Archangel (Mass Market Paperback) Page 7

  Mamantov consulted his watch again. 'Four minutes.'

  All right,' said Kelso, quickly. 'You remember the official biography of Stalin, by Dmitri Volkogonov?'

  'The traitor Volkogonov? You're wasting my time. That book is a piece of shit.'

  'You've read it?'

  'Of course not. There's enough filth in this world without my volunteering to go jump in it.'

  'Volkogonov claimed that Stalin kept certain papers -private papers, including a black oilskin exercise book - in his safe at the Kremlin, and that these papers were stolen by Beria. His source for this story was a man you're familiar with, I think. Aleksey Alekseevich Yepishev.'

  There was a slight movement - a flicker, no more - in Mamantov's hard grey eyes. He's heard of it, thought Kelso, he knows about the notebook -'And?'

  And I wondered if you'd come across this story while you were writing your entry on Yepishev for the biographical guide. He was a friend of yours, I assume?'

  "What's it to you?' Mamantov glanced at Kelso's bag. 'Have you found the notebook?'

  'No.'

  'But you know someone who may know where it is?'

  'Someone came to see me,' began Kelso, then stopped. The apartment was very quiet now. The old woman had finished wailing, but the bodyguard hadn't reappeared. On the hall table was a copy of Aurora.

  Nobody in Moscow knew where he was, he realised. He had dropped off the map.

  'I'm wasting your time,' he said. 'Perhaps I might come back when I've -

  'That's unnecessary,' said Mamantov, softening his tone. His sharp eyes were checking Kelso up and down - flickering across his face, his hands, gauging the potential strength of his arms and chest, darting up to his face again. His conversational technique was pure Leninism, thought Kelso:

  'Push out a bayonet. If it strikes fat, push deeper. If it strikes iron, pull back for another day.'

  'I'll tell you what, Doctor Kelso,' said Mamantov. 'I'll show you something. It will interest you. And then I'll tell you something. And then you'll tell me something.' He waved his fingers back and forth between them. 'We'll trade. Is it a deal?'

  AFTERWARDS, Kelso tried to make a list of it all, but there was too much of it for him to remember: the immense oil painting, by Gerasimov, of Stalin on the ramparts of the Kremlin, and the neon-lit glass cabinet with its miniatures of Stalin - its Stalin dishes and its Stalin boxes, its Stalin stamps and Stalin medals - and the case of books by Stalin, and the books about Stalin, and the photographs of Stalin – signed and unsigned - and the scrap of Stalin's handwriting - blue pencil, lined paper, quarto-sized and framed - that hung above the bust of Stalin by Vuchetich ('... don't spare individuals, no matter what position they occupy, spare only the cause, the interests of the cause. .

  He moved among the collection while Mamantov watched him closely.

  The handwriting sample, said Kelso - that. . . that was a note for a speech, was it not? Correct, said Mamantov:

  October 1920, address to the Worker-Peasant Inspection. And the Gerasimov? Wasn't it similar to the artist's 1938 study of Stalin and Voroshilov on the Kremlin Wall? Mamantov nodded again, apparently pleased to share these moments with a fellow connoisseur: yes, the GenSec had ordered Gerasimov to paint a second version, leaving out Voroshilov - it was Stalin's way of reminding Voroshilov that life (how to put it?) could always be rearranged to imitate art. A collector in Maryland and another in Dusseldorf had each offered Mamantov $100,000 for the picture but he would never permit it to leave Russian soil. Never. One day, he hoped to exhibit it in Moscow, along with the rest of his collection - 'when the political situation is more favourable'.

  And you think one day the situation will be favourable?'

  'Oh yes. Objectively, history will record that Stalin was right. That is how it is with Stalin. From the subjective perspective, he may seem cruel, even wicked. But the glory of the man is to be found in the objective perspective. There he is a towering figure. It is my unshakeable belief that when the proper perspective is restored, statues will be raised again to Stalin.'

  'Goering said the same of Hitler during the Nuremberg trial. I don't see any statues -

  'Hitler lost.'

  'But surely Stalin lost? In the end? From the "objective perspective"?'

  'Stalin inherited a nation with wooden ploughs and bequeathed us an empire armed with atomic weapons. How can you say he lost? The men who came after him - they lost. Not Stalin. Stalin foresaw what would happen, of course. Khrushchev, Molotov, Beria, Malenkov - they thought they were hard, but he saw through them. "After I've gone, the capitalists will drown you like blind kittens." His analysis was correct, as always.'

  'So you think that if Stalin had lived -'

  'We would still be a superpower? Absolutely. But men of Stalin's genius are only given to a country perhaps once in a century. And even Stalin could not devise a strategy to defeat death. Tell me, did you see the survey of opinion to mark the forty-fifth anniversary of his passing?'

  'I did.'

  And what did you think of the results?'

  'I thought they were -, Kelso tried to find a neutral word '- remarkable.'

  (Remarkable? Christ. They were horrifying. One third of Russians said they thought Stalin was a great war leader. One in six thought he was the greatest ruler the country had ever had. Stalin was seven times more popular than Boris Yeltsin, while poor old Gorbachev hadn't even scored enough votes to register. This was in March. Kelso had been so appalled he had tried to sell an op-ed piece to the New York Times but they weren't interested.)

  'Remarkable,' agreed Mamantov. 'I should even say astounding, considering his vilification by so-called historians.

  There was an awkward silence.

  'Such a collection,' said Kelso, 'it must have taken years to assemble.' And cost a fortune, he almost added.

  'I have a few business interests,' said Mamantov, dismissively. 'And a considerable amount of spare time, since my retirement.' He put out his hand to touch the bust, but then hesitated and drew it back. 'The difficulty, of course, for any collector, is that he left so little behind in the way of personal possessions. He had no interest in private property, not like these corrupt swine we have in the Kremlin nowadays. A few sticks of government-issue furniture was all he had. That and the clothes he stood up in. And his private notebook, of course.' He gave Kelso a crafty look. 'Now that would be something. Something - what is the American phrase? - to die for?'

  'So you have heard of it?'

  Mamantov smiled - an unheard-of occurrence - a narrow, thin, rapid smile, like a sudden crack in ice. 'You're interested in Yepishev?'

  'Anything you can tell me.'

  Mamantov crossed the room to the bookshelf and pulled down a large, leather-bound album. On a higher shelf Kelso could see the two volumes of Volkogonov - of course Mamantov had read them.

  'I first met Aleksey Alekseevich,' he said, 'in fifty-seven, when he was ambassador in Bucharest. I was on my way back from Hungary, after we'd sorted things out there. Nine months work, without a break. I needed a rest, I can tell you. We went shooting together in the Azuga region.'

  He carefully peeled back a layer of tissue paper and offered the heavy album to Kelso. It was open at a small photograph, taken by an amateur camera, and Kelso had to stare at it closely to make out what was happening. In the background, a forest. In the foreground, two men in leather hunting caps with fleece-lined jackets, smiling, holding rifles, dead birds piled at their booted feet. Yepishev was on the left, Mamantov next to him - still hard-faced but leaner then, a cold war caricature of a KGB man.

  And somewhere there's another.' Mamantov leaned over Kelso's shoulder and turned a couple of pages. Close up, he smelled elderly, of mothballs and carbolic, and he had shaved badly, as old men do, leaving grey stubble in the shadow of his nose and in the cleft of his broad chin. 'There.'

  This was a much bigger, professional picture, showing maybe two hundred men, arranged in four ranks, as if at a graduation. S
ome were in uniform, some in civilian suits. A caption underneath said 'Sverdlovsk, 1980'.

  'This was an ideological collegium, organised by the Central Committee Secretariat. On the final day, Comrade Suslov himself addressed us. This is me.' He pointed to a grim face in the third row, then moved his finger to the front, to a relaxed, uniformed figure sitting cross-legged on the ground. And this - would you believe? - is Volkogonov. And here again is Aleksey Alekseevich.'

  It was like looking at a picture of Imperial officers in the tsarist time, thought Kelso - such confidence, such order, such masculine arrogance! Yet within ten years, their world had been atomised: Yepishev was dead, Volkogonov had renounced the Party, Mamantov was in jail.

  Yepishev had died in 1985, said Mamantov. He had passed on just as Gorbachev came to power. And that was a good time for a decent communist to die, in Mamantov's opinion: Aleksey Alekseevich had been spared Here was a man whose whole life had been devoted to Marxism-Leninism, who had helped plan the fraternal assistance to Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan. What a mercy he hadn't lived to see the whole lot thrown away. Writing Yepishev's entry for the Book of Heroes had been a privilege, and if nobody ever read it nowadays - well, that was what he meant. The country had been robbed of its history.

  And did Yepishev tell you the same story about Stalin's papers as he told Volkogonov?'

  'He did. He talked more freely towards the end. He was often ill. I visited him in the leadership clinic. Brezhnev and he were treated together by the parapsychic healer, Davitashvili.'

  'I don't suppose he left any papers.

  'Papers? Men like Yepishev didn't keep papers.

  'Any relatives?'

  'None that I knew of. We never discussed families.' Mamantov pronounced the word as if it was absurd. 'Did you know that one of the things Aleksey had to do was interrogate Beria? Night after night. Can you imagine what that must have been like? But Beria never cracked, not once in nearly half a year, until right at the very end, after his trial, when they were strapping him to the board to shoot him. He hadn't believed they'd dare to kill him.'

  'How do you mean, he cracked?'

  'He was squealing like a pig - that's what Yepishev said. Shouting something about Stalin and something about an archangel. Can you imagine that? Beria, of all people, getting religious! But then they put a scarf in his mouth and shot him. I don't know any more.' Mamantov closed the albums tenderly and placed them back on the shelf. 'So,' he said, turning to face Kelso with a look of menacing innocence, someone came to see you. When was this?'

  Kelso was on his guard at once. 'I'd prefer not to say. 'And he told you about Stalin's papers? He was a man, I assume? An eyewitness, from that time?'

  Kelso hesitated.

  'Named?'

  Kelso smiled and shook his head. Mamantov seemed to think he was back in the Lubyanka.

  'His profession then?'

  'I can't tell you that, either.'

  'Does he know where these papers are?'

  'Perhaps.

  'He offered to show you?'

  'No.'

  'But you asked him to show you?'

  'No.'

  'You're a very disappointing historian, Dr Kelso. I thought you were famous for your diligence –

  ''If you must know, he disappeared before I had the chance.'

  He regretted the words the instant they were out of his mouth.

  'What do you mean, he "disappeared"?'

  'We were drinking,' muttered Kelso. 'I left him alone for a minute. When I came back he'd run away.

  It sounded implausible, even to his own ears.

  'Run away?' Mamantov's eyes were as grey as winter. 'I don't believe you.

  'Vladimir Pavlovich,' said Kelso, meeting his gaze and holding it, 'I can assure you this is the truth.'

  'You're lying. Why? Why?' Mamantov rubbed his chin. 'I think it must be because you have the notebook.'

  'If I had the notebook, ask yourself: Would I be here?

  Wouldn't I be on the first flight back to New York? Isn't that what thieves are supposed to do?'

  Mamantov continued to stare at him for a few more seconds, then looked away. 'Clearly we need to find this man.

  We...

  'I don't think he wants to be found.'

  'He will contact you again.'

  'I doubt it.' Kelso badly wanted to get out of here now. He felt compromised, somehow; complicit. 'Besides, I'm flying back to America tomorrow. Which, now I come to think of it, really means I ought -'

  He made a move towards the door but Mamantov barred it. Are you excited, Dr Kelso? Do you feel the force of Comrade Stalin, even from the grave?'

  Kelso laughed unhappily. 'I don't think I quite share your ... obsession.'

  'Go fuck your mother! I've read your work. Does that surprise you? I'll pass no comment on its quality. But I'll tell you this: you're as obsessed as I am.'

  'Perhaps. But in a different way.'

  'Power,' said Mamantov, savouring the word in his mouth like wine, 'the absolute mastery and understanding of power. No man ever matched him for it. Do this, do that. Think this, think that. Now I say you live, and now I say you die, and all you say is, "Thank you for your kindness, Comrade Stalin." That's the obsession.~

  'Yes, but then there's the difference, if you'll permit me, which is you want him back.'

  'And you just like to watch, is that it? I like fucking and you like pornography?' Mamantov jerked his thumb at the room. 'You should have seen yourself just now. "Isn't this a note for a speech?" "Isn't that a copy of an earlier painting?" Eyes wide, tongue out - the western liberal, getting his safe thrill. Of course, he understood that, too. And now you tell me you're going to give up trying to find his private notebook and just run away back to America?'

  'May I get by?'

  Kelso stepped to his left but Mamantov moved smartly to block him.

  'This could be one of the greatest historical discoveries of the age. And you want to run away? It must be found. We must find it together. And then you must present it to the world. I want no credit - I promise you: I prefer the shadows -the honour will be yours alone.

  'So, what's all this then, Comrade Mamantov?' said Kelso, with forced cheerfulness. 'Am I a prisoner?'

  Between him and the outside world there were, he calculated, one fit and obviously crazy ex-KGB man, one armed bodyguard, and two doors, one of them armour-plated. And for a moment, he thought that Mamantov might indeed be intending to keep him: that he had everything else connected with Stalin, so why not a Stalin historian, pickled in formaldehyde and laid out in a glass case, like V. I. Lenin? But then Madame Mamantov shouted from the passage -'What's going on in there?' - and the spell was broken.

  'Nothing,' called Mamantov. 'Stop listening. Go back to your room. Viktor!'

  'But who is everyone?' wailed the woman. 'That's what I want to know. And why is it always so dark?' She started to cry. They heard the shuffle of her feet and the sound of a door closing.

  'I'm sorry,' said Kelso.

  'Keep your pity,' said Mamantov. He stood aside. 'Go on, then. Get out of here. Go.' But when Kelso was halfway down the passage he shouted after him: 'We'll talk again about this matter. One way or another.'

  THERE were three men now in the car downstairs, although Kelso was too preoccupied to pay them much attention. He paused in the gloomy portal of the House on the Embankment, to hoist his canvas bag more firmly on to his shoulder, then set off in the direction of the Bolshoy Kamenniy bridge.

  'That's him, major,' said the man with the scar, and Feliks Suvorin leaned forward in his seat to get a better look. Suvorin was young to be a full major in the SVR - he was only in his thirties - a dapper figure, with blond hair and cornflower blue eyes. And he wore a western aftershave, that was the other thing that was very noticeable at this moment: the little car was fragrant with the smell of Eau Sauvage.

  'He had that bag with him when he went in?'

  'Yes, major.'

  Suvorin glance
d up at the Mamantovs' ninth-floor apartment. What was needed here was better coverage. The SVR had managed to get a bug into the flat at the start of the operation, but it had lasted just three hours before Mamantov's people had found it and ripped it out.

  Kelso had begun climbing the flight of stairs that led up to the bridge.

  'Off you go, Bunin,' said Suvorin, tapping the man in front of him lightly on the shoulder. 'Nothing too obvious, mind you. Just try to keep him in view. We don't want a diplomatic protest.

  Grumbling under his breath, Bunin levered himself out of the car. Kelso was moving rapidly now, had almost reached road-level, and the Russian had to jog across to the bottom of the steps to make up part of the distance. Well, well, thought Suvorin, he's certainly in a hurry to get somewhere. Or is it just that he wants to get away from here?

  He watched the blurred pink faces of the two men above the stone parapet as they headed north across the river into the grey afternoon and then were lost from view.

  KELSO PAID HIS two-rouble fare at the Borovitskaya metro station, collected his plastic token, and descended gratefully into the Moscow earth. At the entrance to the northbound platform something made him glance back up the moving staircase to see if Mamantov was following, but there was no sign of him among the tiers of exhausted faces.

  It was a stupid thought - he tried to smile at himself for his paranoia - and he turned away, towards the welcoming dimness and the warm gusts of oil and electricity. Almost at once, a yellow headlight danced around a bend in the track and the rush of the train sucked him forwards. Kelso let the crowd jostle him into a carriage. There was an odd comfort in this dowdy, silent multitude. He hung on to the metal handrail and pitched and swayed with the rest as they plunged back into the tunnel.

  They hadn't gone far when the train suddenly slowed and stopped - a bomb scare, it turned out, at the next station: the militia had to check it out - and so they sat there in the semidarkness, nobody speaking, just the occasional cough, the tension rising by imperceptible degrees.

  Kelso stared at his reflection in the dark glass. He was jumpy, he had to admit it. He couldn't help feeling he had just put himself into some kind of danger, that telling Mamantov about the notebook had been a reckless mistake. What had the Russian called it? Something to die for? It was a relief to his nerves when the lights eventually flickered back on and the train jolted forwards. The soothing rhythm of normality resumed. By the time Kelso emerged above ground it was after four. Low in the western sky, barely clearing the tops of the dark trees that fringed the Zoopark, was a lemony crack in the clouds. A winter sunset was little more than an hour away. He would have to hurry. He folded the map into a small square and twisted it so that the metro station was to his right. Across the road was the entrance to the zoo - red rocks, a waterfall, a fairy tower - and, a little further along, a beer garden, closed for the season, its plastic tables stacked, its striped umbrellas down and flapping. He could hear the roar of the traffic on the Garden Ring road, about two hundred yards straight ahead. Across that, sharp left, then right, and there it ought to be. He stuffed the map into his pocket, picked up his bag and climbed the cobbled slope that led to the big intersection.