They walked out into the courtyard, standing silent among the busy workers, none of whom paid them much attention. Men were loading one truck with small metal bed frames.
“I understand the professor didn’t restrict his research solely to adults,” Dubinkin said.
Korolev said nothing, his attention drawn by the two long concrete buildings he’d seen on his first visit. They looked like massive bunkers more than anything else. Thick iron shutters were bolted into the walls where windows should be.
“Shall we have a look?”
They walked over and Dubinkin pushed at the massive door of the nearest of the two buildings. To Korolev’s surprise, it swung inward smoothly, only the slightest sound coming from its oiled hinges. The Chekist ran a finger along the edge of the door with what seemed to be admiration-it had been heavily sound-proofed with felt on the inside, even though it was already a good six inches thick.
“I’ve seen this kind of sound-proofing before.”
So had Korolev-he’d made a brief unwilling visit to the Lubyanka the year before and seen just the same felt applied to some of the doors. And when Dubinkin found the electricity switch, he recognized the circular metal light shades that ran along the narrow central passage. It was cool inside the building but, then again, unless he was wrong, it was a place where the sun had never shone.
Korolev said nothing as he followed the Chekist past the heavy cell doors that lined each side of the corridor. All of them were open.
“Look in here,” Dubinkin said, peering into one.
The room was as dark as a pit. There was nothing in it-not a bed, nor a basin, nor a chair. Not even a bucket for a man’s necessary activities. The walls were painted black-as was the floor. Korolev looked round for a light fitting inside the cell. But there was none to be found.
“Put a man in here for a few days and he’ll tell you whatever you want him to,” Dubinkin said, and to judge from his voice, his view of such measures wasn’t necessarily negative. “But he won’t like you for it. Or ever be the same, I shouldn’t think.”
The next three cells were identical-but the fifth was a complete contrast. Here the walls and the floor were painted a glossy white and its high ceiling, ten feet up, was thick glass. Korolev flicked a switch and the room lit up like the inside of a light bulb.
“I wonder what they did about the heat-from the lights,” Dubinkin said.
Always the pragmatist, Korolev thought to himself.
“I don’t think they cared much about the poor devils’ comfort,” he said. “There’s not even a bench for them to lie on, let alone a cot.”
“Yes, I wondered about that. And do you see, in this cell there’s an eyehole. Not in the other ones-probably no point, given they’d have been pitch-black.”
They went through the entire building-there were some cells no bigger than a standing coffin, while others had the same dimensions as the others they’d seen, except that the ceiling was so low a prisoner would have to crawl around on his hands and knees. In the basement there were cells that were really sealed swimming pools, with the entry point in the roof and metric measurements on the wall-calibrated to the centimeter. By the time they’d finished their inspection, Korolev was profoundly depressed.
“What do you make of it?” Dubinkin asked.
“I make nothing of it,” Korolev said. “I’ve seen nothing.”
He looked along the corridor-they’d cleaned the place up, but there was still that smell of urine, sweat, and fear-the acrid tang of a prison.
“It does make you wonder though.” Dubinkin sounded contemplative, as if an interesting thought had occurred to him. “If they’d wanted to keep us out of here, they could have. Easily. We’d have needed a tank to get through that door if it had been locked. So why was it left open?”
A message, perhaps? Aimed at a Militia detective exhausted past the point of knowing what it was intended to mean? No, that wasn’t right. He knew what it meant all right. It meant keep your damned nose out of our business, Korolev, or face the consequences. He took one last look at the consequences and walked back out into the heat of the sun.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Korolev’s legs felt tired as he climbed the stairs to Shtange’s apartment, but his soul felt wearier still. His visit to the institute had him asking questions he generally tried to avoid. What kind of revolution had it been now that the State had ended up making a science out of breaking its citizens down and building them up again? And for what? So that they could all think the same, feel the same, chant the same name at the same time-Stalin’s name, no doubt. How had it happened? He’d thought the Revolution had been intended to give the people freedom from oppression, not build establishments like the institute. Sometimes it was hard to believe that there was any good left in Soviet power, and that was the truth of it.
“Are you all right?” Slivka asked as he entered Shtange’s apartment. The bloodstained carpets had been removed and the floorboards creaked underfoot.
“A missing son, no sleep, and an investigation that’s as likely to end up with me in the cells as the killer. I’ve had better days. Is there any news?”
“About the case?”
“Yuri first, if you’ve heard something.”
“Yasimov came by,” she said and then paused. It didn’t look as if Yasimov had brought good news.
“What did he have to say?”
“He thinks he picked up Yuri’s trail at Kievsky Station-still in the company of the two boys. You know about them?”
“Yes. And?”
“He’s pretty sure they got on a tram but he lost track of them after that. He said he was going to go to the depot to talk to the drivers-see if any of them remembers anything. But for the moment, the trail’s gone cold.”
Korolev nodded and picked up the phone, asking to be put through to the apartment building in Bolshoi Nikolo-Vorobinsky. The shared phone was in the hallway and the elderly Lobkovskaya, of the batlike ears, picked it up.
“It’s Korolev. Any sign of him?”
There wasn’t. He thanked the old lady for her time and wondered where his son could possibly be.
“There was something else,” Slivka said, when he’d hung up. “Yasimov said he was pretty sure there were other people looking for Yuri. And not our people. Whoever they were, they left some frightened people behind them.”
Korolev sat down, thinking it through. What if the men were Zaitsev’s? “I’m sorry,” Slivka said, reaching a hand out to him. He did his best to smile.
“What about you-any progress?” he said, deciding to ignore for the moment the fear for his son that bubbled in his stomach. He’d go out and look for him as soon as he was finished here, and if the Lord was willing, he’d find him.
Slivka smiled back-not a joyful smile but one that said they’d get through this together. He found it comforting.
“I’ve been chasing round Moscow, and you’ll be surprised to hear I haven’t met one person yet who’s had a good word to say about the dear professor.”
“I don’t like him myself,” Korolev said. “It was inconsiderate of him to be murdered in such an inconvenient way. And, yes, I’ve been hearing the same things-and that he denounced people to the Organs-a lot of them. What did you find out about him up at the university?”
“All this is reading between the lines, because-well-because people still don’t like to talk about him.”
“Go on.”
“One-he wasn’t much of a scientist; the implication is he got to where he was by telling bigwigs what they wanted to hear, by blaming his failures on others on the one hand and by taking credit for their achievements on the other. Although no one said that straight out.”
“You should have spoken to Shtange’s widow-she said it straight out. But then she has a French passport and a bigwig uncle who happens to be a government minister.”
“A French government minister?”
“Exactly-it seems with an uncle like that you can say what you want in Moscow. She damned nearly called Dubinkin a murderer to his face.”