The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (66 page)

“Several of our units, including Cheka, are not responding to orders.”

“They’ve gone over,” I said, glancing down at the lists of names I had been studying.

The cadet was silent as I got up and went to the window. The grey courtyard below was deserted. There was no sign of the Latvian guards, and the dead horse I had seen earlier was gone. I turned my head slightly and saw the cadet in the window glass.

He was fumbling with his pistol holster. I reached under my long coat and grasped the revolver in my shoulder harness, then turned and pointed it at him under my coat. He had not drawn his pistol.

“No, Comrade Stalin!” he cried. “I was only unsnapping the case. It sticks.”

I looked into his eyes. He was only a boy, and his fear was convincing.

“We must leave here immediately, Comrade Stalin,” he added quickly. “We may be arrested at any moment.”

I slipped my gun back into its sheath. “Lead the way.”

“We’ll go out the back,” he said, his voice shaking with relief.

“Did it happen at the factory?” I asked.

“Just as he finished his speech, a woman shot him,” he replied.

I tried to imagine what Reilly was doing at this very moment.

The cadet led me down the back stairs of the old office block. The iron railing was rusting, and the stairwell smelled of urine. On the first landing the cadet turned around and found his courage.

“You
are
under arrest, Comrade Stalin,” he said with a nervous smile.

My boot caught him under the chin. I felt his neck break as he fired the pistol into the railing, scattering rust into my face. He fell backward onto the landing. I hurried down and wrenched the gun from his stiffening fingers, then went back up to the office.

There was a hiding place behind the toilet, but I would use it only if I had to. I came into the room and paused, listening, but there was only the sound of wind rattling the windows. Was it possible that they had sent only one person for me? Something had gone wrong, or the cadet had come for me on his own initiative, hoping to ingratiate himself with the other side. All of which meant I could expect another visit at any moment.

I hurried down the front stairs to the lobby, went out cautiously through the main doors, and spotted a motorcycle nearby - probably the cadet’s. I rushed to it, got on, and started it on the first kick. I gripped the handlebars, gunned the engine into a roar, then turned the bike around with a screech and rolled into the street, expecting to see them coming for me.

But there was no one on the street. Something had gone wrong. The Latvians had been removed to leave me exposed, but the next step, my arrest and execution, had somehow been delayed. Only the cadet had shown up.

I tried to think. Where would they have taken Vladimir Ilyich? It had to be the old safe house outside of Moscow, just south of the city. That would be the only place now. I wondered if I had enough petrol to reach it.

* * * *

4

Lenin was at the country house. He was not mortally wounded. His assassin was there also, having been taken prisoner by the Cheka guards who had gone with Lenin to the factory.

“Comrade Stalin!” Vladimir Ilyich exclaimed as I sat down by his cot in the book-lined study. “You are safe, but our situation is desperate.”

“What has happened?” I asked, still unsteady from the long motorcycle ride.

“Moscow has fallen. Our Latvian regiments have deserted, along with our Chinese workers. Most of the Red Guard have been imprisoned. The Social Revolutionaries have joined the counter-revolution. My assassin is one of them. I suspect that killing me was to have been their token of good faith. There’s no word from Trotsky’s southern volunteers. There doesn’t seem to be much we can do. We might even have to flee the country.”

“Never,” I replied.

He raised his hand to his massive forehead.

“Don’t shout, I’m in terrible pain. The bullet struck my shoulder, but I have a headache that won’t stop.”

I looked around for Nadezhda, but she was not in the room. I saw several haggard, unfamiliar faces and realized that no one of great importance had escaped with Lenin from Moscow. By now they were in Reilly’s hands, dead or about to be executed. He would not wait long. I had underestimated the Bastard of Odessa.

“What shall we do?” I asked.

Vladimir Ilyich sighed and closed his eyes. “I would like your suggestions.”

“We must go where they won’t find us easily,” I replied. “I know several places in Georgia.”

His eyes opened and fixed on me. “As long as you don’t want to return to robbing banks.”

His words irritated me, but I didn’t show it.

“We needed the money,” I said calmly, remembering that he had once described me as crude and vulgar. Living among émigré Russians in Europe had affected his practical sense.

“Of course, of course,” he replied with a feeble wave of his hand. “You are a dedicated and useful man.”

There was a muffled shot from outside. It seemed to relax Vladimir Ilyich. Dora Kaplan, his assassin, had been executed.

* * * *

5

Just before leaving the safe house, we learned that Lenin’s wife had been executed. Vladimir Ilyich began to rave as we led him out to the truck, insisting to me that Reilly could not have killed Nadezhda, and that the report had to be false. I said nothing; to me her death had been inevitable. As Lenin’s lifelong partner, and a theoretician herself, she would have posed a threat in his absence. Reilly’s swiftness in removing her impressed me. Lenin’s reaction to her death was unworthy of a Bolshevik; suddenly his wife was only an unimportant woman. Nadezhda Krupskaya had not been an innocent.

We fled south, heading for a railway station that was still in our hands, just south of Moscow, where a special train was waiting to take us to Odessa. If the situation in that city turned out to be intractable, we would attempt to reach a hiding place in my native Georgia.

Three Chekas came with us in the truck - a young lieutenant and two privates, both of whom had abandoned the Czar’s forces for the revolution. I watched the boyish faces of the two privates from time to time, looking for signs of doubt. The lieutenant, who was also a mechanic, drove the old Ford, nursing the truck through the muddy ten kilometers to the station.

“He could have held her hostage,” Vladimir Ilyich insisted as the truck sputtered and coughed along. “Don’t you think so? Maybe he thought we were dead, and she would be of no use to him as a hostage?”

For the next hour he asked his own questions and gave his own impossible answers. It depressed me to hear how much of the bourgeois there was still in him. I felt the confusion in the minds of the two Chekas.

It began to rain as the sun went down. We couldn’t see the road ahead. The lieutenant pulled over and waited. Water seeped in on us through the musty canvas. Vladimir Ilyich began to weep.

“She was a soldier in our cause,” I said loudly, hating his sentimentality.

He stared out into the rainy twilight. Lightning flashed as he turned to look at me, and for a moment it seemed that his face had turned to marble. “You’re right,” he said, eyes wild with conviction, “I must remember that.”

Of course, I had always disliked Nadezhda’s hovering, familiar-like ways. She had been a bony raven at his shoulder, forever whispering asides, but I had always taken great care to be polite to her. Now more than ever I realized what a buttress she had been to Vladimir Ilyich.

The rain lessened. The lieutenant tried to start the Ford, but it was dead.

“There’s not much time,” I said. “How much farther?”

“Less than half a kilometer.”

“We’ll go on foot,” I said. “There’s no telling who may be behind us.”

I helped Vladimir Ilyich down from the truck. He managed to stand alone and refused my arm as we began our march on the muddy road. He moved steadily at my side, but his breathing was labored.

We were within sight of the station when he collapsed.

“Help!” I called out.

The lieutenant and one of the privates came back, lifted Vladimir Ilyich onto their shoulders, and hurried ahead with him. It was like a scene from the street rallies, but without the crowds.

“Is he very ill?” the other private asked me as I caught up.

I did not answer. Ahead, the train waited in a conflagration of storm lamps and steam.

* * * *

6

Our train consisted of a dining car, a kitchen, one supply car, and the engine. A military evacuation train was being readied on the track next to ours, to carry away those who would be fleeing out of Moscow in the next day or two. I was surprised at this bit of organization. When I asked how it had been accomplished, a sergeant said one word to me: “Trotsky.”

We sped off into the warm, misty night. Vladimir Ilyich recovered enough to have dinner with me and our three soldiers. The plush luxury of the Czarist interior seemed to brighten his mood.

“I only hope that Trotsky is in Odessa when we arrive,” he said, sipping his brandy, “and that he can raise a force we can work with. Our foreign venders have been paid, fortunately, but we will have to keep our southern port open to be supplied.”

He was looking into the large mirror at our right as he spoke. I nodded to his reflection.

“The troops behind us,” the youthful lieutenant added, “will help ensure that.”

Vladimir Ilyich put down his glass and looked at me directly. “Do you think, Comrade Stalin, that we hoped for too much?” He sounded lost.

“No,” I answered. “We have popular support. The people are waiting to hear from you. Reilly’s pamphlets have struck a nerve of longing with promises of foreign help and bourgeois progress, but he is actually depending only on the uncertainty of our followers. His mercenaries won’t count for much when the news that you are alive gets out. Most of his support can be taken from him with that alone, but we will have to follow our victory with a period of terror, to compel loyalty among the doubters.”

He nodded to me, then looked into the darkness of the window. In that mirror we rode not only in a well-appointed, brightly lit dining room, but in the cave of all Russia.

“You must get some sleep,” I said.

We found blankets and made ourselves comfortable on the leather couches. The lieutenant turned down the lights.

I tried to sleep, but my thoughts seemed to organize themselves to the clatter of the train wheels. Contempt for my own kind crept into me, especially for the idealists in our party. Too many Utopian fools were setting themselves up against their own nature and what was possible. They did not grasp that progress was like the exponent in one of Einstein’s fashionable equations - a small modifying quantity that has an effect only when the big term grew very large. They failed to see that only when the biggest letter of human history, material wealth, became sufficiently large would there be a chance for social progress. Only then would we be able to afford to become humane. My role in this revolution was to remember this fact, and to act when it was neglected . . .

* * * *

7

Our mood was apprehensive as our train pulled into Odessa. We stepped out into bright sunlight, and a deserted station.

“We don’t know what may have happened here,” I said.

“There hasn’t been time,” Vladimir Ilyich replied. His voice was gruff after three days on the train, and he seemed ready to bark at me in his usual way. I felt reassured. This was the Lenin who had taken a spontaneous uprising and interpreted the yearning of the masses so they would know what to do; the Lenin who would make ours a Communist revolution despite Marx. Like Reilly, Lenin was irreplaceable. Without him there would only be a struggle for power, with no vision justifying action.