Child 44 - Страница 13

Only Brodsky reacted, making a noise, an inhuman noise — no words but grief and anger mixed together. Vasili took a step to the side and positioned his gun behind the wife’s head. Leo raised his hand.

— Lower your gun! That’s an order.

— These people are traitors. We need to make an example.

Vasili pulled the trigger, his hand recoiled, a second shot rang out and the woman’s body slumped into the snow beside that of her husband. Brodsky tried to break free but the two officers escorting him kicked him to his knees. Vasili took another sidestep, positioning the gun behind the head of the elder daughter. Her nose was red with the cold. Her body was shaking slightly. She was staring at her mother’s body. She would die in the snow beside her parents. Leo drew his gun, pointing it at his deputy.

— Lower your gun.

Suddenly all his tiredness disappeared, not as the result of some narcotic. Outrage and adrenaline swept through him. His hand was steady. He closed one eye and took careful aim. At this range he wouldn’t miss. If he fired now the girl would survive. Both girls would survive — no one would be murdered. Without thinking about it the word had sprung into his head:

Murdered.

He cocked his gun.

Vasili had been wrong about Kiev. He’d been duped by Brodsky’s letter. He’d assured the other men they were wasting their time going to Kimov. He’d hinted that tonight’s failure would result in him becoming the new boss. These embarrassing mistakes would all be in Leo’s report. Right now Vasili could sense the other officers watching him. His status had been struck a humiliating blow. Part of him wanted to see if Leo had the nerve to kill him. The repercussions would be severe. Yet he was no fool. He knew in his heart that he was a coward just as surely as he knew that Leo was not. Vasili lowered his gun. Pretending to be satisfied, he gestured to the two children.

— The girls have learned a valuable lesson. Maybe they’ll grow up to be better citizens than their parents.

Leo moved towards his deputy, passing the two dead bodies, leaving a boot print in the bloody snow. In a swift arc he swung his gun, cracking the edge of his weapon against the side of Vasili’s head. Vasili fell back, clutching his temple. There was a trickle of blood where the skin had broken. But before he could stand up straight he felt the barrel of Leo’s gun pressing against his temple. Except for the two girls, who were staring down, waiting to die, everyone watched.

Very slowly, Vasili tilted his head and looked up, his jaw quivering. He was afraid of death; this man to whom the death of others was so casual. Leo’s finger touched the trigger. But he couldn’t do it. Not in cold blood. He would not be this man’s executioner. Let the State punish him. Trust in the State. He holstered his gun.

— You’ll remain here and wait for the militia. You’ll explain what has happened and assist them. You can make your own way back to Moscow.

Leo helped the two girls to their feet and walked them to the house.

Three agents were needed to carry Anatoly Brodsky to the back of the truck. His body was slack as though life had been sucked out of it. He was muttering incomprehensibly, insane with grief and oblivious as the other officers told him to shut up. They didn’t want to listen to his crying.

Inside the house the two young girls said nothing, still unable to comprehend that the bodies lying outside in the snow were their parents. At any moment they expected their father to make them breakfast or their mother to return from the fields. Nothing felt real. Their parents were their entire world. How could the world exist without them?

Leo asked if they had any other family. Neither girl said a word. He told the elder girl to pack — they were coming to Moscow. Neither of them moved. He went to the bedroom and began to pack for them, looking for their things, their clothes. His hands began to shake. He stopped, sat on the bed and looked down at his boot. He clumped his heels together and stared at the thin, compact ridges of blood-soaked snow that fell to the floor.

Vasili watched from the roadside, smoking his last cigarette, as the truck pulled away. He glimpsed the two girls sitting in the front beside Leo where he should’ve been. The truck turned and disappeared down the road. He looked around. There were faces at the windows of nearby farms. This time they didn’t shy away. He was glad he still had his machine gun. He walked back to the house glancing at the bodies lying in the snow. He entered the kitchen, warmed up some water and brewed some tea. It was strong and he sweetened it with sugar. The family had a small pot of sugar, probably meant to last a month. He poured almost all of it into his glass, creating a sickly treat. He sipped it and suddenly felt tired. He took off his boots and jacket, went to the bedroom, pulled back the covers and lay down. He wished it were possible to choose his dreams. He’d choose to dream of revenge.

Moscow

16 February

Even though it had been his place of work for the past five years, Leo had never felt comfortable in the Lubyanka, the headquarters of the MGB. Casual conversations were rare. Reactions were guarded. All this was hardly surprising considering the nature of their occupation but to his mind there was something about the building itself which made people uneasy, as though fear had been factored into the design. He accepted his theory was nonsense in so far as he knew nothing of the architect’s intention. The building predated the Revolution, existing as nothing more than an insurance office before being taken over by the Bolshevik secret security force. Yet he found it difficult to believe they’d by chance chosen a building whose proportions were so unsettling: neither tall nor squat, wide nor narrow, it was somewhere awkwardly in between. Its facade created the impression of watchfulness: rows and rows of windows crammed together, stacked up and up, rising to a clock at the top which stared out over the city as though it were a single beady eye. An invisible borderline existed around the building. Passers-by steered clear of this imaginary perimeter as if fearful they were going to be pulled in. Crossing that line meant you were either staff or condemned. There was no chance you could be found innocent inside these walls. It was an assembly line of guilt. Perhaps the Lubyanka hadn’t been constructed with fear in mind but fear had taken over all the same, fear had made this former insurance office its own, its home.

Leo handed over his identity card; a card which meant not only that he could enter the building but also that he could leave. The card-less men and women led through these doors were often never seen again. The system might carry them into the Gulags or to a building just behind this one, on Varsonofyevsky Lane, another State Security compound fitted with sloping floors, logpanelled walls to absorb bullets and hoses to wash away the rivulets of blood. Leo didn’t know the precise execution capacity but the numbers were high, up to several hundred a day. At those levels practical considerations, such as how easily and quickly human remains could be cleaned away, became an issue.

Entering the main corridor, Leo wondered how it would feel to be led down to the basements with no leave to appeal and no one to call for help. The judicial system could be bypassed entirely. Leo had heard of prisoners who lay abandoned for weeks and doctors who served no other purpose than the study of pain. He taught himself to accept that these things existed not just for their own sake. They existed for a reason, a greater good. They existed to terrify. Terror was necessary. Terror protected the Revolution. Without it, Lenin would’ve fallen. Without it, Stalin would’ve fallen. Why else would rumours concerning this building be deliberately spread by MGB operatives, muttered on the metro or on tramcars as strategically as if they were releasing a virus into the population? Fear was cultivated. Fear was part of his job. And for this level of fear to be sustained it needed a constant supply of people fed to it.

Of course the Lubyanka wasn’t the only building to fear. There was Butyrka prison with its tall towers and squalid wings filled with cramped cells where inmates played with matchsticks whilst waiting for their deportation to the labour camps. Or there was Lefortovo, where criminals under active investigation were transported for interrogations and where screams could be heard from neighbouring streets. But Leo understood that the Lubyanka held a special place in the people’s psyche, representing the place where those guilty of anti-Soviet agitation, counter-revolutionary activity and espionage were processed. Why did that category of prisoner strike particular dread into everyone’s heart? While it was easy to comfort yourself that you would never steal or rape or murder, no one could ever be sure they weren’t guilty of anti-Soviet agitation, counter-revolutionary activity and espionage since no one, including Leo, could ever be sure exactly what these crimes were. In the one hundred and forty articles of the criminal code Leo had just one article to guide him, a subsection defining the political prisoner as a person engaged in activity intended to:

Overthrow, subvert, or weaken the Soviet Power.

And that was more or less it: an elastic set of words stretching to accommodate anyone from top-ranking Party officials to ballet dancers to musicians to retired cobblers. Not even those who worked within the Lubyanka’s walls, not even those who kept this machinery of fear ticking could be certain that the system they sustained would not one day swallow them too.