TANIArecognized the chief inspector as the train slid into the Chita station. He was standing in a crowd of waiting passengers, mostly young soldiers and rough farmers from the big agricultural communes that stretched through this part of Eastern Siberia. He was watching, Tania imagined, his small pig eyes looking for reportable violations of procedure. He was a dumpy, heavy man, with puddles of chins that shook as he moved. He looked jolly, but that was a false impression. He was a dour, serious man, whose ruthless pursuit of violators had earned him the post of chief inspector for this section of the line. With him was another man, taller, with a mane of white hair that stuck out from under his fur hat. They stood motionless in the freezing cold, watching, waiting for the crowd to disperse.
Tania grabbed the handrail and hopped off the train. The American doctor and the KGB man rushed past her, followed by a group of armed soldiers. The crowd watched them with great interest, as did the inspector and his companion. Tania, uninterested, was surveying the debarking passengers for any sign of the general. He had, after all, been ticketed for Chita and, although she had inspected every inch of the train, she still hoped that the old crone had been lying and he was hiding somewhere. Hadn’t he confided his fears, and pressed her for information about the KGB men and the strange cripple? She might have been more thorough in her search for the general, but the sight of the inspector made her remember her lost master key. Was it possible that the general had reported her? she wondered. It made her bitter to think about it.
She felt a sudden tightness in her throat, as the inspector and his companion moved toward her. Was it possible? Why had they singled her out? When they reached her, she bowed obsequiously to the chief inspector.
“Comrade Romoran,” the chief inspector said, nodding, the puddles of chins shaking like jelly as he spoke.
“Comrade S-Sokolovich,” she stammered.
“This is Comrade Voikov of the Railway Police.”
The presence of a policeman startled her, adding another dimension to her fear.
“Comrade,” the white-maned man responded pleasantly, showing a set of yellow teeth. He extended his hand and she took it gratefully, feeling a little relieved.
“We will be traveling with you, Comrade,” Sokolovich said.
He talked in a low, even voice that was deliberately noncommittal, expressionless. One never knew what he thought of one’s performance until he actually sent his memorandums, which were frequently scathing.
Tania picked up their suitcases and carried them into the train. They followed her along the passageway to the compartment formerly shared by the Jew and his wife. Hesitating at the door, she wondered if the old crone had done a good job of clean-up. She had meant to inspect it, but never had. The stench of death had always sickened her, made her afraid. It was a superstition from her childhood. She was thankful that at least she had wiped away the obscenities the Trubetskoi brat had written on the misted windows.
She watched the men look about the compartment while she placed the suitcases under the bunk. Removing his hat, Voikov ran his fingers through his thick white hair and removed an envelope stuffed with papers from an inside pocket. He sat down and began to read while the chief inspector moved into the passageway, motioning Tania to follow. He peered into the well-lit station.
“This is not a routine inspection,” Sokolovich whispered, turning to face her. “We are investigating a brutal attack.”
Tania was silent. Somehow, she was sure, it was related to the general. Her knees shook. She cursed her own weakness.
“The railroad and its personnel are frequently the target of hooliganism, the work of dissidents who choose to vent their spleen on the railroad.”
The inspector shook his head, the chins rippling with anger. They are not after me, Tania thought, reprieved.
“The latest incident is by far the most serious we have encountered,” Sokolovich intoned, boring into her with his little pig eyes. “One of our train agents in Krasnoyarsk was brutally attacked. His spine was deliberately broken and he is paralyzed.”
She tried to look sympathetic and compassionate. He was, after all, talking about one of their own.
“All of our people are on the alert,” Sokolovich said, his face expressionless. It occurred to her that the “Russiya” was being singled out for the inspector’s personal attention. Again she felt her security in jeopardy. She wanted to inquire, but kept her silence. Long experience had taught her not to speak except in answer to a question directed specifically at her.
“There is a possibility,” Sokolovich continued, his little eyes fixed on her face, “that the culprit might be on this train, since we have fixed the attack at the exact time that the ‘Russiya’ was at the Krasnoyarsk station.”
She felt like a pendulum swinging between guilt and innocence, fear and hope. Could it have been one of her people? Would she somehow be penalized if it were found that someone on her carriage had perpetrated the attack? “Voikov is our best man, Comrade Romoran,” Sokolovich whispered. “He will be asking for your full cooperation, as well as the cooperation of all of our personnel on the train.”
“Of course,” Tania said.
She knew that the outward investigation would be secondary to Sokolovich’s own observations. He would always be watching, she knew.
He turned from her and peered again into the brightly lit station. The crowds around the vendors had thinned. Some of the women had already begun to pack up their goods. Tania could see Sokolovich squinting in the direction of the station, watching the soldiers. She knew he would not make inquiries. The special KGB train was sure to be the subject of rumors all along the six-thousand-odd miles of track. The official explanation was surely known to Sokolovich and it was the unwritten code of all railroad workers not to question KGB affairs.
But despite the cooperation between the KGB and railway workers, some of whom were covert agents themselves, Tania was conscious of considerable rivalry between the two groups. The railroad workers were a powerful entity in their own right, a privileged group in the Soviet Union.
“We are a nation within a nation,” a railway official had once said at a meeting. The idea had frightened her, for it hinted at separation from the goals of the State. That had been early in her railway career. Now she knew the official’s real meaning: the railway was an entity answerable to its own hierarchy, a powerful bureaucracy with its own interests, including a special police force and a surveillance system that was both part of and separate from the KGB. “The Railroad washes its own linen,” was their slogan.
Sokolovich squinted at the station clock, checking it against his own silver pocket watch. It was one thing to cooperate with the KGB, but when they interfered with the railroad timetable, that was quite another matter.
“Bastards,” Sokolovich mumbled.
The Chita stopover was scheduled for fifteen minutes. It was now five minutes overdue. Voikov came out from the compartment and joined them in the passageway.
“We are late,” he said, looking at Tania as if she were responsible.
The two men stood in the passageway, their eyes fixed on the station entrance, as if they could not begin their investigation until the train was moving again. As they watched, the blonde woman came out of her compartment and joined them in their watch.
At last the American doctor and the KGB man reappeared. The soldiers reformed at the station entrance and moved quickly back toward the train.
“Ten minutes behind now,” Sokolovich observed. The blonde woman glanced at him and returned to her compartment.
When the train had begun to move again, Sokolovich went into the toilet while Voikov rubbed his chin and looked at Tania. Under his thick white hair, his face was ruddy and veined. He beckoned Tania into the compartment and sat down again on the only chair, putting on his glasses and looking over his papers.
“Shmiot. The man’s name was Shmiot. Did you know him?”
Tania shook her head.
“It seems to have been totally unprovoked. He was seen just five minutes before the train arrived at the station and was discovered by one of the switchmen less than five minutes after the train had left. All roads lead to the ‘Russiya.’ ” Voikov paused. “The only logical conclusion is that someone slipped off the train, attacked Shmiot, then came back on the train.”
“I was sleeping,” Tania said, calculating that Krasnoyarsk was a late night stop, nearly midnight local time.
“It is not an easy assignment,” Voikov said. “Our people are interrogating everyone who debarked within the last two days. We are handling those who remained on the train since Krasnoyarsk—about a hundred people.”
Tania shrugged. She was trying to appear intelligent and concerned, but she was still afraid that somehow this investigation would uncover her intrigue with the general.
Sokolovich came back into the compartment. Voikov removed his glasses and stood up.
“Thank you, Comrade Romoran,” he said. “We will start at the hard class and work our way back here. The important thing is not to alarm the passengers or alert our killer. Judging from the condition of the victim, our man may be a psychopath.”
Tania excused herself and left the compartment. Her head ached and her uniform was soaked with perspiration. She opened the door to her quarters and was immediately assailed by the stench of the old crone who lay on her bunk, snoring heavily. Soon Tania would have to wake her to take her shift. The idea of the old crone answering questions filled Tania with dread. Who knew what stupidities might come out of her mouth, inadvertent remarks that could reflect on Tania’s own actions. She changed her clothes quickly, deciding not to wake the sleeping woman.
When she returned to the passageway, it was empty except for the dull soldier who leaned against the door of the doctor’s compartment. She began polishing the samovar, determined to win back her sense of pride in her work. Never again would she allow herself to be corrupted by her emotions. She would distrust them forever, she vowed, if only she might escape detection now.
She polished the samovar until she felt she might be rubbing through the metal. Then she attacked the toilets with an attention to detail that startled even herself. That done, she carefully scoured the filigreed cup holders and polished each metal curlicue until they sparkled in the light like the crown of the old Czarina that she had once seen in Leningrad. She scrubbed the windows in the corridor and promised herself that as soon as the train stopped again she would drop everything and start work on the muddy outside windows. She could finish the job by Skovorodino if she hopped out to the platform at every fifteen-minute stop, washing one window at each station.
The prospect of further chores energized her, spurring her sense of purpose. Even the corridor carpets got an extra effort as she sat on her haunches, ignoring the curious glances of the guard, and loosened the encrusted dirt with her fingers before running the vacuum. She would show Sokolovich what it meant to be a railway worker.
Sokolovich and Voikov returned to the carriage just before dawn. The train was running along the Amur River, very close to China. Both men looked somber in the early light, and the eyes of the chief inspector showed strain and fatigue.
“Wake us in two hours,” Sokolovich said as they went into the compartment. Tania had already turned down their bunks and puffed their pillows.
As the men closed the door behind them, the door to the Trubetskoi compartment opened and the fat woman, her hair in curlers, walked drowsily to the toilet. A few moments later a fierce-looking Mongolian, who was the sandy-haired Australian’s new roommate, came out of their compartment, heading for the occupied toilet. He tested the door. It was unlocked. As he swung it open, Mrs. Trubetskoi’s scream of outrage echoed through the passageway. Rising from the seat, she banged the door shut on the startled Mongolian’s hand. The scream brought Trubetskoi dashing out in the passageway, the gap in the front of his pajamas wide open. He banged on the toilet door and called to his wife inside.
“That Mongol pig,” she screeched. “He opened the door.”
Trubetskoi glared at the Mongolian, who was mumbling, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” in heavily accented Russian.
“Filthy foreigners,” Trubetskoi growled. He turned on Tania. “You should not allow them in the soft-class compartments. I will report it to the railroad authorities.”
He had regained his arrogance, and was happily unaware of how ridiculous he looked with his testicles exposed through the opening of his pajamas.
The inspector’s compartment opened and Sokolovich, chins quivering, came out into the corridor.
“They allow these disgusting Orientals in the soft class,” Trubetskoi hissed, obviously mistaking Sokolovich for an ally. Sokolovich squinted in the direction of the man’s crotch, then turned to look at Mrs. Trubetskoi, who was finally emerging from the toilet. Little Vladimir had awakened and crept out to stand beside his father. The door of the doctor’s compartment opened a crack and Tania could see the dark face of the KGB man watching the scene.
Mrs. Trubetskoi, gathering her dignity, had started moving down the corridor, when she suddenly noticed the display of her husband’s genitalia.
“These Orientals are pigs.” Trubetskoi was still raging at Tania and Sokolovich. The Mongolian stood wringing his hands and appeared not to understand.
“Papa,” Vladimir cried, pointing to his father’s crotch. Not comprehending, annoyed at the interruption, Trubetskoi took a wide swing at the boy, who instinctively stepped backward, escaping the blow but upsetting a bucket of charcoal. At that instant Tania remembered the incident at Krasnoyarsk, the boy rushing past her, spilling the charcoal.
“Krasnoyarsk,” she said, pointing to Vladimir.
Sokolovich, instantly alert, looked from Tania to the boy, then turned to the father, whose anger was still gathering momentum.
“We should not permit these filthy barbarians to contaminate the train—”
“Will you please cover yourself?” Sokolovich said calmly.
The man paused in his diatribe and looked questioningly at the inspector. His wife, flushing a deep red, reached downward and pulled the sides of her husband’s fly together. Trubetskoi was suddenly speechless. The Mongolian quickly ducked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. Doors closed all along the passageway. The incident was over.
When Mr. and Mrs. Trubetskoi had departed, Tania explained to Sokolovich the circumstances at Krasnoyarsk. The inspector looked at Vladimir, who was playing with the charcoal he had spilled. Then he went into his compartment and roused Voikov. Tania repeated her story.
“It may be nothing,” she said, a hedge against such a possibility.
“Bring in the boy,” Voikov ordered.
Tania went out into the corridor and bent down beside Vladimir. She detested the boy.
“Those men would like to talk with you, Vladimir,” she said. The boy continued to play with the charcoal, not even looking at her.
“Vladimir, if you come they will give you a nice present.”
He stopped and looked up, his little face suspicious.
“A present?”
“Yes. A present.”
He got up from the floor and rubbed his dirty hands on his shirt and trousers.
“You are making yourself dirty,” Tania scolded.
He looked at her, then at his blackened hands, and ran them down the front of her uniform. The dirty little bastard, she thought, leading the boy into the compartment where the two men waited. Vladimir stood in the center of the room and put his hands on his hips defiantly.
“Where is my present?”
The men shrugged and looked at each other.
“Do you like candy?” Voikov said pleasantly. When he smiled, he looked grandfatherly, reassuring. “I have a little boy that likes candy.”
“What kind?” the boy snapped. He seemed to be playing with them, enjoying his newfound power.
Voikov poked in his suitcase and brought out a bar of chocolate. Tania sensed his embarrassment at having to reveal his own extravagance. The boy’s eyes opened wide as he put out his hand. Chocolate was an expensive delicacy and even Vladimir’s indulgent parents did not buy it often. But Voikov drew the chocolate back.
“What were you doing inside the Krasnoyarsk station?” Voikov said with a practiced blandness.
“Krasnoyarsk,” Vladimir repeated, not taking his eyes off the candy.
“He was running as if he were frightened,” Tania said. She felt hesitant suddenly. Vladimir was a brat, but he could not have committed such a violent crime. He did not have the strength. But, perhaps, he had seen something. The connection of events meant something, she was certain. She was proud of her memory and hoped it might mean another commendation.
“What were you running from, Vladimir?” Voikov said.
“Give me the candy,” Vladimir demanded.
“Perhaps you saw something,” Voikov urged. He looked up at Sokolovich. “Although he doesn’t look as if he is capable of fear.”
Voikov undid the wrapper and broke off a piece of the thick, shiny brown chocolate. “Would you like a bite?” he said.
Vladimir rubbed his lips with the back of his hand, and Tania could see all the gluttony of his heritage.
“If he saw such brutality,” Voikov whispered, “he would remember.”
“Are you sure he was there, Comrade Romoran?” Sokolovich asked. Tania thought hard. Her own credibility was in question now. She remembered the boy coming at her, looking backward over his shoulder. When he had collided with the charcoal bucket, he had stopped for a brief moment, looking up at her in panic and pointing in the direction from which he had come. The picture came to her clearly now. She knelt quickly and grabbed Vladimir by the shoulders.
“He will come after you now,” she hissed. “He will do the same to you.” She had acted on impulse, but it worked.
“You must not let him,” Vladimir cried, his lip quivering.
“See,” Tania cried, exhilarated by her vindication.
“What did you see?” Voikov asked.
“The funny man.” He enacted an attack, flaying his arms in the air, twisting and gyrating, enjoying his own exhibition.
“Who?” Voikov asked. He was still patient, gentle, the candy bar poised in his hand.
Vladimir stopped and looked at the floor. Then he slowly lifted his head and pointed toward the compartment door, smiling and reaching out his little hand for the chocolate. Voikov broke off a piece and put it in his grimy hand. Vladimir stuffed the entire piece in his mouth.
“Now you will show us,” Voikov said.
The boy darted into the passageway. He stopped outside the compartment shared by the Jew and the cripple. Then he put out his hand.
Voikov gave him the rest of the chocolate and the boy skipped away down the passageway.
“Miserable brat,” Tania whispered.
“We will bring him back later,” Voikov said.
“The key,” Sokolovich whispered, touching Tania’s arm. She felt her heart stop, her throat constrict.
“One moment,” she managed to say. She rushed to her quarters and violently shook the old woman awake.
“Your master key, please.”
The woman automatically patted her pockets, then looked up warily.
“Where is yours?”
“Give me the key or I shall tell them that you took bribes from the Jew.”
“Who?”
“Chief Inspector Sokolovich. He is outside.”
The old woman reached into her pocket and drew out her master key. Tania tore it out of her hand and ran back into the corridor. Both men were poised at either side of the compartment. She eased the key into the hole and stepped back. Sokolovich turned it slowly, then threw the door open and burst into the compartment.
The two men inside looked up in surprise, then immediately turned to each other. Tania felt certain that in that glance, some message passed between them. One of them was surely the culprit, she told herself. It hardly mattered which one.