Simon Montefiore - One Night in Winter

But tears can lie too. Because for Andrei, survival was all. He had one more option – to play his last card, the one that he hated himself for playing.

MIDNIGHT IN THE Lubianka. In the middle of darkened Moscow, the lights burned in every window as if it was the hull of a gigantic ship. Victor Abakumov hurried into the Inner Prison, moving with the stiff gait of the profoundly weary. The electric lights burn brightly here, he thought, and no one sleeps soundly in my night kingdom.

A blue-tabbed officer waited and saluted: ‘She’s here, comrade general!’

‘Let me take a look.’ The officer opened a door in the long sterile corridor. Abakumov looked through the window into the interrogation room at the young schoolgirl, still in her school uniform, who sat at the Formica table. Likhachev, smoking a cigarette, was pacing up and down shouting at her: ‘Come on, you whore, who are you fucking? You little bitch, I ask you again—’ Abakumov flicked off the volume.

The single desklight lit up the gold threads of her hair. Serafima Romashkina was waiting, playing with her curls, and she looked tired, and too thin. Her lip was cut and swollen – one of my boys went too far, reflected Abakumov. He shook his head to see this glorious creature sitting so forlorn and dejected. He had meant just to take a look before he went in but now, leaning on the wall, lighting up a cigarette and relaxing for the first time in his gruelling day, he was free to stare at her intensely – as both a connoisseur of female beauty and a manipulator, sometimes even a butcher, of men, families, villages, nations.

She wasn’t as brazen as her famously alluring mother, but even so, he admired the perfect crescent of her white forehead, the heart shape of her face and her arrestingly green eyes with their lush dark eyelashes. This simply adorable girl was in his power, waiting for him and no one else. No wonder those stupid, spoilt schoolfriends had done foolish things to win her favour. But she possessed the last key to their case, a key he needed to unlock without delay.

Abakumov walked straight into Serafima’s interrogation room. Likhachev sprung to attention.

‘I’ll take over here, comrade colonel. Shut the door as you leave.’ Likhachev saluted and vanished; the door closed. Abakumov sat, smoking his cigarette, boots on the desk, eyes fixed on Serafima. She said nothing but something about the way her nostrils flared made his power seem futile. Yes, he could beat her to pulp, he could rape her, but he still wouldn’t possess her.

‘I was in Berlin a few hours ago and I had a chance on the flight home to think about you and the case.’ Abakumov sighed huskily.

‘You did?’ said Serafima, looking bored.

‘There’s lot to think about.’ Abakumov was still mulling over Stalin’s riddles that were becoming ever more obscure and gnomic. He had not been allowed to arrest Satinov – whom Stalin respected – so he had devised a way to ‘get the attention of Comrade Satinov’, as Stalin put it: he’d arrested Mariko.

Stalin had also said the children ‘have to be punished’ . What did he mean? They were already in prison. Extra homework? A good thrashing? Nine grams in the back of the neck? I’ll be damned if I guess wrong! But Abakumov was sure of one thing: Stalin’s real targets were arrogant generals and smug bosses.

Serafima touched her lip and looked at her finger: still bleeding.

‘We’re all struggling with the truth here, Serafima, Colonel Likhachev most of all. I’m sorry about your lip. It’s nothing serious, I hope?’

‘No. Thank you,’ she said softly.

‘Did you get any sleep? You look tired, dear girl.’

‘I’m fine.’

Silence. Abakumov thought about the Children’s Case once again. A play-acting club, which was a front to conceal passions of adolescence, had led to the death of two kids. The investigation had uncovered a puerile game. If they hadn’t been élite brats, Stalin would never have heard about it. But now that he had, he would use the children in any way that suited his manoeuvres of the moment. He, Abakumov, had applied pressure to the children to discover the mastermind behind the conspiracy but it was clear that none of them knew who it was. He could torture Serafima, but it was possible even she didn’t know. While the other children awaited Stalin’s judgement, he decided, right there and then, to play a special game with her. And the only way it would work was if he freed her.

‘Now, you will tell your mother how kind I was, won’t you? You’ll say, “Abakumov really looked after me!” eh?’

‘I will, general.’ Hope rose in her face and he saw how she suppressed it. But when she put her head on one side, that charming mannerism of hers, he couldn’t help but smile.

‘Go and get your things,’ he said. ‘There’s a bath ready for you. Stand up, come on…’ and he took her hands and helped her up.

The door of the room opened and two warders stood ready to escort her to a meal and, yes, that bath.

Serafima stood and he saw her relief, her exhaustion; her skin flushed from her neck upwards and she set her jerking lips, as if she was trying not to lose control. But she was hesitating.

‘But what about the others? My friends – Minka, George, Andrei – are they coming home too?’

Abakumov was suddenly angry with the arrogance of these children when he had so much on his mind. He banged the table with his hands and saw her flinch. ‘That’s none of your business, girl. Get out before I change my mind.’

Tears running down her cheeks, she walked out of the room, and Abakumov sat listening to her footsteps disappearing down the long corridor.

Now it’s my turn, he thought. Now we play my game.

Still suspecting that it might be a trick, Serafima walked down the prison corridors. The warders no longer held her but touched her elbow to guide her into a new section of the prison and into a room where there was a meal laid out. Pirozhki . Hot shchi vegetable soup. A sturgeon steak, newly grilled and served with potatoes. She sat and feasted on this, eating too fast, washing it down with Borzhomi mineral water. Next they gave her a bath, letting her lie in it for a time, and then told her to hurry up and dry herself. She was to be collected.

As soon as she was dressed, she waited in a wood-panelled waiting room, alone, until the door opened and her mother came in. Sophia was caked in make-up and dressed in an army uniform, having come straight off the set of her latest movie. Speechless with relief, Sophia held her in her arms; then she walked her to the waiting car. It was time to go home. Time to sleep.

When Serafima awoke the next day, she thought she was still in prison. Then she remembered that she was at home, that all was how it should be once more. She got up, to find that she had slept away almost the entire day. Her mother was out at Mosfilm Studios but the maid cooked a meal, which she ate thinking of him . She had a bath and then put on a yellow dress with a Peter Pan collar – and she went out. Down the steps of the Granovsky building and, looking behind her to check that no one was following her, out into the streets, towards the House of Books.

‘You look even more lovely amongst all these old books,’ said Benya Golden to Agrippina Begbulatova.

It was the lunch hour, and Benya stood naked in his tiny, one-room apartment just off Ostozhenka. He was showing her a new book. Vellum binding, antique. Agrippina lay on her back with her stockinged legs crossed, beautifully setting off the collage of book covers: some of pale kid leather, some of expensive black lacquer, many of greasy, torn, modern paper.

‘All your favourite things in one place!’ she laughed. ‘Books, food and girls. I know you so well, Benochka. You’re a Rabelaisan and Epicurean. It must be confusing trying to work out which to consume first. But choose me while I’m here. We can eat together, and make love; then you can read after I’m gone.’