drifting over the past, remembering faces like the one now stuck into this book. The solution was to remain busy, appointments and meetings. He needed an occupation. He didn’t want to reminisce.
Closing the book, he slipped the volume into his pocket. Why was this happening today? It couldn’t be mere coincidence. Despite his failure to produce a book or journal of any quality, he’d unexpectedly been asked to publish an important State document. He hadn’t been told the nature of the document. However, the prestige of the assignment meant high-quality resources — good paper and ink. Finally he’d been given the opportunity to produce something he could be proud of. They were to deliver the document this evening. And someone with a grudge was trying to undermine him just as his fortunes were about to change.
He left the factory floor, hurrying to his office, carefully smoothing his wispy gray hair to the side. He was wearing his best suit — he only had two, one for everyday use and one for special occasions. This was a special occasion. He hadn’t needed help getting out of bed today. He’d been awake before his wife. He’d shaved, humming. He’d eaten a full breakfast, his first for weeks. Arriving at the factory early, he’d taken the bottle of vodka from his drawer and poured it down the sink before spending the day cleaning, mopping, dusting — wiping away the flecks of grease from the Linotype machines. His sons, both university students, had paid him a visit, impressed by the transformation. Suren reminded them that it was a matter of principle to keep the workplace spotless. The workplace was where a person took their identity and sense of self. They’d kissed him good-bye, wishing him luck with the enigmatic new commission. At last, after the many years of secrecy and the recent years of failure, they had reason to be proud of him.
He checked his watch. It was seven in the evening. They’d be here any minute. He should forget about the stranger and photograph, it wasn’t important. He couldn’t let him distract him. Suddenly he wished he hadn’t poured the vodka away. A drink would’ve calmed him. Then again, they might have smelled it on his breath. Better not to have any, better to be nervous — it showed he took the job seriously. Suren reached for the bottle of kvass. A nonalcoholic rye bread brew: it would have to do.
In his haste, his coordination shaky from alcohol withdrawal, he upended a tray of steel letter molds. The tray fell from the desk, emptying its contents, the individual letters scattering across the stone floor.
His body went rigid. No longer in his office, Suren was standing in a narrow brick corridor, a row of steel doors on one side. He remembered this place: Oriol Prison, where he’d been a guard at the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War. Forced to retreat from the rapidly approaching German army, he and his fellow guards had been ordered to liquidate the inmate population, leaving behind no sympathetic recruits for the Nazi invaders. With the buildings being strafed by Stukas and panzers within shelling distance, they’d faced the logistical conundrum of eliminating twenty cells crowded with hundreds of political criminals in a matter of minutes. They didn’t have time for bullets or nooses. It had been his idea to use grenades, two dropped into each cell. He’d walked to the end of the corridor, pulled back the small steel grate, and tossed them in—
Suren placed his hands tight over his ears as if this could stop the memory. But the noise continued, louder and louder, grenades on the concrete floor, cell after cell.
He cried out:
Removing his hands from his ears, he realized someone was knocking on the door.
13 MARCH
THE VICTIM’S THROAT HAD BEEN SAVAGED by a series of deep, ragged cuts. There were no injuries above or below what remained of the man’s neck, giving the contradictory impression of frenzy and control. Considering the ferocity of the attack, only a small amount of blood had spread right and left from the incisions, pooling into the shape of fledgling angel wings. The killer appeared to have knocked the victim to the floor, pinned him down, continuing to slash, long after Suren Moskvin — aged fifty-five and the manager of a small academic printing press — had died.
His body had been found early this morning when his sons, Vsevolod and Akvsenti, had entered the premises, concerned that their father hadn’t come home. Distraught, they’d contacted the militia, who’d found a ransacked office: drawers pulled out of the desk, papers on the floor, filing cabinets forced open. They’d concluded that it was a bungled robbery. Not until late in the afternoon, some seven hours after the initial discovery, had the militia finally contacted the homicide department headed by former MGB agent Leo Stepanovich Demidov.
Leo was accustomed to such delays. He’d created the homicide department three years ago using the leverage he’d gained from solving the murders of over forty-four children. Since its conception the department’s relationship with the regular militia was fraught. Cooperation was erratic. The very existence of his department was considered by many militia and KGB officers to imply an unacceptable degree of criticism of both their work and the State. In truth, they were correct. Leo’s motive in forming the department was a reaction against his work as an agent. He’d arrested many civilians during his previous career, arrests he’d made based upon nothing more than typed lists of names passed down from his superiors. In contrast, the homicide department pursued an evidential truth, not a politicized one. Leo’s duty was to present the facts of each case to his superiors. What they did with that truth was up to them. Leo’s private hope was that one day he’d balance his arrest ledger, the guilty outweighing the innocent. Even at a conservative estimate, he had a long way to go.
The freedoms granted to the homicide department resulted in their work being subject to the highest level of secrecy. They reported directly to senior figures in the Ministry of Interior, operating as a covert subsection of the Main Office for Criminal Investigations. The population at large still needed to believe in the evolution of society. Falling crime rates were a tenet of that belief. Contradictory facts were filtered from the national consciousness. No citizen could contact the homicide department because no citizen knew it existed. For this reason Leo couldn’t broadcast requests for information or ask witnesses to come forward since such actions would be tantamount to propagandizing the existence of crime. The freedom that he’d been granted was of a very particular kind, and Leo, who’d done everything in his power to put his former career in the secret police behind him, now found himself running a very different kind of secret police force.
Uneasy with the first-glance explanation behind Moskvin’s death, Leo studied the crime scene, his eyes fastening on the chair. Positioned, unremarkably, in front of the desk, the seat was at a slight angle. He walked up to it, crouching down, running his finger over a thin fracture line on one of the wooden legs. Tentatively testing his weight, pushing down on the back, the leg immediately gave way. The chair was broken. If anyone had sat on it, it would have collapsed. Yet it was positioned at the desk as though it were suitable for use.
Returning his attention to the body, he took hold of the victim’s hands. There were no cuts, no scratches — no sign that this man had defended himself. Kneeling, Leo moved close to the victim’s neck. There was hardly any skin left except on the back, the area touching the floor, protected from repeated slashes. Leo took out a knife, prising it under the victim’s neck and lifting the blade up, exposing a small stretch of skin that hadn’t been destroyed. It was bruised. Lowering the flap of skin, retracting the knife, he was about to stand up when he caught sight of a pocket on the dead man’s suit. He reached in, taking out a slim book — Lenin’s
Puzzled by this elaborate anomaly, Leo stood up. Timur Nesterov entered the room, glancing at the book:
