The Case of Comrade Tulayev by Susan Sontag, Victor Serge, Willard R. Trask Page A

bare … The Chief did not raise his head, did not hold out his hand to Erchov, did not ask him to sit down. To maintain his dignity, the High Commissar advanced to the edge of the table and opened his brief case.
    â€œThe plot?” the Chief asked, Erchov saw that his face had the concentrated look, the hard lines, of his cold rages.
    â€œI am inclined to accept the view that the assassination of Comrade Tulayev was the act of an isolated individual …”
    â€œVery efficient, your isolated individual! Remarkably well organized!”
    Erchov felt the sarcasm in the back of his neck, the place where the executioner’s bullet lodges. Could Gordeyev have sunk so low as to carry on a secret investigation of his own and then conceal the results? It would have been almost impossible. In any case, there was nothing to answer …
    The silence which followed annoyed the Chief.
    â€œLet us accept your view provisionally. By the decision of the Political Bureau, the case will not be closed until the criminals have been punished …”
    â€œExactly what I was about to propose,” said the High Commissar, playing up.
    â€œDo you propose any sanctions?”
    â€œI have them here.”
    The sanctions filled several typewritten sheets. Twenty-five names. The Chief glanced over them.
    â€œYou are losing your mind, Erchov,” he said angrily. “This doesn’t sound like you! Ten years for the chauffeur! When it was his duty not to leave the person entrusted to him until he had seen him safely home?”
    To the other proposals he said nothing. On the other hand, his outburst caused the High Commissar to increase all the suggested sentences. The sentry who had been warming himself at the brazier during the assassination would be sent to the Pechora labor camp for ten years instead of eight. Tulayev’s secretary and her lover, the student, would be deported — the woman to Vologda, which was mild, the student to Turgai, in the Kazakstan desert — for five years each (instead of three). As he handed the revised sheet to Gordeyev, the High Commissar allowed himself the pleasure of saying:
    â€œYour proposals were considered too mild, Comrade Gordeyev. I have corrected them.”
    â€œThank you,” said Gordeyev, with a polite bow of his pomaded head. “For my part, I have permitted myself to take a step which you will certainly approve. I have had a list made of all persons whose antecedents might make them suspect of terrorism. So far we have found seventeen hundred names of persons still at liberty.”
    â€œVery interesting …”
    (He hadn’t thought that up himself, the greasy-headed stool pigeon! Perhaps the idea had come from high up, from very high up …)
    â€œOf these seventeen hundred persons, twelve hundred are Party members; about a hundred still hold important offices; several have repeatedly occupied positions in the immediate circle of the Chief of the Party; three are actually in Security …”
    He had spoken with assurance but without emotion, and every sentence had told. What are you doing, who are you after, you climber? You have your sights on the very heart of the Party! The High Commissar remembered that, during the trouble in Tashkent in 1914, he had fired on the mounted militia, and as a result had been imprisoned in a fortress for eighteen months … Then am I suspect? Am I one of the three “ex-terrorists,” “members of the Party,” with jobs in Security?
    â€œHave you informed anyone whomsoever of your researches in this direction?”
    â€œNo, naturally not,” the pomaded head replied suavely, “certainly not. Only the General Secretary, who made the necessary arrangements for me to obtain certain dossiers from the Central Control Commission.”
    This time, the High Commissar felt definitely caught in the meshes of a net that was closing about him for no reason at all. Tomorrow