The Twelfth Department by William Ryan

good portion of it on a large and ornate mansion. Since then a revolution, the Moscow winter, and the passage of time had worked on it, turning once bright-red bricks to brown, and white marble to gray. And what time and weather hadn’t managed to alter, man had. Bars and barbed wire guarded each window and ledge—and the high wall that surrounded the grounds was topped with spikes.
    Korolev parked the car and got out, first walking to the heavy oak front door, conscious that large raindrops were beginning to spatter the pavement around him, and then, following the directions on a handwritten sign, around the corner and down a narrow laneway, his mood darkening with each step. Two men in black hooded rain cloaks stood waiting for him in front of a small sentry box that guarded the side entrance. They watched him approach with apparent indifference.
    “I’m from Petrovka,” he said, showing his identification card to the nearest of the two—a heavyset man with blank blue eyes and a hard face. “I’m—”
    “From Moscow CID. Korolev.” The guard said this without bothering to look at his papers. He sounded bored.
    “You’re expected, Comrade Captain,” the second guard said.
    “You knew I was coming?”
    “Please come with me, Comrade Captain.” The second guard spoke as if he were persuading a temperamental child to perform an unpleasant task. “The deputy director will answer your questions.”
    He stepped aside so that Korolev could pass and, after a brief pause, Korolev did just that. After all, the rain was beginning to come down fatter and faster—pittering and pattering around him on the laneway’s cobbles.
    It was unsettling, of course, that they’d been expecting him, but perhaps Popov had thought it wise to call ahead. Or Priudski. Anyway, he was a senior detective from Petrovka—it wasn’t likely that entering the place on his own would be dangerous. These were just ordinary guards, doing their duty—same as he was.
    But as he followed the guard along the gravel path, he caught sight of two concrete buildings. They were invisible from the street because of the institute’s high perimeter walls—they were only two stories and set well back—and, at first glance they looked like ordinary office buildings or some such. A second glance, however, revealed the heavy metal doors and the shuttered windows, the thick walls and the regular lampposts that surrounded them. And it occurred to him that these were buildings designed not to keep people out—but to keep them in.
    *   *   *
    The man behind the large desk stood as he entered, giving him a smile that seemed genuine enough.
    “Captain Korolev, I’m pleased to meet you.”
    The deputy director was young, not yet forty, broad-shouldered and in good shape. In fact he had the sort of rude health that suggested he’d be more comfortable working in a field than sitting in an office.
    “Thank you for seeing me at such short notice,” Korolev began, before a roll of thunder seemed to rattle the very building itself. A simultaneous gust of wind sent splashes of rain through an open window onto the wooden floor. The deputy director stood up and, with an incongruous half-bow, moved quickly to close it.
    “The storm has come at last,” he said. “Let’s hope it means the air will be cleaner—cooler too, with luck. I’m Shtange. The deputy director.”
    “Korolev,” he said, still feeling the strength of Shtange’s grip, “but you know that.”
    Korolev was surprised at how rough Shtange’s hands were—they didn’t feel like a doctor’s hands, far from it.
    “Yes, they told us you’d be coming. I’ve been instructed to be as cooperative as possible.”
    “Thank you.”
    “We’re all shocked by the news, of course.”
    For an instant Shtange was silhouetted against the window by lightning, which was followed almost immediately by a deafening blast of thunder—even closer now, it seemed. A real summer tempest, Korolev thought,