Everyone Has a Plan Until They Get Hit
"Benzene is... the culprit behind all of this, sir?"
Foreman Ivan stared at me, ashen-faced, as if he could not believe it.
"That's right."
When I nodded calmly, he shook his head in disbelief and pressed back.
"But... that can't be, Inspector. Everyone uses benzene. Not just our galosh factory—nearly every place in the Red Triangle district uses it."
He moistened his dry lips and went on.
"If it were the benzene's fault, similar problems ought to keep appearing all across the Red Triangle. Yet the only place where people are collapsing this badly is, shamefully, our factory. So this must still be the work of the demon that haunts the place..."
"Demons do not exist. Declaring every unexplained truth to be the wrath of God or the work of the devil is nothing but the folly of the last century."
God was dead.
The devil had vanished as well.
"The age of fearing the unseen must now come to an end."
Gods and demons themselves had been our oldest lies, and Foreman Ivan and I lived in an age when everything could be explained by science and reason.
What I had to do, therefore, was define this factory's "demon" as something that possessed a real substance.
— Clack.
I reopened one of the sealed adhesive cans.
"I-Inspector! That's dangerous...! There's a demon in that can..."
Ignoring Ivan's protests, I kept my distance from the can and gently wafted the vapor toward my nose with my hand.
"It's fine. Benzene has a biological half-life of twenty-four hours. No matter the route of absorption, it is excreted in a short time."
Benzene is absorbed mainly through the respiratory tract, and roughly half of what is inhaled is exhaled without being metabolized.
So if I controlled my breathing and absorbed only a little, there would be no health risk in the short term.
— Hoo.
Along with the sweet scent of benzene rose the characteristic thick smell of gasoline.
That alone was enough.
"Do you ever mix other solutions into the benzene?"
"...What? N-no, we don't."
Ivan wiped his sweat and continued.
"The Material Department has been cutting our benzene allotment for some time now, but we don't add anything else ourselves."
"Then why is the color so cloudy? And the smell is a long way from ordinary benzene."
"W-well, the truth is I wasn't sure, so I didn't mention it, but the smarter women workers said it seemed like tar had been mixed in."
Tar?
The byproduct left when coal is baked into coke?
An unrefined tar solvent would certainly still contain benzene, along with a host of other dangerous toxins mixed in.
They didn't increase the volume—they increased the poison....
The cause had been the creation of a crude substitute to cut costs.
I looked down at the open benzene can.
"Foreman."
My voice dropped of its own accord.
"Where exactly did you receive this benzene adhesive from?"
Leonid Fomich Zverev.
Material Department Head of the Leningrad Rubber Trust.
He was a man skilled at his work.
From a single can of benzene to a pair of rubber boots—where the allotted goods went, how, and how much—all of it was decided at his fingertips.
And he was extremely skilled at accumulating private property.
"Listen here, Comrade Director! Raw material prices have gone up this month, so you'll have to pay three hundred more rubles."
"What?! Three hundred rubles is enough to hire fifteen more women workers! How could it rise that much!"
"Times are hard these days, aren't they? Last year the produce tax and the labor tax were abolished and the agricultural tax introduced, so raw material prices shot way up. A pity..."
At Zverev's sly answer the factory director clenched his jaw.
What does the agricultural tax have to do with factory raw materials....
"If you settle in chervonets, I can knock a little off."
Of course this was no act of kindness.
It was a barbaric age when the ruble's value fell year after year.
Though the ruble had finally stabilized somewhat last year, no one knew when the People's Commissariat of Finance might start printing money again as in years past and crash its value once more.
But chervonets were different.
That new currency had even entered foreign markets and been listed on the New York Stock Exchange—it was closer to a non-monetary security than a medium of circulation.
"...Much obliged, Comrade Material Head."
"I'm the one who should thank you, Director. Since you paid in chervonets, I'll make sure to put the benzene in 'generously' for this batch of materials. Hahaha...!!!"
Zverev's knack for this had not been acquired overnight.
At first it had been mere petty sleight of hand—leaving a tiny discrepancy between the benzene quantities recorded in the allotment ledger and the amounts actually sent to the factories.
That much never got caught in inspections, and no one noticed.
But a needle thief becomes a cow thief in no time.
That happened after Zverev learned how to accumulate wealth.
He realized that if he skimmed a portion of the pure benzene allotments that came into the Trust and sold them on the black market, chervonets would pile up in his wallet.
Benzene was a material every factory thirsted for, not just the Red Triangle Trust—so the price was whatever the seller asked.
But the ledger quantities always had to match, so he devised a method.
He began filling the empty space left by the skimmed benzene with something else.
What caught Zverev's eye was tar.
The residual solution extracted from the byproduct left after baking coal into coke.
Since it came from coal, its color was far cloudier than benzene, yet no one questioned it or raised an objection.
That was because the factory directors who came to collect the allotments had never cared about the color of benzene in the first place and never imagined it could be tar.
On top of that, Zverev boldly began lowering the benzene ratio even further when dealing with those of meager knowledge.
Thus the 3rd Galosh Factory, whose director had conveniently gone missing, became excellent prey for Zverev, and the benzene in the adhesive grew thinner and thinner.
And the lower the concentration of the adhesive, the more times the women workers had to reapply it to stick one galosh together, and so the benzene silently swallowed them up.
But in Ivan's country, people were something you dug up from the fields, weren't they?
When one person fell, two filled the spot.
When two fell, five filled it next.
Zverev knew that fact all too well.
"Sometimes ignorance is bliss."
Zverev muttered that and stamped the ledger today as nonchalantly as ever.
That was the world of the man called Leonid Fomich Zverev.
In that world, Zverev was the tsar.
"Are you by any chance the Material Department Head, Comrade?"
"Hm? Who are you?"
"Ah, I am the Production Inspector of the Red Triangle 3rd Galosh Factory."
At least until the young inspector named Svanidze opened the office door and stepped into that world.
"The 3rd Galosh Factory...?"
The Material Department Head of the Red Triangle Trust scanned me with narrowed eyes.
"So, what business does the inspector of that crumbling factory have with me?"
"Do you really not know why I've come here?"
"Hmm..."
He wore a sly smile.
"You're not here to pay the overdue bill.... Those lot are going to go bankrupt soon anyway, the riffraff. Heh heh."
The arrogant Material Head.
Sometimes there are people whose single word can decide a trip to the Gulag.
The man in front of me was exactly that type.
No more value in continuing the conversation.
I cut straight to the point.
"The benzene you allotted to the factory was mixed with other impurities."
His fingertips paused for the briefest moment.
But that was all. He soon answered with an unconcerned face.
"Other impurities?"
"An unrefined, crude tar solution. How did you even think of mixing tar into benzene? Because of it, workers at the 3rd Factory are collapsing one after another. One fell yesterday. Fortunately he received hospital treatment and his life was saved."
I took a small bottle containing an adhesive sample from my breast pocket and set it on his desk.
— Thud.
"The allotment ledger listed it as pure benzene.... But every solution we actually received was like this, or of even worse quality."
That the ledger and the reality differed.
He would know better than anyone what that meant.
He glanced at the bottle I had set down and snorted a laugh.
"Listen here, young Inspector."
— Creak....
Sinking deep into his chair, he leisurely clasped his hands behind his head.
"It's regrettable that there's a 'slight' discrepancy between the ledger and the actual allotment... but you can't go around playing games like this. Work isn't as neat and tidy as you think it is. Benzene is a highly volatile product. A can disappears here, a ladleful there. So these errors are always bound to happen. To call a man a thief over that—young people these days have no fear, do they?"
The man clicked his tongue.
"Besides, is this single bottle all the evidence you've brought? How do you plan to prove it came from our Material Department? Someone at your factory might have played a prank. Isn't that right?"
I let out a hollow laugh in sheer disbelief.
This man was cleverly muddying the issue, but the disappearance of benzene and the mixing of tar solution were entirely different problems.
"So you're saying this solution was not allotted by you, Comrade Head?"
"That's right...! I'm being framed."
"Understood. I'll be going, then."
"...Wait!"
When I withdrew so readily, he called me back.
"Listen. First, since you've come a long way, how about a cup of tea?"
— Clink.
He pulled an elegant teacup from under the desk and poured something into it.
"...What is this?"
"Ahh... you don't know?"
— Swoosh.
The Material Head held the teacup out to me.
"This is 'chervonets' tea. Delicious and good for the body—a very precious tea."
"...That's money."
"Come now! I said tea, so it's tea!"
The man kept insisting on the chervonets.
He probably intended to use the money as a bribe to shut my mouth.
But what of it?
It was far too little money to silence the General Secretary's son.
And so, about a week later.
The militsiya came to Material Head Zverev's office.
"Are you Leonid Zverev?"
"W-who are you people!"
"Rest easy, we are the police."
"P-police?! Don't lie! Identify your affiliation!"
"Ah, you prefer greater precision."
Of course, they were no ordinary police.
"We are OGPU officers from the Sovnarkom."
"OGPU?! Th-the secret police?!"