Red Shadow (20 page)

‘Admit to anything, everything,’ she whispered hurriedly.

One of the guards hit her around the head. ‘No talking.’

Suddenly Misha realised Valya was no longer with him. Was that the last he would see of her – a pale face, eyes darting around in silent terror? He wondered how long it would be before she betrayed him and what kind of crimes they would accuse him of.

Misha was taken to a small damp cell with whitewashed walls. It was cold enough for him to see his breath in front of him. There were two chairs either side of a small metal table. He was made to sit on one of them under the glare of the bare light bulb and his hands were tied behind his back. Then he was left alone.

He waited, flinching at every footstep outside the door. In the distance he could hear the occasional scream. No one came. After an eternity, the door burst open and a tall, stocky man with cruel eyes and thick, slicked-back hair marched into the room.

‘Look to the front,’ he said. ‘Do not move your head to either side. Do not move or speak without being told to.’

Then he sat down and slammed a file down on the desk between them.

‘Mikhail Petrov, you are an enemy of the people. You are contaminated by heresy.’

Misha looked at him, too terrified to speak. He noticed the man was wearing black leather gloves, along with the usual green jacket and black boots of the NKVD.

‘You can help me and help yourself by confessing everything now. Your girlfriend –’ he spat out the words – ‘has already told us all about you. She needed no prompting at all.’

He got up and stood behind Misha, who tensed with fear. An almighty blow knocked him sideways and he yelped with pain as his tethered arm was trapped beneath the chair. His interrogator left him there for a minute, saying nothing, then hauled him upright with surprising ease.

‘You are a stick of a boy, Mikhail Petrov. You will not survive a beating. Here is what we know about you.’ He opened the file and picked up a thin onion-paper sheet, the typewritten text punched so hard it had created little stencil letters throughout the page.

‘You and your partners in crimes against the people, Valentina Golovkin, and the traitor Anatoly Golovkin, have vilely conspired to sabotage the Soviet struggle against the Hitlerites by passing on secret information to German spies and saboteurs in Moscow. You have also transmitted messages to enemy bombers, signalling for them to drop their bombs on the Kremlin when Comrade Stalin was in residence. Furthermore, you have committed acts of sabotage in the Stalin Automobile Plant, deliberately wrecking tank-production machinery and placing explosives on the gun-assembly floor. How do you respond to these charges?’

Misha’s head was reeling. He had not even been to the Stalin Automobile Plant since the war began and they had switched to tank production. But he also felt an odd sort of pride. Nothing that this man had said to him could have come from Valya. She hadn’t betrayed him at all. This was all complete nonsense. He heeded her words. He would admit everything.

‘It’s all true. I did everything you have accused me of.’

The man looked at him with contempt. Misha almost expected him to say, ‘Surely you’re not admitting to this crap. It will get you nine grams in the back of the neck without a doubt. Come on. Put up more of a fight, then I can hit you some more.’

Then he came and stood behind him again. Misha flinched, expecting another blow. But instead, he felt his hands being untied.

‘Sign at the bottom.’

Misha tried to grip the pen but his hands were shaking and he had to breathe hard.

‘Hurry up,’ shouted the interrogator.

Misha scribbled in the indicated space, fully aware that he might be signing his own death sentence.

Then the man produced two more blank pages and told Misha to sign them too. He did so without a second thought.

The man called for two guards and Misha was whisked away. Whenever they heard other people approaching through the maze of corridors, Misha was roughly turned against the wall so he could not see who they were. They went up two flights of stairs to a room where he was photographed and had his fingerprints taken.

Then they took him back down to the basement and placed him in a crowded holding cell. Misha looked fearfully at his fellow prisoners. Some, he could tell by the cut of their clothes, were important people, perhaps factory managers or Party heads in the Moscow districts, but most of them were young men, probably deserters or looters, with a handful of women and a smattering of hardened criminals. They were easy to tell by the tattoos you could see on their faces and hands.

Misha’s heart sank at the thought of being locked away for years with them. He was surprised to find himself completely ignored by everyone around him. But that suited him. He didn’t want to talk to anyone either.

He found a space by the wall and tried not to think about what would happen when they came for him again.

Throughout the night people were called from the cell. Some of them returned, usually covered with bruises. One prisoner was thrown back in the cell whimpering in agony, clutching a broken arm. The next few hours passed in a haze of slammed doors, distant screams and echoing footsteps.

Chapter 24

Misha had drifted into an uneasy sleep when he was called from the cell. As he emerged, he was grabbed roughly by two NKVD men and dragged down corridors and up stairways to an outer courtyard where he waited with several other prisoners. The smell of the autumn night air hit him like a wave of clear fresh water and he filled his lungs, feeling his senses return from a numb stupor. But it was cold too, and he began to shiver beneath the cloudy sky. What time it was he could only guess. He felt so dislocated from the real world he hadn’t even realised it was night again. As they waited, he heard the distant chimes of the Kremlin’s Spasskaya Tower clock and counted to ten.

After a couple of minutes, he began to feel braver and let his gaze wander around his fellow prisoners. Valya was there, staring at the floor – the usual protective gesture of any prisoner who expects to be hit at any moment. He was only a metre or two away from her. They could have spoken to each other without even raising their voices. Misha felt a sharp blow at the back of his head.

‘Eyes down,’ snapped a guard.

They heard the throb of a lorry engine and shouts from the far side of the courtyard wall. There was a hammering at a small steel door and two of the guards hurried to open it. The prisoners were herded through with kicks and punches, like sheep with vicious dogs, and into the enclosed cargo compartment of the lorry. Inside the compartment there were no guards and Misha immediately went to sit by Valya on one of the narrow benches that ran down each side. She looked haunted but, unlike many of his fellow prisoners, he could see no bruises on her face. Maybe they had not treated her as badly as he had feared.

They reached for each other’s hands. Her hair ribbon was gone. Maybe they thought she’d try to hang herself with it. She squeezed his hand tight and was about to speak when two of the burlier guards leaped into the back of the lorry. Just before the doors were slammed shut a small light in the roof came on. The guards stood with two submachine guns pointing at the prisoners.

‘No talking, no moving,’ said one.

The journey was over in less than a minute. As they emerged from the lorry, Misha looked up to see a building he recognised: Moscow City Central Court. Kicks and punches accompanied them to a holding room. Misha stood by Valya but instinct told them not to let the guards know they knew each other.

The captives were counted off in tens and taken up a narrow staircase to a wood-panelled court room, where they were crammed into the prisoners’ dock.

The court had clearly been very busy. Three haggard but stern middle-aged men wearing black gowns were sitting directly opposite them. The man in the centre stood and announced that they were cowards, saboteurs and traitors to the motherland and in accordance with paragraph 58 of the Soviet Criminal Code they were all to be sentenced to the highest measure of punishment: execution by shooting, with all property belonging to them to be confiscated. Sentence was to be carried out immediately with no right of appeal.

One of the women in the dock called out in an anguished, angry voice, ‘We have a right, as citizens, to a fair –’ but she got no further before she was knocked to the ground by a guard.

Misha, standing next to Valya, felt her visibly wilt when sentence was passed. As they were herded away, she managed to whisper, ‘I thought we would be sent to the camps.’

A similar lorry awaited them, and they emerged into the night as the sound of air-raid sirens started to wail across the city. Hurriedly herded into the cargo compartment, they sat in darkness as soon as the door was closed. With no guard present, everyone began to talk. ‘Where will they take us?’ ‘I have not said goodbye to my family.’

Valya said, ‘Misha, I’m sorry I got you into this terrible mess. I should never have come to your apartment.’

He couldn’t feel angry. ‘They would have come for me anyway,’ he said. He was surprised at how calm he felt. It was all too unreal. The lorry rocked slightly and the engine started. Only then was Misha seized by a creeping terror. This was going to be their final journey. Would they take them to the outskirts of the city and kill them there? Or would they shoot them back at the Lubyanka?

The two of them sat in silence, holding hands again, as the other passengers raged at their fate. Everyone, it seemed, was talking but no one was listening. He could feel Valya breathing deeply, and guessed she was trying to hold back her tears.

‘Let’s be brave for each other,’ she said.

In the distance a string of explosions rang out and everyone stayed silent. ‘Come on, come and blow us all to bits,’ shouted one angry voice in the darkness. ‘Finish us off in an instant. Put us out of our torment.’

The truck stopped barely more than a minute away from the courthouse. Misha thought they must be back at the Lubyanka but he didn’t recognise the building when they were hustled out of the van. Despite their anger and despair as their final journey began, the other prisoners now seemed infected with a defensive herd instinct. Look down, don’t catch anyone’s eye. Do exactly what you’re told and you will make your last moments easier.

Misha observed the whole scene as if it were happening to someone else. Blood was pounding so hard in his ears he could hear nothing more than the muffled thud of his own heartbeat. When people spoke, he could see their lips moving, but his mind wasn’t registering their words; it was all a distant babble.

They passed through an entrance arch with ornate white plasterwork and a heavy wooden gate which led directly through to a large interior courtyard. Here several bonfires were blazing away in strict contravention of air-raid regulations. Despite his overwhelming fear Misha recognised the smell in all its different components. There was burning paper, burning cardboard, a slight whiff of kerosene.

In the distance, bombs were still falling. But the explosions seemed to be coming from over to the east, where most of the factories were.

A small group of NKVD guards were standing by the far wall of the courtyard, the light from the bonfires casting their stark, flickering shadows against a plain brick wall. Nearby was a large goods trolley, the sort you would see at the railway station. Among them one man stood out by nature of his physical presence; he was neither short nor tall but his stocky, muscular build gave the impression of immense strength. He wore the same uniform as the others, but also a green leather apron and thick black gloves. It was the sort of protective clothing a slaughterman might wear in an abattoir. He pulled hard on a cigarette as he listened to another man speak and blew out a great plume of smoke. Then he laughed and the other men around him laughed too. He glanced over to the crowd that was being assembled at the other end of the courtyard. Misha looked away. He had seen the face of his executioner.

NKVD guards surrounded them, rifle bayonets glinting in the firelight. Misha thought a bullet would be a better way to die than a bayonet. It hadn’t occurred to him that they would kill him in any other way. A bullet was quick. In the films, when people were shot, they dropped to the ground, lifeless in an instant. In a film he had never seen anyone being killed with a bayonet. He could imagine that was infinitely more agonising and prolonged.

Misha realised Valya was still holding his hand and he glanced over to her face, half lit by the flames. She still looked beautiful to him in that moment. Tear tracks glistened on her cheeks in the light of the fires. He thought with choking sadness of New Year’s Eve bonfires and fireworks. He wondered if his papa would ever hear about what had happened to him.

The man in the apron barked over to the other side of the courtyard. ‘Right, let’s get going. One at a time. This shouldn’t take long.’

Two guards grabbed a man at the front of the huddled group and dragged him over to the wall. They held him tight and he struggled with every step. The executioner walked towards him and Misha could see the condemned man wilt as he approached. Unable to tear his eyes away, Misha saw the executioner lean forward and whisper in the man’s ear. Misha could bear to look no longer.

A shot rang out and Valya squeezed his hand harder. Other prisoners cried out in alarm and despair. The guards around them pointed their bayonets menacingly close.