Elvira Baryakina - The Prince of the Soviets

Alov picked up the receiver. “Hello!”

It was Galina.

“I need to tell you something,” she said. “I’m not working for Klim Rogov anymore.”

“Did he throw you out?”

“No. It’s me. I don’t want to work for him.”

Alov was dumbstruck for a moment, amazed at Galina’s nerve.

“Listen, Pidge, you and I have got a job to do. What does it matter what you want or don’t want? You have your orders, and you follow them.”

But Galina did not seem to be listening. “If anything were to happen to me, would you look after Tata?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Why are you so jumpy? You know yourself anything could happen. I could be run over by a cab on the street tomorrow. I just want to know if you’d look after my child.”

“But Tata’s at boarding school now!”

“She didn’t like it there, and she came back.”

“You know as well as I do that I haven’t got space to put Tata up in my home.”

“Then she’ll have to go to an orphanage,” said Galina thoughtfully. “Just as I thought.”

“You’re fired!” Alov found himself blurting out to his own surprise. He slammed down the mouthpiece, not wishing to hear or say another word.

He was seething with rage. The cheek of it! A fine pair of princesses he had on his hands! One wouldn’t do her job, and the other thought she was too good for boarding school.

He called Diana Mikhailovna again.

“I’ve given the order for Comrade Dorina to be dismissed from her duties,” he told Diana Mikhailovna as she entered his office. “Take care of it for me, please, and ring the duty officers to let them know Dorina’s pass is no longer valid.”

Diana Mikhailovna gazed at Alov in wonder. She knew that Galina had once been his lover.

“So, you’re sacrificing her for our sake?”

Alov frowned. “I’m not sacrificing anybody. Off you go! Why are you breathing down my neck? Actually, wait a minute…. You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”

Diana Mikhailovna brought him a couple of her hand-rolled cigarettes, which she made herself using “medicinal” herbs.

Lighting one up, Alov immediately choked on the sweet, unfamiliar smoke.

He really had been a swine to dismiss Galina like that. But then again, he reasoned, she would have lost her job anyway on the 12th of November not only because of her gentry background and her nonpayment of trade union subscription fees but also because she was completely unfit for the job.

He remembered Drachenblut once telling him that by showing pity to weak people, you only encouraged degradation and social deterioration.

I’ve done what I can for Galina, he tried to reassure himself. It’s not my fault she’s so hopeless. And Tata can go back to the boarding school. What is this new fashion, anyway, of only doing what you want? If we all did as we liked, we’d never create socialism in this country.

6

Drachenblut summoned Alov to come to his office without delay.

He was sitting at his desk and kept putting his hands to his face as if checking to make sure everything was still in place. In front of him was a saucer piled with cigarette butts, a horrible travesty of a dinner plate.

“Today, we gave Oscar Reich ten thousand dollars expenses,” said Drachenblut in a queer voice. “And his wife has stolen the money and gone into hiding. What’s more, she smashed him over the head so hard that he ended up in hospital.”

Alov gasped. “Who is this woman?”

Drachenblut clenched his small, yellow fists. “That’s the point. Reich was fool enough to marry some imposter. He thought she was Baroness Bremer, but today, he found out that her name is actually Nina Kupina.”

“I know her!” cried Alov.

Drachenblut pointed at a folder on the desk in front of him. “I’ve been reading the file you started on her. Everything I’m telling you is a state secret, do you understand? If Yagoda knows we’ve lost a huge sum of money, he’ll eat us for breakfast. I asked you to come here because you know Kupina, and you’ve been keeping tabs on Klim Rogov, the only person who might have an idea where Kupina is. The police inspector spoke to a group of driving students who told him that Rogov and Kupina have been keeping very close company lately.”

Alov looked at his boss with a dazed expression. “So, what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to find Kupina. We can’t let our agents in on it. They’re all accountable to Yagoda, so we’ll have to do it ourselves. If we manage to get back that money she stole from Reich, then you’ve got yourself a room.”

“Who exposed Kupina, anyway?” Alov asked.

Drakhenblut sighed heavily. “Some woman. Reich met her on the street and didn’t even think to find out her name. If we could have found her, it would all have been a lot easier.”

Alov went out of the office, clutching the folder to his chest. I’m no detective, he thought. That isn’t my line at all.

But what if this really was his chance to get a room of his own? After all, miracles could happen. You wished passionately for something, and then some higher power came to meet you halfway.

He had to work out a plan of action. The first thing was to meet up with Klim Rogov, get him under surveillance again, and find out where he went and whom he met.

Alov was already regretting dismissing Galina. She might have come in useful after all.

Back in his office, he called her and asked her what she knew about Rogov’s relationship with Kupina.

“I told you back in the winter that Klim was interested in her,” she said in a dull voice.

“And that’s all?”

“Yes. Leave me alone now, could you? Please?”

It was no good relying on Galina, thought Alov. The fool of a woman really did not have what it took to work for the OGPU.

1

On the off chance, Klim decided to go out to Saltykovka. He prayed the Belovs might have some idea where Nina was hiding. But what if she had been arrested already?

The suburban train was packed with people traveling back out to their dachas outside Moscow. Jobbing laborers stood shoulder to shoulder with dairy women, rag merchants, and street peddlers. Above their heads bristled an array of implements: mops, shovels, and carrying poles.

Klim had to stand in the vestibule at the end of the car. He was next to a crowd of musicians who were traveling back from a wedding. They had had a couple of drinks and were delighted the train was too full to admit ticket inspectors.

“I’d like to give you all a tune on the fiddle,” said one of the musicians, a rough-looking man with blue eyes and a paper carnation stuck behind his ear. “But I’d only elbow someone in the face. Still, you got to admit, a tune helps a journey go quicker.”

“Give us a song then!” somebody shouted, and the fiddler began to croon in a thin voice:

“All I need to soothe my soul

Is some rubbing alcohol!

Ma and Pa, they both agree

Meths is what my body needs!”

The crowd roared with laughter.

It seemed to Klim that the train was hardly moving. He stood up on his tiptoes to see past the musicians’ heads and out of the window, but outside, it was raining hard. He could see nothing beyond the drops on the glass.

A moment later, the train drew to a halt.

“That’ll be on account of the Nizhny Novgorod express, the Blue Arrow,” the fiddler said. “We all have to wait while the top brass goes past.”

The tired crowd cursed the passengers on the Blue Arrow. It was generally agreed that shooting was too good for them.

The delay lasted one and a half hours, and by the time Klim reached Saltykovka, it was already dark.

An old man, who had traveled into the city to sell mushrooms, showed Klim the way to the Belovs’ dacha.

“Watch how you go though,” he said. “There are no walkways or street lights. Time was, we had wooden walkways, but they took ‘em for firewood when the Executive Committee passed a law against cutting down trees. And there’s been no paraffin for a year now.”

The warning was a timely one: as it was, Klim almost broke his neck crossing the deep ruts and potholes on the road.

Nina had told Klim that the Belovs had a special knock to the rhythm of the prerevolutionary anthem, “God Save the Tsar,” but Klim was so anxious that he forgot all about it.

There was no answer for a long time.

“Who’s there?” a woman’s voice asked warily from behind the gate.

“It’s me,” said Klim, and the gate flew open at once.

Nina came running out of the darkness and threw her arms around his neck. “So, you came! We thought it was the OGPU.”

Klim felt an incredible rush of relief. It was all too simple and miraculous to be true. He held Nina tightly in his arms and kissed her hair and her cheeks, murmuring over and over again the first thing that came into his head: “I thought I’d never find you… I didn’t know if you—”

Nina put her finger to her lips, and Klim realized that she had not told her hosts about the incident in the Red Army Club.

She introduced Klim to Countess Belov, a blonde, rather plump woman in a neat dress with a woolen shawl over her shoulders.

“It’s wonderful you’re here,” the countess said. “Come in and have some tea.”

The house turned out to be full of people. Besides the Belov family, their neighbors from nearby dachas were gathered around the samovar. Klim found himself in a world quite unlike Soviet Moscow. Here, the men were polite and chivalrous to the women, the young girls laughed and put their arms around each other’s waists, and the children were as excited about the new visitor as if he had been Santa Claus.