The Margin of Evil!

Prologue

Georgii lay catnapping in his cell, he was badly beaten up and finding it hard to breathe, his ribs ached and he was suffering from sleep deprivation.  The guards had got it off to a tee.         The moment you looked like falling asleep they dragged you back onto your feet, punched you in the guts and took you out for another working over.

Anyway, he knew the score; it was all routine textbook stuff.
Many times in the past when he had stood on the other side of the fence he had done the same thing to others.  Georgii lay back on his pillow and listened. The moans and groans were intermittent. The footsteps came and went and outside, he could hear the keys turning in other locks. He was drifting in and out of consciousness. He heard the flap in his cell door open and shut, then the keys rattled and then the lock turned.

'
Get on your feet ...  Trotskyite scum!'  The guard said whilst he dragged Radetzky up on to his feet.

They ca
rted him off down the corridor.  The ankle chains bit into the tender scabs on his ankles. The shouts and the groans were clearer now. They went down corridors, up and down stairs across a courtyard. They stopped to let others, less fortunate, pass. At one such passing, Georgii recognised the man who passed him as none other than Comrade Zinoviev. The 'Old Hero' of the revolution looked tired and exhausted and had aged dramatically.  He was muttering nonsensically to himself about how he would say anything, but they must leave his wife and baby alone. The old man did not even notice Georgii looking at him.

They had now arrived at their destination.
He was ushered in, and sitting on seats opposite him were two, 'fat jowly’ men smoking cigarettes, shrouded in semi darkness. Georgii hated their kind - The New Soviet Commissars - enjoying all the trappings of the Western Bourgeois-lifestyle yet condemning their Capitalist counterparts as decadent.  They drove around in big saloon cars; they had nice flats with nice interiors; luxurious dachas and the best whores in town and the best food and wine. It was like this, they would say to the wife: 'Working late in the office tonight; or 'I've got an unexpected committee meeting to attend.  See you tomorrow! That is how it was with these comrades.  Then they would be off shagging their sluts.

They ignored him
.  The light bulb carried on flickering and they carried on talking.  Georgii sat there and blinked his eyes. The fat one in the double-breasted suit turned around to stub his cigarette out.  He looked over at Georgii.  'Comrade Radetzky, hero of The Great Imperialist War. You know why you are here; you know the charges that have been levelled towards you. I say that you are guilty on every count, and that there can only be one acceptable solution to all of this. You plead guilty. Then the state will be lenient with you!'

'
Plead guilty to what Comrade?' Georgii uttered.

'
Don't come that with me, Trotskyite filth.  Okay, let's start from the beginning.  You say that you don't know why you are here.’

'
I will tell you why you are here; it's like this Georgii Radetzky! You have been denounced. Look!  Here is the letter. Read it!' The other thug said.

XX May 1937

Re: Georgii Radetzky

My name is X. It is my wish to denounce Georgii Radetzky as an enemy of the state. He is guilty as follows: Conspiring to subvert and undermine the authority and legitimacy of the Bolshevik party from 1917 - Present.  Aiding and abetting enemies of the state:  Leon Trotsky & Auguste Gerhardt, and others, to evade justice.  Membership of a banned Criminal Organisation.  I X do solemnly declare that this is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

Witnessed by X & X on the X
of May 1937.

Georgii looked at it
and started shaking his head from right to left, ran his fingers through his hair.  He put it down on the table then addressed his accusers.  'I see that the accusing Comrade X has reared his ugly head again, and this time is pointing his finger at me!    Anyone, even you two, could have written that! It doesn't even say anything specific to the nature of my crimes! Assuming, and Comrade 'X' does, that I've committed any. It will never stand up in a 'Peoples' court of law and you know it!'  He said.

There was no point in arguing with them it would not do him any good in the long run.
The game was up and Georgii Radetzky knew it. He just wished that the powers that be would sign the death warrant and just get it over and done with.

'
You're not a loyal party man are you?'  The first interviewer inquired.

'
I've done my duty for 'Mother Russia,' on more than one occasion, Comrade! Look at my file; it's all in there! I have nothing to hide!'

That was the problem
: he had a lot to hide and now, if he was going to say anything now was the time to say it. Trouble was that no-one would believe it anyway, so what was the point.  But tell it he would: might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, as his old associate Royston O' Reilly used to say.

'
Your file makes for good reading Tolstoy could have written it! It seems that up until now you have been in the right place at the right time.  You've also managed to save your skin until now!'  The second thug said, picking his file up and waving it in the air.

'
Knew all the right people too; let me see.'  He fingered through the pages until he stopped at one.  'You knew Lenin and the traitors Bukharin, Rykov, Kamenev; adjutant to Brusilov back in fifteen.  Impressive!  'He threw the file down onto the table and glowered at him.

'
We are mainly concerned with your relationship with Leon Trotsky and Auguste Gerhardt during the year of 1919.  What you say to us holds great bearing on whether you live or die.'

Georgii knew
that death was the soft option.  To live would mean to die a slow and painful death in a labour camp.  Years would be spent wasting away in some forgotten corner of Siberia. Escape was pointless; there was nowhere to go.  Russia was simply too big!

The first interviewer called the guards to take him back to his cell.
Just as he was leaving the second interrogator called out to him. 'We want to know the nature of your relationship with Gerhardt and Trotsky.  Go back to your cell.  Think it over.  One way or another we are going to find out but, Radetzky, our patience will eventually run out.'

Back in his cell,
Georgii thought long and hard.  What had he got to lose?  Everything he had held dear had been lost a long, long time ago.  There was nothing left to take! If they wanted to know he would give it to them warts and all.  Give it to them on a plate; he would tell them how one file changed the course, irrevocably, of Soviet history.

Next day he s
at in front of the two interrogators.  He'd thought it all through. He started to tell the story.  The two fat men sat and listened.

Part One

Chapter One

Georgii sat at his desk looking at a new Cheka
[1]
memorandum:

Internal
Cheka/ Militsya
[2]
- Memorandum 675/ R117

Foreign agent believed to be working in and around the Petrograd and Moscow areas for the government of the United Kingdom
.

Man
average height, brown hair, blue eyes, speaks Russian with a slight accent, believed to be British agent Sidney Reilly.

Usually smartly dressed
but also known to be a master of disguise.  Sometimes passes himself off as a French/ Swiss national.

This man is highly
dangerous. If in a position to, try and apprehend, if not kill on sight.

Repeat, this man is highly dangerous.

He placed the memo at the bottom of his to-do pile
with all the other crackpot descriptions of recently seen enemies of the state, but at the same time he was trying, desperately, to muster up some enthusiasm to complete and file a Cheka report on the, tragic, suicide of a teacher.

In every way the report
he was trying to finish was a sad case; it was also an indictment against the ludicrous times they now found themselves living in. If anything it further proved, if the French revolution had not already done so, the massive distortion of values, morality and justice that had been going on in Russia since the second revolution of 1917.

This non-person had only weeks before been a
'good' comrade.  A former member of the intelligentsia, with an impeccable revolutionary C.V. exile, internal and external; a 'Hero of the Revolution', he had dutifully answered Lenin's call to go into the classroom.  On arrival, Georgii saw that he had worked tirelessly to raise the educational standards of the proletariat but maybe he had been too keen.  Eventually he came unstuck and had found himself tried and denounced by a student Soviet for the heinous crime of setting homework.

Stripped of everyth
ing he had previously held dear - professionalism; dignity; belief e.t.c.  Ostracised by former Comrades and then in circumstances bordering on the comical, which after Georgii Radetzky's investigation, were still not altogether clear.  The former teacher, now a non-person and class-enemy of the Revolution, had thrown himself in somewhat bizarre circumstances, under the wheels of a passing train.

Georgii stopped writing
, lit up a cigarette and tried to place himself in the 'Good' comrade's shoes. He thought how he might have felt if everything he had previously held dear had been taken away.  Then he dwelled on the fact that the robbers had been a kangaroo court of irresponsible former students. Looking at what he'd written so far, Georgii pondered on the silliness of the titles the New Order gave people these days.  You were either a 'former-this' or a 'former-that' or you became a 'non-this', or a 'non-that'. It was, at times, too mind-boggling to comprehend.  He stubbed out the cigarette and got back to the immediate task in-hand of writing the report which, if he was lucky, might be given a cursory glance; or, if he was that unlucky, would be filed away for good measure.  Maybe a historian would read it in the future.

The peculiar thing about this case was
that the man had walked up to the edge of the railway station platform. Calmly undressing himself in front of a crowd of waiting onlookers, he had neatly folded up his clothes, so that he was standing stark naked on the platform.  Then, without further ado, threw himself under the wheels of an oncoming train.  The crowd apparently let out an almighty cheer as the passing train shredded his body into mince meat.

Georgii lit up a cigarette and thought
to himself. 'What a way to go, but these were strange times!  In the old days the police had upheld and maintained the law.  Now the combination of Cheka and Militsiya determined it between them.  It seemed that the innocent were guilty and the guilty were innocent.  Rough justice was meted out by the dozen, and the Cheka and Militsya were the instruments used to enforce it.'

There were stories of Militsiya officers walking into people
's houses.  Accompanied by known villains, they stood idly by whilst the villains ransacked the homes. It seemed to Georgii Radetzky that the whole world had turned itself on its head, and in the process of turning itself upside down all sanity had long since disappeared. He picked up the internal memorandum and looked at the name - Sidney Reilly - but it triggered off a memory because Georgii knew of another Reilly.  For a moment he thought about the coincidence. Then the phone rang.

Unknown to
Georgii Radetzky the phone call he was about to receive was the beginning of the Goldstein case. Like all complex investigations the jigsaw would slowly fall into place, piece by piece. He picked up the receiver.

'
Comrade Radetzky, is that you?'  The voice said.

'
Yeah,' he replied. He knew the voice but could not put a name to it.

'
Gerhardt
[3]
here, get your hairy, fat Russian arse down to the Kremlin. I need to speak to you! It's very urgent!'  The voice on the other end of the line hung up and the conversation was left dangling in mid-air.

Georgii got up and put his old
trusty trench coat on. He told the others on his section that he was popping out on Cheka business and he would see them all in the morning.  It was quite a walk across town to the Kremlin.  Georgii had no intentions of doing any more work after his meeting with Gerhardt. He was going to go straight home.

He walked down the street.
The faces of passers-by looked haggard and gaunt. He thought to himself that the hollowed out look of sixteen was back in fashion again. But this time the gaunt look was back with a vengeance, rations had been cut and starvation was rife. Bread, if you could get it, was rumoured to be 99 percent sawdust and one percent flour. Rumours circulating in the slums emphatically stated that bark was beginning to grow on people's legs!

Down the street
as Georgii walked, comrades and good citizens moved out of his way. People knew who Georgii Radetzky was and what he represented. The Civil War dragged on relentlessly - it was actually beginning to look at one stage that the Bolsheviks might lose. It had been rumoured but not corroborated, that Deniken's forces were marching on the city again and this time there was nothing in the way to stop them.