So imagine you are walking down the sidewalk of Tverskaya Ulitca one fair early autumn day. You're returning home with a bread ration, and you get an odd sneaking feeling. You turn around to see there is an opulent limousine - the kind only Party dignitaries have -slowing behind you. After you turn to look, it begins to accelerate past. You can only see a faint silhouette through the tinted glass, but it appears the head of the individual in back, who's sitting forward in his seat, turns to follow you as the car moves past. You are creeped out, but breathe a sigh of relief.
Just as you are about to climb the steps that lead to the entrance of your apartment block, a boxy black sedan screeches to a stop, and two men swiftly get out of the back. Flipping badges, they each grab you under an arm, and, with no explanation, toss you into the back. The men get in, book-ending you on the cramped back seat between their broad-shouldered ex-military physiques.
"What is this about? I haven't done anything wrong." You say without conviction. In a world in which everything is illegal, everyone is a law-breaker, but you have no idea for what, precisely, they have picked you up.
The men ignore you, and continue to stare straight forward. You expect their driver to turn to the East and head out toward the treacherous Lefortovo prison, but they do not. Shortly, you find yourself in a residential neighborhood, but it is residences unlike any you are used to seeing. This is where the high and mighty Party elite live. They are massive multi-story houses once occupied by the family members of the Czar and wealthy industrial magnates.
You are delivered to a dining room, and are sat down at the end of massive slab of table. Steaming dishes of food are already on the table. It smells so good. There are foods on the table, fruits and such, that you have never seen but know of by way of photos and descriptions in books. A door opens, in comes a squat hunched gentleman with a bottle of wine, a servant serving a sommelier at the moment. He pours red wine in a glass at the other end of the table, and then in yours.
"Excuse me..." You try to ask, to get some handle on what is happening, but are ignored.
You think about fleeing, but are sure the two burly ex-Spetznaz soldiers are most certainly right on the other side of the door. So you look around at the elaborate ornate moldings and gilded frames on the paintings, and up at the high ceiling overhead.
Then another door opens, and in strolls a uniformed man in a very tidy NKVD tunic. You recognize the face under the receding hairline immediately. You don't know who he is precisely, but you know that whenever Stalin makes an appearance for a parade or whatnot, this man seems to be in the immediate vicinity.
He makes a beeline toward you. "Hello, my dear, thank you for joining me." He punctuates the absurd statement, as if you had any choice in the matter, by kissing the back of your hand.
You are about to stand, retract the hand, and slap the man indignantly, but are stalled by the recollection of a rumor that you once heard. According to the rumor, a pretty woman picked up by the NKVD was "disappeared" never to return to her family. The details were said to be gleaned from a prisoner who had the good fortune to return from the Gulag, and who delivered a message as promised to the abducted woman's family. The woman had been brought to a mansion and raped by a man. She fought. When the henchmen took her to the car, a servant handed her a bouquet of fresh flowers (a prestigious rarity in Stalinist USSR.) The woman had slapped the flowers from the man's hand. As the story goes, instead of delivering her back to where they abducted her, they took the woman straight to Lefortovo, were she was tortured on trumped up charges for several days before being "sentenced" to life in the Gulag.
The remembrance stuns you into silence.
"What is your name, dear girl?" Beria asks.
You tell him.
"Please, let us dine." Beria says returning to his seat. He rings a bell, and the small hunched man returns. He ladles soup into your bowl and then into Beria's.
The soup is exquisite. There are flavors you have never experienced before. It is so far from the usual crude stews you normally eat that, at best, have scraps of grisly meat amongst the potatoes and limp vegetables. This has chunks of prime cut meat.