Free Night Soldiers by Alan Furst

man had a cold, plain face and looked at him for a long moment without expression.
    The room smelled strongly; musty, sweet, and damp. It had no windows, only water-stained floral wallpaper, a rough table and chair, and a carpet rolled up against one wall to reveal a smooth brick floor with a drain at the center.
    The German spy knelt facing a corner of the room. Khristo saw the hands, tied behind the back with brown cord, the head bent forward, the eyes shut, the lips moving silently, skin the color of dirty chalk.
    The man in suspenders moved forward. He limped when he walked, in felt slippers that did not make a sound on the brick floor. Standing by the kneeling figure, he looked back at Sascha, who nodded affirmatively. Gently, he pushed the head forward until the forehead was only a few inches from the floor, then took the orange hair tied back in a red ribbon and tucked it in front of her shoulder, revealing a white neck.
    Khristo felt Sascha take him by the back of the hand and turn it palm up. He had bony fingers, cold to the touch, and a grip like steel. From his pocket he took a Nagant revolver, slapped it hard onto Khristo's hand, then stepped back.
    A different pair of men drove Khristo Stoianev back to Arbat Street and the Brotherhood Front of 1934. They too wore watches, conspicuously checking them now and again. But they drove slowly and carefully, and took a long, winding route through the city, which had now struggled to life amid the great snowdrifts. Black bundles—you could not determine the age or sex—shuffled head down, single file, along shoveled paths. The sky was dark and thick, the air still. It had long since stopped snowing. Khristo stared out the side window. They were watching him in the rearview mirror—in the same mirror he could see their eyes shift—and he hid his privacy by looking away.
    He felt, had chosen to feel, absolutely nothing. A door had closed inside him. Marike joined Nikko on the other side of it. But he remembered the old story of the man who returns home one day to find his house occupied by demons. He hides in the basement. Each day, the demons put one brick on the trap door that is his only access to freedom. How many days shall he wait to confront them? Khristo would wait a day, many days, he hoped. He had not loved her—never would she have permitted such a thing to happen. Sentimentalism was to be fought at all costs. On her part, making love was only a trick you did for the sake of health or, perhaps, as an appreciative gesture toward a fellow worker. She was, he remembered, demonstratively unaffectionate, as though tenderness in the dance of lovers would betray the honest barnyard essence of their desire. Perhaps, he now thought, this had been her method of deception and had nothing to do with playing the part of worker. He had been naive, he realized, had simply not considered that deception could occur in such matters. Very well. It would happen no more. And, if it did—now that he knew of Sascha's existence and others like him—it would surely be the last time. Unless you could turn over and fuck in your grave. In this place you could not make a mistake. That was the lesson he had learned in the morning; God only knew what he might be taught in the afternoon. He watched the black figures on the street, their white breaths hanging in the air. What was this place? Who were these people?
    The car turned into Arbat Street. In front of his building there was a Stolypin car, puffing black exhaust on the snow as it idled. No one moved to open his door, so he simply sat and waited. Two men in overcoats came quickly out of the building, holding the arms of a man running between them. It was Ozunov. He was barefoot, wearing blue silk pajamas. He stumbled a little, the two men jerked him upright and his glasses went askew. They stopped at the back of the Stolypin car, and one of the men let him go in order to open the door. Instinctively, he adjusted his glasses. Turned