Ryzhkov looked up at him. He just wasn’t a good enough actor.
‘Was it her?’ The photograph slid out of the dossier like a knife stroke curving towards his chest.
Vera Aliyeva curled to a stop, looking up at him.
It was a commercial portrait. Something she had commissioned for publicity in Petersburg. Shot with soft gauze and a backdrop meant to suggest clouds. In it Vera was innocent, looking aloft at some more radiant possibility. So young. A century ago.
‘What about that, Monsieur? You say you don’t have a choice? You didn’t get to choose? Oh, I’m sorry about the unfairness of everything. That’s what the revolution is all about, of course. Rectifying things. By the way, did you know that Lena Hokhodieva is still alive?’
He could not help but look up. Kostya’s wife had been dying with cancer, almost a complete ghost when Ryzhkov had last seen her. ‘No.’
‘Yes. She’s made a complete cure. It’s a miracle. Defied the gods. She’s fat, you wouldn’t recognize her. Good for her, eh?’
‘Yes.’
‘It’s just luck, Pyotr Mikhalovich. Someone has to be found to do certain things. You’re not the first person who is a victim of a government or…governments, or the lack of them. It won’t buy you any special favours around here.’ Zezulin was smiling. ‘Someone has to do these things. It’s bloom or die, eh? And while you don’t care about your own death, maybe you’d even welcome it, you would care about someone else’s…about this woman here.’ The finger gestured towards the photograph; a cheap thing, unmistakably banal, bound in a yellow pasteboard frame with an advertisement for the Nevsky Prospekt photographer she’d charmed into giving her a deal.
‘Ah yes. Good. You have indicated that you recognize her. Excellent. Once more we are getting somewhere. Now we have decided to be grown-up friends and we’ve put down our last secret, eh?’ Zezulin was saying. The voice of a happy man. ‘I’m so sorry, but you can’t keep the picture.
‘Look, my friend,’ Zezulin leaned in close. There was the smell of pickles on his breath. ‘This is not some common theatrical, this is not boys playing games in the barracks. This is real.’ He patted the dossier on the desk. ‘We both know you’re going to do what I say. I can use you to kill, or I can use you for bait. Let’s not waste any more time. These are the trenches too. I know you have courage, and all that.’
‘And this is all for the people?’
‘Yes, yes, the people, of course. But because it’s all secret, they don’t know it.’
‘And if I don’t do what you want?’
‘It won’t be the first time I’ve misjudged someone, eh? So, we’ll take you out and shoot you, and of course you have no need to worry about the future of –’ he patted the dossier, ‘– your friend. Right? You were Okhrana, you know how the levers work.’ He settled back into his chair.
‘But if on the other hand you go out and be the ruthless secret policeman I know you can be, then I can give you more information about certain persons, if that is what you are interested in. You know? That’s the carrot. Death for you and your loved ones is the stick, eh? Well…no offence, we’re all under threat of death. That’s what terror means, brother. Welcome. As you can see, the inmates have taken over the asylum. Come in to my personal padded room.’
Ryzhkov willed himself not to shrug. ‘I suppose if I have to work for someone I’d prefer to work for the people, in the asylum or out.’
‘I knew you would see the logic of it. Here, let’s take those off.’ The soldier moved forward to busy himself with the key.
‘Look, ah…comrade…What shall I call you?’
‘Comrade is fine for now.’
A few minutes later they were taking a stroll through Cheka headquarters, even stranger corridors offices that led to waiting rooms that led to cells and interrogation rooms. A dormitory wing that exited onto a garage.
‘Just for your private information, Pyotr, the existing intelligence apparatus of the People’s Government is like a…choppy sea,’ Zezulin expounded. ‘The great Romanov ocean liner has sunk and now we are all helpless in the expanse of stormy ocean. For just a moment you see a survivor, you encounter them, and then another moment they are gone. The winds have carried them far away.’
‘Yes.’ Ryzhkov sighed. Walking along without the manacles, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. His arms kept involuntarily trying to come together over his fly. They walked along past stables, a garage, a shed where they stacked the firewood. Somebody was making telephone calls, couriers were running in and out. And always the telegraph chattering.
‘One has to make the most of every moment and every relationship. Moscow is a hotbed of spies and rumours. You wouldn’t believe it, Pyotr. Innuendo, fabrication, conspiracy…Around here everyone is supposed to keep quiet. There are layers and layers of secrecy, but the personnel? They’re all new, all of them think they are running the revolution all by themselves, everyone wants to be a hero, and everyone talks.’
They crossed into a second courtyard; beyond was a gate, a big loading door that opened onto Sofika Street and freedom. Wagons, people going by, fanning themselves lazily against the heat of the summer’s day.
‘So this is what I know…’ Velimir Antonovich Zezulin said, offering Ryzhkov a cigarette.
Zezulin was on a short leash to hear him tell it. Noskov was his new name, Boris Maximovich. ‘Nice, eh? I forget where I picked it up.’ Once he had wrung himself out and cleaned himself up, he’d discovered that he could still function. He’d regrown his tendrils and in the process his attention had been…well, somewhat heightened. He’d sensed things, many things in his newly sober state that he would have missed in the bad old days.
And worse was coming. ‘The revolution, to be honest, is not going that well. The Allies are hungry and on the attack. The Czechs are the immediate problem.’
‘Czechs?’
‘Quite a few, fifty, sixty thousand taken as prisoners from the Austrians. Most of them are deserters, they wanted to cross over and fight against Austria for the freedom of a new Czecho-slovak country. You can lay the blame at their feet, if you want.’
‘So what was the problem?’
‘They were on the trains in the middle of Siberia, but it seems they made their own little revolution, and now they control the Trans-Siberian railway. To them you can add the Japanese, inscrutable as always, but always ready to make off with the riches of Siberia and put themselves in an even more dominant position over China. They’ve sent their soldiers into Vladivostok. Of course the Americans, the British and the French are involved. The Canadians are involved…’
‘It’s a civil war.’
‘Very good. I see you have been reading the newspapers. Which brings us to our masters, the Germans, the people who have everything and want more, eh?’
Ahead of them was a disturbance, men shouting at the end of the courtyard. A shot rang out and Ryzhkov saw they had brought a man out for killing. Four guards, and another team of four for the truck. They must have made him kneel but then the shooter had mis-aimed and only wounded the prisoner, who was trying to crawl away as the blood spurted from under the collarbone. One of them stepped forward and put his rifle close to the man and pulled the trigger a second time. The sound of it and the slap of the prisoner’s head on the cobbles brought everyone to the windows. The killer was blushing furiously.
‘Regarding the Germanic menace, our leaders, Comrade Lenin, Comrade Trotsky, they do what they must. They are between the hammer and the anvil. Also there is pressure from within. Among us