The Clown Service

ADDITIONAL FILE: THE MANY FACES OF OLAG KRISHNIN

a) Dagestan, North Caucasus, USSR, October 1931

The ground was frozen. Digging the potatoes was mining rather than farming. Olag forced his hands into his armpits, trying to squeeze some warmth back into fingers that felt like they were broken. They bled onto the thick wool of his shirt, leaving hard crusts that scraped and cracked as he moved.

‘This is no life,’ he said to his brother, Artur, four years his senior but so beaten by his years in the fields he looked much older.

‘It’s the only one you have,’ Artur replied, not looking up because he knew they were being watched by the soldiers. ‘Get on with it or you’ll cause trouble.’

‘Father says I’m good at causing trouble.’

‘He’s right. I wish he wasn’t.’

‘He says I’ll grow up to be better than this. That I’ll change the world.’

‘He says a lot of things, because he hates his life and wants the next generation to change what he cannot. One day he’ll say it too loudly and it’ll get him killed. Unless you want to beat him to it, shut up and dig.’

But Olag was angry and the idea of forcing his bleeding fingers back into the sharp rocks for the sake of a lousy potato – a potato he wouldn’t even be allowed to eat as it was deemed ‘socialist property’ – made him so angry he couldn’t bear to do it.

‘No,’ he said, walking away from the trench and towards the soldiers.

‘No more potatoes,’ he said, folding his arms and trying not to wince.

The soldiers laughed. They were men from the village, drunk on the power their position afforded them. One of them stooped down to Olag’s level and prodded him in the chest.

‘How old are you, little rebel?’

‘Nine.’

‘School age. Time for your lesson, I think.’

The soldier straightened up, still smiling and punched Olag in the face. He tumbled backwards, falling to a sitting position on the hard ground. For a moment he was in shock, his left cheek burning.

Then he was back on his feet and running at the soldiers.

‘Bastards!’ he shouted, kicking and punching at them – to hell with how much it hurt his hands.

The soldier who had hit him continued to laugh, his colleague joining him as they threw Olag back to the ground and gave him a kicking that felt endless.

Lying in the dirt, tears in his eyes, Olag looked up at the soldiers and wished he could tear them apart.

He felt someone pulling him to his feet, his brother Artur.

‘Please,’ Artur said, ‘he doesn’t know what he’s doing. I’ll keep him out of trouble.’ He dragged Olag back towards the trench.

‘You mind you do,’ the soldier shouted, ‘or next time he won’t be getting back up again.’

Artur wiped at the dirt and blood on his younger brother’s face. ‘I hope you learned your lesson?’

‘Yes,’ Olag said, his teeth grinding together as he fought back the hatred he felt inside himself. ‘It is better in this life to be the soldier and not the peasant.’

b) Stalingrad, Russia, 23rd August 1943

‘You dance like a peasant,’ the girl said, as Krishnin carried her around the floor. Noticing his face fall, she squeezed his hand. ‘I didn’t mean it as a criticism. The men here are stiff and unfeeling, they don’t know how to connect to the music. They are all thinking about how they look, about whether people are impressed by them. You just move. It’s nice.’

He smiled and said nothing, twirling her around as the band played on. He wondered if he was in love. The girl was beautiful and, for all her criticism of the men of Stalingrad who tried too hard to impress, he had noticed how she looked at his uniform. He had seen the look before: women loved a man of power.

‘Do you think the Germans will overrun us?’ she asked, clearly eager to move the conversation away from what she feared had been taken as an insult.

‘They will try,’ he said.

‘And you will stop them?’

He just smiled.

The band stopped playing and the dancers rewarded them with polite applause. As the sound of clapping faded a new sound replaced it, a low whine that he recognised only too easily.

‘I think the dancing is over,’ he said, reaching forward and kissing her on the lips. She looked at him, startled and yet accepting.

‘Are you propositioning me?’

‘If I were, what would be your answer?’

She laughed and held him close, whispering in his ear. ‘The answer would be “yes”.’

Perhaps that would have to be good enough, he thought, because the sound of the planes overhead was growing louder.

‘Bombers!’ someone shouted, bursting into the dance hall. ‘Wave after wave of them!’

The room erupted into panic but Krishnin held the girl close, even as she fought to pull away.

‘There is nowhere to hide,’ he said. ‘Running won’t help. Either God lets us live or he lets us die.’

Her face had gone from lust to terror, a look that sharpened his own desire.

The air was filled with the sound of whistling, tons of explosive charges raining down on the city. To Krishnin it was a continuation of the music. The bombs began to hit their targets, the ground shook and explosions cut their way through the streets.

‘Let’s dance some more,’ he said, pulling her around the floor with him, holding her body tight against his own. ‘If we are to die tonight then we may as well. God favours the brave.’

She pulled away from him and, though he reached for her, she evaded him.

She followed the rest of the dance hall’s patrons out of the doors and onto the street outside. The air was thick with fire and bricks and screaming and smoke. Like cement stirred into water, the atmosphere thickened around them until it felt hard to move.

Krishnin held back, standing in the doorway and watching as the city fell apart. Above them, line after line of planes moved through the sky, lit by the fires that bloomed beneath them. The heat and the noise made him hornier than ever. He imagined it was his finger on the trigger, imagined he was the cause of the destruction all around him. Such power. To brush aside whole cities as if with a giant hand. Crumbling houses within your grip, grinding the populace beneath the tip of your finger.

An explosion roared along the street and Krishnin saw the panicking citizens in silhouette, running in all directions.

He stepped outside and began to make his way up the road, already having to step over dead bodies and piles of bricks. He felt as if nothing could touch him, as if he were just an observer in this broken world.

He looked down, recognising the fallen body of the girl he had been dancing with. The back of her head was covered in blood, blood pumping from a wound caused by flying shrapnel. He hadn’t loved her, he decided. How could he love someone as easily struck down as this?

He picked up her body, smiling as she gave the faintest moan in his ear. He held her close and began to hum one of the tunes the band had played earlier. Slowly he danced with her, swinging her limp body around in his arms as the bombs beat on the city as if it were a drum.

c) Yalta, Crimean Coast, Ukraine, 1962

‘A toast,’ said Krishnin, raising his glass, ‘to fruits sown in Black Earth.’ He drained his drink, pretending not to notice Andrei Bortnik’s look of disapproval. He had known that the old man was going to get cold feet, after all. It was no surprise. Nonetheless, he would make Bortnik squirm while he tried to pour cold water on Krishnin’s fire. No, he wouldn’t make it easy for him.

‘Olag,’ the fat man said, ‘Black Earth is… We cannot sanction it.’

Krishnin feigned horror, twisting the stem of his glass in his hands. ‘Not sanction?’ he asked. ‘But why?’

‘It’s…’ His superior stood up and moved over to the patio doors. ‘It’s just too much,’ he said finally. ‘We haven’t…’

‘The stomach for it?’ Krishnin asked.

Bortnik looked at him, a mixture of anger and fear on his face. ‘Can you blame us? What you’re proposing… It’s monstrous.’

Krishnin joined him in the warm sunlight that fell through the glass doors. ‘So beautiful here,’ he said, ‘I think I would like to retire to somewhere like this. Once my work is done.’

Bortnik was clearly uncomfortable at having Krishnin so close. He reached forward and opened the doors. ‘Let’s take a walk outside,’ he suggested.

‘Yes,’ Krishnin replied, putting his glass down, ‘you can show me your pool.’

d) Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell, London, 20th December 1963

Krishnin dragged the man into the dining room and hurled him down into a chair.

‘Who is he?’ Viktor asked. ‘How long as he been listening?’

‘All questions we will be asking,’ Krishnin replied.

‘Ask all you want,’ the stranger said. ‘I’ll tell you nothing. Besides, you know why I’m here. Did you really think they would just let you go? This is a disgrace! What you’re doing must be…’

Krishnin punched the man hard in his mouth. He didn’t need him sowing dissent amongst his men. Viktor was very much under his control – at the moment too scared to ask questions, but if this man brought enough doubt onto his operation…

‘You heard the man,’ Krishnin shouted. ‘How long have you been here and what have you heard?’

The man spat a froth of spittle and blood onto the floor between them and Krishnin hit him again.

Krishnin turned to Viktor. ‘The kitchen. Bring me tools.’

Viktor nodded, and left the room.

Krishnin leaned in close to the spy, whispering so that only they could hear.

‘Say what you like, but know this: the more you speak, the more I’ll hurt you. The only hope you have now is that I’ll kill you quickly.’

Viktor returned with the plastic tray of cutlery, dropping it onto the table with a loud crash.

‘Excellent,’ said Krishnin, selecting a fork. ‘Let us begin.’

e) Dagestan, North Caucasus, USSR, October 1931

‘Look at him,’ the old woman said, moving in so only her daughter could hear. ‘Like a dirty little raven in his funeral clothes. Black suit and black heart.’

‘Don’t be so cruel,’ her daughter replied, looking at the young Olag Krishnin as he walked behind the funeral procession, ‘the poor lad’s just lost his father.’

‘Wouldn’t surprise me if he hadn’t killed him,’ the old woman continued. ‘I tell you, nothing good will become of that boy. I’ve seen the way he looks at people. The way he talks down to everyone. He picks fights.’

‘It’s no time to be a child,’ said her daughter. ‘This isn’t a good world to grow up in.’

‘Rubbish, people always try to find excuses.’

Krishnin looked over at them, the procession having drawn alongside them. He smiled and even the old woman’s daughter had to admit there was nothing good in what she saw.

‘They say kids can’t help it,’ her mother continued, ‘that they become what their parents make them. Maybe that’s true, sometimes. But not always. Look at him and tell me I lie. Sometimes people are just born to be monsters.’

ADDITIONAL DOCUMENT: AUGUST SHINING, PRIVATE NOTES, [DATE REDACTED]

In a long life filled with the bizarre, the story of how Toby Greene came to join Section 37 is hard to beat. Most particularly because I have no memory of the majority of it. It could certainly make an excellent new time-saving directive from the Powers That Be, having your staff eradicate your workload by altering the timeline so it didn’t even happen. Jokes aside, the jury’s still out on whether it was advisable on his part. I mean no criticism of his actions, naturally. Toby continues to prove himself an indispensable part of the section and I’m sure I would have done the same as he did had I been in his shoes. He is particularly upset about the loss of the girl, Tamar. Apparently she used to live upstairs and was a good friend. I am afraid I have no memory of her. He is determined to find her – assuming, of course, she even exists, an unpleasant fact I have chosen not to rub his nose in – and I will of course help if I can. She is important to him and, therefore, to me.

On a personal level, I cannot but be grateful for his actions, since otherwise I would be dead, and I’m quite sure I wouldn’t enjoy that as a state of being. When I die there are certain debts to be paid and I’m not quite ready for that yet.

Still, I would be lying were I to say that I don’t still feel a degree of nervousness as to what may lie ahead thanks to his interference. In the months that followed we put it behind us, for the most part. Well, there was [REDACTED] of course, haunting that upstairs room like a ghost. At least there, Toby was able to assuage some of his guilt. But was that it? Is there worse to come?

[REDACTED] certainly thinks so. I would have wished to have kept that particular skeleton in my closet, I admit. No chance of that. From the very moment Toby joined they were following him, talking to him, seeding unrest and fear as they always do. He asks me about them, of course. Asks how it can be possible for one person to hop from one body to another. I can’t tell him. Not yet. Though I know it drives him wild.

Thankfully our operations kept us busy enough that questions were forgotten. April was quite right about something coming, she predicted as much to me the other day. She said that things felt important. As if matters were coming to a head. They still are.

Yes. I needed Toby Greene. In a way I think he needed me too. Section 37 is a better place for his presence. Or rather the Clown Service – I do so like that! I know it makes him furious that I’ve taken a throwaway comment and turned it into a badge of honour but, as I’ve told him time and time again, that’s how you stay strong. You take what’s thrown at you and make it your own. So, yes, to hell with ‘Section 37’. What really stood between this silly, blind little country of ours and certain destruction time and time again was the Clown Service. Two men and their friends. Railing against the madness.

I think I’ll have that inscribed on my tombstone.

But not yet. That’s all I ask.

Not quite yet.