Peter Higgins - Truth and Fear

‘The steel, Steopan. Tell me about the steel from Schentz. The Mirskov Foundry invoices the Treasury for forty million roubles and the Treasury pays forty million. But only thirty-six million shows up in the Mirskov accounts.’

‘So? Is that it? You think you can bring me down with that? Ten per cent for my trouble? Who fucking cares? You’ve got shit. Big mistake. You’re dead.’

‘I’m not interested in the money, I’m interested in the steel. Forty million gets a lot of steel. How much steel is worth forty million?’

‘I don’t know. Who fucking cares?’

‘At a thousand roubles a ton that’s forty thousand tons. Minimum. A hundred tons per wagon. Four hundred wagons. If you moved it in one train it would be four miles long.’

Dukhonin shrugged.

‘So?’

‘So why send forty thousand tons of steel to Novaya Zima?’

‘Nothing to do with me. Why would I care where it went?’

‘But you ordered it, Steopan,’ said Chazia. ‘You did it. You. Forty thousand tons of steel to Novaya Zima and a nice four million roubles for you. It was the cut that got noticed, but as you say, so what? Still, I’m curious. I ask myself, why is Steopan Vadimovich sending so much steel to Novaya Zima? What is there at Novaya Zima? A shit-hole on an island in an icebound sea? Nothing is happening there. We’re losing a war, yet Steopan finds enough steel to make a thousand main battle tanks and sends it north-east to the edge of the ice?’

‘This is outside your sphere, Lavrentina,’ said Dukhonin. ‘Way outside. You shouldn’t be touching this. It’s serious stuff. Dangerous stuff. You need to back away.’

‘I made enquiries about Novaya Zima, Steopan. And what did I find? Nothing. Not a record of nothing, but no record. No file. An empty shelf where Novaya Zima should be. So I asked a different question. What else has my friend Steopan Vadimovich Dukhonin been buying with Treasury money? It wasn’t easy to track that either, but I found traces. Coal. Rare earths. Machinery. Small quantities of metals I’ve never heard of. Seventy tons–seventy tons –of reclaimed angel flesh. Every scrap of angel flesh that could be found in the Vlast. All arranged by Steopan Vadimovich Dukhonin, who incidentally takes his little ten per cent. And people too. Eighty thousand conscript labourers diverted from war work, all for Novaya Zima. You’re even taking them from here! From Mirgorod! So. Steopan. This is the question. What is happening at Novaya Zima? ’

‘Nothing,’ said Dukhonin. He was confident now. The stupid man was confident. ‘Like you said. Nothing.’

Chazia smiled.

‘Actually, I considered that possibility. Maybe, I thought, it is all a scam. Paper transactions only. Money paid but nothing sent. Maybe Steopan’s little scheme is a big scheme. But no, the shipments are real, and they really go to Novaya Zima. So what happens when they get there?’

‘You’ve got shit,’ said Dukhonin. ‘Dangerous shit, but shit. You think you know it all, with your files and your informers and your useless lickspittle secret police? You know nothing , Lavrentina! Nothing of importance . You know nothing and you are no one. Who are you? What are you? You’re meat, you’re disgusting, a diseased, repellent little cow-bitch. Novaya Zima will kill you. Shit. You send that thing to scare me and you kill my housekeeper and you keep me locked up all night in this pathetic stinking toilet. Fohn will kill you slowly and I will piss on your shitty corpse.’ He stood up. ‘I’ve had enough. I’m going home.’

‘The door,’ said Chazia, ‘is not locked.’

Dukhonin stood up, raised himself to his full five foot six, shuffled across in his carpet slippers and pulled the door open. Bez Nichevoi was standing in the corridor, patient and still. A shadow in the shadows. Dukhonin didn’t see him until he moved. Bez dislocated Dukhonin’s left arm at the shoulder and Dukhonin screamed.

Bez did something to Dukhonin’s face, too fast for Chazia to see, and pushed him back into the room. Dukhonin fell forward hard on the floor and lay there, his left arm at a wrong angle, useless, his right hand holding his face.

‘Oh shit,’ he murmured. ‘Shit.’

Bez followed him into the room and looked to Chazia for instructions.

‘Help him back into his chair.’

Dukhonin sat slumped forward, twisted sideways with the pain in his shoulder, blood trickling down his cheek from his ruined left eye. The socket was a jellied, swollen mess.

‘There cannot be four rulers, Steopan,’ said Chazia. ‘There can only be one . Power shared isn’t power at all. This Colloquium you and Fohn and Khazar cooked up is an abortion. It is an arena for battle only–it is a war –but none of you is a soldier and none of you will win. I am going to take it all.’

Dukhonin didn’t look at her. His one good eye was fixed on Bez Nichevoi, motionless and watchful in the corner of the room. Nichevoi seemed to be exuding the shadows that gathered around him despite the flat glare of the overhead lamp. Tall and thin, he wore a neat dark suit made of shadows. Dark hair, a dark inexpressive gaze, a stark face white as chalk. He made the angles of the room around him seem wrong.

‘You’re just like the rest of them, Steopan, when they come in here,’ Chazia said. ‘The ground you walked on was always fragile, and now it has broken and you’ve fallen through. You’re in my world now.’

‘But we can do a deal, Lavrentina,’ said Dukhonin. ‘Listen. We can do a deal. You’re right about Fohn, of course you are. Completely. He’s weak. A bureaucrat. A committee man. A compromiser. But not me , I’m not like that. You and I–we can make an alliance. Don’t let that thing… You don’t need to kill me, Lavrentina. There’s no call for that. I can help you. You want to come in on it? I’ll let you in. Of course I will. It’s a perfect idea. Perfect. I should have thought of it before. We’ll be good together, Lavrentina. We don’t need Khazar and Fohn. You don’t need to kill me. I’ll share.’

‘Share? What have you got that I need, Steopan Vadimovich?’

‘Novaya Zima! Shit. Novaya Zima! You need it. You need me .’

‘So what is Novaya Zima? Tell me what it is.’

‘Not tell you. I’ll show you. You need to see .’

When Elena Cornelius had left them alone in the attic, Maroussia went across to one of the mattresses and sat down. She put the carpet bag she’d brought from Vishnik’s on the floor next to her and opened it. Started pulling things out, one by one and setting them out on the quilt. The envelope with Vishnik’s photographs. A dark woollen skirt. A couple of thin cotton blouses, faded and softened from frequent washing. A blue knitted cardigan, neatly mended at the elbow with slightly mismatched thread. A linen nightshirt. A bar of soap, wrapped in a piece of brown waxed paper. A thin book in a grey card cover. The Selo Elegies and Other Poems by Anna Yourdania. The clothes were crumpled. They’d been fingered by Vishnik’s killers and thrown aside until Maroussia had grabbed them off the floor and stuffed them roughly, hastily, back into the bag. Lom watched her set out each one, smooth it down and refold it, neatly.

She felt him watching her and looked up.

‘I don’t want to wear these again,’ she said. ‘Not after where they’ve been. Not after what happened there.’

‘No,’ said Lom. ‘I guess not.’

‘They’re not… they’re not mine, not any more.’

She picked up the packet of soap and went across to the table under the window. There was a large pitcher of water and a wide shallow washbowl: chipped yellow enamel with a thin black rim. A rough brown towel hung from a hook. Maroussia poured some water into the bowl, rolled up her sleeves, leaned forward and splashed her face with tight cupped hands. Rubbed her dripping hands across her eyes, her mouth, her forehead, her throat, the back of her neck. Ran wet fingers through her hair. Then she straightened up, unwrapped the soap and lathered her hands, her arms up to the elbow. She turned the soap over and over in her fingers, rubbed it again along the length of her arms and let it slip back into the bowl. Scooped a double handful of water and jammed the heels of her palms into her eyes. Not rubbing but pressing, gently pushing. She stood like that, not moving, breathing.