The Twelfth Department (8 page)

Korolev must have looked confused because the colonel leaned forward so that his face was only a few inches away.

“You understand what I’m telling you, don’t you, Korolev?”

“Yes, Comrade Colonel. You want us to go.”

“That’s right, Korolev. Look at you, you’re leaving puddles on the floor. You can’t even look after yourself, let alone a matter like this. So go on, Korolev, go.”

“At your command, Comrade Colonel.”

Three Chekists slouched in the corridor behind Zaitsev, and Korolev found his cheeks warming as he and Slivka passed them. It wasn’t just shame he felt, there was anger too—a rage that flickered in his stomach like fire.

“Well, that’s that then,” Slivka said, when they’d made their way down the stairs and out of the building.

“It seems so,” Korolev said, conscious that his hands had bunched into fists.

“Back to Petrovka?”

“Why not?”

*   *   *

Pugnacious black clouds still scudded across the brightening sky as Slivka drove them across the Bolshoi Kamenny Bridge, but they were only camp followers to what had preceded them. The sudden storm had more or less passed and, despite the battering it had received, Moscow looked much the same as it always had—as it always would, Korolev supposed. People might come and go and regimes might change back and forth, but Moscow would remain—the city was a constant, even when everything else turned to dust. Slivka opened her mouth to speak but Korolev shook his head—there wasn’t any point in talking about it, she must know that. So they traveled in silence, listening to the car’s engine, until they reached Teatralnaya.

“Chief,” she said finally, reaching across to feel the arm of his jacket, “he really wasn’t wrong about you being wet.”

And perhaps it was just the way the sun was bathing the wet Moscow streets, turning them a brighter gold than the eye could bear, but Korolev found he was smiling.

Back at Petrovka, Popov had left instructions for them to come up straightaway and Korolev wasn’t surprised to find the First Inspector pacing his office when they entered.

“What happened to you?” he asked Korolev.

Korolev looked down at his clothes.

“I got caught in the storm—over in Bersenevka.”

Popov sighed. “You look like you went swimming, that’s what you look like. Over there in Bersenevka.”

Korolev looked down at himself, hearing an echo of the colonel’s rebuke in Popov’s words.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.”

He caught Slivka’s sideways glance out of the corner of his eye.

“That’s just as well—a drowned rat couldn’t look more drowned than you do at the moment.” Popov paused to smile. “Be sure to get yourself dry when we’ve finished here. It wouldn’t do for you to catch a summer cold.”

“I will, Comrade First Inspector.”

Popov waved for them to sit down. He walked to the window, taking his unlit pipe from his pocket as he did so and chewing on its stem. Then he turned and walked slowly back toward the desk, placing his left hand on the back of his chair as he considered them.

“Investigations don’t usually come and go this quickly,” Popov said. “But we weren’t to know the responsibility for it lay elsewhere.”

Slivka opened her mouth to speak but a glance from Popov closed it.

“You’re back on holiday, Korolev. And Slivka, you’re back chasing Gray Foxes.”

Popov pulled his chair back and sat down, taking reading glasses from the breast-pocket of his jacket and picking up a handwritten sheet of paper from the desk—precise instructions would now follow, it seemed.

“Any notes you took or other evidence collected must be given to me—I’ll see they reach the right place. If any file was opened with regard to the matter it is to be immediately closed and its contents passed to me, as before. You will not discuss or refer to the investigation into Professor Azarov’s murder—not even among yourselves. In fact, you’re to forget it ever happened. I think that’s all pretty straightforward. Understood?”

They nodded.

“Good. Off you go then.”

Korolev stood up and left the first inspector’s office with Slivka in tow.

“Are we in trouble of some sort, Chief?” she said out of the corner of her mouth as they descended the stairs.

“I don’t think so,” Korolev said, “as long as we do as we’re told we should be fine. The whole business never happened, is all.”

Korolev located the last of his cigarettes in his damp pocket, along with the matches from the car—and was pleasantly surprised when he managed to get them both to light.

“Well,” he said when they reached the second floor, where their office was. “I’d best leave you to it. Good luck with Shabalin.”

“Thanks,” Slivka said, nodding. “Good luck with your holiday.”

What else was there to say? They certainly couldn’t discuss the matter in question. So instead Korolev nodded once again and squelched off down the staircase, across Petrovka’s cobbled courtyard before making straight for the Sandunovsky bathhouse on Neglinaya Street. And there he soaked in a long bath while a white-coated attendant with a boxer’s ears took his clothes from him and promised he’d have them back dry as a bone within the hour.

So Korolev emptied his mind, allowed his feet to float up till his toes broke the surface and ignored the conversations going on around him. He focused on the ornate ceiling, on the gilded knots and twirls, on the occasional damp patch that marred the decoration, and squinted away the sweat that rolled down into his eyes. It occurred to him that this was as good a way as any to forget all about the day he’d just had. And, after half an hour of floating, a long stretch in the sauna and a few pages of the newspaper, he found he felt more like a human being again. In fact, by the time he come back out onto the street, his clothes dry and ironed, and looking better than they had for some time, he felt as relaxed as anyone had any right to expect these days. The evening sky was a deep blue and the light that the low sun cast flattered the older Moscow buildings and burnished the newer ones. His son was at home waiting for him and nothing more could be desired from life, really.

It was only because Korolev happened to be walking past the Lubyanka’s side-entrance that he allowed himself to even think of anything to do with State Security. They were doing more work on the building, he saw. More cells, he supposed, or more offices for more Chekists. The comrades from State Security were busier than ever these days.

CHAPTER NINE

“Papa?”

Yuri’s voice came from the other side of the bedroom. Two streets away a cockerel crowed, as it did every morning, and Korolev, as he did every morning, wondered how the bird had managed to survive this long. There were plenty of people in Moscow who’d happily eat a cockerel given half a chance, cooked or uncooked. Its owner must guard it well.

“Yuri?” Korolev said. His voice sounded like the creak of a barn door.

“You’re sure you won’t have to go to work today?”

“As I told you,” Korolev said, his eyes still firmly shut, “they’ve assigned the investigation to someone else. Which means we can do anything we want.”

“Anything?”

“Yes,” Korolev said, but he didn’t fully trust his answer. Who knew what a twelve-year-old boy might want to do?

He heard Yuri get out of bed and pad over to him.

“We could go to the zoo then, couldn’t we?”

Korolev opened his left eye to see Yuri looking down at him. Weak sunlight was streaming in through the gap in the curtains and footsteps were moving back and forth above his head as the people upstairs prepared to face the day. They wouldn’t be so loud if they put down a carpet. He should mention it to them.

“The zoo?” Korolev looked at his watch. A quarter past six already. “Isn’t it a bit early for the zoo?”

“Natasha says they feed the lions at eight.” Yuri crossed his arms and turned his face toward the window, avoiding Korolev’s gaze as if expecting a refusal. “With red meat.”

Something about the thought of the red meat seemed to cheer Yuri up, however, and he smiled slowly. No doubt he was imagining the gore.

“Red meat, you say?” Korolev allowed his open eye to close naturally.

“Blood red. She says sometimes they give them a goat. A whole goat. But not alive—at least I don’t think so anyway. Although Natasha says sometimes the goats
are
alive, but I’m sure that can’t be right.” Yuri paused, his mouth twisting sideways as he considered this.

“That Natasha says a lot.” Korolev turned onto his side so that now he was facing his son.

“Well,” Yuri said, “I suppose the goats might be alive—every now and then. You know, for authenticity—what good would a lion be if it didn’t remember what it was to hunt?”

“That’s a good question.” Korolev made the effort to open both his eyes now, look at his son fondly and smile. He even managed to push himself up onto his elbow. This was what it was to be young, he supposed—to think that anything was possible.

Yuri, after a moment, smiled back.

“Torn to pieces?” Korolev continued, fighting a yawn. “Now that would be a sight to see.”

Moscow’s zoo was located only a few streets from where Korolev had lived when he was Yuri’s age. And sometimes back then—not often, but occasionally—a boy might hear a lion roar—a strange and marvelous sound in the middle of a Moscow winter. The memory persuaded Korolev to push down the sheet and get out of bed.

“But I thought the zoo didn’t open until nine?”

“That’s the best thing of all, Valentina Nikolayevna called her friend there yesterday evening and she can give us a tour before it even opens. A whole zoo just for us.”

Korolev remembered something about this friend of Valentina’s from the morning before.

“So she called her, did she?” Korolev looked down at his son—the boy looked a little unsure, apprehensive even. And it occurred to Korolev that he must seem a remote figure to Yuri. They barely saw each other these days. Well, if Zhenia was going to pair up with some fellow back in Zagorsk, then it would be no bad thing if the boy took away a memory or two from this trip that was worth savoring.

“They could be alive, I suppose—the goats.” Korolev stretched his arms above his head. “It would be a shame to miss it if they were.”

Yuri said nothing—but his smile was so broad that Korolev wondered whether the youngster’s face was wide enough to hold it all in.

*   *   *

From then on, things moved quickly—not least because Natasha and Yuri nipped around the adults’ heels like sheepdogs, urging them here and there. Natasha and Yuri seemed to be engaged in some kind of competition as to who could have their parent ready first. As a result, washing and dressing was brisker than Korolev might have liked, while breakfast was a rushed but hearty affair. In no time at all, it seemed, they were boarding a tram, which then hurtled around the Boulevard Ring. And by 7:50 they were exchanging comradely greetings with the famous Vera beside the zoo’s newly colonnaded entrance.

Korolev’s last visit had been his only visit, even though he’d grown up not five minutes’ walk along what was now Barrikadnaya Street—back then there hadn’t been enough spare money to come to places such as this. The exception, however, had been the day before Korolev had departed for the German War—he’d had a month’s pay in his pocket and he’d decided to treat his mother while he still could.

“Is there something on your mind?” Valentina asked him. They were following Vera, who, at the children’s insistence, was taking them straight to the lion enclosure. Valentina’s voice was gentle and she took his elbow as if to reassure him that whatever he was thinking of, it was nothing to worry about.

“I was just recalling the last time I was here.”

He looked around him and thought it was strange that he could remember, as though it were yesterday, the weight and feel of the uniform he’d been wearing, the heat of the day, the sound of church bells somewhere near and, oddly, the smell of a woman’s perfume—and yet he couldn’t recall anything about the place itself. It was as if he’d never been here before. Oddest of all was that he’d no recollection of his mother—and that afternoon had been the last time he’d seen her.

“Dead,” Yuri said, and Korolev looked down at him in surprise, wondering if he’d been talking aloud. But Yuri only had eyes for the lions and the creature they were devouring. Korolev followed his gaze and couldn’t tell what animal the carcass might have been.

“A sheep,” Vera said, as if reading his mind.

“We must have come on the wrong day,” Natasha whispered. “Or perhaps it had a heart attack when it saw the lions.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting we’d ever feed a live animal to them, Natasha. That would be barbaric.”

Vera spoke firmly but Korolev saw Natasha exchange a glance with Yuri that seemed to say: “That’s what she
wants
you to believe. The truth is something else again.”

“When was that?” Valentina asked Korolev. “The last time you were here?”

“Before the Revolution—a long time ago.”

“We’ve made many improvements since then,” Vera said. “Now we have an area devoted to the animals that underpin the fur industry—so that we can demonstrate nature within its socialist and industrial context.”

Korolev couldn’t help but exchange a glance with Valentina, who looked away quickly and covered her mouth as if she might be about to cough.

Not far along from the lions were the elephants—four of them. The huge creatures used their trunks to pick up carrots, two and three at a time, and place them in their mouths—all with a dexterity that had Yuri rubbing his nose in speculation.

“So much food,” Valentina said, in a quiet voice—not for the children’s ears, nor Vera’s either. No one must have told the elephants that belts needed to be tightened if they were to complete the Five Year Plan in record time. Or maybe elephants weren’t subject to the Five Year Plan. Perhaps they worked to a completely different schedule of industrial development—one that allowed them to guzzle as many carrots as they wanted to.

At Vera’s suggestion a young keeper, a bit of an athlete it seemed, persuaded the largest of the beasts to rear its head back and took a hold of her tusks, before using them to do chin-ups. The keeper looked over to the children, proud of his bulging biceps no doubt, and Korolev found that his mouth had curled with disdain of its own accord. He rearranged it into what he hoped might be a polite smile.