William Ryan - The Twelfth Department

“Not here, maybe. But I’m remembering faces.”

Korolev, as it happened, was doing the same. Folk seldom turned the other cheek completely, in his experience, they just waited for an opportunity. It might never come—but if it did, they’d take it. And so he looked at the rats in the strongroom, at each one of their faces, and he memorized them. Then he slowly shut the door and locked it. And left them in the dark.

He turned to Kolya.

“Chances are Zaitsev will hand out their punishment for us, anyway. They failed him.”

“Let’s get out of here,” Kolya said. The Thief’s eyes looked as if they were glowing with a dark, volcanic rage.

“You go ahead—there’s something I have to do.” Korolev’s voice sounded tired, even to him.

Slivka stepped forward. “It’s not worth it, Chief. Stick to the plan—in and out. It’s the best way.”

“Not them.”

“What then?”

“There might be papers here that back up Shtange’s report. Somewhere.”

“We should go,” Slivka said in a flat tone.

“Where to, Slivka? You think they won’t know this is our work? Do you think we can hide? There are other people involved in this—Valentina, Yasimov, our friends, our families. You know how these things work. If there’s something that backs up what Shtange wrote, we’ve a chance.”

Slivka looked at him in silence for a moment, then nodded to Kolya.

“Give us ten minutes—we’ll see you at the cars.”

Korolev could hear the boys moving around upstairs as they worked their way through the first of the offices. Meanwhile, file after file dropped to the floor as he and Slivka went through the cabinet drawers one by one.

“What are we looking for?” Slivka said.

“Anything financial. Accounts, invoices, receipts, estimates, orders, payslips—I don’t know. Anything with a number and a rouble.”

He left Slivka and went on to the other office—the desk was locked and so he went to the dining room and grabbed a handful of cutlery from the table. Two knives lay bent and broken on the floor by the time he got into the drawers, but he found nothing of use in them—just writing paper and some pencils.

He moved onto the cabinets and then the shelves, throwing books and paper around him, so that anyone walking in would have thought there’d been an explosion. But still he came across nothing which looked like it might be remotely relevant.

“Are there offices in the new building?” Slivka asked, coming in.

“There are, but we don’t have time.”

Korolev was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything except the plan they’d made.

“We do, if we’re quick.”

Korolev considered this, then considered the alternative. They’d have to make time.

“Well then, let’s hurry.”

Perhaps it was his tiredness, or the constant fear he’d been living with for days now—but it felt as though he were moving through water as they ran down to the new building. And even though his eyes were telling him he was moving fast, he’d the strong impression that he’d never reach the door he was heading for. He could barely hear the crunch and slide of his shoes on the gravel over the roaring in his ears. Then he was standing inside the doorway, trying to catch his breath.

“You take the doors on the left. I’ll take the right. Let’s be quick, but let’s be careful.”

The first office yielded nothing—patient files, manuals, an entire drawer full of political lectures, a folder full of photographs of Stalin, charts—everything, it seemed, except what he was looking for. He could hear drawers being emptied by Slivka across the corridor.

“Anything?” he called in to her as he moved onto the second door.

“Nothing,” was her reply.

There was a desk in this room, again locked. He looked round for something to open it with and, for a moment, considered using his gun. Then he saw a coat hook on the back of the door and, using all his weight, wrenched it out of the wood that held it. He wedged it into the desk and then used the heavy chair to hammer out the drawer. Pens. A bar of Three Piglets chocolate.

He took the chocolate for Yuri.

The third office had the two terrified nurses in it, both conscious now. These women in their crisp white dresses—if he hadn’t come here tonight it would be his son upstairs looking at them in terror.

“Witches. Devils. Wretches.” He spat each word at them, flinging useless paper to the floor from the drawers as he did so.

“Chief.”

It was Slivka, standing in the doorway. And there was something wrong. She looked as if the breath had been knocked out of her.

“Chief, two cars have just arrived. They’ve found the guard at the front gate. He’s talking to them. They’re closing the place off—they must know we’re here.”

He stood, the sweat turning cold on his skin.

It was always going to end this way, he supposed.

Korolev stood beside Slivka in a darkened room on the upper floor, watching another carload of men arrive. Svalov, Zaitsev’s tubby assistant, sent them up to the main house with Blanter—the boxer. Korolev closed his eyes and felt every last drop of energy drain away from him. Svalov had already surrounded the building they were in and was now looking up at it. It seemed to Korolev that he was staring at the very window they were standing at.

“We could try and run for it.” Slivka’s voice sounded tired.

“We’re surrounded and they know we’re here. They’d shoot us down.”

“That might be better.”

“For us, perhaps.”

Another car pulled in through the gates and Svalov went over to it, leaning down to speak to someone in the front passenger seat.

“Come on, let’s go and meet our fate. Leave the guns here.”

Korolev took the guard’s Nagant from his pocket and then slipped the Walther from his underarm holster. Was it fifteen years he’d had it? More. He placed Azarova’s little pea-shooter beside it. He patted the Walther farewell.

“Slivka,” he said, turning to her, “for what it’s worth, you’ve been the best of comrades.”

“And you, Chief, have been the best of chiefs.”

They walked down the stairs, shoulder to shoulder, and then along the corridor to the half-open door that led outside.

“I’ll go first,” Korolev said.

“I—” Slivka began.

“This once, Nadezhda Andreyevna, let me have my way.”

Slivka looked as though she thought he might be taking advantage of the situation, but she nodded.

One of the cars had a searchlight and as he came out with his hands held high he had to turn his eyes from the glare.

“Take off the jacket, slowly.”

The voice sounded as if it meant business and he complied.

“Who are you?”

“Korolev, captain in the Militia. From Petrovka.” And then, because he thought it couldn’t do any harm. “On temporary assignment to State Security.”

He heard the sound of a car door opening and footsteps approaching, but it was as if the searchlight had mesmerized him, he couldn’t look away from it.

“Korolev, it seems you’re one step ahead of us.”

Korolev turned to confirm the voice belonged to the man he thought it did. A familiar mustache was attached to a familiar face—only feet away.

“Dubinkin?”

“The very same—but you look as though you’ve seen a ghost, Korolev. Are you all right?”

Dubinkin had that irritating smile on his face once again—the one that told you he knew just that little bit more about you than you did yourself. And Korolev was damned if he’d play along with it.

“We’ve been worried about you,” the Chekist continued. “We wondered if you mightn’t have bitten off more than you could chew.”