The Secret Speech

  Leo was shocked:

  —The speech has traveled?

  —The Americans have it. They have printed it in their newspapers. It has become a weapon against us. It is perceived that we have dealt ourselves a terrible blow. How are we to continue the global revolution when we confess to such murderous acts against our own people? Who would want to join our cause? Who would want to become our comrades?

  The major paused, wiping the sweat from his brow. Leo and Raisa were now crouching before him, like children captivated by a story. He continued:

  —After Zoya’s murder everyone who argued for reform, including myself, was silenced. Even Khrushchev was forced to retract many of the criticisms he made in his speech.

  —I didn’t know that.

  —You were grieving, Leo. You buried your daughter. You buried your friend. You were not paying attention to the world around you. While you mourned, a revised speech was written.

  —Revised how?

  —The admissions of summary executions and torture were cut. This document was published one month after Zoya’s murder. I’m not claiming Fraera’s revenge was the only contributing factor. But those murders were important. They made a graphic case for the traditionalists. Khrushchev had no choice: a Central Committee resolution rewrote his speech. Stalin was no longer a murderer: he merely made errors. The system wasn’t at fault. Any minor mistakes were Stalin’s alone. It was the Secret Speech, without the secrets.

  His mind turning these facts over, Leo remarked:

  —My department’s failure to stop these murders was the reason they closed us down.

  —No. That’s an excuse. They never approved of the homicide department. They never liked me for helping to create it. Your department was part of the creeping culture of permissiveness. Leo, we moved too quickly. Freedoms are won slowly, bit by bit—they have to be fought for. The forces that desire change, myself included, marched too far and too fast. We were arrogant. We overreached ourselves. We underestimated those who want to protect and preserve power as it was.

  —They’ve ordered me to rejoin the KGB.

  —That would be a potent symbol. The reformed MGB agent folded back into the traditional power structures. They’re using you. You must allow yourself to be used. If I were you, Leo, I would be very careful. Do not believe that they will behave any more kindly than Stalin. His spirit lives on, not in one person, but diffused, in many people. It’s harder to see but make no mistake: it is there.

  OUTSIDE THE APARTMENT Leo took hold of Raisa’s hands:

  —I’ve been blind.

  BLIZHNYA DACHA

  KUNTSEVO

  TWENTY KILOMETERS WEST OF MOSCOW

  21 OCTOBER

  THIS WAS FROL PANIN’S SECOND VISIT to Blizhnya Dacha, one of Stalin’s former residences, now open to families of the ruling elite as a retreat. The decision had been taken that the residence was not to be closed down or turned into a museum. The dacha was to remain filled with children playing, staff cooking, and the ruling elite slouched on creaking leather chairs, ice cubes clanking as they sipped their drinks. Upon Stalin’s death it had been discovered that the liquor cabinet contained bottles filled with imitation alcohol, weak tea instead of scotch, water for vodka, so that Stalin might remain sober while his ministers lost control of their tongues. No longer needed, the imitation alcohol had been poured away. Times had changed.

  Having eaten sparingly from a five-course meal, picking at three types of bloody meat, ignoring three wines, Frol’s social duties were finished for the night. He climbed the stairs, listening to the heavy rain. Loosening his shirt, he entered his suite. His young sons were in the room next door, put to bed by a maid. His wife was getting undressed, having excused herself from the end of the meal, as was expected of the wives, enabling husbands to talk of weighty matters, an excruciating routine since most were drunk with nothing to say. Entering the living room and, shutting the door, he felt relief. The evening was over. He hated coming here, particularly with his children. To his mind the dacha was a place where people lost their lives. No matter how many children now played in the grounds, no matter how loudly they laughed—those ghosts remained.

  Frol turned off the living room lights, heading toward the bedroom and calling out to his wife:

  —Nina?

  Nina was on the edge of the bed. Seated beside her was Leo. Soaked by rain, his trousers were mud-stained, his hand was bandaged and the bandages were soaked too. Dirty water seeping from his clothes had formed a circular stain on the bedsheets. In Leo’s face Frol observed stillness belying an enormous kinetic force inside, tremendous anger bubbling under a thin sheet of glass.

  Frol calculated quickly:

  —Why don’t I sit beside you, Leo, instead of my wife?

  Without waiting for a reply, Frol gestured for Nina to approach. She tentatively stood up, moving slowly. Leo didn’t stop her. She whispered to Frol:

  —What is going on?

  Frol replied, making sure Leo could also hear:

  —You have to understand that Leo has experienced a terrible shock. He’s grief-stricken and not thinking straight. To break into a dacha could result in his execution. I’m going to work very hard to see that doesn’t happen.

  He paused, addressing Leo directly:

  —May my wife check on my children?

  Leo’s eyes sparked:

  —Your children are safe. You have some nerve asking me that.

  —You’re right, Leo, I apologize.

  —Your wife stays here.

  —Very well.

  Nina sat on a chair in the corner. Frol continued:

  —This is concerning Elena, I take it? You could have come to my office, made an appointment, I would’ve arranged for her release. I had nothing to do with her admission to hospital. I was appalled to hear about it. Completely unnecessary, the doctor was acting on his own authority. He believed he was doing the right thing.

  Frol paused:

  —Why don’t we call for some drinks?

  Leo emptied his pockets:

  —I pose no threat to you. I haven’t brought a gun. If you called for your guards, they’d arrest me.

  Nina stood up, about to shout for help. Frol indicated that she remain silent. He asked:

  —Tell me then, Leo, what do you want?

  —Was Fraera working for you?

  —No.

  Frol sat down beside him:

  —We were working together.

  LEO HAD EXPECTED FROL PANIN to deny it. But there was no reason for him to lie. Powerless, Leo could do as little with the truth as he could do with a denial. Panin stood up, taking off his suit jacket, unbuttoning some of his shirt buttons:

  —Fraera came to me. I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t have any knowledge of vory in Moscow. They’d always been an irrelevance. She broke into my apartment and was waiting for me. She knew everything about you. Not only that, she knew about the struggle between the traditionalists in the Party and the reformists. She proposed that we work together and claimed that our aims overlapped. She would be granted the freedom needed to take revenge on those involved in her arrest. In exchange, we could exploit that series of murders, using it for our own purposes, creating a sense of fear.

  —She never cared about Lazar?

  Panin shook his head:

  —She saw Lazar as someone from her former life, nothing more. He was a pretext. She wanted you to go to the Gulag as a punishment, to force you to see the world you sent so many people to. From our point of view, we needed you out of the way. The homicide department was the only independent investigative force. Fraera required a free hand. Once you and Timur were gone, she could kill as she pleased.

  —The KGB never looked for her?

  —We made sure they never got close.

  —The officers you appointed to run the homicide department in my absence?

  —Were our men, they did as they were told. Leo, you almost managed to stop the murder of the patriarch. Tha
t murder was a vital part of our plan. His death shocked the entire regime. Had you remained in the city Fraera would have been forced to kill you. For her own reasons, she didn’t want to. She preferred to send you away, to stretch out your punishment into something altogether more awful.

  —And you agreed?

  Panin seemed puzzled by that statement of the obvious:

  —Yes. I agreed. I removed Major Grachev and positioned myself as your closest advisor in order to help you make the right decisions, the decisions we wanted you to make. I arranged the paperwork that enabled you to break into Gulag 57.

  —You and Fraera planned this?

  —We were waiting for the right moment. When I heard Khrushchev’s speech, I knew it was time. We had to act. The changes were going too far.

  Leo stood up, walking toward Nina. Concerned, Panin also stood up, tense. Leo put his hand on her shoulder:

  —Isn’t this how we used to interrogate our suspects? A loved one present, the implications clear, if the suspect failed to give the correct answer, the loved one would be punished?

  —I’m answering your questions, Leo.

  —You authorized the murder of men and women who served the State?

  —Many of them were murderers themselves. In my position, they would have done the same thing.

  —What position is that?

  —Leo, these hasty reforms, more than Stalin’s crimes, more even than the West, pose the greatest threat to our nation. Fraera’s murders were an illustration of the future. The millions we as a ruling party have wronged would revolt, just as the prisoners on board the Stary Bolshevik rose up, just as they did in that Gulag. Those scenes would be repeated in every city in every province. You haven’t noticed, Leo, but we are engaged in a silent battle for our nation’s survival. It has nothing to do with whether or not Stalin went too far. He did. Of course he did. But we cannot change the past. And our authority is based on the past. We must behave as we have always behaved: with an iron rule. We cannot admit mistakes and hope our citizens will love us all the same. It is unlikely we will ever be loved, so we must be feared.

  Leo removed his hand from Nina’s shoulder:

  —You have what you wanted. The Secret Speech has been retracted. You don’t need Fraera anymore. Let me have her. Give me my revenge as you gave it to her. You should have no compunction about betraying her. You’ve betrayed everyone else.

  —Leo, I understand that you have no reason to trust me. But my advice is this: forget Fraera. Forget that she exists. Let me arrange for Elena to be released from hospital. You and Raisa can move out of the city, away from all these memories. I’ll find you another job. Whatever you want.

  Leo turned face-to-face with Panin:

  —She’s still working for you?

  —Yes, she is.

  —On what?

  —That speech weakened us domestically and internationally. In response, we need a clear show of our strength. For this reason we’re working to manufacture an uprising abroad, in parts of the Soviet Bloc, small, symbolic uprisings which we will crush mercilessly. The KGB has established a series of foreign cells attempting to stimulate disorder, scattered across Eastern Europe. Fraera is in charge of one of those cells.

  —Where?

  —Take my advice, Leo, this is not a fight you can win.

  —Where is she?

  —You cannot beat her.

  —How could she hurt me more?

  —Because, Leo, your daughter, Zoya, is alive.

  SOVIET-CONTROLLED EASTERN EUROPE

  HUNGARY

  BUDAPEST

  22 OCTOBER

  ZOYA WALKED AS FAST as she could, on her way to the Operaház, the drop point for her illicit cargo. Her pockets were brimming with bullets, one hundred rounds in total, each tip etched with a cross to ensure the bullet quartered upon entering the body. Though it was a cold night she felt hot and flustered. Wearing a knee-length coat tied at the waist, a black beret slanted across her forehead, she looked older than fourteen, more like a Hungarian student than a Russian orphan. Nervous, clammy with perspiration, she snatched the beret off her head, pressing it into her pocket, atop the bullets, muffling their telltale jingle.

  Reaching the main boulevard Sztalin ut, not far from the Operaház, Zoya paused, checking that no one was following. Taking her by surprise, someone grabbed her shoulders. She turned around, finding herself surrounded by a group of men, convinced that they were the Hungarian secret police. One man kissed her cheek, pressing a sheet of paper into her hand. It was a poster of some kind. The men were talking in rapid bursts. Having been in the city for four months she’d picked up only a handful of Hungarian phrases. Judging by their attire, the men were students or artisans, not officers, and she relaxed. Even so, she had to be careful: if they realized she was Russian there was no knowing how they’d behave. She smiled meekly, hoping they’d consider her shy and let her go. They were hardly interested in her anyway, unraveling another poster and plastering it to the front of a shop window. Zoya pulled away, hurrying to her destination.

  Arriving at the Operaház, climbing the stone stairs, she hid behind the pillars, out of view from the street. She checked her watch, a gift from Fraera. She was early and she pulled back into the shadows, nervously waiting for her contact to show up. This was the first task she’d handled alone. Normally she worked with Malysh. They were a team—a partnership forged in Moscow five months ago.

  Taken from her cell that night, Zoya had been certain Fraera was going to execute her in order to punish Leo. Facing death, as she had done only days earlier, she had discovered that she was no longer indifferent to the prospect. She’d cried out:

  —Malysh!

  Fraera had set her down on the ground:

  —Why did you call his name?

  —Because I… like him.

  Fraera had smiled, a smile turning into a laugh, slowly at first, then getting louder, her vory laughing beside her, a chorus of scorn. Zoya had blushed, her face burning with shame. Humiliated, she’d run at Fraera, arms raised, fists clenched. Before she’d landed a blow Fraera had caught hold of her hand:

  —I will give you a chance, one chance. If you fail, I will kill you. If you succeed, you will become one of us. You and Malysh can remain together.

  Driven to the middle of Bolshoy Krasnokholmskiy Bridge, that night had unfolded as Fraera predicted. Leo and Raisa had been waiting on the bridge. Soaked by the rain, they had climbed into the front of the car. Separated by a steel grate, Zoya had witnessed Raisa’s face crumple with distress. In that moment Zoya had experienced doubts. But it had been too late to change her mind. Pressing her hands against the grate, she’d bidden farewell to her unhappy life: a decision that necessitated leaving her little sister behind. She’d feigned resistance as she’d been dragged out of the car. Out of sight, she’d voluntarily climbed into the sack. Already inside, Malysh had been waiting for her.

  The sack had been carried to the edge of the bridge while Zoya had continued to make a show of struggling until the vory had struck her, entirely unexpected. She’d collapsed. The sack had been zipped shut. In the darkness Malysh had wrapped his arms around her, supporting her as they’d been dropped. Briefly midair, in each other’s arms, in the darkness—then they’d crashed into the water.

  Steel weights had carried the sack straight down. The waterproof, waxed canvas had shrouded them in a minute’s worth of air. The steel had thudded against the riverbed, toppling Malysh and Zoya to the side. Working blind, Malysh had flicked open his knife and cut through the material. Freezing water had rushed in as he’d sliced a gash, filling the sack in an instant. Malysh had helped Zoya out. Holding hands, they’d kicked their way back up to the surface. Swimming to the riverbank, they’d watched the final moments on the bridge as Leo and Raisa had jumped, mistakenly believing that they were going to save her.

  Struggling upstream against the torrent, Zoya and Malysh had pulled themselves along the high stone sides of the riverbank. Reac
hing the timber jetty, they’d been reunited with Fraera as she listened to Raisa’s and Leo’s distant, desperate cries, savoring their grief for a child they thought was lost.

  THERE WAS A MAN LINGERING at the bottom of the Operaház steps. Zoya emerged from her hiding place. The man checked up and down Sztalin ut before moving toward her. Zoya emptied her pockets, filling his satchel with the customized bullets. He pulled out a handgun, loading the chamber. The bullets were a match. He filled the other chambers while Zoya continued to transfer the bullets from her pockets to his bag. Finished, the man hid his gun, dropping his head in a gesture of thanks before hurrying down the steps. Zoya counted to twenty before setting off again, making her way back home.

  It was odd to think of this city as home. Five months ago Zoya had known nothing of Hungary except that it was a loyal ally of the Soviet Union, part of a brotherhood of nations, a frontline state in the global revolution. Fraera had corrected this classroom propaganda, explaining that Hungary had never been given any choice. Liberated from Fascist forces, it had been occupied and placed under Soviet rule. Hungary was a sovereign nation with no sovereignty. The leader for many years, Matyas Rakosi, had been appointed by Stalin and had imitated his master exactly, torturing and executing citizens. He’d created the AVH—the Hungarian secret police—modeled on the Soviet secret police. The language and location was different but the terror had been the same. With Stalin’s death, the struggle had begun for reform, electrified by dreams of independence. Zoya was a foreigner here, an outsider, yet not since her parents had died had she felt more at home here, in a country that, like her, had been adopted against its will.

  Relieved that the night was almost over and that she was no longer carrying bullets, Zoya swung down Nagymezo ut. Directly ahead, a small crowd had gathered. At its center were the same men she’d bumped into previously, sitting on each other’s shoulders in order to transform the entire height of a streetlight into a totem pole of postered text. A woman in the crowd saw Zoya approach. In her thirties, stout and stocky, the woman was drunk—her cheeks were red. Wrapped around her, like an enormous shawl, was the Hungarian flag. Zoya glanced at the streetlight and pulled the same crumpled poster from her pocket as if to say—I know, I know! Not content with this gesture, the woman pulled her into the throng, talking good-naturedly, nothing of which Zoya could understand. The woman began to dance and sing. The others joined in, all of them knowing the words, except for Zoya. She could only laugh and smile in the hope that they would eventually let her go. Keen to leave before they noticed she wasn’t speaking, she attempted to extricate herself from the stranger’s affections. But the woman was no longer flushed with happiness. A van had swung off the main boulevard and was accelerating toward them. It skidded to a halt. Two AVH officers jumped out.