The Margin of Evil! by Simon Boxall Page A

cooperate with him, he would shop me to the authorities for dealing in black-market meat. He said that he knew my scam! If I did not cooperate, I would be denounced as a 'Parasite' married to a 'Non Person'. For Christ's sake! It was the height of the 'Red Terror', my wife was minor nobility! What was I to do?'   He produced a photograph of himself with his two children, and another of his wife's family posing for a photograph with the family of Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolayevich. 'They even knew her real family name!! All would be well if I cooperated with them. All would be well for me as long as I did what they asked,' the little man said.
    ' What did they ask of you?' Georgii said.
    Mendolovitch told him of the scam. It was actually quite simple. Cuts of meat from fresh corpses would be substituted for the real meat. The exchange would take place inside the abattoir. That meat in turn would be shipped out with existing orders, which in turn would be siphoned off when it reached its destination, by others waiting on the inside. He presumed from there the meat would find its way, somehow, onto the black-market.
    ' Easier said than done; everything went well for a while. I supplied meats to the former nobility and supplied meats to the black-market. Then about three months ago, Goldstein said that a new gang of organized gangsters had moved in and they wanted a piece of our action. I was reminded of the incriminating evidence that he held. I had no choice but to substitute more corpse for meat.'
    Georgii 's stomach was churning and the ceiling began to spin. Somehow he managed to keep the rising tide of bile down. Then he asked the question.
    ' Did you kill Goldstein? You had everything to gain from his murder!'
    ' No,' Mendolovitch replied. 'The last time I saw him he was in an agitated state. He gibbered on about how he had been double crossed by some new business associates from Georgia. He said that he was going to blow the whistle on them, and when he'd done that, he Isaak Goldstein would once again be the 'King Pin' on the Moscow underground. I thought yeah all right! I never saw him again.'
    ' So you were left alone?' Georgii said.
    ' No, not exactly. These Georgians turned up and said that everything would be O.K. if I cooperated with them. If I refused they would turn me in to the authorities. It was then that I knew something had happened to Goldstein. But there was no way that I was going to stick my neck out for that slimy piece of turd!'
    ' Why don't you leave? Take your family, use those, 'Influential' non-person connections and get out on the 'Warsaw Underground',' Georgii said.
    'Why don't I ... Good question Comrade Radetzky. I'll tell you why! Because they are holding my youngest daughter as insurance! That's why! Now please leave, I have nothing more to tell. Go, please!'
    ' You understand that I'll have to speak to you again.'
    Mendolovitch just returned to a vacant stare.
    Georgii walked to the door and descended the stairs. He had both got half way down. When the loud bang, of a pistol, sounded from Mendolovitch's office; Georgii scrambled back up the stairs and charged back into the office. The sight that faced him was nauseating. Mendolovitch was leaning awkwardly at an angle, and the back of his head seemed to be plastered all over the office's back wall. Georgii turned around clutched his stomach and was violently sick.
    Morning turned to afterno on. He had to be interviewed by other Cheka alumni, as the area was off limits to the Bog Standard Chetnik. They grilled him again and again. By early evening he was dismissed and able to go. On the way home, Georgii decided that at the first available opportunity he was going to become a vegetarian. At least with plants and vegetables you knew what you were eating.
    Exhausted he arrived back at his rooms. Pyotr and Anna were not there.  He had just taken off his coat and was about to fix himself some soup when there was a loud knock at the door. Georgii