Citizens! Today is Victory Day! Congratulate yourselves!
From all across the city hundreds of thousands of people were making their way towards Victory Square on buses and trams and trains for the celebration parade. Hundreds of thousands more were coming on foot. Already an inexhaustible river of people was moving up the wide avenue of Noviy Prospect (newly paved and freshly washed before dawn that morning). Half the population of Mirgorod must have been there, going in a slow tide between the towering raw new buildings of the city centre. Vissarion Lom, less than twenty-four hours back in Mirgorod, sat at a café table under a canopy on a terrace raised above the sidewalk, nursing a cooling birch-bark tea, and watched them pass: more people in one place than all the people he’d seen in the last six years put together. Sunlight glared off steel and glass and concrete fresh out of scaffolding; glared off the flags and banners that lined Noviy Prospect; glared off the huge portraits of Papa Rizhin and the lesser portraits of other faces Lom could not name.
Lom disliked crowds. Even sitting somewhat apart and watching them made him uneasy. Edgy. Even anxious. The noise. The faces. He couldn’t understand how it was that most people could merge into a throng so readily, so gladly even. To him it felt like submersion. Surrender. Drowning. He couldn’t have done it even if he’d wanted to. But he saw the woman with the heavy canvas bag on her shoulder.
He almost missed her. She was moving with the crowd, one small figure in the uncountable mass, going in the same direction as everyone else. Someone else might not have noticed her or, if they had seen her, wouldn’t have understood what it meant. It would have been a coincidence, nothing more. But because he was Lom, not someone else, he saw her, and recognised her, and knew what she was doing.
She was just another slight ageing woman in shabby sombre clothes: there were dozens like her, hundreds, shuffling along among the uniformed service personnel, the families, the classes shepherded by harassed teachers, the young women workers in blue overalls and sneakers, the salaried fellows in shirtsleeves and fedoras, the limping veterans, the veterans in wheelchairs and the tight little groups of short-haired and pony-tailed Young Explorers in their blue shorts, grey shirts, red neckerchiefs, knee-length woollen socks and canvas shoes. The women in dark clothes walked alone or in twos and threes. They had their special place that day: they were the widows, the childless mothers, come to watch and remember on bittersweet Victory Day. Lom’s gaze passed across the one with the canvas bag on her shoulder and moved on. But something about her caught his attention and he looked again.
People in a large slow crowd surrender themselves to it. They all have the same purpose, all heading for the same destination. Simply being part of the crowd is itself the occasion and the only reason for being there. There’s no rush. They have no need to do anything except move along at the crowd’s speed and take their cues from the crowd. So they look around and take in the sights and talk, or absorb themselves in their own thoughts. Some bring drink and food and eat as they go. They won’t miss anything. They’re already where they need to be.
But this one woman was different. There was a tension and separateness about her. Something about the way she held her head and looked around: an obsessive, exclusive watchfulness that snagged his attention, raw and jangled as his nerves were by the numbers of people everywhere. She was making her way through the crowd, not moving with it, and she was alert to her surroundings as those around her were not. She knew where the security cordons and the crowd watchers were, and kept away from them. She tracked her way forward, intent on some private purpose.
And then there was the bag. A drab and scruffy canvas bag, nothing remarkable except Lom could tell by the way she carried it that it was heavy, and the object inside was long and protruded from the top. The thing in the bag was wrapped in a bright childish fabric, which was clever because it attracted attention but also disarmed suspicion. It looked like something that belonged to a child, or used to. The kind of thing an older woman might carry for her grandchild. Or keep with her for ever and never lay down, to remember the dead by. Only this woman seemed a little too young and a little too strong, and it wasn’t easy to guess what sort of childish thing this long heavy object was. It scratched at Lom’s crowd-raw nerves.
As she passed near where Lom was sitting, the woman with the bag glanced sideways at something, and as she turned Lom glimpsed her face in profile. And recognised her. Six years had changed her. She was leaner, harsher, a stripped-back and sanded-down version of the woman who’d once given Maroussia and him shelter in the Raion Lezaryet, but still he knew instantly that this was Elena Cornelius: Elena, who used to have two girls and live in an apartment in Count Palffy’s house and make furniture to sell in the Apraksin Bazaar.
He watched her move on through the crowd. She was good but not that good. Intent on her work, she was just a little too interesting. Too noticeable. Too vivid. She made use of sightlines and available cover for protection. She made small changes of pace. She was moving instinctively as a hunter did. Or a sniper. But snipers move through empty streets, not crowds. In a crowd she was conspicuous. If he could spot her, so could others. Like for instance the security operatives, who were no doubt even now scanning Noviy Prospect from upper windows, though he could not see them.
Lom got up from the café table and followed. He moved up through the crowd to get closer to her, working slowly, cautiously, so as not to be noticed himself and above all not draw the attention of other watchers to her. He felt her vulnerability and her determination. He wanted to protect her, and he owed her his help, but he couldn’t let her do what she was going to do. She had to be stopped.
She made a sudden move to the right, picking up speed and making for the ragged edge of the moving crowd. Lom tried to follow, but his way was suddenly blocked by a knot of loud-voiced broad-backed men. They had just spilled out from a bar and stood swaying unsteadily and squinting in the glare of the sun. They smelled of aquavit. By the time Lom got past them, Elena Cornelius had disappeared from view.
2
The meeting room of the Central Committee of the New Vlast Presidium was painted green. The conference table was simple varnished ash wood. There were no insignia in the room, no banners, no portraits: only the smell of furniture polish and new carpet. There is no past; there is only the future. Each place at the table had a fresh notepad, a water jug, an ashtray and an inexpensive fountain pen. A single heavy lamp hung low above the table, a flat box of muted grey metal shedding from its under-surface a muted opalescent glow. The margins of the room where officials and stenographers sat were left in shadow.
On the morning of the Victory Day Parade the Committee gathered informally, no officials present, to congratulate their leader and President-Commander General Osip Rizhin, whose birthday by happy chance it also was that day. At least, according to the official biography it was his birthday, though of course the official biography was a tissue of fabrication from beginning to end.
All twenty-one committee members were present: twelve men and eight women, plus Rizhin. Sixteen were makeweights: bootlickers, honest toilers, useful idiots, take your pick–placeholders just passing through. Apart from Rizhin there were only four who really mattered, and they were Gribov, Secretary for War; Yashina, Finance; Ekel, Security and Justice; and Lukasz Kistler. Above all, Lukasz Kistler.