Death of a Tyrant

by Christopher Nicole

  “All you need to know, Comrade Princess, is that I have released you from prison, that I am about to release your accomplice from prison, and that your only hope of surviving, or getting out of Russia, is to obey me in all things.”

  Priscilla digested this, then said quietly. “Morgan was never my accomplice.”

  “As you will.”

  They drove in silence for a while. Then Priscilla asked, “That woman who was killed…”

  “You remembered her, did you? From the Lyubyanka. That is remarkable, as it was so long ago.”

  “I shall never forget a moment of the Lyubyanka,” Priscilla said.

  “I shall never forget Atya,” Tatiana said. “She was my aide. But she was also one of my lovers. Have you never had a woman lover, Princess? They are far more reliable than men. And they know how to please, more than men. Most men are simply anxious to please themselves.”

  Priscilla’s cheeks glowed as she stared at the road unfolding in front of them. “And yet you just walked away from her, leaving her lying in the water.”

  “She was dead,” Tatiana pointed out. “There was nothing I could do for her.”

  “You could have said a prayer.” Tatiana turned her head to look at her. “I forgot,” Priscilla said. “It’s not part of the Communist ethos.”

  “Would you like to be my lover?” Tatiana asked. “You are still a very beautiful woman, you know. I find you exciting. We could stop the car for half-an-hour.”

  “Don’t you think we have rather a lot to do?” Priscilla asked.

  Tatiana grinned. “You are in a hurry to regain your male lover.”

  “Morgan was never my lover,” Priscilla snapped.

  “Oh, come now, Princess. You have never had a woman lover, are you now going to claim you have never had a male lover? What a waste of all that beauty.”

  “I have had three husbands,” Priscilla said with dignity.

  “And Rotislav?” Tatiana asked, softly. Priscilla’s head turned, sharply. “It is on file,” Tatiana said. “We keep files on everyone who interests us or may be of use to us. You were Rotislav’s mistress for a year.”

  “I was his prisoner for a year.” Priscilla nearly spat the words out. “Thus he abused me as he felt like it. I do not call that having a lover. And I watched him hang.”

  Tatiana glanced at her. “So you are not just a pretty face. I would like to make love with you, Princess. But I agree it will have to wait because we are nearly there. Now listen to me very carefully. I am your only hope, and Morgan’s only hope. Support me in everything. Fail to do so and you will die.”

  Priscilla swallowed. “Tell me what you intend to do.”

  “I have told you, just obey me, and I will save your life.”

  *

  It was mid-afternoon before they arrived at Gulag Number Seventeen. “Just how many of these places are there in Russia?” Priscilla asked.

  Tatiana shrugged. “A writer once described them as an archipeligo.” She stopped the car. “I am going to handcuff you now. You are wearing prison clothes, and therefore you must be a prisoner, right? Just sit there and keep your mouth shut.” She took a pair of handcuffs from the glove compartment, where she had known they would be, pulled Priscilla’s arms behind her back, and clipped the wrists together. Then she turned Priscilla round to sit straight in the seat. “Now, remember. Keep your mouth shut.”

  She drove up to the gate, showed her pass, and it was opened for her. She drove into the compound, and was immediately surrounded by armed guards. She got out. “I have come to remove a prisoner,” she said. “Take me to your commandant. And make sure that one does not leave the car.” Two men immediately stood beside the car, one on each side. Priscilla didn’t like their looks at all. As Tatiana could see. “There is nothing to be afraid of,” she told the guards. “She is handcuffed, as you can see. However, she is not to be touched. Understood? Now hurry,” she told the man waiting to escort her.

  Priscilla stared straight in front of herself. She was still trying to come to terms with her situation, with the great mystery that was unfolding about her. She had been so utterly crushed by the realisation that Joseph and Alexei were dead that the first few weeks of her ‘arrest’ by the KGB had seemed remote, a nightmare, certainly, but one from which she would soon enough awake, no doubt in death. Certain things stood out in the mind — being photographed, the ice-cold bath, and perhaps more than anything else, the sight of that so nice young man standing naked before her, like herself, a victim of nightmare.

  Perhaps Andrew Morgan had stayed in her mind so firmly because she had been about to enter a world of nothing but women. Then nightmare had become reality. And yet, it had been a limbo rather than a hell. She still remembered the fate with which Tatiana had threatened her, had braced herself for a continual unacceptable ordeal which had surely to result in madness or death…and it had been like falling off a high building, knowing that only concrete death lay beneath one, and instead arriving on a rubber mattress, which absorbed the shock and left one gently bouncing up and down. Her guards had enjoyed physically examining her — but they had not, as Tatiana had said they would, cut her hair or shaved her body. Nor had they beaten her. The other inmates had looked at her shimmering hair, her white body, her exceptional beauty, with lip-licking anticipation…but she had been placed in a solitary cell, her only human contact the guards who fed her and exercised her. It had occurred to her that these subterranean minds might suppose solitary confinement over a period of years would drive anyone mad, but it had been what she wanted more than anything else. She had sufficient memories on which to live, for the rest of eternity.

  Even being raped by the Commandant had been remote, because the Commandant had been a woman of peculiar tastes. Whether she was afraid of her charges, or was afraid of herself getting too close to any of them, or merely was so corrupted by her position and her power that she could not contemplate the least resistance or perhaps, even enthusiastic compliance, with her desires, the fact was that on every occasion she had been summoned to her bed, Priscilla had been injected with a sedative drug which, while leaving her awake in the sense that she would respond to motor impulses, had turned her brain into an uncertain grey awareness, without actually being aware. True awareness came later, when the drug had worn off, but even then, memory was filtered. She knew she had been abused, but could find no marks of it on her body; the Commandant had apparently not been into biting. Those incidents had become the punctuations of her imprisonment. The unchangingly dreary food, the unchangingly monotonous exercise round and round the yard, the unchangingly eventless days spent sitting in her cell, had merged one into the other; she had lost all concept of the passage of time. The summons to the Commandant’s quarters had been bursts of light, even if they had been immediately muted in her mind. The Commandant had given her vodka to drink, had sometimes even made up her face. She had been played with as a toy. So I am a toy, she had thought. I have experienced every other thing in life; being a toy cannot be worse than Rotislav or Stalin himself. She had been in the Commandant’s bed when Tatiana had so suddenly reappeared in her life.

  That had most certainly been a flash of lightning cutting across the grey. Drugged as she had been at the time, she had had no immediate understanding of what was happening. Now she was fully awake. But understanding was utterly confusing. She had been forced to accept that Tatiana probably hated her more than anyone else in the world; well, when she remembered that ice-cold bath, and what the girl had said to her, Priscilla felt absolutely mutual about that. But now, she said, she was going to save her life. And that of Andrew Morgan. Something very unexpected and dramatic had happened, and was still happening. And at the moment she could do nothing to influence events. And supposing she found herself in a position to influence events, some time in the future? She had to be absolutely rational, as she had forced herself to be rational so often in the past, and survived. She wanted to watch Tatiana Gosykinya hang just as much as she had e
ver wanted to see Rotislav the Butcher hang. But that pleasure would have to take second place behind escaping this dreadful country. With Morgan? Supposing he was still worth saving.

  And there he was, walking across the compound towards the car, with Tatiana. Like the Princess herself, he wore prison clothing, and his steps were halting. He also wore a prison sidecap, but the cropped hair on his temples and neck was grey. He had not been spared. They came up to the car, and the guards. “Remember,” Tatiana said, and pushed him into the back seat.

  Priscilla dared not turn her head; she had seen that he too was handcuffed. The guards saluted, Tatiana got behind the wheel, and drove out of the compound. Within minutes the gulag was out of sight. “My God, your highness,” Morgan said. “To see you again…”

  Now at last Priscilla could turn in her seat, gaze into the eyes, count the pain wrinkles that creased his face; he had aged ten years in the four since last she had seen him. “What have they done to you?” Suddenly she was afraid.

  “Nothing I can’t stand,” he assured her. “And you?”

  “Nothing at all.” She glanced at Tatiana who was concentrating on the road. “Will you take off these handcuffs, now?”

  “Not now,” Tatiana said.

  “I thought you were going to help us.”

  “I am helping you. But I must begin by removing you, and myself, from the reach of the KGB. This can only be done by speed. We are going to Semipalatinsk, where there is an airport. From there we will fly to Moscow.”

  “Moscow?” Priscilla and Morgan spoke together.

  Tatiana grinned. “It is our only hope, believe me. But you must travel as my prisoners. I am not going to betray you.”

  “Do you expect us to believe that?” Morgan’s tone was suddenly bitter, as he remembered everything this woman had done to him.

  “Yes,” Tatiana said, not looking at him. “Simply because you have no choice.” She looked at her watch. “Now be quiet. We must reach Semipalatinsk before dark.”

  *

  It was five o’clock and dark by the time they reached Semipalatinsk, and just starting to snow. The roads leading to the city had been bad, and slippery, but at least they had been largely empty. Now they came into rush-hour traffic as workers poured out of the meat-packing plant — the largest in Russia — and although there were even fewer cars in this part of the country than east of the Urals, there were large numbers of trucks and vans, horse-drawn vehicles and even bicycles, slithering in the snow, blaring horns, ringing bells and shouting. Tatiana sat with her hands tight on the wheel, blowing her horn as loudly as anyone. Morgan and Priscilla sat silently beside and behind her; they both had the feeling they were caught up in some surrealist play.

  At last Tatiana was able to swing down the approach road to the airport, to encounter a barrier and two armed guards. She rolled down her window. “The airport is closed, Comrade,” said one of the guards.

  “Why? Because of a little snow?”

  “Because the last flight has just left.” He pointed skywards; they could still make out the lights of the airliner as it circled to gain height.

  “Oh, my God,” Priscilla muttered. If she still could not bring herself to trust Tatiana, the thought of being recaptured and being returned to the mercy of Valentina Karpova, after having killed, or at least overseen, the killing of four KGB agents, was horrifying.

  “Is there not a military section of this airport?” Tatiana demanded.

  “What is that to you, Comrade?” The guard could not make out her uniform in the darkness.

  Tatiana pulled off a glove, reached inside her tunic, and produced her KGB identity wallet. “I wish to go to the military section.”

  The guard studied the wallet with his flashlight, then returned it and stood to attention. “Of course, Comrade Captain.” He signalled his partner, and the barrier was raised.

  “Whew!” Morgan said. “But what will the military have to offer us?”

  “An aircraft,” Tatiana said.

  “You mean you can fly a plane?”

  “They will supply us with a crew,” Tatiana said.

  Priscilla turned her head to look at him, and he waggled his eyebrows. More sentries, more showing of identities, then they found themselves stopped before a command building. “Inside,” Tatiana commanded.

  Priscilla and Morgan filed inside to face several officers and men who had obviously been waiting for them, alerted by the call from the gate. Tatiana chose the one with the highest rank. “Your name, please, Comrade Colonel?”

  “I am Colonel Goronski. The sentry on the gate called to say you were on your way, Comrade Captain. He also said something…”

  Tatiana handed him her wallet. Goronski swallowed. Tatiana reckoned there was not an officer in the Red Army who did not have some secret he would like to keep from the KGB. “What do you require?”

  “To speak with you in private.” Goronski hesitated, then gestured to his inner office. Tatiana jerked her head, and Priscilla and Morgan followed. One of the other officers would have checked them, but Tatiana glared at him and he let them, and her, past. She closed the door. Goronski had retreated behind his desk, but was looking very anxious. “Now, Comrade Colonel,” Tatiana said. “I need an aircraft and a pilot. It must have a range of three thousand kilometres. It must also be fast.”

  “Ah…you are asking for one of our light fighter-bombers, Comrade Captain. I do not think…”

  “Comrade Colonel, it is essential that I deliver these two prisoners to Commissar Beria by dawn tomorrow morning.”

  For the first time Colonel Goronski appeared to realise that Priscilla and Morgan were handcuffed. “Have you no aide?” he asked. Another irregularity.

  “This is a top secret operation, Comrade Colonel. No one is to know of it. All I wish you to do is give the orders for the aircraft to be placed at my disposal. It will return to you tomorrow morning, with a commendation from Comrade Beria.”

  The Colonel pulled his ear. “Should I not telephone Comrade Beria for confirmation?”

  “Do that, and you will undoubtedly be shot. I am risking my own neck in giving you this much information.”

  “You will give me the authorisation in writing?”

  Tatiana bent over the desk, and the pad of paper he thrust at her. She wrote, ‘This requisition is for the loan of a military aircraft from the base at Semipalatinsk for the use of the KGB on vital national security. Tatiana Gosykinya, Captain, KGB.’

  Goronski read it. “You have not mentioned the prisoners.”

  “Nor will you, if you have any sense. Keep that authorisation, until you are told from Moscow to destroy it. That will be tomorrow.”

  Goronski stared at the paper for the last time. “You realise the weather is closing down, Comrade Captain,” he said. “There is a front coming up from the south.”

  “It is not here yet,” Tatiana said. The Colonel sighed, and picked up his phone.

  *

  Because of a snowstorm, it was four o’clock before Kagan touched down at Alma-Ata, and already the evening was closing in, the temperature plummeting. Kagan stamped into the control building, slapping his gloved hands together. “Who are you?” he demanded of the man waiting for him.

  “Station Commander Boros, Comrade General.”

  “Where is Comrade Smorodsky?”

  “I do not know, Comrade General. He went out this morning, and has not returned.”

  Kagan went to the plate-glass window and looked out at the snow clouding down. To telephone would be to risk blowing this whole thing wide open. But he had no choice. “Call that number,” he told Boros, opening his notebook and indicating a figure.

  The Station Commander peered at the figures. “With respect, Comrade General, that number…”

  “I know what that number is,” Kagan snapped. “It cannot be reached without a code. There is the code.”

  Boros’s fingers trembled as he dialled the code. When it rang, Kagan took the receiver from his han
d. The number was repeated by a woman. “This is General Kagan,” Kagan said. “Let me speak to Commandant Karpova.”

  Valentina Karpova was on the phone in seconds. “Comrade General,” she said. “I am glad you called. Will you please tell me what is going on?”

  “I wish you to tell me that,” Kagan said. “Have you been visited today?”

  “Twice,” Valentina said. “Firstly, very early this morning, by Captain Gosykinya and an aide. She brought a command for the release of the prisoner Seven Hundred and Six into her custody.”

  “You did this?”

  “The command was in order, Comrade General.”

  “Very good. What time did she leave?”

  “Just before dawn.”

  “With the prisoner?”

  “Yes, Comrade General.”

  “Very good. And your second visitor?”

  “Colonel Smorodsky, from Alma-Ata. He arrived just after one.”

  “What did he want?”

  “I cannot say, Comrade General. He was in a highly agitated state. He merely ascertained that Captain Gosykinya had been here, and had removed Prisoner Seven Hundred and Six.”

  “When did he leave?”

  “Just after two; he stopped to have something to eat.”

  Kagan looked at his watch. “That is more than two hours ago,” he said.

  “I think he has returned now.” Boros had been looking out of the window at the car park behind the building, in which there was a sudden blaze of lights.

  “Thank you, Comrade Commandant,” Kagan said into the phone.

  “The order for the release of Prisoner Seven Hundred and Six was signed by yourself, Comrade General,” Karpova said, anxiously.

  “I know that,” Kagan said, and hung up. Smorodsky stamped into the room, brushing snow from his shoulders, slapping his gloved hands together, then peeling off the gloves to hold his fingers close to the stove. “You will get chilblains,” Kagan remarked.

  “With respect, Comrade General, I would like a glass of vodka. What I have seen…”

  “Leave us, Comrade Boros,” Kagan commanded.