Rein Raud - The Death of the Perfect Sentence

That’s enough. All things have their limit. Let him sleep with those young Estonian girls; I’m not playing his game any more. That art chick of his, for example.

But now here he was at the door again with a twinkle in his eye, and clearly a little put out.

“The end is in sight, Li,” Raim said. “Just a little bit longer.”

She took a step back from the door and let him in. She might as well, things had already gone this far.

But there was something in the air.

Two things happened at almost exactly the same moment: Raim fell to his knees and took hold of Lidia Petrovna’s waist with both hands, pressing his nose against her belly button, towards the spot where he longed to be. And Lidia Petrovna burst out crying, crying like she hadn’t cried for years. Because once you start to cry like that, you cannot stop.

“It’s nothing, dear,” Lidia lied between sobs, and she stroked Raim’s tousled hair, “it’s nothing serious, really.”

They got Karl just as he stepped out of his front door to go to work in the morning. Vinkel himself had sat in wait for him, in the car with Artyem whom he’d brought along mostly as brawn. They leapt out from either side of the car, Vinkel flashing his ID.

“I’ve got just one question for you,” he said to Karl once they’d shoved him on to the back seat. “Who is it?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Karl mumbled, his face turning completely white.

“Who is delivering information from the security services to your group?”

“Sorry, comrade, but…”

“That’s enough,” said Vinkel. “Don’t play the fool with me. We know it must be one of our own. We know that you know who it is. We both know that you will tell us eventually anyway. So why waste each other’s time?”

Karl sighed.

According to the official records he will die eight years later from alcohol-related liver disease.

In reality he was dead from that moment.

They decided to detain her in the act, so that no questions would be asked. Otherwise she might happen not to have the camera with her that day. Some guy called Karl told you? You must be joking? In any case, it would take some time longer to find out who she was passing the material to.

Lidia Petrovna had positioned two lamps on the table so that their beams intersected. She’d taken the first file from the stack, and looking back at her was a photo of a man who was getting on a bit, with a long face and thinning hair, and a big hearty smile. That face was familiar from somewhere. She took the camera out of her handbag, focused the lens and pressed the button.

And at that very moment Vinkel stepped out from behind the curtain.

I hope I never have to know how that felt.

“So this is what’s going to happen,” Vinkel told her. “First you’re going to tell us everything you know. Then you will board a train. Have you heard of Oymyakon? It’s in Yakutia. It breaks the record for the coldest place in the world every single year.”

Särg was sitting in his office alone – for once the stool in front of him was empty. He pictured to himself how in an hour’s time that very attractive woman would be sitting in front of him, having had some time in the cell to think things over. He didn’t know why Gromova had done what she did, but there had to be some reason behind it. There always was. He wanted to know what it was. It would be easier for him to do what he had to do if he understood what had driven the person sitting on the other side of the table.

But now another image appeared in his mind’s eye, something which had given him no peace for the last few weeks. It was his son, sitting on the stool in front of him. Anton with two black eyes, and his eyebrow cut to bits.

We all have our reasons for doing what we do, Särg thought to himself. He has, and so do I.

Särg took his overcoat from the peg and left the building. It was lunchtime anyway. He walked down Pikk Street towards town – he had to find a proper telephone box, not just one of those phones fixed to the wall. The call he planned to make was not intended for passers-by to hear.

Galina answered almost immediately in her honey-sweet tones (come to think of it, why wasn’t she at work?).

“Get Anton for me please,” Särg said into the cold phone receiver.

“Hello Dad,” Anton’s voice came back at him a moment later, in Russian.

And then Särg said what he had to say so that later in life he would be able to look his son in the face, and at himself in the mirror:

“Lidia Gromova’s been caught. In the worst case they’ll know who she was working with by tomorrow, in the best case the day after. Tell your people. Right away.”

“Wait, but how do you…” Anton started to ask.

“Later,” Särg said, cutting him short, “you should go now.”

“We can’t,” said Indrek, “We mustn’t.”

The other people sitting in the cellar were silent.

“It’s a war,” said Raim, holding firm. “There are always casualties. We’ve got more important things to do.”

“Are you sure you’re human?” Indrek demanded, quite angry by now. “Or some kind of fucked-up robot? Or have you decided to play God, damn it?”

“Hold on, don’t get worked up.”

Raim pulled away slightly. There was a sour smell coming from his friend’s mouth, accompanied by globules of spit. Raim didn’t think he was a robot. Far from it. But there was still a grain of truth in what Indrek had said. After all it had been him, Raim, who had picked up this girl and trained her to do something which could technically be classified as treason. In the eyes of the law the girl was therefore far guiltier than anyone from amongst their own ranks, which meant that if what Anton said was right, then she would find herself somewhere very cold for a good few years.

And what kind of leader was Raim if he couldn’t look after his own people?

What’s more he was also to blame. He had to go and mention Maarja round Li’s that time.

“OK, I’ll see what I can do,” he said with a nod.

There were just the two of them sitting in the steamy sauna on Raua Street, but they were talking very quietly just in case. Valev heard Raim out in silence before going to douse his head in cold water. In the heat of the sauna his face was even more flushed than usual.

“I agree,” Valev said once he’d sat back down next to Raim and splashed some water on to the sauna stones. “We have to try something. I’ve got this one idea, although it will take a couple of days, I’m afraid. The other option would be to send her to Lithuania, of course; there’s all sorts of places to lie low there. What do you reckon, how long will Gromova hold out? How did she seem to you?”

“A little longer, I think,” Raim said. In general he was trying to think about Li as little as possible.

“They’re not going to show any mercy right now,” Valev said apprehensively. “Very well then, let’s leave the Lithuanian option in reserve for now. You can go there yourself if things really heat up here.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Raim said resolutely. He couldn’t explain to Valev why he was fairly sure that the security services would not know the exact details of his role in the whole business. But Maarja, that was a different matter altogether, unfortunately.

“Very well then, you know best,” Valev continued. “We’ve got one guy in the ministry, and we can call Finland too. I hope that they don’t muck around with the visa. Has she got a passport?”

“She should have. She visited Poland just recently.”

“Very well. Go and find her and explain the situation.”