Just after eleven the doorbell rang. Szara raced downstairs, hurried past the landlady's door—opened the width of an eye—and let her in. In the little room, she took off her coat. An aura of the cold night clung to her skin, he could feel it. She was wearing a midnight blue party dress, taffeta, with ruffles. The back was all tiny hooks and eyes. “Be careful,” she said as he fumbled. “I mustn't stay too long. Here it is not done to leave a party.”

  “What did you tell them?”

  “That a friend was going away.”

  It was not a magic night. They made love, but the tension in her did not break. Afterward she was sad. “Maybe I shouldn't have come. Sweeter to have a memory of the snow.” With the tips of his fingers he pushed the hair back off her forehead. “I'll never see you again,” she said. She bit her lip to keep from crying.

  He walked her home, almost to the door. They kissed good-bye, dry and cold, and there was nothing to say.

  In the late November of 1937, the Soviet merchant vessel Kolstroi shipped anchor in the port of Rostock, moved slowly up the Warnemünde inlet into Lübeck bay and, swinging north into the Baltic and setting a north-by-easterly course to skirt the Sasenitz peninsula and pass south of the Danish isle of Bornholm, made for Leningrad harbor, some eight hundred and forty nautical miles away.

  The Kolstroi, heavily laden with machine tools, truck tires, and bar aluminum loaded at the French port of Boulogne, docked at Rostock only to complete its complement of eleven passengers bound for Leningrad. Moving up the Warnemünde in gathering darkness, the Kolstroi sounded its foghorn continually, joining a chorus of in- and outbound freighters as it reached Lübeck bay, where the Baltic fogbanks rolled in toward shore in the stiff northerly winds. André Szara and the other passengers were not allowed the freedom of the deck until the ship was beyond the German territorial limit. When Szara did seek the air, after the close quarters of the ship's lounge where they were fed supper, there was little visibility, nothing of the lights on the German coast, only black water heaving in November swells and a building gale that drove iced salt spray onto the metal plates of the deck, where it froze into a lead-colored glaze. He bore it as long as he could, staring into the fog whipping past the ship's lights, unable to see land.

  The Kolstroi was Soviet territory; he'd bowed under the vast weight of it before they ever sailed, his possessions spread out on a table under the cold eyes of a security officer. The journalist Szara meant nothing to this one, Homo Stalinus, human as clock. He was thankful he had disposed of the Okhrana dossier before he left Berlin—memory itself was frightening in the atmosphere aboard the freighter.

  The passengers were a mixed group. There were three English university students, with creamy skins and bright eyes, terribly earnest young men on a dream voyage to what they believed to be their spiritual homeland. There was one middle-age trade representative, suffering from an illness—attempted escape, Szara thought—who was dragged on board by NKVD operatives. The tips of his shoes scraped the wooden gangplank as they carried him onto the ship—obviously he had been drugged senseless. He was not the only passenger going home to die. They were a strange brotherhood, silent, self-contained, having abandoned themselves to a fate they deemed inevitable; the man who'd been dragged on board proved the futility of flight. They rarely slept, greedy for their remaining hours of introspection, pacing about the deck when they could stand the cold, their lips moving as they rehearsed imagined conversations with their interrogators.

  Mostly they avoided one another. A conversation with a tainted diplomat or scientist would be reported by the attentive security men and, how was one to know, might be made evidence in the cases against them, telling evidence, uncovered only in the last hours of the journey home—we thought you were clean until we saw you talking to Petrov—and dangerously sweet to the NKVD appetite for the fatal irony.

  Szara spoke to one of them, Kuscinas, in younger days an officer in the Lettish rifle brigades that supported Lenin when he overthrew the Kerensky government, now an old man with a shaved head and a face like a skull. Yet there was still great strength in Kuscinas; his eyes glittered from deep in their sockets, and his voice was strong enough to hear above the gale. As the Kolstroi rose and crashed into the heavy seas off the Gulf of Riga, on the second day of the voyage, Szara found shelter under a stairway where they could smoke cigarettes and shield themselves from the bitter wind. Kuscinas never said exactly what he did, simply waved his hand when Szara asked, meaning that such things didn't matter. As for what was about to happen to him, he seemed to be beyond caring. “For my wife I'm sorry, but that's all. Foolish woman, and stubborn. Unfortunately she loves me and this will break her heart, but there's nothing to be done about it. My sons they've turned into snakes, all the better for them now, I think, and my daughter married some idiot who pretends to run a factory in Kursk. They'll find a way to disown me, if they haven't started already. I'm sure they will sign anything put before them. My wife, though …”

  “She'll have to go to friends,” Szara said.

  The old man grimaced. “Friends,” he said.

  The Kolstro's steel plates creaked as the ship pitched particularly high, then slammed down into the trough, sending aloft a huge explosion of white spray. “And fuck you too,” Kuscinas said to the Baltic.

  Szara steadied himself against the iron wall and closed his eyes for a moment.

  “You're not going to give it up, are you? ”

  He flicked his cigarette away. “No,” he said, “I'm a sailor.”

  “Will they arrest you?”

  “Perhaps. I don't think so.”

  “You have the right friends, then.”

  Szara nodded that he did.

  “Lucky. Or maybe not,” Kuscinas said. “By the time you get to Moscow they may be the wrong friends. These days you can't predict.” For a time he was silent, eyes inward, seeing some part of his life. “You're like me, I suppose. One of the faithful ones, do what has to be done, don't ask to see the sense of it. Discipline above all.” He shook his head sorrowfully. “And in the end, when it's our turn, and somebody else is doing what has to be done, somebody else who doesn't ask to see the sense of it, the discipline of the executioner, then all we can say is za cbtoì—why? What for? ” Kuscinas laughed. “A sorry little question,” he said. “For myself, I don't mean to ask it.”

  That night, Szara couldn't sleep. He lay in his bunk and smoked, the man across from him mumbling restlessly in his dreams. Szara knew the history of that question, Za cbtoì Rumor attributed its initial use to the Old Bolshevik Yacov Lifschutz, a deputy people's commissar. His final word. Szara remembered him as a little man with wild eyebrows, the obligatory goatee, and a twinkling glance. Shuffling down the tile corridor in the basement of the Lubyanka—you got it on the way, nobody ever reached the end of that corridor—he stopped for a moment and turned to his executioner, an officer he happened to have known in childhood, and said, “Za chto?”

  Along with the purge, the phrase spread everywhere; it was scrawled on the walls of cells, carved in the wooden benches of the Stolypin wagons that hauled prisoners away, scratched into planks in transit camps. Almost always the first words spoken to the police who came in the night, then again the first words of a man or a woman entering a crowded cell. “But why? Why?”

  We are all alike, Szara thought. We don't offer excuses or alibis, we don't fight with the police, we don't look for compassion, we don't even plead. We are the people who called ourselves “dead men on furlough;” we always expected to die—in the revolution, the civil war. All we ask, rational men that we are, is to see the sense of the thing, its meaning. Then we'll go. Just an explanation. Too much to ask?

  Yes.

  The savagery of the purge, Szara knew, gave them every reason to believe there was, must be, a reason. When a certain NKVD officer was taken away, his wife wept. So she was accused of resisting arrest. Such events, common, daily, implied a scheme, an underlying plan. They wanted only to be let in on it—certainly their own deaths bought them the right to an answer—and then they'd simply let the rest of it happen. What was one more trickle of blood on a stone floor to those who'd seen it flow in streams across the dusty streets of a nation? The only insult was ignorance, a thing they'd never tolerated, a thing they couldn't bear now.

  In time, the cult of Za chto began to evolve a theory. Particularly with the events of June 1937, when the only remaining alternative to the rule of the dictator was ripped to shreds. That June came the turn of the Red Army and, when the smoke cleared, it was seen to be headless, though still walking around. Marshal Tukachevsky, acknowledged as Russia's greatest soldier, was joined in his disappearance by two of four remaining marshals, fourteen of sixteen military commanders, eight of eight admirals, sixty of sixty-seven corps commanders, on and on and on. All eleven vice-commissars of defense, seventy-five of the eighty members of the Supreme Military Soviet. All of this, they reasoned; the shootings, the icebound mining camps, an army virtually destroyed by its own country— could have only one intention: Stalin simply sought to remove any potential opposition to his own rule. That was the way of tyrants: first eliminate enemies, then friends. This was an exercise in consolidation. On a rather grand scale, ultimately counted in millions— but what was Russia if not a grand scale?

  What was Russia, if not a place where one could say, down through the centuries, times and men are evil, and so we bleed. This, for some, concluded the matter. The Old Bolsheviks, the Chekists, the officer corps of the Red Army—these people were the revolution but now had to be sacrificed so that the Great Leader could stand unthreatened and supreme. Russia's back was broken, her spirit drained, but at least for most the question had been answered and they could get on with the trivial business of execution with acceptance and understanding. A final gesture on behalf of the party.

  But they were wrong, it wasn't quite that simple.

  There were some who understood that, not many, only a few, and soon enough they died and, in time, so did their executioners, and, later, theirs.

  The following day, Szara did not see Kuscinas. Then, when the Kol-stroi steamed up the Gulf of Finland, the first ice of the season pinging against the hull, the lights of the fortress at Kronstadt twinkling in the darkness, the security men and sailors began a frantic search, combing the ship, but Kuscinas had gone, and they could not find him.

  “ANDRÉ ARONOVICH! OVER HERE!”

  An urgent female voice, cutting through the uproar of a densely packed crowd in the living room of an apartment in the Mochovaya district. Szara peered through the smoke and saw a hand waving at him. “Pardon,” he said. “So sorry. Excuse me.” He chose an indirect route toward the hand and voice, swinging wide to avoid the dangerous elbows of those who had managed to break through to the buffet. Moscow was ravaged by shortages of nearly everything, but here there was black Servuga, grilled lamb, pirozhki, salted peas, stacks of warm blini, and platters of smoked salmon. What you had, then, was desperation: a roomful of apparatchiks, mandarins of agriculture and road planning, timber and foreign policy, as well as the security services, trying to feed themselves for the week to come. More than one pocket was stuffed with meat, smoked fish, even butter—whatever one could swipe.

  For an instant, Szara caught sight of a vaguely familiar face that appeared over the shoulder of a naval officer, then vanished in the crowd. A sophisticated woman, lightly made up, with simple but stylishly managed hair and dangling silver earrings.

  He figured it out just about the time they found each other: a curiously altered Renate Braun, wearing a full blouse of lime-colored silk and the modestly coquettish smile one saw in British films of cocktail parties. “Heavens, what a crowd!” she said, brushing his cheek with hers—a dear friend one simply doesn't see often enough. Last seen slicing up a dead man's pants cuffs with a razor blade in an Ostend whorehouse, here was an entirely different version of the woman.

  “You must meet Mr. Herbert Hull,” she gushed, speaking in German-accented English.

  Now Szara noticed that she had in tow a tall, sandy-haired man with a weather-beaten face and wildly overgrown eyebrows. He was perhaps in his late forties and, from his casual, loose-jointed posture, evidently American. He was smoking, with difficulty, a poorly rolled makhorka cigarette, a self-conscious attempt to be part of the local scenery, Szara thought. “Herb Hull,” he said. He had a powerful grip and sought something in Szara's eyes when they shook hands.

  “Herb has been so anxious to meet you,” Renate Braun said.

  “We all know André Szara,” Hull said. “I'm a great fan of your work, Mr. Szara.”

  “Oh but you must call him André.”

  “Yes. Please.”

  Szara's English was at best uncertain. He was going to sound awful, hesitant and somehow importunate—an impression often created when Slavs spoke English. He already felt a hatefully ingratiating smile creeping over his face.

  “Herb's an editor with a new American magazine. A very important undertaking. You'll know him, of course, from when he was with the Nation and the New Republic.”

  “Ah yes.” Szara knew the names, prayed he wouldn't be questioned about specific articles. The anxious smile grew. “Of course. Importantly.”

  Szara saw Renate Braun wince, but plunged ahead. “You are liking Russia?”

  “Never the same place two days in a row, things go wrong, but there's a strength in the people that's irresistible.”

  “Ach!”—mock horror from Renate Braun—“he knows us too well.”

  Hull smiled and shrugged. “Trying to learn, at any rate. That's what we need. Firsthand knowledge, a feel for the real Russia.”

  “I am certain that André can help you with that, Herb. Positive.”

  “Yes?” Szara said.

  “Why not?” Hull's eyebrows rose. “After all, I'm an editor, you're a writer. For a new magazine, well, a Russian writer speaking about the USSR would be a change, change for the better I'm inclined to think. No?”

  “Ah, but my English.”

  “No problem, André. We'd be happy to do the translation, or it could be done here. Won't be perfect, but we'll guarantee to preserve the sense of it.”

  “I am honored,” Szara said. He was. The thought of appearing in a respected journal before an American audience, not the usual Daily Worker crowd, was immensely pleasing. Ilya Ehrenburg, Pravda's number one correspondent, had done it, occupying the journalistic territory in the Spanish Civil War so effectively that Szara was virtually restricted to other parts of Europe.

  Hull let the offer sink in, then went on. “Renate tells me you're working on a historical piece that might be right up our alley. I won't kid you, running something like that would get us the attention we need. And we'll pay for it. Won't be Hollywood, of course, but I think you'll find us competitive in the New York market.”

  Renate Braun seemed quite excited by the prospect. “We've even discussed a title, André Aronovich.”

  Szara stared at her. What was she talking about?

  “Just discussed,” Hull broke in. He knew what a certain look on a writer's face meant. “Working title is all it is, but I can tell you it caught my attention.”

  “Title?”

  Renate Braun said, “The piece must be exciting—our plan fulfillment norms won't do, I suspect. It must have …” She looked at Hull for the word.

  “Intrigue?”

  “Yes. That's it. Intrigue! A story of Russia's revolutionary past, its secret history. We aren't completely sure what it is you're working on—you writers keep close with ideas—but we thought perhaps something on the order of ‘The Okhrana's Mysterious Man.' ” She turned to Hull. “Yes? It's good English?”

  “Yes indeed. Good enough to put on the cover, I'd say.”

  Szara repeated the title in Russian. Renate Braun nodded vigorously. “Your English is better than you think, André Aronovich.”

  “Of course,” Hull said, “you can always use a pen name if you like, I'm not unaware how easy it is to get into trouble these days. We'd rather have your name, of course, but we'll protect your identity if that makes you more comfortable.”

  Szara just stared. How much did this man know? Did he have any idea what happened to people who played such games? Was he brave? Stupid? Both?

  “Well, André, would you consider it?” Hull asked, eyes keen, head tilted inquiringly to one side, gauging his quarry.

  “How could he not?” Renate Braun said. “Such an opportunity!”

  Szara walked for a long time that night. His tiny apartment in Volnitzky Alley wasn't far from the house where the party had been given, so he circled the center of the city, crossing the icebound river, a lone, January figure in fur hat and overcoat. He kept an eye out for bezprizorniye, bands of children orphaned by the purge who attacked and robbed solitary walkers of their money and clothing—you might just as easily freeze to death if your head wasn't bashed in—but it was evidently too cold for hunting.

  Sooner or later, he thought, things fall into place and, often as not, you'd rather they hadn't. Now the long leash in Prague and Berlin made sense. They were letting him have his time with the dossier, counting on the fact that he'd stick his curious writer's nose into the business. Seen externally, a well-known journalist had sniffed out a big story which, in the normal way of things, he'd tell the world. They'd protected him when the Georgian khvost operatives had him taken off the train, then left him free to work.

  And now they were rather casually asking him to commit suicide.

  Was it too much to ask? That one life should be sacrificed so that hundreds, perhaps thousands, might survive? All he need do was practice his natural trade. Who was the Okhrana's mysterious man? Well, we know a few small details. A, B, C, and D. A new and provocative enigma from enigmatic Russia. Perhaps, someday, we'll learn his real identity. Yours truly, André Szara. (Please omit flowers.)

  Or, oh yes, the pen name. Boris Ivanov has served in the Soviet diplomatic corps. That would surely throw the NKVD off the scent. For perhaps a month. Or maybe a year. Not much longer.