‘Here?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I see him?’ To see him would give her time to try to think what she had to do. She desperately needed time.
Kapitsa hesitated, uncertainly. ‘I thought we might decide how to handle things first.’
‘I’d like to see him,’ she insisted.
The investigator spoke briefly into a telephone almost drowned under a wash of put-aside papers, and as they walked side by side down the corridor said to her: ‘I’m having him put into an interview cell, away from the detention block. It’s not very pleasant. No reason for you to be embarrassed. Or upset.’
‘You really are being most considerate.’ Sasha. That’s who she had to think about, above and beyond everything else. Only Sasha: keeping Sasha safe.
‘I’ve got children,’ said Kapitsa. ‘Two boys. I’m terrified they might go wrong some day.’ There was the familiar shrug. ‘It’s the job, I suppose. Seeing it happen every day.’
The interview room was still in the basement, but sectioned off from the main detention area behind a thick wall into which just one barred communicating door was set. Smell and noise permeated out: to Natalia it sounded like the rumbled shuffling of animals herded together, which she supposed was a fairly accurate description.
There were two solid metal doors on either side of a central corridor, each with a round Judas-hole at head height. The holes were covered from the outside by a swivelling metal plate. Kapitsa led her to the first door directly to their right, nodding as they approached an officer sitting at a bare desk just inside the communicating entrance to the main cell block. At once the man rose, sorting through keys on a large ring attached to a body chain around his waist. As the officer found the right key Kapitsa said: ‘I’ll leave you here. Just call for the officer when you want to come out.’
‘No!’ said Natalia, quickly. ‘I think you should be with me.’
‘What?’ The investigator stood looking at her, face creased in bewilderment.
‘It’s a Militia responsibility: we’re virtually colleagues, as you said.’
‘But…’
‘I think it’s best. It’s what I want.’
The door swung open and Natalia hesitated before pushing forward into the cell. Had she not known it was Eduard, Natalia would not have recognized the man as her son. When she had last seen him his hair had been shorn tight to his skull, making him almost bald. Now it was very long, practically shoulder length, and waved, which she couldn’t remember it being even before the army, when he’d been at university. His face was stubbled, not with an attempt at a beard but where he had been denied shaving material. There was a gold band in his left ear. If he wore an ear-ring there would be more jewellery. She guessed everything else would have been taken away, along with all the other personal possessions, when he was received into the jail. All his clothes, which she supposed he’d been allowed to retain because he had not yet been formally charged, appeared to be from the West: Levi jeans, leather loafers, an expensive-looking leather jacket and a wool shirt, open at the neck.
Eduard was at a table chained to the floor, in the very middle of the room. There were chairs either side of the table, also chained down, but still with some movement, which he was using as much as possible, going back on the rear legs and rocking slightly back and forth, easily confident. He didn’t attempt to get up when his mother entered.
Instead he smiled up from the tilted chair and said: ‘At last! I thought you’d forgotten me!’
Kapitsa gestured politely towards the facing seat, but Natalia didn’t take it. Even from where she stood she could detect the sour smell that she’d earlier got from the main detention block minutes before.
‘It wouldn’t have been difficult to forget you.’
Eduard’s expression faltered, but only slightly. Looking pointedly at the investigator near the door but still addressing Natalia he said: ‘We need to talk. Just the two of us.’
‘I’ve asked him to stay.’
‘Why?’
‘It isn’t going to be a problem.’
Eduard came forward at last, settling his chair. ‘You sure about that?’
‘I think so.’
‘Good!’ he said. The smile came into place.
My flesh and my blood, she remembered. She wished she could feel more: feel anything. Still her flesh and blood. ‘How long have you been back in Moscow?’
‘It must be over a year.’
‘You did not contact me?’
There was a passing attempt to look serious. ‘Meant to. Decided to get established first. Got busy, you know how it is.’
‘You’re in a hell of a mess.’
The seriousness now was genuine, Eduard’s eyes going between Natalia and Kapitsa. ‘I’d really like to talk to you alone.’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘I need your help!’
For the first time the complacent arrogance slipped, and Natalia was unsure whether Eduard’s anguish was at having openly to plead or at having allowed the fear to show. From the look he directed at her, she guessed it was a combination of both. ‘There are things to think about.’
‘What things?’
‘It’s not that easy.’ She heard Kapitsa shift behind her.
‘You’re still in the KGB or whatever it’s called these days?’
Natalia hesitated. ‘Yes.’
The smile returned. ‘You’d be surprised at the effect it had when I told him’ – Eduard nodded towards Kapitsa – ‘your name. You know what I think? I think you’ve climbed even higher up the ladder than when you and I were last together.’
‘Much higher,’ Natalia conceded.
‘That’s good.’
‘Is it?’
‘Things must be easy for you.’
Now Natalia gestured behind her, to the investigator. ‘It’s not just a matter for me. There’s the Militia position to consider.’
‘What about my position to consider?’
‘That’s what I’m doing,’ said Natalia. Adulterated medical drugs kill sometimes. Or maim. The investigator’s words echoed in her mind, loudly, like an announcement with the volume turned up. My flesh and blood, she thought: Eduard is my flesh and blood.
The expression was sly now. ‘We don’t want any embarrassment, do we?’
‘I’m not sure I understand that.’
The back and forth chair came down squarely again. ‘You’re obviously very important now: much more than before. Everything’s public in Moscow these days: openness is the official policy…’ There was a hesitation, staged and theatrical. ‘… Very easy for people in important positions to be embarrassed: damaged by the embarrassment even…’
The noise of Kapitsa shifting behind her was louder. ‘All of that is very true.’
Eduard sighed. ‘So we’d better get this problem cleared up, before it goes any further. I’ve been in this shit-hole for five days.’ There was a nod in Kapitsa’s direction. ‘Why don’t you have a talk?’
She had to estimate how exposed she was. ‘You’re with a Mafia gang? The Lubertsy?’
Eduard sniggered. ‘Don’t be melodramatic! I work with businessmen.’
‘What sort of business?’
Eduard’s shoulders went up and down. ‘All sorts. Providing what people always want.’
Natalia used his ambiguity. ‘When you formed your consortium with these Lubertsy businessmen, did you tell them I had a rank and influence in what was then the KGB?’
Eduard’s smirk was conspiratorial. ‘It’s normal business practice, to provide references. Assure colleagues of one’s good standing.’
Natalia guessed he would have seen every Western gangster film to be shown in Moscow: the attitude and the words were virtually a parody. ‘Is that why you were appointed an organizer: put in charge?’
‘Recognition of natural ability.’ There was another disparaging head movement, towards Kapitsa. ‘The offer I made still stands, if the money hasn’t already vanished from wherever it’s supposed to be safeguarded here. No reason for anyone to lose out. Everyone stays happy. OK?’
Natalia gestured again to the man behind her. ‘We have to talk. See what can be done to make everything work out right.’