The Body Outside the Kremlin by James L. May

Author:James L. May
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Delphinium Books
Published: 2020-01-03T19:07:13+00:00

18

Intelligence of the missing gold leaf changed things.

I arrived back at our cell late in the afternoon, as the sun was going down. Not finding Petrovich there, I ate a cold meal of bread, onion, and a little salt fish soaked in a mug of water, all taken from Antonov’s dry ration. The cell was warm after my long walk through the snow. Soon I dozed on my cot.

It was well after curfew by the time the old man appeared, creaky and exhausted. Even so, he immediately wanted to know about my conversation with Vinogradov, taking particular interest when I described what the museum director had said about the gold. One of his eyes had swollen almost entirely shut by now, but excitement flattened the other.

For his own part, he was able to report crossing off eight more names from the Chekist’s list. With Terekhov and Zuyev, that made ten who’d been talked to, out of seventeen total. It had been a full day’s work, but none had had anything suspicious or illuminating to say. Each knew most of the others on the list, but none would admit to an acquaintance with Gennady Antonov. He had not asked them about Terekhov, since our instructions to leave that alone had been explicit and we were already pushing our boundaries. It was impossible to say what the Chekist thought connected them to the case.

Whether the news of the leaf would alone be enough to convince him that our investigation ought to be extended was hard to say. “The trick,” said Petrovich, “is to do enough of what your superior says to make him feel he’s being taken seriously, but not so much it keeps you from presenting him real results. Misappropriations at the museum will intrigue him, at least. And these Whites Army types are getting us nowhere. But I’m worried he’ll take it as insubordination if we don’t make a show of looking into all his suspects.”

At length it was resolved: having nothing to show for ourselves when we next went to meet the Chekist at his cabin would spell the end of our deputization just as certainly as having ignored his orders altogether. The leaf gave us a new lead to follow, one that might finally produce some results. We would prioritize tracking it down, with any time left over devoted to interrogating the rest of the list.

That was settled, then. What was not settled was what to do about Veronika.

True to his suggestion, Petrovich had visited her at the women’s dormitories before coming back to our cell. This, too, had taken priority over questioning the last seven men. It was important, he said, to begin putting our leverage to use. What this had meant, practically speaking, was that he had threatened to tell Spagovsky about her affair with Antonov unless she cooperated. Of course, he explained, he hadn’t discarded the possibility Spagovsky already knew—that was required by the hypothesis of his killing Antonov, which it would be premature to

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