Archangel (Mass Market Paperback) Read online

  'Wait!' shouted Kelso.

  Across the corridor, an elderly woman with a bandaged hand started screaming.

  He sank back on to the bench.

  Presently, a third officer, powerfully built, with a Gorky moustache, came wearily downstairs and introduced himself as Investigator Belenky, a homicide detective. He was holding a piece of grubby paper.

  'You're the witness in the business involving the old man, Rapazin?'

  'Rapava,' corrected Kelso.

  'Right. That's it.' Belenky squinted at the top and bottom of the paper. Perhaps it was the walrus moustache or maybe it was his watery eyes but he seemed immensely sad. He sighed. 'Okay. We'd better have a statement.

  Belenky led him up a grand staircase to the second floor, to a room with flaking green walls and an uneven, shiny woodblock floor. He gestured to Kelso to sit, and put a pad of lined forms in front of him.

  'The old man had Stalin's papers,' began Kelso, lighting a cigarette. He exhaled quickly. 'You ought to know that. Almost certainly he had them hidden in his apartment. That's why -'

  But Belenky wasn't listening. 'Everything you can remember.' He slapped a blue biro down on the table.

  'But you hear what I'm saying? Stalin's papers -'

  'Right, right.' The Russian still wasn't listening. 'We'll sort out the details later. Need a statement first.'

  'All of it?'

  'Of course. Who you are. How you met the old man. What you were doing at the apartment. The whole story. Write it down. I'll be back.'

  After he had gone, Kelso stared at the blank paper for a couple of minutes. Mechanically, he wrote his full name, his date of birth and his address in neat Cyrillic script. His mind was a fog. 'I arrived,' he wrote, and paused. The plastic pen felt as heavy between his fingers as a crowbar. 'I arrived in Moscow on -'He couldn't even remember the date. He who was normally so good at dates! (25 October 1917, the battle-cruiser Aurora shells the Winter Palace and begins the Revolution; 17 January 1927, Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Politburo; 23 August 1939: the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is signed. . .) He bent his head to the desk. '- I arrived in Moscow on the morning of Monday October 26 from New York at the invitation of the Russian Archive Service to deliver a short lecture on Jose/Stalin. .

  He finished his statement in less than an hour. He did as he was told and left nothing out - the symposium, Rapava's visit, the Stalin notebook, the Lenin Library, Yepishev and the meeting with Mamantov, the house on Vspolnyi Street, the freshly dug earth, Robotnik and Rapava's daughter ... He filled seven pages with his tiny scrawl, and took the final section even quicker, hurrying over the scene in the apartment, the discovery of the body, his desperate search for a working telephone in the next-door block, eventually rousing a young woman with a baby on her hip. It felt good to be writing again, to be imposing some kind of rational order on the chaos of the past.

  Belenky put his head round the door just as Kelso added the final sentence.

  'You can forget that now'

  'I've done.'

  'No?' Belenky stared at the small pile of sheets and then at Kelso. There was a commotion in the corridor behind him.

  He frowned, then yelled over his shoulder, 'Tell him to wait.

  He came into the room and closed the door.

  Something had happened to Belenky, that much was obvious. His tunic was unbuttoned, his tie loose. Dark patches of sweat stained his khaki shirt. Without taking his eyes off Kelso's face, he held out his massive hand and Kelso gave him the statement. He sat down with a grunt on the opposite side of the table and took a plastic case from his breast pocket. From the case he withdrew a surprisingly delicate pair of gold-framed, half-moon glasses, shook them open, perched them on the end of his nose, and began to read.

  His heavy chin jutted forwards. Occasionally, his eyes would flicker up from the page to Kelso, study him for a moment, then return to the text. He winced. His moustache sagged lower over his tightening lips. He chewed the knuckle of his right thumb.

  When he laid the final page aside he gave a sigh.

  And this is true?'

  'All of it.'

  'Well, fuck your mother.' Belenky took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the side of his hand. 'Now what am I supposed to do?'

  'Mamantov,' said Kelso. 'He must have been involved. I was careful not to give him any details but -'

  The door opened and a small, thin man, a Laurel to Belenky's Hardy, said, in a frightened voice, 'Sima! Quick! They're here!'

  Belenky gave Kelso a significant look, gathered the statement together and pushed back his chair. 'You'll have to go down to the cells for a bit. Don't be alarmed.'

  At the mention of cells Kelso felt a spasm of panic. 'I'd like to speak to someone from the embassy.'

  Belenky stood and slid his tie back up into a tight knot, fastened the buttons of his tunic, tugged the jacket down in a hopeless attempt to straighten it.

  'Can I speak to someone from the embassy?' repeated Kelso. 'I'd like to know my rights.'

  Belenky squared his shoulders and moved towards the door. 'Too late,' he said.

  IN the cells beneath the headquarters of the Central Division of the Moscow City Militia, Kelso was roughly frisked and parted from his passport, wallet, watch, fountain pen, belt, tie and shoelaces. He watched them shovelled into a cardboard envelope, signed a form, was handed a receipt. Then, with his boots in one hand, his chit in the other and his coat over his arm, he followed the guard down a whitewashed passage lined on either side with steel doors. The guard was suffering from a plague of boils - his neck above his greasy brown collar looked like a plate of red dumplings - and at the sound of his footsteps, the inmates of some of the cells began a frantic shouting and banging. He took no notice.

  The eighth cubicle on the left. Three yards by four. No window. A metal cot. No blanket. An enamel pail in the corner with a square of stained wood for a lid.

  Kelso went slowly into the cell on his stockinged feet, threw his coat and boots down on the cot. Behind him, the door swung shut with a submarine clang.

  Acceptance. That, he had learned in Russia many years ago, was the secret of survival. At the frontier, when your papers were being checked for the fifteenth time. At the road block, when you were pulled over for no reason and kept waiting for an hour and a half. At the ministry, when you went to get your visa stamped and no one had bothered to show up. Accept it. Wait. Let the system exhaust itself. Protest will only raise your blood pressure.

  The spyhole in the centre of the door clicked open, stayed open for a moment, clicked shut. He listened to the guard's footsteps retreat.

  He sat on the bed and closed his eyes and saw, at once, unbidden, like the after-image of a bright light imprinted on his retina, the white and naked body revolving in the down draught of the elevator shaft - shoulders, heels and trussed hands rebounding gently off the walls.

  He sprang at the door and hammered on it with his empty boots and yelled for a while, until he'd got something out of himself. Then he turned and rested his back against the metal, confronting the narrow limits of his cell. Slowly he allowed himself to slide down until he was resting on his haunches, his arms clasped around his knees.

  TIME. Now here is a peculiar commodity, boy. The measurement of time. Best accomplished, obviously, with a watch. But, lacking a watch, a man may use instead the ebb and flow of light and dark. Lacking, however, a window through which to see such movement, the reliance must be devolved upon some inner mechanism of the mind. But if the mind has received a shock, the mechanism is disturbed, and time becomes as the ground is to a drunkard, variable.

  Thus Kelso, at some point indeterminate, transferred his body from the doorway to the cot and drew his coat across himself. His teeth were chattering. His thoughts were random, disconnected. He thought of Mamantov, going back over their meeting again and again, trying to remember if he had said anything that could have led him to Rapava. And he thought about Rapava's daughter and the way he had broken hi
s word in his statement. She had abandoned him. Now he had revealed her as a whore. So the world turns. Somewhere, presumably, the militia would have her address on file. Her name as well. The news about her father would be broken to her, and she would be - what? Dry-eyed, he was fairly sure. Yet vengeful.

  In his dreams he moved to kiss her again but she evaded his embrace. She danced jerkily across the snow outside the apartment block while O'Brian paraded up and down pretending to be Hitler. Madame Mamantov raged against her madness. And behind a door somewhere, Papu Rapava went on knocking to be let out. In here, boy! Thump. Thump. Thump.

  HE woke to find a cool blue eye regarding him through the spyhole. The metal eyelid drooped and closed, the lock rattled.

  Behind the pustulous guard there stood a second man -blond-headed, well-dressed - and Kelso's first thought was a happy one: The embassy, they've come to get me out. But then blond-head said, in Russian, 'Dr Kelso, put your boots on, please,' and the guard shook the contents of the envelope out on to the cot.

  Kelso bent to thread his laces. The stranger, he noticed, was wearing a smart pair of western brogues. He straightened and strapped on his watch and saw that it was only six twenty. A mere two hours in the cells, but enough to last him a lifetime. He felt more human with his boots on. A man can face the world with something on his feet. They passed down the corridor, triggering the same desperate hammering and shouting.

  He assumed he would be taken back upstairs for more questioning~ but instead they came out into a rear courtyard where a car was waiting with two men in the front seats. Blond-head opened the rear passenger door for Kelso -'Please,' he said, with cold politeness - then went round and got in the other side. The interior of the car was hot and fetid, as if at the end of a long journey, sweetened only by blond-head's delicate aftershave. They pulled away, out of militia headquarters and into the quiet street. Nobody spoke.

  It was beginning to get light - light enough, at least, for Kelso to recognise roughly where they were heading. He had already marked this trio down as secret police, which meant the FSB, which meant the Lubyanka. But to his surprise he realised they were travelling east, not west. They came down the Noviy Arbat, past the deserted shops, and the Ukraina came into view. So they were taking him back to the hotel, he thought. But he was wrong again. Instead of crossing the bridge they turned right and followed the course of the Moskva. Dawn was coming on quickly now, like a chemical reaction, darkness dissolving across the river, first to grey and then to a dirty alkali blue. Streaks of smoke and steam from the factory chimneys on the opposite bank - a tannery, a brewery - turned a corrosive pink.

  They drove on in silence for a few more minutes and then suddenly swung off the embankment and parked in a derelict patch of reclaimed land that jutted out into the water. A couple of big sea-birds flapped and rose, and span away, crying. Blond-head was out first and then, after a brief hesitation, Kelso followed him. It crossed his mind that they had brought him to the perfect spot for an accident: a simple push, a flurry of news reports, a long investigation for a London colour supplement, suspicions raised and then forgotten. But he put a brave face on it. What else could he do?

  Blond-head was reading the statement Kelso had given to the militia. It flapped in the breeze that was coming off the river. Something about him was familiar.

  'Your plane,' he said, without turning round, 'leaves Sheremetevo-2 at one-thirty. You will be on board it.'

  'Who are you?'

  'You'll be taken back to your hotel now, and then you'll catch the bus to the airport with your colleagues.'

  'Why are you doing this?'

  'You may try to re-enter the Russian Federation in the near future. In fact, I'm sure you will: you're a persistent fellow, anyone can see that. But I must tell you that your application for a visa will be rejected.'

  'This is a bloody outrage.' It was stupid, of course, to lose his temper, but he was too tired and shaken-up to help himself. A complete bloody disgrace. Anyone would think that I was the killer.'

  'But you didkill him.' The Russian turned round. 'You are the killer.'

  'This is a joke, is it? I didn't have to come forward. I didn't have to call the militia. I could have run away.

  And don't think I didn't consider it -'It's here in your own words.' Blond-head slapped the

  statement. 'You went to Mamantov yesterday afternoon and told him a "witness from the old time" had approached you with information about Stalin's papers. That was a death sentence. Kelso faltered. 'I never gave a name. I've been over that conversation in my mind a hundred times -, 'MamantOv didn't need a name. He already hadthe name.' 'You can't be certain -'Papu Rapava,' said the Russian, with exaggerated

  patience~ 'was re-investigated by the KGB in nineteen eighty-three. The investigation was at the request of the deputy chief of the Fifth Directorate - Vladimir Pavlovich Mamantov. Do you see?'

  Kelso closed his eyes.

  'Mamantov knew precisely who you were talking about. There is no other "witness from the old time". Everyone else is dead. So: fifteen minutes after you left Mamantov's apartment, Mamantov also left. He even knew where the old man lived, from his file. He had seven, possibly eight hours to question Rapava. With the assistance of his friends. Believe me, a professional like Mamantov can do a lot of damage to a person in eight hours. Would you like me to give you some of the medical details? No? Then go back to New York, Dr Kelso, and play your games of history in somebody else's country, because this isn't England or America, the past isn't safely dead here. In Russia, the past carries razors and a pair of handcuffs. Ask Papu Rapava.'

  A gust of wind swept the surface of the river, raised waves, set a nearby buoy clanking against its rusting chains.

  'I can testify' said Kelso after a while. 'To arrest Mamantov, you'll need my evidence.'

  For the first time, the Russian smiled. 'How well do you know Mamantov?'

  'Hardly at all.'

  'You know him hardly at all. That is your good fortune. Some of us have come to know him well. And I can assure you that Comrade V. P. Mamantov will have no fewer than six witnesses - none of them below the rank of full colonel -who will swear that he spent the whole of last evening with them, discussing charity work, one hundred miles from Papu Rapava's apartment. So much for the value of your testimony.

  He tore Kelso's statement in half, then halved it again, and again - kept on until it couldn't be reduced further. He crumpled the pieces between his hands, cupped them and threw the fragments out across the water. The wind caught them. The seagulls swooped in the hope of food then wheeled away, shrieking with disappointment.

  'Nothing is as it was,' he said. 'You ought to know that. The investigation begins again from scratch this morning. This statement was never taken. You were never detained by the militia. The officer who questioned you has been promoted and is being transferred, even as we speak, by military transport plane to Magadan.'

  'Magadan?' Magadan was on the eastern rim of Siberia, four thousand miles away.

  'Oh, we'll bring him back,' said the Russian, airily, 'when this is sorted out. What we don't want is the Moscow press corps trampling over everything. That really would be embarrassing. Now, I tell you all this, knowing there's nothing we can do to prevent you publishing your version of events abroad. But there will be no official corroboration from here, you understand? Rather the contrary. We reserve the right to make public our record of your day's activity, in which your motives will be made to look quite different. For example: you were arrested for indecent exposure to a couple of children in the Zoopark, the daughters of one of my men. Or you were picked up drunk on the Smolenskaya embankment, urinating into the river, and had to be locked up for violent and abusive behavior.'

  'Nobody will believe it,' said Kelso, trying to summon a last vestige of outrage. But, of course, they would. He could make a list now of everyone who would believe it. He said, bitterly, 'So that's it then? Mamantov goes free? Or perhaps you'll try to find Stalin's papers
yourselves, so you can bury them somewhere, like you people bury everything else that's "embarrassing"?'

  'Oh, but you irritate me,' said the Russian, and now it was his turn to lose his temper. 'People like you. How much more is it you want of us? You've won, but is that enough? No, you have to rub our faces in it - Stalin, Lenin, Beria: I'm sick of hearing their damn names - make us turn out all our filthy closets, wallow in guilt, so you can feel superior -'

  Kelso snorted, 'You sound like Mamantov.'

  'I despise Mamantov,' said the Russian. 'Do you understand me? For the same reason I despise you. We want to put an end to Comrade Mamantov and his kind - what d'you suppose this is all about? But now you've come along - blundered into something much bigger - something you can't even begin to understand -'

  He stopped - goaded, Kelso could tell, into saying more than he intended - and then Kelso realised where he must have seen him before.

  'You were there, weren't you?' he said. 'When I went to see him. You were one of the men outside his apartment -But he was talking to himself. The Russian was striding

  back to the car.

  'Take him to the Ukraina,' he said to the driver, 'then come back here and pick me up. I need some air.

  'Who are you?'

  'Just go. And be grateful.'

  Kelso hesitated but suddenly he was too tired to argue. He climbed, weary and defeated, into the back seat as the engine started. The Russian slammed the door on him, emphatically. He felt numb and shut his eyes again and there was Rapava's corpse swinging in the darkness. Thump. Thump. He opened his eyes and saw that it was the blond-headed man, knocking on the window. Kelso wound it down.

  A final thought.' He was making an effort to be polite again. He even smiled. 'We're working on the assumption, obviously, that Mamantov now has this notebook. But have you considered the alternative? Remember, Papu Rapava withstood six months of interrogation back in fifty-three, and then fifteen years in Kolyma. Suppose Mamantov and his friends didn't manage to break him in one evening. It's a possibility: it would explain the . . . ferocity of their behaviour: frustration. In that case, if you were Mamantov, who would you want to question next?' He banged on the roof. 'Sleep well in New York.'