The dresser between the Alovs’ corner and the rest of the room did not count as a genuine wall.

Alov dreamed of one thing above all else—a room of his own. One day, he had been present during the interrogation of a biology professor who had come out with a comment that had left a deep impression on Alov. The professor had argued that the surest way to make people unhappy was to cramp them together and leave them no way out.

“You’ve packed us into crowded trams and communal apartments,” the professor had harangued his interrogators. “And you know what will happen now, don’t you? All-out war when neighbor fights against neighbor for living space—the same way as animals fight for their territory.”

He’s right. That’s exactly how it is, Alov had thought. Though it had not stopped him leafing through the professor’s personal file, which contained a note of his address. Alov had known that this counter-revolutionary would be sent off to the camps and was wondering who would get their hands on the professor’s accommodation.

Alov often dreamed that he and Dunya had got a permit for a room of their own, and he told her of these dreams in which they would pack their belongings into pillowcases, say goodbye to Valakhov, and set off by tram to their new house.

He imagined having a place of his own with tall windows, a stove, and an extra big windowsill. And underneath it, three shelves, every one of them belonging to the Alovs.

Listening to him, Dunya always laughed. “Stop your nonsense! It’ll never happen.”

But Alov’s idea to send Galina with Seibert had borne fruit: she had got hold of information that might win him not only a room but also a promotion. Alov was sure his chief would snap up the story and make something big of it.

Once, when they had been drinking, Drachenblut had told Alov about Stalin whom he frequently visited in the Kremlin.

Stalin had never been sociable, but he had now become a complete hermit, surrounded by “courtiers” who brought him information about ill-wishers both within and without his circle. He was obsessed with coded messages and secret files and demanded absolute vigilance from his subordinates.

The craze for exposing enemies had spread like wildfire through the whole of Soviet society. For anyone wishing to gain promotion at work, it was essential to display vigilance. This was what lay behind the mass purges and political repressions—bureaucrats were doing their best to advance through the ranks while at the same time seizing the chance to remove competitors.

As might be expected, these workplace battles were most brutal inside the OGPU. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the chairman of the organization, Menzhinsky, was constantly ill, and his two deputies, Drachenblut and Yagoda, were engaged in a deadly struggle for the place of his successor.

Yagoda had staked his efforts on unmasking conspiracies within the USSR—he had personally masterminded the Shakhty Trial. Drachenblut, on the other hand, was trying to curry favor through operations abroad, which allowed him to procure not only valuable information but also foreign currency. But he was also obliged to expose opponents to the regime—those who did not report on counter-revolutionary plots could be accused either of trying to cover up for the enemies of the state or simply failing to carry out their work properly.

Alov thought he held a trump card in his hands. But when, on the previous day, he had presented his supervisor with Galina’s denunciation (altered slightly so that it would read more convincingly), Drachenblut merely gave it a cursory glance and told Alov to come in again the following day.

Though surprised, Alov decided to think nothing of it. Drachenblut was flesh and blood after all, and he too needed to rest from his duties occasionally.

As for the question of whether Seibert was actually guilty of conspiracy, this did not bother Alov in the slightest. Guilt was determined not by the actions of a given “customer” but by the potential threat he represented. If foreign journalists were given free rein, they would not hesitate to harm the USSR in word and deed. There was no sense in going too soft on them.

2

Drachenblut took off his glasses and looked sharply at Alov.

“You claim that Seibert set up an espionage ring to intercept radio communications?” he asked.

Alov nodded readily. “That’s right.”

“Nonsense. Any radio enthusiast can ‘intercept’ messages in just the way you suggest. What else do we have?”

Drachenblut bent his head over the paper, found the place he was looking for, and began to read aloud:

“In order to discredit the USSR, Seibert arranged the dispatch of warships from Murmansk, charging them with the mission of destroying the icebreaker Krasin and the Soviet Arctic heroes on board as well as the Italian airmen.”

Alov felt an unpleasant gnawing sensation in his chest. Drachenblut did not seem very happy with the report at all. But why not? He had instructed all his subordinates to sniff out some serious case for him in whatever way they could.

“We have been in contact with Murmansk,” Alov said hoarsely. “The duty officer received a telegram from Moscow and thought it came from the Central Committee rather than the Central Telegraph Office. He reported to his superiors, and the port was put on a state of alert—”

“There are no warships in Murmansk,” said Drachenblut in an expressionless voice. “During the war, it was used for delivering supplies from the Allies, but now, it is a small commercial port. Who could even be put on a state of alert in Murmansk? The local fishermen?”

Alov began to cough as he always did when agitated. His lungs almost burst with the effort.

Drachenblut poured him some water from a decanter on his desk.

“I understand perfectly what you mean,” said Alov as soon as he got his breath back. “But if we don’t act on this information, there could be serious consequences for us.”

“What consequences?” Drachenblut demanded. “Don’t take me for a fool.”

“The duty officer from Murmansk will be frightened out of his wits by now. Like as not, he’ll go to the local OGPU office to make a confession of guilt. Then they’ll question him about the telephone conversations, there will be an investigation, and the case will be sent straight to the top—to Yagoda. When he finds out that Seibert was under our jurisdiction, he will almost certainly ask, ‘Why did Comrade Drachenblut not show sufficient vigilance?’”

“Do you think anyone will listen to him?” Drachenblut asked, raising his voice. “Yagoda’s a liar! He writes on all his forms that he joined the Bolsheviks in 1907. It’s not true! He’s nothing more than a common criminal! He only joined us to rob and kill with impunity!”

Alov’s shot had hit home. Drachenblut, an idealist prepared to sacrifice his own and everybody else’s life for the world revolution, now felt that the old Bolshevik guard was giving way to pressure from cynical careerists like Yagoda.

“We can’t arrest Seibert,” said Drachenblut with a frown. “He’s almost a national hero in Germany, and we have to organize timber shipments to the West.”

Alov was still hoping to profit from Galina’s report. “We can’t let this affair with Seibert go unpunished!”

But Drachenblut was no longer listening to him.

“If we so much as touch a hair on Seibert’s head,” he said, “there’ll be a press scandal, and that might jeopardize our deal. I think we should deport him. As long as he’s out of the country, we won’t have a problem. And we’ll punish those blockheads in Murmansk to show that we were not keeping our powder dry.”

Alov drooped. The deportation of a German citizen was not enough to get him an apartment.

“Comrade Drachenblut,” he began, “I’ve already talked to you several times about the situation with my accommodation—”

“It’s good for OGPU agents to be cold and hungry,” said Drachenblut with a smirk. “It keeps them on their toes. Bring me something worthwhile, and then you’ll get a room.”

3

It was chaos in the former Neapolitan Café—Seibert was packing together all his Moscow belongings. Lieschen’s wails issued from the bedroom. The news that her employer was going and leaving her behind boded no good for her whatsoever.

Seibert was standing on a chair, taking the pictures down from the wall.

“Please, Lieschen, calm down!” he yelled. “Or I’ll do something I regret, so help me, God!”

Klim was sitting in an armchair opposite the window, which was already being stripped of its curtains.

“So, you still haven’t worked out why they’re deporting you?” he asked.

Seibert jumped to the floor and yanked out a drawer from the chest so hard that it came loose from its runners, scattering letters, scissors, and broken pencils all over the carpet.

“In this country, they can deport whomever they like for whatever they like,” Seibert said. “I simply had a call from the Commissariat of Foreign Affairs instructing me very politely to leave the Soviet Union.” He pointed a finger toward the bedroom. “It’s her I feel sorry for!”

Seibert picked up a piece of notepaper from the floor and handed it to Klim.

“I didn’t ask you to come here for nothing, you know. These people are in trouble. If you don’t help them, they’re done for.”

“Who?” asked Klim.

“Have you ever heard of the Volga Germans?” Seibert asked. “Back in her day, Catherine the Great invited German peasants who had suffered from the Seven Years’ War to come and settle in Russia. In the course of a hundred and fifty years, they grew wealthy, built up a number of villages near Saratov, and even started their own companies.”