Дэвид Даунинг - The Dark Clouds Shining

The clerk replaced the desktelephone and swung open the bookcase, allowing Komarov into the short secret passage that led through to Felix Dzerzhinsky’s office. The Vecheka chairman was sitting behind his huge desk, looking, as usual, as if he’d been working for days on end. The eyes glittered; the cheeks were flushed; his gesture of welcome seemed stiff with fatigue.

“Success?” he asked expectantly.

“Up to a point,” Komarov said, taking the opposite seat. He ran through the history of the investigation, concluding with the news from Samara.

“Yuri Vladimirovich, you’ve been enjoying yourself,” Dzerzhinsky said with mock disapproval.

“I’m afraid I have.”

“How effective are these men, do you think?” Dzerzhinsky asked after a pause.

“Very, I should say. Though they did make a mess of the depot robbery.”

“Bad luck, perhaps,” Dzerzhinsky suggested. “But they seem like enemies we could well do without.” He tapped his pen on the desk. “Enemies,” he repeated, as if he was testing the concept’s viability. “I’m not at all sure the commission in Tashkent will be able to stop them. Yakov Peters doesn’t have the manpower, and without photographs…”

“I agree.”

“We could just let them go,” Dzerzhinsky mused, leaning back in his chair. “A group of seasoned revolutionaries, some of whom fought with great distinction against the Whites, now carrying the banner of world revolution south into India… I could write the eulogy myself. And they’d be out of our hair.”

Komarov smiled. “All true,” he agreed. “But they’re also renegades and murderers.”

“And they wouldn’t be out of our hair,” Dzerzhinsky went on morosely. “They’ll do something in India, probably something dramatic enough to get the English screaming mad. Then we’ll either have to disown them, and look like liars or imbeciles, or say nothing at all, and look like we’re breaking the treaty. Bad propaganda either way.” He stared gloomily at the ceiling, then looked at Komarov. “I’m just rehearsing Zinoviev’s arguments for him. If that was all, I’d let them go, and to hell with the English. But it isn’t, is it?”

“We can’t afford renegades anymore,” Komarov said.

“Exactly. While our survival was in doubt, the Chekas had to act as an instrument of victory. But now that we’ve won, our only possible justification is to serve as an instrument of justice. And we must be seen to be so. I want these men caught.”

Komarov nodded.

“You must go after them, in person. They have a few days’ start, but that means nothing with the state the railways are in. And, as I remember it, traveling with false papers tends to slow a man down.” He smiled at the memory. “Take Maslov and however many men you think you need.”

“I’d like to take Piatakova.”

Dzerzhinsky looked surprised, then vaguely amused.

“She has some influence over her husband, and she can recognize two of the other men involved. We have no pictures of them,” Komarov added in explanation. “But she won’t be willing, and she has powerful friends.”

Dzerzhinsky offered up one of his famous sardonic smiles. “Not as powerful as mine,” he said, standing and shaking Komarov’s hand.

The latter could still see the smile as he walked back through the building; like a Soviet version of the Cheshire cat’s, it seemed to hang in the corridors of the Vecheka headquarters, a comment on all it surveyed. Komarov felt sorry for its owner and knew that he was also feeling sorry for himself. “A time to kill, a time to heal,” he murmured. Or all the killing would have been for nothing. He felt his right hand twitch and put it in his pocket. Why did the body take the mind so literally?

As he walked back down Bolshaya Lubyanka to the M-Cheka building he recalled the occasion two New Years ago when Dzerzhinsky had drunk far too much at a Kremlin celebration, buttonholed several party leaders, and insisted on being shot for spilling so much blood. The luminaries in question had been patronizing, embarrassed, angry, anything in fact but understanding. Komarov had been furious with them and all the other fools who thought that signing death warrants entailed no emotional cost. He still was.

Maslov was a convenient scapegoat. “Kazan Station,” Komarov barked at the young Ukrainian. “Arrange for an extra coach on the next Tashkent train. If it’s leaving today, then tell them to hold it. But don’t use the telephone. Sort it out at the station, and there’ll be less chance of a foul-up. And get hold of that interpreter with the Indian delegation—tell him he’s coming with us and should be ready at a moment’s notice. We need an interpreter and someone who knows Tashkent,” he explained, noticing Maslov’s look of confusion. “And this man’s both. I’m off to the Zhenotdel.”

The stroll to Vozdvizhenka Street proved enjoyable, the interview less so.

“You must be joking,” Caitlin Piatakova said when he told her what was required.

“This is not a comic situation, comrade,” Komarov said. They were alone in one of the upstairs rooms, but he guessed that some of her colleagues had their ears pressed to the walls.

“You expect me to travel to Turkestan, at a moment’s notice… It can take a month to get there and back. I have work to do, Comrade Komarov. Party work. Important work. No, I will not ‘accompany’ you.”

Komarov ran a hand through his hair. He would have preferred voluntary cooperation. “Does it not concern you, Comrade Piatakova, that your husband is doing his best to create difficulties for our party?”

“Of course it does,” she said coldly. “But I am not his keeper. The Zhenotdel,” she added caustically, “is not an organization for keeping husbands to the party line.”

“The Zhenotdel,” he said quietly, “is doing a great deal of work in Turkestan. Oh yes,” he said, acknowledging her look of surprise, “we do notice the odd development here and there whenever we have time off from persecuting poets. For example, at your conference two weeks ago, several women from Turkestan walked onto the platform and tore off their veils for the audience. There was an argument on your executive committee as to whether this constituted genuine agitprop or was merely a cheap theatrical gesture. You supported the former proposition. There is also much anxiety at the moment as to whether Kollontai’s involvement with the Workers’ Opposition is damaging the Zhenotdel.”

“And is it?” she asked. “Damaging—”

“Of course it is. Even in our party most people find it difficult to separate the cause and the person.”

“Are you trying to frighten me, comrade?” she asked.

“No, I am not. I am trying to show you that the Chekas are not full of fools who have nothing better to do than find ways of wasting your time. This is an important matter, comrade. If your presence were not necessary, I would not be here.” And how true was that? he wondered, even as he said it.

She looked far from mollified. “If I accept that—and I suppose I must—what you’ve just told me about the problems the Zhenotdel faces makes it all the more crucial that I remain in Moscow.”

Komarov was beginning to wish he’d sent Maslov to collect her. “Perhaps,” he said, “but this is not a request. Like any member of the party, you are subject to party discipline. I understand your reluctance, and I sympathize with your position, but you must come with us. And if for any reason this business keeps us away for more than a couple of weeks, there must be Zhenotdel work to do in Turkestan.”

She gave him a furious look and slowly shook her head, but offered no further protest. She would, he thought, be angry for quite some time.