Jack Grimwood - Moskva

Frau von Wiesen’s actual statement was missing, destroyed perhaps, or simply not included. Its translation was typed on flimsy using the same machine as before; its ink ribbon still needed changing.

She opened by saying she’d hidden the biggest of her son-in-law’s notebooks because she didn’t want the Bolsheviks to get it. He hadn’t dared confront her, as he didn’t want the Bolsheviks to know it was missing. She would give it to the English if they promised to investigate her granddaughter’s murder.

I knew something was wrong. I knew they were lying. They’d hung her from her heels like a slab of meat and… Having read the first line of the next paragraph, Tom made do with skimming the rest and felt his guts tighten.

Hadn’t even cut her down…

Yes, I’m certain…

One stab…

According to Frau von Wiesen, her granddaughter had not been raped and strangled by Nazis or newly freed foreign workers as Colonel Milov insisted. She’d been skinned alive and hung by her heels by one of his staff. Either he or one of the others had then stabbed her, a single thrust to the heart. Her neck was unbroken. Far from being raped, she had died a virgin.

Tom hardly dared think about how the old woman might have discovered that.

Her daughter and grandson had gone to live in Moscow with her traitorous son-in-law, who was meant to be a brilliant scientist. But if he was so brilliant, why hadn’t he saved the Fatherland? She’d refused to go with them, even though her daughter had begged. She’d noticed that her son-in-law didn’t beg. He didn’t even try to change her mind. She’d always suspected he was a Bolshevik really. She wouldn’t have been surprised to discover he was a Jew.

Lots of people were, you know.

The lieutenant had asked what made her think it was Soviet soldiers and not any one of the thousands of newly released foreign workers, most of them intent on revenge, who had done this? The simplicity of her answer made Tom lurch in his chair. She had watched her granddaughter being taken to the stables by one of the Russians. It was too dark to say which. He’d been thin, looked young. They all looked young to her. Why hadn’t she gone to help?

Dear God, what was he? An idiot?

Had he no idea what had been happening?

Did he think for a minute Colonel Milov’s man wouldn’t simply shoot her and then outrage the little fool anyway? Better to go with one Russian and pretend it was willingly and hope he’d protect her from the others. How was she to know he’d torture her granddaughter like that? There’d been no noise, no sound.

She was certain. She’d left her window open.

No one screamed. No one came running. When the Russian came out later, he’d joked with one of the others who was sitting on a deckchair in the garden, getting drunk. That one had set off towards the stables, changed his mind and returned to his chair and his bottle.

No, she couldn’t describe him either.

Small, thin, young. They all looked like starved rats. Except their colonel – he was built like a manual labourer, squat and ugly. Spoke like one too. No, of course she didn’t speak Russian.

His voice. His accent. His manner.

A letter on crisp white paper from the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge thanked the British Administrator for the diary and asked if there was any chance of talking to Dr Schultz direct. An apologetic note in reply regretted that would be impossible. The last note was on half-size official flimsy.

Whoever had typed it hadn’t bothered with an HQ address or a date more specific than Sept 1945. There it was. Tom felt a thrill of excitement as he skimmed the page. The officer had examined the evidence and talked extensively to his Soviet counterpart, in the eyes of his CO perhaps too extensively. There was no merit in Frau von Wiesen’s story. It was a crude attempt to smear Britain’s allies and the Soviets’ original conclusion that Dr Schultz’s daughter had been raped and murdered by newly released forced workers was a sound one and should stand.

He would inform Frau von Wiesen of this decision.

Tom understood why the decision to take the notebook and sweep everything else under the carpet had been made. He might not agree with it but he understood.

The Soviets were our allies, the Germans our enemies.

The war with Japan was not yet over. Half of Europe was a morally bankrupt wilderness hovering on the edge of anarchy; the UK and America’s alliance with Soviet Russia was already fraying and what action could the Administrator have taken anyway? Moscow was unlikely to offer up a handful of its victorious troops on the say-so of an elderly card-carrying Nazi who happened to be the mother-in-law of a nuclear scientist they’d kidnapped, offered refuge to, protected…

But was that the sole reason for the decision?

The only person who could answer that was the man who’d written and initialled the note, EJSM. Edward James Stought Masterton… How many other British officers had there been in Berlin in 1945 with those initials?

Maybe Sir Edward wasn’t stunned into inactivity by the disappearance of his stepdaughter. Maybe fear was behind his icy control. Maybe Tom had things entirely back to front.

Sir Edward knew exactly what he was facing.

Dennisov met Tom at the door to his bar. Given the speed with which he moved from behind the zinc, he must have been watching from the window. Behind him, the room was hot and fuggy and crowded with a lunchtime crew only half as drunk as those who’d be there that evening. ‘We’re shut.’

‘Beziki took Alex.’

‘I don’t care. I don’t believe you. As I said, we’re shut…’

‘He told me before he died.’

‘We’re shut,’ Dennisov repeated loudly.

‘The bar is full of people.’

‘To foreigners,’ Dennisov said. ‘We’re shut to foreigners.’

Behind the counter, Yelena glanced up and looked away. Sveta didn’t even do that. She finished a bowl of something, knocked back a beer and took her turn at the computer. That pretty much guaranteed everyone in the bar stopped looking towards the door and began watching falling Tetris blocks instead.

Stepping out on to the walkway, Dennisov shut the door behind him.

‘What’s Sveta’s score now?’ Tom asked.

‘You don’t call her Sveta,’ Dennisov said with a scowl. ‘Only her friends call her Sveta. You can call her Major . Svetlana, if you must.’

‘This is about Gabashville?’

‘Fuck Gabashville.’

‘Dennisov, what’s going on?’

‘She told me. She told me how you took advantage of her.’ He glanced at the concrete wall behind Tom and the steps down to the street. That was where Tom had come in, watching Dennisov throw someone down those steps.

‘Sveta says I took advantage of her?’

The Russian glared. ‘She doesn’t have to.’

‘It was once, for God’s sake.’

‘So you admit it?’

‘Dennisov.’

‘You told me nothing happened. I asked you .’

‘You asked what was between us. I said nothing. It was once. Someone had just tried to kill me. I was…’ Tom didn’t have to say more. The sour twist of Dennisov’s mouth said he understood. Sex could be complicated or simple. Sometimes it wasn’t about sex at all. Sometimes it was about convincing yourself you were alive.

‘Once?’ Dennisov said.

‘She was being kind.’

‘You took advantage of her.’

‘Dennisov. She was being kind.’

He looked at Tom, then glanced through to where Sveta was lost in her game, manipulating blocks at impossible speed, oblivious to the crowd pushing in on her, or the lover and ex-fuck at the door edging back from a fight. Would she mind if they fought over her, Tom wondered. Would she be pleased? Appalled? He imagined all she’d display would be contempt.