43
“Peter Sagan, Captain of Gendarmes,” the old Zek said in the most urbane and aristocratic of tones. “There, that’s given her a shock.”
Sashenka gasped. Hadn’t he died in the streets of Petrograd? Her heart drummed, claws tweaked her insides.
“How do you know her?” asked Mogilchuk.
“I loved her once,” said the husk in his Corps de Pages, Yacht Club accent.
“You had a sexual relationship with her?”
“Yes.”
“That’s a lie!” cried Sashenka, thinking back to that romantic but chaste sleigh ride and then the miserable night when Sagan had tried to rape her.
“Quiet or you’ll be removed,” said Mogilchuk. “You’ll get your chance in a minute. She was a virgin?”
“Yes. She became my mistress and I corrupted her with unspeakable perversions. I also gave her cocaine, which I pretended to take as a medicine.”
“Never!” shouted Sashenka. “This is not Peter Sagan. I don’t recognize this man. He’s an impostor!”
“Ignore her, prisoner. Let’s carry on. You had a professional relationship?”
“I used her…I hated the revolutionaries as scum…but I came to love her.”
“We don’t want your romantic reminiscences, prisoner. Your professional relationship?”
“She was my double agent.”
“When did you recruit her for the Okhrana?”
“Winter 1916. We arrested her as a Bolshevik. I recruited her at Kresty Prison. Thereafter we met in safe houses and hotel rooms where she betrayed her comrades.”
“This is not true. You know it’s not true! Whoever you are, you’re telling lies!” Sashenka stood up. Kobylov’s bejeweled hands fell heavily on her shoulders, jolting her back into her seat. A chill rose up her body, and she started to shiver.
“Did she recruit other agents for you, higher up the Bolshevik high command?”
“Yes.”
“Tell us who.”
“First, Mendel Barmakid.”
Sashenka shook her head. She felt she was drowning, the waters closing above her head.
“Was Mendel a valuable agent, Prisoner Sagan?”
“Oh yes. The other leaders were in prison, Siberia or abroad. He was a member of the Central Committee in contact with Lenin.”
“How long did he remain a double agent?”
“Mendel’s still a double agent.”
“Lies! You bastard!” she shouted again, energy draining from her. “You’ll rot in hell for this! If you knew what you were doing! If you only knew…” She started to weep.
“Get a grip on yourself, accused,” said Mogilchuk, “or Rodos will tear you apart.” There was a moment of silence. “After the Revolution, Sagan, what happened to your Okhrana agents?”
“They went underground as I did myself.”
“Under whose control?”
“Initially the White Guards but later we became the servants of…an unholy alliance of snakes and running dogs.” At this, Sagan again smirked, and Sashenka sensed within him a mixture of shame and mockery. Behind his shifting, restless blue irises he seemed to be weeping, begging her to forgive him. Had they drugged him?
“Under whose command, Sagan?”
“Ultimately under the command of Japanese and British intelligence but taking orders from the United Opposition of Trotsky and Bukharin.”
“So all these years you were still in contact with the accused?”
“I was the contact between her and the enemies of the Soviet working people.”
“You met regularly?”
“Yes, we did.”
“This is laughable,” Sashenka shouted. “I’ve never heard of this man. The policeman Sagan was killed on Nevsky Prospect in 1917. This man is an actor!”
“What other agents did she recruit?”
“Her husband, Vanya Palitsyn. And more recently the writer Benya Golden—using the same degenerate sexual techniques I taught her as a girl.”
“So Japanese and British intelligence, along with Trotsky and Bukharin, were running traitor Mendel in the Central Committee, traitor Palitsyn in the NKVD, and traitor Golden the writer for years on end?”
“Yes!”
“You bastard!” Sashenka threw herself across the table but when her fingers came into contact with her accuser, it was like grabbing handfuls of sand. There was nothing to hold. The old man was so weak that he fell off his chair, grazing his head on the side of the table and lying on the floor in a heap.
Kobylov lifted her up from behind like a rag doll and dropped her hard onto her chair.
“Careful, girl, we’ve got to look after him, haven’t we, boys?” said Mogilchuk as he helped Sagan off the floor. He was still floppy and could barely sit up, legs and hands a blur of spasms.
Sashenka experienced the despair of the damned. This scarecrow was tolling the bells on her entire life. She thought of her children. The unthinkable had happened. Nothing was as she had imagined.
She was not irrelevant to this case, she realized. She was its pivot—the center of the spider’s web—and she would never get out, never see Snowy and Carlo again. “Give me time to settle the children,” Satinov had demanded. She prayed he had succeeded.
Was it now time to put Vanya’s plan into action? “Only confess when you realize you have no choice,” he’d instructed. Had he held out this long?
“Good work, boys!” Kobylov clapped his hands together and left, kicking the door shut behind him with a gleaming boot.
Mogilchuk held up a file entitled Protocol of Interrogation and opened it.
“Here’s your confession. You’ve signed every page and at the end, have you not?”
Sagan nodded, jiggling his knees and scratching.
The Chekist tossed it over to Sashenka. “There, Accused Zeitlin-Palitsyn! Read it! You couldn’t remember all this? How could you have forgotten?”
44
“Comrade Stepanian, any sign of a telegram?”
Carolina staggered into the stationmaster’s office. It was the next morning, a fan whirred overhead, and the hot office was crowded that day. An old peasant in blouse and clogs, two little eyes peering over a long white beard, sat in front of the desk; a young man in a Party tunic with a Kalinin beard waited with passport and tickets; an NKVD officer read a sports magazine with his feet up on the radiator.
Comrade Stepanian put his hand on the pile of telegrams and patted it.
“No, no, there’s no telegram…”
Carolina was overcome with despair. Satinov had failed them; it had all been for nothing. “I’m leaving today,” she said, on the edge of tears. “I can’t wait any longer.”
She dragged herself and the children to the door and was struggling to open it when suddenly Stepanian shook himself and clicked his tongue like a woodpecker.
“Wait! There’s no telegram—but there’s someone waiting for you by the samovar in the canteen. A woman. She’s been here for some time.”
“Thank you, Comrade Stepanian. Thank you! I could embrace you…” and she rushed out.
“Is it Mama?” asked Carlo as they hurried to the café.
“Mama’s gone away,” said Snowy seriously. “Carolina’s told you already. We’re on an adventure.”
“Come on,” said Carolina. “Run quickly. Oh, please God she hasn’t left already.”
Inside the canteen, a little apart from the line for tea and hot water beside the steaming samovar and farther from the trays of greasy dumplings, pirozhki and pelmeni, a dignified older woman with a heart-shaped face and grey curls around her ears sat stiffly. Wearing an old-fashioned lady’s cloche hat and a suit, Lala was sipping a cup of tea, scanning the crowds eagerly. When she saw the bedraggled nanny and the two children, she stood up and beckoned them over.