Korolev kept the doctor though, and pushed him at gunpoint to the first of the children’s dormitories.
“Open it and turn on the light.”
There were twelve metal beds, six on either side of the room. Two of them were empty but the remainder contained boys of around Yuri’s age in various states between sleep and bleary awakening, as they reacted to the three men walking into the room.
“Is he here?” Korolev asked, turning to Kolya who was close behind.
Kolya looked at each boy then shook his head.
“No.”
It was curious that the boys didn’t seem surprised to find armed men walking among them. As they woke, they looked at them with calm disinterest. Korolev was about to reassure them when he realized they didn’t need it.
“The next room,” Kolya said, and there was anger in his voice as he pushed the doctor toward the door.
The second dormitory was the same as the first-a dozen beds-and, this time, a dozen boys. As the light went on they stirred, eyes opening, heads lifting from pillows, and suddenly Kolya pushed the doctor out of his way, going straight to a bed at the other end of the room, pulling the boy in it close to his chest, whispering to him, stroking his hair.
“I only did what I was told,” the doctor said to Korolev. “I only followed orders, no more than that.”
Korolev looked back to Kolya’s son and there it was again, that look of serene calm. The boy didn’t seem surprised that Kolya was stroking his hair, far from it-he seemed barely to notice.
“What did you do to them?”
“It wasn’t me. It was the professor and the others-they set everything up. I just do as I’m told.”
“We’ll see about that.”
“I swear it.”
Korolev took a step closer to him and pushed his gun into the doctor’s stomach.
“Tell me where the files are-the ones they brought out from Moscow.”
The doctor looked nonplussed.
“What files?”
“In the trucks. They started coming out on Tuesday.”
He looked terrified. “I’ve been here all week, there have been no trucks. The only visitors we’ve had are the ones who came last night, with a boy.”
“And that’s the boy you were going to operate on this evening.”
“I told you, Comrade. I only do what I’m told to do.”
“That boy’s my son,” Korolev growled.
The doctor took a step back, looking around him as if for a means of escape.
Kolya approached them. “What did you do to them? These children.” There wasn’t anger in his voice; if anything he looked lost. The doctor looked from him to Korolev and back again but he didn’t answer. Korolev lifted his gun. The doctor flinched back as the barrel tracked up the length of his body.
“Tell him,” Korolev said, his voice hoarse.
“They have machines,” he told them. “In the other house. They clean minds with electricity. So there’s nothing left.”
“So he doesn’t know who I am.”
Kolya wasn’t asking a question. He was stating a fact.
“He doesn’t know anything. They only know what the political teachers tell them,” the doctor said. And then the whispering began, the children getting out of their beds and moving toward them, pointing at Kolya.
“It’s him, I swear it’s him.” This, from a brown-haired tyke who was looking at Kolya as if he were the Lord himself come down to walk among them.
Korolev had noticed Kolya’s similarity to the General Secretary of the Party before-it had made him wonder sometimes, in fact; and now it seemed he wasn’t the only one to notice the resemblance.
“Comrade Stalin?” a boy asked.
“It’s all they know,” the doctor said. “It’s all they’ve been taught.”
And Kolya’s son broke through the group and lifted his hand to touch his father’s face, his eyes wet with adoration.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
They left the other boys in the house. There wasn’t anything to be done-they couldn’t bring them all with them and, anyway, they didn’t seem to want to leave-the damage had been done. They’d be made into perfect little Party activists, no doubt, who worshipped Stalin and loved Lenin. And who was to say they wouldn’t be happier for it? Certainly having a mind that thought for itself hadn’t made Korolev content-far from it.
Korolev and Slivka took the doctor down the stairs, and even though he kept asking them what they were going to do with him, they said nothing-just let the man sweat and then pushed the fellow into the strongroom with the others.
Korolev stood in the doorway, looking in at the frightened faces in the small space, and lit the cigarette that every fiber in his body was crying out for. He thought he saw guilt in their expressions and possibly remorse. He hoped he did. He hoped they realized that if you did the kind of things to a person that they’d done-well then-you should expect that something similar might be done to you down the road.
“We said no killing, Kolya.”
Korolev could feel the heat of Kolya’s anger from where he stood behind him.
“Not here, maybe. But I’m remembering faces.”
Korolev, as it happened, was doing the same. Folk seldom turned the other cheek completely, in his experience, they just waited for an opportunity. It might never come-but if it did, they’d take it. And so he looked at the rats in the strongroom, at each one of their faces, and he memorized them. Then he slowly shut the door and locked it. And left them in the dark.
He turned to Kolya.
“Chances are Zaitsev will hand out their punishment for us, anyway. They failed him.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Kolya said. The Thief’s eyes looked as if they were glowing with a dark, volcanic rage.
“You go ahead-there’s something I have to do.” Korolev’s voice sounded tired, even to him.
Slivka stepped forward. “It’s not worth it, Chief. Stick to the plan-in and out. It’s the best way.”
“Not them.”
“What then?”
“There might be papers here that back up Shtange’s report. Somewhere.”
“We should go,” Slivka said in a flat tone.
“Where to, Slivka? You think they won’t know this is our work? Do you think we can hide? There are other people involved in this-Valentina, Yasimov, our friends, our families. You know how these things work. If there’s something that backs up what Shtange wrote, we’ve a chance.”
Slivka looked at him in silence for a moment, then nodded to Kolya.
“Give us ten minutes-we’ll see you at the cars.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Korolev could hear the boys moving around upstairs as they worked their way through the first of the offices. Meanwhile, file after file dropped to the floor as he and Slivka went through the cabinet drawers one by one.
“What are we looking for?” Slivka said.
“Anything financial. Accounts, invoices, receipts, estimates, orders, payslips-I don’t know. Anything with a number and a rouble.”
He left Slivka and went on to the other office-the desk was locked and so he went to the dining room and grabbed a handful of cutlery from the table. Two knives lay bent and broken on the floor by the time he got into the drawers, but he found nothing of use in them-just writing paper and some pencils.
He moved onto the cabinets and then the shelves, throwing books and paper around him, so that anyone walking in would have thought there’d been an explosion. But still he came across nothing which looked like it might be remotely relevant.
“Are there offices in the new building?” Slivka asked, coming in.
“There are, but we don’t have time.”
Korolev was finding it difficult to concentrate on anything except the plan they’d made.
“We do, if we’re quick.”
Korolev considered this, then considered the alternative. They’d have to make time.