William Ryan - The Holy Thief

“Life continues, Comrades. We are nothing more than a stage in the evolution of history. If we wish to remember our fallen Comrade, let us do so by continuing Ivan Ivanovich’s work for a better future for the proletariat. Let us carry on that struggle, and let us be prepared to give our lives for our Comrades, as Ivan Ivanovich was prepared to give his. His memory will remain alive in our efforts. We will finish what he, and many others who have given their lives for the Revolution, began. He was of the People, and the People move forward with his shining example to guide them.”

Popov’s voice was a deep rumble, remorseless and yet gentle, not dissimilar to a priest’s voice in fact, and when he’d finished, Korolev saw more than one of the mourners make the sign of the cross.

He turned, and saw Schwartz standing beside him.

“Hello, Jack,” Korolev said in greeting.

“Alexei. I’m sorry about Vanya. He was a good kid.”

“He was a good man, in the end. You should be grateful to him for that.” Schwartz’s brow crinkled in inquiry. “If it hadn’t been for him, Gregorin would have visited you in the Metropol. He wasn’t a happy man-seemed to think you’d double-crossed him. That you’d stolen his icon.”

Which wasn’t entirely true, but he was curious to see Schwartz’s reaction. If there was one, it was well enough hidden for Korolev to miss it. But, of course, that in itself was revealing.

“The icon?”

“Oh, come on, Jack. If I wanted to cause you trouble, you’d be in a Lubianka prison cell. And that’s somewhere you don’t want to visit, believe me.”

Schwartz took a slow look around, as though he suspected he might be caught in some kind of trap.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this why you left the message at the hotel today? To question me again?” Schwartz’s face remained calm, however, and anyone watching would have thought they were having a solemn conversation about poor Semionov.

“My questions aren’t official, Jack-but when a man nearly gets himself killed as many times as I have in the last week he becomes interested in the reasons why. And perhaps I owe it to Vanya to get to the bottom of it all.”

“And you think I can help you to do that?”

“Call it an investigator’s hunch. You’ve told me yourself the Church asked you to buy the icon, you traveled on the train from Berlin with Nancy Dolan, and the late, not much missed, Colonel Gregorin was trying to sell the icon using your services. In a way you link the main actors in this drama as much as the icon does. It wouldn’t surprise me if you turned out to be Count Kolya’s brother-in-law, to top it all.”

Schwartz shrugged his shoulders in a dismissive gesture.

“And you haven’t asked me about the icon either. If I were in your shoes-” and here Korolev couldn’t help looking wistfully down at Schwartz’s sturdy brogues-“it would be my first question.”

“Do you know where the icon is, Alexei?” Schwartz asked dryly, and Korolev wondered if he was making a joke.

“No, Jack, but I’ve an idea I might just find it if I whistled up twenty Militiamen and started doing a bit of poking round in your vicinity. Would you like me to do that?”

“I’m guessing that might make leaving the country tomorrow a little difficult.”

“So you’re leaving us? That also makes me curious. Why would you be leaving if there was still a chance of purchasing the icon? I presume you take a percentage of the purchase price-don’t you? Even a small percentage of a million dollars must be worth waiting round for.”

Schwartz frowned.

“Is that what you want, Alexei? Money?”

“Money, Jack? I don’t think so. Kolya was right, I’m not quite the Soviet citizen I thought I was, but I’m not for sale either. I just want a few answers. Just for myself. My discretion is evidenced by the fact that you’re not being questioned by less polite people. Not to mention that the city isn’t being torn apart brick by brick to find her.”

Schwartz smiled, as if at a half-forgotten joke, then nodded. “I have a car by the main gate. Why not come back with me to the hotel?”

Korolev nodded, “Give me five minutes.”

“Of course,” Schwartz said.

Korolev watched him walk away before approaching the grave. Two diggers-thick-handed peasants from some far-off province-were filling it in with shovelfuls of earth and he watched the last visible corner of Semionov’s coffin disappear.

He felt sadness, he supposed-not only for Semionov, but also for himself. To lose a friend and kill a man were both hard things, and he’d done both in the last two days. He didn’t regret Gregorin’s death, but he wished someone else had pulled the Walther’s trigger. It hadn’t even been a good shot-Korolev had been aiming for Gregorin’s chest and hit him just above his left eye-but it had snuffed out the colonel like a candle all the same. To end a man’s life so suddenly, well, it made you think about your own mortality, and that was never a comfortable thing to do.

Perhaps it was the memory of Semionov lying dead in the corridor that made him do it, he couldn’t rightly say afterward, but his right hand raised up as if of its own volition and executed a perfect sign of the cross, for all the world to see, and, for a moment at least, he felt no fear of the consequences, and a total peace.

They didn’t speak in the car-partly because of the driver’s presence but also because there didn’t seem to be much to say-nor did conversation start up when they entered the Metropol. The silence was only broken when Schwartz opened the door to his room.

“After you,” he said.

Korolev walked inside and, despite the shadows within, he was able to make out the huge bed, the elegant lines of a pair of chairs, a writing desk, dark wallpaper, the pile of packing crates that stood in front of the window, and the faces that stared up at him from the floor.

Icon after icon after icon leaned against the high skirting board that circled the room, golden halos reflecting the weak sun that streamed through the half-closed curtains. Korolev turned slowly, his eyes running round the wall at devout renderings of Christ at every age, saints and, of course, the Virgin Mother herself.

There were nearly twenty representations of the Virgin-in many of the traditional forms-but, of these twenty, five were Kazanskayas. They all had the appearance of great age and he looked at them in silence for several moments, intrigued by the small variations and then seeing how the thing was to be done.

“Clever,” he said in a low whisper.

Schwartz nodded in confirmation.

“I’m packing them up now-they’ll come with me by train to Hamburg, and from there I sail to New York.”

It was brilliant-what better way to hide an icon than among icons? He looked at the Kazanskayas once again.

“And?”

“We’ll never know for sure. It’s a question of belief, not truth-it always has been. But there’s enough truth here to base belief upon.”

Korolev felt the eyes of the Mother on him as if she were in the room. He wanted to ask which icon was the one, but he didn’t. He didn’t need to. There was no doubt in his mind-there was only one of them that it could be. The one that looked into his soul. But he didn’t kneel, or cross himself, or pray. “But what will they do with her in America?”

Schwartz considered the question. “D’you know my guess is, they’ll do nothing. Wait, I think, until things change.”

Korolev considered the icon, nodded and then held his hand out to the American.

“Have a good trip, Jack. Perhaps we will see you again in Moscow. One day.”