Authors: D. R. Bell
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Historical, #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Thrillers & Suspense, #Financial, #Spies & Politics, #Conspiracies, #Political, #Historical Fiction, #Russian, #Thrillers
I rushed to the
militzia
headquarters in the morning and asked Mershov to find out what happened. He switched Makar and I to patrol the area next to the headquarters. I kept checking with him every hour. When I came in for the third time, Ivan was sitting behind the desk, staring down at his hands. He spoke without looking at me, “They were right on the front line, seeing the soldiers off. The Germans are well-entrenched there, they had every inch covered with fire. It was a direct artillery hit. I am sorry, kid.”
I started screaming, “That fat bastard! Sitting in a warm office, stuffing his face, sending people to death!”
A sweaty hand clamped my mouth. It was Makar, holding me from behind, whispering in my ear. “Volodya, don’t! You have to stay alive!”
The old curmudgeon held me in his arms until my sobs subsided.
My grandmother was killed in one of those senseless, bloody frontal attacks that Zhdanov and his ilk concocted. She was sacrificed in order for the people in charge to report to Stalin that they are attacking.
11 December, 1941
Mershov called us into his office yesterday and told us to do a short patrol today, then report to a cinema in Sadovaya Street. We find there NKVD Lieutenant Kulikov, the same one that we worked with in Smolniy. It’s a fully functional theater, kept warm by its own heating system. Most importantly, there is plenty of food. Kulikov tells us that’s where party functionaries relax in the evening, bring their girlfriends and prostitutes. Our job is to watch the door, make sure that only the people that are supposed to be here can get in. After the show, the food gets packed away, but we can collect what’s left behind, what’s partially eaten. When the show ends, in my gas mask I collect bread, cakes, sausages, cheese. Makar hands me the choicest pieces.
The city in the dark is dangerous, as gangs and cannibals come out at night. I walk with the rifle in my hands, to make me a less attractive target. It’s a scene from hell: sliver of the moon, skeletons of bombed out buildings, red glow from
burzhuiki
-set fires that nobody puts out. Snow sparks brilliantly in a cold, deep silence. Searchlights are sweeping the sky. I can see figures moving in the dark. Whenever anyone approaches, I lift the rifle to scare them away.
I am tired, I have to stop. The shadows creep closer. Leningrad is the city of shadows now. I open and close the bolt of my rifle, sound echoing in still air. The shadows move back. I start walking again, counting steps. When I get home, I wake up Nastya and Andrei. I only let them eat a little bit, so they don’t get sick. With food, comes hope.
28 December, 1941
Andrei is not going to last much longer. I can see that he’s lost the will to live, he is just lying in bed silently, air wheezing in and out of his lungs. In desperation, yesterday I asked Mershov whether we can help the NKVD Lieutenant Kulikov in the Sadovaya cinema or in Smolniy.
This morning, Mershov tells me to report to Smolniy. Kulikov is waiting for me there, we are to go with him and his boss to the airport to receive and distribute a food shipment for the families of the party officials. The giant city outside is starving, but nobody in Smolniy looks hungry. A truck picks us up, and we drive through a city in standstill. We get to unload boxes of food: ham, caviar, cheese, expensive wines. The truck takes us back to Smolniy. As I am about to leave, hungry and exhausted from the effort, Kulikov gives me a small package and reminds me to make sure to stop by Canteen No. 12.
I don’t look inside the package until I get home. It’s a loaf of bread, three cans of ham, three jars of jams: boysenberry, strawberry, raspberry. Once home, Nastya boils the water, and we feed Andrei two pieces of bread with boysenberry jam. A touch of color comes into his face.
I realize that the last entry was written right here, across the street. I look up at the apartment’s windows and try to imagine what it looked like in 1941.
18 January, 1942
Today, Makar and I patrolled the Haymarket. I asked to come here, wanted to trade a small jar of raspberry jam for a collection of toy soldiers for Andrei. Nastya thought it may lift his spirits.
Thousands are dying daily from hunger and cold. But here, everything’s on sale. Warmly-dressed, healthy-looking, pitiless people sell bread, meat patties and sausages to walking skeletons. A woman produces a wedding ring in a trembling hand to a tall man in a fur coat. He cuts a small piece of bread, “Here, that’s it.” She says “I need more, it’s a gold ring. My child is dying.” The man is about to take the bread away when he sees Makar pulling a rifle off his shoulder. The man thrusts the bread in woman’s hand and scurries away with his packages. Some others start packing their wares. Makar breathes hard, I see that he wants to kill them all.
“Where did they get all this when everyone is starving?” I ask.
“Some work in the food supply chain, they steal,” snarls Makar. “Some kill people and turn their bodies into sausages and meat patties. All prey on others.”
“That’s what we are, human predators,” I whisper.
Makar looks at me. “Not all. You saved him, Volodya.”
I don’t understand. “Saved whom?”
“Andrei. People are going crazy from hunger, stealing food from their families. There is no way for a child to survive on a dependent’s ration. The bastards here, the bastards in Smolniy, they only take care of themselves and send others to die. But you, you saved someone else’s child. When the judgment comes, God will take the measure.”
I did not realize Makar is religious. It’s something one has to hide.
“It’s just one child.”
“You never know. One soul can make all the difference.”
This is the hardest month. No food, no heat, no running water, freezing cold. German shelling is much worse than it used to be. But we have this will to live now. Nastya scrambled for wood from burned out buildings, and we have enough to feed the burzhuika for at least a month. We still have two-and-a-half candles left. Both Andrei and Nastya are into the
Count of Monte Cristo
story, waiting for me to read to them how Dantes takes his revenge. And the metronome keeps beating.
The waiter brings my food. I take a break, eat absentmindedly, looking around. I like the new Malaya Sadovaya, it’s a happy, cheerful place with tons of people.
5 April, 1943
Two days ago, Andrei said he had something to tell me. He saw the man that killed his mother. I asked if he was sure; he said he would not forget that face as long as he lived. He followed the man to a building on the Fontanka River Embankment, just a five minute walk from our old apartment.
I told Andrei to show me. Waited and waited, but as the daylight was running out, Andrei grabbed my arm, “That’s him!”
A large red-faced man walks by us and into the building. He is stout, bordering on fat, wearing a coat with major’s epaulets and an officer’s hat. I remember him. He was in that cinema on Sadovaya back in December of 1941, laughing out loud, grabbing his girlfriend’s tits.
“You sure?” I ask again.
“I am,” replies Andrei. “I bumped into him on purpose; he swore at me, I remember his voice, screaming at my mother.”
“Don’t talk to anyone about this. Anyone!” I look Andrei in the eyes, to make sure he understands.
The next day, I clean out and load the Walther PPK that I took off the German officer I killed during the January offensive. I wait for the man, but he has a woman with him, they are laughing loud as they walk. I go home. He and he alone is my target.
6 April, 1943
Today, I wait again. This time, he is by himself. I follow him as he gets into the building and climbs up the stairs, catch up as he is opening the apartment door.
“Major!” I call out.
“What?” he turns impatiently, smell of alcohol mixed with sour breath.
I raise the gun and pause.
He backs into the wall, small eyes growing scared: “You can take anything you want. I have food, I have gold.”
“Do you remember a woman on Liteyniy Prospekt that you visited in November of ’41? The one you hit over the head with a can of ham?”
“No, I did not hit anyone!” he protests. But a momentary hesitation betrays him with a flicker of recognition in small eyes.
Images fly through my brain: Andrei’s mother, her head bashed in; the man laughing in a warm theater; frozen corpses like statues in the snow; Zhdanov lecturing me on sacrifice; resignation in the German officer’s eyes before I kill him; Nastya saying “he became like them” about Dantes; Makar talking about God’s judgment. I can’t wait for God.
I pull the trigger. The sound is deafening, and I run away as fast as I can.
I hid the gun in a courtyard place I had chosen beforehand. When Andrei asks me, I remind him to never speak about this to anyone. Never.
In four days, I will be back on the front line with my infantry regiment. Let them chase me there.
Before I leave, we are going to apply to adopt Andrei as our son. It will be difficult to send him to school as an orphan, Nastya and I are afraid they’ll take him away from us.
The table next to mine erupts in cheers. They are celebrating a birthday. I laugh and salute them.
8 January, 1946
Tatyana, a teacher in Nastya’s university, has been arrested for maintaining a diary of anti-Soviet propaganda. Tatyana survived the blockade but lost her mother and one of her children. She kept a diary, like I did. Tatyana brought her diary to the museum. Nastya read it; it was a simple account of hunger, shelling and death. And then the NKVD came and took Tatyana away. Why?
Nastya is still helping out in the museum, but she is afraid. After this entry, I will hide my diary in a safe place. I work with Mershov during the day, take writing courses at night. This does not leave much time for editing, but I am almost done with my play!
30 August, 1946
This will be my last entry. I have burned my play. Earlier, when I tried to publish it, I’ve been told to eliminate “negative characters.” Then they cast Akhmatova and Zoshchenko out of the Writer’s Union. That fat pig Zhdanov is now in charge of the country’s cultural policy. Nastya can’t work in the museum anymore; it’s getting too dangerous, too easy to be accused of subversive activities. There are rumors that Zhdanov wants to close the museum. Two days ago, the NKVD called me in. My name was on the list of people that came to see Anna Akhmatova. Only intervention by Kulikov, now a captain, saved me. But I’ve been warned that I must demonstrate unquestioning loyalty toward the Party from now on.
Nothing true about the blockade can be published. They want to wipe out the memory, to rewrite the history. I knew then I had to destroy the play. I have to protect Nastya and Andrei. It’s never enough to destroy a person; they always come after the family. I will not be a writer, I will become an investigator, as Mershov asked me to. I will hide the diary, but I retrieved the Walther PPK that I took off the German officer I killed and it’s now in my desk, loaded. They can come after me, but they will never take me alive.
That’s it, that’s the end of the diary. I should put the torn pages back into the notebook, in order. No reason to worry about the sixty-year old killing; they can chase my father’s regiment in the sky. No reason to worry about the NKVD and their descendants, the history made its judgment.
I can’t wait for God.
Where do you draw the line between revenge and forgiveness?
Friday, June 23
Rozen calls in the morning. “Hey, it’s already past six in St. Petersburg, you should be up!”
“OK, Sal, go ahead.”
“So we looked into the companies you asked about…”
“We?”
“Me and Alex Shchukin. Remember, he was Brockton’s and Streltsova’s bodyguard that was sent for a take-out when they were killed? He is in Los Angeles, was only too happy to help out. Let’s start with the home lender. I visited their local branch, looks like a perfectly legitimate operation. They advertise a lot in Russian and Spanish communities, so Alex asked around in the West Hollywood area where many of the Russians have settled. Turns out there is some kind of scam going on where they basically pay people to take loans.”
“That does not make sense, the borrowers pay ‘points’ for the loans, not the other way around.”
“That’s how it should be, but it seems there is like a rate card, about 1 percent of the loan, depending on your FICO score and God knows what. You sign documents that you are buying a house and taking a million dollar or whatever loan, three months later you sign documents that you either sold the place or that you can’t pay and are walking away from the house, and for your troubles you get paid ten grand. Nice, eh? Alex gave a hundred to one of the fake borrowers to refresh his memory and the borrower remembered the street in Simi Valley, an L.A. suburb, where his supposed house was. I drove to check it out. It’s a private gated community, big sign in front announcing that the construction was done by home builder whose name you gave me. I pull up to the gate, a guard comes out, and asks me what I want. From his accent, I figure he is from your old country. I tell him I want to see houses for sale, he replies it’s by appointment only. I drove all the way from Santa Barbara, I am not going to turn around, so I pull my badge, say it’s police business. His eyes narrow, like he is calculating whether to kill me or let me through. I pull my jacket open so he can see the holster with the gun. The guard goes back, raises the gate. I drive through the community, perhaps fifty built homes but mostly lots where construction has barely started. I see very few cars, no people. After I leave, I go check the real estate transaction records. Turns out almost 400 homes have been sold on those streets in 2005, prices starting from $700,000, most financed by that home lender. I can’t figure out what the scam is though: they give people the money to buy homes and then pay them to walk away? What’s the deal?”
I know what the deal is; they are offloading the loans to government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as soon as they make those loans. They don’t care that these loans will never see any payments, they just sell the loans to the government and pocket the money. They sell unfinished houses because the so-called buyers never move in. Another fraudulent game where the sucker is the U.S. taxpayer. Eventually the government will pick up the tab for the worthless mortgages. But that’s what much of Wall Street is doing these days anyway, these guys just seem to be more aggressive.
I remain silent, so Sal continues, “I think there is some major money laundering going on. But as I said, I don’t get the whole scheme. You do, don’t you?”
I just say, “Sal, thank you. Please thank Alex for me. No need to look into this farther.”
Rozen sighs, “Fine, be that way. Take care of yourself, OK?”
I promise to do just that.
St. Petersburg State University is Russia’s oldest university, founded in 1724 by Peter the Great. That’s a source of pride over the Moscow upstarts to the south. The university is located just across the Big Neva from the Hermitage, on Vasiliovskiy Ostrov (Island). I don’t waste the opportunity to walk by the Palace Square and the Hermitage before crossing the bridge to the Kunstkamera, an anthropological museum. It was the very first public museum in Russia, also started by Peter the Great, who was anxious to follow the Western examples. Its first collection was a cabinet of curiosity, an assortment of deformed fetuses. I shuddered when I read about it. Following the river, I come to the vermilion-and-white three-story faculty building, directly in sight of the Bronze Horseman. After about twenty minutes of wandering within the building, merely finding Zinaida Konyukhova feels like a victory in itself.
Konyukhova turns out to be a nice-looking woman in her mid-thirties locked away in a windowless office with a small “Archives Administration” sign. She is planted behind a massive desk and seems to be glad to have a visitor.
“Zinaida Petrovna?” I say.
“Yes, that’s me.”
“I am Pavel Rostin, Mr. Zorkin told me I could visit you.”
The smile on Konyukhova’s face morphs into an expression of puzzlement. “Did you say Rostin?”
“Yes.” I answer carefully.
“There was another person by this last name here a few months ago…” Konyukhova’s voice trails away, her smile gone, eyes narrowed in suspicion.
I try to respond confidently and without hesitation. “It was my father, Vladimir Rostin. He was looking for Grigoriy Voronezhsky’ dissertation.”
The woman nods. “But I made him a copy, why are you back?”
“He had a mild stroke and can’t remember where he put it. I searched his whole apartment; I think he accidentally threw it away. He did not finish reading the document and asked me to find it. He could not even remember your name, so his neighbor, Mr. Zorkin, offered to help. You know, Zinaida Petrovna, my father is eighty-one. I am sure you’ve dealt with people that age and know how they can be.”
The last bit must have convinced Konyukhova. “Yes, my grandfather is eighty two and he often forgets things. But your dad seemed to be so together.”
“Yes, well, he was. Until the stroke.”
“I am sorry to hear about that, I hope he recovers. You see, I am not even supposed to give you access to the archives, let alone make copies.” As she says it, the palm of her right hand turns face up signaling what’s expected.
“I understand, but I would love to indulge the old man,” I say while producing a pair of $100 bills from my wallet.
Konyukhova’s palm flips once again, facing me, signaling to stop. “It’s nice of you to care about your old man.” She pushes herself up and squeezes past the desk to stand next to me. Zinaida Petrovna is pleasantly plump and wears a short black skirt below a prim white blouse. She takes the bills and smiles. “Follow me, please.”
Konyukhova walks in front of me, her hips swaying. We take an elevator to the basement. Two other men share the ride with us, both eyeing Konyukhova as she stands formally with her hands clasped in front. I follow her to the door with a faded “Archives” lettering which she unlocks with a key. Once inside, she takes my hand with a “We don’t want you to get lost” comment, and we make our way through a library-like setup of shelves filled with books, manuscripts, and binders. She must be bored in her job and enjoys a little game of seduction.
We turn into one of the spaces between shelves, Konyukhova lets go of my hand, bends down, picks up a thin binder and hands it to me. “I did not have to look it up; I was getting it for your father not long ago.”
I open the binder to read:
“Financial Warfare in the 21
st
Century: Scenarios, Trends, and Policy Implications. Master’s Thesis by Grigoriy Voronezhsky, 1998.”
There are more words on the page, but I have trouble concentrating with Konyukhova’s body emanating heat right next to me.
Konyukhova takes the binder from my hands, steps back and asks, “Would you like me to make another copy for your father?”
I squeeze out “Yes” and she leads me to a side wall, where she disappears into a small copier room while I lean against the wall, and take a deep breath. The copier stops whirring, and Konyukhova comes out, hands me a manila envelope with papers inside and takes the binder back to the shelf.
I had a thought in the meantime.
“Zinaida Petrovna?”
“Yes?”
“The university does have an annual book of graduates, right?”
She hesitates, unsure of where this is going.
I add. “All universities print one every year, I think.”
Konyukhova nods, eyeing me suspiciously.
“Can I look at the one from 1998?” I reach into my wallet and produce another hundred.
She hesitates, then reaches for the bill. “You can’t make a copy.”
“That’s OK, I don’t want a copy. I just want to look at it.”
I follow her to a rack by the entrance to the archives, and she pulls out a book of 1998 graduates off the shelf. I flip through the alphabetical listing, get to the right page. Grigoriy Voronezhsky and Greg Voron is the same person.
Konyukhova escorts me out of the archives, guides me to a side exit on the first floor, formally shakes my hand and says, “Thank you for visiting the university and good luck with your research.” There is a note of relief in her voice. With that, Konyukhova turns around and marches back, hips swaying, high heels clicking on a stone floor.
When I get back to the apartment, I open the envelope. It’s has a document of about fifty pages. The table of contents reads:
The doorbell rings. As expected, it’s Zorkin.
“Pavel Vladimirovich, I have some papers for you to sign,” he says cautiously, half-expecting to be told that I have another assignment for him.
To his relief, I respond with, “Yes, Evgeny Antonovich, we do.”
We go through the piles of paperwork. Seems that although the Russian real estate privatization has been done only recently, the document bureaucracy already caught up to the U.S. levels. I date everything with the coming Wednesday. When Zorkin protests that it should be Tuesday, I point out to him that Monday evening in the U.S. will be Tuesday in Russia.
“What’s another day, Evgeny Antonovich? By the way, one small request for you.”
Zorkin’s face drops, but he recovers when I explain that I just may ask him to send some of my father’s items to New York.
“No problem, I will be happy to ship everything.” He sweeps his hand, indicating that he has no interest in any of my father’s furniture. He probably already has a painting and remodeling crew standing by.
“Thank you, Evgeny Antonovich. That won’t be necessary; I will clearly mark what I would like sent. Here’s the key, I trust you to not use it until Wednesday.”
“Of course, of course, you can absolutely trust me,” gushes Zorkin, ecstatic at reaching his goal at a price that’s much lower than he was prepared to pay. “Pavel Vladimirovich, should we go out and celebrate tonight? I have connections at the city’s best restaurants!”
I thank him and beg off. I have had enough of the man.
I reserve a flight to New York. An unmistakable sign of progress in Russia: One no longer needs “connections” to get airline tickets, doesn’t have to buy them well in advance. If there are seats, you buy a ticket and you get on. Fortunately, my credit card limit is pretty high, the credit card company has not caught up to my new reality. Going through father’s things. I take the diary, the metronome and the photo album. I put a few other books into a box, marked for a shipment to New York City. Everything else can be left to Mr. Zorkin.