NINE

 

 

KATO WAS TALKING, but Koba wasn’t listening. Probably she was talking about the baby, who was crying. Little Iakob had been in the world for three months, and much like his father, he was quiet more than he wasn’t, but when he chose to make his presence felt, he ensured that no-one could deny him. Currently he was screaming fit to shake the rafters, and Kato was talking, in a somewhat desperate, fluttering manner, and Koba was doing his best to ignore both of them at once.

The robbery was days away. The pieces were in place, and all that remained was for the date—and their money—to arrive. Rather than be excited, Koba grew ever more indifferent. It was as though he was trying to devote his attention to an event in the distant past, and any questions of its success or failure were irrelevant. The outcome was predetermined, and he had forgotten it, since it had ceased to matter.

Odd to think that a goal he’d been pinning his hopes on for so long could become so trivial. But hadn’t that happened often enough before? He’d turned his back on his education at the seminary, which had meant everything to his mother and therefore to him, and then on poetry, for which he’d held such an outrageous passion. Would there be a time when socialism failed to inflame him? Would these feelings he had for Kato dwindle and dim? Would his boy lose the niche he’d carved in Koba’s heart the day he’d first seen his round, red-cheeked face? Would this life of his come to have no meaning, and was it happening already? Was that why he found it impossible to focus on his wife’s bids at conversation?

No. Not that. Not yet. He’d simply let himself sink into a funk, and that was something else that had happened often before. Conceivably he was anxious about the robbery, and this detachment was the way he’d come up with to process that. He’d go for a walk, he decided, and clear his head, as increasingly he did most nights. Koba got up from his chair, ambled to Kato, clasped her pale chin between his palms and kissed her soundly on the lips. “Don’t fret,” he said.

He continued to the crib in the corner, picked up Iakob, and awarded him also a smacking kiss upon the forehead. “And you, shush. Can’t you see how you’re bothering your mother?” He put the baby back and tucked the scrap of blanket around his pudgy body.

Miraculously, this did the trick. Iakob peered up at him in stunned surprise, gurgled, and then closed his eyes and rolled over with a last weak kick.

“I’m going out,” Koba declared, feeling he’d earned the right as both a loving husband and able father. And not waiting lest Kato should argue, he hurried through the door and clattered down the stairs in the hallway three at a time, until he was into the night-shrouded street.

He walked briskly, as was his custom. He liked Tiflis better after dark, when the air still clung to its warmth but wasn’t so humid as in the day, and when the worst of the city’s bustle had surrendered to the more relaxed mode of carousing and singing and bickering that constituted Georgian nightlife. He could have been tempted to go drinking, or to seek out Kamo or another member of the Outfit. But Kamo would persist in asking questions he was unwilling to answer, and even if Koba found someone else to drink with, they were bound to be a socialist, because all his friends were socialists, and everyone had wind of what they were up to. In a place such as Tiflis, secrets had a tendency of changing into rumours that spread like wildfire.

And, Koba thought, too late for the acknowledgement to do him any good, those rumours frequently reached the wrong people. Like the two figures in long overcoats and black felt hats who’d stepped out in front of him and now barred his path. He could have shoved past. Instead, he turned casually and prepared to head back the way he’d come. As he’d predicted, two more men, dressed in similar fashion, blocked his course in that direction, and were approaching at a rate that squared the difference between leisurely and intimidating.

They were here for him, and they weren’t here solely to threaten. This was something more tangible. Maybe he ought to have been frightened, but fear wasn’t in his nature, not since the first time he’d stood up to his brute of a father and discovered he could do so without the slightest trembling. Thus, he held the gaze of the men who approached, letting his mouth slip into the hint of a sneer to make clear his contempt.

The approaching pair had almost caught up. Koba didn’t recognise either of them, but that didn’t signify much. He wanted to curse them to their faces for coming for him like this, in public, where anyone might see. Did they propose to get him killed? Perhaps they were serious enough, and the fate in store for him was severe enough, that they were unconcerned with such niceties.

“Come on,” the one on the right said peremptorily.

Then they were sweeping him along, Koba boxed in amid the four of them. They passed down three streets, and toward the end of the third came to a halt at an open-topped carriage, where a fifth man was hunched in the driver’s seat. One of the four conveyed to Koba with a tilt of the head that he should get inside, which he did. The two who’d approached from behind him took the opposite seat and the other two were left on the curb as the carriage jolted off.

They maintained a hectic pace. Having travelled for five minutes, the driver pulled up, and the pair who’d silently accompanied Koba got out and waited as he did likewise. Inspecting the building they’d stopped at, he mentally labelled it as nondescript. This was a region of apartments, neither especially poor nor particularly luxurious, and nothing about them suggested they were a resource of the dreaded Okhrana. He could have memorised the address, had he wished to, they’d made no effort to hide it; but then, they didn’t care. In their minds, he was no threat to them, and they were probably correct.

One of the two that were escorting him opened a door—it was unlocked—and trudged up a flight of stairs and another, to a landing at the summit of the building. A further four doors led off, and the man selected the nearest and knocked, hesitated for a count of seven seconds, and let himself in. Koba followed promptly, hands stuffed into pockets. He had the sense that the man’s partner, who was close behind them, would have been glad to provide some physical encouragement, and Koba refused to give him the satisfaction.

The room beyond was sparsely furnished, containing a circular table, three chairs, and a new-looking samovar on a stand in the corner. An urge made Koba scan the bare floorboards for stains that might indicate where blood had been spilled and cleaned up, but they were so generally grubby that it was hard to make out anything conclusive. A man older than the rest of them occupied one of the chairs at the table. He was in late middle age and his sable hair had greyed at the wings. His face was aquiline and his eyes, in the lamplight, were positively ebon. Koba didn’t know him, yet certain facts were plain: his neatness of dress and demeanour marked him as significantly higher in the Okhrana’s ranks than his colleagues. What this meant for Koba was more ambiguous. The man was definitely trouble, but there was no way to establish how much or of what sort.

The officer motioned to a free chair, and Koba reckoned it would be healthier to sit without the assistance of the pair still hovering nearby. He made a point of drawing the chair out so that he could stretch his legs, and lounged with the truculent air of someone baffled as to why his liberty was being interfered with so maliciously.

“My name is Mukhtarov,” the Okhrana officer said. “And you are Joseph Djugashvili, who uses the nom de guerre of Koba.”

He didn’t say this enquiringly, but it wasn’t altogether a statement either. It wasn’t as though the Okhrana weren’t known for making preposterous mistakes, for dragging in the wrong person or accidentally combining two records. Koba, who’d made a habit of studying them as they studied him, had come to the conclusion that they were somehow both highly efficient and thoroughly incompetent, and could veer from one extreme to the other in a heartbeat. If they would only be consistent, they’d be substantially easier to manage.

He might as well keep cooperating until they gave him a reason not to. “Yes, I’m Joseph Djugashvili. As for Koba, I don’t go by that these days. Some of my old friends call me Soso, and for a while I wrote poetry as Soselo. Perhaps you’ve heard of my work?”

Mukhtarov had a sheaf of papers open before him in a cardboard binder. The handwriting was tiny and crabbed and Koba couldn’t read it upside down, but he assumed it referred to him, or at least that he was supposed to believe so. Mukhtarov consulted these papers, scrunched his brow as if he were confirming a crucial detail beyond any doubt, and said, “Our files show that you still make use of the name Koba. This will go better if you’re honest.”

Koba shrugged. “I’m always honest. But who can control what others call them? Names stick, even once they’ve been outgrown.”

Mukhtarov evidently didn’t feel this assertion was worth debating. “You’re here because you’re going to help us,” he said. “You’ve been useful before, and now you’re going to be yet more useful.”

“I don’t see how,” Koba replied. “That life is behind me. I’ve a wife. I’ve a son. Do you think I’d risk bringing strife down on them? Well, maybe you do, but I’ve told you I wouldn’t, and I’ll tell you a hundred times if need be. Why waste your evening with me? There are real hoodlums out there, types who’d like the Tsar and everyone who takes his side up against a wall. Whereas I just hang around with some people, and barely that anymore.”

He might have kept on in that vein. Mukhtarov didn’t seem inclined to stop him from rambling. But Koba couldn’t quite persuade himself that his lie was being accepted. If it had got back to them that he’d attended the conference in England, the fabrication was futile. Then again, there was a reasonable chance it hadn’t. He’d been one straw in a large haystack, and even if that weren’t the case, the various branches of the Okhrana were notoriously abysmal at communicating. If a report had been filed, that wasn’t to say it would have made its way to the local office or had actually been read.

Mukhtarov had been watching him all the while, with a steadiness that might as easily have represented patience or disinterest. He had a lassitude about him that implied this was a job he’d be continuing throughout the night, with an interminable stream of visitors like Koba, and he was measuring out his energies carefully.

Now, however, that vanished in an instant, so that suddenly he was sitting straight and his scrutiny was intense. “We know a major robbery’s coming up,” Mukhtarov affirmed. “We know it will involve the Tiflis bank. We know the date and the location. What we need from you is the name of the ringleader.”

All of this he said with perfect aplomb. Indeed, he’d spoken as one picking highlights from a vast pool of revolutionary activities that he could dip into as he saw fit. It made no difference. The man was lying. A small reveal was that he’d said, It will involve the Tiflis bank. If he knew the specifics, and believed Koba did also, what gain was there in being vague? No, the most they had was whispers and theories, a cobbled-together picture riddled with blanks they hoped he’d fill.

The question was, how much of what Mukhtarov had claimed was true? But on that question, everything was riding. Give away too little and they might keep him all night, all week, all month. Give them too much and not only would Koba sink the plan, he’d expose himself as its architect. But he surely had to give them something. They’d shown their hand, and they’d require him to do the same, otherwise their biggest accomplishment would have been tipping him off as to precisely what they had, or hadn’t, uncovered regarding an upcoming crime.

Koba nudged himself nearer to the table, where he placed both palms flat on its surface. He leaned forward conspiratorially, bridging the gap between him and Mukhtarov, and lowered his voice, as if afraid the pair behind them would eavesdrop.

“So you know all that, eh? Then perhaps there’s no point in my staying quiet. It’s tough to avoid hearing things, even when you’d rather not. These socialists, none of them can keep their mouths shut; I’ve caught bits and pieces simply by having my ears open.” Koba reclined a fraction. “Obviously I’d want to ensure my family and I will be safe. Nobody likes being picked up this way in the middle of the night.”

Mukhtarov nodded lethargically. “Give us what we need and I guarantee you this won’t happen again.” He selected a spot on the page in front of him and rubbed at it with a finger, as though he might thereby erase some unfortunate particular. “Maybe we could do better than that. The more useful you are to us, Djugashvili, the more we can be useful to you.”

Koba nodded too, and with surety, to impart that this was the assurance he’d been waiting for. “You’re already aware,” he said, “that it’s set for the morning of the twenty-sixth, that’s not news.”

While he hid his reaction well, Mukhtarov’s countenance betrayed to Koba that he hadn’t known even that much. But that was fine. They’d still need substantiation, and they’d have an impossible time getting it, because Koba had been using his web of contacts to put out false intelligence for weeks. This, he’d long since learned, was his greatest weapon against the Okhrana. The trick was not to strangle them with too little information, but to drown them with an overabundance.

The next part was the real gamble. To protect himself—and so the robbery, the Bolsheviks, his entire future—necessitated offering up some vital snippet they couldn’t acquire elsewhere. And it had to be of genuine worth, sufficient to make him valuable enough to tread lightly around.

Still, it was with a heavy heart that Koba said, “But as to the matter of who’s leading it? That I may be able to help you with.”