‘So where are we, boss?’ he asked with a fake smile, as he offered some bread and a bowl of soup. ‘Sure, I remember. Andropov is bumping off his own supporters. Tell me that again, how does it go? You don’t want the bread?’ He took it himself, gnawed at the sour rye, smiled between bites and let his old, dead eyes look anywhere but at Kirov. Waiting for an answer he talked about his wife: he couldn’t call her; she’d be going crazy. He riffled through his knuckles like a deck of cards. ‘The bit about Andropov — tell me again how it goes. How are you feeling? OK to go on? No? OK, let me tell you one. About Zagranichny, you remember Zagranichny, the guy who flashes his dick at the girls in Viktor Gusev’s dacha. You were right about him. He is from out of town.
‘I searched the hotel records and came up with some names and dates: F.T. Zagranichny, from Sverdlovsk, stayed at the Kosmos for four days in April — another one: Yu. A. Zagranichny, from Kubishev, spent a week at the Mezhdunarodnaya in June — one more: D.S. Zagranichny, from Volgograd, three days at the National in July.’
‘The same man?’
‘You can bet on it. The forenames may have changed, but the handwriting is the same. Also the hotel security logged two incidents during Zagranichny’s stay at the Kosmos and the Mezhdunarodnaya. A couple of the local girls who work the bars were badly beaten up. No names, but it’s just our man’s style, right? This guy is incredible!’
Zagranichny. The name had dull echoes. Kirov could hear them and tried to register them. Another day maybe, and he would feel better and understand. He asked, ‘Why didn’t he change his surname?’
‘Good question.’ Bogdanov chewed it over. ‘Why does he beat up girls in the same hotels he’s staying at? How is it that the hotel security doesn’t nail him on the evidence of the two girls? Answer: Zagranichny thinks he can walk on water! He can change his identity papers every time he comes to town and even though the surname’s the same no one can touch him; he can get the MVD boys at the hotels to shut their traps and forget what they’ve heard; he can get our hotshot Viktor Gusev to lay on girls for him whenever he wants them; in short he has friends and he doesn’t care. Boss, this Zagranichny is totally crazy, but he is very important to some very important people.’
‘He’s playing games with us.’
‘Damn right he is! Why “Zagranichny”? Why does he stick to the same name?’
They stood outside the cottage. Bogdanov studied animal tracks in the snow. ‘What do you think they are, boss? When are we going back to Moscow?’ In his city coat and overshoes he was out of place. ‘All these trees give me the creeps. My guts are killing me. Every time I go outside for a leak, I seize up. When do we go home?’
‘Where are the others?’ The cottage was empty, the man and woman gone.
‘I did them a favour and sent them away. I have a set of papers for you and some tickets for Moscow. One of these days Heltai is going to be back to check that he’s finished the business. He’ll have some very bad-tempered people with him and we’re in no condition to face them. Boss, we’ve got to get out of this place.’
Kirov agreed. Apart from a dull ache in one arm he had recovered. There was nothing to keep him here except the tug of the empty snow-covered spaces, the appeal of that unencumbered clarity.
Bogdanov took a cigarette and flung the empty pack on the ground. He lit the cigarette philosophically and made a few remarks about the travelling; they would go separately; meet in Moscow. Then: ‘You were going to tell me about Andropov, what he was doing having, his own people killed.’
‘Was I?’
‘You may as well let me know the worst.’ Bogdanov stared at the bitter stub of his cigarette and threw it away.
Kirov stared at the snow and a bird flying across the horizon, black against white. ‘Andropov was a sick man,’ he said. ‘That was the root of his problem. He knew that he hadn’t long to live, and he had only reached the top after a close run-in against Chernenko. He still had enemies.’
‘So?’
‘So he wanted to clear the old Brezhnev crowd out of the Politburo and vacate the ground for his successor — who wasn’t going to be Chernenko. He was in a hurry. He couldn’t wait for the old men to die since he was likely to die first. He had to provoke a crisis, one that would give him the leverage to get rid of Chernenko and his supporters. His answer was the Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring.’
‘He invented it?’
Kirov shrugged. Not ‘invented’, he thought on reflection. Although from a strictly logical point of view it was not true, it seemed to him that no one had invented the Great Jewish Antibiotics Ring. Certainly no one had ever fully defined its shape; indeed even now its shape was unfinished, still changing. It grew by accretion, by metamorphosis, in the way that archetypes have an appeal that forces successive generations to take them and shape them to new purposes. Perhaps.
‘I don’t think that Andropov invented the whole thing,’ he said. His eyes were still fixed on the bird, which was now hovering low in the sky. ‘My guess is that there was already an idea floating around in the KGB. Fabricate a plot to implicate the Jews in the antibiotics shortage and solve two problems at once. It was — a conspiracy looking for conspirators.’ He turned to Bogdanov to see if he understood. The words maybe, but not the meaning. He carried on with the explanation. ‘Andropov learned what our people were doing and recognised that Academician Yakovlevitch and his supposed ring of corrupt Jewish doctors and peddlers of black-market drugs could as easily be made to look like a gang of medical poisoners. And by creating victims for the murderers among some of his own minor supporters, Andropov could make the object of the plot appear to be his own death. The obvious beneficiary would have been Chernenko, so, when Andropov exposed the plot he could calculate on the Politburo swinging behind him to expel Chernenko and all his followers.’
‘Except that Andropov died too soon.’
‘He died too soon,’ Kirov conceded.
‘You think Chernenko learned about it? Jesus, it must have scared him stiff!’
‘That’s why the GRU investigation was set up. Andropov had been head of the KGB and the KGB had fabricated the plot. GRU were the only people Chernenko could rely on to find out exactly what had happened and then bury the answer. The answer still frightens them because it reminds them of the past, the way that Stalin used to do things. They thought they’d put that behind them and they could sleep safely in their beds knowing that the worst that would ever face them was retirement and a pension. But if Andropov had pulled off his plan, he could have used it as the basis for a purge and there would be no telling how far it could go.’
There was a pause while Bogdanov took in the explanation. Kirov watched him from the corner of his eye, still distracted by the distant bird. The older man looked slightly ridiculous, shabby and solemn like a pauper at a funeral. In the end he asked, ‘And that’s it, boss? That’s what this is all about?’
‘It’s how it started,’ Kirov answered, and even then he could never be sure. Conspiracies weren’t meant to be understood. All that could be grasped were versions of the truth.
‘What do we do? Tell someone?’
‘Tell who? The KGB doesn’t want to know: it wants to forget its own part.’
‘Then maybe we should forget too. That’s all that Heltai is asking, isn’t it?’