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  Devout in his desire to not understand this development, Arkady quizzed Yury once more about his memory of the car.

  Yury stamped his foot. —Yes, I’m certain! Car number forty-two, and it’s gone! How shall I get Comrade Captain Kuznets home now?

  Arkady drove both men home himself, in his own signed-out vehicle, as Boris assured Yury this business of the missing car would not affect him. —Someone took it by mistake. We’ll get it straightened out at the office, once I see the Garage Number One records.

  Free of Yury and Boris, Arkady knew he should drive by Kostya’s block of flats. Just to see.

  Then he’d reminded himself of construction in that area, of random signs rearing up in the dark, and declined.

  After signing his car back in, and after thanking a young sergeant called Katelnikov for then driving him home, Arkady returned to the study and sifted the detritus of women. Many pairs of stockings, one set destroyed at the knees. Drawers and step-ins. A necklace with a hammer and sickle pendant. Several handkerchiefs. Some bloodied rags. A brassiere, this last garment very strange to Arkady, and one which refused to give up its secrets even as he dangled it in the air, high above his face. And that handbag, black leather, well made, almost as conspicuous to his eyes as the wristwatch with the English brand name.

  Arkady dumped the contents of the handbag onto Kostya’s old desk: a mirrored compact; a lipstick; a beautiful glass bottle of perfume with a tassel and a chipped stopper; a leather case about half the size of Arkady’s hand, and, inside that case, a rubber dome, intimate and strange; a small amount of cash; travel papers and the British passport in the name of Margaret Bush.

  He’d almost said it aloud. Kostya, we get shot for less.

  Now, in the garden, Arkady did say it aloud, and the sound of his own voice, and then the soft and quiet impact of his dropped trowel adjacent the turned soil, made him feel sick.

  I’ve saved him before; I can save him again.

  Somewhere behind him, a car braked. Arkady finished patting the earth over the buried stockings as booted footsteps approached.

  — Beautiful afternoon, Arkady Dmitrievich.

  — Boris Aleksandrovich, how are you?

  Boris, looking younger somehow in his uniform, extended a hand. —Sore in the head, but I’m in better shape than young Stepanov. I suppose Nikto’s sleeping it off, too? Sometimes I despair of the next generation. Young people today.

  Arkady accepted Boris’s offer of a hand up and lumbered to his feet. —No Chekist like an old Chekist.

  — Forged in the fire of revolution.

  They laughed at the slogans, at themselves.

  — Arkady Dmitrievich, you’ll never guess how I got here.

  — Troika? I admit, I heard no sleigh bells.

  Boris grinned, acknowledging Arkady’s wit. —NKVD car number forty-two.

  — Found it, then? Poor old Stepanov. Had he ever signed it out?

  — He had. Someone else signed it back in. Not too long ago, in fact. Still, overdue.

  The sunlight seemed to burn Arkady’s face; the rest of him felt quite cold. —Come inside for a drink.

  At his desk in Laboratory of Special Purpose Number Two, beneath a huge red poster showing two joined rings and the text Only Those Who Work Deserve to Eat, Efim wrote a letter.

  My dearest Olga, my Olyushka.

  The pen spit ink in blobs, and Efim scowled at the paper. How to say it, how to consider one’s audience: not just Olga, of course, but any of the NKVD agents who might, could, would, intercept and read this letter? How to say it, and yet make the letter sound innocent?

  Every year on their wedding anniversary, he would ask, You still love me, Olyushka? You still want to spend your life with me?

  Yes, she’d answer, looking out a window, I suppose so. I don’t see anyone better.

  He’d brush her fair hair aside and press his lips to her forehead in mock concern. Are you feverish?

  You’re stuck with me, Fima.

  As years passed, she’d sometimes pat her abdomen as she said You’re stuck with me. No matter what Efim said about biology and the unknowable workings of life, she blamed herself for the miscarriages.

  He imagined another such anniversary conversation. You still love me, Olyushka, even after I inject poisons into political prisoners, call it phage therapy, and study the results? You still want to spend your life with me, or do you want spit in my face?

  He heard Major Balakirev’s voice, his casual threat. What did you say your wife is called?

  Efim covered his mouth with his hand and moaned. The compelled doctor: he’d played this role before. A sensation of movement, of travel, overtook him, as the floor of his office seemed to become the floor of that armoured train. Forced away at gunpoint, he’d left wounded men to die in misery. Cold. Months on end of bone-deep cold, and one war and one calendar wore into another.

  One dull morning, grasses exposed, snow receded to puddles, the train maybe half a kilometre on its way, slow, slow, a woman alongside the tracks dropped the handles of the cart she hauled, a grown man and a child lying there, ran to keep up, then stopped, her arms outstretched. That dull morning, Efim leapt from the train.

  Sunday 6 June 1937. My dearest Olga, Olyushka, my love, I think of you every night.

  The new radio sitting on a chair in the corridor outside the main lab, volume cranked high, spewed static and Tchaikovsky’s ‘Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.’

  As I sit here and think on you, I also think on my great privilege to serve our country as I do. I have here, in Moscow, a chance to leave a legacy in medicine. Such…

  He tapped his pen against his thumb, oblivious to the spatter of ink. Such what? Detailed work? Meaningful work?

  Intimate work?

  My research progresses well, and we approach a breakthrough, one that may reverberate around the world.

  A woman cried out, her voice ragged. —Mercy!

  A door slammed.

  A colleague’s shadow darkened the frosted glass panel in Efim’s office door, remained there a moment, then disappeared. Women’s shoes tapped on the hard floors.

  Efim sighed. Even with an office and a closing door, he could expect little privacy. His thoughts slipped on oily fear. So many people. Which of them eavesdropped? Which of them informed? Which of them sympathized with his reluctance to harm people? The prisoner who’d just screamed for mercy and now made no sound: had she even existed?

  One day soon, would someone ask the same question about Olga?

  Olyushka, my miracle, my love. As I sit here and think on you, I also think on my great privilege to serve our country as I do. I have here, in Moscow, a chance to leave a legacy in medicine. Such work is a journey in honour. I look forward to a new letter from you. I enclose a little money. Buy a nice blouse, if you need one, or a new pair of shoes. All my love, Fima.

  Garbage, he told himself, complete garbage, the letter so stiff and formal even as he used the diminutives Olyushka and Fima. No NKVD agent would believe Efim had written the letter with no expectation of interference. Even this tacit acknowledgement of interference with the post could get him arrested.

  He rocked the blotter over the fresh ink.

  Olyushka, what have I done?

  Acid and brine and vegetable fibres: pickles crammed Arkady’s mouth. In his parlour, staring out the back window at his garden, Arkady shoved little pickles between his teeth, one after another, and then crunched them down. He did not swallow, instead holding the chewed mess in the pouches of his cheeks. He always felt worse after eating pickles; his father had avoided them. He told himself that he enjoyed eating pickles: fill the belly, occupy the teeth, chew chew chew. Two famines and subsequent random shortages had stripped much of the pleasure of eating from Arkady, leaving him with only a grim instinct to devour. He swallowed the wads of pickle in three gulps, shoved a chunk of bread into his mouth, then groped for the bottles on his table. His glass of wine had done nothing to calm him after the visit of
Boris Kuznets, and neither had the vodka. The drinks did, however, help him decide that Boris’s three separate mentions of cronyism, the charge so often thrown at disgraced NKVD officers, meant nothing.

  Almost gagging on the bread, Arkady poured more vodka. If Kuznets wanted to threaten me with cronyism, he’d never have come to my party. He damn near insisted I invite him. He benefits as much from my generosity as any other officer. What is he playing at?

  Glass clinked; liquid dribbled; knuckles knocked.

  Three knocks, not five like NKVD on a raid. Spitting the bread into a handkerchief and stuffing that mess into his pocket, Arkady stood up to his full height, strode to the door, and yanked it open.

  Then he sighed. —You have a key, Tatar.

  Kostya stepped inside and, by long habit, sat on the little bench and fixed his heel into a bootjack. —I didn’t want to startle you.

  — Leave your boots on. Just wipe your feet; the charwoman comes tomorrow. Why are you in uniform? I thought you had today off.

  — I had to drop by Lubyanka.

  Grateful he had his back to Kostya, Arkady shut his eyes and accepted the lie. You mean, you had to return Stepanov’s car to Garage Number One. —And what brings you here?

  — Brings me here? Arkady Dmitrievich, I grew up in this house. Do I need a reason to visit my…you?

  Arkady took a bottle from the table. —I expected you to be home today, sleeping it off. You need the rest.

  Kostya shook his head at the wordless offer of vodka. —I’m fine. Can I help you tidy before the charwoman comes?

  — I’ve got it looked after.

  — Anything left behind?

  Arkady stood where the sun shone bright, knowing Kostya would have trouble seeing him there. —Really, Kostya? Am I now the decrepit old man whose bib you must tie?

  — I apologize, Arkady Dmitrievich.

  — Let’s go to the park.

  — What?

  Arkady had to admit the utterance surprised him, too. —Yes, Gorky Park. Such a lovely afternoon. How often do we get the same day off anymore? I can’t go on holiday, like you keep pestering me to, but I can go to the park. Wait here. I’ll get dressed.

  He left the sunbeam and ascended the stairs.

  Kostya studied the older man’s back, his hunched shoulders, his tight grip on the stair rail. Then, once he heard Arkady close his bedroom door, he turned to the study.

  Sunlight poured onto the tidy floor, the little bed, the desk. The piles of clothing, the heap of boots and shoes: gone.

  Kostya took a deep breath, and he caught the echoes of sweet musks and Krasnaya Moskva.

  He took another breath, and this time he smelled only stale tobacco smoke and men’s cologne.

  A breeze played at the window, at his face, and it carried the scents of the early flowers in Arkady’s garden. Birds sang.

  Upstairs, Arkady dropped something heavy, grunting as he bent over to retrieve it.

  Kostya hurried now, checking beneath the bed, in the drawers of the desk.

  No wristwatch, no handbag, no travel papers, no passport.

  As if she’d never existed. I should expect nothing less from an old Chekist.

  Then he spotted the Persian rug, folded over the back of the chair. He picked it up, drew it to his face, breathed in.

  Arkady’s voice floated over the stairs, almost like a warning. —Kostya?

  Kostya left the study, hurried across the parlour, and stood at the bottom of the stairs. —Yes?

  — Are the boot hooks in the porch?

  Where else would they be? Kostya checked the porch, picked up the hooks, and returned to the bottom of the stairs. —I’ve got them. Should I bring them to you?

  — No, just stand clear.

  Left, right: Arkady tossed his boots down over the stairs, and they landed at Kostya’s feet. Then the man himself descended, in uniform, armed, carrying his cap. He gripped the railing again, as if fearing a push, as if breaking a fall.

  Kostya picked up the boots, held them out. —Why did you bother with uniform for a walk in the park?

  — Kostya, what the hell is the matter with you? Ever since you came back from Spain, you’ve acted the foolish pochemuchka, always asking questions, why-why-why, and when you’re not asking questions, you refuse to believe what’s right in front of you. Save it for the cells. You’re even worse now than then you first came here from Odessa. I have bothered, as you put it, with my uniform because even without translating a calendar I can feel in my bones this is a Sunday. When I was a child, I always wore my finest clothes on Sundays.

  Kostya watched the older man tug on his boots with the hooks and ignored the heavy breathing. How to say it, how to acknowledge crime after crime: Arkady Dmitrievich, did you find a British passport and travel papers?

  And if he hadn’t found them? If she’d lost passport and papers somewhere else?

  If one of the other men had found them?

  Arkady looked up from his boots and waved a hook. —This gets harder every day.

  Not speaking, they rode the metro to the park. As civilians made room for them, Kostya wished he could explain that he and Arkady were not on duty. Yet there they stood, uniformed from cap to boots, major and senior lieutenant of the NKVD, unmistakable.

  Mistakes, thought Kostya. I’ve made so many mistakes.

  Arkady touched Kostya’s bad shoulder, and pain zapped down the arm. —Our stop, Tatar.

  Park Kultury station: pillar after pillar of variegated brown and tan marble, corners sharp enough to cut the air. No Odessa catacomb, this, yet Kostya felt trapped and hungry, as if hiding underground to escape the sleet.

  He hurried up the stairs. On the street, he turned around, looking for Arkady, who called out to him to wait.

  In the park, the men strolled a while, commenting on the gentle air, the beauty of the grounds, and the happiness of children.

  — Arkady Dmitrievich, I should get back.

  Face calm, patient, Arkady gestured to a bench. —Let’s sit down.

  Kostya noticed the parachute tower, its twisting exterior a mash of Pisa upright and Tatlin constrained. Park visitors might climb this tower and then, wearing a motley parachute with a point like a budenovka cap, jump.

  Arkady gestured to the woman who stood at the top of the tower adjusting her parachute harness. —I never understood the appeal.

  Kostya made to light a cigarette; his match broke. He flicked the pieces of his shattered match to the ground and plucked out a second. Silk rustled and snapped as air filled the leaping woman’s parachute, and her scream warmed to a laugh as she descended in safety and grace.

  Ignition, flame: Kostya drew on his cigarette. —She seemed to like it.

  — Those scars on your ear, do they hurt?

  — Yes, they hurt. Yes, they’re ugly. Yes, they look like the work of a savage dog. I know. I know.

  Arkady raised his eyebrows. —Such a tone with me?

  Kostya exhaled smoke. —I apologize, Arkady Dmitrievich.

  — Those scars also turn dark red when you’re upset. That’s a dangerous giveaway.

  — Can I hide nothing from you?

  Emotion broke Arkady’s steady voice then: concern, dismay. —The sunlight…you’ve got grey hairs.

  — Yes.

  Arkady said nothing.

  Songbirds landed near Kostya’s boots. —We should come here more often, Arkady Dmitrievich. Take a lunch together, here, Solonki, any place where it’s green.

  — Such a scowl on you.

  — My shoulder hurts.

  — Learn to hide it.

  — What do you know about it? Hey?

  Arkady shook his head. The pain’s as bad as that? —I’ll speak to Scherba. At least sit up straight. You’re in uniform, and you slouch like some sneaky bezprizornik.

  — Well, once I was a sneaky bezprizornik. Now I’m…

  Kostya dug in his pouch for another cigarette.

  I’m fucked in the mouth, that’s what
.

  Arkady leaned closer to Kostya’s ear. —You’re a damned war hero. When I got the telegram from Leningrad saying you were home, I almost said a prayer of thanks. And I’ve not prayed since 1905.

  Please, old man, shut up. Wait, I didn’t send a telegram.

  A new tone in Arkady’s voice startled Kostya: not quite a whisper, not quite a murmur, just the safety of the blasé. —Tatar, listen to me this time. Please. Things…changed while you were gone. We tread new soil and pretend not to notice the graves. The chief’s arrest upset everything. Even inside NKVD we’ve turned on one another. Secrets. Games. The guiltier the officer, the better the arrest.

  Kostya said nothing.

  — For the ones who make the arrest, I mean. They look brave, willing to confront the corruption—

  — I know, Arkady Dmitrievich. I get the same memos you do, the same orders. I know.

  Arkady’s eyes followed the path of a songbird as it rose and fell, then disappeared within a tree. —We’re Chekists, NKVD, the strongest guardians against treachery and rot, and now we’re under suspicion, too? I don’t…

  At the crunch of footsteps, both Arkady and Kostya nodded to an elderly couple passing by, the woman leaning on the man’s arm, the man, despite a limp, jaunty.

  — Enemies without and enemies within, Kostya. I cannot even give you a list.

  The woman at the parachute tower, on her second turn now, kept silent on this fall. She landed on her feet. Impressed, Kostya nodded as if she could see him, and he admired, too, her lovely hair, all those loose brown curls. Laughing, the woman struggled to walk, to stay upright. She fell to her knees, and the parachute enveloped her. Her shadowed form struggled, stumbled, beat at the silk. Kostya stood, ready to run and help, unaware he did so. Then the woman emerged from the parachute, throwing it off. She ran to a waiting man and embraced him.

  As Kostya sat down again, fire stabbed his shoulder. A spasm in the fingers: his cigarette and matches fell to the ground.

  — I’ll get them, Tatar.

  Arkady bent over to retrieve the matches; his own flesh got in the way. Snorting, Kostya bent at the waist with ease and grace, and Arkady wanted to punch him, perhaps in the small of the back, to teach him better manners. Kostya’s left hand darted out, fingers scrabbling against grass and little stones, water and cardboard, guano. Got it. Another spasm in his hand: he almost crushed the matchbox.