police. Of course it was busier: the tsarist Rossiya had to worry only about death, fire, flood, famine, and other natural events, but along with these insignificant occurrences, Stalin’s protectors contended with Mensheviks, Trotskyites, kulaks, “former people” (tsarists), revisionists, anarchists, Social Revolutionaries, counterrevolutionaries, wreckers, double-dealers, saboteurs, spies of every ilk, engineers, all clerics, Ryutinists, fascists, right oppositionists, Bukharinists, left oppositionists, White Guards, capitalists, and most old Bolsheviks, to name a few.
All of these “unnatural” but cunning enemies were enmeshed in conspiracies, constantly hatching plots. And they were ubiquitous; they had even been unmasked posing as loyal party members. It was enough to make one’s head spin, and NKVD colonel Hershel Shwartzman’s had spun for the last several years. But now he was overwhelmed by it all. What had set his head turning most, however, weren’t the frantic investigatory white-hot beams of NKVD light so much as the elusive shadow that played among them. That shadow was the staple of all insurance organizations: fear.
Fear had always made the denizens of the Lubyanka do strange things. Since the Lubyanka represented a progressive revolution, fear, too, had progressed; it caused the secret police officers themselves to do strange, unexpected things within the sheltering walls where Grisha Shwartzman now sat, facing a prisoner. Bourgeois insurance divided the risk, but Communist security multiplied the fear.
Never mind the fear, Grisha thought; but who could put that from his mind? It was always lurking like a shadow in the darkness. The light would shine, but there it would be, naked and ugly. Beyond the fear, the NKVD officer marveled; it was positively shameful! Grisha should have returned the prisoner to his cell almost two hours earlier. What was worse, he, an NKVD colonel, was permitting the prisoner to sleep. That was a scandal. Almost a sacrilege. When Colonel Hershel Shwartzman had taught interrogation, if a trained lieutenant so much as permitted a prisoner to close an eye, Grisha had mercilessly roasted the fledgling officer for lacking revolutionary vigilance. The officer never lacked it again; not if he wanted a real investigatory career in the NKVD. If not, let him guard convoys, administer camps, supervise institutions. There was more than enough to do, but if the cadet really wanted to protect the revolution by rooting out the evil that threatened to sap its lifeblood, he would listen.
Who could appreciate that lifeblood better than an old Chekist who had struggled to create the very revolution itself? The very first political institution created following the Great October Revolution was the Cheka—whose initials stood for Extraordinary All-Russian Commission of Struggle against Counterrevolution, Speculation, and Sabotage. Not until a month later did the party establish the Glorious Red Army under Trotsky, that traitor. There was a man who split the party and damaged the state! The Chekists, however, were loyalty itself. The party’s founder had enrolled Grisha in the fledgling organization. Oh, Grisha had taught them a thing or two. And now? Chekists themselves were not only suspect but even more suspect than anyone else. Why? Why those who had served so faithfully, the sword and shield of the revolution?
In the past few years, when his head had spun, Grisha had hoped that things would settle down and his head would cease to spin. Everything would fall into place and begin to make sense. He wanted to stifle the swirling chaos he was afflicted with—as a dizzy child reels, stumbling off a carousel—until little by little, the world would stop gyrating and once again only the carousel would revolve, balanced and bright, a large child’s toy. Now Grisha realized there might be no climbing off the ever quickening machine. Disoriented, he would inevitably lose his grip and be flung off, to crash against stable objects such as the prison bars of the Lubyanka itself. Or worse, flung into the basement, where the dreaded pistol shots had no echoes.
Colonel Shwartzman had feared for the revolution; now he feared for his life. Others who had ridden the carousel more skillfully—moving to the very center, where the motion was negligible—had been thrown to their deaths. Henrik Yagoda, the chief of the NKVD, had disappeared. Grisha had not been allied with Yagoda; those who had, immediately followed the ex-chief into the basement. Until Yagoda’s precipitous fall, Grisha had always assumed that he himself had an insurance policy against casualty. Grisha had served Stalin faithfully from the beginning. Not personally, but he had never made a secret of where his loyalties lay. After beloved Lenin’s death, Grisha had understood that Stalin was the only man for the job. But look what had happened to Stalin’s man, Yagoda. No, with Stalin there were no insurance policies, only sacrosanct areas where the NKVD would not arrest one of their own. The organs could never admit a mistake; therefore, no NKVD officer could ever be arrested while interrogating a prisoner. As long as the prisoner in front of him remained, Grisha was safe. Two hours ago he should have returned him to his cell. How much longer could he keep him here?
Grisha stared across his desk at his insurance. An experienced prisoner, the man sat erect. Anyone entering the office from behind would never suspect him of sleeping. His eyelids were inflamed and puffy from days without rest. Grisha guessed that his companion was about his own age, slightly over fifty, but the man had been in prison camps before he was returned to the Lubyanka, and he looked considerably older. For all the discomfort of the prisoner’s predicament, his unguarded expression revealed something smug, as if the NKVD were not worth losing sleep over. Jealous that the man could rest so innocently, Grisha felt a rush of the old Chekist indignation at the prisoner’s contempt for Soviet justice. A Chekist colonel had a sense of pride! Suddenly, Grisha went around the desk and kicked the prisoner in the shin. The man’s eyes popped open, and he instinctively began to rub his leg.
“Mock Soviet justice!” Grisha cried indignantly. He wasn’t acting. He felt the burning hatred welling up within him as if he had swallowed hot lead.
“We know everything. We know everything about you,” Grisha railed. “You!” He wanted to spit out the prisoner’s name, as if even pronouncing it left a bad taste in a decent man’s mouth, but for the life of him he couldn’t remember. He wanted to check the name on the folder lying on his desk, but he thought better of it. The organs were infallible and omniscient.
“You Trotskyite wrecker!” He uttered these words with the abhorrent loathing he felt for all those who had followed that arrogant theoretician. Stalin had gotten that right!
The prisoner looked slightly bewildered. Grisha had caught him with his guard down. Now was the time to press the advantage.
“Do you still deny it?” Grisha snarled.
Perplexed, the prisoner shifted his weight.
“Answer me,” Grisha demanded.
“It’s not true,” the man said in simple honesty and looked strangely at his NKVD antagonist.
Offended, Grisha could see that the man was not the least bit intimidated.
“How can you expect me to believe that?” He twisted his face into a pained expression.
The prisoner began to answer, then hesitated, as if he thought better of it.
“Tell me,” Grisha coaxed with a certain gruff sincerity. “We’re here to tell the truth.”
“For the last week you have been accusing me of Menshevik wrecking through Bukharinist counterrevolutionary circles,” the man said with no emotion.
Shamed at his lack of revolutionary vigilance and enraged by the prisoner’s lack of fear, Grisha screamed, “I’ll squeeze your balls until you piss blood! You’ll sign whatever the charge is. And if the charge changes, you’ll sign again. You think it makes a difference. You’ll sign that your mother was a garbage truck. And it will be true, too!”
Grisha’s head was reeling. He had never talked this way. This was the new way, the way his younger colleagues spoke, all vulgar bluster. Ashamed of indulging in such a primitive outburst, and embarrassed—the organs never made a mistake—Grisha wanted to get rid of the prisoner immediately. He rang for the guard to remove him.
While waiting, he took his pen and entered a few meaningless remarks in the file about “double-dealing as a means of wrecking the truth.” He didn’t want to look at the prisoner until the guard arrived. Grisha wasn’t afraid of revealing his own fear, but he was unnerved by