The Twelfth Department (33 page)

Korolev had made the 1:30 call—to talk to Popov.

“Do we know whose number the other one is?”

Kuznetsky’s misery seemed to deepen. “I called the number and asked who it belonged to, but they told me to mind my own business.”

“Did you say who you were?”

“No. But they’ll only have to call the operator to find out where the call came from.”

“I see. The Comrade Lieutenant’s friends, do you think?”

Kuznetsky really did look as if he were having the worst of days.

“Kuznetsky, we’ll keep quiet about this. If it blows up, which I don’t think it will—well, I asked you to make the calls and I’ll square it with the powers that be, all right? As it happens, this is very useful information. Just keep quiet about it for the present.”

“Of course, Comrade Captain.”

Kuznetsky looked relieved. He tore the pages from his notebook and handed them to him.

“You asked about calls from this number as well.” Kuznetsky nodded to the telephone on Shtange’s desk.

“Go on.”

“Two—one to the doctor’s wife in Leningrad on Monday evening and one to the Commissariat for Health on Monday afternoon.”

Nothing odd there at least.

“Thanks, Kuznetsky. Now, go and find Slivka.”

Korolev followed the youngster to the door, thinking about the professor’s call to Zaitsev and wondering what might have been said in it. As for Priudski’s calls—they’d no doubt been to his NKVD handler, whoever that was. Maybe he’d worked for Zaitsev’s Twelfth Department—which would explain Korolev’s reception at the institute, as well as the colonel’s showing up at Azarovs’ apartment later that afternoon.

*   *   *

When Kuznetsky had left, Korolev locked the apartment’s newly repaired door, took the report from under his arm, and walked through to the study. He sat down at Shtange’s desk and placed the envelope in front of him. He looked at it for a moment, reached forward to open it, then paused, pushed back his chair and pulled out the bottom drawer of the desk. There was a cavity beneath it. It would do. Temporarily at least.

Satisfied he had somewhere to hide the document quickly if needed, he slipped the report out of the envelope and ran his finger along its edge—some of the blood-browned pages were stuck together and couldn’t be unstuck, at least not without ripping them, but they were relatively few—and mainly at the beginning, where it seemed Dr. Shtange had written an introduction. The name of the person to whom that introduction was addressed was obscured, but it was someone familiar with the institute—“as you indicated,” “as you are aware” … It seemed clear from its blunt findings that the report had never been intended for general circulation.

The report was divided into four parts. The first section concerned the scientific basis of the research being undertaken by the institute and, to judge by the notes in the margin, Azarov had taken exception to many of the points made. The next was entitled “Procedural Failures and Inconsistencies” and Azarov had scribbled on much of this as well. The third part, by far the shortest, was entitled “Ethical Considerations,” while the fourth and last of the main sections covered “Financial Irregularities.”

Finally there was a brief conclusion. In Shtange’s opinion, Korolev read, Azarov should be replaced and the institute’s research restricted to the few areas where progress was achievable—and even then a complete overhaul of the research methodology would be necessary. It seemed Shtange considered that nearly all the work done up until this point had been an expensive waste of time.

Korolev turned back to the beginning and began to discover exactly what the institute had been up to. Telepathy, it seemed, had indeed been one area of research—although Shtange considered that there was no scientific basis for it and the results, so far, had produced nothing to change his mind. Korolev was curious as to what “re-education and mental manipulation of enemies” might be, and discovered the aim was to scrub enemies’ minds of counterrevolutionary bias and to replace it with pro-Soviet thinking. Shtange set out the means by which Azarov had attempted to cleanse the subjects’ minds and it was a disturbing list—surgery, electricity, a surprising variety of drugs, sensory deprivation, fear—the list went on and on.

Some of Shtange’s summaries set Korolev’s hair on end:

Surgery has certainly succeeded in erasing counterrevolutionary thinking, but only by erasing all mental processes permanently. In other cases, surgical intervention left subjects physically or mentally incapacitated—sometimes both. On several occasions surgical experimentation has resulted in the death of the subject on the operating table. There is no evidence that any of the professor’s surgical techniques have resulted in material progress, despite claims to the contrary.

Electrical treatment had been more effective in Shtange’s view—“Subjects’ memories have been erased, along with preconceptions of behavior and thought, when repeated high-voltage electrical shocks to the cortex have been administered for sustained periods.” The problem was putting the correct thinking back in, it seemed, and Shtange recommended this as one of the few areas where further research might be undertaken—although he referred the reader to reservations that he would address later on in the report.

By this time, however, Korolev was feeling sick to his stomach. It was clear to him that, in among all the medical jargon and bureaucratic dodging, these brain doctors had been doing things that human beings shouldn’t damned well do to other human beings. And what was more, he couldn’t help but remember the small beds he’d seen at the institute. Had these rats been opening up the heads of youngsters? Electrocuting children? The orphanage director had said many of the boys had come back from the institute with small scars on their cheeks—was this the explanation? He thought of the scar on Goldstein’s face and the terrible thought occurred to him that his Yuri was, likely as not, in the hands of people who’d something to do with this. He gritted his teeth and read on.

Now Shtange was talking about new methods for recovering information from “reluctant” sources. All those methods that had been attempted for “re-education” had also been tried for this purpose, as well as more traditional methods of torture. Because that’s what they’d been doing—torturing those who’d been held there. Korolev remembered the strange cells and their prison stench. If he’d ever had any doubt as to what the place had been for, this report explained it to him in detail. And alongside each of Shtange’s negative comments, Azarov had written a defense. In some places his writing was illegible—written with a hand so heavy it had torn the paper. But in others some sort of logic was apparent—if logic was possible from such a man.

And so it went on, and on, and on. Anything that could be done to mine a man’s mind, to change it, stretch it, or compress it—had been tried. Thankfully the scientific basis of most of what the professor had attempted had been questioned by the doctor. The section that covered research irregularities was almost unreadable, as the professor—at least, Korolev presumed it was the professor—had scribbled out entire paragraphs. But from what Korolev could make of it, there was an established way of doing these things, and the professor had done it the wrong way—stumbling around looking for a quick solution, rather than taking it step by step. When Shtange had moved on to ethical irregularities, the professor’s notes had seemed calmer—“Bourgeois Morality!” he’d written beside a paragraph in which Shtange had questioned the use of humans for such research. “Necessary sacrifices for the greater cause of socialism,” had been his comment when Shtange had questioned the deaths of so many of the subjects. And beside the paragraph that had confirmed Korolev’s worst fears—children had indeed been used and in nearly every aspect of the research—Azarov had written a brief defense in the margin: “Children have proved the most pliant research subjects—great progress has been made thanks to their inclusion in experimental activities.”

Korolev put his hand over his mouth when he read this, his stomach plummeting. He swore to himself that if the professor hadn’t already been dead then he himself would have done the job. Cheerfully.

But it was the section that dealt with financial irregularities that caught Korolev’s particular attention—unaccounted-for expenditures, inflated prices paid for basic equipment, salaries paid to nonexistent employees. In Shtange’s opinion, the institute’s budget had been stripped of large quantities of the foreign currency allocated to it for the purchase of equipment, books, periodicals, and any number of other items from abroad—and irregularities were apparent in every aspect of the finances. Shtange had no idea who was stealing from the NKVD on such a scale, but considered it imperative that it was investigated immediately.

But the professor knew, because he’d written one name, over and over again, beside each allegation.

Zaitsev.

Zaitsev.

Zaitsev.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Korolev put the report back into its envelope and then dropped it into the waiting cavity and replaced the bottom drawer. He had a good idea what might have been said during one of those phone calls Kuznetsky had found out about.

He stood and walked to the window, looking down on the children playing in the small park, before changing his focus to see the grim, merciless anger that showed in his reflection. He reached into his pocket for cigarettes and lit one up, thinking it all through, and when he’d finished he stubbed the butt out on the glass before opening the window and flicking it out. It was uncultured, the act of a hooligan. But then he’d just read what cultured men had got up to in the name of science. Maybe being uncultured wasn’t such a bad thing, if you knew what was right and what was wrong. It might be “bourgeois morality” to a wretch like the professor, but in Korolev’s opinion knowing the difference between right and wrong was what separated humans from wolves.

The stack of files was still on the table and Korolev walked over to it, going through them until he found the Bramson file. He picked it up and stopped when he saw the other name on the file. Goldstein. Varvara Goldstein. Bramson’s wife. She’d been arrested on 1 March 1936—three days after a husband whose surname she hadn’t taken. And the couple had a son named after the acronym for the Komsomol International Movement: Kim. Age at the time of the arrest of both his parents—eleven. Korolev swallowed dryly. The same Kim Goldstein who was now on the run from the Vitsin Street Orphanage turned out to be the son of the former occupants of Azarov’s apartment. People who owed their arrests to the professor. Korolev felt the band around his chest tighten another notch or two and reached for another cigarette. If he came through this alive he’d give the damned things up, he swore it—but for the moment, he needed all the help he could get.

Korolev reached for the telephone, tapping for the operator. When she came on the line he asked to be put through to the director of the Vitsin Street Orphanage.

“Comrade Spinsky? Korolev here, from Petrovka. I came to see you last night.”

“I remember.” The tinny voice sounded wary.

“It’s about those two boys—the ones that went missing on Wednesday night. I wanted to know where they might have been earlier in the week.”

“Earlier in the week?”

“Monday and Tuesday in particular.”

“Goldstein and Petrov? They’d have been here on the Monday—it was Tuesday morning that we bussed the boys out to Peredelkino.”

“What are the chances one or both of them could have slipped away at some stage?”

“From the orphanage? We keep a close eye on them, but it’s not a prison,” Spinsky said, and there was no mistaking the director’s concern now.

“So they could have? Do children often leave the Vitsin grounds on their own?”

“Very rarely. Only the older children, even then. As for Goldstein and Petrov—it’s not impossible. Unlikely, but not impossible. You’d have to ask Comrade Tambova or one of the others, to be certain.”

“Tambova? Little Barrel?”

“That’s what the children call her, yes.” The director sounded as though he didn’t approve of such familiarity, either from Korolev or the boys.

“Can I speak to her?”

There was a pause.

“She’s out.”

“Doesn’t she live at the orphanage?”

“She has time off the same as any other citizen. Today is her day off. I’ve no idea where she might be.”

“I want to talk to her.”

“I’ll tell her you called.”

To Korolev’s ears, the director sounded rattled. Korolev wondered if someone might have come to visit him after he’d left the night before. Cartainly Zaitsev would have wanted to know what they’d been talking about, wouldn’t he?

“Last night you mentioned a facility out near Lefortovo where the children who were chosen by Professor Azarov were taken—have you remembered where that facility might be?”

There was a lengthy pause. “I’ve no idea. As I told you yesterday—the institute takes over responsibility for the children once they are transferred.”

“Yes, so you said. So you said. And you’ve heard nothing from either Goldstein or Petrov since last night?” Korolev asked.

“Not a thing. We’ll give them a few more days and then we presume they’ve gone back on the streets. It’s not unusual, Comrade Captain. Not unusual at all.”

Korolev smiled grimly. Someone had got to Spinsky, he was sure of it. The man was doing a good impression of being offhand, but Korolev could almost smell his fear down the telephone line.

“One last question, Comrade Director—I can tell you’re busy. You remember that there were three other children who came in with Goldstein and Petrov back in January. One of them died and the other two were transferred to Professor Azarov’s care. Can you give me the names of the two boys who were transferred?”

“I’m not sure,” Spinsky began.

“Let me remind you who I’m working for on this investigation.”

“One moment,” the director said after a pause, and Korolev heard footsteps and then a drawer squealing open.

“I have them,” the director said. “Vitaly Petrov and Mikhail Kudrin.”