Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

‘So Nikolasha shot Rosa?’ Kobylov said.

‘If you say so, maybe. Yes.’

‘Where was the gun?’

‘I never saw it!’

Kobylov rolled his eyes at Mogilchuk. ‘He never saw a gun!’ he imitated Vlad in a girlish intellectual voice. ‘You’ll spit it out in the end.’ He ruffled Vlad’s hair and chuckled. ‘Mogilchuk, a word!’

The two MGB officers stepped outside. General Bogdan ‘Bull’ Kobylov was Beria’s right-hand man, and Colonel Mogilchuk, standing to attention in his blue shoulderboards and tunic, hurried to light Kobylov’s cigarette.

‘Comrade colonel,’ Kobylov said, ‘remember Comrade Beria’s orders?’

‘A murder. A conspiracy. To be solved without regard to rank or position. The very words of the Instantsiya.’ Mogilchuk paused. ‘But they’re just kids.’

‘You milksop! You’re getting soft. There are two children with gunshot wounds on Professor Schpigelglaz’s slab right now down at the Kremlevka. And not just any teenagers either. Did you ever hear about the Lakoba case in Georgia?’

Mogilchuk pretended that he hadn’t.

‘Well, I’ve got some experience of working with kids,’ said Kobylov modestly. Comrades Beria and Kobylov had killed the Abkhazian leader Lakoba and then they had inflicted unspeakable torments on his young sons, but they couldn’t be executed until they were twelve so they were kept alive. On the day they celebrated their twelfth birthdays, Kobylov shot one and beat the other to death. ‘Comrade Stalin says, “You can’t make a revolution with silk gloves,”’ he went on. ‘But so far the order is: no French wrestling, and that suits me. I don’t want to hurt a bunch of kids either.’

‘So what do you suggest, comrade general? Should we wait for Schpigelglaz’s post-mortem?’

‘The Instantsiya wants this solved fast, Mogilchuk. It’s obvious what happened. Let’s just tie it up quickly and get on with some real work.’ Kobylov took a drag on his cigarette and then kicked open the interrogating-room door.

Vlad, startled, recoiled, knocking his chair over backwards and crouching in the far corner.

‘Hey, easy now! Not so jumpy, eh? Come on. Sit down again.’ Kobylov coaxed Vlad back into his chair. ‘Who else was in this poetry-reading, transvestite, cock-sucking, arse-licking, Pushkin-duelling strip club?’

‘It wasn’t like that at all, I promise!’

‘Look, just cough up the names and you can go home. Who helped Nikolasha plan the murder? Or did he do it alone?’

Satinov’s bodyguard, Losha, collected George from the football game later that evening.

‘What’s news, Losha?’ George asked anxiously as he got into the car.

‘On the shooting case? Nothing yet. Chinese saying: Never worry worry until worry worries you!’

George nodded. ‘How are you, Losha?’

‘Sizzling, son. Now, have you kissed that girl yet?’ He accelerated through the traffic in the Packard.

‘Which girl?’

‘Minka Dorova, you sissy. She’s your girl, ain’t she?’

‘Well, I suppose so, but I haven’t kissed her.’

‘What are you, a sissy or a man?’ Losha boomed. ‘She’s longing for a Georgian man. You can tell by the way she’s always looking around under those long black eyelashes. It’s time you kissed her. Now you’ve got to kiss her tonight. Or I’ll… shave off half my moustaches in protest!’

‘You’re joking, Losha!’

‘No, I swear. Everyone will say, “Losha, where’re your whiskers,” and I’ll tell ’em what a sissy you are. Ask her for a walk in Sokolniki Park. Give her a full meal. With girls, a full stomach goes straight between their legs. Kerboosh! Like a train when you put coal in the furnace. The train builds up steam and, kerboosh, it toots its whistle! Add a few shots of cognac. Losha knows. Call her now.’

George thought for a few moments. Losha was right. He did like Minka. He dreamed of her. It was now or never. ‘Drop me off at the House on the Embankment.’

‘Kerboosh! Attaboy!’

George, still in his Spartak football strip and white shorts, watched the limousine speed away across the bridge. He peered up at the eighth floor of the eastern wing of the modernist complex beside the Moskva. The lights burned in the Dorov apartment. He prayed Minka’s father, the Uncooked Chicken, wouldn’t answer: with any luck he would be at Old Square bullying his staff as usual. And surely her mother Dr Dorova was at the Kremlin Clinic? Ludmilla the housekeeper would be cooking supper for Senka, Demian and his own adorable Minka. He picked up the phone in the public phone booth, listening to it ringing, then he dropped the kopeck in.

‘I’m listening.’ Victory! Minka’s voice, soft as the buzz of a bumblebee.

‘What’s news? It’s George. My parents are driving me mad about… about the case. What about you?’

‘Same here. Papa says the club was un-Bolshevik, a bourgeois heresy. He thinks everything’s a conspiracy. But Mama says that’s nonsense. The school’s seething with rumours. It’s ridiculous! Shall we ask Andrei and Serafima to join us somewhere? I called Andrei earlier, and said we might…’

George panicked suddenly. Losha would have to shave off half his moustaches. Courage!

‘No, let’s just be the two of us tonight. There’s so much to discuss.’

A pause. Had she guessed? ‘Oh, all right. Are you inviting me to supper?’

George made a thumbs-up: Kerboosh! A full stomach!

‘I’m at the phone on the embankment. Looking up at your window. How about meeting in the usual place?’

‘Give me ten minutes. I’d better put on a nice frock. See you soon!’

With his back against the phone box, George settled down to wait. Not long now.

Minka came out of the lobby of the House on the Embankment in a red summer dress that she knew she looked good in. But as she stepped into the breezy evening air, two men in suits took her arms with such smooth momentum that she found herself sitting between them in the back of a boxy Volga, the car of the middle bureaucracy, before she had even had time to say anything.

‘What’s this? Who are you?’ she whimpered as the car sped into the night.

The man in the passenger seat turned round. ‘Just a few questions,’ he said. ‘You’ll be back for your hot date before you know it.’

Across the street, the boy in the Spartak football strip standing next to a public telephone had seen it all.

‘Minka! No ,’ said George, as he too was almost lifted off his feet and guided into a little Emeka car. As it accelerated into the traffic and crossed the river, he kept saying to himself: Losha will have to shave off his moustaches… This was just about the deaths on the bridge, he told himself a few minutes later. He had nothing to hide. The Organs had to investigate it, and he would answer all their questions.

But if it was so straightforward, why was he so afraid? Why was his football shirt soaked with sweat? And why was he worried for Minka too? Surely his father would get him out soon enough. Then he remembered overhearing his father say to his stepmother: ‘At this rate, I’ll have to take them and pick them up every day until this blows over.’ George had often heard them whispering behind the doors of the bathroom and though the main part of the conversation was always inaudible, it virtually always ended with the words: ‘Say nothing to anyone. Carry on as normal.’

His heart was thudding in his ears. This could only mean one thing: his father would do nothing.

High in his kommunalka apartment, Andrei was planning the evening. Losha was on his way to pick him up, and then he would meet up with George and his friends.

‘Have fun,’ said his mother. ‘But be careful too. Watch your tongue.’