-something. If I understood what they were talking about, I would make the best spy in the world.”
“So they didn’t talk about a uranium tamper?”
“You’re starting to be insufferable. They talked about what they always talk about, including tampers.”
“They didn’t argue?”
“They always argued.”
“Angrily?”
“Korin’s always angry about something. Adamov never is. Nor was Petrov. Too cool to lose his temper about anything, him.”
“Did you speak to Petrov, privately? About Axelrod, the photos you showed me?”
Finally Masha’s composure broke.
“What would I have said to him? ‘You’re a foul pervert who has no right to breathe God’s good air’?”
Masha’s sudden anger stopped Vasin’s questions. Masha, too, seemed discomfited by her own loss of control. She stood and began to examine the boxes on the shelves wi
th apparent fascination.
“Oooh look. This is good. I’ve just run out. Guri’s got a new shipment of Kot—”
“I know that type. Your Guri. Wouldn’t trust him.”
“Know the type, do you?” An edge of mockery had crept into her voice.
“Put plenty of them behind bars. Jolly Georgians. Be careful.”
“You live with wolves, you learn to howl like a wolf.”
“You lived with wolves?”
“Sure. Maybe I’ll tell you about it one day. And I know how to deal with men like Guri. He’s a kitten, not a wolf.”
“Until he needs to save his own skin. Then you see the fangs.”
“You talk to me like I’m a kid.”
“Listen, Masha, when you’ve seen what I’ve seen…”
Masha silenced him with a hard little fist that smacked into his arm with surprising force.
“Don’t know me very well, do you, buster? I’ve seen some things too, Vasin.”
She was standing very close. He took hold of her upper arms. Through the thick material of her winter coat Vasin could feel how skinny she was, her limbs fragile as a sparrow’s.
“Sorry. I know you have.”
Masha twisted away from his grip. Her eyes lit with a spark of defiance that he had seen before.
“You keep asking me about that damn dinner, but you want to know a real secret? My secret? I killed a man once. Yes. I fucking did. It was in Leningrad. During the siege. We lived by wolves’ laws. Hunting for food wherever we could find it. Running with a gang. Orphans like me ran in packs. I was a kid, fourteen, and I got caught by an air-raid warning in alien territory while scavenging. Early morning. I’d scrambled into a shelter in a cellar on Pushkin Street. People would take everything with them during the air raids, and some of them croaked down there. They were good places to look for grub. Then, just my luck, it was an actual air raid. There was nobody left fit in the city to crank a hand siren by that time. But some Kommandatura had an electric one, and it started singing out like a bitch.”
Masha’s tone and vocabulary had unconsciously slipped into the rhythms of the Leningrad streets. She sat back down on the bed to continue the story.
“The shelter starts filling up. People stagger in, looking like corpses. Unlucky for me. I would have preferred to find real corpses with ration books in their fucking pockets. We sit there in the piss-stinking dark, listening to some poor idiots catching some heavy shit over my way, toward Moscow Station. I start to think of my crew, our food stash. Then a man comes down into the shelter, fast. The ring of good boots on the steps. Ogo, I think. Someone’s doing well for themselves. He lights a candle stub, sniffs, looks around. A well-fed mug, padded cotton coat. Not an officer, then. A criminal. Looked around like he was some kind of underworld king. Maybe he was, but I never saw one without a pack of mongrels looking out for his back. He was alone. He takes one look at me and steps right over. Puts the candle down on the floor. Kicks my feet out from under me and lays me down. Starts rifling my clothes for food, I think at first. No one in the shelter says anything. They are in this shitty place, but their minds are elsewhere. He straddles me and starts yanking off my boots. Son of a bitch wants my boots, I think. Then his hands are pulling down my trousers. He gets one leg of my britches off. Now I know what he wants. The knife I carry in my boot clatters on the floor. While he’s busy getting his dick out, I find the steel in the shadows. I wait for him to slump down on top of me, then slip it under his ribs. Before he manages to slip anything into me, in case you’re wondering. Blade goes in beautiful smooth. I hold it fast while he thrashes about. His hot blood spills onto my bare belly. Man, that guy could swear…When I finally get out from under him, I find three watches and half a kilo of sugar in his pockets. A good bayonet. A handful of manual workers’ ration books, with ID cards. They were worth two hundred and fifty grams of bread a day, each. The man was a treasure trove. Course, the other vultures in the cellar choose that moment to pay attention, start closing in. I had to threaten to cut them to keep ’em away and got the hell out of there. We lived on that haul pretty much to the end of the siege. Maybe I should be grateful to that rapist piece of shit.”
Masha had become a person Vasin did not recognize. Her voice was shrill and flinty, her face hard. When she looked up at him he saw steel in her, an open ferocity.
“Don’t you dare tell me I can’t look after myself.”
“I saw that on the roof of the Kino.”
Masha flushed with anger. Vasin backtracked.
“I mean—of course you can look after yourself. But I wanted to say that I’ve seen…madness. My sister, like I told you. It’s more powerful than any person’s will. You mustn’t be ashamed. You have it in you. And you know it. God knows, it’s understandable after what you’ve—”
“I’m not crazy.”
“If you say so.”
A tense, silent space opened between them. Masha stood, shaking her whole body like a wet dog and reassembling her image as a Party housewife. The coiffed hair, the nicely pronounced vowels. But Vasin could not shake the image of the young Masha, a wet rat in a cellar, sliding her knife into a man’s chest. The blade going in “beautiful smooth.”
Masha put her arms around him. One hand closed over the report in his pocket.
“Time to trade,” she whispered in his ear. “I told you my secret. Ready to tell me yours?”
Vasin’s hand clasped over hers, preventing Masha from pulling out the roll of paper. Her smile spread unnaturally wide as she refused to relinquish her hold on the document.
“Fair’s fair. You can tell me. You can.”
She had begun the sentence in a tone of girlish cajoling—but by the time she reached the last syllable her voice had become hard.
“No.”
Vasin untangled her arms from around him.
“I have to go. My entourage will be looking for me.”
He turned toward the staircase.
“Vasin. Sasha. Wait.”
He found himself incapable of resisting the pleading in her voice. The vicious, foulmouthed version of Masha had disappeared, leaving a vulnerable young woman.
“Sasha. Tell me. Am I really crazy?”
“We’ll talk it over later.”
Vasin tried to make his voice consoling. But he was thinking of the earlier flash of fire in Masha’s eyes, the hard grip of her hand on the document.
She stepped forward to embrace him once more, but he was already moving toward the stairs and out of the door. He closed it behind him without looking back. He took the stairs two at a time and strode out onto the street without bothering to check if his tails were behind him.
Vasin had learned to be wary of opponents of good instinct. Now he found himself wary of Masha.
Even outside in the chilly air, he could feel the warmth of her body under his coat.
III
Vasin was a plague carrier. The realization came as he walked down the gray, chilly boulevard. His presence contaminated everyone around him. Everything he had ever touched, everything that he had ever tried to do, turned to shit. Right now he needed someone to tell him just that. He needed to speak to Vera.
The Arzamas Central Post Office, deserted at night, was by day a teeming circus of human life. Harassed housewives cradled bundles of parcels. Elderly men, their jackets sagging with medals, took their time explaining themselves to the desk clerks. Pretty young secretaries, pleased to be released from their offices on an errand for the boss, gossiped with their girlfriends. Above all, the place was a showcase of queues. The various windows answered various needs: parcel dispatch, regular post, telegrams, general delivery, bills and collections. The line for long-distance phone calls had the most restless and unsettled look. Vasin joined it behind a woman who clutched her address book op
en at the page where her number was written, ready for the moment twenty minutes hence when the clerk would ask for it. When the line moved, she sighed and wearily shuffled forward a single step.
The wait would be worth it, Vasin told himself. He needed to speak to Vera when she was sober. Maybe he could even head off her vengeance. Nonetheless he found his index finger jiggling involuntarily, as through practicing to cut off the call as soon as talk turned to Katya Orlova.
His forms duly submitted, corrected, and submitted again, Vasin settled down to wait for his call to be put through on a bench beside a pair of sleeping twin schoolgirls. In front of him stood the row of handsomely polished oak phone booths, ominous as a line of dentist’s chairs. In one of them, soon, some small but agonizing part of his self-esteem would be unceremoniously ripped out.
“Comrade Major Vasin! Booth three!”
Again. This booth had something against him. He listened to the usual cascade of clicks and voices as his call was connected.
“Who is this?”
He had reached her at work; he could hear the shrill voices of her workmates in the background.
“It’s Sasha. How is Nikita?”
“Normal. Everything is normal.”
“And how are you?”
“I’m also normal.”
“Listen, I’ve only got three minutes. I wanted to say…”
“I’ve packed your things. When you get back we will file for divorce. I’m not interested in your apologies anymore.”
“Please, Vera, I am sorry. But it’s more complicated than you think.”
Vera interrupted him, her voice beginning to break.
“Self-righteous to the bitter end. I know you, Sasha. You use the people around you to prove to yourself how superior you are, but you’re a liar. A hypocrite. I’ve sent a complaint to my Party committee about your affair. You’re finished, my dearest. It’s time you face the consequences.”
The line clicked dead. Vasin’s finger had come down hard on the cradle. He held it down as though squashing the life out of a tiny enemy. He continued to hold it until his knuckle went white, as though the pressure would hold his secret back from the dangerous world listening in.
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