Legends

“My roots are Georgian, though I have long since offered my allegiance to Mother Russia. It was me,” he added with a distinct twinkle in his eyes, “the ironmonger on the slope who was employed by our security services. It was me who took the photographs of you with a camera hidden in my lunch box.”

“You’ve come up in the world,” Martin commented.

“Photographing your execution was my first great triumph. It caught the attention of my superiors and started me up the career ladder. After you jumped from the tow truck and disappeared in Moscow, we heard rumors that you had found your way to the American Embassy on the ring road. The CIA station chief himself was said to have taken you in charge. There was a flurry of coded radio traffic for forty-eight hours, after which you were spirited out of Moscow in an embassy car heading for Finland. There were five men in the car—all of them had diplomatic passports and were able to pass the frontier without scrutiny. What happened to you after that we simply do not know. To tell you the truth, I suspect you don’t know either.”

Martin stared at his interrogator. “What makes you suppose that?”

The interrogator collected his thoughts. “My father was arrested by the KGB in 1953. He was accused of being an American agent and sentenced by a summary tribunal to be shot. The guards took him from his cell in the vast Lubyanka headquarters of the KGB one night in March and brought him to the elevator that carried prisoners down to the vaulted basements for execution. When they discovered that the elevator was not working, they returned him to his cell. Technicians worked through the night to repair the elevator. In the morning the guards came for my father again. They were waiting for the elevator to climb to their floor when word reached them that Stalin was dead. All executions were cancelled. Several months later the new leadership killed Beria and issued a general amnesty, and my father was set free.”

“What does his story have to do with me?”

“I remember my father returning to our communal apartment—I was six years old at the time. It had been raining and he was drenched to the skin. My mother asked him where he had been. He shook his head in confusion. There was a vacant look in his eyes, as if he had glimpsed some horrible thing, some monster or some ghost. He didn’t remember his arrest, he didn’t remember the summary tribunal, he didn’t remember the guards leading him to the elevator for execution. It was all erased from his consciousness. When I went to work for the security apparatus, I looked up his dossier and found out what had happened to him. By then my father had been put out to pasture. One day, years later, I worked up the nerve to tell him what I had discovered. He listened the way one does to the story of someone else’s life, and smiled politely as if the life I had dredged up had nothing to do with him, and went on with the life he remembered. Which was the life he lived until the day he died.”

Drinking off the last of his tea, the interrogator produced a small key from the pocket of his vest and offered it to Martin. “If you go through that door, you will find a narrow staircase spiraling down six floors to the street level. The key opens the door at the bottom of the staircase leading to a side street. When you are outside, lock the door behind you and throw the key down a sewer.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I believe you when you say you don’t remember being brought across the river and buried alive. I believe you when you say you don’t know Samat Ugor-Zhilov or his uncle, the Oligarkh. I have concluded that you are unable to help us with our inquiries. If you are intelligent, you will quit Russia as rapidly as you can. Whatever you do, don’t go to the American Embassy—the CIA station chief has been making discreet inquiries for the past several weeks about someone named Martin Odum. From his description, we suspect that Martin Odum and Jozef Kafkor are the same person.”

Martin started to mutter his thanks but the interrogator cut him off. “The skeletal man in the third photograph, the one offering the condemned man a last cigarette, is Samat Ugor-Zhilov. The man with silver hair watching the execution from the partly open window of the automobile is the Oligarkh, Tzvetan Ugor-Zhilov. Keep in mind that they attempted to execute you once. They would surely try again if they discover your whereabouts. Ah, I must not forget to return to you your belongings.” He retrieved the Canadian passport, the wad of bills, the picture postcard showing a family strolling down a country road somewhere in north America and the shoelaces, and handed everything to the prisoner.

The interrogator watched as the prisoner threaded the laces through his shoes. When Martin looked up, the interrogator shrugged his heavy shoulders, a gesture that conveyed his presumption there was nothing more to say.

Martin nodded in agreement. “How can I repay you?” he asked.