Sokolov was looking out of his office window. He tended to find something good in all the seasons of the year, unlike some of his comrades who would say things like, “I hate winter.”
He didn’t love—or hate—winter. He did, however, like getting to work in the dark and then watching his office window gradually turn from reflecting his image and that of the room to becoming transparent to the outside world as the outside light grew. He remembered doing this in school. That was a lot of sunrises ago. He also liked staying in the office until after dark. It meant less time in his empty apartment.
It also meant less time alone to think about the parts of his job that he didn’t want to think about. He liked Mikhail Bobrov. He was a brave, honest—also naïve and romantic—soldier. But it was now his job to liquidate Bobrov for the good of the People and the revolution. If he didn’t, then he would have failed the revolution himself, and someone would have to liquidate him.
He was disturbed by a gentle knock on the office door. It opened and his secretary peeked in. “Comrade Bobrova asked if she could see you.”
His immediate reaction was happiness, maybe even a little joy. It occurred to him that in such a bleak existence as his, even a little happiness could be interpreted as joy. “Five minutes,” he answered. It would look bad to appear eager.
He turned back to the window, which still could reflect a hazy image. He smoothed back his hair. He wished he were taller and had pushed himself to stay in better condition. He sighed and straightened his tie. He threw back his shoulders and grunted a sort of I guess that’s the best we can do. He went to a locked filing cabinet, opened it, and took out two files. Then he returned to his desk and placed them such that the names on them could be seen. Then, he spread other files and papers out, making sure it would look like he was very busy and important when his secretary announced Natalya Bobrova.
She came in and he stood, almost involuntarily. To receive beauty like this sitting down would be uncouth, almost sacrilegious. And she was beautiful. If he were a religious man, she would prove the existence of God.
He saw that Natalya had taken God’s work one step further. She had let down on her Socialist standards and used some makeup. It also was not lost on him how tightly the skirt of her suit hugged her lower body. She had that exotic elegance of the former Russian aristocracy. It was incorporated in the very way she held herself and moved—lots of ballet at a young age.
He knew that from reading her file, as well as the files on both of her parents. Both had indeed been minor aristocrats, the sort left after decades of an original large estate being broken into smaller and smaller pieces for each successive generation. Even that signified Natalya’s mother and father both had come from families with more moderate attitudes—overthrowing primogeniture that would have kept a large estate and its power concentrated in a single offspring. Natalya’s father had served as an officer in the 1914 war. He and her mother had been spared the brutal retaliation and justice of the revolution because he had sided with the Bolsheviks, bringing his unit to their side. They’d both given up their estates and served in Trotsky’s Red Army, again with distinction, during the Civil War. Both had remained loyal followers of Trotsky.
So, Natalya had spent her formative years with her aristocratic parents. Of course, after Trotsky was exiled to Turkey in 1929, her parents had been rounded up and shot. Natalya was thirteen.
She had been sent to a state orphanage and had done well in school. It was all in the files. What was missing, he mused, was a picture of her mother. She must have been a beauty, too.
He graciously, at least he thought so, moved around his desk, and held the back of a chair for Natalya to seat herself. Leaning near her shoulder, he could smell that she’d put on perfume. Another good sign. He glanced past her neck and saw that he’d placed her parents’ files just right, so she could see their names. He guessed that she would glance at the names as he moved back behind his desk. When he had seated himself again, she was smiling politely, showing nothing. “Comrade Bobrova,” he said brightly. “How can I help?”
Natalya was smiling, but it was like winter sunshine. “I thought we should spend a little time together to discuss some ideas about Mikhail.”
So! His heart lifted. Up until now, he’d not been sure that she would go through with it. He would get caviar! He was sure she almost never got that. And American cigarettes. It could be at his place. No, too closely watched. He knew his driver reported to someone in Moscow. But then several packs of American cigarettes—maybe even a bottle of champagne. Yes. The French embassy had had tons of it in their cellars left over from before the war. Of course, the Control Commission had looted it all within a day of arriving in Helsinki. And the NKVD had taken it from them three days later. Yes, give the driver a bottle, maybe two. Then it was just a wink and a nod—and an understanding that there would be no more cigarettes or champagne if the driver talked. It was how life worked.
“Of course. I thought perhaps the Hotel Kämp?” Sokolov asked. “I could send my driver. He could drive you there to a scheduled meeting. I’ll take care of that. It would be concerning your work on locating assets for war reparations. As you probably know, there is a door with a plainclothes MGB guard that we use occasionally when we don’t wish to be seen leaving the legation. The guard works for me.”
“Of course, Comrade.”
“Good. Shall we say nine o’clock?”
Natalya was hesitating.
“Does that not work?”
“Comrade, Sokolov,” Natalya began carefully. “How am I to know that you would be able to”—she searched for the right words—“do what you say you will for my husband?”
Of course, she didn’t trust him Sokolov thought. He hadn’t found his way to the top of this particular greasy pole because he didn’t see the real questions hidden by the stated questions. A brief fantasy of a widowed Natalya seeking solace flashed through his mind, quickly replaced by more thinking. Comrade Lieutenant General Pyotr Fedotov had basically said to kill Mikhail Bobrov. Doing what needed to be done was not a direct order, but what was clearly understood was if he didn’t liquidate Bobrov, he would share Bobrov’s fate.
His challenge was to make sure that whatever he did, it had to look—to Natalya—like he was trying to protect her husband. A major part of true power was perceived power. A major part of perceived power was how one’s actions were interpreted, not what resulted from the actions. Hitler had given everyone in Germany a free radio as soon as he had control of all the stations. Now that man knew what he was doing.
“Rest assured, Comrade Bobrova, I will deliver my part of the plan. I give you my word.”
“Yes, Comrade. Of course. A man of your position …” She hesitated again.
This one was not only a beauty but also a thinker. She’d have made a fine operative.
“I am not at all doubting your ability to carry out your part of the plan,” she said and left it there.
No fool this one. She didn’t trust that he would—or could—deliver. Now was the time to make her feel more secure. He pushed her parents’ files across the desk toward her. She looked up at him, questioning. He cocked his head, indicating that she could look at them.
It was a gesture, to be sure, but it was the best he could do to ease her distrust. She, of course, could never be assured of help from anybody in the political game. When the only constant was getting ahead, things like promises were changed constantly.
A sudden fantasy of Natalya on her knees looking up to him intruded. Then thinking returned. She must know that he wanted her, if not to love him at least to like him enough to be with him. This meant she must also know that he would turn heaven and earth to make sure she would keep seeing him. So, she had every incentive to make sure that he believed this. Yes, she would meet him at the hotel. He knew that she must have already worked all of this out for herself. She was, after all, Russian.
She took the files and began reading. He watched her. He could see pulsing in her throat. He wondered what that warmth was adding to the perfume she wore. She closed one file and started on the other. When she’d finished, she closed the files and pushed them back across the desk.
“They were killed because they were suspected of being Trotskyites.”
“Yes.”
“There would have been no need to be informed on. Their association was clear from my father’s position in Trotsky’s Red Army.”
“Yes.”
She let out a sigh, its unsteadiness showing her only emotion. “Thank you, Comrade Sokolov,” she said, her face calm. With sufficient training, he thought, she could operate anywhere in the world.
“Olezka,” he said, smiling his best reassuring and gentle smile. “May I call you Natalya?”
“Of course, Comrade.”
“Olezka, please,” he interrupted.
“Olezka.”
“If our planning meeting goes well, we could of course continue to plan.” He paused to make sure the next words were clearly understood. “As long as there is a reason to keep planning.”
There it was. The deal. He promised to protect Mikhail as long as she kept seeing him. Saying it aloud made him almost feel like he wasn’t going to do what must be done.
He watched her eyes to gauge her reaction. She seemed to be looking through him, beyond him. Then her eyes shifted to the window, to the outside world, clean, cold, and clear.
“Of course, Com … Olezka,” she said, her eyes returning to him. She smiled. “I shall be waiting for your driver at nine tonight.”
He thought that he’d be happy when he heard her say what he wanted her to say. But he was not. There was no light in her eyes. He thought of the old jokes about the frigid upper-class Englishwoman shutting her eyes and doing it for England. He stood. “Wonderful. Nine o’clock then. I shall be looking forward to it.”
He walked around his desk. As she stood, he put his hand on her arm. She looked at his hand. She did not move her arm back. “Natalya,” he said. “Don’t worry. We will get Mikhail out of this situation.”
She looked at him, searching his face, but didn’t move her arm. He awkwardly withdrew his hand.
“Of course, Olezka,” Natalya said. “Nine o’clock.”
“Nine o’clock.”
He escorted her into the outer office. The secretary looked up briefly from her typing and quickly looked back down. He watched Natalya disappear into the hallway. Sokolov returned to his own office and shut the door behind him. He stood behind the chair she’d been sitting in, his hands on the backrest pretending she was still sitting there and breathed in the lingering smell of her perfume.
She had worn perfume—for him. He walked to the window. He realized wanting her to love him was like wanting a prostitute to love him. There would be all the sex he wanted, but she would be doing it for Mikhail. But what happens after it becomes clear that Mikhail had met some fatal accident. Would the deal be off? Not necessarily. He could still hold the safety of her children over her head, or offer her many things that she couldn’t get otherwise, Western things that women liked and couldn’t get in Russia, perhaps even trips to France? He hurriedly straightened the files. Face reality. This was not some Turgenev novel or Pushkin poem.
From long practice, he placed a tight box around the longing but not around the excitement of conquest. He doubted that she’d ever given herself to anyone but her husband. Such a prize. And Bobrov had already won it. She wasn’t giving anything of herself to him. It was a transaction. The forlorn emptiness returned.