One Night in Winter (18 page)

‘It’s the way we Bolsheviks do things.’

‘But you’re one of the most powerful men in the country, so why can’t you speak to someone? Find out when George is coming home?’

‘Stalin is dead set against any favouritism.’

And that’s supposed to make me feel better? Tamara thought. ‘Of course,’ she replied.

‘Look, we built Lenin’s state, we won the war. When you chop wood, chips fly.’

Not that damn slogan again! But she nodded submissively.

Satinov stopped. ‘I’ve got to go.’ He kissed her forehead and she watched him enter the Kremlin through the Spassky Gate.

Sometimes, she thought, it’s a lovely thing to be married to an iron hero; sometimes, it’s just too painful for words.

Beria collapsed wheezily by the side of his new girl, his green-grey man-breasts hanging pendulously like a camel’s buttocks. What a session! Then the
vertushka
, the special Kremlin line, rang. Doesn’t a man get a moment’s peace? he thought, picking it up.

‘Comrade Beria?’

‘Speaking.’

‘Comrade Stalin expects you,’ said the expressionless voice of Poskrebyshev. The line went dead.

It was five past midnight but in Stalin’s world, it was the middle of the day. Beria dressed quickly in his usual garish Georgian shirt and loose jacket but then turned to look one last time at the fourteen-year-old girl lying naked on his bed, the skin of her flat belly a little flushed and creased by his weight.

‘Colonel Nadaraia will drive you home,’ he said softly, sitting beside her for a moment. Thank God he had managed to get his pox cleared up before he found this treasure. But he had to lose weight! Leaping around with a girl this age tired a man out. Memo to Comrade Beria: eat more salad! His hand actually trembled as he stroked her long hair, the satin of her lower back. ‘But first Colonel Nadaraia is going to show you the apartment I’ve chosen for you and your mother.’

‘Oh Lavrenti, thank you! How amazing. Mama will be so happy.’

‘She will,’ he agreed. He knew her mother.
She
had been his mistress first.

‘You’re pleased with me, aren’t you?’ she asked, frowning sweetly.

‘Yes, yes I am. See you tomorrow.’

I am really very taken with her, he thought as his Packard raced through the Spassky Gate in the Kremlin and round to the Little Corner of the triangular Yellow Palace. Yes, this perfect girl is melting the heart of one of the hardest men in our carniverous era.

Beria took the lift to the second floor, showed his pass to two sets of guards (even he was not exempt) and hurried down the interminable corridors with the blue carpet held in place by brass rings set in the parquet. Two more checkpoints, and finally he was handing in his Nagan pistol to the guards outside Comrade Stalin’s office.

Two man-sized globes stood by the doors. A couple of ministers and several generals were waiting stiffly in the ante-room, grown men holding their papers on their knees like frightened schoolchildren. Quite an appropriate analogy, thought Beria, as schoolchildren were one of things he had come to discuss.

He was no longer so impressed with the Great Stalin though. He had seen Stalin’s dire mistakes in the early weeks of the war, his obstinacy, his panic, the waste of millions of lives; yes, Stalin would not have won the war without his help. Didn’t Stalin realize that he, Beria, and the Organs had held the state together? Beria saw himself not just as a Chekist, but as the most capable statesman in the entire leadership.

The old sot doesn’t appreciate my talents, he thought, although
he
now thinks himself a genius and never stops boasting!

‘The Master will see you now,’ said Poskrebyshev, the livid red skin on his face wizened as if he had been burnt. The two men did not like each other: Poskrebyshev was a lowly cringing ink-shitter who hated Beria, and blamed him for the execution in 1939 of his beloved young wife after which he continued to serve Stalin loyally. Beria couldn’t tell him, of course, that although he had brought Stalin the evidence that his wife had Trotskyite connections, it was Stalin who had ordered her killing.

As Poskrebyshev, in tunic and britches, escorted him through the short corridor that led to the double doors, Beria asked quietly, ‘Is it a good evening?’ He meant: Is Stalin in a good mood?

‘It’s a beautiful summer’s night,’ replied Poskrebyshev, meaning: Yes he is. ‘He’s going to look at his new uniforms. Here they are!’

Three strapping young men, athletes all, entered the ante-chamber wearing flamboyant cream, braided, golden uniforms that wouldn’t have been out of place in an Offenbach opera. One even had a golden cloak. In their wake shuffled Lerner, the tailor, his nimble white-tipped fingers a-twitch with tape measure and chalk.

‘Very smart,’ chuckled Beria.

‘Stand over there,’ said Poskrebyshev to the youths. He then lifted one of his many phones and said: ‘Comrade Stalin, Lerner’s here. The uniforms.’

Sometimes life was just too absurd, Beria reflected as the double doors opened and Stalin emerged, drawn in the face, his grey hair standing on end as if razor cut. He was wearing a plain tunic with just his marshal’s shoulderboards and a single Order of Lenin.

‘Who are they?’ he asked gruffly, looking at the youths. ‘What are these peacocks doing here?’ The three models saluted. Lerner bowed.

‘The generalissimo’s uniforms for your approval, Comrade Stalin,’ said Poskrebyshev. ‘Lerner’s here to show you the finer details.’

Lerner, who’d started work sewing the Tsar’s uniforms, bowed again.

‘Comrade Stalin is grateful to you, Lerner,’ Stalin said, always polite to ‘service workers’. But to Beria and Poskrebyshev, he snarled: ‘Whose idea was this? Yours, Lavrenti? Well, they’re not right for me. I need something more modest. Lerner, do you want me to look like a doorman or a bandmaster?’ He turned and went back into his office.

‘You’re designing for Comrade Stalin not Hermann Göring!’ hissed Beria to Lerner. ‘It’s back to the drawing-board!’

Lerner wrung his hands and backed away into the ante-chamber.

As Poskrebyshev closed the doors behind him, Beria entered Stalin’s spacious room with its ruffled white blinds covering most of the windows. On the far wall were portraits of Marx and Lenin and the latter’s death mask. A long table with twenty seats, each with notebooks and ink blotters, filled the centre. At the far end was a desk with an extension holding about eight Bakelite telephones and a small table at right angles that formed a T-shape. The desk was very neat with scarcely anything on it except a blotter, an ashtray with a pipe that contained a lit cigarette smoking in its bowl, and a glass of steaming tea. Behind was a grey safe as large as a man and a small door whence Stalin now appeared, bearing a bottle of Armenian cognac. He sat down at the desk, poured two teaspoons of the spirit into the tea which he stirred and then looked up.

‘
Gamajoba
.’ He often spoke Georgian to Beria when they were alone. ‘What have got for me?’

‘Much to report, Josef Vissarionovich.’

‘What’s the plan for the German trip?’

Beria opened the leather portfolio and brought out some papers. Even after all these years, all their shared schemes, triumphs of war and construction, and their little secrets of ‘black work’, murder and torture, Stalin still treated Beria like a trusted servant who specialized in dirty jobs. Yes, there had been family holidays on the Black Sea – Stalin liked Beria’s wife Nina and trusted his son Sergo – but still Beria felt under-appreciated. Just in January, at one of the dinners in Yalta, Stalin had introduced him to President Roosevelt as ‘my Himmler’. It was at that moment that he started to hate Stalin. The drunken braggart! Where would Stalin be without him?

‘The meetings with the American President and British Prime Minister are set to begin on the seventeenth of July,’ said Beria.

‘I’ll arrive last. Let the others arrive first,’ Stalin said.

‘Understood.’

‘I miss Roosevelt. This Truman’s not a patch on Roosevelt. As for Churchill, he’ll reach into your pocket to steal a kopeck; yes, even a kopeck.’

‘Everything is ready for you in Berlin,’ Beria told him. ‘The route to Potsdam is 1,923 kilometres. To provide proper security, 1,515 MVD/MGB operatives and 17,409 MVD troops are placed as follows: in USSR, 6 men per kilometre; in Poland, 10 men per kilometre; in Germany, 15 per kilometre. On the route, 8 armoured trains will patrol. Seven MVD regiments and 900 bodyguards will protect you. Inner security by the 6th Department will function in three concentric circles of 2,041 men and—’

‘All right,’ said Stalin, waving his hand. He relit the pipe, puffing clouds of smoke and watching them waft up, his eyes moist slits, almost closed.

‘It’s all in the memo here.’ Beria handed over some typed sheets.

‘I don’t want honour guards and brass bands when I arrive. I mean it. I’m tired.’

‘Understood.’

‘Anything more about the new American weapon?’

‘The nuclear device. Our agents in the British Foreign Office report that it is almost complete. It is possible America will use it against the Japanese. It has astonishing destructive power.’

‘Keep me closely informed. Now, what about the schoolchildren?’

‘We have made some progress . . .’

‘Some of them are with you?’

Beria knew that ‘with you’ meant in his prisons. ‘Yes, four of them,’ and he gave their names.

‘One of Satinov’s boys, eh? What were they playing at?’

‘We’ve investigated, and discovered that it was the girl – Marshal Shako’s daughter – who shot the Blagov boy, Nikolasha.’

‘Ah – Romeo and Juliet, is that it?’

‘She was in love with him. But he was infatuated with another girl, Serafima Romashkina – you know, the actress’s daughter?’

‘As I thought. A love triangle.’

‘You were right. When Rosa Shako found out Ambassador Blagov was being posted abroad and the boy with him, something snapped and she shot him.’

‘And then herself?’ Suicide was a sensitive subject with Stalin: his wife Nadya had shot herself. A long silence. ‘Nadya would be forty-three now.’ Stalin sighed and then collected himself. Silence. Just the mellow puckering of an old man puffing on a pipe.

Beria waited. He knew Stalin was thinking about the Children’s Case. Beria had no wish to interrogate teenagers. It was messy, too close somehow to his own beloved son who had also attended School 801. ‘They’re just harmless children. Let’s release them,’ he was tempted to say. But he and Stalin knew better than anyone that there was no tool on earth as powerful in the management of men as a threat to their children. He raised his cloudy colourless eyes to meet Stalin’s remorseless gaze.

‘You said they were in fancy dress?’ A tigerish grin.

‘Correct,’ said Beria. Stalin tapped his pipe. Now he was waiting. Beria shuffled his papers and read from Kobylov’s report. ‘“Both dead children were members of a secret group named the Fatal Romantics’ Club. Covert chosen membership. Clandestine meetings in graveyards. Obsession with romance and death.”’

‘Were they reading
Dracula
?’ Stalin asked, puzzled.

‘Pushkin.’

‘At least they were studying good literature.’

‘As you saw at once, it’s a teenage love story. An old chestnut. Should we release the children now?’ Immediately Beria regretted his words.

‘Do you know what they were doing?’

‘Kobylov says they were playing something called the Game.’

‘And Kobylov didn’t think to find out what this Game was? And where did Rosa Shako get the gun?’ Beria knew that Stalin had never forgiven his brother-in-law for giving his wife the pistol that she used to shoot herself. ‘There’s more to do in the Children’s Case.’

Stalin leaned back in his chair and pressed a button that rang a bell outside.

Poskrebyshev opened the door and stood to attention, notebook raised, pencil at the ready. ‘Yes, Josef Vissarionovich?’

‘Sasha, let’s invite some comrades to watch a movie and have a snack. Call Comrade Satinov and the rest of the Seven.’

It was already half past midnight. From Vladivostok in the east (where the Soviet armies were massing to attack Japan) to Berlin in the west, the Russians and their new subject peoples slept, but not their leaders. In Moscow, ministers, marshals and Chekists waited at their desks for Comrade Stalin to leave the office. Now that Stalin had summoned the Seven for dinner, Poskrebyshev would let a few favoured friends know that they could go home too.

‘Are you busy later, Comrade Beria?’

‘
Didi madlobt
,
thanks so much,’ said Beria in Georgian. Busy later? Who dared be busy later? Not him, that was for sure.

AT ONE IN
the morning, the Judas port on George Satinov’s cell door clicked open. He was sleeping properly for the first time because he was sure the interrogations were over. His interrogators had seemed satisfied with his answers and then he had been taken back to his cell and given a meal. Now suddenly he feared there was more. The clink of keyrings, the clip of boots on concrete, and then, moments later, the locks were grinding.

‘Get dressed. Now.’ He heard other doors opening, other locks turning and wondered who else from his school was there. As he was escorted along the corridors, he heard another prisoner coming behind him. Was it Vlad? Or Minka? He prayed that Minka was all right and that no one else was in trouble: not Serafima, not Andrei. He longed to see Minka, so that she would know he was nearby and that he had not betrayed her. I wonder if I am in love with her? he asked himself. How does one know?

Lines of cell doors, detergent vying with sweat, metallic stairways. ‘Eyes straight ahead! No talking!’ snapped one of the warders.

‘Prisoner, step inside the box,’ said the other, and he was forcefully guided into a metal box like an upright coffin: its door was closed, a lock turned. Short of breath, George started to sweat. He heard another prisoner coming, the same way as he, and that prisoner too was ordered: ‘Eyes straight! No talking!’

In the gait of the steps, in the breaths of the prisoner, he imagined it was Minka. For a moment he tensed his vocal cords and prepared to shout: ‘Minka! Is it you? I know you’re here!’ But soon the corridor was empty again, the coffin unlocked, and he was free to breathe. Up stairways and down, through more sealed doors. As he was marched towards the interrogation rooms, he thought of his father’s fury: ‘I’ll strangle you myself,’ he’d warned George and Marlen if he found they were involved in the shooting. And now George was. What would his father say?