Anatoly looked up, his eyes widening a fraction. It took him a moment before his sleep-deprived brain recognized the man seated beside him. This was the man who’d caught him. This was the man who’d saved his life. Drowsy, his words slurred, he said as though he’d been drugged.
— The children? Mikhail’s daughters? Where are they now?
— They’ve been placed in an orphanage. They’re safe.
An orphanage — was that meant as a joke, was that part of this punishment? No, this man wouldn’t make a joke. He was a believer.
— Have you ever been to an orphanage?
— No.
— The girls would’ve had a better chance of surviving if you’d left them on their own.
— The State is looking after them now.
To Leo’s surprise the prisoner reached up and, with his wrists still bound, felt his brow. The junior officer sprang forward, raising the wooden baton, ready to crack a blow across the prisoner’s knees. Leo waved him away and the officer reluctantly stepped back.
— You have a fever. You should be at home. You men have a home? Where you sleep and eat and do all the things normal men do?
Leo wondered at this man. He was still a doctor, even now. He was still irreverent, even now. He was brave, rude and Leo couldn’t help but like him.
Leo pulled back, wiping his clammy forehead with the sleeve of his jacket.
— You can save yourself unnecessary suffering by talking to me. There’s not a person we’ve questioned who didn’t wish they’d admitted everything straightaway. What will you gain by silence?
— I will gain nothing.
— Then will you tell me the truth?
— Yes.
— Who are you working for?
— Anna Vladislovovna. Her cat is going blind. Dora Andreyeva. Her dog refuses to eat. Arkadi Maslow. His dog has broken its front leg. Matthias Rakosi. He has a collection of rare birds.
— If you’re innocent, why did you run?
— I ran because you were following me. There was no other reason.
— That doesn’t make sense.
— I agree but it’s true all the same. Once you’re followed you’re always arrested. Once you’re arrested you’re always guilty. No innocent people are ever brought here.
— Which officials from the American Embassy are you working with and what information have you been passing them?
At last Anatoly understood. Several weeks ago a junior clerk working for the American Embassy had brought his dog in for examination. The dog was suffering from an infected cut. It needed a course of antibiotics but since the antibiotics were unavailable he’d cleaned the animal carefully, sterilized the injury and kept it in under observation. Not long after that he’d spotted a man loitering outside his home. He hadn’t slept that night, unable to figure out what he’d done wrong. The next morning he’d been followed into work and followed home again. This continued for three days. After the fourth sleepless night he’d decided to run. Now, finally, here were the details of his crime. He’d treated a foreigner’s dog.
— I have no doubt that I will eventually say whatever it is you want me to say but right now I will say this: I — Anatoly Tarasovich Brodsky — am a vet. Soon your records will say that I was a spy. You will have my signature and my confession. You will force me to give you names. There will be more arrests, more signatures and more confessions. But whatever I eventually tell you will be a lie because I am a vet.
— You’re not the first guilty man to claim that he’s innocent.
— Do you really believe I’m a spy?
— From this conversation alone I have enough to convict you for subversion. You’ve already made it quite clear that you hate this country.
— I don’t hate this country. You hate this country. You hate the people of this country. Why else would you arrest so many of them?
Leo grew impatient.
— Are you aware of what will happen to you if you don’t talk to me?
— Even children are aware of what goes on in here.
— But you still refuse to confess?
— I will not make this easy for you. If you want me to say I’m a spy you will have to torture me.
— I’d hoped this could be avoided.
— You think you can remain honourable down here? Go get your knives. Get your tool kit. When your hands are covered in my blood then let’s hear you sound reasonable.
— All I need is a list of names.
— There’s nothing more stubborn than a fact. That is why you hate them so much. They offend you. That is why I can upset you simply by saying that I — Anatoly Tarasovich Brodsky — am a vet. My innocence offends you because you wish me to be guilty. You wish me to be guilty because you’ve arrested me.
There was a knock on the door. Vasili had arrived. Leo stood up, muttering:
— You should have taken my offer.
— Perhaps one day you’ll understand why I could not.
The young officer unlocked the door. Vasili entered. He was wearing a sterilized dressing at the point where he’d been hit, which Leo suspected was of no practical value, intended only to trigger conversation and enable him to describe the incident to as many people as possible. Vasili was accompanied by a middle-aged man with thinning hair and dressed in a crumpled suit. Seeing Leo and Anatoly together, Vasili seemed concerned.
— Has he confessed?
— No.
Evidently relieved, Vasili signalled for the junior officer to get the prisoner to his feet whilst the middle-aged man in the brown suit stepped forward, smiling, offering Leo his hand.
— Doctor Roman Hvostov. I’m a psychiatrist.
— Leo Demidov.
— Pleased to meet you.
They shook hands. Hvostov gestured at the prisoner.
— Don’t worry about him.
Hvostov led them to his surgery, the door to which he unlocked, gesturing for them to come in, as though they were children and this was his playroom. The surgery was small and clean. There was a red leather chair bolted to the white-tiled floor. By using a series of levers the chair could be lowered to become a bed and then raised upright again. On the walls were glass cabinets filled with bottles and powders and pills, labelled with neat white stickers and careful, tidy black handwriting. Hanging beneath the cabinet was an array of steel surgical instruments. There was a smell of disinfectant. Brodsky didn’t struggle as he was strapped to the chair. His wrists, ankles and neck were fastened with black leather straps. Leo tied his feet whilst Vasili tied his arms. Once they were finished he was unable to move any part of his body. Leo stepped back. Hvostov scrubbed his hands at the sink.
— For a time I worked in a Gulag, near the city of Molotov. The hospital was full of people pretending to be mentally ill. They would do anything to get out of work. They would run around like animals, screaming obscenities, tearing their clothes off, masturbating in full view, defecating on the floor, anything and everything to convince me they were deranged. You could trust none of it. My job was to identify who was lying and who was genuine. There were numerous academic tests but prisoners quickly caught on and this information was shared and soon everyone knew how to behave in order to cheat the system. For example a prisoner who thought he was Hitler or a horse or something equally and obviously outlandish was almost certainly pretending to be insane. And so prisoners stopped pretending to be Hitler and became much more subtle and sophisticated in their deceptions. In the end there was only one way of getting to the truth.