They tied the Thief between two metal pillars, arms and legs spread wide, and then it was just him and Tesak, already feeling the pain of being hung up like a drying skin. At first there’d been the usual bravado; the fellow had thought he was just another cop looking for information. He could take a beating and had told him so. He’d even spat at him. But his swagger had begun to leave him when the gauntlets and the apron appeared and, by the time he opened his box of tricks, Tesak wasn’t looking quite so confident.

“We live in a modern world,” he said to Tesak as he cut open his shirt, button by button. The buttons fell onto the concrete floor one by one, bouncing and rolling across the hard surface.

“That’s a new fucking shirt, flatfoot.” Tesak was indignant, yes, but it was the indignation of a frightened man. So far, so good. Now was the time to establish the rules of engagement, so he stepped back a pace, looked Tesak in the eye, and then put his entire body into a back-fisted slap that spun Tesak’s head hard against his upstretched arm. He had Tesak’s attention after that.

“As if I care about your shirt. The very thought. Let’s be clear-from now on you will only speak in answer to a question. Understand?”

Tesak just looked at him, a little confused from the blow to the head perhaps, but quiet now. He stepped closer once again, close enough to detect the stale alcohol on Tesak’s breath. The Thief’s eyes were now completely focused on the knife as it slowly climbed toward his midriff.

“Now, what do these tattoos mean?” he asked, looking at the rough blue etchings on the man’s chest. He touched the blade to the skin underneath the ranked profiles of Marx, Lenin and Stalin staring across Tesak’s chest from beneath a Soviet flag. “You’re not telling me you’re a Bolshevik, are you, Tesak?”

“Not me. No way. That’s so no firing squad will ever put Tesak in some shallow flower bed. Reds like you don’t take potshots at your big men, do you? See? Not unless you want to end up in the same place.”

“You think I give a damn about Marx?” he said and then, taking hold of Tesak’s neck for purchase, sliced Marx away with one clean cut. Then he punched him twice to stop the roar of pain. The comment about Marx was textbook, of course. Sudden changes in the expected parameters of a situation undermined defenses. Tesak hung there whimpering, looking down at the bubbling rawness of his chest. He took the opportunity to gag him, whispering to him, as he did so.

“And I’m no flatfoot either. Tell me what I need to know and I’ll make your death easy.” Tesak’s eyes bulged as he lifted the blade once again. “If not?” he continued, and to answer his own question he sliced Lenin away. Now Stalin alone stared across the mangled chest. Tesak was struggling desperately against the ropes and so he took the mason’s hammer from his bag and hit his kneecaps hard, one after the other. Tesak mewled through the gag, but hung limply now that his legs couldn’t support him.

“As I said, we live in a modern world, and one of the glories of Soviet power is the progress we’ve made in the field of electricity. Such a useful thing-and we’re leading the world when it comes to electricity, you know. Every household will have a little Lenin’s lamp soon, dazzling the peasants with four hundred watts of light at the flick of a switch. You’ll have read about it in the paper.” He considered the likelihood of the Thief being able to read for a moment. “Or perhaps not.”

He picked up the prod and showed it to Tesak.

“Anyway, every Soviet citizen should experience the reality of electricity. Theory is all well and good, but practical application is the thing.”

Then he’d attached the prod to the battery and he’d been surprised at how much noise Tesak had made, even through the gag. So he did know something about electricity. There were always surprises.

After a few minutes work, he’d removed the gag and the whimpering Thief had bargained for his life, as was to be expected.

“What have you got to offer me? Money? I don’t want your money. Love? I don’t need it. What have you got for me? Come now, Tesak, you know what I want. Where have they hidden it?”

“I don’t know. Count Kolya is the only one who knows. He’s the one you want. I didn’t even know it was real-I thought it was a fucking copy, believe me, Comrade.”

“The pig’s no comrade to the goose, Tesak. You call me citizen.”

The Thief was hanging limply in the ropes, the bloody remnants of the clothes that had been cut away from him bunched around his ankles and shoulders. He looked ready. One final push perhaps. He almost felt sympathy for the Thief, but then he hardened his heart and put the gag back in place.

Korolev awoke at five o’clock, as he always did. There were times he wished he could sleep for a few minutes more, but his mother, the tsar’s army, and finally the Red Army, had trained him so that he had no choice in the matter. “God gives to those who rise early,” had been his mother’s mantra, but this particular morning he allowed himself a moment or two to savor the pleasure of the new room.

On the ceiling above him the floral pattern of the moulding was just visible in the pale creamy glow from the streetlamp outside and he found himself smiling with very un-Soviet, very bourgeois, very proprietorial pleasure at the beauty of it. Who else did he know who had a ceiling rose with plaster grapes and flowers and even what looked like apples? No one. Not even the general, he suspected. Nor did the draft from the window that nipped at his nose detract from the comfort of the new bed or the warmth of the quilt that had been loaned to him by Koltsova. A strange woman, her. One moment she’s pointing a gun at his heart and the next thing she’s loading him down with bedclothes. Not from Moscow, of course. Odessa. Everyone knew they were different down there-the Odessians weren’t Ukrainian and they weren’t Russian either. They were just Odessian.

He lay there thinking how curious life was and how, at this particular moment and in this particular place, it had suddenly become quite pleasant. It was only with great reluctance that he reminded himself of the impending lecture. Some preparatory notes would stand him in good stead.

He swung his legs down onto the floorboards, found them cold to the touch, and crossed over to the window to look out. Snow had fallen overnight, sloping up against the wall opposite where the wind had pushed it. A solitary set of footprints marked out the middle of the lane-winter was early this year. The day before had had a bite to it, and the cold season had whispered its arrival in the chill breeze that had slipped through the streets as darkness fell. Personally, he greeted it as an old friend; the first snow was always welcome to him. Winters were hard, of course, but the snow masked Moscow ’s imperfections and, at night, silenced the city into a semblance of tranquility. Moscow in winter was a beautiful, hard, breathless place where the only smell was the inside of your coat. He wouldn’t miss the summer and the stench and swelter. How the People smelled in summer. He hoped it wouldn’t be long before soap became a production priority.

His assessment of the snow complete, he turned from the window and knelt beside the bed and, his head upright, crossed himself in the Orthodox way, raised his eyes to heaven and thanked the Lord for allowing him to experience such a beautiful morning in such a fine apartment, then began to say the prayers his mother had taught him, adding, at the end, a plea for the advancement of soap to full production as soon as possible, feeling it his duty, both as a Believer and as a loyal Soviet citizen.

The point of praying to a God that the Party said didn’t exist concerned him momentarily, as it did every morning. But then sometimes, looking back, it was clear that the Party made mistakes. After all, look how they’d nurtured that viper Trotsky for all those years. Perhaps it would turn out they were wrong about God as well. And even if they weren’t, well, it wouldn’t hurt to be on the safe side in the meantime.