— What invitation?
— Ah. Kostya forgot to tell you.
Arkady clicked his tongue and looked to the sky. —That boy will be the death of me.
Vadym chuckled. —Such a boy, such a remarkable boy, thirty-two years old.
— Fine, fine, he’s a grown man. It hardly means I’ll ever stop worrying about him. Do you know where he was last night?
— His bed, I hope.
— Poligon duty.
— Kostya?
Arkady nodded.
Vadym recalled his own days in the civil war as a Red Army executioner. He’d shot deserters. He’d hunted them, too, and often, as the deserters passed their final night, he sat up with them. Vadym considered it a duty, a deathbed vigil. Sometimes deserters confessed to guilt and shame. Sometimes they remained sullen, or defiant. Sometimes they shook. Boys, many of them, fifteen, sixteen. So many boys. At dawn, he shot them, in the head. —Wet work. Still, it must be done.
— Must be done, Dima, but by a man like him? It’s artless slaughter. Any knuckle-dragging ape can shoot someone in the head.
Vadym changed his stride to imitate a gorilla’s.
Arkady almost laughed. —I didn’t mean you, Dima. I’m sorry. I’m not…we all shoot…I can’t think straight. Some days, I hate humanity.
— Only some days?
— When we see something strong and beautiful, we want either to possess it or destroy it. Kuznets rides my back, thinks he’s sniffed out treachery. Then he spots Kostya, who’s one of our best officers, and he recognizes that, so boom, he must either possess Kostya or destroy him.
— Arkasha…
Arkady shut his eyes. The diminutive’s sting of affection: only Vadym called him Arkasha, and then in moments so scarce they hurt. —And one reason Kuznets would possess or destroy Kostya is just to make a little sideshow as he pursues me, because I once said good things about…a man who’s no longer working. Of course, I said good things about him. He was the fucking chief.
They walked in silence for several minutes.
Vadym took a key from his pocket and passed it to Arkady. —Kostya was asleep when I dropped by with mushrooms.
— Good. He needs the rest. And thank you for checking on him. He’s been avoiding me. Mushrooms?
— At the fruit market where I found the lemons. Did I tell you about the lemons?
— Lemons are only good for keeping cats out of the flowerbed.
— The rest of us like them. Remember the first time we took the boys mushroom hunting, and I cooked mushroom soup in the woods? Misha turned up his nose, and Kostya stole Misha’s bowl and licked it clean.
Pocketing the key, Arkady chuckled. —Yes, I remember that. Was he civil when you woke him?
Delighted to see his friend laugh, Vadym also laughed. —I let him sleep. I left the mushrooms with his girlfriend.
— What?
Vadym gazed up at St Basil’s, at the beautiful domes he’d viewed, what, thousands of times? He sighed. —Ah. He’s not told you. Now I have embarrassed you both, yes?
— A girlfriend? Living in the flat?
— Calm down. He should have married long ago.
Arkady softened his voice. —I’m worried about the propiska regulations, that’s all. How did he get her registered to live there so fast?
— Well, I’m not about to start an official inquiry.
— What does she look like?
Vadym thought about it. —Petite, dark curly hair, not his type at all.
— And her name?
— Solovyova, Nadezhda Ivanovna Solovyova. From Leningrad, maybe? Her speech is a touch old-fashioned, now that I think on it, a smack of the aristocrat. She’s lovely. I’m quite charmed.
— I can tell.
— She’ll be good for him, if he holds onto her. Not got much of a record with women, our Kostya. That last girlfriend: Sofia, yes? She didn’t last long.
— A complete whore. I could see that the moment I met her.
This time, Vadym looked to the sky. Sofia, like Yulia, Tatiana, Sonja, and the others, would not, or could not, withstand the words and scrutiny of Arkady Balakirev. —When will you learn to trust Kostya? He won’t get entangled with a whore, complete or otherwise. He’s not that stupid.
Breathing hard, Arkady slowed his stride. —Fine words from a man who never got married.
— I can’t burden a wife with the work I’ve done and must yet do.
— Neither can I. So I serve my needs as they arise.
Vadym gave him a long look, long enough to lose sight of the street and stumble.
Arkady grabbed his arm, kept him from falling. —We should get back.
— Promise me you’ll consider Kostya’s feelings and be gentle with this one? Civil, at least?
— I am always civil.
— No, you’re an iron-bound old Chekist who treats every encounter as an interrogation.
Arkady looked at Vadym in some confusion and hurt. —I do no such thing.
— You just did it to me.
Arkady ignored that. —If she’s worthy of him, if she truly loves him, then she’ll not be frightened off by me.
Neither man spoke again until they’d reached the Lubyanka doors.
Vadym looked Arkady up and down. —Are you sure you’re all right?
Face sweaty and pale, Arkady nodded. —Never better.
— I’ll reschedule supper, yes?
— That would be best.
Emerging from the shadows by the door, Efim almost dropped his large burden and so embraced it the harder. An electrical cord trailed behind him, plug knocking the floor, as he strode toward the flat’s kitchen.
Kostya looked up from the cutlery drawer; he seemed to be counting.
Efim made it sound like a joke. —Are we missing a knife?
— No. What the hell have you got there?
— A samovar.
Kostya took it from Efim’s arms and laid it on a kitchen counter. —I’d guessed that much. Where did you get it?
— The lab. I found it alone in a hallway just outside my office, toppled over on the floor next to the chair where the radio sits. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this in operation. We’ve got a new one at the lab, massive thing, an absolute beast.
— So you stole this one.
— After working many hours of overtime, I contributed to a more just society and picked up rubbish from the floor. Or, if you prefer, I liberated it from the tyranny of sanitation engineers.
Kostya stared at him for a moment. Efim stared back. Then they both snorted and laughed.
The samovar squeaked as it tilted to one side.
Efim frowned. —Just needs a little support at the base. Some folded newsprint might do it. Ah, Nadezhda Ivanovna. You wanted tea earlier.
Kostya looked at Temerity. —You never told me that.
Efim kept his face neutral. Not very observant for a secret policeman, are you? —Now you may have such tea as you please.
Wondering why Efim seemed to be needling Kostya, Temerity smiled. This womb-shaped machine, while smaller than the one at the communal kitchen in Hotel Lux, still baffled her. Surely, she could conquer it. —It’s beautiful.
Kostya ran his fingers over the samovar’s dim brass. —It needs a good polish.
Efim looked around for the best outlet. —Nikto, have we got any tea?
Kostya already strode for the telephone. —No, but I know where to find some.
Temerity studied the samovar. —Will it work?
— Only one way to find out.
Connected to Arkady’s house, Kostya listened to the telephone ring and ring and ring. He ended the call and returned to the kitchen, where Efim and Temerity tested the samovar’s balance on a narrow strip of counter near an outlet. —I’ll be about an hour.