Tom Smith - The Secret Speech

LEO SAT UP, his thoughts sluggish with sleep, intermingled dreams and reality — there had been movement, a figure, or perhaps there hadn’t. The phone was ringing. It only ever rang because of work. He checked his watch: almost midnight. He glanced at Raisa. She was awake, waiting for him to answer the phone. He mumbled an apology and got up. The door was ajar. Didn’t they always close it before they went to sleep? Maybe not; it didn’t matter, and he headed into the hallway.

Leo picked up the receiver. The voice on the other end was urgent, loud:

— Leo? This is Nikolai.

Nikolai: the name meant nothing to him. He didn’t reply. Correctly interpreting Leo’s silence, the man continued:

— Nikolai, your old boss! Your friend! Leo, don’t you remember? I gave you your first assignment! The priest, remember, Leo?

Leo remembered. He hadn’t heard from Nikolai in a long time. This man was of no relevance to his life now and he resented him calling.

— Nikolai, it’s late.

— Late? What’s happened to you? We didn’t start work until about now.

— Not anymore.

— No, not anymore.

Nikolai’s voice drifted off, before adding:

— I need to meet you.

His words were slurred. He was drunk.

— Nikolai, why don’t you sleep it off and we’ll talk tomorrow?

— It has to be tonight.

His voice cracked. He was on the verge of crying.

— What’s going on?

— Meet me. Please.

Leo wanted to say no.

— Where?

— Your offices.

— I’ll be there in thirty minutes.

Leo hung up. His annoyance was tempered by unease. Nikolai wouldn’t have got back in contact unless he had cause. When he returned to the bedroom, Raisa was sitting up. Leo shrugged an explanation:

— A former colleague. He wants to meet. Says it has to be tonight.

— A colleague from when?

— From…

Leo didn’t need to finish the sentence.

— Out of nowhere, he calls?

— He was drunk. I’ll speak to him.

— Leo…?

She didn’t finish. Leo nodded:

— I don’t like it either.

He grabbed his clothes, hastily getting changed. Almost ready to leave, tying his shoelaces, he saw something under the bed, something catching the light. Curious, he moved forward, crouching down. Raisa asked:

— What?

It was a large kitchen knife. Near where it lay there was a notch in the floor.

— Leo?

He should show it to her.

— It’s nothing.

As Raisa leaned over to look he stood up, hiding the knife behind his back and turning the light off.

In the hallway he laid the blade flat across his palm. He glanced at his daughters’ bedroom. He stepped toward the door and gently pushed it open. The room was dark. Both girls were in bed, asleep. In the process of retreat, silently shutting the door, he smiled at the slow, shallow breathing of Elena sleeping. He paused, listening carefully. He couldn’t hear any noise coming from Zoya’s side of the room. She was holding her breath.

DRIVING TOO FAST, LEO skidded into a turn, the tires slipping across black ice. He eased off the accelerator and brought the car back to the center of the road. In a state of agitation, his back damp with perspiration, he was relieved to arrive at the offices of the homicide department. He pulled up, resting his head against the steering wheel. In the unheated interior his breath formed a thin mist. It was one in the morning. The streets were deserted, layered with patchy snow. He began to shiver, having forgotten to grab a pair of gloves or a hat as he rushed from the apartment, hurrying to get out, to get away from the question of why the bedroom door had been ajar, why his daughter had been pretending to sleep, and why there’d been a knife under his bed.

Surely there were explanations, simple, mundane explanations. Maybe he’d left the door open. Maybe his wife had gone to the bathroom, forgetting to shut the door on her return. As for Zoya pretending to be asleep: he’d misheard. In fact, why did she need to be asleep? It made sense that she was awake, she’d been woken by the telephone and she’d been lying in bed, trying to get back to sleep, justifiably annoyed. As for the knife… he didn’t know, he just couldn’t think, but there had to be an innocent reason, even if he had no idea of what that might be.

He stepped out of the car, shutting the door, moving toward his offices. Located in the Zamoskvareche district, south of the river, an area with a high concentration of factories, his homicide department had been designated space above a vast bakery. There was mockery in the location as well as the message that their work was to remain invisible. The offices had been marked as Button Factory 14 , prompting Leo to wonder what went on in the other thirteen factories.

Entering the ramshackle reception area, the floor crisscrossed with flour footsteps, Leo climbed the stairs, running the events of the night over in his mind. He’d successfully dismissed two out of three occurrences, but the third — the knife — resisted attempts to explain it away. The matter would have to wait until the morning when he could talk to Raisa. Right now Nikolai’s unexpected phone call was a greater concern. Leo needed to focus on why a man he hadn’t spoken to in six years was calling drunk in the middle of the night, begging for a meeting. There was nothing between them, no bond or friendship, nothing except that year—1949—his first year as an MGB agent.

Nikolai was waiting for him at the top of the stairs, slouched in the doorway like a vagrant. Seeing Leo arrive he stood up. His winter coat was well tailored, perhaps even foreign made, but tatty with neglect. His shirt had come unbuttoned, his stomach overflowing. He’d gained weight, lost hair. He was old- and tired-looking, his face pinched with worry, scrunched up around the eyes. He stank of smoke and sweat and booze, which, combined with the ever-present smell of baking and dough, formed a rancid combination. Leo offered his hand. Nikolai pushed it aside, embracing him, clinging on as if he’d been rescued from a mountainside. There was something pitiful about the hug— this from a man who’d built a reputation on being pitiless.

Leo’s attention was suddenly snatched away as he remembered the notch in his wood floor. Why had he forgotten that detail? It was unimportant, that’s why. Any number of things could have caused it. It might have been there for some time, it wasn’t something he’d necessarily notice, a scratch caused by furniture being moved. Yet in his gut he knew the knife and the notch were connected.

Nikolai had begun talking, rambling, slurring his words. Leo was barely paying attention as he’d opened up the department, leading his guest through to his office. Seated opposite each other, Leo clenched his hands together, leaning his elbows on the table, watching Nikolai speak but hearing almost nothing, tuning in and out, catching occasional fragments — something about being sent photographs.

— Leo, they’re photographs of the men and women I arrested.

Leo’s mind had no space for the things that Nikolai was saying. A single, terrible realization was growing inside of him, shunting every other thought aside. The knife had been dropped, the tip cutting into the floor before ricocheting under the bed, dropped because whoever had been holding it had panicked, alarmed by a sudden noise, an unexpected telephone call. The person had fled the room, leaving the door open, in too much of a rush to close it behind her.