“Let me handle him,” whispered Semionov.

“Greetings, Comrades,” Morozov said, as he slapped his gloved hands together and stamped his feet. “Winter’s early this year. Looking for a car, are we, Alexei Dmitriyevich? Taking young Semionov for a spin?” His good eye gleamed from under his fur hat. Despite his reputation, he had a soft spot for Korolev.

“Do you have something good for us, Comrade Morozov?” Semionov said, before Korolev could respond, “I see a new Emka over there. Fine cars, I hear.”

Morozov looked Semionov up and down, turned to Korolev, and put a glove up to his face, adjusting his eye patch.

“You’ll be driving, won’t you, Alexei Dmitriyevich?”

Korolev looked at Semionov’s hopeful eyes and relented. “I might let the youngster drive, Pavel Timofeevich. Under my direction, of course.”

Morozov looked back at Semionov, grunted, re-entered the hut, and emerged with a set of car keys.

“The Ford,” he said and tossed the keys to Semionov, who caught them with a smile. “A car’s a means of transportation, young lad, not entertainment. It’ll do the job. The Emka’s not for the likes of you.”

“I’ll look after it as if it were my own, Pavel Timofeevich.”

“Your own, is it? Look after it better than that, it belongs to the Soviet People, that car. It’s no speedster, but it’s reliable.” Morozov pointed the young man toward the end of the line of cars.

Semionov already had the engine started by the time Korolev squeezed himself into the passenger seat.

“Now, let’s get this clear. I’m allowing you to drive, it’s true, but take it slowly. The roads are icy and I’d like to make it home in one piece.”

“Of course, Alexei Dmitriyevich,” Semionov answered, with a look too innocent to be trusted. “The Institute?”

“The Institute,” Korolev agreed, without enthusiasm.

“Excellent. And afterward?”

“We’ll see,” Korolev answered, having to shout the words because Semionov had inadvertently revved the engine as high as it would go, causing a flock of screeching black birds to fly up from the overhanging trees. Morozov emerged from his hut to give the younger man a one-eyed look that immediately reduced the engine’s scream to a rattling growl. An abashed Semionov let off the handbrake and directed the car away from its fellows, while Korolev turned up the collar of his overcoat against the chill draft from the windscreen, and avoided Morozov’s aggrieved gaze.

Semionov drove out through the front gate, saluting the wet-looking sentry and turning left into a stream of carts, cyclists and slow-moving trucks, before maneuvering to the middle of the street, where he had a clearer run. It was strange, Korolev thought, how they never showed the carts and horses in the newsreels. It was almost as though they didn’t exist in black and white; slowly fading from the picture and leaving only the speeding trucks and cars of the future. They weren’t the only things that were being replaced, of course, and, as they drove along Gorky Street, Korolev found himself marveling, not for the first time, at the extent of the reconstruction taking place in the city. Tverskaya Street had been a narrower, more intimate thoroughfare before it had been renamed in honor of the great Soviet writer, and now it was being turned into a fine wide strip of asphalt with pedestrian walkways along both sides, as well as giant new buildings, solid and practical, as you’d expect from Soviet architects. The car ran along the street’s new surface as smoothly as its aged engine and bone-jangling suspension would permit, passing work parties who were clearing the remaining slush from the road and piling it up in banks that ran along the pavements’ edges.

There were more motorized vehicles here: green and cream city buses coughing clouds of black smoke as they pulled away from the curb; bustling red and white trams and a constant stream of mud-washed trucks; but theirs was one of the only cars to be seen. Forward planning was the key to achieving the economic development necessary for the Soviet Union to take its place among the great countries of the world. The cars would come in due course.

“We’ll outstrip America soon enough,” Korolev shouted above the engine as they passed yet another construction site where iron girders were sketching out a new building against the gray clouds overhead.

“I hear they’re going to build skyscrapers,” Semionov shouted back. “Bigger than the ones in New York, bigger even than the Empire State building itself. Comrade Stalin himself has approved the plans, and they’ll be twenty times the size of the Hotel Moskva.” He indicated the huge squat building with a dismissive nod. “And they’re going to move the buildings on rails, to widen the street. It will be as wide as a football pitch, if not wider. What could be wider? Perhaps it will be as wide as a football pitch is long. Anyway, the plans are well under way.”

“A football pitch? And they’ll move the buildings?” Korolev shook his head.

“On rails, like a tram. They’ll get on at one stop and get off at another. My friend told me, but it’s secret. Although everyone knows it, so it can’t be that much of a secret. Apparently our engineers have it all worked out.”

“The Soviet Union, Vanya. An example to the world,” Korolev said, and meant it, but he spared a thought for the poky streets and familiar buildings of his youth, now being pushed hither and thither if they were lucky, but more usually flattened into rubble and used to fill in the foundations of the new city. The Moscow he’d grown up in had been a place of secrets and smells, courtyards and alleys, corners and hideaways. The reconstruction, however, would be about size and space and grandeur, as it should be, but he sometimes wondered whether he, like the old Moscow, had a place in the new world Socialism was creating around him.

The further they drove away from the center of the city, however, the more the road narrowed and deteriorated-the surface holed and pitted by heavy trucks, and slippery with packed snow that had still not been properly cleared. The reconstruction hadn’t reached this far out as yet, and tottering tenements leaned against multi-domed churches, shabby with twenty years of neglect. Most of this neighborhood had been slated for demolition and some buildings had already disappeared, flattened to create a massive tunnelling site for one of the new Metro lines. A queue of young, mud-spattered workers were gathered outside underneath a banner that they had probably answered: KOMSOMOLETS, KOMSOMOLKA! HELP BUILD THE METRO! YOUR FUTURE NEEDS A GREAT RAILWAY! As they passed the queue, a heavy truck surged out of the site entrance, forcing Semionov to stamp hard on the brakes, the Ford’s tires slithering across unexpected ice before coming to a halt. The driver, looking as though he should still be at school, waved a good-natured apology as Semionov sounded the horn.

“We’re Militia!” Semionov shouted at the driver as the truck swept past them, but the young fellow just carried on waving. Semionov was still muttering to himself when they pulled up at the Institute five minutes later.

“I’m Komsomol as well, Alexei Dmitriyevich, and that just wasn’t good driving. I’m ashamed of him, if the truth be told. If I knew which cell he was from, I’d report him. He could have killed us and it wouldn’t have been my fault. Believe me.”

“I believe you, Vanya. Come on, let’s go and have a look at the body.”

The car parked, they entered the building with its familiar smell of disinfectant and damp and, as they approached the mortuary, they heard Larinin’s voice in loud discussion with Chestnova.

“I have important matters to attend to elsewhere today, Doctor. Make no excuses for delay. It can only be inefficiency on your part. That’s what we Party members must fight against. Inefficiency.”

As they opened the door, they saw Larinin emphasize his point by stabbing a fat finger at Chestnova. The two were of an even size and bulk, but Korolev’s money would be on Chestnova if it came to blows and, indeed, she was giving a good impression of an angry bull about to charge. In the background, Gueginov was smiling nervously and, from the slightly lopsided slant to his face, Korolev deduced that he’d been at the medical spirit again.