Point of Loyalty

Snow was falling. Vasily watched as a myriad of snowflakes drifted down from the early morning sky and carpeted the small alleyway. There were two trash cans nearby on the sidewalk, and an extra layer of thick snow on top had made them look like giant mushrooms. Vasily brushed off some of the snow on one of them with his thick mittens, letting the excess snow fall and cover some of the blood stains on the ground.

Then the snow suddenly stopped. The icy breeze that carried it also died down and all was quiet, but only for an instant. The city's factories, traffic noises and the incessant hums of nearby street gas lamps all came back and drowned out any sense of nature or peace Vasily had sensed a moment before.

It was another beautiful day in freezing mother Russia.

"Hey Vasily, are we doing this or not?"

Vasily broke from his daze and nodded at the two armed troopers next to him. Lined up against the bricked wall at the end of the alleyway stood two men in handcuffs. Vasily focused on the man on the left; the prisoner's eyes were reddened from the pepper spray, and a small trickle of blood ran down the corner of his mouth down to his chin. The blood dripped down onto the ground and reddened the snow.

It had taken three removed teeth before he gave up the other guy standing next to him.

Vasily stiffened and removed one of his woolly mittens. He fished out a small black notebook from his coat pocket, and read the sentence within:

"Adrian Kopelev and Michail Bukharin. You have been found guilty of sedition and treason and have been condemned to death by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union."

Vasily nodded to the troopers and two loud shots were fired at the two men, hitting them both square in the chest. Their lifeless bodies sank down into crumpled heap on the snowy sidewalk.

Vasily ticked off the two names in his little black book and returned it to his pocket. He thought about putting his mittens back on -as it had started to snow again-, but instead he reached into his trouser pocket for his cigarettes.

"OK boys, lets wrap this up..."

The two NKVD troopers holstered their handguns and set about retrieving the handcuffs, leaving the bodies by the side of the trash cans in the alley way and returned to the truck.

*

Vasily sighed at the sight of the mountain of files on his desk. He had been so neat and meticulous when he first started as an agent for The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, but after ten years on the job, he knew his desk was never going to be tidy again.

Vasily’s job was straightforward: If leader Stalin didn't like someone, they were charged under Article 58 of the RSFSR Penal Code, with conspiring with Western powers to assassinate Stalin and other Soviet leaders, dismember the Soviet Union, and restore capitalism.

The penalty for which was death.

It was a common charge and was worded in a manner just vague enough that you could pretty much charge anyone with Article 58. Plus, it was slightly less paperwork than other charges.

But sometimes suspects absconded, and sentences could not be carried out. And so, some files had stayed on the desk, gathering dust.

"Hey Vasily, you still got the Kopelev file there?"

Vasily looked up. It was Natasha, one of the clerks.

"Yeah, right here, was just about to close it, why?"

Natasha walked over to him brandishing a stack of papers: "these need to go in. Oh, and apparently, they found a key to a locker in the Leningradsky railway station belonging to Adrian Kopelev. They want you to check it out.”

Vasily frowned: "Why me? I don't have time to play tidy-up..."

"I think it's because you live nearby. You know how busy we are. Check it out on your way home and leave the contents with evidence in the morning..."

*

Vasily shuffled across Red Square in the thickest coat he could get his hands on. His boots were all muddy; the snow from earlier on in the morning had frozen to even harder and icier snow, if that was possible.

"...I don't need a ticket... I just need to get to the lockers?"

The young man at the ticket office gulped at the sight of Vasily's NKVD badge, but his supervisor behind him just rolled his eyes and waved Vasily through the barrier, as if this kind of thing happened all the time:

"The lockers are upstairs opposite the newspaper stands. Do you have a key? Good, good, they're numbered."

Getting into Adrian Kopelev's locker took a few moments with an icy and rusted key, but he eventually managed it. Vasily began to empty the contents into evidence bags and throw them into his briefcase, but he pricked is hand on the sharp edge of the locker door.

Ouch! He put his finger in his mouth. He was bleeding.

Yep, this was the day that was going to keep on giving.

His focus returned to the locker and fed his other hand, to reach any missed items right at the back.

His hand felt something papery, and he pulled it out.

Vasily gasped at the sight of what he had found. It was a large bundle of American dollar bills, all fifties, tightly wrapped in brown paper right at the back of the locker.

Vasily bundled the bills into his briefcase.

Concealed in one of the station's bathroom cubicles, Vasily counted the notes. Twenty... thousand dollars!

He couldn’t believe it; This was the most money he had ever seen. Had anyone in the USSR seen this much since the fall of the Tsar? he bet that not even Minister Beria made this much in a year!

Vasily was dazed at the prospect before him. He could buy food that wasn't bland rations! A coat with no holes in it! Wait, what was he thinking? twenty thousand dollars could buy you an entire palace full of food!

But the loud whistle of a departing train and the thunder of NKVD jackboots on a nearby platform snapped Vasily back into focus. Reality set back in as he caressed the bundle of notes.

This was too much money... he'd never get away with it.

Besides the slim chance of finding someone who would exchange this kind of money to rubles without telling anyone, what of loyalty? It was wrong to have private wealth, it went against the socialist ideals.

He needed to turn it over to the state, where it could be distributed among the people. That is what leader Stalin would want him to do. Maybe it would be used for the war effort, to get our boys at the front better equipment or food.

...or would it?

Vasily sighed. Just how far would this money go up the food chain before it would be pocketed? The ministry was corrupt, through and through. Either his boss would keep it, or his boss’s boss would.

Besides, was it even worth causing the stir declaring a sum like this would cause? And would the other officers trust him after he turned in such an amount? He knew that if he turned in all this money, he'd essentially be telling his comrades that he couldn't be trusted.

Oh hell, was he really considering this? Keeping twenty thousand American dollars?

Vasily coughed as he walked down the icy street away from the station. He had been a loyal soldier all his life... But look where that had gotten him. He had been hungry and poor ever since he could remember. Life as a street rat in Minsk had been rough, but they had told him it was because of the Tsar and his capitalist advisors. But now, twenty years and God knows how many revolutions and purges and executions later, he was still poor and hungry.

He stopped to look at one of the dozens of statues of Lenin that adorned Moscow. What had it all been for? It didn't seem like it mattered who was in charge; there were always those who had plenty, and those who didn't have anything.

And he - despite all his loyalty- was still one of the have-nots.

Vasily walked on.

But not today! Vasily had twenty thousand American dollars!

He turned the key at the front door of his flat. Screw it, he thought as he tucked the bundle of cash behind his chest of draws.

Finders, keepers.

*

"Hey Vasily, the Commander wants to see you!"

Vasily flinched; he was so hungover. He had spent all night with a bottle of vodka, toasting to his unexpected windfall.

"When does he need to see me?"

"Now."

Vasily hurried up to the fourth floor, where the top brass was; it was quite apart from everyone else. He took a deep breath and knocked on door 101.

A raspy voice came from within. "Come in..."

Vasily felt a chill of cold as he walked into dark room. In the corner, the Commander sat at his desk, a much neater one than his own.

The Commander didn't look at Vasily, he just kept writing: "I have been told it was you who went to retrieve the rest of the belongings of the traitor Adrian Kopelev at the station".

Vasily stiffened, still saluting "Yes, sir."

"And you brought the contents back to the evidence clerks?"

"Yes, this morning, sir."

The spymaster finally looked up from his work and stared Vasily squarely in the eye. " All of it?"

Vasily gulped. "Yes, sir."

"Are you sure there was nothing else in the locker? Adrian Kopelev was a British spy, tasked with funnelling finance from the west to a spy cell here in Moscow. We know his last drop-off was unsuccessful, and the payment itself is yet to be found."

Vasily could feel a bead of sweat run down his forehead, but he dared not move. "Do you want me to go an check again, sir?"

The Commander smiled. "There's no need, we know who has it."

"When you cut your finger a faint splatter of blood marked the shapes and sizes of everything in the locker yesterday. We used the evidence you turned in to reconstruct the locker's contents and, unfortunately for you, there was a clean rectangular space at the back of the locker, roughly the size of a bundle of American currency notes."

*

The frozen alleyway was even less inviting than the day before. Vasily shivered and leaned his handcuffed hands against the bricked wall behind him. Before him stood two agents and a new NKVD officer, writing Vasily's name in his own little black notebook, a booklet that all officers carried with them.

As the officer turned to the page of the booklet to recite the charge, Vasily looked up at the sky. It was snowing again. His eyes followed the snowflakes as they fell from the heavens, carpeting the alleyway as they always did.

This time it was Vasily's blood drenching the snow. Six teeth had been removed, but he hadn't revealed the location of the missing money.

Not that he would ever get to use it. Vasily wondered what the officer standing before him would do after finding the key to his apartment on his dead person in a few moments. Would he be loyal and turn in the money? Or would he, like Vasily, come between the commander and a handsome payday?

How many times would the cycle of hope, disloyalty and death turn before someone uses the money for a good cause?

The NKVD troopers took aim: "Vasily Bernosky, you have been found guilty of sedition and treason and have been condemned to death by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union."

It had probably been an Article 58 charge. It was vague and accommodating, at least for the officer filing the paperwork.

Comrade Stalin had no time for disloyalty, regardless of circumstance. Despite the promises of a better world, of a socialist utopia, and of shared wealth and happiness, it seemed that there were only three realities in this world: the haves, the have-nots... and blood-stained snowflakes.

the end.

All images displayed in this article were drawn from the public domain.