The Samurai Inheritance (13 page)

He’d been thinking it over, but had avoided bringing up the subject because he suspected his decision would sound patronizing. He had a feeling Magda Ross was a woman you patronized at your peril.

‘According to Daniel, Dimitri Kaganovich lives in an old people’s home in one of the workers’ housing projects just inside the outer ring road. He must be close to a hundred years old now. I think, in the first instance, I should visit him alone … sound him out. Apparently, he suffered a great deal under the old Communist regime. It’s likely to be quite a long, possibly a difficult conversation, entirely in Russian, so you’d probably be bored and—’

‘Jamie,’ Magda laughed, ‘all you had to say is it would be more sensible for me not to come along. I’m not going to be much use to you if I don’t speak the language. Besides, I have better things to do.’

‘You do?’

‘Of course.’ She grinned. ‘I’m in one of the world’s great cities. I’ll go shopping. I packed for Japan, remember, and it’s a lot colder in Moscow. If we’re here for a few days I’ll buy something a little warmer. If you let me know your size, maybe I could get you a jacket?’

‘That would be great.’ Jamie cursed himself for sounding like a gushing schoolboy. ‘Naturally, Mr Devlin will be paying, so don’t hold back.’

‘Naturally.’ Her lips twitched. ‘And I wasn’t going to. Now,’ she got to her feet, and he rose with her, ‘I have to go to bed.’ She kissed him on the cheek and though it was only the faintest touch of her lips he felt as if he’d been branded. He watched the door close behind her, sighed and picked up his mobile phone. If it was bedtime in Moscow what time did that make it in Australia?

It took less than an hour by taxi to get from the Lotte Hotel to Kapotnya, but by the time the driver turned off the MKAD, Moscow’s outer ring road, Jamie was convinced he’d been transported to another planet – one made entirely of concrete and steel. For the last third of the journey the highway was sandwiched between huge factory complexes, steel foundries, cement works and petrochemical plants. Daniel had described Kapotnya as a workers’ housing project from the Fifties. What he hadn’t mentioned was the air of defeat and destitution, or the sprawling oil refinery – all belching chimneys, giant tanks and gas flares – that squeezed the enclave against the bank of the Moskva as if it were a medieval army bent on pushing the squat, rust-stained housing blocks into the river. Low, leaden clouds leaking a thin, sulphurous drizzle helped turn the scene into the backdrop of some gloomy post-apocalyptic disaster movie; a Philip K. Dick adaption, only without the belly laughs. Jamie began to understand the look the taxi driver had given him when he’d mentioned the address: a cross between disbelief and pity. Another turn took them into a tree-lined avenue flanked by two of the giant apartment blocks, a concrete chasm with a tarmac floor. Normally, Jamie associated trees with freedom, the open countryside, or even little London parks that gave you the illusion of being out in the fresh air when your lungs were being clogged with petrol fumes. These trees felt like prisoners, just like the dusky-skinned teenagers who sheltered from the rain beneath them. The separate groups had been eyeing each other dangerously until the white Mercedes caught everyone’s attention. He heard the driver curse beneath his breath and he had the feeling the man was a second away from refusing to go any further, but a quick check of the satnav showed the destination to be so close as not to make any difference. Another turn and another concrete canyon. Halfway along, a path led to the entrance of the block on the right and the car slowed to a halt.

‘This is it.’ The driver sniffed. Jamie studied the doorway. There was a sign beside it, but it didn’t look like any old people’s home he’d ever seen.

‘You’re sure?’

The man shrugged, what difference did it make to him?

‘You’ll wait for me?’ Jamie asked, more in hope than expectation. A half grunt, half laugh that meant ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ confirmed his theory and he counted the agreed fare into the outstretched hand. The car was in gear almost before he managed to close the door.

Conscious of the predatory eyes of the teenagers sheltering under the trees, and a group of older men he hadn’t noticed earlier who sat smoking and playing cards, Jamie hurried up the path and through the doorway. The block caretaker’s office had been converted into a reception area. It was empty and after a brief hesitation he walked past it and through a double door that led to a long corridor. The stench of excrement, stale urine, unwashed body and the bitter tang of fresh vomit hit him like a slap in the face. On either side of the passage the original ground-floor apartments had been converted into wards. Their doors lay open, revealing dank, gloomy rooms illuminated only by the light filtering through ragged curtains and what seeped in from the dimly lit corridor. In the first room, each of the six beds was occupied by a grey-faced male in pyjamas or a dressing gown. The men lay on filthy blankets stained with weeks or months of anonymous bodily fluids, their heads back and mouths open, breath wheezing in their chests or rattling in their throats. Eyes flickered and bony hands twitched as if they were in the grip of some terrible living nightmare. A sound alerted him and a thin stream of urine dripped from the bottom of one of the beds. He watched it form a small pool before trickling towards the doorway and he stepped back in disgust.

‘
Napoi-it
,’ a voice as brittle as sea ice whispered. ‘Water.’ A feeble, blue-veined hand waved from the bed at the back of the room.

Jamie hurried out into the corridor and called for a nurse, but no one answered.

‘Water.’

He returned to the room and searched in vain for a tap. A door on the far side opened on to what had once been once a tiny kitchen, with a bed containing another semi-comatose figure taking up most of the space. The only utility remaining of the room’s former use was a rust-stained sink filled with unwashed cups. He gingerly picked one up and turned the tap to rinse it, but the only result was a dribble of brown liquid.

‘You have to let it run for a while,’ a voice from behind advised.

He turned to find one of the men from the card game leaning against the doorway.

‘One of your patients wanted a drink – I take it you are a nurse?’

‘Sure.’ The man grinned. ‘That will be old Nikolai. He’s due his fix. Are you visiting? Only you don’t sound as if you’re from round here and we don’t get many. Visiting time is …’

The water finally ran clear and Jamie swirled it round the cup. ‘Here,’ he said, handing over the cup and displaying a handful of hundred-ruble notes. ‘I’m looking for a resident here. A man called Dimitri Kaganovich.’

‘Resident?’ The man’s grin grew broader. ‘Sure, Dimitri’s still a resident. There’s a special place in Hell waiting for Dimitri, but the tough old bastard’s determined to keep the Devil waiting. He’s like that, Dimitri, never happier than when he’s pissing somebody off. I think the Devil may not be in charge for long when Dimitri eventually gets down there, know what I mean?’

‘Just tell me where he is.’ Jamie tucked the notes into the nurse’s top pocket.

‘Third door on the right. He’ll be the one who’s awake, unless he’s died. Never takes his meds that one.’

Jamie walked to the door then turned, as if he wanted to imprint the scene on his mind; the concrete floor, with its recent history mapped out in stains of brown and yellow; the filthy, rusting ex hospital beds carrying their cargoes of chemically comatose living dead to a destination most of them probably longed for. ‘Maybe Dimitri has decided he’s already in Hell. Don’t you ever clean this place?’

‘Why?’ The nurse seemed genuinely surprised. ‘They just dirty it again. What’s your worry? Nobody cares about these people. Only Mikhail.’

As he walked out and along the corridor Jamie heard a soft scuffle. ‘Come on, Nikolai, time for your pill.’

‘No, please …’

XV

The third room on the right showed even fewer signs of life than the previous one and put Jamie in mind of an impromptu morgue. It took a moment before he sensed chests rising and falling in the heavy, stinking darkness and made out the figures of sleeping men. He waited, seeking some sound or movement that would identify the man he was looking for –
He’ll be the one who’s awake
– but heard nothing but the faint hiss of laboured breathing.

‘Dimitri? Dimitri Kaganovich.’ The whisper cut through the doom-laden silence like a buzz saw. At first it evoked no reaction, but soon Jamie felt a chill run through him. In a single instant something had changed. Something indefinable, then not. Previously the atmosphere in the room had been oppressive, now it contained a definite hint of danger. His eyes sought out the source, drifting across the gloom and finding nothing – until he detected the faintest gleam in the far corner to the left of the window, away from any light source. Not one gleam, but two, reflecting the dull glow from the corridor lamp. A pair of eyes, watching him, wary, but not frightened; malevolent, hateful eyes that wished him dead.

‘Dimitri?’ Jamie pushed carefully through the beds until he was standing at the foot of the one occupied by the watching man. A hollowed-out face showed above the blanket. Skin stretched tight across bones like knife blades, a razor-lipped mouth collapsed over toothless gums, the high dome of the bare scalp etched with an elongated wine-stain. The face of a dead man. Apart from the eyes.

‘Six one two five seven four Kaganovich.’

‘What?’ Jamie barely caught the hoarse growl.

‘So you’ve come at last?’ The old man struggled with each word as if it were the verbal equivalent of a blacksmith’s anvil, and the sentences that followed were punctuated by the wheezing breaths of an asthmatic. ‘About time. I have been waiting for you. I am ninety-eight years old and I’ve been waiting to die since before you were born. Don’t hesitate. Come closer.’ The tone changed and it took Jamie a moment to realize the next words were thoughts he wasn’t supposed to hear. ‘Yes, come closer, you bastard. If this had been twenty years ago, or even ten, I’d have my hands round your neck or my fingers in your eyes. If I still had my teeth, I’d rip your throat out, but you smashed them in with a hammer, didn’t you?’ A long sniff. ‘So take your fucking Tokarev and put the barrel on the back of my neck so I can feel the cold steel. Look, I’ll turn my head away to make it easier. One bullet, one corpse, that’s the Cheka way. Just the right angle, up and into the skull.’

‘I haven’t come to kill you.’

In the suspicious silence that followed, Jamie could almost hear the wheels turning in the old man’s brain. ‘Why not? Am I of so little danger to you now? Not that I ever was, of course, but that didn’t matter to you. A denounced man is a dead man, isn’t that what you used to say?’

‘I’m not the secret police. I only want to talk to you about the old days.’

‘You have cigarettes?’

The abrupt change of subject was designed to give the other man time to think, but Jamie was happy to accommodate him. He fumbled in his pockets. Knowing the fondness of elderly Russians for the kind of cigarette that would choke a donkey, he’d bought two packets from the hotel bar. Still, he thought it was worth pointing out the ‘no smoking’ signs that decorated the walls.

‘Pouf,’ the old man grunted. ‘You think a nail is going to kill me now? Or any of these old fools I share this cell with. If anybody objects I tell them to go and fuck their mother.’ Jamie shrugged and handed him one of the thin cardboard tubes and produced a cheap disposable lighter, tucking the lighter and pack beneath his blanket when he’d done. The Russian inhaled with a long, whistling appreciative sigh and the thin lips twisted into a smile.

‘What were we talking about?’

‘The old days.’

Kaganovich choked on a cough of chesty laughter. ‘When you are as old as I am there are many old days. Do you mean the old days when I was young and fought in Manchuria? Or when Stalin himself noted my facility for languages and made me a diplomat and sent me to meet the beast Hitler?’

‘Yes, I—’

But Kaganovich wasn’t going to be interrupted. The voice became harsher. ‘Or when I came back and was denounced by that crooked bastard thief Berzarin? Berzarin, who had me sent to the gulag, ruined my life and destroyed my family. I always vowed that one day I would piss on Berzarin’s grave, but it is too late for me now. Maybe I will tell you what you want if you promise to piss on it for me, huh? Is it Dimitri the human mine detector you want to hear about? Or Dimitri the war hero who smashed the
Fascisti
on the Seelow Heights and marched into Berlin. Or perhaps it is Dimitri the traitor to the Motherland who ended up working in the same mines as the
Fascisti
he had been killing, because that cocksucker Stalin remembered his name, may he rot in a thousand hells.’

His strength spent, Dimitri lay back with his eyes closed and the cigarette drooping from his lips, the smoke spiralling up in wispy ribbons to form a cloud below the nicotine-stained ceiling.

Jamie gently removed the cigarette. ‘Why don’t you tell me about Hitler and Berzarin?’

It must have been five minutes before the old man started speaking.

‘I can’t remember taking a piss in the morning,’ he began in a voice that shook with effort, ‘but I remember those days like they were yesterday. It was just after that bastard Hitler had made his backstabbing treaty with the Yipponski, the Japs. Berzarin, who was my chief, called me into his office and told me we were both ordered to the Kremlin. I remember his hands were shaking and the sweat was pouring off him,’ the haggard features took on a semblance of a smile at the memory, ‘not that I wasn’t shitting my pants myself. This was at the start of the Great Purge. There were already plenty of rumours going round about people, loyal people, being pulled in and never being seen again. So you have to imagine us, Berzarin and me, shaking in our shoes as we drive there in one of those fancy new ZiLs—’ He was interrupted by a shout from the bed by the door, followed by a string of muttered curses that died away to be replaced by a desperate gasping struggle for breath. Jamie automatically turned to help the other man. ‘Do you want to hear my story or not?’ Dimitri rasped. ‘He’ll soon be dead, and good riddance.’ Reluctantly Jamie turned his attention back to Kaganovich. ‘Good.’ The old man nodded. ‘We saw Litvinov first. He wasn’t a bad fellow for a Jew, but all he told us was that our mission was deadly secret. We must reveal its existence to no one, not even our wives – not that I had one then. The Boss would tell us the rest. So we’re feeling a little braver when we go in to see him, knowing we’re not going to the Lubyanka after all. He’s in a good mood, the Boss, all jovial and friendly. There’s been a big mistake, he says, the fucking Yipponski have persuaded the Nazis we’re some kind of threat to them. You’re going to Berlin to convince Hitler different. Tell him that Stalin is his best friend and that the Soviet Union has no interest in German spheres of interest (which wasn’t entirely true, because everyone in the Foreign knew the Boss had his eye on Bessarabia and so did Hitler). We’ll share technology and we’ll share information for an assurance that the Anti-Comintern Pact has no military dimension.’ He smiled at the memory and the ravaged features resembled a crow-pecked skull. ‘He has this big deep belly laugh, and he does it now. Hitler doesn’t like German Communists, he says, I don’t like them either; tell him we don’t care how many of them he kills. In fact, we’ll give him a list if that’s what it takes. Hitler’s a pragmatist, he says, he’s not going to rock the boat for a bunch of Mongolian by-blows.’ There followed a long silence, but Jamie knew better now than to hurry the old man. Sometimes it seemed he was finished, but eventually he would take up the story again, as if he’d only been drawing a long breath.