— Too many patients. They rationed the morphine, too. I got bromides. It still took two men to hold me down. I think I’ll sit in the front room now. Thank you.
After a moment, Efim heard the radio. A tense female voice rapped out details of an ongoing trial. The accused had confessed to sabotage of equipment, sabotage of morale, plots to kidnap, plots to murder, pedophilia, hoarding of food, smuggling of warm coats from France…
— France? Why would they make better winter coats than we do?
Then Efim bit the inside of his lip, hard. One did not ask such questions out loud.
The announcer concluded her report with the criminal’s sentence. Because the accused had cooperated with the investigation and given NKVD further assistance, the state would grant leniency and commute the expected sentence of death to twenty-five years labour in Kolyma.
Efim found Kostya sitting in their one soft chair, his body at a sharp angle to the radio, as if he bowed to it. He seemed to listen with great attention.
— Nikto, I’ll be in my room. You should make an early night of it.
Jaw tight, Kostya nodded. Then he sat back in the chair, felt his jaw relax, and dozed.
Temerity woke up, checked her watch: not long after six in the evening. She ached all over. As if coming down with flu, she thought, oh, wouldn’t Freeman enjoy that. Somehow, her room smelled like the Lubyanka cell. She put on fresh clothes and tucked her Temerity West passport into the special lining of the blouse. Then she opened her curtains and peered out her window at Gorky Street. Two parked NKVD cars. Four officers leaned against the cars, chatting, smoking, and staring up at the Hotel Lux windows. Temerity recognized two of the men: Comrade Subtle and Comrade Quiet, still there.
The room’s stuffiness worsened.
Christ, I can’t think in here.
When upset as a child and adolescent, Temerity would walk the grounds of Roedean or, if at home, the Kurseong House estate, perhaps soak her shoes in the fen or run until she got breathless and then lie on her back on the ground. Air, her father said, good fresh air. Cures anything. The greatest men in history have solved their problems while out for a walk. Just a short stroll along Gorky Street, as far as the Gastronom food shop, and then, if she slipped Comrades Quite and Subtle, she could stroll a little farther, yes, make it a good hike, cross the river Moskva and get herself the bloody hell to the British embassy and maybe, just maybe, NKVD wouldn’t arrest her again before she reached the embassy doors.
How best to leave? A service entrance might help her avoid the NKVD tail out front, presuming she could get past hotel staff and their suspicious questions. Leaving through the main doors meant informing the desk clerk of one’s plans and destination, and, of course, attracting the attention of the NKVD officers.
Temerity descended the stairs to the lobby and strode up to the desk clerk, a young man with brown eyes and spectacles. He glanced up at Temerity, then returned his full attention to his paperwork.
After a moment, Temerity cleared her throat. —Good evening, comrade. I need some air and shall go for a walk.
— Destination?
— The Gastronom food store at Gorky Street Forty, then back here.
He took up a pen to make a note in a ledger and checked the time on his watch. —Very well, Comrade Bush.
— Oh, the last time I visited Gastronom, I picked up some chocolate, one of those big slabs, but it’s the wrong kind. Would you care for it?
The young man’s eyes betrayed his desire for the chocolate and his fear of a possible trap. How much did one name in a ledger really mean? And really, how could any chocolate be the wrong kind? Yet… —Is the wrapper intact?
— Yes.
After a moment, he closed the ledger without writing anything in it. Temerity gave him the chocolate, then strode outside through the main doors.
Three of the NKVD officers stared at a disturbance down the street, a quarrelling couple oblivious to their audience, while the fourth noticed Temerity.
Underarms slick with sweat, she kept walking.
The officer made no reaction.
The stench of that Lubyanaka cell still in her nose, Temerity found herself thinking of the Gernika fires, and then imagining a lecture from Neville Freeman about deserting one’s post. Have you no backbone at all, Miss West? First little upset and you gallop to the embassy? England expects that every man will do his duty. Are you really suited for this work?
Then she saw her own reflection in a glass window, her head sliced off at the neck by the edge of small poster promising plenty. The poster shone, paper glossy, colours slick: tumbling sausage, cheese, bread. Behind the poster, the window showed many empty shelves. The sign over the door read Deli Number 12, and someone had painted a surname beneath that: Babichev.
The light had changed, darkened.
Temerity blinked a few times. This isn’t Gorky Street. Wrong turn?
Her watch told her that almost two hours had passed since she’d left Hotel Lux.
I’ve seen this deli before. Haven’t I? Did I walk in circles?
A car approached, all rumble and rattle of metal and screws, and Temerity, about to turn and seek a street sign, caught the car’s reflection in the deli window: matte black. She dug her nails into her palms. Comrade Subtle and Comrade Quiet had followed her, after all.
The car stopped; two men climbed out. They wore civilian clothes, and Temerity did not recognize their faces. Just a coincidence, then.
A radio blared through the window of a flat one storey up: classical music, Mikhail Glinka, the overture to his opera Ruslan and Lyudmila.
Temerity glanced up and down the street and saw no one else. Then she resumed her study of the deli’s display, watching the men’s headless reflections. They closed in. As she turned to face them, one took her handbag while the other reached for her left arm. —Come, little one.
Instinct took over. Temerity grasped the reaching man’s sleeve, embraced him round the back while getting her knee between his legs, lifted him, then turned and flipped him over her shoulder. The thud and gasp of him landing on his back on the street seemed too quiet, and the pounding of Temerity’s pulse seemed too loud. So did the second man’s command to stop, heavy with the authority of an aimed Nagant. Head slow, Temerity looked up. One tiny black hole pricked her vision, and she stared at the muzzle’s narrow darkness in the utter opposite of gazing at a star.
She lifted her hands and showed her palms.
The music of Glinka continued, quite merry.
The man who aimed the Nagant snarled at his colleague to stand up. The fallen man, breathing hard and complaining of the dangers of unmuzzled bitches, got to his feet, and locked handcuffs on Temerity, too tight. When she cried out, he gave her a hard shove. She fell to her knees, scraping them open and ruining her stockings. The men hauled her up by the arms, and the three of them walked in a brisk lock-step to the car. A witness, an adolescent girl watching from a third-storey window, caught Temerity’s eye and then darted away.
As the men forced Temerity into the back seat, she commanded herself to speak. Her angry voice, however, remained imprisoned in her head, where it echoed alongside long-memorized instructions in case of detention. Keep quiet and observe. What you see and learn may be invaluable. If compelled to speak, recite in growing detail your cover story and thereby stall for time. Your duty at all times is to observe and then escape and make report.
The driver started the car.
Blood trickling down her knees, Temerity leaned forward to ease the pressure on her arms and peered through the windshield. Tears blurred her vision, and she saw little of the drive until they turned onto Gorky Street and passed the Hotel Lux. Comrade Quiet and Comrade Subtle had left, but the other two uniformed officers still smoked and chatted. The men in the car gave the officers no signal, and the officers in turn only glanced at the car. Temerity felt cold. The men in the car, while armed, wore civilian clothes and had not demanded to see her papers. Nor had they identified themselves in any way as NKVD.