I said I didn’t know.
I noticed how the sleet ticked the sides of the ship, and Kastalsky stared into the fog. Finally he asked, ‘When did you see him last?’
I told him it was a few weeks, and I expected that any moment now, any moment he’d invite me on board so I could warm up and explain.
Then the fog closed over Kastalsky, and his slow footsteps receded. I called his name, over and over, but my voice cracked out, and the docks were noisy. Even Shlykov lost sight of me. ‘Konstantin, are you there? Are you still there? Take care, boy.’ A dockworker chased me away, threatened to beat me with his cargo hook, and then he called me a bezprizornik. Shlykov likely heard it. I felt my face burn, and then I leapt at the dockworker. If I’d had a knife, I’d have stabbed him. He threw me off like a rag. I got to my feet and made my way through the fog. I managed to beg a few cigarettes. The man who gave me the cigarettes lit the first one for me, and I lit the next from the embers of that one. Then I found myself at my grandfather’s house once more, and maybe this time I could explain how the house belonged to Dr. Semyon Mikhailovich Berendei.
I should have stalked them better. I should have watched the house and learned the men’s patterns so I’d know when they might be absent. I knocked and knocked on the back door and pleaded to be let in. Then I smelled the roasting pork. Where in hell had they gotten pork? It didn’t matter. My mouth filled with froth, and when I swallowed it, I almost vomited.
The cook dragged me inside and let me sit on a wooden stool, the one my grandfather used when he wanted to reach a book on a high shelf. I saw the woven rug and the dark spots on the beauty wall where the ikons and my mother’s watercolours once hung. The cook filled my pockets with bread and bits of pork and told me to let it cool. I begged her to let me stay.
The men heard us. They ran into the kitchen. The father told his sons to get me out, and they picked me up, one on each side, and they threw me outside. I landed on stones and ice. I scrambled to get back up, and the two sons were staring at me, eyes huge, and their father picked up a bucket. It was wastewater from the kitchen. We had indoor plumbing in that house, so it could have been worse. Anyway, he drenched me with it, and warned me again to stay down. This time I did, and the sleet turned to snow. The soaking took the fight from me, and it seemed easier to give in. The cold started to change, and soon I felt warm. A boot nudged my ribs, very gentle. Then a hand shook my shoulder, and I cried out for whomever it was to get the hell away from me. I rubbed ice from my eyes and got them open, and I saw the boots, the hem of a long black leather coat layered under a shorter coat of fur, the amber worry beads dangling from the belt, and the peaked cap.
A Chekist. He had a beard like Lenin’s, and I was stupid and sleepy now with the cold, so I thought he was Lenin, bigger than I’d imagined from the photographs, and he’d come to tuck me into bed. The beads clicked, and the Chekist reached out his hand. ‘Get up,’ he said. I didn’t take his hand. I told him to leave me alone and let me sleep. He hauled me up to my feet. ‘You will get up,’ he said, and that’s when I called him a son of a syphilitic bitch in four languages. He stared at me a moment, and then he laughed. He took a flask from his coat and held it out. It was vodka. I choked on it. He took it away, and he said, ‘I am Balakirev of the Cheka, and you will come with me.’ I thought he would put me in jail, but he saved me. By his own free will, he saved me.
Temerity studied Kostya through whorls of cigarette smoke. —It reminds me of another story.
Kostya smirked. —When Baba Yaga smells the Russian hero. She complains of it, and then she asks, ‘Are you here of your own free will, or twice as much by compulsion?’
— Is it true?
— Baba Yaga?
— You.
He reached over and stroked her hand the same way she had stroked his. —I’m here, aren’t I? And I saved you. How the hell did you even get to that party?
— I don’t know.
— Please don’t cry.
She sniffed back tears. —I’m not crying. There were two of them. Armed. Not in uniform.
— Did they show identification?
Temerity shook her head. —I flipped one of them before I saw the Nagant. Jiu-jutsu.
Kostya stared at her a moment, then laughed. —And you wonder why I love you.
— You hardly know me.
— Sometimes, Nadia, it might be a person, or an idea, or, I don’t know, a scrap of cloth, but what the cloth means, or even the existence of the scrap and how it came about: it’s precious. To be cherished. Worth saving. Look, I’ve participated in those parties. I’ve chosen a woman and taken her. I’m not proud of that. But you, first in Spain, then in Lubyanka, finally at that party, three times, Nadia, three impossible times. Not only are you something to cherish, but you are meant to be cherished. You are meant to be here, and I am meant to save you, just as Arkady Dmitrievich was meant to be in Odessa and save me.
She shut her eyes. —Twice as much by compulsion.
— Do you believe me yet?
When she opened her eyes, tears fell, and she laughed, a hard and hollow laugh. —Believe you about what?
— That I won’t hurt you. Think, woman. You kneed me in the balls, and I didn’t strike you back, and believe me, I wanted to. Everything I’ve told you is a weapon you can hurl back at me. You tell another officer even half of it, and I’ll be arrested in less time that it takes to say my name. In Lubyanka, we’ve got these special cells. The floors are sloped towards a grated drain. The walls above the drains are battered and pocked. We’ve got a spigot and a hose in the corridor outside. If I fuck up, that’s where I die. And yet here I am, Senior Lieutenant Nikto of the NKVD, who wants to save a British spy.
— I’m not—
— You are, and if my colleagues knock on the door—
— Then I’m dead.
— Interrogated, brutalized, raped, and then yes, dead. And I’ll go with you.
She sneered. —How gallant.
— No. At gunpoint.
She said nothing.
Kostya stayed close, kept his voice low. —The good doctor will be home soon enough. You need to convince him that you want to be here, that you’re fond of me. At least a little. I can sleep on the bedroom floor, but we must both sleep in the bedroom.
Temerity shut her eyes. Your duty at all times…
Eyes still closed, she extended her hand for him to shake. —Fine.
Instead, once more, he kissed it.
Vadym and Arkady strolled Red Square. Both in uniform, both on duty, they’d claimed old Chekists’ privilege and announced to their respective department secretaries a need for fresh air. Vadym had appeared at Arkady’s office door, and Arkady, already too distracted to focus on a report from Boris Kuznets on Laboratory of Special Purpose Number Two, had smiled in relief.
Vadym struggled to remember the last time he saw Arkady smile.
Outside, as they kept their voices low and their faces calm, Arkady with less success, Vadym addressed his old friend with his usual term of endearment. —You grumpy old goat. You snubbed me. The invitation to my flat for supper.