Red Icon (20 page)

Warder First Class Turkov selected a brass key from the dozens he kept on a large iron ring. Inserting the key into a battered metal door, he stepped into a musty, darkened room and locked himself inside.

Feeling around in the blackness, he located the light switch. Three powerful bulbs crackled into life, illuminating the dreary chamber. The room had a tall ceiling and no windows. It had once been the power plant, whose massive, wood-fired boiler heated the entire prison, but the camp’s engineers had replaced it with a number of smaller boilers and wood stoves, which heated separate buildings at Karaganda.

Although the room still smelled of smoke and engine oil, the place had been converted, a number of years ago, into a place of execution.

A large grid-iron scaffold had been erected in the centre of the room. A narrow staircase climbed up to a platform roughly three times the height of a man above the ground. On the platform was a bar from which the noose would be suspended. There was also a large lever, reaching up from the base of the platform to the height of a man’s waist. At the moment of execution, the bar would be pulled back, opening a trapdoor through which the prisoner would fall to his death.

The prison only carried out about three executions a year, for punishments such as killing a fellow inmate, grievous injury to a guard, or a third attempt at escape. The executioner, Carl Levitsky, a precise and humourless man with a bald head and bushy grey eyebrows, took a solemn pride in his profession.

At first, Turkov had kept his distance from Levitsky, convinced that only the most twisted of minds could follow such a calling.

As time passed, however, Turkov began to appreciate the skill and precision that the executioner brought to his work. The night before a man was to be hanged, Levitsky would come to the isolation cell where the condemned was fed his last meal. Sliding back a peephole in the door, he would judge the man’s weight and height and only then would he construct the noose. Levitsky’s aim was to cause a minimum of suffering to those whom he dispatched from this world. For this, he had compiled charts showing exactly how far a man had to fall in order to cleanly sever the third vertebra, killing the condemned man instantly. If the rope was too long, the drop could sever the man’s head from his body. Too short, and a man could take minutes to die.

As Turkov watched the executioner go about his work, he came to understand that Levitsky’s attention to detail served to cause a minimum of suffering to those he dispatched from this world and his original revulsion for the man transformed into a kind of awe.

Levitsky knew nothing of this, because Turkov rarely spoke to him. In the beginning, Turkov had been too disgusted to make the man’s acquaintance and now he was simply too humbled.

It was required that a warder be present beside Levitsky when the executions were carried out, to assist in unbolting the floor if the drop handle should ever fail. The bolts could be drawn back very quickly, but it was a two-man job and, although the drop handle had never failed, Levitsky insisted on the presence of a warder at his side, just in case.

The role of executioner’s assistant was not a popular one at Karaganda, mostly because executions took place on the stroke of midnight, but Turkov often volunteered for the job.

His fellow guards considered him a morbid follower of death, but Turkov never saw it that way. To him, it was a privilege to watch such a master at work.

A hanging had been scheduled for that night, and this time the Chief Warder had not even asked for volunteers. He had simply appointed Turkov.

The man due to be hanged was an embezzler named Klebnikov. The money he had stolen from the State Tobacco Monopoly was never recovered. Klebnikov claimed that it had all been gambled away, but from the first day he arrived at Karaganda, rumours began to circulate that the embezzler Klebnikov had hidden it somewhere. Some prisoners became fixated on the idea that he still had access to a fortune. With petty bribes, they attempted to draw his secret out of him, and when that did not work, they tried to frighten him into giving it up. Eventually, inevitably as far as Turkov was concerned, the death threats began to emerge. Fearing for his life, Klebnikov decided to act first. With a knife fashioned out of a tiny triangle of metal from a used tin can, which was then fitted into the wooden stem of a broken toothbrush, Klebnikov murdered a fellow prisoner by jamming the blade into the man’s throat and severing the carotid artery. His pleas of self-defence were met with stony silence by the members of the prison tribunal, and a date of execution was set.

As Levitsky’s assistant, Turkov’s job was to arrive before the execution, make sure that everything was in order, and test that the drop door was functioning correctly. It was now 11.15 p.m.

Turkov made his way up the metal stairs to the scaffold platform.

The rope was already in place, fitted to an iron ring attached to a bar above his head. Turkov paused to admire the craftsmanship of the noose, its lower edge fitted with a piece of leather, so that the rough hemp did not cut into the dead man’s skin.

It was very quiet.

Turkov stepped on to the drop door, his hands trembling at the thought that it might give way suddenly and send him falling to the floor, which would certainly break both his legs.

The bow of the noose hung directly in front of his face. Next to him was the metal lever for releasing the drop door, the paint worn from its handle.

Turkov leaned forward, resting the underside of his chin upon the leather padding.

This is the last thing they see, he thought, before the hood goes on. He remembered the way the black cloth billowed as the person gasped for breath, and the medicinal smell of the alcohol the prisoner had been given to drink just before he entered the execution chamber. The prisoner would be handed a green enamelled tin mug, of the type in use in every government-run institution in the country. It was filled with what appeared to be vodka, and indeed about a third of the drink was vodka, but the rest of it was some concoction of Levitsky’s own invention, containing rubbing alcohol, embalming fluid and surgical anaesthetic. The effect on the prisoner was stupefying. By the time they reached the stairs, some of the condemned had to be carried to the rope.

Some thought it was a cruel joke to play upon a man, to serve him such a revolting cocktail as his traditional last drink.

As far as Turkov was concerned, however, it was yet another sign of Levitsky’s humanity. He wondered if they ever knew, these men condemned to death, how lucky they were to be shepherded out of existence by such a compassionate soul.

Turkov settled the noose around his neck.

‘So this is how it feels,’ he muttered to himself, and he felt a sudden urge to ease his conscience of the burden it had carried for so long. It is secrets that weigh a man down, he thought, when the time comes to rise up from his shackling of bones.

For Turkov, there was only one.

When he was five years old, his father had joined the Skoptsy, and submitted to the full measure of castration as a gesture of his faith. The Skoptsy priest had then re-sharpened his knife in preparation for doing the same thing to the son. But the father had refused, saying that the boy could decide in his own time what path he intended to follow.

The stigma of completeness followed Turkov through his youth and into manhood. He was on the verge of being thrown out of the Skoptsy when a delegation of elders approached him with an offer of salvation. He could forgo the operation, they said, and remain among the chosen on the condition that he became a warder at the Karaganda Prison.

A man was there, they explained. One of their own. And this man needed a protector.

‘What crime has he committed?’ asked Turkov.

‘None at all,’ they told him. ‘In fact, this man, a certain Father Detlev, has been sent to Karaganda as a test of his own faith.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Turkov.

‘You don’t need to,’ they replied, and went on to explain that Turkov would, as a warder at the prison, keep watch over Father Detlev, until such time, and it might only be a matter of months, as he would be released.

‘And this is all you want of me?’ he asked.

‘Just see that no harm comes to him,’ they told Turkov, ‘for as long as he stays behind bars. You cannot tell him who you are. He must not know you’re watching over him. Then they gave him an address in Moscow, of someone he had never heard of before, named Anatoly Argamak, and told him to write to Argamak if anything out of the ordinary occurred.

Turkov applied to become a member of the prison staff and was accepted. He never knew what bribe, blackmail or debt had cleared his path, but he was soon on his way to Karaganda.

And he had been there ever since.

Months turned into years, and Detlev was never released. Turkov, whose anger at the course his life had taken initially found its voice in the daily brutality which made him a legend at the prison, began, in time, to realise that this was not a place to which he had been sentenced like the convicts. This was, in fact, exactly where he belonged.

A thousand times, Turkov almost blurted out the truth to Father Detlev, but in the end he kept his peace. Better to live in the lie, he told himself. It made life easier to bear.

In all that time, he heard nothing from the men who had sent him to Karaganda, or from anyone else among the Skoptsy. Once, back in the 1920s, he had overheard a conversation between two of the senior guards about the numerous sects, the Skoptsy among them, that had been hunted down by agents of Internal Security and exterminated. But there was nothing in the papers about it, and Turkov did not dare to ask the guards about their sources, for fear of giving himself away. He began to wonder if he and Father Detlev might be the last of their kind. Even though Turkov could not understand why the old priest seemed to resent the many small kindnesses he had been shown over the years, still the guard felt a sacred bond with Detlev and he never wavered in his task of making sure that no harm came to him.

On the same day Inspector Pekkala and the major from Special Operations visited the prison, Turkov sat down and wrote to Anatoly Argamak in Moscow, informing him of the Inspector’s visit. It was the first time he had ever written. Until that day, there had never been anything worth mentioning. The address was so old by now that he wondered if anyone would even be there to read it on the other end, but he still paid the extra money to have it sent by priority mail.

When it became clear that Father Detlev had been killed by the contents of the package sent from Moscow, and that the package had not come from Pekkala, as he had first believed, Turkov realised that his letter must indeed have been read and the reply had cost Detlev his life.

For this, Turkov blamed only himself. After years of watching over the old man, he had inadvertently set in motion the events which caused his death. The fact that he had not known what he was doing offered him no consolation, and he guessed that it would not be long before Inspector Pekkala realised that someone at the prison had tipped off the outside world about his visit.

What justice should a man choose for himself, wondered Turkov, when he knows that if he hesitates, the world will choose it for him?

A little over half an hour later, when the embezzler Klebnikov was led, kicking and spitting, into the place of execution, the small procession of guards, condemned and executioner stopped in their tracks and stared in amazement at the body of Warder First Class Turkov, his third vertebra neatly severed, hanging from the leather-bound rope.

By the time Pekkala returned from Leningrad, the police had allowed Kirov back into their office and Elizaveta had found a carpet to cover up the bloodstain on the floor.

While Kirov fired up the samovar, sprinkling into it some of his last, precious reserves of pine-smoked tea, Pekkala told them what he had learned in his talk with Antokolvsky. ‘The first thing we need to do,’ he explained, ‘is to find out about Cheka operations against the Skoptsy. Dzerzhinsky believed that they had been wiped out but, as we now know, that appears to be far from the truth.’ Turning to Elizaveta, he asked, ‘Do you think you can find us Dzerzhinsky’s report at the Lubyanka record office?’

‘You won’t find it at Lubyanka,’ she answered.

‘Why not?’ asked Kirov.

‘Cheka files were moved to Archive 17 years ago,’ continued Elizaveta. ‘That’s where you’d find them now. But what you’re looking for are not ordinary Cheka files. Cases handled personally by Dzerzhinsky were kept among his private documents. Access to those requires special clearance. The Archive director himself must apply to the Kremlin for permission to release them. It could take weeks, or months.’

‘We don’t have time for that,’ muttered Pekkala. ‘We are looking for a murderer who seems to know a great deal more about us than we presently know about him. We need those files from the Archive and we need them now.’

‘Archive 17,’ Kirov groaned and let his head fall back against the tired stuffing of his chair. ‘Even if that’s where they are, good luck trying to find them! Ever since Vosnovsky took over, it has been impossible to get anything out of that place.’

After the death of its previous director at the hands of one of Stalin’s own assassins, control of the Archive had been handed to a small and energetic man named Alexander Vosnovsky.

Before the Revolution, Vosnovsky had served as a railway conductor on the short carriage line between Petrograd and the Tsar’s estate at Tsarskoye Selo. In his immaculate blue uniform, with its double row of silver buttons, each one emblazoned with the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs, Vosnovsky had been the ruler of this tiny and efficient universe. He would stride back and forth between the two carriages that made up the train singing loudly and passionately from his favourite operas. Mussorgsky. Tchaikovsky. Rimsky-Korsakov. He seemed to know them all and he sang them so well that there were people who travelled on that train simply to hear the man perform.

At stations along the way, Vosnovsky would step down on to the platform, haul a large watch from his vest pocket and wait for the precise second before blowing two short blasts on a nickel-plated whistle. He would then produce a small red flag, which he would raise above his head to show the conductor he could depart. Then he would bring the flag down with a sharp, jerking motion, the fabric snapping smartly as it descended. Vosnovsky tolerated no delays. Old ladies tottering into the station at the last minute, and old men gimping on bunioned feet, in spite of all their pleading, would be left in a cloud of steam as they hobbled out on to the platform.

There had been many late nights when Pekkala had fallen asleep while riding the train back from Petrograd to his cottage at Tsarskoye Selo. Vosnovsky was always there. He never seemed to take a day off. For a man who appeared to have so little patience for the failings of the human race, it was with surprising gentleness that he would rest his hand upon Pekkala’s shoulder, shaking him awake when it was time for the Inspector to depart.

The Revolution swept away Vosnovsky’s career. All that remained of those days was his watch, which he still carried on its heavy chain, but the former conductor had lost none of his bearing, and still carried himself as proudly as he had ever done before. There was a certain symmetry between his old life and the new one he had found for himself as the sole living inhabitant of Archive 17. He had quickly established himself as nearly impossible to work with. Anyone arriving at the Archive without the necessary authorisations, of which there seemed to be an infinite and ever-changing variety, was sent packing regardless of their rank. The cruel harmony Vosnovsky had achieved in the clockwork running of the railroad belonged here, too, in this place devoted to the cold undreaming logic of the archivist.

‘You must be the one to go to Vosnovsky, Inspector,’ pleaded Kirov. ‘You’re a friend from the old days, after all.’

‘I would not call us friends,’ replied Pekkala, ‘but I think Vosnovsky can be persuaded to help us, with or without the necessary clearance.’

‘Then you will go?’ Kirov asked hopefully.

‘No,’ Pekkala answered flatly.

Kirov threw up his hands. ‘Then what hope is there of getting to Dzerzhinsky’s private files?’

‘Our hope,’ answered Pekkala, nodded to Elizaveta, ‘is sitting over there.’

Kirov turned and stared at his wife. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ he said.

‘Me?’ gasped Elizaveta. ‘Oh, no, please don’t send me. What possible sway could I have with that horrible little man?’

‘The swaying of your hips, perhaps,’ replied Kirov. ‘I think that’s what Pekkala has in mind.’

‘I only meant . . .’ began Pekkala.

‘Yes,’ she interrupted indignantly. ‘What exactly do you mean?’

Pekkala shrugged and rolled his eyes.

Now Elizaveta turned to Kirov. ‘Aren’t you going to say anything? You can’t really expect me to go in there and deal with Vosnovsky simply because I’m a woman.’

‘Better you than me,’ replied Kirov.

‘Fine!’ snapped Elizaveta as she rose to her feet. ‘I’ll go, but you will owe me for this.’ She looked from one man to the other. ‘Both of you!’

The door to Archive 17 was a huge sheet of metal, painted battleship grey and scarred with strange dimpled impressions, like the skim on a cup of boiled milk. There was no window in the door; only a steel plate which slid back and forth like the gap through which food was passed to a prisoner in his cell.

Elizaveta knocked, but her fist made almost no sound against the steel. She tried again, and with the same effect. Why couldn’t they have a bell? she wondered as she stood back and looked at the building, hoping to see some sign of life behind its windows. But the windows were so high up, well above her head, that there was no hope of spotting anyone. It looked dark inside, and there was no sign of any light.

Elizaveta puffed out a sigh and was about to turn and head for home when she thought about what her husband would say if she came home empty-handed. And Pekkala. What would he say? Probably nothing, she thought, and that would make it even worse.

Then she noticed several large stones lying in the cobbled street outside the archive building. There were no stones anywhere else, and it took her a moment to realise that these rocks were the explanation for the unusual dents made in the door. People, like herself, who had failed to make themselves heard with their pounding on the door had instead pelted the metal with these rocks in order to attract attention.

Elizaveta felt a moment of solidarity with those anonymous visitors who had gone before her as she picked up a stone, marched over to the door and began to hammer against it.

Before she had a chance to really get to work, the door opened a crack, and a small, fierce-looking man with a thick black moustache peered at her from the darkness.

It was the infamous Vosnovsky. ‘I could have you arrested for that,’ said the little man.

‘By all means do!’ exclaimed the woman. ‘And may I suggest you put through your call to my husband, Major Kirov of Special Operations.’

‘Titles don’t scare me,’ muttered Vosnovsky.

‘Then call Pekkala,’ she told him, ‘and talk to him instead!’

Vosnovsky blinked, as if she had just blown dust into his face. ‘You know the Inspector?’

‘He is the one who sent me here.’ Elizaveta felt vaguely disgusted with herself to be dropping the name of a man whose presence she could barely tolerate, and yet it was also curiously satisfying to see that it produced an effect.

‘And am I correct,’ Vosnovsky asked, a note of hesitation in his voice, ‘that Pekkala still works only on the direct orders of Comrade Stalin?’

Elizaveta only smiled by way of answer.

‘What is it you want?’ inquired Vosnovsky.

Elizaveta handed over the file request, which had been correctly filled out on NKVD stationery and was countersigned, in arterial-red ink, by Sergeant Lyudmila Gatkina, Elizaveta’s superior at the Lubyanka records office.

‘Dzerzhinsky’s private files!’ exclaimed Vosnovsky. ‘Well, it’s a good thing you have come with such impeccable credentials. Otherwise I would have sent you packing!’ With those words, he stood aside to let her pass.

The first thing Elizaveta saw when she walked into the building was a huge, bronze hand, held palm up as if waiting for giant raindrops. As her eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, she saw more pieces of statuary, scattered about among rows of filing cabinets. Headless men in tall riding boots. A horse, saddled but without a rider. A bare-headed man, down on one knee, his hands clasped together in prayer.

Vosnovsky stopped beside a tall, black filing cabinet. After a few minutes of combing through the files it contained, he removed an envelope, its edges frayed and faded. ‘Here it is,’ he told her. ‘Dzerzhinsky’s operation against the Skoptsy. I don’t think anyone has looked at this since it was filed away in 1922.’ He carried it over to a table, withdrew the documents one by one and laid them out, overlapping like the blades of a lady’s fan.

Together, they began to go through the file.

Elizaveta soon found what she was looking for. She held up the fragile piece of paper, which had been written in Dzerzhinsky’s own hand.

‘According to the Cheka leader,’ she said, ‘the last Skoptsy to be liquidated was a man named Stefan Kohl. It says here that he came from one of the German families that immigrated to the Volga region in the 1770s. When the Great War broke out, the Kohl family was deported to the village of Ahlborn in Germany, but their youngest child, Stefan, did not go with them. Against the wishes of his parents, Kohl joined a Skoptsy pilgrim who was returning to his home in Siberia.

‘And what became of him?’ asked Vosnovsky.

Elizaveta paused while she read. ‘Several years later, he turned up in a village called Markha, a settlement founded by the Skoptsy when they were first exiled to the wilderness, back in the 1700s. Dzerzhinsky states here that Kohl was the leader of a group of men who ambushed a carload of Cheka agents who were on their way to Markha, hacking them to death with axes. By the time the Cheka office in Irkutsk learned of the massacre, Kohl and the others who had taken part in the attacks had already fled. That’s why Dzerzhinsky took over his case. Avenging those deaths became a personal matter for him. One by one, he tracked them down until only Stefan Kohl remained.’ A moment of silence followed as Elizaveta attempted to decipher a paragraph of Dzerzhinsky’s spidery handwriting. ‘Subject shot while attempting to escape across lake. Body not recovered. Returned to Kazan. File closed.’