Trans-Siberian Express (22 page)

“What have you learned?” Zeldovich asked, deliberately refocusing their conversation.

“He is cautious.”

“Of course.”

“It is not so simple,” she said, after a long pause.

“Do you think he suspects you?”

“Perhaps. He is not a fool.”

He felt that she wanted to say more, but had checked herself.

“The question remains,” she said. “What happens when we learn the truth? How can we prevent a holocaust?”

He took a deep swallow from the vodka bottle. The holocaust was not his concern. What he cared about was his own survival.

“We must take one step at a time,” he said. “We will know better how to proceed when we know how long Dimitrov will be with us.”

“And then?”

“Others will need to know.”

“And quickly.”

“So you see why I am anxious,” he said, feeling the edge of his own cunning. “For all we know, there is no time left at all.”

“You mustn’t get too impatient. There is a delicacy here. We are dealing with a sensitive man. There is, actually, some question whether he will ever tell us what we want to know.”

Zeldovich could feel again the irritation in his nerve ends that no quantity of vodka could erase. Perhaps he was being too subtle. Other methods might be far more effective. He took another swallow from the bottle. His eyes roved over the compartment. It was confining, maddening. Like Dimitrov, he craved space, big high-ceilinged rooms, a large scale. This confinement is killing me, he thought.

Anna Petrovna looked out into the darkness. “We will be in Novosibirsk soon,” she said wistfully. “We are heading home.”

“It is a godforsaken country,” Zeldovich said, shivering lightly. Hearing his own words, sensing her disapproval, he knew he had spoken rashly.

“Forsaken?”

“I mean it is formidable, huge, an enigma.” He felt himself reaching for ways to placate her.

“The future is here.” She stood up, then moved toward the door. “You will know when I know. And don’t send for me again.” She opened the door a sliver, paused, then let herself out.

Alone in the compartment, Zeldovich felt the full weight of his depression descend, and he emptied the vodka bottle to the dregs.

TANIA
stood on the bottom step of the train carriage, gloved fingers wrapped tightly around the handhold as the lights of Novosibirsk glowed up ahead. The icy wind against her cheeks felt wonderful, and she waved to the crowd of babushkas who lined the tracks. She felt a great sense of her own importance as she stood there on the moving train, the old women’s faces looking up as if in tribute. She was sure they envied her. She was Cleopatra coming down the Nile, and these rows of babushkas were her subjects.

In her free hand she could feel the paper rubles the general had given her. She would have declined this mission for anyone else, just as she had refused countless scores of passengers who asked for similar consideration. It was against the rules, although it was winked at even by the inspectors. But since they no longer sold vodka in the restaurant concession, what was one to do when the craving became oppressive?

For many of the attendants it was a regular business. They ducked off the train and went straight to the supplier, usually an ancient crone who bribed the police not to notice her as she stood in the shadows. Some attendants even stocked it in their quarters, stashing bottles in every spare bit of space. Tania found that unthinkable. But she was not against vodka. She always kept a bottle herself, and understood that, for the passengers, there was something about a train ride that seemed to induce drinking. What surprised her was how quickly she had agreed to the general’s request. Not the slightest quiver of protestation had occurred to her. It was as if she had been merely waiting for him to ask her for something, anything.

She was happy to do this for the general, but she felt her mission to be an interruption of her efficiency. That made her nervous, for this was no ordinary, routine journey. There was, after all, a dead woman in one compartment, and KGB men in another, on an active mission of surveillance. She had observed the blonde woman being carried bodily into their compartment. And then there was that little brat Vladimir, and the squat fellow who walked like a duck and never seemed to sit still.

It was her duty to observe them all, and she wondered when she herself would be interrogated. As always, she was fully prepared. Suddenly she remembered one of her duties. The Jew, Ginzburg, had to get off at the next stop with the body of his wife. The general’s mission had driven the thought out of her head.

Reentering the carriage, she knocked at the door of Ginzburg’s compartment, and the grief-stricken face of Ginzburg appeared, his skin ashen, his eyes puffed and bloodshot.

“We will be in Novosibirsk in a few minutes.”

He nodded. She looked beyond him into the compartment, hesitating, unwilling to enter. She imagined that the dead woman had already begun to smell and made a mental note to disinfect the compartment as soon as possible. The very idea of death was offensive, the epitome of uncleanliness.

“I’ve asked the night attendant to help you,” she whispered, as if the sound of her voice might provoke a resurrection. Then she backed away and returned to the steps of the carriage.

The platform filled with people as the vendors crowded toward the edge of the train, hawking their wares. Searching the shadows in the rear of the platform Tania saw an old woman, huddled in a huge coat, her unruly gray hair wrapped in a large babushka. Beside her was a pushcart, covered with canvas.

Soldiers in the rear train jumped off, their guns slung over their tunics as they crowded around the women, some of them flirting with the few pretty girls among the peddlers. Without looking around, Tania moved toward the old woman. Pulling off her glove, she put up three fingers and counted out the correct number of rubles. Out of the boxes in the pushcart came three bottles of vodka, which Tania quickly tucked under her coat. As she turned to depart, she was blocked by the big red-haired man, who stared impassively at her for a moment, then motioned to the old woman. Tania felt suddenly unnerved. Her knees began to shake as she ran toward the train without looking back.

On the edge of hysteria, she hurried down the passageway and tapped frantically on the general’s door.

“You’re as white as a sheet,” Grivetsky said, taking the bottles and lining them up on the table.

She felt perspiration begin to pour from her armpits as she struggled to keep herself from trembling. “I’m sorry, sir.”

“Sorry?”

“He saw me,” she said, blurting the words out. Surely she could trust the general. He stood in the center of the compartment watching her, his handsome face showing concern. Being with him calmed her. She felt suddenly under his protection.

“Who saw you?”

“KGB,” she said, in control again. “The red-haired man. He must have followed me.”

“Did he say anything?”

“He didn’t have to. He just looked at me. I know he will report me.”

“I doubt that.”

“I know them,” Tania said. “They can make it hot for you.”

“It’s me they’re watching,” the general said, smashing a fist into his hand. “This train is infested with them.”

“You?” She had assumed they were watching the American doctor and the blonde woman. It was very confusing.

The general opened one of the vodka bottles and poured her a tumblerful.

“This will make you feel better,” he said, pouring out a glass for himself.

She drank slowly, two hands wrapped around the tumbler, feeling the heat of the liquid in her throat and chest.

She looked into the general’s face. It was strong, kind, manly.

“Why are they watching you?” she asked, feeling the closeness grow between them.

“They cannot bear not knowing,” he mumbled.

“I don’t understand.”

“They must know everything,” the general said.

The train began to move and Tania felt her fear and anxiety slip away. A real enemy could only exist outside the world of the train. She looked at the general, the reflection of his profile etched in the window as the train moved out of the light. She felt suffused with sensations and mysterious yearnings. The general was watching her, just as Colonel Patushkin had. His eyebrows met above the bridge of his nose, his forehead was wrinkled with thought.

“We must find a way to outfox them,” he said, putting a hand on the sleeve of her coat.

She wanted to place her own hand on his, to touch him. But he seemed too formidable.

“I will do anything,” she said. Anything, she repeated to herself, remembering Patushkin and the agony of her disappointment. In spite of everything, she told herself, it was the finest moment of her life, never duplicated.

“You must tell me everything you see, everything you hear. There is more to this than meets the eye. This is a massive operation of either surveillance or, perhaps, interdiction.”

“Interdiction?” She stumbled over the word.

“They are trying to prevent something.”

“Prevent what?”

“Me.”

She nodded knowingly, remembering his fine uniform, the glistening symbols of rank, the delicious smell of the crisp fabric. He had drawn the chalk line and she had crossed over to his side, irrevocably.

“Do you understand?” he asked loudly. Then he softened, and began to pour more vodka into her tumbler, which she hastily set down.

“I must be alert,” she said sincerely, her sense of mission profound.

He nodded and sat in the chair again, folding his hands, a brooding grayness descending over his face. She stepped backward, out of the compartment. Except for the old attendant, the passageway was empty.

“You must tell me everything that happens tonight,” Tania barked, beginning to unbutton her coat. The old woman nodded, but there was something about her manner that made Tania suspicious. That one is up to something, she thought. Perhaps she has been assigned to watch me.

“What is it?” she snapped. Long ago she had learned that these people responded only to intimidation. The old woman stopped her vacuuming and, with a wag of her head, pointed to the end of the passageway.

“What?”

“The Jew,” she said, avoiding Tania’s eyes. “He is still there.”

“How could he be?”

“He would not leave.”

“And the body of the woman?”

“Still there.”

“A dead woman!”

“He would not leave.”

“You should have reported it.”

“I wanted to. Believe me, I wanted to. But I could not find you.”

“You should have told the station master.”

“By the time I realized it, it was too late.”

“Katrina Ivanov!” Tania barked, hands on hips.

The old crone was trembling now. She looked down at her fingers and would not raise her eyes.

“Well,” Tania urged.

“He gave me twenty-five rubles.” The woman looked up. “Before I could think, he had thrust them into my hand. ‘Here, old woman,’ he said. Just like that. ‘Here, old woman, take twenty-five rubles. We will keep her here until Birobidjan.’ It had all happened so fast. I was frightened. Who knows what these Jews will do? He frightened me.”

“Stupid hag,” Tania cried, walking to Ginsburg’s compartment, feeling the full authority of her railway service. She rapped sharply on the metal door with her knuckles.

“Go away,” Ginzburg’s voice whined from within.

“Open this door immediately.” Tania could feel the old woman’s eyes on her. The woman was goading her to great heights of indignation.

“Go away,” Ginzburg said.

“Open this door,” she cried, rapping more sharply now, persistent and loud, the sound reverberating in the passageway. A door opened nearby. It was the fat Trubetskoi, rubbing his pouchy eyes.

“Stop this racket,” he cried. “We are sleeping.”

Tania lifted her hand to knock again, then checked her swing in midair. Another door had opened down the corridor, and the red-haired KGB man was watching them now.

“Sorry, sir,” she said to the fat man, who yawned, scratched his belly, and walked back into his compartment, slamming the door behind him.

Tania picked up the vacuum cleaner the crone had been using and began to push it across the carpet. The KGB man continued to watch her. She could feel his dull eyes on her. But she found her courage in the pact with the general. It is us against them, she told herself over and over, as she moved the vacuum nozzle across the carpet. She cursed the stupidity of the old woman. There was no sense creating another incident. She herself had failed on two counts—purchasing illegal vodka, and grossly neglecting the disposition of the dead body.

After a while, the red-haired man disappeared into his compartment. When had gone, Tania turned on the old woman. She could not contain her malevolence.

“That dead woman in there,” she said, waving a finger in front of the hag’s petrified face. “That dead woman in there,” she repeated. “She will give you the evil eye.”

The woman’s stifled scream hung in the air as Tania walked toward her quarters.

THE
cold seeped through the layer of carpeting on the compartment floor, chilling the bottom of his feet. A gray light revealed the outline of objects as he searched through little piles of cast-off clothing for his wristwatch. He vaguely remembered shoving it into the pocket of his trousers.

He had managed to slip out of bed without awakening Anna Petrovna. The size of the bunk had become a joke between them, and they laughed at the idea that they slept, talked and copulated in a space barely fit for one undersized human.

He found his wristwatch. It was 3
A.M.
, Moscow time, but he was ravenous. He tiptoed to where his overcoat was hanging, put it on over his naked body and slumped in the chair, curling his feet underneath him for warmth. Outside, the gray light brightened, picking out shimmering icicles that hung from the white birches. Sunrise was not far away.

He looked at the long strands of blonde hair that lay jumbled on the pillow. He reached out and touched them, careful to keep his hand light. He sighed, feeling the weight of time. One more day and one more night, he calculated, and then Irkutsk.