‘Who?’ said Lom. ‘Who did that?’
‘What difference does it make?’ said Elena. ‘Police. Militia. Gendarmes. Army. What’s the difference? Uniforms did it. And it’ll be worse now. Much worse.’
‘Why?’
She stood up and went across to the sideboard, took a piece of paper from a drawer and shoved them across the table towards him.
‘See this? Look at this.’
‘Colloquium Communiqué No. 3’. Its corners were torn as if it had been ripped off a notice board or a telegraph pole.
Men and women of the Vlast!
Again the counter-revolution has raised its criminal head. Revanchists are mobilising their forces to crush us. The bloodstained pogrom-mongers, having slaughtered our beloved Novozhd, intend to cause more killing and terror in the streets of Mirgorod! They have deluded the minds of certain weaker elements within our army and navy and betrayed the heroic sons and daughters to the Archipelago. Staunch resistance is needed. Now is the time for action and clear-eyed sacrifice.
Justified by angels, the Colloquium for the Protection of Citizens and the Vlast agrees to take upon itself the defence of Perpetual Revolution. The Administrative Government of the CPCV is hereby declared.
People of the Lezarye cannot be citizens of the Vlast. They have no rights in law.
It was signed with four names. Dukhonin. Khazar. Chazia. Fohn.
‘See?’ said Elena Cornelius. ‘They’re blaming us for the death of the Novozhd. They’ll come for us all. No rights in law. You know what that means? It means anyone can do anything to us. Put us out of our houses. Loot our shops. Kill us, kill our children. Any time they want to, any time at all, and no police to protect us. The police are for citizens.
‘And that is not all. Look at what happened to the men at the Saltworks Foundry. They took them all, hundreds of men, and their families. All of them.’
‘Took them?’ said Lom. ‘Took them where?’
‘Who knows? The Saltworks Foundry was the first. They come for more every day–whole factories and whole streets every time. They put them on trains and we never see them again. One day they will come here. It is only a matter of time. You should run, Maroussia. Get away from the city while you can. Don’t tell me what trouble you’re in, it doesn’t matter. If the Vlast wants to kill you, then they will kill you. You have to get far, far away from here.’ She looked at Lom. ‘Take her away,’ she said. ‘If you are her friend, get her out of Mirgorod. Go to the exclave. Go to the ice. Go to the forest. Find a ship to the Archipelago. Go anywhere. There’s nothing to keep you here. You should run.’
‘No,’ said Maroussia. ‘I’m not going to run.’
30
Chazia left General Secretary Steopan Dukhonin alone for most of the night in the interrogation room where Bez Nichevoi had put him. Let him stew. Let him think. Let him wonder. She had other work to do. And she wanted to prepare for the interview: get the facts and figures straight in her head. Dukhonin was a sly little shit, but she would skewer him. She was going to skewer them all one by one: Dukhonin, Khazar, Fohn, all the vicious, patronising, conspiring little men who thought they could use her and keep power for themselves. The men who did not know her and did not see who she was. She would start with Dukhonin. Industrious, cautious, greedy, tiny, frightened Dukhonin. He was the worst. Start with him.
When she went down for him he was sitting at the table in his shirt and carpet slippers. The skin of his face was grey and patched with sparse white stubble. He smelled faintly of urine.
‘Lavrentina, what the fuck…’ he said. ‘What the fuck is this? Am I arrested? That… that thing of yours killed my people. My fucking housekeeper! Fohn will destroy you for this. Destroy you!’
His small watery eyes glared at her, sour with fear. His thin little face was tight and full of bone. Chazia sat down across the table from him.
‘We need a little talk, Steopan Vadimovich,’ she said. ‘Just a little talk.’
‘You want to talk, make a fucking appointment.’
‘Let’s start with the steel from Schentz.’
‘Does Fohn know I’m here?’ said Dukhonin. ‘He doesn’t, does he? You’re finished, Lavrentina. You’re nothing. We should never have let you in. I told Fohn… I told him you were—’
‘Fohn?’ said Chazia. ‘What does Fohn matter? Look around you, Steopan. Where is Fohn? Is he here?’
‘You’ve overreached yourself, Lavrentina. You’re dead. Finished. What is this situation? It is preposterous, that’s what it is. I am the General Secretary. I am one of the Four. You don’t question me and I certainly don’t fucking answer.’ He stood up. ‘I’m going home and you’re fucking dead.’
‘The steel, Steopan. Tell me about the steel from Schentz. The Mirskov Foundry invoices the Treasury for forty million roubles and the Treasury pays forty million. But only thirty-six million shows up in the Mirskov accounts.’
‘So? Is that it? You think you can bring me down with that? Ten per cent for my trouble? Who fucking cares? You’ve got shit. Big mistake. You’re dead.’
‘I’m not interested in the money, I’m interested in the steel. Forty million gets a lot of steel. How much steel is worth forty million?’
‘I don’t know. Who fucking cares?’
‘At a thousand roubles a ton that’s forty thousand tons. Minimum. A hundred tons per wagon. Four hundred wagons. If you moved it in one train it would be four miles long.’
Dukhonin shrugged.
‘So?’
‘So why send forty thousand tons of steel to Novaya Zima?’
‘Nothing to do with me. Why would I care where it went?’
‘But you ordered it, Steopan,’ said Chazia. ‘You did it. You. Forty thousand tons of steel to Novaya Zima and a nice four million roubles for you. It was the cut that got noticed, but as you say, so what? Still, I’m curious. I ask myself, why is Steopan Vadimovich sending so much steel to Novaya Zima? What is there at Novaya Zima? A shit-hole on an island in an icebound sea? Nothing is happening there. We’re losing a war, yet Steopan finds enough steel to make a thousand main battle tanks and sends it north-east to the edge of the ice?’
‘This is outside your sphere, Lavrentina,’ said Dukhonin. ‘Way outside. You shouldn’t be touching this. It’s serious stuff. Dangerous stuff. You need to back away.’
‘I made enquiries about Novaya Zima, Steopan. And what did I find? Nothing. Not a record of nothing, but no record. No file. An empty shelf where Novaya Zima should be. So I asked a different question. What else has my friend Steopan Vadimovich Dukhonin been buying with Treasury money? It wasn’t easy to track that either, but I found traces. Coal. Rare earths. Machinery. Small quantities of metals I’ve never heard of. Seventy tons–seventy tons–of reclaimed angel flesh. Every scrap of angel flesh that could be found in the Vlast. All arranged by Steopan Vadimovich Dukhonin, who incidentally takes his little ten per cent. And people too. Eighty thousand conscript labourers diverted from war work, all for Novaya Zima. You’re even taking them from here! From Mirgorod! So. Steopan. This is the question. What is happening at Novaya Zima?’
‘Nothing,’ said Dukhonin. He was confident now. The stupid man was confident. ‘Like you said. Nothing.’
Chazia smiled.
‘Actually, I considered that possibility. Maybe, I thought, it is all a scam. Paper transactions only. Money paid but nothing sent. Maybe Steopan’s little scheme is a big scheme. But no, the shipments are real, and they really go to Novaya Zima. So what happens when they get there?’