10:00 p.m. L. P. Beria.
Leaves 10:30 p.m.
10:30 p.m. H. A. Satinov.
Leaves 10:45 p.m.
10:40 p.m. L. P. Beria.
Leaves 10:52 p.m.
By the time Beria left Stalin’s office at 10:30 p.m., Satinov was waiting in the anteroom. Stalin called in Satinov and asked him about Sashenka’s affair.
Katinka perused the new page of Stalin’s squiggles and, with a rising horror, she started to understand.
Questions for Comrade Satinov: Sashenka in St. Petersburg was in the middle of the page, surrounded by circles, squares and a finely drawn fox’s face, shaded in red and entitled Comrade Snowfox. Satinov must have answered these questions coolly because Stalin scrawled down his answer: Old friends, devoted Bolsheviks.
Then Stalin called in Beria again and they intensified their cross-examination of Satinov. The next words were scarcely legible.
“I can’t quite read this,” she said.
The archivist followed the words with his finger and read out:
Snowfox in St. Petersburg reliable/unreliable?
L. P. Beria: Molotov and Mendel in St. Petersburg?
Katinka realized that these were all questions to Satinov. She started to imagine his struggle for survival during those five minutes. What could he say? He must have been pale, sweating, his mind spinning. He had a sweet wife and a new baby, but he was a devoted Communist and an ambitious man. His answers during those five minutes would either save his life and make his career, or destroy his own life and that of his wife and baby.
When Stalin asked about Sashenka’s “reliability” in Petersburg, a name must have come to Satinov’s mind: Captain Sagan, whom he knew of only from his dealings with Mendel in late 1916.
Did Stalin already know about Sashenka’s mission to turn Sagan, and that it had been ordered by the Petersburg Committee? If he talked about it now, and no one knew of it, it could taint Sashenka, although this was unlikely since Sagan had been dead for twenty-two years.
But what if Molotov or Mendel, the only others apart from Sashenka who knew about the Sagan operation, had already discussed it with Stalin? Satinov would then be accused of hiding it from the Party, from Stalin himself. That was unthinkable. That would mean death.
Katinka stared down at the crayoned hieroglyphics that revealed this feverish game of Russian roulette that would still decree the destinies of people fifty years later.
So what did Satinov do? Did he panic and say more than he meant? Or did he calculate and act in cold blood?
“We’ll probably never know.” She found she was talking aloud.
“But we do know he said this…,” replied Shcheglov, his finger showing her the next words written by Stalin on this crowded piece of paper: Hercules S: Cpt Sagan. Petersburg. SAGAN
Katinka went cold. So Satinov had told Stalin and Beria about Sashenka and Captain Sagan of the Okhrana. She felt pity for Satinov, and then anger, and then pity again. He might have answered differently if he had known that Captain Sagan was alive—and in one of Beria’s camps, his name meticulously filed in the NKVD roster of prisoners. Within hours, Sagan was on his way to Moscow and Kobylov was beating him into testifying against Sashenka.
“If Satinov had brazened it out,” she whispered, “they might all have survived.”
“Or he might have faced the Vishka too,” Shcheglov pointed out. “Have you seen enough?” He started to gather up the papers and put them away in his orderly files where they would rest, perhaps forever.
“So Satinov doomed his best friends,” Katinka mused, “but then risked everything to save their children. Does that redeem him?”
Shcheglov gestured toward the elevator, in a hurry to get her out of his office, but she gripped his arms. “Hang on, there’s one thing missing. Stalin created a commission to investigate Sashenka’s execution. Where is its report?”
“There was a number for the file,” said Shcheglov, guiding her toward the elevator. “But the file’s not here. Sorry, but only God knows everything.” He pressed the button to call the elevator.
“Thank you for showing me this,” she said, kissing him as she left. “You’ve been very kind. I can’t tell you what this means to me.”
“And you care too much,” he said, squeezing her hands.
As she stepped into the elevator, she reviewed the combination of the extract from Satinov’s memoirs and Stalin’s enigmatic note, Bicho to curate, on the papers Maxy had shown her in the Party archive.
Bicho—boy in Georgian—was Stalin’s nickname for Satinov. “Curate” was Stalin’s word for what he wanted Satinov to do: supervise the destruction of a family he loved.
“Oh God,” she gasped, finally understanding it all. “Satinov saw her die. What did they do to her?”
23
Rushing out of the archive and onto Mayakovsky Square, Katinka waved down a Lada. It sped her down the hill toward the Granovsky. Fizzing with urgency, she rang five bells simultaneously, the door buzzed and she raced upstairs to the Satinov apartment. The door was again open but when she entered, Mariko was standing in the hall beneath the crystal chandelier.
“Mariko, I know what you think but please—I’ve got to tell him what I’ve discovered. He’s helped me every step of the way without me realizing. I know he’ll want to talk to me now.”
Katinka stopped and caught her breath. Mariko did not throw her out. She didn’t say anything at all and Katinka, who had never really looked at her before, noticed that Mariko did not seem angry. Her dark, pointed face was desperately tired.
“Come in,” she said quietly. “You can see him.” She walked down the hallway, passing the sitting room. Katinka followed, peering eagerly ahead. “Go on in.”
Satinov lay in bed, propped up on pillows with his eyes closed. His face, his hair, his lips seemed the color of ashes. A nurse was by the bed, adjusting the oxygen tank and the plastic mask, but when she saw them she nodded briskly and left the room.
Katinka, who had so much to ask, was suddenly uncertain what to do. Satinov’s breathing was ragged; sometimes his chest rose jerkily, at other times he did not breathe for some seconds. He was sweating with effort and fear. Katinka knew she should feel pity for this dying man but instead she felt only fury and frustration. How could he escape her like this? How could he be so cruel as to leave Roza without ever telling anyone what happened to her mother?
Katinka glanced at Mariko, who gestured at the low chair by the bed. “You can talk to him,” Mariko said. “For a minute or two. He asked where you were. He was thinking about you and your research. That’s why I let you in.”
“Can he hear me?”
“I think so. He speaks sometimes, his lips move. He’s talked about my mother a bit but it’s hard to understand. The doctors say…We’re not sure.” Mariko leaned back against the doorpost, stretched her back and rubbed her face.
Katinka stood up, leaned over the bed, then looked back at Mariko.
“Go ahead,” she said.
Katinka took Satinov’s hand in hers. “It’s Katinka. Your researcher. I say ‘your’ researcher because you’ve held all the cards all along and you’ve sent me this way and that…If you can hear me, let me know somehow. You can squeeze my hand or even just blink.” She waited but he took another desperate breath, his entire body shivered, and he settled down again. “I know you loved Sashenka and Vanya, I know you did a terrible thing and I know how you saved their children. But what happened to Sashenka? What did you see? Please tell me how she died.”