“To hell with our orders. Go back!”
TIME…
Time was slipping away from them. It stole silently through the forest, birch tree to birch tree. Time was now their enemy. Gabriel knew he had to seize hold of it. And for that he needed Ivan’s help. Keep him talking, he thought. Bad things happen when Ivan stops talking.
For now, Ivan was wordlessly leading the procession of death along a snowy forest path, one massive hand wrapped around Chiara’s arm. Flanked by bodyguards, Gabriel, Mikhail, and Grigori followed.
Keep him talking…
“What caused the depressions in the forest, Ivan?”
“Why are you so damn interested in those depressions?”
“They remind me of something.”
“I’m not surprised. How did you find them?”
“Satellites. They show up nicely from space. Very straight. Very even.”
“They’re old, but the men who dug them did a good job. They used a bulldozer. It’s still here if you’d like to have a look. It stopped working years ago.”
“So how do you open up the earth now, Ivan?”
“Same method, new machine. It’s American. Say what you want about the Americans, they still make a damn good bulldozer.”
“What’s in the pits, Ivan?”
“You’re a smart boy, Allon. You seem to know a bit about our history. You tell me.”
“I assume they’re mass graves from the Great Terror.”
“Great Terror? This is a Western slur invented by Koba’s enemies.”
Koba was Stalin’s Party name. Koba was Ivan’s hero.
“What would you call the systematic torture and murder of three-quarters of a million people, Ivan?”
Ivan appeared to give the matter serious consideration. “I believe I would call it a long overdue pruning of the forest. The Party had been in power for nearly twenty years. There was a great deal of deadwood that needed to be cleared away. And you know what happens when wood is chopped, Allon.”
“Splinters must fall.”
“That’s right. Splinters must fall.”
Ivan translated a portion of the exchange for his Russian-speaking bodyguards. They laughed. Ivan laughed, too.
Keep him talking…
“How did this place work, Ivan?”
“You’ll find out in a minute or two.”
“When was it in operation? ’Thirty-six? ’Thirty-seven?”
Ivan stopped walking. So did everyone else.
“It was ’thirty-seven-the summer of ’thirty-seven, to be precise. It was the time of the troikas. Do you know about the troikas, Allon?”
Gabriel did. He paid the information out slowly, deliberately. “Stalin was getting annoyed at the slow pace of the killings. He wanted to speed things up, so he created a new way of putting the accused on triaclass="underline" the troikas. One Party member, one NKVD officer, and a public prosecutor. It wasn’t necessary for the accused to be present during his trial. Most were sentenced without ever knowing they were even under investigation. Most trials lasted ten minutes. Some less.”
“And appeals were not permitted,” Ivan added with a smile. “They won’t be permitted now, either.”
He nodded to the pair of bodyguards who were holding Grigori upright. The procession began moving again.
Keep him talking. Bad things happen when Ivan stops talking.
“I suppose the killing took place inside the dacha. That’s why it has a cellar with a special room in it-a room with a drain in the center of the floor. And that’s why the track is winding instead of straight. Stalin’s henchmen wouldn’t have wanted the neighbors to know what was going on here.”
“And they never did. The condemned were always picked up after midnight and brought here in black cars. They were taken straight into the dacha and given a good beating to make them easy to handle. Then it was down to the cellar. Seven grams of lead in the nape of the neck.”
“And then?”
“They were thrown into carts and brought out here to the graves.”
“Who’s buried out here, Ivan?”
“By the summer of ’thirty-seven, most of the heavy cutting had already been done. Koba just had to clear away the brush.”
“The brush?”
“Mensheviks. Anarchists. Old Bolsheviks who’d been associated with Lenin. A few priests, kulaks, and aristocrats for good measure. Anyone Koba thought could possibly pose a threat was liquidated. Then their families were liquidated, too. There’s a real revolutionary stew buried beneath these woods, Allon. They all sleep together. Some nights, you can almost hear them arguing about politics. And the best part is, no one even knows they’re here.”
“Because you bought the land after the fall of the Soviet Union to make sure the dead stayed buried?”
Ivan stopped walking. “Actually, I was asked to buy the land.”
“By whom?”
“My father, of course.”
Ivan had answered without hesitation. Annoyed by Gabriel’s inquiries at first, he now actually seemed to be enjoying the exchange. Gabriel reckoned it must be easy to unburden one’s secrets to a man who would soon be dead. He tried to frame another question that would keep Ivan talking, but it wasn’t necessary. Ivan resumed his lecture without further prompting.
“When the Soviet Union collapsed, it was a dangerous time for the KGB. There was talk about throwing open the archives. Airing dirty laundry. Naming names. The old guard was horrified. They didn’t want the KGB dragged through the mud of history. But they had other motivations for keeping the secrets, too. You see, Allon, they weren’t planning to stay out of power for long. Even then, they were plotting their comeback. They succeeded, of course. The KGB, by another name, is once again running Russia.”
“And you preside over the last mass grave of the Great Terror.”
“The last? Hardly. You can’t put a shovel in the soil of Russia without hitting bone. But this one is quite large. Apparently, there are seventy thousand souls buried beneath these trees. Seventy thousand. If it ever became public…” His voice trailed off, as if he were momentarily at a loss for words. “Let us say it might cause considerable embarrassment inside the Kremlin.”
“Is that why the president is so willing to tolerate your activities?”
“He gets his cut. The tsar takes a cut of everything.”
“How much did you have to pay him for the right to kidnap my wife?”
Ivan made no response. Gabriel pressed him to see if he could provoke another outburst of anger.
“How much, Ivan? Five million? Ten? Twenty?”
Ivan wheeled around. “I’m tired of your questions, Allon. Besides, we haven’t much farther to go. Your unmarked grave awaits you.”
Gabriel looked beyond Chiara’s shoulder and saw a mound of fresh earth, covered by a dusting of snow. He told her he loved her. Then he closed his eyes. He was hearing things again.
Helicopters.
72
COLONEL LEONID Milchenko could finally see the property: four frozen streams meeting in a frozen marsh, a small dacha with a hole blown in the front door, a line of people walking slowly through a birch forest.
He opened the mic on his headset.
“Do you see them?”
The pilot’s helmet moved up and down rapidly.
“How close can you get?”
“Edge of the marsh.”
“That’s at least three hundred meters away.”
“That’s as close as I can put this thing down, Colonel.”
“What about the Alphas?”
“Fast rope insertion. Right into the trees.”
“Nobody dies.”
“Yes, Colonel.”
Nobody dies…
Who was he kidding? This was Russia. Someone always died.
…
TEN MORE paces through the snow. Then Ivan heard the helicopters, too. He stopped. Cocked his head, doglike. Shot a glance at Rudenko. Started walking again.
Time… Precious time…
NAVOT’S MESSAGE flashed across the screens of the annex.