‘Always said you’d help!’ insisted Eduard, desperately. In front of him, Tudin was rigid, head predictably down over his papers.
Destruction time, decided Natalia: she was savouring the moment, even delaying for the pleasure of it. ‘Why do you think it was that when I promised you protection, which you say I did at Tverskaya, I didn’t tell you I’d been promoted to General, which would have been a much better guarantee than if I had remained a Colonel? Or why, during those visits, did I never give you my new address? And how did I know you lived at Tverskaya, when we hadn’t had any contact for six months before you left the army? Eighteen months before you even had somewhere to live at Tverskaya!’
There wasn’t any impatient shifting from the panel now. In fact there was no movement or sound at all in the room.
Natalia pressed on, relentlessly. ‘Colonel Tudin promised there would be no prosecution if you came here today, didn’t he? That’s the deal, isn’t it? Give evidence against me – incriminate me – and you’ll go free!’
‘He said he would recommend it,’ said Eduard, trying to stick to what they had rehearsed.
‘It’s with Colonel Tudin that you have an arrangement, isn’t it? Not with me? There’s never been an understanding or arrangement with me.’
Again Tudin came to his feet before Eduard could reply. Tudin said: ‘This evidence is becoming distorted: twisted. The facts are that General Fedova went to Petrovka and in front of Investigator Kapitsa, who has still to address this committee, undertook to prevent a prosecution.’
Tudin was floundering. Natalia didn’t think she’d won yet, not as absolutely as she intended, but the hostility from the panel wasn’t so easy to discern any more. She said: ‘The distortion of this matter is not mine. It’s that of Colonel Tudin, for the reasons I have already brought before you. I ask you to insist my question is answered.’
‘Well?’ demanded Lestov, of Eduard.
‘Colonel Tudin promised to recommend leniency,’ said Eduard, doggedly. ‘There was always an understanding between my mother and me prior to any undertaking from Colonel Tudin.’
Natalia risked the silence that lasted until there was a positive shift from the men at the table before saying: ‘So what happened to our understanding? Why did you have to wait another six days in custody after I had been to Petrovka before you were released, to come here? Released upon the instructions of Colonel Tudin?’
Before Eduard could respond to a question she didn’t want answered anyway – believing her intended effect was best achieved without an answer – Natalia sat down. The gesture left her son standing as ineffectually as she wanted him to appear and Tudin having to grope to his feet, to indicate that Eduard’s testimony was finished. But Natalia remained ready, believing that the inquiry was swinging in her favour, and when Tudin moved to call the Militia investigator she rose up, stopping him in mid-sentence, asking if she could recall the lawyer. The agreement from Lestov was immediate, which she took to be a good omen.
Alipov rose, as demanded, and Natalia said: ‘You were present at Petrovka when the affidavit was taken?’
‘Of course. That’s why I was there.’
‘At that meeting what promise or undertaking was given to Eduard Igorevich Fedova?’
The lawyer hesitated, looking momentarily at Tudin’s unresponsive slumped back. Then, visibly, he straightened as someone straightens having made a decision. ‘That there would be no prosecution.’
‘By whom was that assurance given?’
‘Colonel Tudin.’
‘Had there at that time – or at any time up until this moment – been any consultation or approval of that amnesty from the Federal Prosecutor?’
‘Not as far as I am aware.’
‘It was given entirely upon the authority of Colonel Tudin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Before or after the taking of the affidavit?’
‘Before.’
‘So the amnesty was an inducement for the testimony?’
Tudin moved to rise, but before he could do so Lestov waved the man down, refusing the interruption.
‘I do not believe there would have been a deposition without such a promise,’ capitulated the lawyer.
As she sat to end the re-examination, Natalia was sure that at least one person had abandoned Tudin. Surely the investigator would have realized by now which was going to be the winning side and be anxious to join it. All he had to do was tell the truth.
Very soon after Kapitsa began to talk Natalia decided there had been an attempt at a slanted rehearsal but that it was failing because of the Militia investigator’s effort to distance himself from this unofficial prosecution which was so obviously going wrong.
Kapitsa’s nerves were clearly stretched by his enforced deprivation of nicotine. His hands fluttered in constant movement over the chair-backs and he kept squeezing his eyes shut, in an exaggerated blinking expression. He exposed himself as someone prepared to compromise and bend any legality in a stumbling effort to explain why he had contacted Natalia, openly saying that Eduard – and the men arrested with him – clearly expected Natalia’s intercession to block any prosecution. The admission opened the way for Kapitsa to insist that throughout his discussions with Natalia he had always asserted the need for a prosecution.
‘Did you expect General Fedova to remove her son from any proceedings?’ demanded Tudin.
‘I felt I should discuss the matter with her before formulating any charges,’ allowed Kapitsa, miserably.
‘To what purpose?’ pressed Tudin.
‘I left General Fedova to decide that.’
‘Have you ever brought prosecutions against a high-ranking official – or any member of the family of a high-ranking official – in the State security service?’
‘No.’
‘Do you expect to?’
Kapitsa looked forlornly towards Natalia. ‘No.’
‘Did you expect Eduard Igorevich Fedova to be removed from the situation in which he found himself?’
‘Yes,’ said Kapitsa. His voice was barely above a whisper.
‘What, exactly, did General Fedova say to you after she left the detention cell at Petrovka?’
Kapitsa did not reply at once, and Natalia hoped he was searching for the most innocuous remark she might have made.
‘That she would be in touch very soon,’ he recorded accurately.
It was the ideal moment for Natalia to come into the examination, and she seized it when Tudin sat down, apparently satisfied. ‘Did I get in touch with you very quickly?’
‘No.’
‘Have we met at all from that moment, until today.’
‘No.’
It was not Kapitsa’s fault he was appearing so ineffectual. It was the fault of a far too recent favour-for-favour system and the blind jealousy of a man like Fyodor Tudin, and of no one being really sure whether Russia was going to go forward into new ways, in all things, or fall backwards into the familiar mire of the past. Natalia felt a surge of sympathy for the man who’d acted in the only manner he knew. She said: ‘There was more discussion between us, after I had been to the cells, wasn’t there?’
Kapitsa’s face furrowed, in the effort for recall. ‘Yes.’
‘Did I not say that my son’s arrest – and the interception of the convoy – had to be handled properly, to everyone’s satisfaction?’
Kapitsa nodded, eagerly. ‘Yes. And I said that was what I wanted.’
Natalia was glad the man had picked up on her offer, recognizing at the same time how he had sanitized his original reply. ‘So we were discussing a prosecution?’
She wondered if Kapitsa’s search for a reply she wanted was as obvious to the panel as it was to her. ‘Yes. That’s what I understood.’
‘Did I ever, at any time, say or indicate to you that I was going to prevent or stop a prosecution of my son?’
Kapitsa’s hesitation was greater than before. ‘No.’
‘I will not lead you on this question,’ warned Natalia. ‘I want you to recall, as precisely as possible, the remark my son made about embarrassment.’ You’re a detective, trained to remember things, thought Natalia: for God’s sake remember this!