The December sun was weak in Khabarovsk, but its reflection off the snow dazzled the city, ice crystals sparkling in the pristine air. Apart from the massive underground supply depots and the munition factories on the city’s outskirts, where the wind kept most of the industrial pollution blowing west, the city, though shabby up close, nevertheless looked stunningly clean and peaceful. Gen. Kiril Marchenko had sensed the difference in the air the moment he’d deplaned following the long, four-thousand-mile trip from Moscow.
After having received greetings from the Khabarovsk’s KGB chief, Colonel Nefski, he went up the winding stone stairs of the jail. General Marchenko took off his greatcoat, cap, and gloves, and got right to it.
“Who put you up to this?” he asked the girl, Alexsandra Malof, the moment she was brought in.
She said nothing.
“It’s a very grave matter.”
It was worse than that, Nefski knew. Even suspected sabotage carried the death penalty. Several submarine captains from the Far Eastern Fleet out of Vladivostok had reported that some torpedoes were not detonating. A serial number check showed they all came from the munitions factory at Khabarovsk.
In a perverse way, Nefski admired the woman. Dark, in her late twenties, not much over five feet, she radiated defiance, her body stiffening the moment the two burly guards held her, one on each arm, when she looked as if she was about to spit at the general. The coarse woolen prison top could not hide her beauty, her breasts more alluring each time she resisted the pull of the guards, her eyes quick with rage, her whole body tense. Proud, too — wouldn’t even acknowledge the presence of Nefski’s subaltern near the window, overlooking the courtyard, whether from fear or contempt, he didn’t know. Of course, she’d just been in the prison for a day — brought straight from the munitions factory. Anyone could act tough for the first couple of hours, and amateurs were always profligate with their resistance.
It never occurred to her interrogators that she might be innocent of any sabotage, either on the railway or in the munitions factories where the Jews were supplying what was euphemistically called “volunteer labor.” She was also one of the young Jewish women prorosili—”requested”—to entertain the pilots at Khabarovsk air base. Refusal meant family harassment or most usually what the fliers called a “surprise party”—a pogrom — when things became too dull at the base.
“Is this how you Jews repay us?” pressed Marchenko. She glared at Colonel Nefski and his assistant looking on impassively.
“We give you your autonomous regions,” said Marchenko. “Let you worship your God — and this is how you treat us?” He waited. Nefski and his assistant could see the general’s patience was wearing thin.
“There are Jews in all our armed services, you know,” continued Marchenko. “Loyal to the USSR. How do you think they must feel, knowing there are traitors among their own people?”
She smiled, but it was one of contempt, as if to say, “They are the ones who are the traitors.”
Marchenko rose from behind the colonel’s desk, put on his coat, and picked up his gloves from his cap. Holding his gloves in one hand, the general put the edge of his cap beneath her chin, forcing her to look up at him. “You think this Jewish stubbornness is a virtue?”
She remained silent, and Marchenko, sweeping the cap away, turned to Nefski. “I’m wasting my time. She’s your charge.” Putting on his cap, he gestured to Nefski with his gloves. “A moment, Comrade.”
As the two men’s footsteps echoed down the stone staircase toward the brilliant white rectangle of snow framed by the door of the KGB headquarters, Nefski’s assistant asked the prisoner if she would like some tea. She made no sign.
Marchenko began putting on his fur-lined gloves. It might be sunny outside, but it was still twenty below. “She is banking on the kosoglazy—slant-eyes — being beaten by the Americans—if the Americans cross the Yalu.”
“I think you may underestimate the Chinese, General,” said Nefski. “With all due respect. They may solve our problem for us. Look at the Americans in Vietnam. They failed miserably, and with overwhelming air superiority.”
“They failed,” said Marchenko, pulling the other glove on tightly and squinting against the brilliant reflection of the snow, “because they lacked national will, Colonel. They dropped more ordnance on the Vietnamese than in all of World War Two. But it does you no good if you don’t have national will. This war, however, is very different, Comrade. The Americans see it as a Holy Grail. Vietnam veterans were spat on. In this war, Americans think God is back on their side. Like the Jews, which is why we must break that one upstairs. A dud torpedo that does not sink an American nuclear ship, a missile that fails to bring down an American nuclear bomber, could mean the difference between victory and defeat for us. Remember, Colonel, for the want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for the want of a shoe, the horse, for the want of the horse, the rider, for the want of the rider, the battle.”
“I will get the information about the sabotage,” said Nefski confidently.
“No doubt, Comrade. But when? It’s all a matter of time. You remember the Yumashev—the best battle cruiser we had? Well, we found the Estonian bastards who sabotaged her depth charges — depth charges which might have saved her from the American Sea Wolf — the Roosevelt—that sank her.”
“Luchshie umy mysliat odinakovo”—”Great minds think alike”—said Nefski. “I was telling my assistant only this morning, Comrade General, about the Yumashev.” Nefski didn’t go on to tell the general that his mention of the Yumashev to his assistant had been used to illustrate how Moscow’s interference with local investigations could actually delay solving the problem.
“Good,” said the general, “then we are in concert on this matter.” The chauffeur opened the door of the hand-tooled Zil and Marchenko stepped into the warm, plush interior. “I will be here for another six hours before I return to Moscow with my report. I can be reached at Khabarovsk air base. It would go well for us both, Colonel, if I could tell the Politburo upon my return that the situation had been solved.”
“Of course, General. I understand.”
“I’m sure you do.” The splash-green-and-white-camouflaged Zil moved slowly out of the compound, its tires crackling on the frozen sheet, the heavily coated KGB guards coming snappily to attention, rifles at the “present.”
“You are as foolish as your grandfather, Alexsandra,” Nefski told her. “You see, no matter what the official records show, we have always known your little secret. Oh yes, your grandfather paid his fifteen rubles like a good little boy to change the family name to Russian and thought he’d bought the family protection. I admit, for some, it worked. But you see, we—” he meant the KGB “—here at the local level have always known that you were Jews. And—” said Nefski, his tone magnanimous, “we told no one outside because we wanted to give you a chance. In return, this is how you repay—”
“You told no one outside,” she said, sitting forward, Nefski’s assistant grabbing her hair, pulling her back hard against the wooden chair, “because,” she shouted, undaunted, “you were being bribed not to tell!”
Nefski pouted like a disappointed grandfather. “You see?” He turned to his assistant. “The old man’s grandchildren are not grateful for his sacrifice. The poor old fool changes his name — he knows he can’t change the noses — but the name will help. To make sure, he does not go to synagogue — for seventeen years — to show us he’s sincere.” Nefski walked over, lifting up her chin. “He does this for you. And you despise him.” Nefski let her head drop. “He surrenders his faith and you spit on him.”
“I didn’t spit on him.”
Nefski glanced at his assistant as if he could no longer be bothered with her. “She spits on him. She and her brothers.” As Nefski stood by the window, the sunbeam caught his flat shoulder boards, and Alexsandra could see his red stars vibrant, like spots of blood, the sunbeam slicing the room in two, dust particles dancing madly in the beam, their randomness terrifying her. She didn’t know how much longer she could be strong. She thought of her grandfather, a good man but a compromiser, deluded into thinking he could buy respectability and safety, believing that even if the secret of the family’s origin got out, the very act of changing their name to Russian and not going to the synagogue would speak for itself. She despised Nefski and all those like him. In them, hatred of Jews ran as deep as it had in the Nazis. Gorbachev had not changed that. She remembered the resurgence of nationalism in the republics, all crying for more independence and, along with it, the wildfire of anti-Semitism. Even before that, she remembered the reports coming out of Hungary in the great days of the 1990 liberation, when at the beginning of the first big soccer game in free Hungary, the cry had gone up from the fans: “Kill the Jews! Kill the Jews!”
“You and your three brothers,” said Nefski. “You worked in the Khabarovsk munition factory. Dispatch. Correct?”
“Yes,” she said.
“The munitions are checked on the production line — so the logical place for sabotage is in dispatch. You agree?” She didn’t answer.
“Your family worked the night shift. Correct?”
“Everyone worked night shift — sometimes.”
“The midnight-to-dawn shift,” said Nefski. “Before the transport trucks arrive.”
“There are truck pickups all night,” she retorted. “Can you loosen these handcuffs?”
He had gone to the window, where he had been distracted for a moment by watching a driver from one of the red-and-cream-colored trolley cars trying to realign its poles after they had been deflected by a glistening scab of ice. “He’ll need his gloves on for that, Ilya,” Nefski told his assistant, who was still watching Alexsandra. It was a ploy for the colonel to appear unconcerned, his confidence that he would break the prisoner transferring itself to the prisoner.
Nefski lit a cigarette, and soon Alexsandra could smell the strong, pungent Turkish tobacco, the interrogation room filling with swirling brownish smoke. She inhaled as much of it as she could.
“Don’t think the fact that you’ve been fraternizing with our pilots will help you,” Nefski told her, still ostensibly watching the trolley car. Before she could stop herself, Alexsandra had suddenly looked up, and Ilya knew the information was correct, and it all slid into place for him. She had been buying protection from officialdom through her pilots. Or so she had thought.
“Well, well,” said Ilya. “And who would your pilot be, Alexsandra?”
She fell silent again.
“Maj. Sergei Marchenko,” said Nefski, without turning around.
Nefski told Ilya to inform the guards it was time for her meal. Ilya lifted the phone and advised the guardhouse. As he put the phone back down, he had new respect for Nefski. Marchenko had obviously come all this way on a twofold mission: as Moscow’s heavy — to “urge” the locals to get to the bottom of the sabotage — but also to show for the record that he himself had interrogated the girl. It had been so brief that in Ilya’s eyes, it could hardly be called an interrogation at all, but it would allow the general to say he’d personally questioned her, showing no favoritism, even though his son had been seen in her company.
What his assistant admired most about Nefski was that while it would have been so easy for Nefski to do a deal, to protect the Marchenko name, he had stood firm. If the Jew had thought she’d compromised the KGB by making it with the son of one of the Supreme Soviet commanders, then she had made a serious mistake.
The phone jangled. Ilya answered it and, cupping the mouthpiece, told Nefski that the kitchen said her meal was ready. Should they bring it up to the office?
Alexsandra looked surprised. Since when did the KGB provide room service?
“It depends,” answered Nefski. He beckoned to her, as a father to a child. “Come,” he said. “Don’t be afraid.” And she walked slowly toward the window.
Down below in the high-wall quadrangle of the prison’s exercise yard, she saw her three brothers: Ivan, Alexander, and Myshka—”little Michael”—who had just turned twelve. “Little Mike” because he so loved bears and, like the Yakuts, had always believed that if you shot one of the great beasts, save in self-defense, God would punish you. He looked so tiny, the drab khaki prison jacket and bulky trousers making him look even more diminutive. A guard stood near them, an officer, from his shoulder boards. A moment later she saw a squad of nine men in gray infantry caps, their earflaps down, which somehow made it even more ominous, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, their boots crackling on the frozen snow, and the banana-shaped magazines of the rifles painted in winter-white camouflage pattern. Her attention to such details was an escape from what she knew was happening. Either the three brothers had not seen her or had been told not to look up, trudging out in the foot-deep snow, looking straight ahead, hands behind their backs, making them look strangely like holy men. It was only when they stopped and were told to face the wall that she saw they were handcuffed. Ivan, the oldest, and Alexander, the next oldest, had marched out together but not in unison, their footprints scattered. Myshka, on the other hand, had taken pains not to disturb the snow but to walk as precisely as he could in his older brothers’ footsteps. He had always believed it was bad luck to be the first to disturb virgin snow.
“Who told you to do it?” Nefski asked calmly, his arm about her rigid shoulders. He could feel her trembling; her arms and neck muscles were going into spasm, her skin covered in goose pimples. Nefski shifted his arm down about her, gently rubbing her buttock. “There’s no need for all this, eh, Alexsandra? It only causes trouble for everyone.”
She lowered her gaze to the windowsill. Nefski told her brusquely to look up, ordered her to look out through the frost-edged glass, down at the prison yard, at her three brothers, and she knew Nefski had done such things many times before. The officer was now pushing the brothers against the wall, his boots kicking theirs as far apart as possible.
“Well?” Nefski asked her. “Tell me a story, Alexsandra. A true story.” Her face was white as the snow, and taut, the blood draining from her cheeks.
“You look kosher,” he laughed. “Well—?” The officer down in the quad looked up at Nefski, and the colonel lifted his finger. The officer roughly jerked Michael away from the wall, turned him about, and ordered him to look up. He seemed confused.
“Well, I’m waiting,” Nefski told her.
Tears were streaming down her face.
“The oldest one,” Nefski said. “Ivan. Did he—?” She waited for him to say something else, but he didn’t.
“You see,” he told her, “you have brought it to this. You. You and your brothers. Traitorous Jews. All of you. But I will spare them, Alexsandra — if you tell me what I wish to know.”
“Neskazhi im!”—”Don’t tell them!” It was Ivan screaming up at her, his voice barely audible from behind the high, closed windows. The officer shouted, his voice echoing from the stone walls. A guard stepped forward, driving the Kalashnikov’s butt into Ivan’s stomach. As Ivan fell, the officer kicked him hard on the back, keeping him down in the snow.
“You bastard!” she shouted at Nefski.
Nefski opened the window and made a sign to the officer, and a squad of six of the nine guards marched Alexander and Myshka back toward the cells. The officer had drawn his pistol. Now Nefski knew that Alexsandra finally understood her lover’s name wouldn’t protect her — or her brothers.
“She’s tough,” Nefski said to Ilya in mock admiration, while lighting a second cigarette from the first. It was starting to get dark, the jagged ice at the confluence of the Amur and Ussuri rivers now silhouetted like black daggers as it broke up the dying sunlight. The officer in the courtyard, his foot still on Ivan, looked up at Nefski again, waiting.
“Well?” Nefski asked Alexsandra. “What’s it to be?”
She said nothing, her gaze below transfixed, her knees shaking.
Nefski dropped his hand. The officer fired at point-blank range. She screamed, hands leaping to her face, then turned to attack Nefski, but Ilya held her, dragging her back into the chair. Nefski turned his back on her and walked to the window, smoking his cigarette. Two guards entered to return her to the cell.
“Next time,” Nefski told her without turning around, “it will be the second oldest, Alexander, and then Myshka.”
With her screams reverberating down the stairwell, she was taken away. Ilya asked Nefski when they would try again with Alexsandra. Nefski said nothing.
“Do you think she’ll crack?” Ilya asked him.
“Possibly.” He paused to draw heavily on the cigarette. “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.”