George thought of Vasily Stalin. He recalled his brother David saying, ‘Vaska’s crazy about Serafima, and he always gets what he wants. When the rogue takes girls flying, they fall into bed with him out of sheer terror!’ What if Likhachev found out George had not told him about Serafima’s partying with Vasily Stalin? What if Andrei had told them already, and they were testing him? George kept his nerve and held back.
Likhachev stood up abruptly and banged on the door, which opened almost instantaneously. ‘Major,’ he rasped, ‘bring in Prisoner 72.’
George’s heart beat faster as terrible thoughts rushed through his mind. Would this be Minka? Or Serafima? And he prayed that if it was any of his friends, they would not be harmed. He hoped that they had not punched Andrei or Vlad as they had punched him and he prayed too they had been as strong as him and not incriminated themselves. And then for a moment, the nightmare: could it be his father? But that was simply unthinkable. He could hear the clip of footsteps getting closer. For the first time, George, so confident, so brash, experienced the most elemental fear. His belly contracted. Amidst the martial marching of guards, he sensed dragging: the shuffling of another presence barely walking at all. Then two guards pulled in a figure whom they deposited on the chair opposite. There was a bump like a sack of grain and a big head fell forward, but Colonel Likhachev seized the hair and held it up like a primitive warrior with the scalp of a fallen enemy. George gasped. At first it was just the atrocious wounds that shocked him: the face was smashed into pulp, swollen to twice its normal size, the nose crushed, teeth missing, the lip gashed to the nose, the hair caked with blood.
His head spun, his jaw clenched, his belly tightened and he vomited in the corner of the room. The face was scarcely recognizable but when he wiped his mouth and looked again, Colonel Likhachev said, ‘Don’t you remember your dear friend? Look more closely!’
The man seemed barely conscious. He was muttering to himself, and one of his eyes was totally closed, with blood seeping out of it. He wore a uniform, though the tunic was missing half its buttons, the chest was torn where the medals had been ripped off and the shoulderboards had been cut away. George half covered his eyes. Even like this, the man was all too familiar.
‘Losha?’ he said. ‘Losha – oh God, what have they done to you?’
‘Ssssizz!’ The sound came from Losha Babanava’s mouth but it was incomprehensible. He opened his good eye which somehow almost seemed to twinkle at George. ‘Ssshhhzz.’
‘Sizzling?’ said George.
The head nodded.
George collapsed back into his chair. He thought he might vomit again. After his father, Losha Babanava was the man George most loved and respected. He had known him all his life. Whatever happened, whatever he needed, Losha had been able to fix it. Now Losha, this prince of men, was the bloodied ruin before him, flanked by two guards, in this Godforsaken prison. If Losha was broken, anything was possible. His father could be here too.
‘George, George, calm down,’ said Likhachev. ‘You can see what happens when you don’t tell us all you know. No one can stand in the way of the state, however strong you are – isn’t that right, Prisoner Babanava? Losha’s as strong as an ox but we broke him, didn’t we?’ He paused, and then smiled at George, his face shining with sweat. ‘We should thank you, George. How else could we have known where you got the gun that Rosa Shako used to kill Nikolasha and herself?’
George was almost overcome with the shame of it, and angry too. There was no shortage of guns in Moscow. Nikolasha could have got that gun anywhere. Yes, he, George, had borrowed it from Losha and given it to his schoolfriend, but it had not occurred to him that Losha would get into trouble. And now he realized that this ruin of blisters, blood, bruises, was his own doing.
But Losha was shaking and trying to say something. ‘Don’t blame yourself,’ he thought Losha was trying to mouth. ‘Do whatever you have to do.’
‘Silence, prisoner,’ shouted Likhachev. ‘Or we’ll finish you off!’
Losha slurred one more word until George recognised it: ‘Family!’ Family was everything to a Georgian, and Losha loved their family. George buried his face in his hands.
‘Let’s get on with this,’ said Likhachev. ‘Losha says there’s something you haven’t told us, George.’
George could barely hear him. He felt the fires of hell were screaming in his ears.
‘If you want to earn Losha a visit from the doctor, tell us who was the important man who chased Serafima. Focus, George. Losha might die without a doctor.’
George looked at Losha and the caked head nodded. He was right. It did not matter. He must tell or Losha would suffer more.
‘I’ll tell you, if you get him a doctor. It was Vasily…’ Losha nodded. ‘Vasily Stalin.’
Likhachev stiffened when he heard the name. ‘Vasily Stalin and Serafima?’
