The Twelfth Department

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

They left the other boys in the house. There wasn’t anything to be done—they couldn’t bring them all with them and, anyway, they didn’t seem to want to leave—the damage had been done. They’d be made into perfect little Party activists, no doubt, who worshipped Stalin and loved Lenin. And who was to say they wouldn’t be happier for it? Certainly having a mind that thought for itself hadn’t made Korolev content—far from it.

Korolev and Slivka took the doctor down the stairs, and even though he kept asking them what they were going to do with him, they said nothing—just let the man sweat and then pushed the fellow into the strongroom with the others.

Korolev stood in the doorway, looking in at the frightened faces in the small space, and lit the cigarette that every fiber in his body was crying out for. He thought he saw guilt in their expressions and possibly remorse. He hoped he did. He hoped they realized that if you did the kind of things to a person that they’d done—well then—you should expect that something similar might be done to you down the road.

“We said no killing, Kolya.”

Korolev could feel the heat of Kolya’s anger from where he stood behind him.

“Not here, maybe. But I’m remembering faces.”

Korolev, as it happened, was doing the same. Folk seldom turned the other cheek completely, in his experience, they just waited for an opportunity. It might never come—but if it did, they’d take it. And so he looked at the rats in the strongroom, at each one of their faces, and he memorized them. Then he slowly shut the door and locked it. And left them in the dark.

He turned to Kolya.

“Chances are Zaitsev will hand out their punishment for us, anyway. They failed him.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Kolya said. The Thief’s eyes looked as if they were glowing with a dark, volcanic rage.

“You go ahead—there’s something I have to do.” Korolev’s voice sounded tired, even to him.

Slivka stepped forward. “It’s not worth it, Chief. Stick to the plan—in and out. It’s the best way.”

“Not them.”

“What then?”

“There might be papers here that back up Shtange’s report. Somewhere.”

“We should go,” Slivka said in a flat tone.

“Where to, Slivka? You think they won’t know this is our work? Do you think we can hide? There are other people involved in this—Valentina, Yasimov, our friends, our families. You know how these things work. If there’s something that backs up what Shtange wrote, we’ve a chance.”

Slivka looked at him in silence for a moment, then nodded to Kolya.

“Give us ten minutes—we’ll see you at the cars.”