“I have to ask about Professor Azarov’s wife. About your relationship with her.”
“You’re very direct,” Weiss said.
“I don’t have time to be otherwise.”
“No, I’m sure you don’t.” Weiss rested his hands on his knees and nodded, perhaps to himself. “I suspect some kind soul has told you that I’m having an affair with Irina Azarova? Is that the case?”
Korolev nodded.
“Then let me try and be just as direct in turn, Comrade Captain. The rumor’s true. Unless I’m wrong, your next question will be where I was on the morning of the murder.”
“If you ever want to change professions,” Korolev said dryly, “you can always try mine.”
Weiss smiled and pointed to a sheet of paper that was lying on a low table beside Korolev’s chair.
“That tells you where I was and who I was with. When you read it, you’ll understand why I couldn’t be more frank with Sergeant Slivka.”
The letter was brief and to the point and, curiously, addressed to Captain A. D. Korolev, 38 Petrovka Street. When he’d finished it, Korolev decided he’d have been happier if it had been addressed to someone else. He found himself trying to swallow on a dry mouth and, as a result, making a strange sound not dissimilar to the beginnings of a death rattle.
“You were in a meeting with the General Secretary? Himself?”
Four people had attended the meeting. Two of them were from the Ministry of Health-a man and a woman he’d never heard of. Dr. Weiss had been the third, and the fourth was a man he knew all too well, seeing as he was the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
“Comrade Stalin values my advice from time to time,” Weiss explained.
Honestly, Korolev thought to himself, he should move to a different city-some place where people couldn’t possibly have meetings with people like Stalin or be connected with State Security or have mysterious benefactors who could land them apartments as big as a metro station. Omsk, perhaps.
“The meeting was from ten until twelve,” Weiss continued. “Before that I was, as the letter says, waiting. I was waiting from eight o’clock that morning. So I couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with the professor’s murder.”
As Dr. Weiss was pleased to point out, by the time he’d returned from advising the General Secretary on the need for a new children’s hospital in Moscow, Belinsky’s Militiamen had been on the scene, trying to calm a distraught Irina Azarova. He’d stepped in to assist-as any good physician would.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t be more frank yesterday. But it’s best to be careful with such a personage.”
“Of course,” Korolev said, wondering where he went with an interview that seemed to have ended before it had begun.
“You wanted to ask me about my relationship with Irina?”
Korolev felt his cheeks redden from a mixture of embarrassment and irritation. This Weiss fellow was making fun of him now.
“Yes.”
“We’ve known each other for a long time-since we were children. Her mother and mine grew up beside each other on Bolshaya Sadovaya Street, so they were very old friends as well. The family came to live with us during the German War while her father was at the front. I’ve always been very fond of her-and so has my wife. She knows about Irina, incidentally. That’s not the reason why she isn’t here, in case you’re wondering. I told her when it started.”
Korolev felt disbelief manifesting itself on his face.
“We have that kind of marriage, Korolev,” Weiss said, picking up the toy airplane once again and turning it over in his hand absentmindedly.
“It’s unusual, that kind of marriage.”
“You think so? All we are is honest with each other.”
“Your lover wasn’t quite so honest when I asked her about her relationship with her husband.”
“But you see, even when we were lovers-and no, we no longer are-I had the sensation she never fully admitted to herself what we were doing. It was a strange feeling-as if the Irina who I spent time with was a completely separate person. It was as if she had a public persona and then a private one-the one I saw when we were together. Although perhaps that isn’t so unusual these days. I can tell you that, on many levels, Irina was always loyal to Azarov-to a fault, in my opinion. I know she didn’t approve of certain of his actions-but she believed in him. And when, in recent months, she began to uncover some unpleasant truths about her husband, I think that, rather than blaming him, she blamed herself. Her grief isn’t feigned, that much I can tell you. She loved him deeply. Much more than he deserved, in my opinion.”
“And you as well?”
“Perhaps-these things happen. Love never follows a predictable path. The heart isn’t an organ that has the capacity for logic.” Weiss smiled, and Korolev could have sworn it was with satisfaction at his own nicely turned phrase.
“What was your personal opinion of the professor, if you don’t mind?” Korolev asked.
“I thought he was a bully and a braggart.” Weiss’s eyes were less kindly than they had been. Much less kindly.
“His area isn’t something I have great expertise in, but colleagues who know better than me had reservations. Serious reservations, which they were careful to keep to themselves-because he had considerable support in certain circles.”
“So I hear,” Korolev said, wondering if “certain circles” was a euphemism for State Security that he hadn’t heard before.
“Azarov used that support to his advantage, of course. People say that Irina was as bad as he was-that husband and wife were the same Satan-but it wasn’t like that. She was a loyal, dedicated follower. She followed Azarov the same way she follows the Party. She didn’t question, she obeyed. Even when she had to hold her nose.”
Korolev found the comparison of Azarov to the Party worrying, particularly as he now knew that the walls of the building were riddled with secret tunnels in which listening devices lurked as well as, possibly, diminutive killers. But Weiss was oblivious to his reaction, moving on to tell Korolev how Azarov had denounced him-and how, with the way things were these days, he’d thought things would go badly. And they probably would have, if Shtange hadn’t intervened.
Korolev was surprised.
“If you don’t mind my saying, Comrade Weiss. I’d have thought you’d have been secure against such criticism-being an adviser to-well-to him.” Korolev nodded in the general direction of the Kremlin.
Weiss smiled but it wasn’t a smile with much joy in it.
“I work with senior people, but that can be a problem in itself these days. Such people might think that my being denounced reflects on them-support is therefore the last thing I could expect. No, the fact is I was out on a limb and Shtange’s intervention was remarkably brave. Believe me, Korolev, it may not be like this within the Militia-but elsewhere people are like starving wolves-always searching for the weakest to hunt, always trying to show they aren’t the weakest. I sometimes wonder where it will end, or even if it can end. It has taken on a momentum of its own.”
“Did you know Shtange well?” Korolev asked, finding himself casting a nervous glance at the ventilation grilles.
“Beforehand?” Weiss seemed to consider his answer for a moment or two. “No, I barely knew him. I’d met him at faculty meetings, knew of him professionally, of course, but not much socially. Of course, he was a person of some importance among the students. Even before he came to Moscow, he was known to them through his work with the university flying club in Leningrad-he organized joint exercises, not just in flying but other activities as well. He was much respected and admired for it. He never usually intervened in Works Meetings; he’d only recently joined us, after all, so when he did so on my behalf, I think everyone took note-and the students were inclined to support him. And perhaps most of the Party activists knew what Azarov was up to by then. Not all of them are blind to that sort of thing.”