Aron’s dream was to die here by the Sound. He wanted to look out across the water, then close his eyes, with peace in his heart. And perhaps it would happen, if he stayed close to the sea for the time he had left, and kept away from his enemies until it was time to face them.
He would be ready. Everything was prepared.
Slowly, Aron began to climb down from the tower, past his bed on the ground floor, out through the door and down the steps. His car was hidden among the trees a short distance away.
He was heading up to Marnäs for one last conversation with Gerlof Davidsson.
The New Country, 1940–45
The war against the counter-revolution has been long and hard, and Vlad is very tired.
So many are gone now. Denounced and condemned. There is a constant insistence that every enemy who is unmasked must give the names of more enemies, who in turn give even more names, like an ever-growing mill wheel.
They have crushed so many.
Trushkin has been shot.
Teachers and scientists have also been shot.
Homosexuals and soldiers have been shot.
Poets, porters and priests have been shot.
So many.
Captain Rugajev, Vlad’s first commanding officer at Kresty, was removed by Zakowski, the top man in Leningrad. Zakowski was then shot by Jagoda, the NKVD Chief of Police; the following year, Jagoda was executed by his successor, the vodka drinker Nikolai Yezhov, a bloodthirsty individual who soon ended up in Lubyanka Prison, condemned to death by the new leader of the NKVD, Lavrenti Beria.
Vlad’s new commanding officer at Kresty has survived for several months in his post. His name is Karrek, and he is a hard-bitten old soldier from the First World War. Major Karrek doesn’t say much, but he always carries a little notebook with him. It is said that he jots down any rumours about his men. Karrek continues to administer the ultimate punishment under the law down in the cellar, often by his own hand.
Trucks trundle away every night, transporting the bodies to a military area outside the city. Vlad has heard that enormous excavators are needed to dig mass graves big enough to accommodate all the corpses.
To think that there were so many enemies, so many traitors.
Vlad is certain that no one suspects him of being a Trotskyite, or an imperialist, or any other kind of traitor to his country. He is loyal to Stalin, to the Party and to his commanding officer; he is no enemy of the state.
He is clean.
And yet. The fear and the doubts are there when he goes to bed, and the walls press in around him. What is Karrek writing down in his notebook? Vlad is terrified of turning up at work one day and being met by evasive glances, by the realization that no one is calling him ‘Comrade’ any longer. After all, he was once a foreigner, and sometimes he isn’t completely convinced that he is not a spy.
He remembers his friend Vladimir, and the question he asked up in the north when Aron said he wasn’t a spy: ‘Are you sure?’
Is he? Aron sees what goes on in the cellar, he notices and remembers everything — doesn’t that make him a kind of spy? Perhaps he is spying for some foreign power that has yet to get in touch with him. If Sven was a spy, perhaps Sven’s secret plan was to place Aron in the Party, so that other agents would be able to contact him later.
These dark thoughts always come at night, when he is lying in his bed. He sees bloody faces floating in the darkness, he listens for the sound of knocking. He waits for the sound of a car stopping outside the building, for footsteps hurrying up the stairs. Loud banging on the door, like knuckles against a coffin lid.
There are sometimes footsteps in the stairwell, but so far no one has come to his door.
What can Aron do, while he waits?
Nothing. He just has to let Vlad get on with his work. Day and night, nothing but work.
On 4 May 1940, Vlad is called into Karrek’s office. The major is sitting at his desk with his notebook in front of him. He gives a brief nod.
‘Come forward, Jegerov.’
Vlad steps up to the desk. He notices a bowl of pickled gherkins, but Karrek doesn’t offer him any. He merely leans back and studies Vlad. ‘How are you?’ he says.
‘Very well, Major.’
Karrek adjusts his cufflinks. ‘I have been called to Moscow to serve in Lubyanka Prison. I am to take over as the commandant. It is a great honour. I need to take a number of men with me, and I have selected the very best.’
At first, Vlad doesn’t understand, but then he stands to attention.
Three months later, Major Karrek is transferred to Moscow. He takes Vlad and two others with him to the capital.
They arrive in a city where a certain air of calm has descended after all the trials and purges. There is far less suspicion, and everyone seems relieved that the threat of war has been removed, now that the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany have become allies.
Perhaps the future has arrived, Vlad thinks. At long last.
The summer of 1941 is scorching. Aron finds it oppressive, as if a thunderstorm is coming. And the storm breaks at midsummer.
On 22 June, Hitler invades the Soviet Union in a lightning attack that sweeps aside all opposition. Polikarpov aircraft are shot down by swarms of Messerschmitts. German Panzer divisions advance across the wheatfields of the Ukraine.
The railway line between Leningrad and Moscow is cut on 21 August. Kiev falls on 26 September.
Aron cannot go home to Sweden now, not even if he is granted safe conduct by Stalin himself.
He is trapped in a country where, for the first time, everyone is affected by the war. There is no bread. Sugar is rationed, so is soap.
A quarter of the population joins the Red Army, but they are unable to drive back the fascists. During 1941 alone, the Soviet Union loses almost three million soldiers.
At the end of October, the Germans are outside Moscow. Kalinin in the north and Kaluga in the south have already fallen. Shops and abandoned apartments are looted. Moscow’s sixteen bridges and Stalin’s dachas are mined. Stalin himself prepares to leave Moscow, but on 18 October he eventually decides to stay and sleep on an underground train.
General Zhukov assures him that the city can be held.
The NKVD is given free rein to execute deserters and workers who attempt to flee. Vlad is one of those operating out in the streets, just behind the fortifications.
The German army stops to rest and to prepare the final onslaught on Moscow, which is a mistake. Four hundred thousand well-rested Soviet troops, together with a thousand tanks and a thousand planes are on their way from the Far East on special trains. They arrive at the end of October, and gather outside Moscow.
At the beginning of November, Stalin holds a military parade in the besieged city in order to stiffen the resolve of his people and to boost morale. Vlad helps to carry chairs from the Bolshoi Theatre for members of the Politburo. He hears the leader give an inspiring speech about the defence of the mother country, with music provided by the NKVD ensemble.
That night, the temperature drops to arctic levels as if to order, and in the middle of November Zhukov launches a counter-attack. On 5 December, the Red Army manages to stop the progress of the Germans.
Slowly, the war turns for the Soviet Union, but the cost is incalculable. Over eight million Soviet troops perish in the conflict. In addition, almost ten million civilians die of starvation or in Nazi massacres.
The NKVD is reorganized after the war. The prison service is placed under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the MVD, while counter-espionage and the hunt for class enemies becomes the remit of the Ministry for State Security, the KGB. Vlad moves to the KGB.