Kostya wanted to brush the curls from her forehead. —Just something to make you calm.
— I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything from last night. I left the hotel. Then it’s blank.
Kostya said nothing.
Temerity drank the last of the water in her glass. —So when will you bring me in? Could we get it over with?
Kostya’s stern expression fell away, revealing worry and fatigue. —I’m not arresting you.
— Then you’ll shoot me here?
— No! I’m trying to help you.
— Help me? You held a gun to my head!
— You remember that just fine.
Her voice squeaked. —How the hell am I supposed to forget it?
— And do you also remember I let you go? Hey? Because here you are, in my flat, in my bed, alive, intact, and one hundred per cent not shot.
— Oh, yes, pardon me for overreacting. Clearly, everything’s fine so long as I’m not shot.
— I spared you. This means nothing?
— I don’t understand it. This entire mess. You. How can a situation mean something when I don’t understand it?
Kostya took a breath to snap back an answer. Another thought interrupted him. —Fucked in the mouth, the car!
— What car?
He wrenched open the closet doors, shook uniform pieces off hangers onto the bed, and unfastened his trousers. —Even here, it must be the British way or no way at all, yes? A problem, a country, a people do not even exist unless a Britisher builds an empire around them, exploits them, and then says, ‘Oh, dear me, I do not understand them.’
She kept her eyes closed as he dressed. —The British have not built an empire around the USSR.
— Then what are you doing in India?
— What? You’ve got the biggest land mass in the world. What are you Russians so afraid of?
— Invasion. Aren’t you, on your little island? Open your eyes.
He stood over her, an NKVD officer once more, flawed only by a wrinkled collar and a missing cap. Then he touched her shoulder. —Look, I want to help you. I’ll get your papers, and then we’ll figure out what to do with you. But stay here until I get back. The bathroom’s just down the hall to your right, and the mineral water’s there on the bedside table. Promise me you won’t leave. Please. It’s much too dangerous to go outside without papers. I’ll get them, I swear to you. Just stay here.
— I—
— Please!
She studied him. —Open the window? Just for air?
He did this. —Stay in bed, out of sight of the window, yes?
She nodded.
He tugged on his cap. —I won’t be long.
A long day in the garden always soothed Arkady. He wore his ragged gardening clothes, and he’d not bothered to shave. Bringing shrubs back to life after winter, planting annuals, tending perennials: it all earned him some ribbing from his colleagues. Arkady only nodded when teased, and he relished the satisfaction of dirty hands, dirty with life.
His garden also allowed for disposal of anything awkward left behind at a party. He’d buried clothing in the larger garden behind the house, many pieces over the years, near a specific hedge. The bones of one accident lay buried beneath an iris bed. Other accidents had gone to the morgue. Only three in total over all those years, good odds, really. The bones beneath the irises belonged to a young woman he’d picked up for an autumn dessert party, many years ago. He got her to the house before any other guests arrived. She fought back, refused a drink, ran to a window and beat on the glass, and then, worst of all, said she recognized Arkady from a visit to her uncle’s office at Lubyanka.
Arkady struck her head with the butt of his Nagant — too hard, he’d discovered an hour later, when he unlocked the little closet in the basement to check on her. He considered faking a crime scene in an alley, a common tactic, but he respected his colleagues too much to waste their time. So after the party that night, in the small hours, cursing the girl’s uncle and his callous disregard for her innocence — letting a girl see the inside of Lubyanka like that, really — Arkady buried the body in a wild patch of his back garden. The following day, he planted iris bulbs there. Each spring these perennials bloomed anew, fragrant and beautiful.
Arkady suffered recurring dreams in which he must explain flowers strewn on his Lubyanka desk as Kostya stood in the office doorway, hesitant, amber worry beads dangling from his hand. Sometimes Misha stood behind him, grinning.
Refusing to consider the iris bed, Arkady reminded himself that Kostya, at least, had not attended that particular party, being too young and sent to spend the night at Vadym’s. These days, Arkady pretended to be irritated when Kostya missed a party, and he would remind Kostya of all his adolescent pleas to be invited. In truth, Arkady felt relieved when Kostya declined. I’ve tainted him enough.
Arkady had scheduled last night’s party knowing Kostya had to work early the next day and so would not come.
Then, schedules changed.
Captain Boris Aleksandrovich Kuznets, new to Moscow and still finding his way around, had asked Major Arkady Dmitrievich Balakirev about his rumoured parties. Arkady had long decided on the best way to deflect any implied threat from another officer, a threat to report these parties: an invitation. Arkady would then observe the new man’s reactions at the party and decide from there whether to invite him again or blackmail him into silence. —Yes, Comrade Captain, a very selective list of guests.
— How might one get added to such a list?
— I put you there. Consider it done.
— Thank you, thank you, that’s very kind. Call me Boris Alek-sandrovich, and forgive my asking, Arkady Dmitrievich, but what do you do about noise?
Arkady almost wrinkled his nose at the presumption. As the older man and senior officer, Arkady should be the one to set the level of formality, not Boris. —All taken care of, Boris Aleksandrovich. A private house and, for the excitable girls, supplements.
— Sometimes the noise is the best part.
— Too much noise, and the neighbours might call the police, and what a pretty fix that would be.
Both men had laughed. Then Boris explained that his protégé, Yury Stepanov, could obtain supplements, good ones, to ensure not just compliance but amnesia. Arkady remembered Yury from Kostya’s adolescence and time in NKVD school, how Yury had trailed Kostya and Misha with something like murder in his eyes, something like love.
Ah yes, such fine supplements Yury had fetched. Party guests had complained that the pastries kept falling asleep. Arkady interrupted Yury in his abuse of a frizzy-haired blonde to ask the little sycophant if he’d perhaps supplied a general anaesthetic? Tugging up his galife pants, Yury spat on the unresponsive woman and murmured about the experimental and therefore perhaps unpredictable nature of the medications at Laboratory of Special Purpose Number Two.
Arkady almost struck him. —Do you even know what they’re doing at Special Two?
— Indeed I do, Comrade Major. Because I supervise. While also making time to assist at Lubyanka.
Finding Boris with another blonde one who bore a great resemblance to the woman Yury had spat on, sisters perhaps, Arkady almost complained, almost spewed his fury with Yury’s incompetence, almost said that Misha and Kostya had been correct to treat Yury like a worm.
Instead, he asked Boris to take his pastry’s pulse.
— She’s fine. Just dozy.
— Finish up. We need to get rid of them.
Boris and Arkady rallied the men, bundled the women into the cars, and instructed the younger men to drop the women close to where they’d found them. Or in a park, whatever worked, just not too many together. Clumps of unconscious young women would alarm passersby.