Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

The door opened and he jumped. It was the janitor, that hoary Tajik in brown overalls.

‘What are you doing here?’ the janitor asked.

Rimm hadn’t thought how it would look: an important teacher like him skulking in a cupboard full of bleach and lavatory paper.

‘How dare you!’ he barked. ‘Get on with your work! And not a word to anyone! Or you’ll be on the next train home to Turkestan!’

‘Yes, boss,’ said the janitor, backing away quickly.

Five minutes later, Rimm opened the storeroom door to get some air – and there he was, a small dark boy approaching with the tentative steps and lithe vigilance of a night creature. When he saw Rimm, he froze.

The covert craft of a spy comes naturally to me, Rimm thought, as he led the way into his classroom. Closing the door, he sat at his desk and pointed to the front row of desks. The boy sat.

‘Demian Dorov, why did you write me that note?’ he asked.

Demian seemed terrified as he stared at Rimm.

‘If anyone asks, we can say I was tutoring you on Stakhanovite poetry,’ Rimm said more gently. ‘Now, you’ve been very brave coming to see me.’

Demian nodded and relaxed a little, but still he didn’t speak.

‘What have you got?’ Rimm asked again.

Demian shook his head. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I… I was just joking.’

Think like a Chekist, like a Bolshevik, Rimm told himself. Analyse your informant and his family. The key will lie there.

The Dorovs. The father Genrikh was the Chairman of the Party’s Control Commission, an admirable enforcer of discipline and morals; the mother, that comely doctor and Health Minister. They had four children. After a son in the army, the daughter Minka had her mother’s looks but was un-Party-minded, frivolous and impertinent. The Organs had been right to pull her in. The little boy Senka was clever but sickeningly spoilt by his mother. So Demian Dorov, who resembled his father and tried to emulate him by leading the school’s Young Pioneers, was stuck between the two favourites. Rimm suddenly warmed to him: Demian too was unappreciated. The other children nicknamed him the Weasel but perhaps he too had seen the poison of bourgeois romanticism seeping into the rotten school…

Rimm came down from his seat on the platform and sat at the neighbouring desk to Demian.

‘You’ve been noticed by the Party and I’ve always known that you will go far.’

‘Thank you,’ said Demian. Rimm could see he was blushing a little.

‘I don’t think your parents have really respected you enough. They’re too busy with their important work – or in your mother’s case with your younger brother, her favourite. Am I right?’

Demian nodded slightly.

‘If you did something for the Party, I think we could change that,’ continued Rimm. ‘Let me help you.’ But Demian had begun to fidget nervously again. ‘You have a choice,’ Rimm said slowly. ‘You can either be a hero, just like the schoolboy Pavlik Morozov who denounced his wicked parents, and tell me everything – or you can hold back a secret. But if you do, and we find out, you could destroy your family.’ He paused, giving his words time to sink in. ‘Tell me what you know. The highest authorities in the Party are interested. Now!’

Demian’s eyes blinked quickly. Rimm put his hand on the boy’s narrow shoulders. ‘I know what righteous Bolshevik deeds you are capable of.’ Finally, reluctantly, Demian reached into his satchel and pulled it out. An exercise book with velvet covers.

‘I recognize this book. It was Nikolasha’s. Where did you get it?’ asked Rimm.

‘Senka found it on the night of the deaths and he took it home.’

‘He hid it?’

‘Under the mattress in his room.’

‘He must have taken it right under the eyes of the Organs. Have you read it?’

‘No.’

Rimm didn’t believe him. He opened the book up and for a moment, he was disappointed. ‘The Velvet Book of Love.’ A schoolboy’s scribblings. But as he glanced at its contents – lists of names, chronicles of meetings, strange rituals – he sensed there was treasure here.

‘Demian, you’ve done a wonderful thing for the Party. Rest assured this will be our secret. You were right to bring this to me. Now go on with your day. And tell no one of this.’

Demian scuttled away, leaving Rimm with the book. Thoughtfully, he walked over to the new Lenin Library and sat at a desk in one of the remotest stacks. Should he show the notebook to Director Medvedeva? Possibly, but she might refuse to take it further. Or she could inform on him for being a meddler in an official investigation. She had every reason to suppress this for her own ends. Besides he, Dr Rimm, was the secretary of the school’s Communist Party committee while she was a mere member.

Furthermore, if he kept the exercise book within the school, it would remain a school matter while this case surely concerned higher authorities. Should he take it to Demian’s father, Genrikh Dorov, Chairman of the Central Control Commission? In normal circumstances, yes, but his daughter Minka was under investigation and Demian’s role in procuring the book might compromise Comrade Dorov’s ability to pass judgement.

Perhaps he should take the information to Comrade Satinov himself. Comrade Satinov would say, ‘Comrade Rimm, someone wants to see you, to hear it from your own lips,’ and a door in a Kremlin office would open, and there would be the Great Stalin himself, smoking his pipe. ‘Comrade Rimm, we meet at last. I’ve heard so much about you,’ Stalin would say. But no, no, Satinov’s wife was a teacher and his son George had also been arrested.

So it was clear. Rimm would have to handle this himself. In short, this was a case for the Knights of the Revolution.

Stalin lay on the sofa in the wood-panelled little study of the Nearby Dacha, feeling weary, hung-over and liverish. It was early evening. He listlessly opened a Zola novel, then read the script for the movie Ivan the Terrible Part Two. He did not like it. It must be rewritten. Who should do it?

A knock and that soft lullaby voice: ‘Coffee for a weary man who never gets any peace!’

It was his dear housekeeper, Valechka Istomina. She poured him a cup, just as he liked it, with two sugars. He looked around his study. Every surface was covered with piles of books and literary journals that he loved to read. But now, wearing his favourite old tunic (darned by Valechka in three places), soft kid-leather boots, baggy canvas trousers like an artist, and smoking a Herzegovina Flor cigarette, he tried to rustle up the strength to go into the Kremlin. Soon he must leave for the conference at Potsdam. Do I have the strength? he asked himself.

The vertushka rang. It was Poskrebyshev. ‘Comrade Abakumov wants to see you. He says something new has come up.’

Something new. Stalin relished a fresh gambit in the game of shadows that was counter-intelligence. It was his natural habitat. Even before the Revolution, even in the underground, he had mastered the game of agents and double agents, of cash in envelopes, shots in the night, daggers in the back. The Organs were the only part of government, except foreign and military policy, that he would never relinquish.

A car drew up. One of the bodyguards knocked. Abakumov had arrived.

Stalin stood up, his knees unsteady. He felt dizzy; his vision blurred and there was a frightening tightness in the back of his neck. He had to steady himself by grabbing his desk.

‘Send him in,’ he said.

Victor Abakumov stood in the lobby in a general’s uniform, looking the other way. Stalin could tell he was expecting him to come from the big office across the hall. It was always good to keep the security people on their toes.