Nikolai believed he could destroy these words? If that thought had crossed his mind, the accompanying letter would’ve ended that hope. The speech was to be copied and distributed. The inclusion of the official letter was a message to Nikolai that the secrets of his past were no longer his to control.
Leo glanced at Timur. Before joining the homicide department he’d been a militia officer, arresting drunks and thieves and rapists. The militia had not been excluded from making politicized arrests. However, Timur had been fortunate, no such demands had been placed on him, at least not that he’d ever admitted to Leo.
A man who rarely lost control of his emotions, Timur was visibly angry:
– Nikolai was a coward.
Leo nodded. It was true. He’d been too scared to face disapproval. Nikolai’s life was his family. He couldn’t live without them. He couldn’t die without them either.
Leo picked up a page from the speech, regarding it as if it were a knife or a gun-the most effective of murder weapons. He’d read the speech this morning, after it had been delivered to him. Shocked at the outspoken attack, it had taken Leo very little time to realize that if he’d been sent the speech, Nikolai would have too. The intended target was clear: the people responsible for the crimes described.
The clump of footsteps filled the stairway. The KGB had arrived.
KGB officers entered the apartment, regarding Leo with open contempt. No longer one of them, he’d turned his back on their ranks. He’d refused a job in order to run his homicide department, a department they’d been lobbying to shut down since its inception. Prizing loyalty above all else, in their eyes he was the worst of things- a traitor.
Taking charge was Frol Panin, Leo’s superior officer from the Interior Ministry, the office of Criminal Investigations. Some fifty years old, Panin was handsome, well tailored, charming. Though Leo had never seen a Hollywood movie, he imagined Panin was the type of man they’d cast. Fluent in several languages, he was a former ambassador who’d survived Stalin’s reign by remaining abroad. It was rumored that he didn’t drink, that he exercised daily and had his hair cut once a week. In contrast to many officials who prided themselves on their modest background and indifference to anything as bourgeois as appearances, Panin was brazenly immaculate. Soft-spoken, polite, he was a new breed of official who no doubt approved of Khrushchev’s speech. Behind his back he was frequently badmouthed. It was claimed that no man as effete as him would have lasted under Stalin. His hands were too soft, his nails too clean. Leo was sure that Panin would have accepted it as a compliment.
Panin briskly studied the crime scene before addressing the KGB officers:
– No one leaves the building. Head count all the other apartments, check them against residential records and make sure every person is accounted for. No one goes to work; those who have already left, bring in for questioning. Interview everyone-find out what they saw or heard. If you suspect they’re lying, or holding back, take them into a cell and ask them again. No violence, no threats, just make them understand that our patience has limits. If they do know something…
Panin paused, adding:
– We’ll deal with that on an individual basis. Also, I want a cover story. Agree the details among yourselves but no mention of murder. Is that understood?
Thinking better of giving them responsibility for a plausible lie, he continued:
– These four citizens were not murdered. They were arrested, taken away. The children have been sent to an orphanage. Begin to sow talk of their subversive attitudes. Use the people you have at your disposal in nearby communities. It is imperative no one catches sight of the bodies when they’re taken out. Clear the street if you have to.
It was better that society believe an entire family had been arrested, never to be seen again, rather than know that a retired MGB officer had murdered his family.
Panin turned to Leo:
– You met Nikolai last night?
– He phoned around midnight. I was surprised. I hadn’t spoken to him in over five years. He was upset, drunk. He wanted to meet me. I agreed. I was tired. It was late. He was incoherent. I told him to go home and we’d talk when he was sober. That was the last I saw of him. When he got home, he found Khrushchev’s speech on his doorstep. It was put there as part of a campaign against him, instigated, I believe, by the same people who put the speech on my doorstep this morning.
– Have you read the speech?
– Yes, it’s the reason I came here. It seemed too much of a coincidence that it was delivered to me at the same time as Nikolai getting in touch.
Panin turned, staring at Nikolai in the bloody bathwater:
– I was in the Kremlin Palace when Nikita Khrushchev delivered the speech. Several hours and no one moved, silence, disbelief. Only a very small number of people worked on it, select members of the Presidium. No warning was given. The Twentieth Congress began with ten days of unremarkable talks. Delegates were still applauding Stalin’s name. On the last day, the foreign delegates were getting ready to go home. We were called in for a closed session. Khrushchev showed a certain relish for the task. He’s passionate about admitting the mistakes of the past.
– To the entire country?
– He argued that these words couldn’t go beyond the confines of the hall or it would damage our nation’s reputation.
Leo failed to keep the anger out of his voice:
– Then why are there millions of copies in circulation?
– He lied. He wants people to read it. He wants people to know that he was the first person to say sorry. He’s taken his place in history. He’s the first man to criticize Stalin and not be executed. The notice that it is not to be printed in the press was a concession to those who opposed the speech. Of course, the stipulation is absurd in the context of the wider distribution plans.
– Khrushchev rose up under Stalin.
Panin smiled:
– We are all guilty, yes? And he feels it. He’s confessing, selectively. In many ways, it’s an old-fashioned denunciation. Stalin is bad: I’m good. I’m right: they’re wrong.
– Nikolai, myself, we are the people he’s telling everyone to hate. He is making monsters of us.
– Or showing the world the monsters we really are. I include myself in that, Leo. It is true for everyone who was involved, everyone who made the system tick. We’re not talking about a list of five names. We’re talking about millions of people, all of them either actively involved or complicit. Have you considered the possibility the guilty might outnumber the innocent? That the innocent might be a minority?
Leo glanced at the KGB officers examining the two daughters.
– The people who sent this speech to Nikolai must be caught.
– What leads do you have?
Leo opened his notepad, taking out the folded sheet of paper retrieved from Moskvin’s printing press.
Under torture, Eikhe
Panin examined it while Leo retrieved a page from Nikolai’s copy of the speech. He pointed at a line: Under torture, Eikhe was forced to sign a protocol of his confession prepared in advance by the investigative judges.
Spotting the duplication of the three words, Panin asked:
– Where did the first sheet come from?
– From a printing press, run by a man called Suren Moskvin, retired from the MGB. I’m sure the speech was delivered to him. His sons claim that he had an official contract with the State to print ten thousand copies. But I can find no evidence of that contract. I don’t believe it existed: it was a lie. He was told it was a State contract and then he was given the speech. He worked through the night, typesetting it; by the time he got to these words, he’d decided to kill himself. They gave him the speech knowing the effect it would have, just as they gave it to Nikolai, just as they gave it to me. Yesterday, Nikolai said he was being sent photographs of the people that he’d arrested. Moskvin was also harassed with photographs of the people he’d come into contact with.
Leo took out the modified volume of Lenin’s text, holding up the arrest photo glued into the front instead of Lenin.
– I’m sure one person connects all three of us-Suren, Nikolai, and myself-someone recently released from imprisonment, a relative of a…
