Derek Lambert - The Judas Code

Viktor said: ‘What’s all this got to do with executions?’

‘The GRU is in charge of military purges, even though we’re only a branch of the Secret Police, the NKVD. The NKVD itself didn’t do too badly in the purging business under a gentleman named Genrikh Grigorevich Yagoda. But apparently he didn’t purge quite diligently enough and he was shot in Lubyanka Prison. Now they have a fellow named Nikolai Yezhov in charge. He’s doing a good job – seeing off about thirty a day, they estimate – but it’s only a question of time before they cart him off to Lubyanka.’

‘I don’t believe any of this,’ Viktor said.

‘Where have you been, comrade? In solitary confinement?’

‘I’ve heard the rumours, of course.’

‘You should listen to rumours. They’re the alleyways in the maze surrounding the truth.’

‘If what you say is true – and I don’t for one second believe it is’ – Or did he? – ‘then why are you honouring me with a visit?’

‘Because I’m in love with Anna Petrovna. So is my friend Nikolai Vasilyev. So, I believe, are you. Wouldn’t you do anything she asked?’

Viktor thought about it, then said firmly: ‘No.’

‘Ah, but you are young. Perhaps you are the sort of young man she needs. Someone who will stand up to her.’

The Ukrainian’s words surprised Viktor: he seemed to be the sort of man who would stand up to anyone.

The Ukrainian went on: ‘But I assure you that what I’m doing is not entirely selfless. You see I think you’ll be so horrified, so disgusted, that you’ll do something rash – and leave Anna to me. And Nikolai Vasilyev —’ He circumvented a cow that had wandered into the road. ‘There is another reason,’ he said abruptly, his tone flinty. ‘You see I’ve heard all about you from Nikolai. You’re something of a hothouse plant, aren’t you? And in my book naïvety, feigned or otherwise, is as much to blame for tyranny as greed or corruption or any of the other usual culprits.’

Viktor shivered; but he knew he still had to attack. ‘By your own admission you play your part in this blood-letting. Are you proud of that, comrade?’

‘I have saved more than I have sentenced to death. It’s all I can do.’

‘So you select the victims?’

‘I don’t intend to be cross-examined.’ His voice was suddenly weary.

‘Not a very proud achievement, to condemn men to death and come to terms with yourself by saving a few souls.’

‘Then you believe me?’

Too late, Viktor realised that he had been manoeuvred into accepting the Ukrainian’s claims. ‘And what if I tell the authorities that you took me to this place of execution?’

‘Then you, too, would be executed. Comrade Stalin doesn’t like to have people in the know around too long. Yan Berzin’s days are numbered. So are my own. So, you see, I don’t really care what you do or say.’

He pulled into a track leading to a farmyard and parked the car in a stable. ‘And now, my patriotic young friend, we walk.’

The Ukrainian was shorter than Viktor had imagined him to be. He wore a brown tweed jacket and grey trousers and an open-neck grey shirt making Viktor self-conscious about the alpaca jacket that had looked so smart in the shop in the Alexander Arcade.

He also walked with an unnatural stiffness and when he saw Viktor staring at him he said: ‘The bullet hit me in the spine. I wear a steel corset. Ridiculous, isn’t it? But perhaps it will stop another bullet one day. Except that in Lubyanka they pump them into the back of your head.’ They turned into the dirt road and headed east. ‘You’re not a very curious young man, are you? I suppose it’s part of your upbringing. But you haven’t even asked me my name. It’s Gogol, like the author. Mikhail Gogol.’

Bats fluttered in the calm air, swallows skimmed the road ahead of them. In the fields peasants were scything lush green grass. A bearded muzhik wearing brown carpet slippers wandered past, eyes vacant.

‘I’d better tell you where we’re going and what we’re going to do,’ Mikhail Gogol told Viktor. ‘We’re on the outskirts of a village that was once called Tzaritzuino-Datchnoye. Does that mean anything to you?’

‘Not a thing,’ replied Viktor, with the terrible certainty growing upon him that it soon would.

‘Well, the village was given by Peter the Great to Prince Kantemir of Moldavia. In 1774 Catherine the Second – Catherine the Great – bought it back for Russia. She started to build a huge dacha here but abandoned it. There’s a theatre – also unfinished – next to it and there are lakes, lawns, gazebos … but all overgrown. In fact the place is a jungle,’ Gogol said.

‘Why the history lesson?’

‘You must know your background. One day, perhaps, you’ll write about it.’

‘I might,’ Viktor said. ‘But it will be fiction.’

‘ Touché .’

Gogol stopped for a moment, holding his back as though it pained him. He thumped the base of his spine with his fist. ‘I can’t walk very far these days. Would you believe that I was once an athlete? Hundred metres sprint champion at the military academy in Kiev?’

‘Why are we going to a decayed dacha?’ Viktor asked.

‘To witness a massacre, of course. I forgot to tell you why Catherine abandoned the place. It was because it reminded her of a coffin.’

*

From behind his cover Viktor could just see the dacha over the top of the ivy-covered wall surrounding it. And it did resemble a coffin. A long, low building surmounted with spires that looked like funeral candles.

He was crouching behind a clump of dusty-leaved laurel bushes. Facing him, across a stony path, a massive wooden door, studded with iron spikes, opened into the wall; set into it was a smaller door; both were guarded by a grey-uniformed sentry who every ten minutes marched along the length of the wall, first to the right and then, re-passing the door, to the left. According to Gogol, who had brought Viktor through the undergrowth to the rear entrance, the smaller door was unlocked and only needed a push to open it. Clearly the sentry, a shabby-looking fellow with pock-marked features, didn’t expect intruders because he marched dispiritedly, staring at the ground; and no official visitors either because he had taken off his cap and was smoking a cigarette. Locals, said Gogol, had been warned not to come anywhere near the mansion and only a select few (GRU, for instance) knew that it was used for executions.

‘Make your move when he’s halfway to the right-hand extremity of the wall,’ Gogol had instructed Viktor, before making his way to the front entrance of the mansion where, apparently, he was expected. ‘Then make your way through the shrubbery to the theatre. At the back you’ll find a potting shed, wait for me there. If you get caught then I’ve never heard of you. I admit,’ he added, ‘that I do still have some faint instincts for self-survival.’

The sentry took a deep drag on his yellow cigarette, pinched out the tip and slipped the remainder into the pocket of his jacket. Then, carrying his rifle as though it were a cannon, he started out to the right of the door.

Viktor tensed himself. Twigs cracked beneath his feet. Dust from the laurel leaves made him want to sneeze.

Halfway across the path he slipped, righted himself and made it to the door. The sentry, a hundred yards away, didn’t look around. Viktor reached out one hand and pushed the smaller door. But it didn’t move. Perhaps Gogol had locked it from inside. Perhaps he wants me dead with a bullet from the sentry’s rifle in my back – or an NKVD bullet in the back of my head in Lubyanka.

The sentry was turning. Viktor pushed again. The door swung open with a creak. He was inside, closing the door, peering round, sprinting for a privet hedge enclosing a shrubbery. He crouched behind a rhododendron. In front of him a spider on a web suspended between dead blooms was devouring a fly; through the web he saw a man wearing a brown smock pushing a handcart. A gardener – reassuring; gardening and bloodshed were contradictions. Then it occurred to him that the garden was so overgrown that gardeners were superfluous; he thought of gardeners exterminating insects and wondered if this one had turned his hand to humans.