Elvira Baryakina - The Prince of the Soviets

“Is Tata in her room? “ asked Klim.

Natasha nodded. “She’s locked herself in, and she isn’t answering. We’re fed up with pounding on the door. I told her, ‘You need to go to an orphanage. Who’s going to feed you?’ But it’s all the same to her.”

Tata only opened the door when Kitty knocked and called her name. But as soon as Klim came in the room, she darted into the closet and began to whimper like a sick wolf cub.

Kitty ran to her. “Oh, please don’t cry!”

“Tata, we have very little time,” Klim said. “So, you need to make a decision quickly. Either you go to an orphanage, or you come abroad with Kitty and me. This minute.”

“I’m not going anywhere!” yelled Tata in an angry voice.

Klim sighed. “All right then. Kitty, let’s go.”

Reluctantly, Kitty tore herself away from Tata. “I love you very much!” she told her friend.

Klim and Kitty left the apartment and set off down the stairs.

“Wait!” Tata’s voice echoed around the stairwell. “I can’t go to an orphanage! I remember what it was like in the boarding school.”

“Come with us!” Kitty cried, her words echoing off the high ceiling.

Tata ran up to them, her worn slippers falling off her feet, and then stopped as if she had hit an invisible wall.

“How can you take me with you? You need documents, don’t you?”

“I can write your name in my passport,” said Klim. “That will be enough.”

Tata gawped at him, unable to believe her ears. “What? Are you going to adopt me?”

“Your mother saved my life.”

“When? How?”

“I’ll tell you later. Get your things together now. The taxi’s waiting.”

1

Alov could not bring himself to tell Dunya about the results of the purge, and Valakhov was not at home; he had been sent out of town on an urgent mission.

The following day, Alov surreptitiously observed his wife, convinced that her feminine intuition would tell her something terrible had happened to him, but she showed no signs of having sensed anything. Or then again, perhaps she had known all along? Was she in cahoots with Babloyan?

Alov knew that everything was over for him. He would never find another position now. Who would associate with a pariah who had been expelled from both the Party and the OGPU? In his mind, he went through all his acquaintances, wondering if he could ask any of them for help, but he could think of no one. The only person who had always helped him and never expected anything in return was Galina.

When Dunya came back from work, the solicitous neighbors were quick to let her know that her husband had been lying about at home all day. Only then did she realize Alov had been dismissed from his post. However, to his surprise, she was not in the slightest bit dismayed at the news.

“I’m glad you’re not working at the Lubyanka anymore,” she said.

“Are you out of your mind?” yelled Alov. “Don’t you understand? We don’t have enough money to live on. We’ll be evicted from this apartment, and we won’t be able to rent even a corner of a room on your miserable wages.”

Dunya took out a small cloth purse from her shopping bag and held it out to Alov. Inside was a brand new banknote, bearing the portrait of an elderly man with a prominent forehead.

Alov had only ever seen a hundred-dollar bill once before in his life—when he had been shown the contents of Klim Rogov’s wallet.

“Did Babloyan give you this money?” he asked in a shaky voice.

“Yes,” replied Dunya. “And there’s no need to stare at me like that. It’s payment for my performance on the anniversary of the October Revolution.”

Now, Alov understood what had happened. Rogov must have used the foreign currency to bribe Babloyan, and Babloyan had handed the note on to Dunya.

2

Alov was lying in wait for Diana Mikhailovna when she came out of work.

Finally, she appeared from the gate. Alov ran up to her and grabbed her sleeve.

“Help me, for God’s sake! Could you check the number of a banknote against the list given to Oscar Reich?”

Diana Mikhailovna stared fearfully at her former boss. “I don’t know if I’m allowed.”

“Please! I helped you when you needed work. Don’t you remember?”

She agreed in the end to check the number and went back inside the building. Fifteen minutes later, she came out again.

“Yes, that’s one of ours,” she said.

Overcome by emotion, Alov kissed her hand. “I’ll be indebted to you till the day I die. Now tell me, what’s happening with Rogov?”

“They let him out today.”

“What? Who let him out?”

“It was Drachenblut who signed the order. He said the charges were fabricated. Rogov was just the victim of slander by some scoundrel.”

Alov clutched at his head. So, that was it! Babloyan had had Alov expelled from the Party simply to get his crony out of prison. Babloyan must have made a deal with Drachenblut, agreeing to support him during the purge and creating an alliance against Yagoda. And as Alov might have objected to their plan, they had sacrificed him like a pawn in a game.

But why had Drachenblut agreed to such a deal, Alov wondered. After all, his former boss had been adamant about locating the money stolen from Reich. And he knew that the registered banknotes had been found in Rogov’s wallet.

Suddenly, Alov felt his blood run cold. But maybe Drachenblut didn’t know about the banknotes, he thought. Not if I didn’t include it in the report!

On that day, Alov’s damned illness had made it impossible to work; he must have neglected to fill out the necessary papers and then forgotten all about it.

Alov took his leave of Diana Mikhailovna and ran back to the gate. He had to speak to Drachenblut urgently.

3

At first, Drachenblut refused point blank to speak to Alov, but then he relented.

“What is it?” he demanded gruffly when Alov came into his office.

“Why did you let Rogov go?” asked Alov, trembling all over.

“Comrade Stalin invited Rogov for an interview. That doesn’t happen to just anyone.”

Alov clutched at his chest. “But Rogov was planning an assassination attempt! He won over Babloyan and used him to get close to Comrade Stalin.”

Then Alov told Drachenblut of the hundred-dollar bill and of the money that had been found in Rogov’s wallet.

“I didn’t manage to finish the report,” Alov said, “because I was sick. But you saw for yourself the portrait of Comrade Stalin with a hole in his forehead. It was a prearranged signal!”

It turned out that Drachenblut had seen nothing of the sort. He had only read Elkin’s testimony. The envelope containing the postcards had turned up on the following day.

“We have to save Comrade Stalin!” cried Alov. “All Rogov has to do is to smuggle in some poison powder into Stalin’s office inside a button or a fountain pen and scatter it before he leaves. Surely you know that?”

Drachenblut summoned Eteri Bagratovna. “Find out the time of Rogov’s interview at the Kremlin!” he ordered.

A few minutes later, the secretary reported back that the meeting with Stalin was scheduled to take place at seven o’clock. It was now already half past six.

Cars were dispatched to Chistye Prudy and to the Kremlin visitors’ pass desk.

Alov sat fidgeting nervously while Drachenblut smoked one cigarette after another, every now and again picking up the phone to make a call. “Have you found him yet? No? For Chrissakes!”

At 7:30 p.m., a call came in from the Kremlin to say that Comrade Stalin had canceled the meeting with the correspondent from the United Press as he had not turned up.

“I don’t understand,” Alov kept saying. “Was Rogov so delighted to be let out of jail that he went on a drinking spree? How could anyone fail to turn up to a meeting with the Comrade Stalin?”

Drachenblut ordered an investigation of Rogov’s friends and acquaintances and a search of the city hospitals, stations, and local bars. Rogov was to be found, dead or alive.

At half past eight, the message came in that he had flown out of the Moscow.

“What do you mean ‘flown out’?” Drachenblut roared at his secretary.

“He got on a plane,” answered Eteri Bagratovna calmly. “He left for Berlin this afternoon. His documents were in order.”

Alov jumped to his feet. “We need to tell Comrade Stalin everything. He needs to know that Babloyan is taking bribes—” Alov caught Drachenblut’s icy stare and fell silent.

“Calm down,” said Drachenblut. “We can’t touch Babloyan. If we start a scandal now, Yagoda will get involved, and he’ll almost certainly work out what’s going on with the money from union fees paid overseas.”

Alov slumped weakly back onto his chair. How could he have been such a fool? He might have guessed!

OGPU agents working abroad were paid in foreign currency, and as they used it to pay their union dues, large sums of currency were piling up in foreign bank accounts. Drachenblut and Babloyan must have agreed to appropriate the money for themselves, meanwhile transferring the payments back to the state in devalued rubles, which were worth only half the official exchange rate.

All senior Soviet officials were like servants stealing from their employer’s storerooms. They would strike up deals to make it easier for them to steal and then go to the boss to report on each other in an attempt to keep their enemies from the feeding trough. This was the substance of their “struggle for a bright future.”

“You know, Alov, we were maybe a bit hasty to expel you from the Party,” said Drachenblut thoughtfully. “I can see you’re a reliable employee and a vigilant agent. We’ll send you out to Cuba to carry on the good work.”

Alov understood everything. His superior was prepared to turn a blind eye to any crimes committed by Babloyan and Rogov. Meanwhile, Alov, as an unwanted witness to those crimes, was to be dispatched abroad to keep his mouth shut.

Drachenblut picked up the telephone receiver. “Put me on to the administrative department of the People’s Commissariat for Foreign Affairs.

“Ah, good evening, Comrade Fyodorov. We need to send one of our men to Havana. Do we have a position as commandant? No? Well, then he can be a registrar. I’ll send him to you with a note from me, and you get him settled in, all right?”

He hung up the phone and turned to Alov. “You were dreaming about having your own room, weren’t you? Now you’ll have one with a view of the sea and palm trees. And take that woman of yours along too so she doesn’t make a nuisance of herself here.”

“So, you’re just going to let Rogov and Kupina go?” said Alov in a faint voice.

“Don’t worry about them,” said Drachenblut. “We’ll find them all right.”

4

Klim realized it was madness to take Tata away with him. What would Nina say when she found out he had decided to adopt another child, and the child of his former lover at that? Tata would run them all ragged with her awful character, but Klim could not bring himself to abandon her to her fate. If it had not been for Galina, the OGPU woman with the red hair would have maimed him for life.

They were in luck: there were seats left on the plane, and they passed through passport control and customs without incident.

A young airport employee led Klim and the girls out on to the airfield where a bright red blunt-nosed plane stood waiting.

“Isn’t it pretty?” cried Kitty in delight. “Just like a model plane!”

It was true; the airplane looked like nothing more than a toy. It was difficult to believe that this shed with wings would actually be capable of taking off.

Klim cast an anxious glance toward Tata, but thankfully, she said nothing.

At that moment, Friedrich jumped down from the cockpit. He was wearing a leather coat and a helmet with earphones.

“Good Lord!” he said when he saw Klim. “You’re still alive! And who are these young ladies?”

“These are my daughters.”

Friedrich looked nonplussed. “Ah well, you can tell me everything later. Let’s go into the cabin. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes. First stop—Smolensk, then Kaunas, then Konigsberg. And after that, it’s just a short hop to Berlin.”

In the cabin were four leather armchairs with headrests. There were hooks for coats on the walls and rolled-up blinds at the rectangular windows with rounded corners. In the back end of the plane, behind a barrier, various crates and suitcases were being loaded noisily. Every time a new piece of baggage was thrown on board, the plane would shudder and rock.