The Twelfth Department (37 page)

A few minutes later and familiar voices came from the corridor outside the apartment. He looked quickly at his watch. He had to meet with Kolya in just under an hour. He put a handful of bullets and the spare clip in his pockets and walked out to them.

“Alexei.” Valentina smiled when she saw him—but the warmth in the smile slowly dimmed.

“You’ve had news of Yuri?” Her smile had now turned to concern.

“No.”

“I thought…”

Her voice faltered and Korolev realized how he must look, hard-faced and with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“I’ve had no bad news.” He stopped and looked from Valentina to her daughter, who was listening to him with an expression of determined concentration. At her throat was the red scarf of the Pioneers.

“Natasha, perhaps your mother and I could talk for a moment.”

Natasha glanced between them, but had enough sense to do as she was asked without asking why. When she’d gone into the room she shared with her mother, Korolev took Valentina by the hand and led her into his. He leaned in close to her, whispering so low he could barely hear himself.

“Look, Valentina. I have to do something this evening. The only thing is, if it doesn’t work out—it might be a mess.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

She doesn’t ask what kind of mess, Korolev thought to himself, she asks what she can do to help. And in times like these as well.

“Nothing. Nothing at all. But if I don’t come home tonight—maybe you should go to Peredelkino tomorrow, first thing. To Babel’s Dacha. Stay there for a few days. Out of the way of things. Don’t get involved in this. In fact, perhaps you’d both be better off spending the night upstairs with Shura. Just in case.”

“Is this to do with Yuri?”

“I’m answering no questions. You know that’s best. And I’ve thought it through, believe me.”

Valentina shook her head but he squeezed her hand, begged her with his eyes.

“Think of Natasha.” He put a hand to her neck, whispering into her ear. “It’s best if you know nothing, nothing at all. So if someone comes to ask you something, you can tell the truth. You knew nothing. I behaved oddly, and that was that.”

She turned her face to him, and for a moment he thought she was going to disagree with him, but instead she stepped forward into his arms and, to his surprise, her lips met his.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed like that but it seemed as though it might be forever—the moment stretching out around them. Her tears were wet against his face and the salty smell of them filled his nostrils. He held her as tight as he dared and thought how small she seemed as he held her in his arms.

“Be careful,” she said, pulling back to look him in the eyes. “Be very, very careful. And I know you’ll bring him home. I know it.”

Then she kissed him once again, on the cheek, ran the sleeve of her shirt across her face to dry it, smiled a crooked smile, and left the room.

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Korolev walked quickly through the long-shadowed streets, squinting against the low-hanging sun. He didn’t want to think about what had just happened—but whenever his concentration slipped, there it was, a surge of emotion of a kind that wouldn’t be much use to him where he was going. Tomorrow he could think about it, and what the future might hold for them. But today was today and tomorrow might never come.

He turned down a side street and then made his way through an archway that led into a courtyard he knew had another doorway at the far end. He crossed the open space quickly, startling a group of citizenry who were sitting on a circle of upturned logs taking in the last of the sun. And then he was past them, ignoring the hard looks from men who stood to see what stranger had come in among them, and before any of them could summon the energy at the end of a hot day to question him on his reasons for being there he’d reached the far end of the courtyard and disappeared through the carriage doors, out into an alleyway. He turned left and left and then slowed his pace as he approached the street he’d originally turned off from. He looked to see if anyone might have been following him, but there was no one, and he found himself exhaling a long breath that he seemed to have been holding in since Bolshoi Nikolo-Vorobinsky. Then he took one more look around and, satisfied, made his way quickly across the street to a small lane that would eventually, with more cut-backs and false trails, take him to Kolya.

Unusually for Moscow, the tree-shadowed courtyard that the Thief had designated as their meeting place was deserted—and the buildings that surrounded it were either boarded up or burned out. The spot must be intended for some new construction project that had yet to start. Cautious, Korolev walked the length of a crumbling stone wall, looking for the green doors Kolya had mentioned. He found them, half-hidden behind a bush. The gates looked the worst for wear, paint peeling off them in large curls, and the wood underneath gray and brittle. He pushed one of the doors gently and, to his surprise, it slid open on well-oiled hinges.

“You took your time.”

Little Mishka was standing just inside, half-hidden in the late-evening gloom. Korolev wasn’t in the mood to bother with him and nor, it seemed, was the Thief his usual combatitive self, merely nodding Korolev toward a coach house, barely even bothering to scowl. Behind Mishka, Korolev could see the glowing tips of two cigarettes and the dark shape of a large man leaning against a wall to his right. Korolev ignored them. Again, ancient doors opened easily and in the shadows two cars were parked.

“Greetings Korolev,” Kolya’s voice came from the darkness as he entered. “Did you succeed?”

Korolev reached into his pocket. “I did,” he said, and took out the map of the estate’s location.

There was a movement to his left and Korolev turned to see a youngster standing by the wall. When he saw that Korolev had noticed him, Kim Goldstein stepped forward.

“He could be useful to us,” Kolya said. “Remember—we’ll look out of place there, while he might not.”

Korolev breathed deeply and held the boy’s gaze. Goldstein nodded to him, the personification of calm.

“What happened to Yuri?”

“Chekists.”

“I know—how though? And how is it you were with him in the first place?”

“We came across him by chance—he was watching the train station from the trees beside the monastery in Peredelkino and saw us come over the wall. He thought there were men staking the place out, although he wasn’t sure who they were, so we went to the next station along the track.”

“And when you got to Moscow?”

“We took a tram into the center—I don’t know if they saw us at Kievsky and followed us, but they were waiting for us when we got off.”

“But you got away, didn’t you?”

“I couldn’t stop them taking Yuri,” Goldstein said. “I tried—they gave me this.”

He came further into the light and Korolev saw that someone had hit him a good belt—the skin around his eye was puffy and discolored.

“And Yuri?”

“They took him, like I said, but he was all right the last time I saw him. I only just managed to get away—they took Petya as well.”

Petya was the friend he’d gone over the wall with.

“It’s your damned fault he’s in this mess, Goldstein, and it’ll take more than that bruise to fix it now.”

Goldstein said nothing but held his gaze sullenly.

“I know everything,” Korolev continued. “I know your father’s name was Bramson and your mother’s Goldstein and how you took her name. I know your family lived in Azarov’s apartment before he did and, somehow or other, you found out about the ventilation system and how to get into it. I know that when Azarov denounced your parents, you ended up on the streets and your parents—well—elsewhere.”

“Dead,” Goldstein said.

“I see,” Korolev said. The anger in the boy’s eyes was such that his instinct was to look away, but Korolev held Goldstein’s gaze—and waited.

“Azarov took everything from me. When we were taken to his institute for the research project,” Goldstein said, “I knew I’d been given a chance to take something from him.”

“Where did you get the Derringer from?”

“I knew where my father kept it and when they came for him, I hid it in the ventilation system where no one would find it—under some rubble, right at the end of one of the tunnels.”

“And so Monday morning, you crept out of the orphanage and shot him while he sat at his desk.”

Goldstein shrugged. “He deserved it. But we got out the night before. We had to wait until the time was right.”

“Did Shtange deserve it? His murder was a direct result of what you did.”

“We went to do the same to him the next day,” Goldstein said quietly. “Only someone got there before us.”

“That scalpel-cut. You left your mark on him, all the same.”

Things were finally fitting into place.

“He was as bad as Azarov. He might have spoken kindly to us, but he did the same things.”

But in truth, had Shtange really had a choice? Once he was ordered to Moscow—he had to do what he was told. And he’d at least tried to stop it with his report. On the other hand, weren’t the prisoners and Thieves humans too? Didn’t they have rights? And Shtange had done nothing for them. Korolev shook his head—all he knew was that right and wrong were slippery commodities these days.

“Where’s the gun now?”

“In the river.”

Korolev sighed.

“I haven’t time for this now but you can believe me when I say I haven’t finished with you yet.”

If Goldstein was alarmed, he hid it well, only nodding.

“Shall we look at this map of yours?” Kolya asked, seeming to decide that the silence needed breaking.

“Why don’t we?” Korolev said.

The Thief lit a lantern and Korolev spread it out on the bonnet of the nearest car and they stood over it, looking down at his rough sketch. Korolev began to explain how to get there and where to leave the cars.

“We have a visitor,” Mishka’s voice came from behind them and they turned to see who he was talking about. A leather-jacketed female stood beside him, arms folded.

Slivka.

“I knew you were up to something,” she said.

“You followed me?”

Slivka took a step forward and her face became visible. She wasn’t smiling—if anything she looked angry.

“I didn’t have to—he told me.”

She nodded in Kolya’s direction—the Thief shrugged.

“You’re supposed to be showing me the ropes,” Slivka continued—more than just angry, it seemed—furious. “Turning me into a first-class detective—not skulking around behind my back.”

“Slivka, the only rope on this little trip is shaped like a noose. I want your neck kept out of it.”

Kolya was leaning against a car listening, and Korolev was suddenly reminded of a pointless argument he and Zhenia had once had while visiting her parents. Except that her parents had pretended not to notice, whereas Kolya sat watching them as if he were at the cinema.

“Kolya,” he said. “Tell her we’ve no room.”

“We’ve room,” Kolya said. “And Nadezhda’s a cool head in a tight spot. We can use her—I’ve only four men and Mishka. Another gun might come in useful. Besides, she has the right.”

And Korolev could see there wasn’t much point in arguing. After all, blood was blood and family was family. And Kolya’s son was her blood and her family.

“On your head be it then,” he said eventually.

And so he began to go through the plan all over again.

*   *   *

“And when we get to the house itself?” Kolya said. Korolev turned the piece of paper over, and showed them the rough plan of the buildings that he’d prepared with Azarova’s help.

“There are three main buildings surrounded by a wall—it’s about eight foot high, so manageable. The children’s dormitories are in the house itself. On the first floor. There’s a stable yard here, to the rear of the house, which was empty the last time Azarova was there—it might not be now. There’s also a newer building over here, to the left of the house—two stories, with several offices on the ground floor. What’s upstairs, she didn’t know.”

“Guards?”

“As she remembers it, there was one at the gate. An older man. But she remembers that the men and women who looked after the children looked like they might do more than turn down the beds at night. My suspicion is there will be more of them now.”

Then Korolev took a deep breath and told them his plan.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Korolev leaned against the trunk of a tree, waiting for Goldstein and Mishka to come back from scouting the place, and wishing it were possible to have a cigarette. It was strange, he thought, that in a situation where he should be, at the very least, apprehensive, he was instead consumed with desire for tobacco. He shifted his weight and did his best to keep his mind focused on the fear he should be feeling.

To his left, so close he could hear him breathing, was Kolya; and crouching on the ground in front of them was Slivka. Behind him, sitting on a tree trunk, were two more of Kolya’s men—Red Sasha and the Deacon. The other two had been left with the cars, just off the main road, to make sure they all had a way out of the place.

It was a good night for this kind of affair, the moon was more than half-full but there were enough clouds passing overhead so that they could move around unseen. There was a stillness in the air that made the small sounds of the woods behind seem amplified—but Korolev was more concerned about the occasional noise from inside the high walls. What if Goldstein had been discovered?

“There,” Kolya whispered, and pointed at a figure slipping over the wall at a point just ahead of them.

The boy dropped silently to the ground, sitting still for a long moment, before moving toward them at a crouch, pausing every now and then to listen and look—probably for them. When he was about twenty meters away Kolya gave a low whistle and the boy changed his course. When Goldstein reached them they retreated into the treeline.

“Well?” Kolya asked.

“The place is quiet enough. There’s a guard at the main gate and one that walks around the place every fifteen minutes, but that’s it, as far as I can see. The one who walks around is older and stout, he’s carrying a pistol. The one at the main gate looks younger and fitter—he’s got a pistol as well.”