Free One Night in Winter by Simon Sebag Montefiore Page A

with Rosa? She adores him.’
    George nodded. ‘She does, but Nikolasha lives for Serafima. In fact, sometimes I think the entire Fatal Romantics’ Club is really for her.’
    Andrei stood up. He cared about this more than he meant to – and he had shown it all too clearly.
    ‘You helped me out,’ George said, standing too, ‘and I know you’re one of us. They’re planning to play the Game right after the Victory Parade so you have to join before then. It’s a special ritual.’
    George led Andrei out of the study, across the corridor to his bedroom where he pulled from under his bed an olive-green leather case, which he flicked open. There, lying in red velvet, were two nineteenth-century duelling pistols.
    ‘Beautiful,’ said Andrei. He closed his eyes, remembering his
Onegin.
     
    Now nothing else mattered –
    A brace of pistols and a shot
    Shall instantly decide his lot.
     
    Andrei admired the pistols: the bevelled barrels, polished wood, burnished steel. ‘Are they real?’ he asked.
    ‘I doubt it. We borrow them from the Little Theatre. They use them in plays,’ George said, laughing. ‘And we’re going to use them in the Game – you’ll see.’
     
    A few streets away, School 801 was not quite empty. The janitor mopped the floors of the empty corridors with the disinfectant that gives schools their characteristic pungency, and the director, Kapitolina Medvedeva, was alone in her office planning how the school would celebrate the Victory Parade on 24 June. It was getting closer. A few Komsomols and Pioneers would be chosen to serve in honour guards. And when she thought about this, she wished she could include Andrei Kurbsky because she knew how much it would mean to a boy of tainted biography.
    The report on her desk showed that Andrei was thriving in the school and she was proud that she had overruled Rimm to let him in.
    ‘I wish to register my disapproval of the acceptance of a child of an Enemy of the People,’ Rimm had said. He believed Medvedeva was not Party-minded enough, and he wanted her job. She knew that every school, every institution had a Rimm. They were usually cowards so she’d stood her ground.
    ‘Fine,’ Rimm had surrendered. ‘Let him in if you must, but a family like his won’t be able to pay the fees.’
    ‘Actually, comrade, they
can
afford the fees,’ she’d responded, and smiled as she thought about the opportunity she was giving Andrei. He was her special project and she approved of his neat, reserved appearance, his parted brown hair and dark-framed spectacles. And he was already friends with George Satinov, Minka Dorova and Rosa Shako.
    Kapitolina Medvedeva was a devout Communist, who believed that loving children too much made them egotistical. She was proud to be the director of a school with pupils from such eminent Party families. She was not impressed by the clammy and rather menacing pallor of Comrade Dorov, but his wife Dashka managed to be both chic
and
a doctor. Marshal Shako, the commander-in-chief of the air force, was the very model of a Soviet commander. And as for Comrade Satinov, he was so impressive that, when she spoke to him, she stammered and over-egged her compliments. There was something about Comrade Satinov. Perhaps it was because he was the real thing: he had done time in the Tsar’s jails, helped storm the Winter Palace in 1917, known Lenin, spent the winter of ’42 in Stalingrad. And no one was closer to Stalin himself.
    Kapitolina Medvedeva had taught Stalin’s own children just before the war. Svetlana loved history – and came almost top of her class. But Kapitolina had failed to teach anything to his son, Vasily. The boy had been a delinquent scoundrel. Still, it must be hard to have the greatest titan in world history as your father.
    She looked down at her desk to read Benya Golden’s report on Andrei. The hiring of Golden was another decision she had made over Rimm’s head, and he had turned out to be the best teacher she