The Holy Thief

CHAPTER TWELVE

Gregorin’s Emka was waiting for him when he reached Bolshoi Nikolo-Vorobinsky and, as he approached, the door opened and Gregorin stepped out. He leaned back into the car and spoke a few words to the driver, a large black shape behind the steering wheel. Gregorin looked at his watch and smiled.

“A few minutes late. Busy day?”

There was something in his cheerful demeanor that infuriated Korolev. The feeling was so intense that he could feel it twisting his face into a snarl. He tried to suppress it but Gregorin was already giving him a quizzical look.

“Is there something wrong, Comrade?”

“Nothing. I watched an ambulance take away a colleague’s body not thirty minutes ago. Perhaps it’s that.”

“I’m sorry to hear it. What happened to him?”

“An accident, they say.”

“I see. There are a lot of accidents these days. Your friend Chestnova is kept busy.”

“Yes, it seems so.”

Gregorin shrugged his shoulders. Korolev knew what he was thinking-this was just the way things were these days.

“Have you brought today’s report?” the colonel asked.

“Yes,” Korolev said, patting the front of his jacket with his free hand.

Inside the car, Korolev placed his food parcel at his feet. Gregorin switched on a small roof light, gesturing toward the driver as he began to read.

“This is Volodya, my driver. We can talk in front of him.”

Volodya turned his head toward Korolev. Everything about the face seemed to bulge, except for the eyes that peered out at him through pillbox slits. A massive hairy hand gave Korolev an incongruous thumbs up. Korolev nodded back, aware of the smell of sausage wafting up from the parcel on the floor. Krakow sausage. Korolev hoped this wouldn’t take too long.

“Interesting, the tattoos. You’ll have a full autopsy report tomorrow?”

“Yes, and hopefully an identification as well. There’s bound to be a file on him-probably has a filing cabinet to himself if the tattoos are anything to go by.”

“And the car?”

“If it’s an Emka-well, they’re not easy to get access to.”

“No,” Gregorin said, with a smug smile.

“We’ll do our best, Comrade Colonel, but it might be that the NKVD would have more success tracking it down.”

“We’ll certainly be looking into it,” Gregorin said, turning the last page and then switching off the light.

“What about the American?”

“It was an off-the-record conversation, for what that’s worth.”

“Don’t worry, Schwartz is useful to us. We leave the Americans well alone, particularly those who are, as I said, useful to us.”

There was something contemplative in the way he said the word “useful,” which made Korolev wonder if Schwartz did more for State Security than just buy a few icons from time to time. He hesitated, pretending to himself for a fleeting moment that he had a choice, and then repeated to Gregorin everything that Schwartz had told him. Maybe Korolev would have withheld something if he’d had an American passport and a return ticket to New York in his pocket. But he didn’t and so discretion was a luxury he couldn’t afford.

When Korolev had finished, Gregorin reached into the inside pocket of his coat and produced his battered cigarette case, taking one out for himself, and then one each for Korolev and Volodya. Soon the car was a fug of cigarette smoke.

“Well, you’re right,” Gregrorin said after a while. “Nancy Dolan isn’t Miss Smithson. Lydia Ivanovna Dolina is her name. You remember I thought the dead girl could be one of two possible candidates? Well, Citizeness Dolina was the other candidate. A similar White Guard background.”

“Not a nun?”

“We don’t know, but Schwartz’s information seems to indicate she has religious connections at the very least. We have people working on it-I’ll pass this on to them.”

“Schwartz said she was with an Intourist group.”

“Yes, it was when she went missing from the group that her cover story began to come apart. No one at Comintern has ever heard of her, although we’re keeping an eye on the Americans there just in case. It’s possible she has ended up the same way as Miss Smithson-if not, we’ll find her sooner or later. Moscow isn’t such an easy place to hide.”

“You’re looking for her?” Korolev asked through a cough-by this stage there was enough smoke in the car to cure fish.

“Only as a visa violator. We don’t know how she fits into the picture, so we’re keeping it low-key. I’ll let you have a photograph, in case you come across her.”

Korolev nodded his thanks.

“And this icon? Can you tell me anything about it?”

Gregorin let a small leaf of smoke curl out of his mouth and then exhaled the rest through his nose.

“There is a particular icon-one that went missing from a Lubianka storeroom two weeks ago. There might be a connection.” His words seemed carefully measured.

“The Lubianka? Christ,” Korolev said and would have pushed the word back into his mouth if he could, but Gregorin only laughed.

“No, I don’t think it was him, he hasn’t got the clearance. Other people have, though.”

“Is there a connection? Between the murders and the icon going missing?” Korolev was surprised his voice sounded relatively calm, given his entire body had broken into an icy sweat. To mention Christ in front of a Chekist staff colonel-he felt his toes curl into a cramp.

“It seems certain Nancy Dolan knows about the icon, if it was her who opened the door to Schwartz in New York -therefore it seems reasonable to assume she’s here in connection with it. I think your dead nun must have been as well.” Gregorin spoke slowly, seeming to weigh each word. “And if she was, then the Thief also-after all, it seems they were both tortured in the same way.”

“What icon is this-that people are dying for it?”

Gregorin shook his head after a long pause. “I’m sorry, Comrade. There’s no need for you to have that information at this stage. You must now concentrate on identifying this fellow Tesak and then any associates of his who might be involved. If you find Nancy Dolan along the way, so much the better. But leave the icon to us.”

“I see.” Korolev didn’t really, but he saw enough to keep his mouth shut. Gregorin leaned across and opened the door for the detective.

“You’re expected.”

“I’m sorry?”

“ Babel, the writer, your neighbor. He has good connections with the Thieves. He may be able to assist in your inquiries. I’m afraid another matter has come up that Volodya and I have to deal with. But I’ll see you tomorrow evening, if not before.”

It was only after he entered the building that Korolev remembered he’d no idea which apartment Babel lived in, so he left his food parcel in his room and climbed the stairs to the second landing, hoping that the one-armed BMC chairman, Luborov, would be able to direct him properly. He knocked on his door a little out of breath, and waited, hearing movement and then the hollow sound of footsteps approaching on the wooden floorboards.

“Who’s there?” Luborov’s voice sounded strained.

“Korolev. I moved in yesterday.”

The door opened and Luborov looked out at him.

“It’s nearly nine o’clock, Comrade. Do you need me as a witness?” Luborov was referring to the practice of having two independent witnesses present for arrests, particularly when it was a political matter.

“No, I just need you to tell me where the writer Babel ’s apartment is.”

Korolev knew some people made a living from being witnesses, but it was generally night work and often meant going without sleep if you worked in a factory or on a building site. He supposed Luborov’s condition and his position on the BMC made it easier for him than for most people, but it wasn’t a pleasant way to pass your time.

“ Babel? He has rooms in the Austrian’s apartment. I’m glad you weren’t calling me out, I could do with a good night’s sleep. It’s become busy all of a sudden-it hasn’t been like this for a while. Anyway, big black door to the left on the next landing up. Comrade Babel entertaining, is he?”

“I don’t know, I’ve an appointment.”

“I thought I saw some people go up earlier-he likes to entertain. He never asks me, of course. Well, remember me to him. Goodnight, Comrade.” Luborov shut the door.

Korolev stood for a moment, considering what Luborov had said, and then turned to climb the stairs. So the witnesses were busy again. No one had thought things would change completely, of course, Muscovites knew better than that, but it seemed the quiet optimism of the last few months had been misplaced. He shrugged-it wasn’t as if he could do anything about it, after all. It was like poor Andropov’s accident: you just had to accept that these things happened and then forget about them.

He knocked on Babel ’s black door, which was indeed a fair size, and heard laughter and music inside. It sounded like Melkhov’s band performing “Girls, Tell Your Friends!” He knocked again in case they couldn’t hear him and the door opened. A small woman in a black dress with a white handkerchief over her gray hair looked up at him, her sagging sallow face speaking of troubles endured, as much as age. Two sad brown eyes started at his waist and worked their way up. He took off his hat-there was something about the old woman that made him feel like a small boy.

“Who are you? What do you want?” the woman said; her voice rumbling with quite astonishing depth for such a small frame. The jazz record came to a bumping stop in the background.

“I’m Captain Korolev, Criminal Investigation Division. I believe I’m expected.”

“A Ment? I suppose I shouldn’t ask.” She stood aside with an expression of distaste. “Come in, come in. You’re letting the warmth out. You think we can afford to heat the stairwell, do you?”

“Thank you.”

“Give me your hat and your coat, come on. Don’t worry, I won’t sell them to a passing speculator. I wouldn’t get much anyway, they’ve seen better days. There.” She took the coat and hat and dropped them in a heap on a nearby chair. ‘You can leave your briefcase as well. Have you eaten?”

Korolev hadn’t had anything since the blinchiki on the way out to the stadium, but it wasn’t polite to eat other people’s food. Not with queues for bread the way they were since the poor harvest.

“I’m not hungry,” he said, hoping his stomach wouldn’t betray him.

“Of course you’re not. I made some cheese dumplings this morning. Will I bring you a plate?”

He shook his head, but his eyes must have betrayed him and she squeezed his arm.

“Of course I will,” she said.

In the sitting room five people sat around a low table on which glasses, a full ashtray and bottles stood. Five pairs of eyes looked up at him through the layers of smoke.

“Who’s this?” A short, balding, heavy-set man was sitting cross-legged on the daybed, squinting at them from behind a pair of round, gold-framed glasses. He wore a collarless shirt with open cuffs and a pair of old trousers held up with braces. The shirt was starched a dazzling white and all the light in the room seemed to be focused on it. He smiled at Korolev, his brown eyes mischievous. “Some boyfriend of yours, is it, Shura?”

“Ah, Isaac Emmanuilovich, you do like your little jokes. I can’t grudge you them, I suppose, you poor thing you.” The old woman’s deep voice rumbled out from the kitchen she’d stepped into.

“It’s Captain Korolev, our new neighbor. I was just telling you about him.” Valentina Nikolaevna rose from the soft chair in which she’d been sitting. She was wearing a cocktail dress with a neckline that plunged low enough to reveal chiseled clavicles and swan-white skin. She smiled at him; not exactly a friendly smile, but not unfriendly either. Babel uncrossed his legs and rose to his feet, as did the others, and his smile was, in contrast, as warm as the sun. He waved Korolev to an empty chair.

“Welcome, Comrade. Valentina you know, and Shura it seems. This is my wife Antonina Nikolaevna-Tonya-and this is Avram Emilievich Ginzburg, the poet, and his wife, Lena Yakovlevna. Shura, bring Comrade Korolev a glass. Would you like wine or vodka, Comrade? We’ve both, you see.” He laughed, revealing even, white teeth.

“I’d drink a glass of wine, if I might,” Korolev said.

“Let me guess, Captain. You’re late home after a long day wrestling with evil, heard our little party and thought you’d introduce yourself. Thank God you did-poor Ginzburg was getting bored.”

The small man with wary eyes and a gray beard waved the suggestion away with a half-irritated smile, not shifting his gaze from Korolev’s. He looked ready to run, but that was a reaction you became accustomed to as an investigator. It used to mean people had something to hide, but that wasn’t necessarily the case any more; although, on second thought, there was something about the man’s pallor and frailty that suggested Ginzburg was no stranger to the Zone.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Comrade, but I’d hoped you were expecting me. Staff Colonel Gregorin suggested I come by.”

“Gregorin, ah yes,” Babel said.

“He thought you might be able to assist me with a case I’m working on. A murder.”

“A murder,” Babel said, his eyebrows lifting. “Did you hear that, Shura? I know you’re listening. Shura loves a good murder-the more horrific the better. And my beautiful Tonya isn’t averse to homicide either.” Babel placed a proprietary hand on the knee of the pretty, long-necked brunette, who shook her head in shy disagreement.

“Have you eaten?” Babel continued.

“I have cheese dumplings for him, haven’t I?” a grumpy Shura said, coming from the kitchen with a plate and an empty glass.

“I told you she was listening,” whispered Babel, and Shura leaned over and slapped his arm.

“Don’t be like that, Shura. Sit down now, and we’ll see what kind of a story Captain Korolev has for us.”

Babel poured wine into Korolev’s glass before crossing his legs beneath him.

“I’m afraid I can’t talk about this particular case,” Korolev said, feeling awkward.

“Don’t worry, Captain, I was only teasing. Have some wine and food and when you feel refreshed we’ll talk. Avram is telling us about Armenia.”

Korolev lifted the glass of red wine and enjoyed the warm taste of it, beginning to relax as the bird-like man began to speak. Korolev looked over at Valentina Nikolaevna and was struck by the sharpness of her profile and the way she listened to Ginzburg. Her look was benevolent, even motherly, as though she wanted to shield him from the times they lived in. His wife, Lena, regarded him with the same affectionate gaze, although when she looked up at Korolev her face became closed and careful.

When Ginzburg finished his tales of the sun-baked Armenian hills, the conversation wandered from talk of Paris, where Babel had spent part of that summer representing Soviet literature at a writer’s conference, to the construction of the Metro, on which Babel ’s wife Tonya worked as an engineer. Without being aware quite how it had come about, Korolev found himself telling the story of the rapist, Voroshilov-the trail of clues, the relief on the young man’s face when he was caught. Although Shura, leaning against the kitchen door, maintained her stony face, he couldn’t help notice the way she stared at him. Not at his eyes, he thought, but at his mouth, so that she didn’t miss a word he said. It was Babel, however, who asked what clothes the rapist had worn, how he’d managed to obtain such a fine pair of boots, which lectures had been on the list that led to his undoing, and so on.

“What happened to him, the dog?” Shura asked when he finished.

“He’ll get eight or ten years I should think, depends on what the court decides. It doesn’t matter.”

“How so?” Ginzburg asked, but Korolev was sure he already knew the answer. He’d been in the Zone, or close to it-Korolev was sure of that now. He had the prison pallor of a Zek. Babel coughed, then picked up a bottle of wine.

“Come, friends, let’s finish this off and we’ll open another.”

“Tell us, Captain, why doesn’t it matter?” Ginzburg’s wife asked now and there was accusation in her tone. Perhaps she didn’t understand. He looked at Babel, who shrugged his shoulders and poured out the wine, his eyes on the stream of red. Korolev sighed. Well, if they wanted to know, why shouldn’t they? There were no children present.

“There’s a hierarchy in a prison, even in a police cell. At the top sits the ranking Thief, the ‘Authority,’ then his lieutenants, then down through the Thieves to the lowest apprentice. Then beneath the Thieves are the other prisoners and then the politicals. At the bottom, beneath everyone, are the untouchables. No Thief, nor any other prisoner, will touch them except to commit violence upon them, sometimes sexual violence. They sleep underneath the bunks in case they contaminate a bed. They have their own cutlery, as a fork used by an untouchable would contaminate anyone who used it after them and bring them down to the untouchable’s level. They are given the filthiest jobs. And they don’t last long. Voroshilov will end up like that, as a rapist, unless he’s very lucky. It’s the Thieves’ morality.”

Shura nodded her head, a short jab downward with a hard mouth. It was peasant justice also. Harsh, even brutal, but just in a peasant’s eyes, and she approved. Babel gave a half-smile.

“They have their own rules. It’s difficult for cultured people to understand.”

Valentina Nikolaevna looked at him in confusion. “How could this be allowed to happen? The Thieves are not the law.”

“They are in the camps and the guards allow it,” Ginzburg said and his eyes burned. “The Thieves are the guards’ dogs, and the rest are the sheep. That’s what the Thieves call us-the politicals and the rest-sheep. And they can shear us whenever and however they want. The untouchables are there to tell us that, no matter how bad it gets, it can get worse. And to make us complicit because we all conspire against the untouchables. After all, if we helped them, we would become one of them. It’s a little microcosm of Soviet society, wouldn’t you agree, Captain?”

Korolev looked at Ginzburg in the silence that followed and saw how his chin was lifted, as though expecting a blow. Korolev sighed and shook his head.

“I’m a criminal investigator, Citizen. I find bad people who have done bad things and I put them in a bad place. What of it? As for Soviet society, it’s getting better. We know it isn’t perfect. Comrade Stalin tells us as much. It’s in the nature of Bolshevik self-criticism to recognize its current flaws. It’s where we’re going, not where we are.”

“We know where we’re going, Captain. We’re going to…” Ginzburg stopped and turned to his wife, who’d taken his arm and now shook her head. Babel passed a glass of wine to him and another to Korolev. He seemed comfortable with the break in the conversation, and when everyone had a glass in their hand he raised his own.

“A toast, friends. To our beautiful future.” He held the glass for a moment as though to contemplate the prospect in the color of the wine. Each of them seemed lost in thought and Korolev wondered if they, like him, were imagining what such a beautiful future might be like.

“You’ve won Shura’s heart, you know,” Babel said, when the other guests had left and his wife had gone to bed. “She loves a man with a healthy appetite and a good atrocity up his sleeve. You’ll have to come again-she’ll want to feed you now. If you don’t watch out she’ll make you fat. Look at me. I was a stick when she took me on.”

“A fat stick,” Shura said, from the kitchen. Babel laughed and stood up awkwardly from the daybed.

“Now, Captain, come into my study-we can talk privately there.” Babel led him along the corridor to a room with a desk and a typewriter, a chaise longue and a great many books that were shelved and stacked on or against every available surface. He shut the door behind them.

“It’s not really mine, this room,” Babel said. “I share the flat with an Austrian engineer, but he’s in Salzburg and we don’t know when he’s coming back. It’s been eight months, so I’m gradually taking it over. I don’t think he’s coming back, if the truth be told-but I tell the BMC his arrival is imminent. Of course.”

“An Austrian?” Korolev couldn’t keep the surprise out of his voice.

“Yes, an engineer. I think he decided he couldn’t face another of our winters, so he’s staying at home in the Alps, listening to Mozart and drinking hot chocolate instead. They probably have a different type of snow, a polite kind, very gentle.”

“I would have thought…”

“Yes. It is dangerous, but I need the space to write. I assure you I’m not an Austrian spy, by the way.”

“I’m sure of it.”

“Oh, you can’t be sure of it. The Party may decide otherwise.” He winked at Korolev and gave him a slanted smile. Then he frowned. “Pay no attention to Ginzburg-he’s at the end of his tether. Highly strung poets aren’t designed for Five Year Plans and purges.” He put the glass to his lips and closed his eyes as he drank.

“Anyway, what’s all this about? What assistance can a poor writer offer the combined forces of the NKVD and Petrovka Street?”

“I can’t tell you all I would like to,” Korolev began and Babel nodded.

“That doesn’t surprise me. I guessed as much when Gregorin called. Tell me as little as you can, if you don’t mind. I’ve a two-year-old daughter asleep down the corridor and a wife I plan to spend a lifetime with-but I’m happy to help if I can.”

It was Korolev’s turn to nod. “There have been two murders. One of the dead was a Thief. The other was a young American woman, although of Russian birth-it seems she was also an Orthodox nun. The two killings are almost certainly connected.”

Korolev looked into Babel ’s eyes for a moment, then opened his briefcase and extracted the envelope of case papers. He took out the woman’s autopsy photographs.

Babel took his time with each picture, seemingly absorbing each pore of her skin, each crusty fleck of blood. He turned the images to see them more clearly and when he had reached the last photograph, the one Gueginov had taken of the girl’s profile, he sighed.

“She was quite beautiful. You would think he must have hated her to do this. But maybe not-he’s such a precise man. See the way the clothes are neatly folded, the body parts arranged in just such a way. I wonder. Perhaps he’s sending a message.”

Korolev leaned forward to look at the girl’s body, all shadows and light in the black and white photograph. “I thought as much myself. The way the ear, eye and tongue are arranged?”

“Yes, I’ve heard of something like this, but I’ve never seen it. It’s something the Thieves used to do. To an informer. Or a spy. It means that the dead person may have heard and seen but he will never tell.” Babel looked up at Korolev, his eyes blinking as though trying to remove the dead girl’s image from his retinas. “But the Thieves would be unlikely to desecrate a church. They might steal from it but they wouldn’t do something like this. Well, not while Kolya rules Moscow, that’s for sure.”

Korolev found himself blinking now, but with surprise. He’d heard of Count Kolya, but Babel ’s offhand reference implied a personal knowledge of a man reputed to be the Chief Authority of all the Thieves in Moscow. It wasn’t an elected position, it was open to challenge, but Count Kolya was never challenged. At least, if he had been, the challenge had been dealt with so quickly and savagely that it had barely rippled the surface of his reign. The Militia had been trying to track him down for seven years, but a wall of silence surrounded him and any time the wall looked as if it might be penetrated, the informant who’d seemed to be a promising prospect had either disappeared or shown up dead. Now that Korolev thought of it, one of them had been mutilated in just such a way.

Babel tapped the side of his nose. “I was born in Odessa, Captain. Do you think I made up the stories I wrote about Benya Krik? I changed his name, but if you ask any of the old Militiamen from Odessa they’d tell you all about him. As brave and honest a Thief as ever broke a maiden’s heart. It was just that his version of honesty was quite different from yours and mine, and most certainly from the Party’s. They caught him in the end. A bullet in the neck, I’m told. But they probably needed more than one to finish him. And he was revenged by his fellows, you can be sure of it.”

“Do you know Count Kolya?” Korolev asked and Babel exhaled a long breath, then nodded.

“I talk to him sometimes when I go out to the Hippodrome. Horses are a weakness we share. You might not spot him straight away, except that if you were to look in his direction for a little longer than you should you’d find three or four handy-looking lads with blue fingers have surrounded you, and then you get the strong impression it’s time to go and look at the horses for the next race.”

“You know Count Kolya.” Korolev wasn’t asking the question again, just expressing a quite amazing fact.

“Why do you think Gregorin sent you to me? The NKVD use me as a line of communication from time to time, although I try not to know what they communicate about. I’ll tell you this, though. Kolya would never desecrate a church in this way. He’s not a Believer, at least not the way I suspect you may be, but there’s a code he must live by the same as any other Thief. If this was done on his instructions or with his consent-well, he wouldn’t be the Chief Authority for long.”

Babel seemed oblivious to the fact that Korolev’s blood had concentrated in his toes.

“A Believer, Isaac Emmanuilovich? Me?”

Babel looked up at him and smiled.

“Am I wrong?” He leaned across and put his hand on Korolev’s arm, smiling. “Comrade Korolev, I apologize if I’ve offended you. I must be mistaken.”

Korolev drank the rest of the wine in a single gulp and wondered, not for the first time that day, how the hell he’d got himself into this mess. He took a deep breath, put the glass down firmly on the table and thought for a moment.

“I think I agree with you. If it was a message, maybe it was a message sent to the Thieves. Maybe to Kolya himself. The dead Thief was tortured as well. See these electrical burns on the girl’s body-they both have them.”

Babel whistled. “Is that what they are? You hear things, of course…”

“What things?”

“Things. How people are interrogated these days. I’ve heard that electricity isn’t only used to brighten Lenin’s Lamp.”

Korolev suspected Babel was coming to conclusions about what kind of a person might be behind the killings.

“Look, Comrade,” Korolev said, emphasizing the word “Comrade” and putting into it all the loyalty and hope that old soldiers like Babel and himself remembered from the bitter years after the German War. “I know it’s a lot to ask, but there’s someone going round killing people and I want to stop them, if I can. Whoever they are.”

Babel rolled the red wine round his glass, let it settle and then drank. He pursed his lips in appreciation and then shifted his gaze to Korolev.

“There’s racing tomorrow. Trotters and flat. A horse I follow is in with a chance so I’d have been going anyway. If I see him, I’ll approach him. I presume you’d like to know his side of it, if he’ll tell me. I’ll have to let him know who’s asking, of course.”

“It might be better if he were to agree to a face-to-face meeting. That way you wouldn’t hear things you might not wish to.”

Babel shrugged his shoulders as if to say, “Why not?”

“It might be possible and, of course, even a man like me would rather not hear some things. Although I am curious-my God, I’m curious.”

He paused and smiled a cat’s smile, full of speculation and mischief.

“It will have to be quietly done, of course,” he continued. “The first rule in the Thieves’ world is non-cooperation with the Soviet state in any form, you know that. What Ginzburg said-it’s not quite right. Even in the prison system the Thieves bark at the sheep for their own purposes, not because they’re told to. Is there something in it for Kolya?”

“The Thief’s body, perhaps? His tattoos say he was known as Tesak.” It might be done. General Popov would consent if it bought them some information-the body would only be incinerated otherwise. “What do the Thieves do with their dead?”

“Same as the rest of us, I think. Put them in the ground and remember them fondly, or not, as the case may be. But for Kolya to recover Tesak’s body from the police it would have to be handled so as not to make him look like an informer.”

“He can steal it, for all I care.”

“I’ll ask him. Anything else you can offer him?”

Korolev considered for a moment and then decided that if he was going to run the risk of being shot, he might as well be shot for a reason.

“It can be a two-way conversation. He may be as interested in my information as I am in his, particularly if the mutilation was a message with his address on it.”

Babel took another drink of the wine and sighed. “Do you know, when they reopened the Hippodrome after the Civil War I practically lived out there. It’s a place I feel very happy. It’s all about the horses, which is not a bad thing at all.”

A little later, the rest of the wine finished, Korolev said his farewells to Babel and stumbled down the stairs, a paper bag of Shura’s cheese dumplings clutched to his chest. He shut the door to the apartment behind him, taking all the more care when he heard the child Natasha’s voice and then Valentina Nikolaevna’s, quiet and reassuring, in response. He paused for a moment in the shared room and listened to the sound of a distant train’s whistle, then walked over to the window. It was snowing outside and a set of tire tracks in the center of the lane were already losing their shape. The lantern across the street cast its yellow glow and Korolev thought it seemed as peaceful as a scene from an old postcard.

He wouldn’t have seen the watcher in the carriage entrance if the man hadn’t moved. It was just a shift in the darkness, but when he looked more carefully, shielding his eyes from the streetlamp’s glare by placing a hand down the side of his face and looking a little off center-the way he’d learned to do in the trenches-he was sure he detected the outline of a man there in the shadows. Then he noticed the disjointed footprints under the round arch. If there was a watcher, then the cold was making him stamp his boots from time to time. It would be difficult, Korolev thought, for whoever it was to see inside the darkened apartment, but perhaps they’d seen the light from the hallway when he’d entered. The watcher’s eyes would be more attuned to the dark than Korolev’s, and he wouldn’t have made the mistake of looking at the single street lamp that served that part of the lane. Possibly he was looking back at Korolev at this very moment, seeing Korolev’s face in the same street lamp’s glow, which added a slight sheen of silver to the surfaces of the shared room. Another flicker of movement decided the matter. He considered going down and confronting the watcher, then thought better of it. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know who was keeping tabs on him-at least they were only watching at this stage, and not carting him off to Butyrka.

But Korolev didn’t turn the light on as he undressed. And when he lay down to sleep it was with the chair against the door handle and his Walther underneath his pillow.

It tired you out, this kind of work, and it didn’t help that he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep in nearly a week. Of course, it was always difficult when you came home after a job, and busy periods exacerbated the problem. You couldn’t just lie down straight away when you’d finished-humans weren’t light bulbs, after all. They couldn’t just turn themselves off with the flick of a switch. They needed time to adjust to different situations. Like tonight, for example; the contrast between the sleeping domesticity of the apartment and what had happened out in the empty house was too extreme. As a result, he knew he’d have to let sleep come to him. He would have to be patient.

Over the years he’d become more accustomed to the late jobs. Of course, he’d had to; it wasn’t unusual to work past midnight, in fact it was probably the norm. After all, it was ideal for his kind of work-being the time when people were at their lowest, mentally and physically. But he was human also, and it required enormous effort to remain alert and hard and show nothing but strength to a prisoner, particularly if he also was exhausted and at the end of his tether. When it was over, no matter how tired he might feel, turning off that effort was difficult. He’d be driven home-they knew how to conserve his energy-and sometimes he’d drift off in the car, but it was rare. Mostly he just stared out at the empty streets and thought about the human being he’d just broken.

Tonight he’d climbed the stairs carefully, avoiding the steps that creaked, and slipped a soundless key into the apartment door. Once inside, he looked in on his son and touched the curls of his head as he lay there. His fingers looked rough against the boy’s porcelain cheeks, and he tried not to think of the blood he’d shed that night. He stepped back when his son stirred, his lips puffing outward for a moment and a frown forming, but the boy didn’t wake, and he was grateful-who knew what the boy might see in his eyes? He wished then that the boy could stay forever just like this-innocent and safe. Who was to say that the boy might not find himself in just such an empty house as the one he’d just left? And what if he were there too? They might ask that of him some day-to kill his own son. They had asked everything else of him. He sighed and pulled the blankets closer round the sleeping child.

He was never hungry when he came home. He liked to have a drink, it was true, but he didn’t have an appetite for food. Some did, but not him. Instead he’d sit in the kitchen, like tonight, pour himself a glass of vodka and read for a bit. Anything would do. For a while he’d read Shakespeare’s plays but then they’d become difficult. There was too much right and wrong in them, and he lived in a world where such bourgeois considerations were unhelpful. What did so-called virtues like honor, compassion and justice mean in the context of a Revolution? Let their enemies get bogged down with such nonsense-they were meaningless in the prism of predestined historical change. And yet they left awkward questions, the kind of questions his wife had asked before the end. He poured another measure. She’d seen him late at night too many times to have any illusions as to what kind of person he might be. And now nor did he. It was the reason why there was no mirror in the kitchen.

Two more ruffians dealt with tonight-easier with two, as well. The driver had taken them out well past Lefertovo, then down a winding road, and then a track. The two Thieves were trussed like chickens in the boot, and had looked around in confusion when they’d been hauled out. He wondered if it had been the first time they’d seen the moon cut through a forest’s bare branches-they certainly looked as though they’d never left the city before. It was the last time they’d seen the moon, anyway, if they’d bothered to take the chance.

Inside, the house had the penetrating cold of a long-empty dwelling, but it had three rooms, and doors to separate them, and once he started to work he’d warmed up soon enough. He’d played them off each other, used one’s pain to persuade both, passed information from room to room. Having the driver there had been a help-and, for once, he hadn’t had to worry about the noise. That had been useful too.

Afterward he’d shot them in the cellar, and the driver had helped drag them back to the car. This time they wanted no traces-the Militia were investigating the first two, and there was no point in getting them all worked up with another couple of stiffs. That worried him, if the truth were told. When he’d done this kind of work before, investigations had been no more than paint jobs. The idea that this one might be more substantial-well, it made him wonder.

He reassured himself that he’d followed the orders that he’d been given, and that they were close now; that much was evident. It shouldn’t be long-the two Thieves had given them useful information. Still-messy. It wasn’t the first time he’d been involved in an irregular action, but normally, of course, there was a team, preparation and coordination, a clear aim. This time the support was almost nonexistent-they didn’t know who they could trust within the organization, so they said, and therefore the operation had been stripped down to its essential parts-the driver was the only active assistance he’d seen. They’d told him there were others acting independently, but he’d seen no signs. And there was no plan as such-they had an objective, it was true-to recover the icon, and trace it back to the leak-but everything was improvised, each step forward leading to the next, whatever it might be. That was not something he was used to either.

There was always a degree of trust and support among Comrades from the organization, a fellowship that accepted frailty and occasional excess. The organization understood all too well the pressure they placed on operatives like him and they made allowances. They looked after you, kept an eye on you, sent you for a break when it was needed, organized extra rations of vodka when you were busy, that kind of thing. Mostly he worked in the Moscow area-the Butyrka, the Lubianka, Lefertovo. He was well known in all of them. His colleagues didn’t look down on him for what he did, far from it; they understood that specialists like him were essential to their work. You could only get so far with ordinary forms of interrogation, they all knew that. For tougher cases you needed a man like him. He could take a prisoner to pieces and then put him back together again, but always as just one more step in a process. He was merely another cog in the machine and each cog relied on the others for forward momentum. It was Soviet power in action, no detail overlooked, no goal unattainable.

But it was strange that they wanted things done quietly now-it seemed a change of tactics since he’d been instructed to leave the mutilated body of the girl on that damned altar. If that hadn’t been sending someone a public message, he wasn’t sure what else it could have been. And the girl troubled him as well. Her last look was always there, lurking at the periphery of his consciousness, and only effort kept her from his thoughts.

The girl came to him now, despite his resistance, with that gentle look she’d given him just before she died, and it occurred to him, and there was a sweet dizziness to the thought, that this might not be an authorized action. That he might be out on a limb with no back-up, no protection. That if it blew up he’d be the hunted, not the hunter. It didn’t bear thinking about. He’d followed orders, trusted his superiors, that was all he’d ever needed to do. He thought of his son asleep in the next room, his blond hair curling on the pillow and hoped this was tiredness playing tricks on him-this feeling that the girl had cursed him with those soft eyes of hers.

He poured the last of the bottle into the glass and drank.