The Prince of the Soviets

29. EXPOSURE

Galina knew that Klim had begun seeing somebody. He now did his best to avoid her and clearly disliked it when she tried to kiss him. There had been no question of them going to bed together for some time.

In the middle of dictating an article, he might stop mid-sentence and point at the typewriter with a smile. “Here’s an interesting puzzle. Look at the keys on the top row of the typewriter: Y-U-I-O. Can you make them into words that fit?”

Galina stared back at him, bewildered. “What words?”

“Look. It’s the words ‘You’ and ‘I’ mixed up together. Don’t you see it?”

Gazing at the black Underwood, Galina found her eye drawn to something else completely: the key of the space bar denoting nothing but emptiness.

However hard she tried to avoid facing the truth, it was no good. Recently, Klim had, by some miracle, brought back a pineapple and then taken it off to his driving lessons. What was he thinking of? Was he going to offer some to the other students instead of eating such a rare delicacy at home?

So, when Klim asked her to collect some statistical reports from the Moscow Tuberculosis Institute, Galina could not resist calling in at the Red Army Club, which was right next door.

She marched up to the receptionist and, in a stern voice, demanded to see the student register.

At first, the old lady was reluctant to bring out the list, but Galina’s OGPU card made her change her mind.

“Everything is in perfect order,” she assured Galina in a flustered voice. “We always check the papers of everyone who comes here.”

There were twenty men and a single woman signed up for driving lessons. Galina ran her finger down the list of names. Here was Klim’s name, and here, sure enough, was Nina’s. An address was written beside Nina’s name, copied out from her documents: 8 Petrovsky Lane.

Where is that? Galina wondered. Wasn’t it opposite the Korsh Theater? And why was there no apartment number?

All of a sudden, she remembered where she had heard the surname “Reich” before: that was the name of the famous American businessman who had been granted all those Soviet concessions. She had heard Alov mention him more than once, invariably with a sense of outrage that this bourgeois had his own house while honest workers like himself had to put up with four square meters of living space behind the dresser.

Now she understood it all: Klim’s wife had left him for a millionaire, but she hadn’t enjoyed living with her new husband and had started meeting her ex-husband again.

Galina wondered if Mr. Reich knew Klim Rogov was bringing pineapples to his wife?

When she got home, Galina went straight to see her neighbor, Mitrofanych.

“I need everything you have in the archives on Nina Reich,” she said. “Nina Kupina and Nina Reich are the same person.”

Mitrofanych brightened up at her words. “And what do I get in return?”

After a pause, Galina began to undo the buttons of her blouse.

Drachenblut placed a pile of sealed packages of banknotes before Oscar.

“There are ten thousand dollars here, and all the numbers have been recorded. Pass this money to Seibert when you’re in Berlin.”

“So, Seibert has decided to work for the OGPU?” Oscar asked in surprise, putting the notes away in his briefcase.

“Seibert is desperate—he’s completely high and dry. He’ll be working in secret, picking out journalists for us who will write encouraging articles about the USSR. We need to have positive press coverage. The Canadians are doing everything they can to disrupt our consignments to Germany. They want to sell timber to the Germans themselves, but their transport costs are higher than ours. So, they’re pushing the idea that it’s risky and unethical to do business with us. But with a bit of help from Seibert, we’ll get the better of them in no time.”

“Whatever you say.” Oscar found it amusing that Drachenblut claimed to be waging war on capitalism, but that when it came down to business, he behaved like a hard-nosed trader trying to cut himself a fat profit.

When he got home, Oscar saw a pale-faced woman with auburn hair waiting at his gate.

“Ask that woman what she wants,” he instructed his chauffeur.

The driver lowered the window, but without waiting, the woman ran up to the car and began to speak in perfect English.

“Mr. Reich, I have something to tell you about your wife.”

Oscar flinched. Nina had run away while he had been out of the country, and all his efforts to trace her had come to nothing. He had found it hard to accept that the fortune of Baron Bremer, which had been almost within his reach, had eluded him. But what could he do?

He asked the strange woman into his car while he made his chauffeur wait outside.

“Do you know where my wife is?” he asked.

The woman nodded and took a pile of papers from a carrier bag.

“Look at this,” she said. “This is the certificate from the civil registration office where you and Nina Bremer were married. And this here is a note from the police archives which states that Nina Bremer is receiving compulsory treatment at the Kashchenko psychiatric clinic.”

Oscar stared at the piece of paper. On it was a stamp that read “Certified to be a true and correct copy.” According to the document, Nina Bremer had been admitted to the hospital in January 1928.

“But that’s impossible,” he said, bewildered. “Nina was with me all that time.”

“The woman who was with you was a commoner from Nizhny Novgorod by the name of Nina Vasilievna Kupina. Here’s a photograph of her.”

The woman showed Oscar a picture. On the back of it was a scored-out inscription “Nina Kupina,” and below that, somebody had written “Mrs. Reich.”

“This young lady has been using somebody else’s name,” the woman said.

“Do you know where she is now?” asked Oscar.

“She’s taking driving lessons at the Red Army Club.”

Long after the woman had left, Oscar sat, motionless, staring at the leather back of the seat in front of him.

“Mr. Reich, are we going somewhere else?” asked the chauffeur,

Oscar looked at him vaguely. “Do you know the way to the Red Army Club?”

Kapitolina had had a fight with her machine operator, and for two days now, she had been sitting sobbing in the kitchen.

“I told him we need pillows with feathers. How are we supposed to sleep with no pillows? And he says to me, ‘If that’s the kind of thing you’re wanting, you can go marry Rockefella.’” Kapitolina looked up at Klim, her eyes brimming with tears. “What do you think, sir? How can I get to know this Rockefella? I don’t suppose he’d make a fuss over a couple of pillows, would he?”

Klim poured Kapitolina glass after glass of milk and tried to reassure her that the pillow crisis would soon be over.

He was late for his lesson that day. There was a raid on black market traders, and there were roadblocks on all the surrounding roads manned by army trainees.

When Klim got to the Red Army Club, he saw a crowd of curious onlookers gathered around an ambulance. As he watched, two medical orderlies took a body covered with a sheet on board and pulled the doors shut.

“You just missed a domestic scene that turned nasty,” one of the driving students told Klim. “We were all in the garage, and all of a sudden, Nina’s husband came in, demanding to talk to her.”

“She just went for him with a crank handle,” piped up Andrei, who shared a desk with Nina in class. “Then we heard yelling.”

Klim looked toward the ambulance. “Did he kill her?”

“No. It was her who knocked him over the head. We come running, and there he was lying there all covered in blood with the crank handle next to him. Reckon he’s lucky to be alive.”

“And where’s Nina?”

“She ran off. She wasn’t going to hang around to get arrested.”

A policeman appeared on the porch, leading an enormous Alsatian.

“Go find it, Dinah. Go find it!” he urged, thrusting Nina’s white shawl under the dog’s nose.

The Alsatian made a sudden rush at Klim, who jumped back.

“What are you doing, Dinah?” the policeman cried, dragging the dog away. “It’s a woman we’re after!”

Klim walked away. So, Reich had tracked down Nina, and now the entire Moscow criminal investigation department was on her trail.

“Can I come in for a minute?” Zharkov put his head around the door of Alov’s office.

Alov sighed. He knew what was coming next. Zharkov would start tempting him with all sorts of foreign rubbish, and he would not be able to resist. He always bought something for Dunya.

Zharkov closed the door behind him.

“I’ve just come from the personnel department,” he said. “You know what I saw on the desk? Your work chart. And next to your name was a note: ‘From nobility.’”

Alov felt a familiar spasm in his lungs. “But many of our top brass are from the nobility… and that means—”

“Don’t argue with me and listen!” Zharkov cut him short. “Haven’t you read the latest directive? All the departmental bosses have been told to cut staff and get rid of idlers. We’re all on an economy drive right now, so you’d do well to weed out some of your coworkers. If not, they’ll give you hell for setting up a ‘nest of gentlefolk.’”

Alov was racked by an uncontrollable fit of coughing. Zharkov rummaged in the pockets of his voluminous trousers and brought out a small candy tin. “Here. Have a mint drop.”

Alov shook his head. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine….”

He folded his arms on the desk and put his head down on them. He felt a little better in that position.

Zharkov clapped him on the back sympathetically. “This purge has got me running scared too, you know. I asked Drachenblut to send me off to Europe while it’s going on, but he won’t hear of it. ‘The OGPU is founded on the principle of equality,’ he told me. ‘The purge has the potential to affect every one of us.’”

Alov, his head still hidden, smiled bitterly. There was no equality to speak of in the OGPU. Some stayed in their jobs, even though they were from the nobility while others lost their livelihoods for the same reason. Some worked like dogs while others were sent off to live abroad with full board and lodging and a salary of two hundred and fifty dollars a month. No endless meetings for them or “voluntary donations” to the aviation society, and no purges either.

“How about we have a drink in the canteen?” suggested Zharkov. “My treat.”

Alov nodded. He was not fool enough to refuse such a generous offer. The price of vodka had just gone up by 60 kopecks.

On his return from the canteen, Alov sat for some time at his desk, trying to gather his thoughts.

The purge was to take place on November 12th, and he had very little time left. Everyone would ask him about his achievements. What could he tell them?

Zharkov was right. Alov’s aristocratic roots might turn out very badly for him. He was bound to be accused of class-based cronyism and of trying to protect “socially similar elements.”

But which employees could he get rid of? All the staff members in his department were vital.
Alov called Diana Mikhailovna into his office and asked her what members of staff she thought he should dismiss. She became agitated, talking about Anya the translator who had a young child and about Nikolai Petrovich who had bad knees.

“If he loses his job, it will be the end of him,” she fretted.

At that point, the telephone rang. “Off you go now,” said Alov, waving Diana Mikhailovna out of the room, but she refused to budge.

“Comrade Alov,” she said in a pitiful voice, “you’re not going to dismiss me, are you? I have children too.”

“If it was up to me, I wouldn’t get rid of anyone,” he told her. “You’re all too valuable to the organization for that.”

Diana Mikhailovna beamed. “Thank you!” she said and ran from the room.

Alov picked up the receiver. “Hello!”

It was Galina.

“I need to tell you something,” she said. “I’m not working for Klim Rogov anymore.”

“Did he throw you out?”

“No. It’s me. I don’t want to work for him.”

Alov was dumbstruck for a moment, amazed at Galina’s nerve.

“Listen, Pidge, you and I have got a job to do. What does it matter what you want or don’t want? You have your orders, and you follow them.”

But Galina did not seem to be listening. “If anything were to happen to me, would you look after Tata?”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“Why are you so jumpy? You know yourself anything could happen. I could be run over by a cab on the street tomorrow. I just want to know if you’d look after my child.”

“But Tata’s at boarding school now!”

“She didn’t like it there, and she came back.”

“You know as well as I do that I haven’t got space to put Tata up in my home.”

“Then she’ll have to go to an orphanage,” said Galina thoughtfully. “Just as I thought.”

“You’re fired!” Alov found himself blurting out to his own surprise. He slammed down the mouthpiece, not wishing to hear or say another word.

He was seething with rage. The cheek of it! A fine pair of princesses he had on his hands! One wouldn’t do her job, and the other thought she was too good for boarding school.

He called Diana Mikhailovna again.

“I’ve given the order for Comrade Dorina to be dismissed from her duties,” he told Diana Mikhailovna as she entered his office. “Take care of it for me, please, and ring the duty officers to let them know Dorina’s pass is no longer valid.”

Diana Mikhailovna gazed at Alov in wonder. She knew that Galina had once been his lover.

“So, you’re sacrificing her for our sake?”

Alov frowned. “I’m not sacrificing anybody. Off you go! Why are you breathing down my neck? Actually, wait a minute…. You don’t have a cigarette, do you?”

Diana Mikhailovna brought him a couple of her hand-rolled cigarettes, which she made herself using “medicinal” herbs.

Lighting one up, Alov immediately choked on the sweet, unfamiliar smoke.

He really had been a swine to dismiss Galina like that. But then again, he reasoned, she would have lost her job anyway on the 12th of November not only because of her gentry background and her nonpayment of trade union subscription fees but also because she was completely unfit for the job.

He remembered Drachenblut once telling him that by showing pity to weak people, you only encouraged degradation and social deterioration.

I’ve done what I can for Galina, he tried to reassure himself. It’s not my fault she’s so hopeless. And Tata can go back to the boarding school. What is this new fashion, anyway, of only doing what you want? If we all did as we liked, we’d never create socialism in this country.

Drachenblut summoned Alov to come to his office without delay.

He was sitting at his desk and kept putting his hands to his face as if checking to make sure everything was still in place. In front of him was a saucer piled with cigarette butts, a horrible travesty of a dinner plate.

“Today, we gave Oscar Reich ten thousand dollars expenses,” said Drachenblut in a queer voice. “And his wife has stolen the money and gone into hiding. What’s more, she smashed him over the head so hard that he ended up in hospital.”

Alov gasped. “Who is this woman?”

Drachenblut clenched his small, yellow fists. “That’s the point. Reich was fool enough to marry some imposter. He thought she was Baroness Bremer, but today, he found out that her name is actually Nina Kupina.”

“I know her!” cried Alov.

Drachenblut pointed at a folder on the desk in front of him. “I’ve been reading the file you started on her. Everything I’m telling you is a state secret, do you understand? If Yagoda knows we’ve lost a huge sum of money, he’ll eat us for breakfast. I asked you to come here because you know Kupina, and you’ve been keeping tabs on Klim Rogov, the only person who might have an idea where Kupina is. The police inspector spoke to a group of driving students who told him that Rogov and Kupina have been keeping very close company lately.”

Alov looked at his boss with a dazed expression. “So, what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to find Kupina. We can’t let our agents in on it. They’re all accountable to Yagoda, so we’ll have to do it ourselves. If we manage to get back that money she stole from Reich, then you’ve got yourself a room.”

“Who exposed Kupina, anyway?” Alov asked.

Drakhenblut sighed heavily. “Some woman. Reich met her on the street and didn’t even think to find out her name. If we could have found her, it would all have been a lot easier.”

Alov went out of the office, clutching the folder to his chest. I’m no detective, he thought. That isn’t my line at all.

But what if this really was his chance to get a room of his own? After all, miracles could happen. You wished passionately for something, and then some higher power came to meet you halfway.

He had to work out a plan of action. The first thing was to meet up with Klim Rogov, get him under surveillance again, and find out where he went and whom he met.

Alov was already regretting dismissing Galina. She might have come in useful after all.

Back in his office, he called her and asked her what she knew about Rogov’s relationship with Kupina.

“I told you back in the winter that Klim was interested in her,” she said in a dull voice.

“And that’s all?”

“Yes. Leave me alone now, could you? Please?”

It was no good relying on Galina, thought Alov. The fool of a woman really did not have what it took to work for the OGPU.