The Dark Clouds Shining

A Simple Act of Violence

The Harrow courtroom was in a shabby condition; like so much else it was still waiting for a postwar recovery. The large expanses of wood paneling looked like they hadn’t been polished for years, which was somewhat surprising given the number of people outside yearning for gainful employment.

The railing in front of Jack McColl was shiny enough, presumably greased by the sweating palms of previous defendants. It wasn’t the first time he’d stood in a dock, but he’d never been alone in one before, and for some reason the experience felt less stressful. Perhaps because he had only himself to worry about.

He was glad his mother hadn’t come down from Scotland. She had visited him in Pentonville a week or so earlier, and he had obviously convinced her that there was little point. He had refused her offer to pay for a better lawyer for much the same reason. Moral support was always nice, but she didn’t have that much money to spare, and both of them knew it would have been wasted.

The mere fact that the authorities had gone for a jury trial suggested, at least to McColl, that the outcome was a foregone conclusion, and that the Crown’s chief concern was to maximize his sentence. The jury, of course, might prove awkward, but nothing in the faces of its members suggested any sympathy with his case. The judge, a white-haired man in his sixties, had been palpably hostile from the outset. According to one newspaper that McColl had seen, the judge was known as “the Met’s best friend,” some accolade when London’s police force was clearly spoiled for choice in that regard.

And some choice when the alleged crime concerned the serious injuring of a policeman. The officer, PC Owen Standfast—even the name seemed like an accusation—was still, ten weeks later, in too frail a state to attend the court. Or so it was claimed. McColl had his doubts, but admitted he might be doing the man an injustice. It was, after all, his instant aversion to PC Standfast that had set his fist on its face-bound trajectory.

The police constable had been well enough to recall and describe the events in question, and the middle-aged detective inspector now entering the witness box was armed with the interview transcript. He began by explaining the reasons for PC Standfast’s nonappearance, and then announced, apropos of nothing, that the constable had decided on doctor’s advice to take early retirement. When McColl’s state-provided counsel protested that this statement might be prejudicial, the judge reluctantly agreed, and advised the jury to forget they had heard the offending words.

The inspector started reading Standfast’s testimony, his voice rather loud for the mostly empty courtroom, his tone suggesting a penchant for amateur dramatics. PC Standfast had first observed the vehicle—a Ford Model T—coming toward him on Preston Road at around four o’clock in the afternoon. It had been traveling in the center of the highway at what he considered an excessive speed. Only a few seconds later it had abruptly swerved to the left and crashed through the plate-glass window of number 146, the Eternal Rest Funeral Parlour. PC Standfast had hurried toward the scene—a distance of about a hundred yards—worried that someone might be badly hurt, but on reaching the spot had found two men in the automobile’s front seats laughing hysterically. The man behind the wheel, half of whose face was covered by one of those tin masks commonly worn by soldiers who’d suffered facial disfigurement in the war, was so taken by the humor of the situation that he was rhythmically beating his hands on the steering wheel.

All true, McColl thought, aware of the stares of several jurors. His and Nate Simon’s sudden confrontation with a window display of coffins had, at the time, seemed a joke of almost cosmic proportions.

“I see you still find this amusing,” the judge commented, noticing McColl’s involuntary smile.

“You had to be there,” McColl replied.

The judge gave him a contemptuous look and invited the inspector to continue. According to PC Standfast, he had been about to order the two men out of the automobile when he noticed that the driver, Nathaniel Simon, had no legs. The vehicle had been adapted for his use, hand levers bolted to the foot pedals in what appeared a highly slapdash manner.

“Mr. Simon chose to end his own life in police custody, I believe,” the judge noted.

“Yes, m’lud,” the inspector said.

“One might consider him the second victim,” the judge went on, looking at the jury.

One could if one wanted to influence the verdict, McColl thought. Though only a fool would deny that Nate had been a victim.

Thinking it unlikely that a man with no legs would step out of the car, PC Standfast had asked the man in the passenger seat to do so.

“The defendant, Jack McColl?”

“Yes, m’lud.”

PC Standfast had then asked Mr. McColl to help him get the driver out of the car. At which point Mr. McColl had punched PC Standfast in the face, causing him to fall backward and—as he discovered much later—to hit his head on the edge of the roadside curb. “PC Standfast was in a coma for five weeks,” the detective added helpfully.

He was dismissed with fulsome thanks and the lack of any opportunity for the defense to question or challenge the absent witness blithely noted. Two other witnesses were duly heard and confirmed the basic outlines of the incident—neither had been close enough to hear the exchange of words. By the time the second man left the stand, it was almost noon, and the judge was apparently hungry. The case for the defense would be heard that afternoon.

McColl was escorted back down to the basement for his own feast—a chunk of yesterday’s bread with a slice of ham, washed down with a decent mug of tea. It was an improvement on the fare at Pentonville, to which he assumed he would soon be returning. He was resigned to a lengthy sentence, and much of the time was inclined to think he deserved one, if not for this particular crime. He had the feeling that things were finally catching up with him, that his ham-fisted search for atonement had been finally deemed insufficient by some nebulous higher authority.

As was often the case at such moments, his thoughts went back to that day in Moscow, almost three years before. The anguished look on the young boy’s face when McColl had told him he couldn’t take him to England. Eleven-year-old Fedya, whom McColl had chanced across in a far-off village while on his way to Moscow, and whom he’d taken with him partly for the camouflage that a child in tow would provide. Fedya, who had refused to take no for an answer, followed McColl from the orphanage, and then been caught in the middle when Cheka agents chasing McColl had recklessly opened fire. His old enemy Aidan Brady, then serving with the Moscow Cheka, had probably fired the fatal shot, but McColl had felt responsible. He had brought the boy to Moscow and stupidly put him at risk.

That heartbreaking day in the summer of 1918 had been only the first of several—in the months that followed his brother Jed had been taken by the Spanish flu, and Caitlin Hanley, the Irish-American love of McColl’s life, had decided that the Russian Revolution meant more to her than he did. Her decision to stay on in Moscow had effectively ended their long on-off affair, and a subsequent letter had formalized the break. His career with the Secret Service had already ended after he’d sabotaged a plot by the Service’s Russian allies to poison Moscow’s food supply.

McColl and his mother had helped each other through their months of grief over Jed. In truth, she’d been in much better shape than McColl had, and her continued immersion in the postwar radical politics of Glasgow’s Clydeside had provided a focus that his own life lacked. Then in the spring of 1919, he’d received a letter from London. Long before the war, in what seemed another age, McColl had met and married Evelyn Athelbury, and gone on to work for her brother Tim, a designer and manufacturer of luxury automobiles. It was the opportunities implicit in hawking these vehicles around the world that had first persuaded Mansfield Cumming, the head of Britain’s new Secret Service, to enlist McColl as a part-time spy.

Already aware that Evelyn had died in the postwar flu epidemic, he had learned from the letter that her brother had recently succumbed to one of the more aggressive cancers. Before dying, Tim had advised his younger sister Eileen—the letter’s author and his sole beneficiary—that she should seek McColl’s advice on the future of the firm. Would he be willing to visit her in London and do as her brother had suggested?

McColl had been reluctant, but his mother had persuaded him that the change would do him good. Eileen, an attractive widow in her late thirties with a traumatized eleven-year-old son, had asked him if he could take a week or two to decide on which was the sensible course—selling the firm outright or finding a new man to manage it for her. The business, as McColl soon realized, was nothing like its prewar self—the days of small automobile manufacturers were rapidly drawing to an end, and Athelbury’s was now little more than an upscale garage that specialized in servicing luxury cars. But the buildings were sound, the equipment mostly up-to-date, and the Swiss Cottage location a good one for the trade in question.

McColl had taken on its renaissance, hiring a one-armed mechanic named Sid whose skills were far greater than his own and making his home on the premises. He liked Eileen, and when she suggested they share the office cot, his body didn’t get the argument that it probably should have. Over the next six months, they made love once or twice a week, and it was only when she suggested marriage that he realized how serious she was about him.

He couldn’t face the responsibility, for her or her son, who sometimes even looked like Fedya, if only in McColl’s imagination.

He had built her a thriving business, and she let him go without any rancor. McColl had learned a lot from the one-armed mechanic and soon found another job at a garage in Wembley. With someone else doing all the paper work, he had more time for the disabled veterans’ group, which Sid had introduced him to, and spent much of his spare time ferrying men with missing limbs around London. On several occasions his passengers were bound for demonstrations outside Parliament or one of the ministries, and twice he found himself involved in skirmishes with the police.

Waiting for a passenger on one occasion, it occurred to him that a car could be adapted for disabled use. He arranged to meet Sid for lunch at a pub on the Finchley Road, and the two of them had enjoyed a long and liquid discussion of the possibilities. In the eight months since, they’d experimented with all sorts of bespoke adaptions for the myriad forms of maiming suffered in the war, often in vain but sometimes with heartwarming success. The vehicle that Nate Simon had driven through the funeral parlor window had been one of their simpler jobs, and McColl was still at a loss as to what had gone wrong. He suspected that Nate—not the sanest of men since losing half his face and limbs—had done it deliberately, but now he would never know. Nate was beyond questioning, by McColl or the jury upstairs.

“I would like to take you through Police Constable Standfast’s statement to the police,” the defense attorney began.

McColl nodded.

“He said that the car was traveling at excessive speed in the middle of the road. Do you agree?”

“In the middle of the road, perhaps. There was, as far as I remember, no other vehicle in sight. At excessive speed? I would guess we were traveling at around twenty-five miles per hour, which few drivers would consider excessive in this day and age.”

“I think we can agree that the automobile took a sudden turn to the left, before mounting the pavement and crashing into the funeral parlor?”

“Yes.”

“Can you explain why that happened?”

“It certainly had nothing to do with the modifications we had made to the car. They were still in perfect working order.”

“How do you know that?” his counsel asked.

“I used them myself to drive the constable to hospital.”

“So what do you think happened?”

McColl hesitated. He was reluctant to point the finger at Nate Simon, because of how it might reflect on other disabled drivers, but the truth was the truth. “I think Nate—Mr. Simon—had a moment of madness. He saw the sign above the funeral home—‘the best care for your loved ones’—and something just snapped.”

“Were you ‘laughing hysterically’ when PC Standfast arrived on the scene?”

“We were. It just seemed so appropriate somehow, after everything that happened in the war, to find ourselves literally in death’s lap. It wasn’t as if anyone had been hurt.”

“Quite. So what happened next?”

“Mr. Simon took off his mask, something he often did when confronted by figures of authority.”

“With the intention of upsetting the person in question,” the judge interjected, with only the slightest hint of inquiry.

McColl took it in his stride. “He liked to make people aware of the sacrifices he and others had made for their country.”

“But a provocative act, nonetheless,” the judge insisted.

“If you say so,” McColl said dryly.

The judge considered another verbal intervention, but opted instead for simply shaking his head.

“How did PC Standfast react?” the defense counsel asked McColl.

“He blanched. Which was not an unusual reaction—Mr. Simon’s face was quite shocking at first sight.”

“And did he ask you to help him get Mr. Simon out of the automobile?”

“In a manner of speaking. He said: ‘Get this monster out of the car.’”

“Those were the exact words he used?”

“Yes.”

“And what happened next?”

“I punched him,” McColl admitted.

“Because of what he called your friend?”

“Yes,” McColl said, more hesitantly than was sensible. How could he explain the years of pent-up anger and anguish that had gone into that punch?

“And when you saw that the constable had struck his head on the curb, and was probably seriously hurt, what did you do?”

“I drove him to Harrow Cottage Hospital.”

“Did Mr. Simon accompany you?”

“Yes, I helped him into the passenger seat.”

“Was he upset?”

“I think so. He refused to put his mask back on.”

“One last question, Mr. McColl. If PC Standfast was unconscious, what was to stop you simply driving away and leaving him and avoiding the situation in which you now find yourself?”

“Humanity, I suppose. It didn’t occur to me. I never had any intention of seriously hurting the constable, and I certainly didn’t want his death on my conscience.”

“Thank you, Mr. McColl.”

The prosecution counsel was already on his feet. “Just a few questions, Mr. McColl. First, we have only your word for it that PC Standfast used such an ugly term to describe Mr. Simon. That is true, is it not?”

“The only other person there was Mr. Simon. And as far as I know, he never spoke again.”

“And yet one might assume that a person so insulted might make some sort of protest?”

“Perhaps Mr. Simon had a better idea than you do of how effective such a protest might prove.”

“Perhaps. But this uncorroborated insult provides you with a most convenient line of defense, does it not? Without it, you’re just someone with a hatred of authority, a very short temper, and a disposition to violence.”

McColl smiled at that. “That would be true if I were making it up. But I’m not.”

The prosecution counsel shrugged his disbelief. “As a matter of fact, we have only your uncorroborated word that Mr. Simon took off his mask when you said he did. Neither of the witnesses saw him do so.”

“They were still fifty yards away, and he had his back to them.”

“Indeed, but still… And I suppose in the end it doesn’t matter, because even if PC Standfast is being reticent with the truth, and everything happened exactly the way you say it happened, the fact remains that you struck a policeman in the course of performing his duties, and came remarkably close to killing him. And that no matter how offensive the alleged remark, there can be no excuse for what you did.”

The judge didn’t say he agreed, but the jury was left in no doubt of his expectations. McColl was barely back in the basement before being recalled; the eleven men and lone woman had taken less time than it took to smoke a cigarette. The guilty verdict was unanimous, and none of them looked in the slightest bit doubtful about its rightness.

“Jack McColl,” the judge began, “you have, as the learned member for the prosecution pointed out, an obvious affinity for violence. PC Owen Standfast was the victim in this instance, but two other police officers—as I am only now allowed to reveal—have suffered at your hands in the last eighteen months. Both in political demonstrations which, accidentally or not, descended into violence. Neither man suffered serious injuries, but perhaps they were simply more fortunate than PC Standfast.

“The disabled and disfigured veterans of the war have been a feature of this trial. They, and the treatment they receive from a mostly grateful society, are obviously of enormous importance, but this trial has not been about them. A simple act of violence—that is what this trial has been about, and you, Jack McColl, have been found guilty of committing it. In some ways you are a very lucky man, because if Owen Standfast had died, you would now be facing a probable life sentence, or even an appointment with His Majesty’s hangman. I was minded to give you ten years in prison, but have decided on reflection to reduce that by three, on account of your driving the victim to hospital. Take him down.”

With one last glare at McColl, the judge rose to his feet and headed for his chambers. McColl felt hands encasing both his arms, and allowed himself to be led from the dock and onto the stairs. He was vaguely surprised and somewhat aggrieved by the length of the sentence, but realized, with something of a shock, that his strongest feeling was one of relief.

Waifs and Strays

Sergei Piatakov had hoped that the Red Army train wouldn’t stop in the town where he’d grown up, because these days the past was something he mostly tried to forget. But here he was staring across at the old familiar platform and the snow-draped buildings that lay beyond. A short walk away, hidden by the curve of the main street, was the school where he’d taught. A verst beyond that, the house by the river where his family had lived.

The urge to see the place again was surprisingly strong, but the train would probably soon be on its way. And anyway, what would be the point? Everyone was gone, and all would be different. He certainly was.

Five years had passed since he’d left from that platform on another late winter afternoon. He, his mother, and Olesya had waited to say their teary good-byes under the canopy, watching the snow floating down to the tracks. The wall poster proclaiming that the kingdom of the proletariat shall never end certainly hadn’t been there that day, and the soldiers hadn’t been wearing caps with gleaming red stars. On the contrary, if memory served him right, a couple of priests had been telling a group of doomed young conscripts how lucky they were to be serving the beloved czar. Before, no doubt, scuttling home to the warmth and safety of their church.

He remembered Olesya making sure the top button of his navy greatcoat was securely fastened before she kissed him good-bye. He remembered his mother’s pale face and feverish eyes, and the brave smile she had just about managed to keep in place.

It was the last time he’d seen either of them. Now one was dead, the other in exile, God only knew where.

The train jerked into motion, stanching the flow of memories, blurring the picture inside his head. They were gone, he reminded himself, as the station slipped from sight. That world was gone.

And what had been put in its place? To say that the last five years had seen their ups and downs felt like the mother of understatements. The horror and despair of the czar’s war against the Central Powers had dissolved in the joyful hopes of the October Revolution, but they in turn had been all but swallowed up by the horrors of civil war. When that had been finally won the previous winter, the winners had found themselves deeply at odds with one another over how to proceed. And now, this very week, the sailors at the Kronstadt naval base—whom many had thought the heart, soul, and fist of the revolution—had come out against Lenin’s government.

Piatakov was no longer a sailor—these days the regime’s enemies were almost all on land—but he, his father, and his brother had all been stationed at Kronstadt at some time or other. He had traveled to and fro between the base and nearby Petrograd in the autumn of 1917, and been lucky enough to take part in the storming of the Winter Palace. He knew these men, and if they said the revolution had lost its way, he was inclined to believe them.

He certainly had no desire to fight them, and when the regiment had received its marching orders the previous evening, that distinct possibility had filled him with dread. But on reaching Velikiye Luki their train from the Polish border had continued eastward on the line to Moscow rather than north toward Petrograd, and soon thereafter new orders had been divulged. The rebellion in Tambov province, which they’d fought to subdue in the months before Christmas, was apparently still alive, and the regiment was headed back for a second tour of duty.

Which had to be better than fighting old comrades, but still seemed a less than inviting prospect. Piatakov had no sympathy for the mostly peasant rebels, who had no hope of victory, and whose barbaric depredations he had seen at first hand. His own side had often behaved just as badly, but who could afford bourgeois scruples when the towns were starving for lack of grain?

The things he had seen and done in his twenty-five years. Things he would have found unimaginable when he left for war that day. Things you did because the bastards clung to power and privilege like limpets, and had to be loosed, finger by finger, until they fell away.

He suddenly realized how hard he was gripping the corridor handrail.

Outside, the countryside was growing dark. They should be arriving in Moscow sometime tomorrow and, if the past was any guide, would probably not be setting off again for at least another twenty-four hours. He found himself hoping that the train would just keep going, because Moscow meant his wife, and these days he found his comrades-in-arms a much more comfortable fit. He still loved her, but he was far from sure that she still loved him or, indeed, ever had, at least in the way he’d once hoped for. These days they barely ever talked politics because both of them knew it would end in a row. And the problems they had in bed—the problems he had—certainly hadn’t helped.

He told himself that he was being foolish, that it would be good to see her, and that, anyway, it wouldn’t be for long.

Once he had only his own reflection to look at, he made his way back to the crowded compartment. With the windows shut against the cold, the tobacco fug grew ever thicker, but at least they could hear one another talk, and soon the usual debate was underway. Piatakov’s regiment had more than its fair share of revolutionary veterans, and not for the first time, abuses of power and position were the principal topic under discussion. Some thought the increasing stratification, and the uneven distribution of goods and privilege that went with it, were only teething troubles—that once the economy was back on its feet the party would find a way to restore the simple egalitarianism of the early years. Others were convinced that the revolution had been betrayed, as much by the party leadership as by the specialists they’d hired in such numbers, and that these new bosses would soon resemble the old unless the lower ranks fought back.

What neither side disputed was the proliferation of double standards. Several other men had noticed the train that Piatakov had spotted in Polotsk station, with its luxury saloon for Lenin’s beloved specialists and overcrowded, run-down coaching stock for everyone else. Those specialists were the bourgeois gentlemen that Lenin had promised he would first squeeze dry and then cast aside. They hadn’t looked squeezed or fearful for their future.

Many soldiers had similar tales to tell. There was the brand-new workers’ sanatorium in Odessa, which had no worker patients, but was proudly shown to any visiting bigwigs. There were the dachas of long-vanished nobles in the woods around Moscow, which the government had confiscated in the name of the people, before erecting taller fences and gates. While in Petrograd, one of the soldiers had visited the Smolny Institute, where the October Revolution had been organized, and found himself in the midst of a bitter conflict over different canteens for different grades of party membership.

The general accord as to what had gone wrong didn’t extend to how things could or should be put right. Ever since the first revolution, stepping onto a train had usually also meant stepping into a highly animated discussion of political rights and wrongs. But in those early days, the debates would usually remain good-natured—people were genuinely intrigued by other possibilities, and not inclined to dismiss all opponents as merely self-interested. These days an argument was more likely to end in a brawl, as this one looked likely to do before an unscheduled stop gave everyone the chance to literally cool down.

Walking up the platform, Piatakov found himself with the teller of the sanatorium story. They knew each other by sight, but had never spoken before. The other man said he already knew Piatakov’s name, and that he was Vladimir Fyodorovich Sharapov.

“Are you really as pessimistic as you sounded?” Piatakov asked him.

Sharapov laughed. “I sometimes wonder that myself. I do think it will get a lot worse before it gets better. The Kronstadt sailors have seen to that.”

Piatakov was taken aback. “You think they’re wrong?”

“They’re right, and everyone knows they are, but our leaders can’t admit it. So they’ll make an example of them.”

“Will they find troops willing to go up against them?”

“Oh yes. The only ones that won’t are older regiments like ours.” His smile was bitter. “And look which way we’re heading.”

“But there must be another solution,” Piatakov said, hoping it was true. The acute sense of loss he was feeling suggested otherwise.

Sharapov just shrugged. “You know the party’s Tenth Congress is happening in Moscow?”

“Of course.”

“Well, the leadership will be announcing a new economic policy in a few days’ time. People will be free to trade again.”

Piatakov was more shocked than surprised. “How do you know this?” he asked, hoping it might be no more than a rumor.

“My brother works in the Economic Commissariat. They’ve been drafting the new regulations for weeks.”

Piatakov took a few moments to take this in. “But that sounds like they’re reintroducing capitalism,” he said eventually.

“That’s exactly what they’re doing.”

“But…”

“They think that as long as the party retains absolute political control, they can afford to lessen their economic grip. Give the bourgeoisie enough economic freedom to get everything moving again, but don’t let them get their hands on any political levers. A breathing space, a period of transition. That’s what they say we need.”

“You don’t believe it.”

“I don’t doubt that’s what they’re thinking. I don’t even question their good intentions. I do fear the consequences.”

“Dictatorship.”

“Of course. The more economic freedom you offer, the less you can risk any real democracy. We’ve seen it whittled away: the banning of other parties, even those with whom we shared a lot. Now there’s talk of banning factions in our own. Democracy’s like virginity—once it’s gone it’s gone. Can you imagine Lenin and the other leaders meeting a few years from now and deciding that powers should be handed back to the soviets or the unions or anyone else? It’s a fantasy. There won’t be any going back from this.”

Piatakov shook his head, but couldn’t deny a terrible sense of foreboding. “Is it really that hopeless?”

“Sometimes I think so, sometimes not. We can keep on arguing until they actually shut us up, and who knows? Miracles happen. We might even convince the men who matter. If we can’t…” He shrugged. “I have a wife and son to think about.”

Ten minutes later their train was on the move again, and this time running on a decent stretch of track. Piatakov arranged his body for sleep as best he could in the cramped space, and then went through his usual ritual of mentally reliving one of the many horrors he’d witnessed over the last two years. He chose the moment that he and a comrade had come across the commissar tied to the post, his eyes still showing signs of life, his entrails hanging out of his stomach, which was stuffed with the grain he’d been sent to requisition. This was the memory that often woke him screaming, and over the last few months he had convinced himself that reliving the experience while he was still awake made it less likely to haunt the sleep that followed.

The view from the small office window was surprisingly evocative, a wide expanse of grass sloping down toward the river, and the monastery sat on the bank beyond, white walls and golden domes set against the wall of birches, all beneath a pure blue sky. Moscow’s ragged streets seemed a world away, not a handful of versts.

The manager’s assistant, a woman of no more than thirty, was clearly unnerved by Yuri Komarov’s presence. This didn’t surprise the M-Cheka’s deputy chairman—few people instinctively reached for the samovar when the Bolshevik security police came to call. Most, in Komarov’s experience, were too busy trying to guess which of their activities had brought such dangerous visitors to their door.

The four men he had brought along looked almost as unhappy. They were standing around in the yard outside, smoking and staring moodily into space, all in their trademark leather coats. When he’d called them in that morning to explain the task at hand, the looks on their faces had suggested he’d lost his mind. When he had pointed out that higher authority had decreed that the Cheka take responsibility for Moscow’s large and ever-rising population of young waifs and strays, they’d rolled their eyes and offered muttered doubts about the Orgbureau’s collective parentage. Komarov had just smiled at them. He liked the idea of softening the Cheka’s image.

“I want to examine the facility,” he told the woman.

“All of it?” she asked.

Komarov nodded.

“I’d prefer the manager to be here.”

“So would I. But he isn’t, and we don’t have all day. So…”

She hesitated, failed to find a counterargument, and reached for a heavy bunch of iron keys.

“They’re locked in,” Komarov murmured as they crossed the hall. It wasn’t a question.

“Of course.”

“For how long each day?” he asked as they ascended the staircase.

“All but an hour. Each child is allowed a full hour’s exercise.”

“Like a prison,” Komarov said blithely.

The look on her face suggested she didn’t know how to take that comment. Most people would have considered it a statement of disapproval. But from a high-ranking Chekist? “We don’t have the staff to offer any more,” she said—unable was always a better excuse than unwilling. “If we let them out without sufficient supervision, they’d just disappear. And you’d have more gangs on the street to deal with.”

She unlocked the first door and stood aside for him to enter. About twenty girls, ranging in age from around seven to around fifteen, almost leaped to their feet. Most had been sitting behind a bewildering variety of prewar sewing machines; the others had also been working on textiles in one way or another. An older girl had been sitting and facing the rest, an exercise book open in front of her. The smile she gave Komarov was about as genuine as a nine-ruble note. When he reached for the exercise book, she took an involuntary step backward.

The book contained the record of each girl’s work, the jobs she had done and the time it had taken.

Komarov placed it back on the desk, apologized for the interruption, and walked out onto the landing.

“The other rooms are no different,” the woman told him.

“Show me.”

There were three of them, huge bedrooms once, their intricate cornices all that was left of the life that the revolution had brought to an end. The girls were all doing much the same work as the ones in the first room.

“Is that it?” Komarov asked as they headed back down the staircase. He could imagine the previous owners on the lower steps, welcoming the guests in all their finery.

“There’s a laundry in the basement,” the woman admitted.

“Show me.”

It was damp and poorly lit, the stove apparently unused. The girls stood there and blinked at him, pale bare feet on the dark stone floor. It was like something out of Dickens, Komarov thought.

“Where do they sleep?” he asked as they climbed back up the stairs.

There was a dormitory out back. It had once been a stables, and each stall was fitted with three tiers of roughly built bunk beds. The small office next door, which had presumably belonged to the estate manager, was still in use, a table and chair by the only window, a bed that must have come from the house taking up most of the room.

“Who sleeps here?” Komarov asked.

“No one. Well, not on a regular basis. The manager sometimes spends the night here when he has a lot of paper work. At least, that’s what he told me,” she added, seeing the expression on Komarov’s face.

“How many staff are here at night?” he asked.

“Usually three or four, I think. I always go home.”

“How many women?”

“None,” she said, looking more anxious.

Komarov ran a hand through his greying hair. “Where does the manager live?”

“In Yauzskaya. At seventeen Mashkov Lane.”

They walked back around to the front of the house, where his men were still patiently waiting. He gave the address to the nearest pair, told them to pick the man up and take him straight to the holding cells on Bolshaya Lubyanka. “I need to use your telephone,” he told the woman. “In private,” he added when they reached her office door.

As he waited for the exchange to connect him with the Zhenotdel offices, he wondered if there was a more appropriate organization he should be calling, but couldn’t think of one. It was intelligent females he needed, and who better to supply them than the women’s department?

The woman he spoke to took some persuading. “The Cheka wants to borrow two of our workers for help with interrogations?” she asked disbelievingly, in an accent that Komarov couldn’t quite place.

“Not interrogating, questioning. We need to question a lot of young girls—”

“What crime have they committed?”

“None. If crimes have been committed, they are the victims. And the crimes will have been committed by men. In such circumstances, using men to question the girls seems singularly inappropriate.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” the woman said, sounding slightly mollified. “But is there no one else? We really have no one to spare today.”

“I’m open to suggestions.”

The woman was silent for a moment. “Are there no women in the Chekas?” she asked.

“There are a few. But none I know of who could set these girls at ease.”

“Oh, very well. I will come myself and bring a colleague if I can find one. Where are you?”

He told her.

“But that’s miles away.”

“I can have a car pick you up in half an hour.”

“Oh. All right. You know the address?”

“I do.”

Komarov smiled as he hung up the receiver. Outside, he gave the other two the Zhenotdel address and watched their Russo-Balt head off toward the city center, trailing a cloud of exhaust in the frigid air. After giving the manager’s assistant her office back, he found a seat in one of the old reception rooms and stared at the discolored shapes on the wall where paintings and mirrors had hung.

He had only an hour to wait. Hearing the car arrive, he studied the passengers through the window. There were two of them, one short and slightly stocky with medium-length blonde hair and a pretty face, the other slimmer, taller, with dark reddish hair and a pale-skinned face that didn’t look Russian. Both were wearing practical clothes and Zhenotdel red scarfs around their necks.

He went outside to meet them. “I’m Yuri Komarov, deputy chairman of the M-Cheka,” he said, offering his hand to each woman in turn. Up close, he recognized the taller of the two, an American comrade who’d crossed his path several years before. Which explained the accent on the phone.

The other woman introduced herself as Comrade Zenzinova. “And this is Comrade Piatakova.”

“We’ve met before,” Komarov said with a smile. He had questioned her twice in the summer of 1918. On the first occasion, it had been her relationship with the renegade Socialist Revolutionary Maria Spiridonova that had brought her to the Cheka’s attention. On the second, it had been an informer’s report of her contact with a foreign agent. In both instances she, like so many others back in those days, had received the benefit of any doubts. And apparently deserved them, given that three years later she was still devoting her life to a foreign revolution.

“I remember,” she said. “My name was Hanley back then.”

“Well, thank you for coming,” Komarov said. “Now let me explain the situation. This is a home for female waifs and strays. I assume it was set up by the party, but I rather doubt there’s been any political oversight. From what I’ve seen, it’s obvious that the girls are being exploited, and that a great deal needs to be done to improve the conditions. I have no evidence of worse, but I strongly suspect it…”

“You think they’re being interfered with sexually?” Piatakova half-asked, half-stated.

“I don’t know. The manager and his cronies have had the run of the place at night, and most of the girls seem frightened to death. I’m hoping you can get at least some of them to open up.”

“How many are there?” Zenzinova asked.

“About sixty, but I’m hoping you won’t need to question more than a few to get an idea of what’s been going on.”

The two women looked at each other. “Then we’d better get started,” Piatakova said in her strangely accented but otherwise perfect Russian.

All work was stopped, and the girls brought together in what had presumably once been the ballroom. Two smaller rooms on the same floor were found for interviews and the first two girls delivered to their questioners by the clearly frightened staff.

It was almost four hours later when the two Zhenotdel women found Komarov in the manager’s office. They both looked devastated.

“They work every hour God gives,” Comrade Piatakova told him. “Apart, that is, from a short spell in the yard once or twice a week. The rest of the time they’re either working or locked up in the dormitory.” She raised her green eyes and gave him a look he could have done without. “Or, as you suspected, warming the manager’s bed. It’s sometimes just him, sometimes a few of his friends as well. They take their pick after the girls finish their suppers.”

“Are any of them pregnant?” Komarov asked, knowing it was the wrong response the moment he said it.

“Probably not,” Piatakova told him. “I doubt that most of the girls have ever had a period, and given the state of their health, I don’t expect the older ones are menstruating either.”

“How many did you talk to?”

“I talked to four and Fanya to five.”

“Well, they’ll all need to be questioned eventually, but first I must find people to look after them.”

“Women, I hope.”

“Of course. If you think of any suitable people, or of homes you can vouch for, I’d be grateful to hear. I know Comrade Kollontai was working to set up several such places in the early months of the revolution.”

“I’ll ask,” Piatakova said. She got to her feet. “I assume your men will drive us back to Vozdvizhenka Street.”

“Of course. And thank you.”

She hesitated in the doorway, obviously trying to put a thought into words. “This speaks so badly of us,” she said eventually.

“I couldn’t agree more,” he said simply.

He listened to the car drive off. A year ago he would have had the staff taken out to the yard and shot. Everyone would have been delighted—the children seeing their abusers receive their comeuppance, his men doing what they were good at, the bureaucrats in Moscow spared all that tiresome paperwork that went with trials. But now…

Things were supposed to be changing. The death penalty had been abolished, in theory if not quite in practice. And if they were ever to get the revolution back on its rightful course, then wrongdoing had to be exposed, not simply punished with a bullet in the back of the neck. The manager would certainly get one, but only after everyone in Moscow knew what for.

That was the easy part, he thought. What kind of future lay in wait for these girls?

He went back to the manager’s office, where the woman who’d welcomed him six hours before was weeping in a corner.

“Where are the records?” he asked her.

“What records?” she managed to ask.

“The names of the girls. Their ages. Where they came from.”

“He never kept any records,” she said.

Komarov sighed. Even in the bad old days, they’d tattooed numbers on orphans’ knuckles. “I’ll send someone out here in the morning,” he told the woman. “You’ll be here to show her around. And then you leave.”

“But—”

“Either that or join your boss in prison.”

“But I didn’t touch anyone.”

Komarov just looked at her.

“You people think you own the world,” she said, covering her mouth when she realized she’d said it aloud.

And what a world to own, Komarov thought.

Caitlin Piatakova glanced at the clock on the wall, and saw she had only an hour before the Orgbureau appointment. The last three had flown by: since the midday arrival of the twenty-four women from Turkestan the Zhenotdel offices had been a whirlwind of color, noise, and enthusiasm. A sense of liberation was catching, Caitlin thought, and more than a little intoxicating to Muscovites, who had almost forgotten how to feel so positive. And as far as she and Fanya were concerned, the arrival of the women had certainly provided a much-needed lift of the spirits after yesterday’s hours at the refuge for waifs and strays.

These women had literally left their men—their husbands, fathers, and brothers—two thousand miles behind them. And, for the moment at least, they all seemed exhilarated by the freedom that distance had given them. Days like this, Caitlin thought, were what she lived for. The long hours, the endless petty obstruction, the knowing smirks and outright insults—all that men could throw at them—days like this made it all worthwhile.

They had spent the afternoon discussing the programs and material that the Muslim women would take back with them, and the Zhenotdel workers had initially feared that their visitors might prove overoptimistic about the pace of possible change. But they needn’t have worried—the latter were fully aware that changing male minds in a highly traditional Muslim culture would take time and tact. As Rahima, one of the unofficial leaders of the women, put it: “If we look too happy, they will be suspicious.”

Rahima was only eighteen, but seemed a lot older, with a fund of common sense that provided ballast for her bubbly enthusiasm. She had married at fourteen, and her husband was one of the few Uzbeks prominent in the Turkestan Communist Party. He had allowed his wife to make the trip out of political duty, but she knew only too well that he found the whole business profoundly upsetting. “I will need to work on him day and night,” she said. “And his mother, who keeps pouring poison into his ears.”

Caitlin glanced at the clock—it really was time to leave. She checked that the relevant notes were in her bag, told Fanya she was off, and reluctantly left all the noise and happiness behind her.

Outside on Vozdvizhenka Street, a pale sun was struggling with a cold breeze. The Orgbureau offices were about a mile away, and with no tram in sight, she decided she might as well walk. The streets were virtually empty, and as she strode along, she rehearsed the arguments she would put to the committee. The issue in question was the setting up of Zhenotdel offices in a long list of provincial cities and towns, and the properties that the organization had carefully chosen to house them. There was no obvious reason why the proposals in Caitlin’s bag should prove contentious, provided that they were considered on merit. But it was far from certain that this would be the case. Her friend and boss, Alexandra Kollontai, had already annoyed the party leadership by strongly supporting the Workers’ Opposition faction, and the leaders might well choose to punish her by punishing the women’s organization that she headed.

It was so frustrating, Caitlin thought. She loved Kollontai like a sister—a much older one who often seemed younger—and Caitlin could hardly fault her friend for sticking to her principles. But they had achieved so much over the last three years—women delegates and apprentices at every level, propaganda work among the peasants and now the Muslims, making Russia the first country in the world to legalize abortion… Only yesterday evening a woman from Petrograd had told Caitlin that 90 percent of people were now eating in communal kitchens. Not eating very much, she had added with a laugh, but communally. The link between cooking and domestic slavery was finally being broken!

This was what Caitlin had stayed in Russia for; this was what kept her going when less welcome things like hunger and loneliness and unwelcome political developments gave cause for doubts and depression. If you looked for reasons to feel pessimistic, there always seemed one to be found—some murderous outrage by the Chekas, some new instance of official corruption, what was going on now up at Kronstadt. But they weren’t the whole truth. Good things were happening, too. The civil war was over; Muslim women were finding a voice. And who would have thought that Cheka bosses would turn into guardian angels where orphan girls were concerned?

The question, she supposed, was, which was the rule, which the exception? Sergei seemed increasingly convinced that everything was going to hell, but she hadn’t given up hope. Far from it.

She was five minutes early for the appointment, but the committee was apparently running late, and the male secretary primly told her to join the queue in the waiting room. “How long do you think it’ll be?” she asked him sweetly, leaning forward to read his list. As she expected, the Zhenotdel was right at the bottom.

Swallowing her anger—why make things worse before the committee had its say?—she joined the four men in the smoke-filled anteroom. Listening to their conversation, she realized that one was there to lobby for better sports facilities in Yalta, another to enlist decorators for the party offices in his local village. After seething quietly for several minutes, she took a deep breath and set to work on editing an article for Communist Woman that had reached the office that morning.

It was almost three hours later that she was invited into the committee room, where five comrades were seated on the far side of a long and highly polished table. She knew three by sight, including the chair, Vyacheslav Molotov. Each man had a copy of the Zhenotdel proposals in front of him, and the first objection wasn’t long in coming.

“This hall in Yaroslavl,” one man began. “It’s currently a soldiers’ club.”

“It’s a public bar,” she corrected him.

“Which our soldiers use. Would you deny them a place to let off steam, after all the sacrifices we ask them to make?”

“Of course not. But there are many other bars in Yaroslavl, and this one has several rooms on both floors that would make an ideal suite of offices.”

“Why not just use those other rooms?”

Are you serious? she thought but didn’t say. “I doubt that using the same building for two such different purposes would work,” she replied. “The men might feel inhibited by the presence of working women,” she added with a straight face.

“Could the women not take turns meeting in one another’s kitchens?” another man interjected.

She took a deep breath. “We are setting up working offices, comrades. Might I remind you that Vladimir Ilych has urged all local parties to offer assistance in this matter.” Caitlin was fairly sure he had said something along those lines, and even if he hadn’t, none of the men across the table would be certain whether or not he had.

“Of course,” Molotov agreed. “But we have the responsibility of ensuring that the correct assistance is being offered.”

And they took that obligation seriously. They offered a litany of objections to all but a few of the proposed requisitions, and though most were eventually sanctioned, the tone of the proceedings was appallingly paternalistic.

“Comrades,” she almost pleaded after more than an hour had passed, “we are on the same side. Women are vital to the future of the revolution—the party says so—and the Zhenotdel is vital to the future of our women. We’re not asking for the moon, just appropriate housing for our offices and educational facilities. And we have done our research—we haven’t just picked buildings we liked the look of. Give us some credit, please.”

Molotov had the grace to look slightly abashed, which was just as well, because his underlings merely looked sour. “I take your point, Comrade Piatakova,” he said. “And perhaps we should take the remaining suggestions as read. But I think you would agree that the committee would not be fulfilling its duty if all suggestions were simply waved through without query or challenge.”

“Of course,” Caitlin agreed. He sounded more like a manager than a revolutionary, she thought.

Outside on the street she took a deep breath of the fresh evening air. She felt vindicated, annoyed, and depressed in almost equal measure. Why did it have to be so hard? How many years would it take to make men like that appreciate the central truth that improving women’s place in the world would also make life so much fuller for men?

It was dark, the few working streetlamps like spotlights on a citywide stage. The Muslim women were going to the theater that evening—they would probably be there by now—and she had meant to go with the party. She had already seen the play, but was curious to see what their guests would make of it. After hesitating for several moments, she decided she would simply go home. The last few hours had worn her out.

Her room was a mile and a half from the office, just south of the river and canal. A safe walk these days, even after dark, now that most of the robbers who’d plagued Moscow streets in the civil war years had been caught by the Chekas. As she strode across the Kamenny Bridge, Caitlin found herself thinking about the notorious “jumpers,” footpads who had—it was said—attached springs to the soles of their feet for bouncing away from Chekist pursuit, triumphantly waving stolen fur coats in the air. Had these “jumpers” ever been caught? Had they even been real?

The room she’d lived in for the last eighteen months was at the top of an old mansion on Dmitrova Street, a few hundred yards south of the river. It was cold in winter, but less noisy than those on the floors below, which were large enough to house families. She got on well enough with her neighbors, but her fluency in Russian could never quite make up for being born a foreigner.

Despite the cold, several of the older children were out on the stoop. “Good evening, Comrade Piatakova,” they all chorused. “Your husband has returned,” her neighbor’s daughter Lana added, with what looked suspiciously like a leer.

“How long has he been back?” Caitlin asked automatically.

“Not long. Ten minutes, perhaps.”

As she started up the stairs, Caitlin tried to sort out her feelings. She was glad he was safe, glad that he wasn’t one of those taking on the Kronstadt rebels. Which didn’t mean she was pleased to see him.

She told herself to be more generous. Sergei was always interesting to talk to, and having him hold her in bed was warming in more senses than one, even when being held was the only thing on offer. Of all the men she’d met in Russia, he was—or had been—the kindest and most likable.

They had met at Kollontai’s wedding in early 1918 and become lovers a year or so later on one of his leaves from the Volga front. The relationship hadn’t been easy at first because she couldn’t be her usual honest self with him. It wasn’t a straightforward case of two people falling in love—she knew only too well that Sergei was filling the emotional space that Jack had left behind. But other leaves had followed, and she’d gotten used to walking the line between playing a part and finding real satisfaction in what they actually shared. They had become what Kollontai, in one of her writings on love, called “erotic friends”; they had, almost on a whim, embarked on what many party members called “a comrades’ marriage.” Or so Caitlin believed. She sometimes worried that he felt more for her than she did for him, but he was never fawning. He was ruthless in argument and would never do anything just because she wanted him to.

And until the previous fall they had made each other happy enough, sharing their thoughts and their bodies, and leaving their future for a postwar discussion, always assuming the war ever ended. Then, in October 1920, his regiment had been one of the units sent to Tambov province to crush the peasant rebellion, and several months later he’d come back a different man. For one thing he was impotent; for another he would often wake up shouting or—which seemed even worse to Caitlin—weeping. By day he was either depressed or angry and, on each succeeding trip to Moscow, seemed to spend more and more time at one or other of those disreputable clubs where renegades of every stripe met to share their rage and despair. When he’d last gone back to his regiment, she’d realized with a shock that all she felt was relief.

Caitlin took a deep breath and opened the door to her room. He was standing at the gable window, looking out over the moonlit roofs, and the face he turned toward her looked boyish and terribly bleak.

“Sergei,” she said, walking across and throwing her arms around his neck. “It’s good to see you.”

He was stiff in her arms, but slowly relaxed. “And you,” he said, just about managing a smile.

“How long are you here for? Where have you come from?”

He explained that the regiment was on its way back to Tambov province, and that he and many others suspected that part of the reason was to get them as far away from Kronstadt as possible. “I don’t think they trust us to go against the rebels.”

“That’s terrible,” she said.

“What is? That we couldn’t be trusted or that that’s what they thought?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know what to make of what’s happening at Kronstadt.”

“As far as I can tell, it’s not complicated. The sailors are the revolution’s conscience, and they say the things we fought for are in danger of being lost. Have already been lost in some cases.”

“But according to Pravda it’s not the same sailors who were there in 1917, and there are Whites involved.”

Piatakov shook his head dismissively. “They’re lying.”

“That’s a serious accusation. Are you sure?”

“Not a hundred percent. But I know these men. And even if I didn’t—sometimes you just know. Sometimes the facts only add up one way. But is there any news from Kronstadt? I’ve been on a train for more than a day.”

“None that I’ve heard. But I was in an Orgbureau meeting for almost that long.”

That made him smile. “I’m hungry,” he said. “Let’s go to the cafeteria, and maybe someone will know something.”

“All right.”

They walked the three blocks arm in arm, Caitlin silently wondering why she found it so hard to believe that Lenin was actually lying to his own party. Was it because the truth would be too damning? Would undermine everything?

The cafeteria was still almost full, despite the lateness of the hour. They queued for their soup and bread, but Sergei was more interested in asking the other diners questions than eating his food. “They say that Trotsky has appointed Tukhachevsky to lead an attack across the ice,” he said, when he finally returned to their table. “Sixty thousand men against three thousand,” he added, picking up his spoon and staring stonily into space.

It occurred to Caitlin that the rebels would have been wiser to wait a few weeks until the ice surrounding their island had melted, but Sergei seemed depressed enough already. On the walk back to the house, he suddenly stopped, grabbed both her hands, and earnestly looked her in the eye. “Sometimes I think it’s all over,” he said, “and we should just find another country, and start again from scratch, determined not to make the same mistakes.”

No, she thought, remembering Rahima and the others. It wasn’t over. But she didn’t want to argue with him. Not tonight.

In bed, they undressed and held each other for what seemed a long time, until he murmured, “I’m sorry,” and turned his back.