Authors: William Ryan
‘I’ll call the Militia station. See if we can locate him. Do you want me to drive out there?’
‘No, I’ve a feeling we should stay in Odessa today,’ Korolev said, thinking about gunrunners and Slivka’s mother. ‘Ask them to bring him into Odessa, if it’s
convenient for our honoured French guest. If it isn’t, well, we’ll deal with that eventuality when it comes to pass. And order Gradov to report here directly – he seems a careless
sort of a fellow with regard to poor Andreychuk, doesn’t he? Leaving his key for him to escape and losing his gun for him to shoot himself with.’
‘I’ll see to it, Chief.’
‘And call your mother, Slivka.’
She nodded her agreement, giving Firtov a put-upon shrug of her shoulders. The forensics man turned towards Korolev with a look of puzzled respect.
‘You’ve tamed that one,’ he said as the door slammed shut behind Slivka. ‘If anyone had asked her to call her mother a week ago, they’d have been walking bow-legged
till September.’
‘I believe in encouraging youngsters to have respect for their elders.’ Korolev spoke with a grave expression. ‘You’ll call me if you come up with anything
else?’
‘Count on it,’ the cavalryman said.
Korolev turned to leave, but then he stopped, hearing the chink of the bullet in his pocket. He pulled out the glass container and showed it to Firtov.
‘I almost forgot,’ he said. ‘It’s the slug that made the hole in Andreychuk’s head. The doctor pulled it out of the dead man’s arm.’
Firtov took the jar from Korolev, examined it for a moment, his face impassive, then placed it on his desk. The dented bullet seemed to have a dark presence, despite the glare of the electric
light. He pulled across a set of weighing scales and decanted the bullet into one of the brass baskets, before adding and subtracting various tiny weights.
‘Not from a Nagant. Most likely a nine-millimetre. We’ll have a look at it, anyway, me and the Greek, and see what we make of it under a microscope.’
‘I’d be grateful. Tell Slivka I’ve gone down to check in on our journalist friend – maybe a little time in a cold cell has warmed up his memory.’
LOMATKIN was sitting in his shirtsleeves, beltless and bootless, his open collar revealing the top of a grey vest. Korolev felt a pang of sympathy for the bewildered-looking
man – after all, he himself had sat in a not dissimilar cell not too many months past, an experience he wouldn’t wish to have again.
Korolev sat down, and they looked at each other for a long moment, hands tucked into their armpits, each a mirror image of the other.
‘This isn’t so bad, is it?’ Korolev said, glancing around him. ‘A cell to yourself? Clean, more or less, and a bench to sleep on? You’re lucky if you ask me. You
should see the cage I’ve just passed. Some real types in there I can tell you – they’d have fun with a cultured man like you.’
‘I saw the cage,’ Lomatkin said, his voice measured. ‘Is that how it works? If I don’t tell you whatever it is you want to hear you put me in there with them?’
‘No,’ Korolev said, pretending to consider it. ‘I always think information gained in such a way is unreliable.’
‘You’re a paragon of virtue,’ the journalist replied.
Korolev laughed and took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket.
‘These all right for you? They didn’t have a wide selection at the kiosk. Mind you, they could have had old boots and I’d have bought them. I’d smoked my last one after
Andreychuk’s autopsy and this case needs tobacco. As well as a few answers from you, of course.’
Lomatkin took one, running its length underneath his nose as though it were the finest cigar. Korolev offered him the packet again.
‘Take a few, for later.’
‘Later?’ Lomatkin asked.
‘Well,’ Korolev said, shrugging his shoulders, ‘you must see how things stand. You won’t be buying cigarettes for yourself for a while.’
‘I’d nothing to do with Andreychuk’s escape, or his death. I’ve told you that already. I shouldn’t be here. Now or later.’
‘The evidence doesn’t back you up, Citizen, and that’s the truth of it. In fact the evidence points to you having let the fellow loose and then conspiring with a person or
persons to plant a bullet in his skull. But let’s leave that aside for the moment. Let’s talk about something else. Let’s talk about crimes against the State. Let’s talk
about espionage.’
Now Lomatkin’s eyes were like a pair of car headlights – as if someone had seized him by the nether parts and treated them unkindly. Korolev forced himself to be patient, allow the
fellow to sweat. He deliberately settled back onto his chair, moving from side to side to extract every possible fraction of comfort from its hard frame, uncrossed his arms and slipped his hands
into the pockets of his overcoat.
‘Yes,’ he continued, when he’d finished. ‘I know all about it. Forget Andreychuk is my advice, you have bigger problems. What’s the local equivalent of the Butyrka
in these parts? I hope the cells are as nice as this.’
‘You know . . .’ Lomatkin began eventually, before his voice tailed off. Maintaining an impassive expression, Korolev considered what he knew and what he was guessing. Putting facts
together and producing possibilities from them was what being a detective was all about, of course, but in this case he didn’t have many facts to back his supposition up – all he had
was Kolya’s suggestion that Lenskaya had been bringing valuable secret information to the Ukraine that was being traded for guns. The girl had been killed, so it seemed likely to Korolev that
she’d been killed because of her espionage activities, although he wasn’t certain of that by any means. But if her death
had
been to do with spying, it seemed probable
she’d died because she’d been a threat to the traitors in some way. And Lomatkin’s relationship with her, his arrival the day after her death, his assistance in Andreychuk’s
escape, his visit to Krasnogorka – whether or not with the intention of escaping across the border – all pointed to him being involved. And, with him being a defence journalist for
Izvestia
, why shouldn’t he be the source of this mysterious secret information? The Germans wouldn’t hand out guns for statistics about road-building in Kazakhstan – no,
they’d want military information, and Lomatkin could have been the man to provide it.
‘I don’t know everything,’ Korolev continued, ‘but I know enough. It occurs to me that you could avoid the worst of what’s in store for you if you’re frank
with me – the guns are what I’m after at this stage. If you help me prevent them falling into the traitors’ hands, then I’ll help you, you’ve my word on it. You made a
mistake, your record will stand you in good stead if you’re open and straightforward with me. And if you aren’t – well – there are others who will ask the same questions in
a different way.’
‘Guns, Korolev? Guns? I don’t understand a word of what you’re saying. And I don’t know what this espionage talk is about either.’
Imagine if they’d managed to find the dead girl’s diary that Yasimov had mentioned, Korolev thought to himself. Imagine if it had made life easy for them by explaining exactly what
was going on here. The journalist had certainly reacted to the suggestion of espionage – he was sure of that. But the mention of guns seemed to have given the fellow confidence again. Perhaps
he didn’t know about the guns.
Korolev decided to take a risk.
‘We found her diary, Lomatkin.’
‘Her diary?’
‘Her diary. You knew she kept one, surely? So we know she was bringing information down from Moscow – and your role in it. What you might not know is that your information was being
passed on for guns, German guns. That’s what she was killed for. We know about your role. It’s the others we’re after now. Tell me everything, Lomatkin, and you might get out of
this in one piece. Did they have something on you? Was it the drugs, or something else?’
Korolev hoped his face didn’t betray his own fear. If he’d got this wrong, if Lomatkin turned out to have nothing to do with anything, then Korolev had revealed Kolya’s
information and the journalist might blather about it to Mushkin or someone similar and Korolev was pretty confident that the Chekists would be interviewing this fellow sooner or later. Korolev
scanned Lomatkin’s face for reassurance, a small sign of guilt, but it was as if the journalist’s expression was frozen solid – only his eyes seemed alive, staring at Korolev with
unnatural intensity, and he had a sudden temptation to lean across and twist the man’s nose. What a strange impulse, he thought to himself, holding Lomatkin’s gaze and doing his level
best not to blink. And it was an impulse that was still there, making his fingers twist in his pocket, when they rubbed against a piece of paper, which suddenly seemed a most useful thing to
produce.
‘We also found this, Lomatkin. Lenskaya typed it just before she died.’ And Korolev handed him the typed page he’d found the night before in the book of Stalin’s
speeches.
Lomatkin looked at the piece of paper for a long time, his mouth moving slowly as he read it. Perhaps his English wasn’t that good – but Korolev was confident the journalist
understood it all right.
‘She wasn’t religious, you know,’ Lomatkin said.
‘It doesn’t matter to me if she was or she wasn’t.’
‘But this psalm meant something to her – I suppose it means something to all of us these days.’
Korolev waited as a frown darkened the journalist’s face. It was as though Lomatkin was asking himself a difficult question – and after a time, it seemed he’d found an answer
to it.
‘What did she write about me in the diary?’ he asked. The journalist spoke quietly and Korolev had the feeling that Lomatkin was bracing himself for a dead lover’s
recriminations. But it occurred to Korolev that if he were in the journalist’s shoes he’d like to hear he’d been forgiven, if there was anything to be forgiven for.
‘She cared about you, Lomatkin,’ Korolev said, a sombre tone deepening his voice. ‘She loved you, it seems. She didn’t hold you responsible for the mess she found herself
in.’
Lomatkin smiled sadly, turning his eyes up to meet Korolev’s. ‘You never found a diary, did you?’
Korolev started to speak, but before he could think of anything to say Lomatkin shook his head to stop him.
‘Don’t bother, Korolev, it doesn’t matter. I’ll be open with you. I knew it would end up like this. But I’d nothing to do with her death and nothing to do with
Andreychuk’s escape, I promise you that much.’
‘I’m listening,’ Korolev said, hope stirring.
‘You know about my indiscretions – my dubious past as you called it. Perhaps that’s what first made them think they could blackmail me. After all, these days an anonymous
denunciation based on lies can result in a ten stretch. And they had more than lies, Korolev. But they were clever, they dug a little and must have found out about Masha’s past along the way.
I might have risked the consequences of what they knew about me – it was mostly gossip and I have friends who could have helped me – but Masha’s father having been a Petlyurist
officer and her living under a false identity, well, those things alone would have resulted in her death. I know enough about Ezhov to know that much. It would have been done quietly, but he
couldn’t have allowed her to live.’
It was true, Korolev thought: to be discovered having a dalliance with the daughter of a counter-revolutionary would have been a political disaster for the Central Committee member responsible
for State Security, no matter what Comrade Stalin said about the sins of the parents not being visited on their children. No, someone with a class background like Lenskaya’s, particularly
someone who’d obscured it so effectively, would be an Enemy of the Revolution in the eyes of the Party, and a traitor to the State.
‘To start with they didn’t seem to want much from me,’ Lomatkin continued. ‘Nothing more than what they could have read in
Izvestia
two days later anyway. They
just wanted to know the stories I was working on – the launch of a new submarine, the range of a fighter bomber. Really, it was the kind of thing I’d have told anyone over a glass or
two of beer.’
‘They were leading you on.’
‘Of course. I closed my eyes to the risks at first. I knew the man who approached me. A Ukrainian, like me. Living in Moscow, like me. A Party member, like me. When he started talking
about a separate Ukrainian state with support from European powers I realized the mess I was in, but by then they’d enough on me to have me shot four times over, and in my own handwriting no
less. Then they squeezed me, and they squeezed me till there was nothing left.’
‘So what was the information you provided after that?’
‘More confidential, much more confidential. Detailed plans for a new tank, inch-accurate maps of the western defences, locations of armaments factories, our preparations against chemical
warfare. In my position I had access to such information on a regular basis, and when I did I passed it on. I was afraid of ending up in a place like this, and of Masha ending up here as well, but
now that I’m here, and Masha’s dead, well, there’s nothing to be afraid of, is there?’
Korolev wasn’t sure about that, but he let it go.
‘How did they find out about her, do you think?’
‘It must have been when she came down here scouting for the film location. I suppose she was curious to see where she came from and it was she who suggested to Savchenko that they shoot
down here. That her father turned out to be the caretaker at the College was a complete coincidence, I think. They kept it a secret between them, I’m sure of that – I didn’t even
know about it. But someone must have known.’
‘Who?’
‘I’ve no idea. It must have been someone who knew her father well. Perhaps someone who knew her mother too. That would be my guess. Masha’d kept her mother’s maiden name
– someone must have been able to put the names together, do the research, find the evidence.’
‘What evidence?’
‘They had a baptism record. I showed her a copy.’
‘She knew about the blackmail?’