William Ryan - The Holy Thief

“I’ll cover you,” Korolev said and took a bead on the Emka, although now the hunched figure was gone, the driver’s door hanging open. He stood up to get a better view and then, when the uniform was in position, advanced along the wall toward the car, his Walther out in front of him. The car was empty except for broken glass and smeared blood on the driver’s seat. Of course, Volodya would have had the key. He waved the uniform forward and was just turning round when a bullet thwacked into the wall behind him, spraying fragments of plaster and stone. He dropped to his knee, trying to work out where the shot had come from and then heard the uniform’s pistol bark twice. There was another shot and he heard a shout of pain from behind him. The uniform was clutching his right arm, his heavy revolver lying at his feet, and his face twisted in pain. He’d taken cover behind the kiosk.

“On your side. There’s a yard entrance. About forty meters,” the uniform shouted, and Korolev nodded in acknowledgment. He could hear running feet and turned to see more Militiamen coming at a brisk trot, their guns out. He waved to them to keep low and then ran the few meters to the parked car and crouched behind it, feeling it vibrate as a bullet clanged into its side.

Further down the road Militiamen scattered for cover and the street was suddenly empty, the only noise that of an idling truck engine. He slipped to the ground and lay flat, looking toward the yard entrance, spying a knee-high boot with a dark stain running down its length. He aimed carefully and fired, seeing the boot and its twin jump away from the cloud of dust that erupted on the wall beside them. He stood up to take another shot and felt a bullet whip past his ear, and the simultaneous sound of breaking glass behind him. If he were a cat, it occurred to him as he dropped to the ground, he’d be down to his last couple of lives.

In the quiet that followed he heard the uniforms working their way closer and also the stop-start rhythm of a limping man’s boots as they broke into a run. He lay there and thought about leaving the uniforms to it when it occurred to him-if Gregorin made it as far as Yauzski Boulevard, he might well slip away into the crowd. It was enough to get him up. Gregorin was moving away at a surprisingly quick pace and, as Korolev stood up from the ground, he looked back and raised his pistol. Korolev was already moving but he fired in Gregorin’s direction, to remind the colonel that he was there if nothing else, and was gratified to see him duck. But Gregorin was already close to the column of soldiers, and the inflatable kolkhoz village strained against its ropes as white faces turned in the direction of the gunfire. Gregorin fired again and panic began to buckle the orderly ranks. There was another shot from behind Korolev and the village’s smithy lunged upward as two of its anchormen fell flat to the ground. The remaining men struggled to hold the balloon, but another shot weakened their resolution and the smithy soared with surprising grace toward the morning sky.

Korolev threw himself into an already occupied doorway as Gregorin lifted his gun to fire once again, still moving away as he did so. Curses greeted Korolev as he crashed in on top of a well-fed man in a fine fur hat. The curses stopped when Korolev’s Walther went off in his hand, causing lumps of plaster to drop down onto the doorway’s occupants.

“Sorry, Comrades,” Korolev muttered as he stepped back out into the street. Ahead of him Yauzski Boulevard was in chaos, the entire inflatable village now bumping its way up through the trees and along the side of the tall apartment buildings that lined the road, and brown-uniformed soldiers were scattering in all directions. Korolev ignored the chaos and took careful aim at the limping colonel, missing him and seeing men and women fall to the tarmac around the fleeing man, their hands over their heads as they crawled on their elbows toward more substantial cover.

Korolev’s shot must have been close because Gregorin stopped and turned, lifting his weapon. Korolev made no effort to take cover and aimed the Walther at the traitor’s chest. He saw the blaze of Gregorin’s shot even as he pulled his own trigger, and pain surged along his right arm as his body was shoved sideways by the impact of a bullet. He was hit, yes, but still standing and he still had the Walther in both hands-so he clenched his teeth and looked for Gregorin, ready to fire again.

But the colonel was just a crumpled heap of clothing lying motionless where he’d fallen.

Semionov’s open coffin had been laid out in the Komsomol club, of which he’d been a member, attended by an honor guard of six of his young Comrades. It wasn’t until he’d arrived that Korolev had realized that the club was one he was familiar with, located as it was in the church where Mary Smithson’s body had been found. Even more extraordinarily, the coffin had been placed on the very same altar on which the nun had died. Visible stains still marked the white marble, despite the wreaths and flowers that surrounded the coffin. For a moment Korolev wondered whether the symmetry was deliberate but then dismissed the thought. This was a mis-communication, that was all-because of the special circumstances surrounding the funeral. No one had that dark a sense of humor-not even the Chekists.

He stood at the entrance to the sacristy, conscious that his appearance was causing a stir. He wasn’t surprised, his winter coat had had most of the blood cleaned out of it by Shura, and the rip caused by Gregorin’s bullet had been neatly sewn up, but it had been shabby to start with and now looked shabbier still. If he’d been allowed to wear his Militia uniform, he might at least have looked presentable but, even then, with his bandaged head and his arm in a sling, he suspected he’d still have drawn stares. He sighed and consoled himself that at least beneath the knee he was resplendent, wearing, as he was, a pair of the finest boots he’d almost ever seen, even if in a way the boots were causing him the greatest discomfort of all.

It wasn’t just the blisters on his heels, although the new boots felt as though they’d rubbed their way down to the bone on the walk to the church. It was more the mystery of how he’d found them, wrapped in brown paper, when he’d opened the apartment door that morning. There was no explanatory note accompanying them, but his name had been on the package. And when he’d unwrapped them, and seen them standing there in the early sunlight that came in through his bedroom window, one name came to mind and that was Kolya’s. So the smell of new leather wafting up to him caused him as much guilt as pleasure-but what was he to do? Give them away? It was a relief when Popov arrived and, without a word, took his arm and walked him over to the side of the room.

“The Devil, Captain. I’ve seen healthier-looking corpses.”

“I got knocked about a bit, it’s true.”

“How’s the arm?” Popov asked, pointing his pipe at the sling in which Korolev’s right arm hung.

“The bullet went straight along it, from elbow to shoulder; a flesh wound.” He stopped for a moment, remembering that any mention of the “incident” had been forbidden by Colonel Rodinov when the NKVD man had visited him in the hospital. On the other hand, he couldn’t exactly pretend he hadn’t been injured, so he continued.

“My arm was stretched out, so it ran the length rather than hit anything. I was lucky.” Korolev tried not to think about what would have happened if the bullet had been half an inch better aimed, not while he was in the same room as Semionov’s corpse anyway. Nor did he want to think about the sound of the trigger hitting the empty chambers of the colonel’s gun, nor the inexplicability of the colonel leaving the apartment without finishing the job. The Lord had been merciful-that was all there was to it.