The Margin of Evil! by Simon Boxall Page B

had to do. All was going to go to plan, all Anatoly Gruzinsky had to do was sit back and wait for the robbery to be committed.
    So, on the night of December the 14 th last, the robbery took place but as it turned out the Armenian girl had other ideas. It seems that she had recently suspected her boyfriend of treachery and she had followed him to the meeting with 'The Besprizorniki' boys. When she realised that her partner was not only planning a new life for himself without her, in the Americas, she decided that she would keep the precious stones for herself, and not give them to him as planned. But things for Geghanush Hairabedian slowly began to unravel.
    On the night of the fourteenth, t he girl went quietly downstairs sometime after the old lady had gone to bed. She went into the old woman's living room and removed the stones from the cabinet, and filled the inner lining of her coat with jewels. In her haste she knocked a candlestick holder onto the floor.  The noise woke up the old lady and she came downstairs to investigate. Hairabedian quickly hid behind the door, but to no avail. as the old lady discovered her and challenged her as to why, at this time of night, she was dressed the way she was. The old woman immediately sensed that all was not right, so she instinctively turned around to check the jewellery cabinet. It was while the old lady was momentarily distracted that the servant girl made her move. She picked up the fallen candl`abra, and cracked her mistress on the back of the head. The servant assumed, wrongly, that death for the old woman was instantaneous.
    Hairabedian immediately took flight, from the house in Tverskay Street, but not along the designated ro ute.  She went around the corner and gave the booty to a young girl she had recently befriended. This girl was instructed to take the route that the Armenian girl had been told to take by the sly Gruzinsky. In the meantime she was going to be waiting for the boys to show up at Anatoly's rendezvous point.
    The friend quickly hurried down the alleyways to the place where she had been told to go. But she never made it. Halfway down one of the alleyways, in full view of the ever watchful servant girl, she encountered a gang of crazed 'Besprizorniki' coming the other way.  They robbed her and then cut her throat from ear to ear, making off with the jewels to their rendezvous with Gruzinsky. What none of them had realised was the Armenian girl was still very much alive and was now in close pursuit.
    She watched as the boys hand ed over the jewels to Gruzinsky and then the gang made off into the night. Now it was her turn to make a move. She followed Gruzinsky for a while; the girl knew exactly where he was going. He had told her all the intricate details of his plan and how they were both going to travel in-style from Russia to the New World. So Geghanush Hairabedian was one step ahead of her unfaithful lover and, not only that, she also had the element of surprise on her side.
    Gruzinsky was now walking at a brisk pace .  Everything was going to plan. His route would keep him well away from Red Guard checkpoints and roving gangs of other undesirables.
    The Armenian girl had already decided where and when she was going to confront Anatoly Gruzinsky. She had decided that when the moment came to kill him she was going to walk around the corner, stop for a second, savour the moment and then run a kitchen knife through his chest. This is exactly what she did. The end for Gruzinsky was so quick that he never had enough time to take it all in. He was simply alive one minute and dead the next.  She relieved him of the jewels and then pushed his head down into the dirty snow.  On her part there was not even the slightest feeling of remorse.
    Unknowingly the Armenian girl `s luck had already run out. Back at the house, the old woman had managed to crawl out onto the street to raise the alarm. Now units of The Red Guard and The Peoples Militsya were combing the