The Last Train to Kazan

2

The dead man was Velimir Zezulin.

For a moment Ryzhkov was frozen. Stunned, he coughed in surprise, jumped up and got almost half-way out of his chair. He had not seen Zezulin for…almost four years to the day, and on that occasion Zezulin had been drunk. Dead drunk.

Later, the last image he’d seen of Zezulin was of their portraits, along with Konstantin Hokhodiev and Dima Dudenko, printed on St Petersburg police fugitive warning handbills. Maybe no one had recognized him, since the photograph, taken from Zezulin’s ancient Okhrana identity card, was so out of date. Together the four had been sought as murderers of Deputy Minister of Interior, Boris Fauré. What was deliberately not said on the posters and handbills was that they were also suspects in the abduction and murder of their own superior, General A.I. Gulka, head of the entire Third Section.

Somehow he had survived and was now back, a new Zezulin, brisk as a wolverine. Moving with assured fluidity, a solid man with energy held in reserve. He came in, closed the door on the sentry, and sat. Their eyes locked for a moment and then Zezulin pointed to the ceiling and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head.

Ryzhkov was suddenly very tired. He found that his head was bobbing from side to side, saying no, no…Zezulin must be dead, he had to be dead, as dead as Kostya Hokhodiev, or as vanished as Dima. Surely he’d been killed, since he must have been caught. Of the group, Zezulin was the only innocent and he’d had no warning, so they must have taken him. Zezulin would have been their only prize, so they would have tortured him, and, since he knew nothing, they would have tortured him some more. Eventually they would have shown him the papers, various authorizations Ryzhkov had cadged from him when he was in an alcoholic stupor.

But here he was. Alive, with Ryzhkov’s file in his hands.

‘Citizen Ryzhkov. You will answer the questions I put to you, do you understand? You should understand this by now, given your dossier. You have been interrogated many times, I’m sure you know all about these procedures. Yes, you understand? Correct?’

‘Yes,’ the sound came out of Ryzhkov’s mouth like a whisper.

‘You will be entirely forthcoming.’

He nodded.

‘Your name?’

‘You know my name…’

‘I do, indeed. But you are going to confess it. You will give me the details of your life, your Okhrana training, salient events of your career as an employed thug within the Tsarist political police, the identity of your supervisor, other personalities in your section…’

‘That was a long time ago,’ he said wearily. And it was true. Several lifetimes ago, so remote as to be unreal. A life mulled over, dissected and regretted so many times that there was no honest version he could give. He just shook his head.

‘Your name is Ryzhkov, Pyotr Mikhalovich, I know this from your file. This is your photograph from your identity card as a member of the Tsar’s terror police. These are your evaluations, your recruitment letter, your grades at the gymnasium. I have everything. We have known about you all along.’ Zezulin’s voice had begun to rise, then he bit it off. They looked at each other for a long moment. ‘I am sure you can remember a great many details. Do you remember, for instance, the name of your Okhrana supervisor at the time?’

With an almost involuntary shrug, Ryzhkov shook his head. What was he supposed to say? Everything was whirling. He felt the sharp curl of nausea, swallowed to keep the world upright.

‘Can’t remember? I’ll save you the trouble. His name was Zezulin, Velimir Antonovich. Like you, a paid butcher for the Tsar, the head of a death squad. A terrorist and probable double agent. You will be interested to know that he was executed in the first days of the revolution. This is his photograph. You remember working with this man, don’t you? Admit it.’

Ryzhkov’s head jerked up. He was looking at a photograph of a dark-haired mask, staring at the camera, as dead as a fish. It could have been anyone, anyone at all. An anonymous face, someone off the street. It vanished back into the dossier.

‘Good. You signify that you knew him, fine. Now we’re getting somewhere. Do you want a cigarette? Some water? You don’t look that well. Perhaps we’ll have some food brought in. Do you feel like answering any additional questions or would you like to go back to your cell?’

Not only had he changed his identity, Zezulin had taken on a completely different personality. Gone was the slovenly drunk, the slurred voice, the fragmentary memory. Now, instead of staring out the window at the street outside their section house, his eyes were locked on Ryzhkov, the hypnotic glare of a poisonous snake deciding exactly where to strike.

‘If I blink, you die,’ Zezulin said softly across the table – the voice of a parent explaining an unpleasant and complicated reality to a child. Ryzhkov suddenly realized that fresh tears were running down his face. Lost, lost again. Life was just a vortex of loss…He shrugged again; it was all he could do – make the gesture reserved for cowards or those who couldn’t think of a quick comeback.

‘Fine. Please, you will tell me about your work with the French Secret Service. In 1914 you escaped and travelled to Paris…’ Zezulin had relaxed somewhat, the eyes were softer. ‘You do know that I have all the travel documents.’ Zezulin fussed through the dossier. ‘Yes…You went to Paris, you were recruited into the Foreign Legion, served here and there, and then at Verdun, and from there – ‘

‘I knew…languages, so I went to the signals.’

‘Yes, yes. I’m sure it was all very helpful, listening to the Germans in the trenches…help the artillery find their targets. Then you were wounded, court-martialled…’

‘I was paroled.’

‘Paroled, yes. I know all of this. But they had something on you, so they made you come back to Russia and work for the French. Don’t feed me this translation nonsense. We had you followed. It’s all right here.’ The wolverine’s paw slammed down on the dossier. ‘So. You can’t run any more.’

‘No.’

‘Cigarette?’ Zezulin put a box on the table. ‘Tea?’

Ryzhkov reached to take out the cigarettes. Zezulin watched while he fumbled with the box, dropped it, dug out a cigarette, dropped it too, and finally gave up and left it on the table, unlit.

‘Here it is,’ Zezulin said. ‘There have been a series of decisions regarding persons like yourself. Chickens. Chickens who serve the farmer…’ Zezulin began. ‘People like you, who under the former government were responsible for heinous crimes. Killers, thugs, terrorists. Some of them are psychologically distressed. Well, that’s understandable, so many have had it hard what with the war…but my biggest question is why? Why did you come back, Ryzhkov?’

‘I didn’t have a lot of choice.’

‘Mmm. But why did you decide to throw in your fate with the French? Do you like their cooking? Their certain something? I mean, a man like you made it out of the trenches, you performed with a certain amount of gallantry. Millions have performed such things, but you did more. A lot more. You’re a warrior, Ryzhkov, a spy. A man who survives. Survives beyond the limits of most men in the business. You don’t love it. You’re not obsessed with the enemy, it doesn’t seem to make you happy, but here you are. Back home. The question is why? What do they have on you, eh?’

The question hung in the room. Ryzhkov tried to look him in the eye but failed.

‘Tell me. What is it? Who is it?’ Zezulin’s hand wavered, settled on the dossier and the thick fingers began to pat it, like a baby he was trying to burp.

‘“Mother, dead. Father, dead. Brother, died as a child…”’ He looked over at Ryzhkov and shrugged. ‘You didn’t come back to Russia because you’re in love with the rooftops of Paris, and you owe them something. You already took your revenge, I suspect. No, you came back for a fellow human being. Maybe your wife? Mmmm…I don’t think so. You hadn’t lived with her since 1912. It’s not her. She’s safe in Portugal, the last anyone cared. So who is it, Pyotr?’

Ryzhkov looked up at him. He just wasn’t a good enough actor.

‘Was it her?’ The photograph slid out of the dossier like a knife stroke curving towards his chest.

Vera Aliyeva curled to a stop, looking up at him.

It was a commercial portrait. Something she had commissioned for publicity in Petersburg. Shot with soft gauze and a backdrop meant to suggest clouds. In it Vera was innocent, looking aloft at some more radiant possibility. So young. A century ago.

‘What about that, Monsieur? You say you don’t have a choice? You didn’t get to choose? Oh, I’m sorry about the unfairness of everything. That’s what the revolution is all about, of course. Rectifying things. By the way, did you know that Lena Hokhodieva is still alive?’

He could not help but look up. Kostya’s wife had been dying with cancer, almost a complete ghost when Ryzhkov had last seen her. ‘No.’

‘Yes. She’s made a complete cure. It’s a miracle. Defied the gods. She’s fat, you wouldn’t recognize her. Good for her, eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s just luck, Pyotr Mikhalovich. Someone has to be found to do certain things. You’re not the first person who is a victim of a government or…governments, or the lack of them. It won’t buy you any special favours around here.’ Zezulin was smiling. ‘Someone has to do these things. It’s bloom or die, eh? And while you don’t care about your own death, maybe you’d even welcome it, you would care about someone else’s…about this woman here.’ The finger gestured towards the photograph; a cheap thing, unmistakably banal, bound in a yellow pasteboard frame with an advertisement for the Nevsky Prospekt photographer she’d charmed into giving her a deal.

‘Ah yes. Good. You have indicated that you recognize her. Excellent. Once more we are getting somewhere. Now we have decided to be grown-up friends and we’ve put down our last secret, eh?’ Zezulin was saying. The voice of a happy man. ‘I’m so sorry, but you can’t keep the picture.

‘Look, my friend,’ Zezulin leaned in close. There was the smell of pickles on his breath. ‘This is not some common theatrical, this is not boys playing games in the barracks. This is real.’ He patted the dossier on the desk. ‘We both know you’re going to do what I say. I can use you to kill, or I can use you for bait. Let’s not waste any more time. These are the trenches too. I know you have courage, and all that.’

‘And this is all for the people?’

‘Yes, yes, the people, of course. But because it’s all secret, they don’t know it.’

‘And if I don’t do what you want?’

‘It won’t be the first time I’ve misjudged someone, eh? So, we’ll take you out and shoot you, and of course you have no need to worry about the future of –’ he patted the dossier, ‘– your friend. Right? You were Okhrana, you know how the levers work.’ He settled back into his chair.

‘But if on the other hand you go out and be the ruthless secret policeman I know you can be, then I can give you more information about certain persons, if that is what you are interested in. You know? That’s the carrot. Death for you and your loved ones is the stick, eh? Well…no offence, we’re all under threat of death. That’s what terror means, brother. Welcome. As you can see, the inmates have taken over the asylum. Come in to my personal padded room.’

Ryzhkov willed himself not to shrug. ‘I suppose if I have to work for someone I’d prefer to work for the people, in the asylum or out.’

‘I knew you would see the logic of it. Here, let’s take those off.’ The soldier moved forward to busy himself with the key.

‘Look, ah…comrade…What shall I call you?’

‘Comrade is fine for now.’

A few minutes later they were taking a stroll through Cheka headquarters, even stranger corridors offices that led to waiting rooms that led to cells and interrogation rooms. A dormitory wing that exited onto a garage.

‘Just for your private information, Pyotr, the existing intelligence apparatus of the People’s Government is like a…choppy sea,’ Zezulin expounded. ‘The great Romanov ocean liner has sunk and now we are all helpless in the expanse of stormy ocean. For just a moment you see a survivor, you encounter them, and then another moment they are gone. The winds have carried them far away.’

‘Yes.’ Ryzhkov sighed. Walking along without the manacles, he didn’t know what to do with his hands. His arms kept involuntarily trying to come together over his fly. They walked along past stables, a garage, a shed where they stacked the firewood. Somebody was making telephone calls, couriers were running in and out. And always the telegraph chattering.

‘One has to make the most of every moment and every relationship. Moscow is a hotbed of spies and rumours. You wouldn’t believe it, Pyotr. Innuendo, fabrication, conspiracy…Around here everyone is supposed to keep quiet. There are layers and layers of secrecy, but the personnel? They’re all new, all of them think they are running the revolution all by themselves, everyone wants to be a hero, and everyone talks.’

They crossed into a second courtyard; beyond was a gate, a big loading door that opened onto Sofika Street and freedom. Wagons, people going by, fanning themselves lazily against the heat of the summer’s day.

‘So this is what I know…’ Velimir Antonovich Zezulin said, offering Ryzhkov a cigarette.

Zezulin was on a short leash to hear him tell it. Noskov was his new name, Boris Maximovich. ‘Nice, eh? I forget where I picked it up.’ Once he had wrung himself out and cleaned himself up, he’d discovered that he could still function. He’d regrown his tendrils and in the process his attention had been…well, somewhat heightened. He’d sensed things, many things in his newly sober state that he would have missed in the bad old days.

And worse was coming. ‘The revolution, to be honest, is not going that well. The Allies are hungry and on the attack. The Czechs are the immediate problem.’

‘Czechs?’

‘Quite a few, fifty, sixty thousand taken as prisoners from the Austrians. Most of them are deserters, they wanted to cross over and fight against Austria for the freedom of a new Czecho-slovak country. You can lay the blame at their feet, if you want.’

‘So what was the problem?’

‘They were on the trains in the middle of Siberia, but it seems they made their own little revolution, and now they control the Trans-Siberian railway. To them you can add the Japanese, inscrutable as always, but always ready to make off with the riches of Siberia and put themselves in an even more dominant position over China. They’ve sent their soldiers into Vladivostok. Of course the Americans, the British and the French are involved. The Canadians are involved…’

‘It’s a civil war.’

‘Very good. I see you have been reading the newspapers. Which brings us to our masters, the Germans, the people who have everything and want more, eh?’

Ahead of them was a disturbance, men shouting at the end of the courtyard. A shot rang out and Ryzhkov saw they had brought a man out for killing. Four guards, and another team of four for the truck. They must have made him kneel but then the shooter had mis-aimed and only wounded the prisoner, who was trying to crawl away as the blood spurted from under the collarbone. One of them stepped forward and put his rifle close to the man and pulled the trigger a second time. The sound of it and the slap of the prisoner’s head on the cobbles brought everyone to the windows. The killer was blushing furiously.

‘Regarding the Germanic menace, our leaders, Comrade Lenin, Comrade Trotsky, they do what they must. They are between the hammer and the anvil. Also there is pressure from within. Among us Bolsheviks there are factions within factions, wheels within wheels, masks behind masks, you get the idea. Lately we have been taking steps against these enemies beneath our own roof…as you see.’ They stood there smoking and watching the execution squad at work. It was a woman they next led out. Her thin wail came to them on the summer breeze.

‘Honestly, Pyotr, the problem is knowing which revolutionary tiger to back. Guessing as best you can who will come out on top in the internal struggles, or what might be going on beneath the surfaces. So all of us, we’re being put in a situation where we need to protect ourselves.’

‘So as better to serve the people.’

‘Yes, yes, yes, and so on.’

The bullet, the clashings of the bolts on the rifles. The men bending to their work. The motor started up and the guards climbed in. He didn’t think it meant that she’d be the last one they killed for the day. There was always another truck waiting.

‘These much-vaunted personalities…privately I know they are acting strangely. Trotsky is curious. Dzerzhinsky is irritable. Comrade Sverdlov in his capacity as secretary to the Central Committee is the most overworked, and Comrade Stalin is nowhere to be seen. Necessarily, Comrade Lenin is constantly in touch with all sorts of people, the Germans and a lot of others as well. We are in Moscow, this is the centre of the world stage at the moment. Just so you are aware, Ryzhkov…’

‘So what’s this all got to do with me? Why did you save me? What do you want, comrade…Noskov?’

‘Yes, good. You remembered. I’ll tell you what I want on your way to the barracks. You’re Cheka now. We have to start a brand new file on you. We’re in a hurry, but let’s quickly get you cleaned up and into better clothes. Nothing too bourgeois, however,’ Zezulin said as they walked out of the prison.

Woozy from the sudden intake of food, Ryzhkov floated deliriously through the Cheka baths, a somewhat cramped facility, and made an effort to stay awake during Zezulin’s recital while he tried on some newish clothing that had been obtained for his use.

‘As you probably know, last year the Imperial Family was moved from the old capital –’

‘Petrograd.’ Ryzhkov said. The word would never sound quite right on his tongue, patriotic as it was. It would always be St Petersburg for him. ‘Yes, I remember that. That was done secretly.’ He almost laughed.

‘Yes. Typical of secrets in Russia, everybody knows everybody else’s. Blinded by clouds of secrets, no one can recognize the real ones. At any rate, they were, yes, moved. The architect of this scheme was the unfortunate criminal Kerensky. He did it either because he was afraid the advancing Germans would capture the Tsar, or because he realized that possession of the Imperial Family might be an advantage in hypothetical negotiations,’ Zezulin muttered and shrugged.

‘Where were they moved?’

‘To hell and gone. Into Siberia. The town of Tobolsk, district capital, just beyond the Urals. I have never been there, of course, and I don’t know anyone who has. No, that’s not true. Rasputin, he was from a town on the Tobol. That’s the name of the river. There’s no railroad, they come down and get you there by steamer. Last year someone in the Provisional Government decided that Tobolsk was far enough off the face of the earth to be safe, so they loaded the Romanovs onto the train, pasted a Japanese Red Cross banner on the sides, kept the shades drawn when they went through the stations. Still, there were crowds waiting to throw flowers at them when they got off the boat. Big secret.’

‘Fine.’

‘They had their friends follow and take up residence across the street. They had their books, personal effects, their dogs. And they obviously must have taken some valuables with them. We have lists, of course, but lists, being what they are, never include everything.’

Ryzhkov was studying himself in the mirror. Still in reasonable condition, he thought. Newly shaved but not shorn. It would take some time for his weight to come back. He fit his simple suit well, the kind of thing a clerk might wear to and from his office: a shirt that was worn but free of actual holes, a homburg that made him look like an idiot, and that he resolved to get rid of as soon as possible. Only the shoes were out of place. Not a clerk’s lace-ups with mandatory shiny toe caps, but heavier workman’s boots. Still muddy from use. Shoes made for walking, and heavy socks to match. They sat on a low stool beside the mirror. Zezulin had recommended them.