He sat on the floor of the apartment, his coat still on, the darkness surrounding him. As the minutes passed, the light from the single window illuminated the familiar room, but it looked unfamiliar, new to him. The world had changed. And then the room had threatened to grow. He had scrambled from the floor to the old chest of drawers, his parent’s old chest and had pulled out the heavy hammer. The handle had been made on the farm by his father and the heavy iron head purchased before he was born. It felt solid, good, and cool. He let the metal head cool his burning cheek and forehead, but the room threatened to grow and he thought again that the room might not be getting larger. What if he were growing smaller? The thought made him shriek and shiver. There should be someone to help. He should turn the lights on, but he couldn’t move. He wanted to put the idea away but it was fascinating. Maybe he would just keep getting smaller and smaller and when she came in in the morning after work, she would step on him, squash him like a bug. There would be a small spot of blood on the floor and she would make a sandwich and go to bed, not knowing what she had done.
But he knew what she had done. Granovsky was smart, so smart, but he was no more and there was no heaven or hell for him. Now he, sitting there with the hammer, was in control of the world. He could kill a cab driver to verify his experience. He was not growing smaller. The room was not getting bigger. It had always passed before and would pass again. He would sit, covered with a terrible sweat, and he would feel fear and no one would help him. She had promised to help him, to stay near him, but that had been a lie. He had only the voice of his father and victims and the hammer. He cuddled the hammer, placed it under his arm, put it between his legs like a wooden erection and laughed. He had taken charge of the world. There would be no more fear or listening to others or standing in line. She would find out. She had changed all this and would get her reward, and the reward would be the hammer as Granovsky’s reward had been the sickle. There should be something beyond that, something to do. Others to be shown, taught. It would come. He knew it would come. He thought of one of his mother’s meals of sausages and dumplings and cheese and the thought held at bay the growing of the room.
CHAPTER FOUR
The file on Aleksander Granovsky had been thick and neat. Sasha Tkach expected as much and knew that the K.G.B. must have drawers of files on Granovsky, but they were files he could not hope to get or see. He had taken the file to the large office room where he had shared a desk with another junior inspector named Zelach. The bottom drawer was supposed to be Sasha’s for records, storing tea, but Zelach kept infringing on the space with his own things. Sasha did not mind sharing the drawer. He minded Zelach’s sandwiches, which left a garlic smell on all of Sasha’s notes and papers.
The lights in the large room were dim, and one or two other inspectors were working. Sasha thought he heard the grunt of a greeting from Klishkov, but he couldn’t be sure. The room was, even when full, a quiet place in spite of the twenty or thirty people who rambled in it at any given time. If one had to shout at a suspect or underling, one was expected to move to an investigating room. The room was also clean, almost antiseptic. One could never go back into the garbage to retrieve an inadvertently discarded note.
Sasha had compiled a list of Granovsky’s acquaintances. The compiling had not taken long, perhaps an hour, even with corresponding addresses, but it was a bit too early to begin to act. There was nothing wrong with questioning people at four in the morning, but Rostnikov had told him to be friendly and persuasive rather than demanding. It was an easier order to give than to execute, for Sasha knew from experience that his youth and disarmingly innocent face would not carry him far in most investigations. Muscovites were too cautious. Innocence was something they distrusted in anyone and were particularly wary of in a policeman.
Sasha pulled out his lunch and began to eat it at his desk, after looking across the room to see if the other officers were interested in his activities. Inspectors were not supposed to eat at their desks. They were supposed to go to the building cafeteria. By pretending to reach for files in his drawer, Sasha managed to sneak bites of the sandwich and wonder if he had enough money to stop at a Stolovaya for lunch or some borshcht and a sausage.
The door opened across the room and Emil Karpo, looking like the angel of death searching for his next victim, strode in, carrying a sickle. Sasha sat up with a mouthful of sandwich, and Karpo glanced in his direction. Sasha nodded, trying to hide his bite of sandwich with a gulp that sent him into a choking gasp. Karpo paid no attention and moved to his own desk, where he placed the sickle gently in front of him and closed his eyes.
By six, Sasha Tkach had had enough waiting. He had memorized the list of twelve names but not the addresses. He placed the list carefully in his pocket, put on his coat and hat and strode out of the office past Karpo who sat with closed eyes over the sickle. Karpo looked like a man with a headache, but Sasha knew it was more likely that he was simply deep in thought. He did not pause to ask. Like the other younger inspectors he had a fearful respect for Karpo who was known to act with cold fury in the face of violence. The younger men were afraid that they might be teamed with the Tatar one of the times he risked his life and possibly theirs.
It was a cold dark morning promising nothing, but Sasha Tkach asked much of it as he hurried down the steps and towards the first friend of Aleksander Granovsky.
Not far from the Kremlin is one of the busiest intersections in Moscow, Dzerzhinsky Square, where as many as half a million people come each day. Many of them come to visit the Museum of History and Reconstruction of Moscow or the Mayakovsky Museum. Others come to the Slavyansky Bazar Restaurant or the Berlin Hotel, but most come to two massive buildings. One building is the Detsky Mir or Children’s World, the biggest children’s store in Russia. The other building is a strange, hulking creature in two sections at the corner of Kirov and Dzerzhinsky Streets. One half of the building pre-dates the Revolution. The other half was completed in 1948, using the labor of captured German soldiers. When the project was completed, the German soldiers were reportedly executed so that they could not divulge information about the labyrinth of rooms they had built. The building does not show up on the official tourist books and pictures of the square. Most such pictures or drawings are presented from the point of view of this massive building, the Lubyanka, which houses the K.G.B.
The square itself is named in honor of the man whose tall bronze statue stands in the center of the intersection, seemingly guarding the building. Felix Dzerzhinsky, who died in 1926, is described by those same guide books as an eminent Party leader, a Soviet statesman, and a close comrade of Lenin. He was, in addition, the principal draftsman of what became the Soviet secret police. The proximity of statue and building is not coincidental.
Until the late 1950s, the organization which became the K.G.B. contented itself with political matters and allowed the regular police to go its own way in dealing with other crimes. The K.G.B. had bided its time after the liquidation of Lavrenti Beria who was executed by the others vying with him for power, Malenkov, Khrushchev, and Molotov. Beria had built a career by kissing Stalin’s hand in public and tearing arms out of sockets like the petals of a flower. When he died, the K.G.B. adopted a posture of extreme patriotism and disinterest in the petty disagreements of man-including murder. With a rash of black market crimes and capitalistic enterprises at the end of the 1950s, the K.G.B. tested its strength by asserting control over economic crimes. Since all crimes can be viewed as political and economic, the K.G.B. could take over whatever crime it chose to investigate.