Winter of the World

Volodya winced. Irina was Markus’s Russian girlfriend. Volodya began to see what this might be about and he had a bad feeling. He sat down opposite Markus. ‘I didn’t arrest Irina,’ he said. ‘And I’m sorry if she’s been hurt. Just tell me what happened.’

‘They came for her in the middle of the night. Her mother told me. They wouldn’t say who they were, but they weren’t regular police detectives – they had better clothes. She doesn’t know where they took her. They questioned her about me and accused her of being a spy. They tortured her and raped her, then they threw her out.’

‘Fuck,’ said Volodya. ‘I’m really sorry.’

‘You’re sorry? It must have been you that did it – who else?’

‘This is nothing to do with Army Intelligence, I swear.’

‘Makes no difference,’ Markus said. ‘I’m finished with you, and I’m finished with Communism.’

‘There are sometimes casualties in the war against capitalism.’ It sounded glib even to Volodya as he said it.

‘You young fool,’ Markus said savagely. ‘Don’t you understand that socialism means freedom from this kind of shit?’

Volodya glanced up and saw a burly man in a leather coat come through the door. He was not here for a drink, Volodya knew instinctively.

Something was going on, and Volodya did not know what it was. He was new to this game, and right now he felt his lack of experience like a missing limb. He thought he might be in danger but he did not know what to do.

The newcomer approached the table where Volodya sat with Markus.

Then the rat-faced man stood up. He was about the same age as Volodya. Surprisingly, he spoke with an educated accent. ‘You two are under arrest.’

Volodya cursed.

Markus jumped to his feet. ‘I am commercial attaché at German Embassy!’ he screamed in ungrammatical Russian. ‘You cannot arrest! I have diplomatic immunity!’

The other customers left the bar in a rush, shoving at each other as they squeezed through the door. Only two people remained: the bartender, nervously swiping the counter with a filthy rag, and the prostitute, smoking a cigarette and staring into an empty vodka glass.

‘You can’t arrest me, either,’ Volodya said calmly. He took his identification card from his pocket. ‘I’m Lieutenant Peshkov, Army Intelligence. Who the fuck are you?’

‘Dvorkin, NKVD.’

The man in the leather coat said: ‘Berezovsky, NKVD.’

The secret police. Volodya groaned: he might have known. The NKVD overlapped with Army Intelligence. He had been warned that the two organizations were always treading on each other’s toes, but this was his first experience of it. He said to Dvorkin: ‘I suppose it was you who tortured this man’s girlfriend.’

Dvorkin wiped his nose on his sleeve: apparently that unpleasant habit was not part of his disguise. ‘She had no information.’

‘So you burned her nipples for nothing.’

‘Lucky for her. If she had been a spy it would have been worse.’

‘It didn’t occur to you to check with us first?’

‘When did you ever check with us?’

Markus said: ‘I’m leaving.’

Volodya felt desperate. He was about to lose a valuable asset. ‘Don’t go,’ he pleaded. ‘We’ll make this up to Irina somehow. We’ll get her the best hospital treatment—’

‘Fuck you,’ said Markus. ‘You’ll never see me again.’ He walked out of the bar.

Dvorkin evidently did not know what to do. He did not want to let Markus go, but clearly he could not arrest him without looking foolish. In the end he said to Volodya: ‘You shouldn’t let people speak to you that way. It makes you look weak. They should respect you.’

‘You prick,’ Volodya said. ‘Can’t you see what you’ve done? That man was a good source of reliable intelligence – but now he’ll never work for us again, thanks to your blundering.’

Dvorkin shrugged. ‘As you said to him, sometimes there are casualties.’

‘God spare me,’ Volodya said, and he went out.

He felt vaguely nauseated as he walked back across the river. He was sickened by what the NKVD had done to an innocent woman, and downcast by the loss of his source. He boarded a tram: he was too junior to have a car. He brooded as the vehicle trundled through the snow to his place of work. He had to report to Major Lemitov, but he hesitated, wondering how to tell the story. He needed to make it clear that he was not to blame, yet avoid seeming to make excuses.

Army Intelligence headquarters stood on one edge of the Khodynka airfield, where a patient snowplough crawled up and down keeping the runway clear. The architecture was peculiar: a two-storey building with no windows in its outer walls surrounded a courtyard in which stood the nine-storey head office, sticking up like a pointed finger out of a brick fist. Cigarette lighters and fountain pens could not be brought in, as they might set off the metal detectors at the entrance, so the army provided its staff with one of each inside. Belt buckles were a problem, too, so most people wore suspenders. The security was superfluous, of course. Muscovites would do anything to stay out of such a building: no one was mad enough to want to sneak inside.