Archangel (40 page)

'Bloody hell,' whispered Kelso. He watched, disbelieving, as O'Brian began opening the camera case. 'Oh no. Not that. You can't be serious.'

'I can.'

'But he's mad.'

'So are half the people we put on television.' O'Brian pushed a new cassette into the side of the camera and smiled as it clicked home. 'Showtime.'

Behind him, the Russian had his head bent over the bowl of hot water steaming on the stove. He had stripped to a dirty yellow vest and had lathered his face with something. The rasp of the knife-blade on his bristle made Kelso's own flesh ache.

'Look at him,' said Kelso. 'He probably doesn't even know what television is.'

'Fine by me.

'God.' Kelso closed his eyes.

The Russian turned towards them, wiping himself on his' shirt. His face was blotchy, beaded with pinheads of blood, but he had left himself a heavy moustache, as black and oily as a crow's wings, and the transformation was stunning. Here stood the Stalin of the 1 920s: Stalin in his prime, an animal force. What was it Lenin had predicted? 'This Georgian will serve us a peppery stew.'

He tucked his hair under the marshal's cap. He slipped on the tunic. A little loose around the front, perhaps, but otherwise a perfect fit. He buttoned it and strutted up and down the room a couple of times, his right hand cirnling modestly in an imperial wave.

He picked up a volume of the Collected Works, opened it at random, glanced at the page and handed it to Kelso.

Then he smiled, held up a finger, coughed into his hand, cleared his throat and began to speak. And he was good. Kelso could tell that straight away. He was not merely word perfect. He was better than that. He must have studied the recordings, hour after hour, year after year since childhood. He had the familiar, flat, remorseless delivery; the brutal, incantatory beat. He had the expression of heavy sarcasm, the dark humour, the strength, the hate.

'This Trotsky-Bultharin bunch of spies, murderers and wreckers,' he began slowly, 'who kow-towed to the foreign world, who were possessed by a slavish instinct to grovel before every foreign bigwig, and who were ready to enter his employ as a spy -' his voice began to rise '- this handful of people who did not understand that the humblest Soviet citizen, being free from the fetters of capital, stands head and shoulders above any high-placed foreign bzgwz~ whose neck

the yoke of capitalist slavery -, and now he was
sh
outing - who needs this miserable band of venal slaves, of what value can they be to the people, and whom can they demoralise?

He glared around, defying any of them - Kelso with the open book, O'Brian with the camera to his eye, the table, the stove, the skulls - any one of them to dare to answer him back.

He straightened~ thrusting out his chin.

'In 1937 Tukhachevsky, Yakir, Uborevich and other fiends were sentenced to be shot. After that, the elections to the Supreme Soviet of the U.S.S.R. were held. In these elections, 98.6 per cent of the total vote was cast for the Soviet power!

'At the beginning of 1938 Rosengoltz, Rykov, Bukharin and other fiends were sentenced to be shot. After that, the elections to the Supreme Soviets of the Union Republics were held. In these elections 99.4 per cent of the total vote was cast for the Soviet power! Where are the symptoms of demoralisation, we would like to know?'

He placed his fist on his heart.

'Such was the inglorious end of the opponents of the line of our Party, who finished up as enemies of the people!'

'Stormy applause,' read Kelso. 'All the delegates rise and cheer the speaker. Shouts of 'Hurrahfor Comrade Stalin!" "Long live Comrade Stalin!" 'Hurrah for the Central Committee of our Party!"'

The Russian swayed before the rhythm of the dead crowd. He could hear the roars, the stamping feet, the cheers. He nodded modestly. He smiled. He applauded in return. The Imaginary tumult rang around the narrow cabin and rolled out across the snowy clearing to split the silent trees.

FELIKS SUVORIN'S AIRCRAFT dropped through the base of low cloud and banked to starboard, following the line of the White Sea coast.

A stain of rust appeared in the snowy wilderness and spread, and he began to make out details. Drooping cranes, empty submarine pens, derelict construction sheds
Severodvinsk, it must be - Brezhnev's big nuclear junkyard, just along the coast from Archangel, where they built the subs in the 1 970s that were supposed to bring ,,-the imperialists to their knees.

He stared down at it as he fastened his seatbelt. Some mafia middlemen had been sniffing around up here, about a year ago, trying to buy a warhead for the Iraqis. He remembered the case. Chechens in the taiga! Unbelievable! And yet they would manage it one day, he thought. There was too much spare hardware, too little supervision, too much money chasing it. The law of supply and demand would mate with the law of averages and they would get something, sometime.

The wingflaps shuddered. There was a whine of cables. They descended further, yawing and pitching through the snowstorm. Severodvinsk slid away. He could see grey discs of freezing water, flat blank swampland, white-capped trees a
nd more trees, running away for
ever. What could live down there? Nothing, surely? No one. They were at the edge of the earth.

The old plane trundled on for another ten minutes, barely fifty yards above the forest ceiling, and then ahead Suvorin
saw a pattern of lights in the snow.

It was a military airfield, secluded in the trees, with a snow plough parked at the edge of the apron. The runway had just been cleared but already a thin white skin was beginning to form again. They came in low to take a look then lifted once more, the engine straining, and turned to make a final approach. As they did so~ Suvorin had a tilting glimpse of Archangel - of distant, shadowy tower blocks and filthy chimneys - and then in they came, bouncing off the runway, once, twice, before settling, turning, the propellers conjuring miniature blizzards from the snow.

When the pilot switched off the engine there was a quality of silence that Suvorin had never experienced before. Always in Moscow there was something to hear, even in the so-called still of night - a bit of traffic, maybe, a neighbour's quarrel. But not here. Here the quiet was absolute, and he loathed it. He found himself talking just to fill it.

'Good work,' he called up to the pilot. 'We made it.'

'You're welcome. By the way, there's a message for you from Moscow. You're to call the colonel before you go. Make any sense.

'Before I go?'

'That's it.

Before I
go where?

There wasn't enough room to stand upright. Suvorin had to crouch. Drawn up beside a big hangar he could see a line of bi-planes painted in arctic camouflage.

The door at the back of the plane swung open. The temperature dropped about five degrees. Snowflakes billowed up the fuselage. Suvorin grabbed his attache case and jumped down to the concrete. A technician in a fur hat pointed him towards the hangar. Its heavy sliding door was
pulled a quarter open. Waiting in the shadows, next to a couple of jeeps, sheltering from the snow, was a reception committee: three men in MVD uniforms with AK-74 assault rifles, a guy from the militia and, most bizarrely, an elderly lady in thick male clothing, hunched like a vulture, leaning on a stick.

SOMETHING had happened, Suvorin could tell that right away, and whatever it was, it was not good. He knew it when he offered his hand to the senior Interior Ministry soldier -a surly-lipped, bull-necked young man named Major Kretov
- and received in reply a salute of just sufficient idleness to imply an insult. And as for Kretov's two men, they never even bothered to acknowledge his arrival. They were too busy unloading a small armoury from the back of one of the jeeps
- extra magazines for their AK-74s, pistols, flares and a big old RP46 machine gun with cannisters of belt-fed ammunition and a metal bipod.

'So, what are we expecting here, major?' Suvorin said, in an effort to be friendly. 'A small war?'

'We can discuss it on the way.'

'I'd prefer to discuss it now.

Kretov hesitated. Clearly he would have liked to tell Suvorin to go to hell, but they had the same rank, and besides he hadn't quite got the measure yet of this civilian-soldier in his expensive western clothes. 'Well, quickly then.' He clicked his fingers irritably in the direction of the gangly young militia man. 'Tell him what's happened.'

'And you are?' said Suvorin.

The militia man came to attention. 'Lieutenant Korf, major.'

'So, Ko
rf-
'

L
ieutenant delivered his report quickly, nervously. Shortly after midday, the Archangel militia had been

notified by Moscow central headquarters that two foreigners were believed tobe in the vicinity of the city, possibly seeking to make contact with a person or persons named Safanov or Safiuiova. He had undertaken the inquiry himself. Only one such citizen had been located: the witness Vavara Safanova -he indicated the old woman - who had been picked up within ninety minutes of receipt of the telex from Moscow. She had confirmed that two foreigners had been to see her and had left her barely an hour earlier.

Suvorin smiled in a kindly way at Vavara Safanova. 'And what were you able to tell them, Comrade Safanova?'

She looked at the ground.

'She told them her daughter was dead,' cut in Kretov, impatiently. 'Died in childbirth, forty-five years ago, having a kid. A boy. Now: can we go? I've got all this out of her already.'

A boy, thought Suvorin. It had to be. A girl wouldn't have mattered. But a boy. An heir -'And the boy lives?'

'Reared in the forest, she says. Like a wolf.' Suvorin turned reluctantly from the silent old woman to
the major. 'And Kelso and O'Brian have gone into the forest to find this "wolf", presumably?'

'The/re about three hours ahead of us.' Kretov had a large-scale map spread over the hood of the nearest jeep.

'This is the road,' he said. 'There's no way out except back the way they went, and the snow will hold them up. Don't worry. We'll have them by nightfall.'

'And how do we reach them? Can we use a helicopter?' Kretov winked at one of his men. 'I fear the major from
Moscow has not adequately studied our terrain. The taiga is not well supplied with helicopter pads.'

Suvorin tried to stay calm. 'Then we reach them how?'

'By snow plough,' said Kretov, as if it was obvious. 'Four of us can just fit in the cab. Or three, if you prefer not to wet your fancy footwear.'

Again, and with difficulty, Suvorin controlled his temper. 'So what's the plan? We clear a way for them to drive back into town behind us, is that it?'

'If that proves necessary.'

'If that proves necessary,' repeated Suvorin, slowly. Now he was beginning to understand. He gazed into the major's cold grey eyes, then looked at the two MVD men who had finished unloading the jeep. 'So what are you people running nowadays? Death squads, is that it? It's a little bit of South America you've got going up here?'

Kretov began folding up the map. 'We must move out immediately.'

'I need to speak to Moscow.'

'We've already spoken to Moscow.'

'Ineed to speak to Moscow, major, and if you attempt to leave without me, I can assure you that you will spend the next few years building helicopter pads.'

'I don't think so.'

'If it comes to a trial of strength between the SVR and the MVD, be aware of this: the SVR will win every time. Suvorin turned and bowed to Vavara Safanova. 'Thank you for your assistance.' And then, to Korf, who was watching all this, goggle-eyed: 'Take her home, please. You did well.'

'I told them,' said the old woman suddenly. 'I told them nothing good could come of it.'

'That may be true,' said Suvorin. 'All right, lieutenant, off
y
ou go. Now,' he said to Kretov, 'where's that fucking telephone?'

O'BRIAN had insisted on shooting another twenty minutes of footage. By sign language he had persuaded the Russian to pack up his relics and then to unpack them again, holding each object up to the camera and explaining what it was.
('His book.' 'His picture. His hair.' Each was dutifully

kissed and arranged on the altar.) Then O'Brian showed him how he wanted him to sit at the table smoking his pipe and to read from Anna Safanova's journal. ('Remember Comrade Stalin's historic words to Gorky: "It is the task of the proletarian state to produce the engineers of human souls..

'Great,' said O'Brian, moving around him with the camera. 'Fantastic. Isn't this fantastic, Fluke?'

'No,' said Kelso, 'it's a bloody circus.'

Ask him a couple of questions, Fluke.'

'I shall not.

'Go on. Just a couple. Ask him what he thinks of the new Russia.'

'No.'

'Two questions and we're out of here. I promise.'

Kelso hesitated. The Russian stared at him, stroking his moustache with the stem of his pipe. His teeth were yellowish and stumpy. The underside of his moustache was wet with saliva.