gaze Pechko aborted his laugh with two deep choking breaths and rose to leave. Beneath the chandelier he bowed awkwardly toward his superiors and, breathing unevenly, marched self-consciously out of the room, closing the door behind him.
Turning to Grisha, Svetkov remained serious, but softened his expression as if he were dealing with a respected comrade. “Colonel, forget that silliness. A simple problem needed a simple solution. I called you in for something really very important.” Svetkov paused, as if searching for the right words. “Some cases are so delicate”—the word seemed to discomfort him—“that only the most senior investigators can be trusted with them. It’s no secret that no one here has had your experience defending the revolution. We are relying on you to make use of that formidable experience. This is a case that demands an old Chekist. Unfortunately, we have only one left.” Svetkov delivered his charge and sat back with evident relief.
Stimulated and flattered by Svetkov’s appeal—he had never known him to be so respectful for so long—Grisha sat up straighter to receive the particulars. Svetkov, however, said no more. He simply sat back and nodded very soberly, as if he had already delivered all the details.
“How long has the case been under investigation?” Grisha asked.
“A few days. It was entrusted directly to me, and I am giving it straight to you to handle,” Svetkov answered and again fell back into his chair.
“Perhaps we should start with the file,” Grisha suggested.
“There isn’t any,” Svetkov answered.
Although Svetkov remained silent, Grisha looked at him for an explanation.
“It is that delicate,” Svetkov explained.
“Then how do I proceed?”
“The prisoner himself will explain everything.” Svetkov seemed nervous and frightened by the case, but Grisha felt the thrill of a formidable challenge.
“When do we start?”
“In a few minutes he will be brought here,” Svetkov answered.
“Here?”
“This demands the strictest secrecy. You will use my office with all its resources at your disposal. Needless to say, you will be relieved of all other duties until this business is completed.”
Svetkov rose from his chair and made a few haphazard attempts to stuff his billowing shirttails into his pants. These unsuccessful thrusts merely flattened the dirty garment against his body. Removing the tunic that he had been wrinkling with his own bulk from the back of his chair, he put it on. Svetkov even made an effort to brush his hair with his hand.
Grisha wondered what prisoner could elicit such respect from Svetkov.
“Sit here behind the desk. It wouldn’t make sense otherwise,” he suggested.
Grisha rose and took the seat of Svetkov, chief of the Lubyanka. As he passed his nominal superior, he was surprised to find that the man was sweating.
“Whatever you need, Tatiana will get for you. She is a good girl. Thoroughly reliable. She has been briefed as to the investigation, but she knows nothing of the case itself. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” Grisha answered.
“Then have her send him in.”
Grisha picked up the phone and heard the severe, efficient “Yes?” of the new NKVD secretary.
“Send him in,” Grisha commanded crisply.
Svetkov crossed the large office as if on his way to escape. For a moment, the insane thought crossed Grisha’s mind that they were going to assassinate him seated at the desk of the chief of investigations. Instead the door opened and a guard entered, followed by a man sandwiched between him and another guard. Svetkov nodded. The first guard stopped, permitting the prisoner to enter. A look of loathing on his exaggerated features, Svetkov let the man walk by him and quickly exited, as if he were escaping a foul odor. The guard stood at attention to Svetkov, then quickly followed him out, closing the door.
Grisha sat up straight, focusing intently on the man who had just been deposited in front of him. After staring several moments to be certain, he was indeed surprised.
CHAPTER THREE
WHEN GRISHA TOOK SVETKOV’S SEAT BEHIND THE DRAB, massive desk, he felt a resurgence of the revolutionary enthusiasm that had once pulsed routinely through his Chekist veins. More importantly, he felt a purity of purpose that he had not experienced for several long, disappointing years. He smoothed his tunic as if it were a priestly vestment and he the priest who must assure the sanctity of the service. So much wasn’t right, but now that the Communist party had chosen him to protect its inner core, there was hope. From this bleak office in the Lubyanka would radiate a new vigilance that would cut away the smothering calcification and expose the life-generating marrow. Mankind’s confidence in the Great October Revolution would be justified!
Grisha sat in the seat of power with a revolutionary confidence that he represented the forces of progress. Historical necessity tickled him like a feather, and he wanted to laugh aloud. Yes, and he had not arrived a moment too soon. Careerists, opportunists, apparatchiks, were trampling the revolutionary flame into the dust; fear of his own arrest was sufficient proof that things were in a terrible state! But the pure spark that had ignited the revolution had survived and would be fanned into flame anew, igniting, illuminating, warning, tempering, and spreading.
Grisha’s inspired mind leaped to the battlements of the Kremlin for a historical perspective. Only an old Chekist could retrieve the Great October Revolution. “What’s to Be Done?” Lenin had heralded, and Grisha knew. The party had to retrace its steps to that point where it had taken the wrong path and from there proceed along the proper way with Bolshevik confidence. The revolution had gone wrong with Trotsky. Exiling the traitor had not solved the problem, but miraculously, that moment could be recaptured. If not the moment, then the man himself; and through the man, things could be set right. Perhaps Trotsky had returned to Russia on his own to help solve the problems he had caused, but Grisha doubted it. An arrogance such as that could not admit error.
No, Trotsky must have been captured and spirited back to Russia. Stalin himself must have understood, for only the general secretary had the authority to give such an order. It would be Grisha’s job to see that the prisoner cooperated. If he did, then the real counterrevolutionaries could be rooted out. As to the personal future of the prisoner, Stalin no doubt would want him shot. There was certainly something to be said for that, especially if it meant that others wouldn’t be shot, but even that might be unnecessary if he confessed properly. After all those years of promising prisoners that if they told the truth, they would have nothing to fear, such might really be the case!
The thought stimulated Grisha; it would justify so much that had happened; so much that he had done to so many. That the “old man” could become the “new man” excited him further. Thus freed from his havoc-wreaking attempts to create a new man, Comrade Stalin could return to building the country, the job he was suited for. But Grisha restrained his enthusiasm; all of this was in the future. First he had to gain the cooperation of the party’s most brilliant theoretician and most dangerous enemy. A man who had created and commanded the Red Army. Whose case could be more delicate than this, a case so delicate that as yet no file existed?
After Svetkov and the guard had departed, Grisha gazed steadily at the prisoner. He was, indeed, surprised.
“Lev Davidovich?” Grisha called softly across the large chamber, using Trotsky’s first name and patronymic, informal name, in faint hope that his disappointment was premature.
Accepting Grisha’s gentle, indistinct query as an invitation, the prisoner stepped humbly forward to be able to hear better. Although he said nothing, his pale meek face silently drew itself into an apology. “Yes?” it seemed to ask in reluctant