The Holy Thief (17 page)

“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.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

There was only a slight disturbance in the snow outside the carriage entrance when Korolev passed the next morning. On the cobblestones inside the arch, however, he spotted three discarded
papirosa
tubes and an empty packet of Belomorkanal, the red star on the map of the White Sea Canal clearly visible on the crumpled box. He didn’t stop to examine them, but kept on moving. It proved nothing, he reasoned. Even if someone
had
been there during the night, who was to say that Korolev was the target of their attention? He pulled his chin a little lower into his collar and put the matter from his thoughts.

By the time he reached Petrovka Street, work parties were already shifting the snow from the street and most of Number 38’s courtyard had been cleared by a group of pale-faced cadets wielding wide-bladed shovels who ignored him as he climbed the steps. Inside the foyer there was activity as well, workers in dirty overalls installing a freshly cast statue of Lenin where Yagoda’s had stood. You knew where you were with Vladimir Ilyich, Korolev mused as he climbed the stairs. He, at least, was unlikely to fall out of favor, being safely dead already.

Entering Room 2F, he nodded to Yasimov and was promptly bustled out of the way by a harassed-looking young woman in a white headscarf pushing in the door behind him. He smiled as she placed several envelopes and circulars on the table and then rushed out. His smile ended up being directed to the closing door.

“No manners, these young people,” he said as he placed his coat on the rack.

“No sense, anyway,” Yasimov said, pointing at a report he was writing. “Two students thought it would be amusing to give a half-bottle of vodka to the bear in Yaroslavl Market.”

“That old one on the chain? What a waste.”

“Oh, he wasn’t too old to enjoy it. He broke the chain in two, helped himself to anything that took his fancy on the nearby stalls and gave one of the students a proper chewing. Some uniforms had to shoot the poor creature. The bear, of course—they took the student to hospital. Giving vodka to a bear? How can youngsters afford such extravagance? That’s what I’d like to know.”

Korolev found an envelope addressed to him in the pile of post. It contained a short typed letter and two photographs, one of which was of Mary Smithson.

Dear Captain Korolev,

Further to our conversation yesterday, I attach the visa photographs of Citizeness Maria Ivanovna Kuznetsova (alias “Mary Smithson”) and Citizeness Lydia Ivanovna Dolina (alias “Nancy Dolan”), in order to assist you with your inquiries. It has been confirmed that Citizeness Dolina is also a cultist nun. You will, as discussed, exercise extreme discretion with any investigation relating to these persons and, if in doubt, contact myself for instructions on how to proceed.

Gregorin
(Staff Colonel)

Korolev looked at the picture of Dolan. Pretty, like the other one—dark eyes, a long neck and pale skin. There was humor in her expression, and to judge from the picture she had a cheerful disposition. Her gaze was directed to the left of the picture, as if avoiding the camera, and her dark hair was cut into an elegant bob, something that would stand out in Moscow, where only the wives of specialists or party cadres had access to the quality hairdressers. It was said that Central Committee members had to intervene personally to arrange appointments at Master Paul’s on the Arbat. If the truth be told, she didn’t look much like any nun he’d ever seen, but he presumed Gregorin’s information must be correct.

He reached for the packet of Little Star he kept in his top drawer for moments such as these. He was about to light up when the phone rang.

“Korolev,” he said, through the corner of his mouth, picking up his receiver.

“Alexei Dmitriyevich? Popov here.” The general sounded like he’d been rudely awakened from hibernation. “I read your report. Come up with Semionov, please. Larinin as well.”

“They’re not in the office at the moment, Comrade General.”

“When they arrive then—the lazy rascals. In the meantime send up Yasimov. Tell him I hope he’s made progress on that damned bear.”

“Of course, Comrade General.”

The general hung up and Korolev lit the cigarette with a sigh that was more sadness than satisfaction. An angry General Popov was not an ideal way to start the morning and took some of the sweetness from the smoke. He caught Yasimov’s eye and pointed the orange tip at the ceiling.

“The boss wants an update on the bear. By the sound of things they were related.”

.  .  .

Half an hour later it was the turn of Korolev and his two colleagues. Korolev summarized the developments from the previous day and, at the general’s suggestion, informed Larinin of Mary Smithson’s identity and the NKVD’s involvement. As Korolev spoke, he saw Larinin’s face gradually pale. He still looked like a pig, but not a happy pig. In fact, he looked like a pig who’d just discovered what sausages were made from.

“Comrade General,” Larinin began, but he got no further.

“Don’t waste your time, Larinin. The Thief was yours, so you’re not ducking out, and I’ll be keeping an eye on you to make sure you don’t try. Any questions?”

All eyes turned to Larinin. His mouth was slightly open as though still trying to speak, but then he shook his head.

“Good,” Popov said. “Now, today—what have you in mind, Alexei Dmitriyevich?”

“It seems to me we need to try and identify the car. We think it’s a black Emka, but perhaps Comrade Larinin could see if his former colleagues in the traffic department are able to narrow the search. If we had an idea of how many Emkas there are in Moscow and which organizations they’ve been allocated to, that would help. Then whether any identifiable vehicles were seen in the neighborhood of the stadium or the church on the nights in question. Anything would be useful.” The general nodded his agreement.

“Also Comrade Semionov should follow up with the interviewees,” Korolev continued. “And there were some street children around at the time the nun’s body was discovered—I think I might see if I can talk to them this morning.”

“What about friend Tesak?”

Semionov and Korolev turned toward Larinin.

“I’m still going through the mugshots—nothing so far. I’ll try showing the autopsy pictures around to the other investigators when they’ve been developed—see if anyone recognizes him.” Larinin’s voice sounded tired.

“And this new girl, Dolina? Or Dolan, is it?” Popov said.

“I’ll show the photograph to Schwartz.” Korolev considered what he was about to say next. “If she does have a link with Mary Smithson then we should start looking for her, quietly. She’s an American, in their eyes anyway, but it’s probable she’ll have assumed a Russian identity. Even so, we could maybe have a discreet look at the places Americans frequent. The embassy, I suppose, the hotels.”

Popov cut him off with an upheld hand. “No. Don’t piss on the NKVD’s lamp post—believe me they’ll smell it straight away if we do. Steer clear of hotels and embassies. Get Gueginov to make bigger copies if he can and we’ll circulate her picture to the stations as a missing person. That’s as far as we can go. And keep it low key.”

Korolev nodded in agreement. “I’ve already asked him. How about informers with cult contacts?”

“I’ll see what can be done. Do you really think your writer friend will be able to arrange a meeting with the Thieves?”

“It’s worth a try. If Count Kolya will talk, he might be able to explain some things. About the icon for a start, and perhaps why Tesak ended up as he did.”

“A Thief won’t talk to you,” Larinin said. Korolev looked at him, expecting to see contempt, but Larinin’s frown seemed to be from doubt more than anything else.

“I could offer him Tesak’s body.”

Larinin’s chin dropped the fraction of a millimeter it took to reach his neck. General Popov merely grunted and pointed at Semionov.

“If there’s a meeting, take him with you. And keep your safety catches off. Only give him the body in exchange for good information. Anything else?”

Korolev thought of mentioning his overnight watcher and the tail he thought he’d detected the day before, but decided there was no point. After all, he’d nothing concrete to tell them, only a feeling which he wasn’t too sure about himself.

“Off you go,” Popov said and the three investigators rose as one.

Larinin looked at Korolev as they left and shook his head in bewilderment. “I’ll keep on with the mugshots,” he said. “First things first.” His sad, pale face reminded Korolev of a circus clown’s.

By the time Korolev and Semionov reached the Razin Street Militia station, the clouds had darkened from white to gray and were becoming blacker by the minute. The remaining snow was being washed into clumps of dirty ice by the curtain-like drizzle and the broken windscreen in the Ford had left Korolev’s coat soaked through. He nodded to Semionov as he stepped out of the car.

“I’ll meet you back here,” Korolev said, wiping rain from his face. “If the witnesses have anything interesting, ask Brusilov to hold onto them till I come back.”

Korolev didn’t really mind the rain; after all, what could you do about weather? It was what it was. Maybe, in the future, Soviet science would be able to control it, turn it on and off or adjust it like a radiator, but for now it was something that only God could influence, and today God had decided to let it wash Moscow’s skies clear of the factories’ smog and drop it onto her streets as murky puddles and black sludge. Korolev suspected the chances of finding the street children would be few in this muck, but there was a Militia post near the church which was manned during the day so he decided to ask there just in case.

The Militiaman, a sergeant, looked at his identification with great care. Korolev had a suspicion that he was spelling the words out to himself one by one.

“Ko-ro-lev?” The elderly sergeant said with a frown, as though unsure of the pronunciation. Despite the roof on the small hut, it was open to the sides and his gray beard and eyebrows were greasy with rain. He looked like a damp St. Nicholas.

“From Petrovka Street. I’m investigating the murder earlier in the week.”

“Ach,” the sergeant said in disgust, “What’s the world coming to, Comrade? When they kill a young girl in God’s own house? Things must be bad. Well, we’re all atheists, of course, but some things just shouldn’t happen. It’s the Devil’s work. I remember you, now I think of it. You were here the morning we found her. In your uniform, weren’t you?”

Another atheist like myself, thought Korolev. There are a lot of us around.

“That was me. Listen, Comrade, there were some
besprizorny
at the church that morning—have you any idea where I might find them? They were very young, under ten I’d say. One had red hair, blue eyes, a thin, bony face and a big padded jacket—ring any bells?”

“That little one rings all the bells in Moscow, Comrade Captain—a hooligan in the making of the first degree called Kim Goldstein. His parents got caught up in something or other, you know the way it is—who knows where they ended up and best not to ask I should think. Left him to fend for himself, anyway, and the rascal’s been running wild ever since—I’ve felt his collar in my hand once or twice, but I haven’t had the heart to hold onto it. Although maybe I should, maybe I should—he hasn’t an ounce of flesh on him and won’t last the winter if I don’t, that’s for certain.”

“Any idea where I might find him?”

“Yes, and I’ll show you and willingly, Comrade. Let me just call in and tell the station I’m leaving my post.”

Korolev wondered whether the boy’s parents had called him for the Kipling character or the Soviet acronym for the International Communist Youth Movement. He hoped it was the former, given where the young lad had ended up. A bit of resourcefulness would not be a bad thing.

Ten minutes later, Korolev stood at the end of an alley, watching some dilapidated stables that were scheduled to be knocked down for a telephone exchange. In the meantime, it was the
besprizorny
hideout. He heard the sergeant blow his whistle as he entered the stables from the other end, and almost immediately ten or twelve young children burst out into the alley, rather than the three or four Korolev had been expecting. They came to a halt when they saw him, looking uncertainly behind them as the sound of the whistle came closer.

“Hey, old-timer! Don’t get in the way of the Collective!” a voice came from the back.

“Listen to that, Grandad. There are no fortresses we can’t storm!”

The voices were absurdly young, but their angry eyes were like searchlights in the wet gloom. Korolev almost reached for his pistol, but that would have been ridiculous. They were just a bunch of kids shouting slogans from the movies.

“Now just stay there, I’m a Militia investigator,” Korolev said in what he hoped was a firm voice, but at that moment the sergeant appeared at the stable doors and then the whole bunch were pelting toward him. Korolev, bending down to their level, picked out Goldstein from the charge and decided it might as well be him as any other. He grabbed hold of the boy around the stomach, felt the padded jacket squirm in his hands as the boy nearly dropped out of the bottom of it, but managed to catch a leg. He’d expected the others to run on past, but instead he felt feet kick at him, hands pull at his hair and then the excruciating pain of a small fist punching him repeatedly in the testicles. He swung Goldstein around like a weapon and then the sergeant was roaring above him and laying into the slower children with his night stick.