The Twelfth Department (12 page)

“She’s out, it seems. We’ll try again tomorrow.”

Yuri nodded and Korolev listened to his footsteps retreating back up the stairs to the first floor.

It might be nothing—some people made dark humor from other people’s misfortune these days. And the whole house would know Chekists had come to visit, that was certain. It could just be a neighbor who wanted to make a call of his own or someone who couldn’t be bothered to go and find her. It was unnerving—but it was probably nothing unusual. Neighbors were like that sometimes. He should just remain calm—that was the sensible thing to do.

*   *   *

Later they searched for mushrooms in the woods around the dacha and turned it into a game. Yuri was soon scampering around, his eyes roaming the ground in front of him and his nose pointing forward as if he might sniff their quarry out.

“Yuri,” Korolev had said, in what he hoped was an offhand way, “if I should suddenly be called away, do you think you could remember how to get back to Moscow—to the apartment?”

Yuri, whose feet had been making their careful way across the sunshine-dappled forest floor, looked up at the question.

“You think you might be called away?”

“It’s possible. I’m a detective, sometimes these things happen. Like the other day, if you remember.”

Yuri considered this. “You’d want me to get the train on my own?”

“I don’t see why not—you made it all the way from Zagorsk on your own.”

“I’m only twelve.”

“I was only ten when I started work for the butcher Lytkin—and you’re a brighter spark than I was.”

Yuri looked pleased at the compliment.

“I’d need money for the train and the tram.”

“You’re right—and I should have given you money before, anyway. A young man needs a rouble or two on his person, or so I’ve always found.”

Korolev reached in his pocket and Yuri rubbed the notes he handed him between his finger and thumb. He looked suspicious.

“It’s just in case,” Korolev said. “But if I have to go—make your way to Valentina, she’ll look after you till I get back.”

*   *   *

In the evening they played chess and then listened to a football game on the radio, an important match between Spartak and Lokomotiv, and then, when Yuri fell asleep in his chair, Korolev carried him to bed.

He looked down at the boy in the half-light of the dusk and saw Zhenia in his features, but also some of himself. He couldn’t help but feel frightened for the boy, and leaned forward to kiss his forehead before he left the room.

Korolev stayed up for a while pretending to himself he was reading, knowing he wouldn’t sleep while his brain kept going over the little he knew and trying to make sense of it. And when he did go to bed he found himself shifting around, unable to relax or get himself comfortable, turning over possibilities and probabilities in his head; wide awake—no matter how much he wished he wasn’t.

So when the silence was shattered by someone hammering on the door downstairs, Korolev was on his feet and reaching for his clothes before he’d even thought who it might be. He went straight to Yuri’s room and found the boy sitting up in his bed, his eyes dark and round in his moonlit face. Korolev tried to keep the fear out of his voice.

“I’ll go and see who it is—but if I’m called away, remember what I told you. Valentina will look after you and I’ll come as soon as I can.”

He turned and went down the staircase, his feet hitting the steps with the same rhythm as whoever was still banging at the door. Whoever? Well, no thief ever knocked and no honest citizen battered another’s door in the middle of the night.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” he called out as he passed through the kitchen—and the knocking stopped.

He turned on the light in the small winter hallway and opened the door. Two men were outside, their faces yellow in the glow that spilled from the doorway. They were wide-bodied, slab-shouldered professionals—one a dark-skinned, black-haired fellow with the look of the Caucasus about him, and the other a blond, unseasonably pale Slav. They examined him without speaking and he wondered if they were deciding whether he’d come easily or whether he’d be trouble.

“Comrades,” Korolev said.

“We’ll see about that,” the paler of the two answered, with a curl of his lip that didn’t bode well.

“Korolev, Alexei Dmitriyevich?” The dark one’s cheeks were round and might have been jolly with another man’s eyes. This one’s had seen too much.

“That’s me.”

“Do we need to introduce ourselves?” the pale one asked.

From behind them came the sound of a door closing and Lipski appeared from the caretaker’s hut. The men turned quickly and Lipski had the good sense to come to a halt, putting his hands on his head as he did so. By then the dark one had a pistol pointing at the old man’s chest and the other was aiming his weapon at Korolev.

“It’s Lipski, the caretaker,” Korolev said in what he hoped was a calm voice. “He must have heard the noise. This is nothing to do with him.”

“That’s the truth,” the pale one said, an ominous tone coloring his voice.

Lipski looked at the Chekists for a moment, then seemed to decide this was the worst possible thing to do and shut his eyes altogether.

“I’ve seen nothing, Comrades, and I’ve heard nothing. Nothing whatsoever.”

“Remember the orders; the matter’s to be handled quietly.” The darker of the men spoke quietly, with a Georgian accent. “Citizen Lipski here will oblige us by keeping his mouth shut, I’m sure.”

“Of course, Comrade,” Lipski said, his eyes still closed and his shoulders hunched over as if to make himself a smaller target.

“Good. So we’ll all be very calm, won’t we? And then we’ll be on our way all the quicker.”

The Georgian was speaking as much to his colleague as to them, and the pale Chekist nodded his agreement.

“Korolev? You’re coming with us.”

Korolev nodded, looking down at his feet.

“I’ll need some shoes.”

“We’ll come with you to get them, don’t worry.” The dark one spoke softly. “And you’ll need to wake the boy while you’re at it. He’s coming too.”

Korolev felt his stomach turn so violently that he thought he must vomit.

“The boy?”

“He’s coming too,” the pale one repeated.

As he spoke, he took a step forward so that Korolev found himself staring down the barrel of his gun from a distance of no more than a few inches. Korolev prayed the fellow had the safety catch on.

“You can’t arrest a twelve-year-old,” Korolev managed to whisper, mastering his fear. “He’s too young.”

The pale Chekist’s eyes narrowed and Korolev braced himself for a blow.

“We’re not arresting anyone, Citizen Korolev,” the Georgian said in his calm voice. “We’re just taking you to see someone. Your presence is requested. No one’s forcing you; but, of course, you’ll be coming with us just the same.”

The Georgian’s eyes were unreadable, but if he wasn’t being arrested that was a good sign, surely?

“Do we have a few minutes to pack?” he asked, hoping to extract a little bit more information.

“We’re wasting time here. We should be back in the car by now.”

“Cover Citizen Lipski here,” the Georgian said to his colleague. “I’ll get things moving quickly enough.”

“Yuri isn’t well,” Korolev began to say, but the Georgian interrupted him by taking his elbow and pushing him through the door to the house.

“I don’t care if he’s got two broken legs, he’s coming with us.”

Korolev felt the pressure of the gun barrel digging into his spine as the Chekist pushed him through the kitchen and into the dining room.

“Where is he?”

“Upstairs.”

Korolev was about to suggest he just call the boy down, but one look at the Georgian and he changed his mind. They climbed the stairs.

“Which room?”

“The one on the left.”

“In you go.”

Korolev opened the door and stepped in, turned on the light and found—no one.

“He’s gone,” Korolev said, mystified. He’d meant Yuri to go to Moscow if he was taken away—not for him to run off into the forest.

The Chekist pushed past him, saw the open window and cursed.

“Where?”

“I don’t know. He was here two minutes ago.”

Before he even saw the fellow’s hand move, the Chekist’s gun had hit the side of his head, knocking him to his knees.

“Where’s the damned boy, Korolev?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Why did he run?” Colonel Rodinov asked him, making another note on the file he was reading. It was the first time he’d spoken. In fact, in the five minutes Korolev had been sitting in front of him, Rodinov had yet to raise his eyes from his paperwork.

“He knows I deal with hardened criminals—maybe he thought men coming to the door with guns in the middle of the night were bandits.”

Korolev wasn’t surprised to find his voice was a little distorted—he rolled his jaw around. He didn’t think it was broken. Just bruised—like most of his body. But the fat lip that went with it probably wasn’t helping his pronunciation.

“Are you suggesting the operatives that went to collect you from Babel’s dacha looked like bandits? Respected members of State Security?” Rodinov said, finally lifting his gaze to examine Korolev.

“Well they certainly didn’t look like ballerinas, Comrade Colonel.”

Rodinov considered him for a moment, his face impassive. Korolev had a suspicion he looked as if he’d been used as a punchbag by a pair of heavyweight boxers—and it wasn’t far from the truth. A nurse had cleaned him up when he’d arrived but even so he’d a fat lip, plenty of cuts, bumps and grazes, his shirt was splattered with dried blood and he could barely see out of his left eye. At least he hadn’t lost any teeth.

“I see,” Rodinov said. “Their orders were just to bring you in. Still, it says here you resisted our people.”

“I didn’t want to leave my twelve-year-old son wandering around the woods in the middle of the night. I wanted to find him before we left. If that counts as resisting, then I resisted.”

Korolev spoke in a monotone—he was tired, it was just past two in the morning and there wasn’t much of him that didn’t hurt.

“He shouldn’t have run,” Rodinov said. “You knew who they were, after all.”

“I’ve met members of State Security before. He’s only a boy.”

“And now he’s a missing boy.”

Korolev had nothing to say to that. Yuri had been with him for three days and somehow he’d managed to lose him
and
end up in the Lubyanka.

“Well, I’ll ask Popov to make sure the local Militia start looking for him first thing,” Rodinov said, signing a page that was stapled to the inside of the file’s cardboard cover. “I’m sure they’ll track him down soon enough. Anyway, it’s time we got to the point.”

Rodinov closed the file and placed his pen down on top of it, turning his full attention to Korolev.

“We’ll start with you telling me why you carried on with your investigation into Professor Azarov’s death when you were given explicit orders not to.”

Korolev could feel his mouth go slack with astonishment. Or as slack as it could go, given the damage that had been inflicted on it.

“But I didn’t. As soon as we were told to drop the matter, we dropped it. Like a hot potato, believe me. I wanted nothing to do with the investigation once I knew it was State Security, I swear it on my mother’s grave.”

Rodinov had had a hard year by the look of him. Korolev had first met him not twelve months before, and back then he’d had a healthy sheen to his skin and seemed solid and full of energy. Now, despite a summer that had turned most Muscovites dark as Abyssinians, the colonel had the gray pallor of a prisoner—his cheeks were drawn and his tunic seemed too big for him. Whatever kind of work he was doing these days, and Korolev most certainly didn’t want to know what that might be, it looked as if it didn’t take him outside very often.

“It’s known what you were up to in Peredelkino, Korolev. What did you think? That you could go around questioning people without State Security hearing about it? And what did you hope to achieve by it? You knew this was a secret matter. Did you hope to pass information to the State’s enemies?”

Korolev ran his tongue over his fat lip and shook his head, both in disagreement and in bewilderment.

“I spoke to no one in Peredelkino, Comrade Colonel. The caretaker, Lipski, of course—but, apart from him, no one.”

“No one, is it?” Rodinov said. “No one? I have on my desk a report, submitted only a matter of hours ago, that says differently.”

Rodinov opened a thick green folder and extracted a typed piece of paper.

“It says here you were seen talking to a number of people who have a clear connection with Professor Azarov’s work. I’d like to know why.”

Korolev thought back—he’d spoken to the ticket collector at the station. Apart from her, he couldn’t remember anyone else. Except for Kim Goldstein, of course. He frowned.

“There was one of the boys at the river—they were out from some orphanage in the city for a few days, I think. A youngster by the name of Goldstein—but I knew him from before.”

Rodinov said nothing, giving Korolev the distinct impression that Goldstein was exactly who he’d been referring to.

“I spoke to him,” Korolev said. “But I’d no idea he was connected with Azarov.”

“And the others?”

“I spoke to no one else.”

“Your son did.”

“He went swimming with Goldstein is all. But Goldstein was the boy who assisted on that matter last year—the icon affair. You’ll recall he provided useful information.”

Rodinov considered this, tapping his pencil against his chin as he did so.

“And what did you speak to him about, this time? Did he provide you with more useful information? Or was it his friends who told your son what you wanted to know?”

“Have those orphans got something to do with the professor’s murder?”

“You don’t ask questions here,” the colonel said, and Korolev looked around at the chipped blue walls and the stained parquet flooring—and saw his point.

“I apologize, Comrade Colonel. Goldstein just happened to be there at the riverbank and so were we. It was a chance meeting—no more than that. If anyone has informed you to the contrary, they’re mistaken.”