CHAPTER EIGHTEEN, MOSCOW, FALL 1996: VOROSHILOV
Borodkin would have been happy to sulk passively for months except that he received a phone call. “Allo?”
“Major Kristinich here.”
“Oh.”
“Oh. indeed.” The intelligent voice sardonic, almost mocking. “Tell me, are you engaged this evening?”
“No.”
“Nor am I. Let us sample a bit of Moscow’s more restrained night life. It will be my pleasure to entertain you.”
Borodkin hung up the phone, thinking only, It begins. What was beginning, he did not care to consider too deeply. All that mattered was…he was.
Borodkin met Kristinich at one of the new restaurants springing up all over Moscow. Dinners at restaurants were still a big deal: many courses and plenty of alcohol, including vodka, champagne, and brandy. They honored the custom fully. To each other’s families, to each other’s health and prosperity—to those who had served and died in Chechnya.
“So tell me about work,” the FSB officer finally asked. It was the question Borodkin had been awaiting.
“The bosses are very pleased. We’re getting money, equipment, and people. Unfortunately, my boss prefers to hire women.”
“Well, she will surely get some use out of them before they go off and marry and have babies, if they haven’t already. Nevertheless, she does good work, although it is truly hard to believe we had to go all the way to America to find her.”
“True. We have incredibly talented men.”
“My point exactly,” Kristinich said. “Tell me, I’ve never worked for a woman. What is it like?” A touch of sympathy, not overdone. Borodkin was a smart man who would not appreciate having the obvious brought to his attention too harshly.
“If something interests her, she chases it. Other than that, she’s very level-headed…”
“For a woman,” Kristinich murmured. “Excuse me, that was uncultured.”
“No, she’s not much of a woman. It’s very strange that a general would be interested in her.” Borodkin said, realizing that he was tired of serving a woman, tired of thinking about a woman in half-formed fantasies, tired of remembering that she was taken.
“The general’s mother was a servicewoman.”
“Ah, she joined the Army to find a husband.”
“Well…” Kristinich answered, “the general’s mother did spend four years at the front and that requires some respect.” Borodkin took the rebuke calmly, then Kristinich went on. “His sister is an FSB officer.”
“I didn’t know.”
“Now you do.”
“Well then, I can imagine what she does.”
Kristinich didn’t care for that. “You may imagine anything you like regarding Major Suslova. You would not be imagining if you thought that Doctor Tolchinskaya is not universally liked. You’re not the only one who dislikes Doctor Tolchinskaya.” And for good reason, Kristinich thought. She had showed up a lot of people without ever intending to, by simply doing her work very well. Woman or not, Zhid or not, American or not, he had to admire her for that much, an extorted admiration that simply increased his hate.
“I can imagine,” Borodkin murmured.
“Let’s drink to the girls of the Army and the Security Services.” A pinprick on Kristinich’s part.
Borodkin drank enthusiastically. “So, tell me what you do? With such women as you might professionally encounter.”
Kristinich was used to having to keep a clear head while drinking. Bemused, he allowed himself to think about what Borodkin was really asking, about the question that underlay the question. He did not care for rape. He had tried it and found it not distant enough, far too personal and anyway, over with far too quickly, and he suspected Borodkin might be much the same way. “Do you really want to know?”
“Yes.”
“Well, as you no doubt noticed during your stay with us in Chechnya, I hurt people. Amongst other things, of course. Amongst many other things. It is not my chief or even a main duty. Sometimes I tend to it personally, sometimes I have my assistants do it on my orders.” He watched Borodkin’s eyes and deliberately warned him of the type of seduction he was offering. “I prefer it if my assistants start out disliking my orders, and are honest about it. The results are better, later on.”
“What’s it like?”
“To hurt? It’s honest. Pleasure can be faked. Indifference can be faked. That kind of pain can’t be. I thought I’d like it, that it would be something marvelous to impose that level of feeling on another human being.” Kristinich waited while the waiter brought them their cognac. “And to be sure, I do like it a great deal. It is occasionally marvelous. But it’s also not enough for me, because I realized that I wasn’t getting through in the manner required by my work, which is the work of the State. The work of the State requires that I take my subjects to the Window of Truth.”
“Again, please?”
“There is a moment, a few minutes, perhaps, during torture when the subject is still conscious and coherent and willing to say or do anything to stop the pain. That is the moment they reveal the information the State requires. Go beyond this little window of opportunity and they become useless. For State purposes.”
“But not for personal purposes?”
“Quite so. If I accidentally take them beyond the Window of Truth…it happens.”
“And if you take them beyond on purpose?”
Kristinich smiled. “I find that, personally, I really get through to people only afterwards. Those who survive. That’s when they begin to comprehend what has happened to them in all its nuances and complexities. Insofar as they still can. This combination of great pain and great mental damage…” he leaned a bit closer. “It twists them.”
Borodkin understood. “I’ll report to you on Doctor Tolchinskaya,”
And she won’t know a thing until I walk into her cell.
“The State will be grateful to you.”