Outside the air was fresh in the early light and his breath came out in a fog as thick as cigarette smoke. The temperature made him feel awake and strangely cheerful. He was glad he had his greatcoat to keep the chill off and that his feet were warm inside his valenki and, most of all, that there was no one else on the streets as yet. The only sounds as he walked along were the soft crunch of snow underfoot and an occasional early-morning voice from an open courtyard. He found himself humming the tune from the “March of the Happy-Go-Lucky Guys,” and the humming soon turned into quiet singing.
“We’ll grasp, discover and attain it all,
The cold North Pole and the clear blue sky.
When our country demands that we be heroes,
Then heroes we will become.”
As he sang, his feet swung to its rhythm. He looked quickly at his watch-he had to pick up the report for Gregorin from Petrovka Street and he decided, having plenty of time, to walk past the Kremlin and see it in its first snowy coat since the spring.
In the end, the lecture went well. Colonel Gregorin met him inside the surprisingly plain entrance to the NKVD training school-there was no furniture apart from a metal table, and paintings of Dzerzhinsky and Stalin were the only decorations on the white walls, apart from the mandatory Red Flag. One of the two burly-looking sentries had given him a speculative look that had seemed more than a little hostile, so he was pleased Gregorin had been prompt in receiving him. He followed the colonel through a pair of large wooden swing doors into a wide corridor, along which hung revolutionary slogans on black canvas banners. “Catch up and overtake the West!”; “Defend against the enemy within!” and “Make way for women!” although he noticed that in fact there were very few women among the students flowing back and forth from room to room, in an unhurried but purposeful rhythm that made it seem as though walking along the corridor was all they did all day.
The high-ceilinged lecture room itself was a little disorientating. He had to lean backward to see the students on the highest level of the wooden semi-circles, which reached up almost to the light fittings. At each desk a young face sat, scrubbed and grave above a spotless cadet uniform. He turned to Gregorin, who pointed him toward a wooden lectern, where, after taking a moment to open his notes and a further nod from the colonel, he began to speak.
He started slowly, perhaps because one of the banners at the side of the lecture room read “Remain ever vigilant. Enemies surround you at all times!” which seemed, for a second or two, to be addressed to him personally, but he recovered and found himself moving through the presentation at a steady pace. Soon the scratch of the students’ pens was the only noise, and he took breaks to allow them to catch up before he started a new point. The pauses also allowed him to observe his audience, and there was something in their concentration that put him in mind of the wolves that had hunted behind his column on that long winter retreat in nineteen. It was not a comfortable feeling. There were some memories you wished you could leave behind you forever, like the corpses that had marked each kilometer on that terrible march.
Afterward, however, when Gregorin had thanked him on their behalf, the young men and women’s applause had seemed genuine enough. Perhaps he was just imagining they had the eyes of prowling predators.
“A keen-looking bunch, aren’t they? Comrade Ezhov wants their course cut in half; he says they can learn on the job. Every day we discover a new conspiracy and he wants us to strike back-and hard.”
The colonel led the way into another corridor, this time narrow and empty.
“Incidentally, Captain, I think I may have something of interest for you.”
Korolev followed Gregorin, the heels of the colonel’s riding boots sounding like pistol shots against the tiled floor. There was no natural light, just blank door after blank door. It was a relief when Gregorin stopped at one of them and opened it.
The room they entered was large, painted a bureaucratic cream and dominated by a wide desk, in front of which a chair stood on a carpet marked by several damp patches. There was a typewriter on a smaller desk to one side, which Korolev presumed was for the stenographer during interrogations because he had no doubt whatsoever that this was the purpose of the room. There were no windows and the lights were all arranged to focus on the sturdy metal chair, which the colonel now directed him toward. Gregorin himself sat down behind the desk and placed Korolev’s typewritten report inside a buff-colored cardboard folder. There was no name on the folder and it was the only one on the desk. The colonel put his hands under his chin, lifted his eyes toward Korolev and then indicated, with a drooping finger, the file.
“I read your report during the lecture. Very thorough.”
The colonel paused and Korolev found himself shifting in his seat, wondering about its last occupant and what might have become of him. After a moment Gregorin sighed and opened the folder once again. He turned a couple of pages and stopped at the photograph of the dead girl that Gueginov had been up half the night developing.
“We know who your victim is, anyway. Maria Ivanovna Kuznetsova. Born 1 July, 1913, here in Moscow. A Soviet citizen, in our eyes at least, although she emigrated to America at the age of six. Her father’s factories turned out guns for the Whites, so he didn’t hang around when the Civil War started going our way. We’ve kept an eye on the father, of course; he’s done well in America but, as you might expect, he continues to have extensive connections with various counterrevolutionary and émigré groups. We hadn’t heard much of his daughter but last week she entered the country as part of a tour group, under the name Mary Smithson. She disappeared soon after she arrived and that’s when her real identity emerged. Smithson is a rough translation of Kuznetsova-here’s her visa application form.”
Korolev picked up the form the colonel slipped across to him. A passport-sized photograph of the dead girl stared out at him from the first page. Although her expression was serious in the picture, her mouth had a curve to it that suggested a ready smile. Her hair was cut short, almost like a boy’s, and her eyes seemed a brilliant blue despite the photograph being in black and white.
“Do the Americans know she’s dead?” he asked, handing the form back to the colonel.
“We don’t think so; at least, they’ve made no inquiries-which is how we’d like to keep it, for as long as possible anyway. Once they report her missing we can decide how to handle the situation, but until then we must keep things quiet. Very quiet. You’re authorized to inform General Popov of her identity, but no one else.”
“I see. What about my assistant on the case, Lieutenant Semionov?”
“He’s very junior…”
“Yes, but a Komsomol member and reliable-I’d stake my life on him.”
Gregorin examined Korolev as though he represented a rather tricky problem.
“You’ll take full responsibility?”
“I will. He’s a good lad.”
“Then I leave it to your discretion.”
Korolev nodded his agreement, feeling a little offended on his colleague’s behalf. Semionov was a Militia investigator-he knew his duty. It was wrong for Gregorin to suggest otherwise.
The colonel, meanwhile, cleaned his nails with a letter opener and took great care about it. Korolev noticed his hands were trembling slightly and that both sets of knuckles were red, the skin broken in places. In the pause that developed, Korolev considered what he’d just been told and didn’t like it. Investigating the murder of a foreigner-worse still, an American foreigner-it was just the kind of assignment that could explode in a fellow’s face. He didn’t understand why he was still being allowed to handle the case; it just didn’t make sense. He found himself rubbing his palm across his chin, feeling a bristly scratch despite his morning shave. Well, if he was stuck with it, he’d better make sure he extracted as much information from the Chekists as was possible.