Bolsheviks are very secretive! Press the right buttons Georgii boy and their paranoia can work miracles for you'
' I'm not completely with you,'
' She has the right connections, make them work for you. Use your charm on her; remind her of nineteen fourteen, get her to use her influence to help you?' Gerhardt said.
' I'll be honest with you Auguste, I find her nauseating. I'll do this investigation, for old times' sake, but I want as little to do with her as possible. I want to handle it my way. I also know you of old, I want you to level with me and I don't want you to keep anything from me!'
' You have my word. If I hear anything I will pass it on to you. Now I have to go. By the way Georgii ... have you ever been inside the Kremlin Georgii?'
' No I haven't,' Georgii replied.
' Then you had better dust off your suit! One week from today, you can meet me there and then you can update me on your progress. Lenin and Trotsky will be there giving their speeches on 'The Future of Socialism. 'Your ticket will be sent via the internal post.'
With that Gerhardt got up and left. Georgii Radetzky followed him a few minutes later. During those minutes, he sat and thought about the day's events; the raid on the house and the deaths of Vironsky and the boy; the memory of the child lying in the grate, like a baby waiting to be tucked up in a cot, would stay with him, or so he thought, for the rest of his life.
Nothing much else happened that week. Two fruitless days had been spent looking for 'White' insurgents. All he managed to catch was his death of cold. Time passed slowly that week. Every time he tried to do some research on 'Kevshor's' or Goldstein; Trofimov instantly found him something else to do. Georgii was getting the feeling that she was watching, even to the point of anticipating, his every move.
On Tuesday she suddenly went off to a meeting. Georgii seized the opportunity and went over to the Central Records Department. Eventually, he found Isaak Goldstein's file. But the strange thing was the filing clerk told him that he was the third person, in so many days, that had asked to see the file. And now, coming to think of it, there had been a lot more information in the file the first and second times he had fished it out. The file that Georgii looked at was now wafer thin. Looking at it he could see that most of its contents had been ripped out in one go. But the upshot was a couple of pages still remained. He copied these, and then placed them back into the file.
Back at the office, he tried to make some sense of the notes he 'd made. Georgii Radetzky had come across, 'The Jew', Isaak Goldstein years before when he'd worked as Gerhardt's junior assistant. He was a petty crook, used by others. Really he was small fry, but he had connections and it was those connections that had made him useful to others, and it was those connections that also had interested him in the past and the very same ones interested him now. Like Rezhnikov, Goldstein would have sold his grandmother into slavery if he could have got away with it. In this respect, sniggering quietly to himself, both were shining examples of 'New Soviet' man. But unlike Rezhnikov, Goldstein had been an Okhrana informant.
At the moment Georgii had nothing to go on. People disappeared every day, only to turn up again month's later! People threw themselves under trains, cars and wagons all the time. Others filled their pockets with lead weights and jumped into the river, those that could, just walked back to their families in the country. Moscow's population was decreasing by the hour. It was rumoured that the guards on the edge of the city were posted there to keep the people in, not the enemy out! Beyond them the wolves simply waited, while the city starved - the wolves had probably never had it so good!
By Wednesday he feigned illness, so that he could take a day off sick. He even went sick with Anya Trofimov's full blessings.
Getting up early he
' I'm not completely with you,'
' She has the right connections, make them work for you. Use your charm on her; remind her of nineteen fourteen, get her to use her influence to help you?' Gerhardt said.
' I'll be honest with you Auguste, I find her nauseating. I'll do this investigation, for old times' sake, but I want as little to do with her as possible. I want to handle it my way. I also know you of old, I want you to level with me and I don't want you to keep anything from me!'
' You have my word. If I hear anything I will pass it on to you. Now I have to go. By the way Georgii ... have you ever been inside the Kremlin Georgii?'
' No I haven't,' Georgii replied.
' Then you had better dust off your suit! One week from today, you can meet me there and then you can update me on your progress. Lenin and Trotsky will be there giving their speeches on 'The Future of Socialism. 'Your ticket will be sent via the internal post.'
With that Gerhardt got up and left. Georgii Radetzky followed him a few minutes later. During those minutes, he sat and thought about the day's events; the raid on the house and the deaths of Vironsky and the boy; the memory of the child lying in the grate, like a baby waiting to be tucked up in a cot, would stay with him, or so he thought, for the rest of his life.
Nothing much else happened that week. Two fruitless days had been spent looking for 'White' insurgents. All he managed to catch was his death of cold. Time passed slowly that week. Every time he tried to do some research on 'Kevshor's' or Goldstein; Trofimov instantly found him something else to do. Georgii was getting the feeling that she was watching, even to the point of anticipating, his every move.
On Tuesday she suddenly went off to a meeting. Georgii seized the opportunity and went over to the Central Records Department. Eventually, he found Isaak Goldstein's file. But the strange thing was the filing clerk told him that he was the third person, in so many days, that had asked to see the file. And now, coming to think of it, there had been a lot more information in the file the first and second times he had fished it out. The file that Georgii looked at was now wafer thin. Looking at it he could see that most of its contents had been ripped out in one go. But the upshot was a couple of pages still remained. He copied these, and then placed them back into the file.
Back at the office, he tried to make some sense of the notes he 'd made. Georgii Radetzky had come across, 'The Jew', Isaak Goldstein years before when he'd worked as Gerhardt's junior assistant. He was a petty crook, used by others. Really he was small fry, but he had connections and it was those connections that had made him useful to others, and it was those connections that also had interested him in the past and the very same ones interested him now. Like Rezhnikov, Goldstein would have sold his grandmother into slavery if he could have got away with it. In this respect, sniggering quietly to himself, both were shining examples of 'New Soviet' man. But unlike Rezhnikov, Goldstein had been an Okhrana informant.
At the moment Georgii had nothing to go on. People disappeared every day, only to turn up again month's later! People threw themselves under trains, cars and wagons all the time. Others filled their pockets with lead weights and jumped into the river, those that could, just walked back to their families in the country. Moscow's population was decreasing by the hour. It was rumoured that the guards on the edge of the city were posted there to keep the people in, not the enemy out! Beyond them the wolves simply waited, while the city starved - the wolves had probably never had it so good!
By Wednesday he feigned illness, so that he could take a day off sick. He even went sick with Anya Trofimov's full blessings.
Getting up early he
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