“I want to examine the facility,” he told the woman.
“All of it?” she asked.
Komarov nodded.
“I’d prefer the manager to be here.”
“So would I. But he isn’t, and we don’t have all day. So…”
She hesitated, failed to find a counterargument, and reached for a heavy bunch of iron keys.
“They’re locked in,” Komarov murmured as they crossed the hall. It wasn’t a question.
“Of course.”
“For how long each day?” he asked as they ascended the staircase.
“All but an hour. Each child is allowed a full hour’s exercise.”
“Like a prison,” Komarov said blithely.
The look on her face suggested she didn’t know how to take that comment. Most people would have considered it a statement of disapproval. But from a high-ranking Chekist? “We don’t have the staff to offer any more,” she said—unable was always a better excuse than unwilling. “If we let them out without sufficient supervision, they’d just disappear. And you’d have more gangs on the street to deal with.”
She unlocked the first door and stood aside for him to enter. About twenty girls, ranging in age from around seven to around fifteen, almost leaped to their feet. Most had been sitting behind a bewildering variety of prewar sewing machines; the others had also been working on textiles in one way or another. An older girl had been sitting and facing the rest, an exercise book open in front of her. The smile she gave Komarov was about as genuine as a nine-ruble note. When he reached for the exercise book, she took an involuntary step backward.
The book contained the record of each girl’s work, the jobs she had done and the time it had taken.
Komarov placed it back on the desk, apologized for the interruption, and walked out onto the landing.
“The other rooms are no different,” the woman told him.
“Show me.”
There were three of them, huge bedrooms once, their intricate cornices all that was left of the life that the revolution had brought to an end. The girls were all doing much the same work as the ones in the first room.
“Is that it?” Komarov asked as they headed back down the staircase. He could imagine the previous owners on the lower steps, welcoming the guests in all their finery.
“There’s a laundry in the basement,” the woman admitted.
“Show me.”
It was damp and poorly lit, the stove apparently unused. The girls stood there and blinked at him, pale bare feet on the dark stone floor. It was like something out of Dickens, Komarov thought.
“Where do they sleep?” he asked as they climbed back up the stairs.
There was a dormitory out back. It had once been a stables, and each stall was fitted with three tiers of roughly built bunk beds. The small office next door, which had presumably belonged to the estate manager, was still in use, a table and chair by the only window, a bed that must have come from the house taking up most of the room.
“Who sleeps here?” Komarov asked.
“No one. Well, not on a regular basis. The manager sometimes spends the night here when he has a lot of paper work. At least, that’s what he told me,” she added, seeing the expression on Komarov’s face.
“How many staff are here at night?” he asked.
“Usually three or four, I think. I always go home.”
“How many women?”
“None,” she said, looking more anxious.
Komarov ran a hand through his greying hair. “Where does the manager live?”
“In Yauzskaya. At seventeen Mashkov Lane.”
They walked back around to the front of the house, where his men were still patiently waiting. He gave the address to the nearest pair, told them to pick the man up and take him straight to the holding cells on Bolshaya Lubyanka. “I need to use your telephone,” he told the woman. “In private,” he added when they reached her office door.
As he waited for the exchange to connect him with the Zhenotdel offices, he wondered if there was a more appropriate organization he should be calling, but couldn’t think of one. It was intelligent females he needed, and who better to supply them than the women’s department?
The woman he spoke to took some persuading. “The Cheka wants to borrow two of our workers for help with interrogations?” she asked disbelievingly, in an accent that Komarov couldn’t quite place.
“Not interrogating, questioning. We need to question a lot of young girls—”
“What crime have they committed?”
“None. If crimes have been committed, they are the victims. And the crimes will have been committed by men. In such circumstances, using men to question the girls seems singularly inappropriate.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” the woman said, sounding slightly mollified. “But is there no one else? We really have no one to spare today.”
“I’m open to suggestions.”
The woman was silent for a moment. “Are there no women in the Chekas?” she asked.
“There are a few. But none I know of who could set these girls at ease.”
“Oh, very well. I will come myself and bring a colleague if I can find one. Where are you?”
He told her.
“But that’s miles away.”
“I can have a car pick you up in half an hour.”
“Oh. All right. You know the address?”
“I do.”
Komarov smiled as he hung up the receiver. Outside, he gave the other two the Zhenotdel address and watched their Russo-Balt head off toward the city center, trailing a cloud of exhaust in the frigid air. After giving the manager’s assistant her office back, he found a seat in one of the old reception rooms and stared at the discolored shapes on the wall where paintings and mirrors had hung.
He had only an hour to wait. Hearing the car arrive, he studied the passengers through the window. There were two of them, one short and slightly stocky with medium-length blonde hair and a pretty face, the other slimmer, taller, with dark reddish hair and a pale-skinned face that didn’t look Russian. Both were wearing practical clothes and Zhenotdel red scarfs around their necks.
He went outside to meet them. “I’m Yuri Komarov, deputy chairman of the M-Cheka,” he said, offering his hand to each woman in turn. Up close, he recognized the taller of the two, an American comrade who’d crossed his path several years before. Which explained the accent on the phone.
The other woman introduced herself as Comrade Zenzinova. “And this is Comrade Piatakova.”
“We’ve met before,” Komarov said with a smile. He had questioned her twice in the summer of 1918. On the first occasion, it had been her relationship with the renegade Socialist Revolutionary Maria Spiridonova that had brought her to the Cheka’s attention. On the second, it had been an informer’s report of her contact with a foreign agent. In both instances she, like so many others back in those days, had received the benefit of any doubts. And apparently deserved them, given that three years later she was still devoting her life to a foreign revolution.
“I remember,” she said. “My name was Hanley back then.”
“Well, thank you for coming,” Komarov said. “Now let me explain the situation. This is a home for female waifs and strays. I assume it was set up by the party, but I rather doubt there’s been any political oversight. From what I’ve seen, it’s obvious that the girls are being exploited, and that a great deal needs to be done to improve the conditions. I have no evidence of worse, but I strongly suspect it…”