The Red Gods

by Christopher Nicole

  “He is as right-wing as anybody, and is already quarrelling with the Chinese Communists. And what do we do? Still nothing. I told them that the Revolution must expand. And they shouted me down. They were led by Stalin, of course. To him, the world ends at the Vistula and the Amur. But he is not even going to get to the Vistula.”

  Sonia refilled his glass. He had put forward this same argument so often before, and been rejected every time. But she wanted him to calm down; she had so much to tell him. “Is there not now a Socialist government in England?” she ventured.

  “Bah! A bunch of fellow travellers. They are not revolutionaries. Can you imagine Ramsay MacDonald or Arthur Henderson ever shooting someone? And they are only in power because the other parties are divided. Oh, they are offering to hold trade negotiations with us. Stalin is delighted. Trade! I am not interested in trade.”

  That had obviously been the wrong tack. “Things will be different when you are Party Chairman,” she suggested.

  “I am not going to be Party Chairman,” Trotsky growled.

  “But, who...?”

  “Who do you think? I told you, Stalin has the others eating out of his hand.”

  “But Lenin’s opinions! Is not Krupskaya going to publish them?”

  “No, she is not. She says in the interests of Party unity to publish them would create discord.”

  Sonia sat down. They had both regarded Lenin’s ‘opinions’, and especially his derogatory remarks about Stalin, as their trumps. “I must speak with her.”

  “Do you suppose it will do you any good? She has burned them.”

  Sonia got up again, took a glass of vodka for herself. “Leon! You must act. You must use the Army. You must take over the state.”

  “Are you mad? I was not given the Army to carry out a counter-revolution. No, we must be patient. Let Stalin become Chairman. His incompetence will soon become apparent to everyone, and then he will be voted out. Then there will only be me left. All I have to do is drop my insistence. upon carrying the Revolution abroad, until the time is ripe. You’ll see.”

  Sonia knelt before him. “Leon, if you let Stalin become Chairman he will destroy you.”

  “That oaf?”

  “I don’t believe he is quite as dull as he likes to pretend. I think he is dangerous.”

  Trotsky squeezed her shoulder. “And I think you are imagining things. I can handle Stalin. Now, what was that letter you were reading when I came in?” Sonia got up and went to the table, picked up the letter and gave it to him. “From that rascal Cromb? You should have let me shoot him, back in 1919.”

  Trotsky scanned the words. “I am sorry your son has been killed,” he said. “But he was a Tsarist.”

  “Who do you think killed him?”

  “Who knows? Probably some other Tsarist.”

  “You knew nothing of it?”

  He looked up. “Me? Would I have sanctioned the execution of your son, even if he was a Tsarist?”

  Oddly, she believed him. “And Anna?”

  “I’m afraid that I must agree with Cromb. She is almost certainly dead too. The police have simply not found her body yet.”

  “You are speaking of my children!”

  “Well, what am I supposed to say?”

  “You haven’t finished the letter.”

  Trotsky frowned as he read. “He wants to come here looking for Jennie Gosykinya? The fellow is demented.”

  “Can you not give him a safe-conduct?”

  “To what purpose?”

  “I think he is entitled at least to speak with his sister.”

  “His sister happens to be Andrei Gosykin’s wife. He would be putting his head in a noose.”

  “You mean Gosykin would kill him? I don’t think so. Gosykin is not a mere murderer, Leon; he is a professional assassin. He kills when he is paid to kill, and he kills who he is paid to kill. And now there is no one left to pay him. Jennie may well be very happy to leave him.”

  “You are wrong,” Trotsky said. “Jennie does not know what he does. And he is most certainly being paid. By Stalin.”

  Sonia’s jaw dropped.

  Trotsky shrugged. “It is certainly being rumoured, and the rumours are not being denied. Stalin has taken over everything of Lenin’s that he can.”

  “Including his tame hit-man. And you can still accept the idea of his becoming Party Chairman?”

  Trotsky gazed at her for several seconds, then chuckled. “You think he would send Gosykin to assassinate me? He would not dare. I am Commissar for the Army. He may become Chairman of the Party, but I am still the most powerful man in Russia.”

  Only if the Army backs you, Sonia thought. But she merely said, “Then will you give Joseph Cromb a safe-conduct in and out of Russia, to visit his sister?”

  Trotsky shrugged. “The blood will be on your head.”

  *

  “Comrade Bolugayevska!” Jennie opened the door wide, while casting a hasty glance over her shoulder; she was at the best of times not the most tidy of women, and now the small apartment was festooned with lines from which hung nappies. “If I had known you were coming...”

  “I know,” Sonia said. “It is most inconvenient to be invaded like this. But I do need to see you. May I come in?”

  “Oh, yes, please. Do forgive me.” Jennie stepped back while Sonia entered, then, after a hasty glance into the corridor to make sure her visitor was alone, she closed the door.

  Sonia looked around her, nose wrinkling. In fact, the squalor and the smell were not so very different to that in almost every Moscow apartment she had ever visited. What was distressing was the appearance of Jennie herself. She remained a most attractive woman, with her flowing auburn hair and her big, handsome Bolugayevski features but she was most shabbily dressed, and she looked undernourished and generally unhappy. “How is Tatiana?” she asked.

  Jennie’s smile was as delightful as ever. “Oh, fine! She’s asleep. Would you like to see her?”

  “When she awakes,” Sonia suggested. If I am still here, she thought.

  “Yes. Do please sit down.” Jennie scooped clothes off one of the two chairs. “Would you like some tea?”

  Sonia sat down. “That would be very nice.” She watched Jennie fussing over the samovar. “I have received some news from England,” she said. Jennie turned, face instantly watchful. “Some of it is very sad,” Sonia went on. “For me, at least. Colin is dead.”

  “Colin? But...”

  “You thought he was dead anyway,” Sonia said. “Well, so did I. But apparently he was actually alive and living in Paris, down to December. Then he was murdered. Just before Christmas.”

  “Oh, Aunt Sonia!” Jennie hurried across the room to embrace her. “I am so terribly sorry. But...murdered? Why? By whom?”

  “No one knows why, yet. Also Anna has disappeared.”

  “Oh, gosh! But...”

  She clearly did not understand. “She was living with him, in Paris.”

  “In Paris?” Jennie frowned. “Priscilla let her do that?”

  “I shouldn’t think Priscilla had any choice in the matter; as long as he was alive, Colin was the head of the family.”

  “And now...do you think she has been murdered too?”

  “Joseph thinks it is highly likely.”

  Jennie made the tea. “I am so terribly sorry, Aunt Sonia,” she said again. “You don’t think any of this was because of...what I did?”

  “I shouldn’t think so. As I said, no one knows why it happened. According to Joseph, Colin was involved in a great many, demi-monde activities. The French police have no leads at all.”

  Jennie sipped her tea. She didn’t know what else to say. She knew of course that this woman had been estranged from her children for something like half their lives, and she personally had never liked Anna. She could not remember Colin at all. But for them both to have been murdered was simply awful! “I came here to tell you this,” Sonia said, “because I felt you should know; the news is hardly likely t
o be reported by Pravda. But I also came to tell you that Joseph is coming to Russia.” Jennie raised her head so suddenly she spilled her tea. “To see you,” Sonia said.

  “Me? But...”

  “Don’t you want to see him?”

  “Well...” Jennie flushed. “Of course I would like to see him. But isn’t it very dangerous for him to enter Russia?”

  “I have secured him a visa and a safe-conduct, signed by Trotsky. He is coming to ask you to return to England with him.”

  “But why? I’m married. Moscow is my home! Andrei would never allow it. He’d not let me take Tattie, anyway.”

  “You would have to elope, yes.” Sonia drank her tea. “With your own brother. But it could be arranged.”

  “You’re talking as if I should wish to leave Andrei my husband. I love him.”

  Sonia regarded her for several seconds, then she stood up. “I must go. I will let you know when Joseph arrives.”

  Jennie stood up. “I would be very grateful if you would write him and ask him not to come.”

  “I’m sorry. I think it is very necessary that he comes.”

  “I do not wish to see him, Aunt Sonia.”

  “You just said you did. And I think you should. I think if you do not, you will be behaving in a very unnatural way, as well as a very guilty way. If you truly love Andrei, and Andrei truly loves you, then surely you can persuade Joseph of those facts, and then he will probably give you his blessing. Thank you for the tea.”

  Jennie stared at the door for some moments after it had closed. Then she sat at the table with a block of writing paper; she would write Joe herself, and ask him not to come.

  *

  “Well,” Priscilla said, as she and Alexei stood on the dock at Southampton beneath the shadow of the Mauretania. “I guess now that England has a Socialist government is as good a time as any to be leaving. I wish you were coming with me. I’m scared stiff.”

  “What for?”

  “Oh...leaving you on your own. Do you realise this will be the first time we have been separated? And to think of you going off to Russia...”

  “And no fears for yourself’?”

  “Lots. The idea of facing a whole new world, I guess.”

  “It’s your world. You were born and bred there.”

  “I was born there. I was bred, properly, on Bolugayen. And anyway the world I was born into no longer exists, if everything one reads in the papers is true. Gansgters, speakeasies...”

  “Never in Boston,” he chided. “And Jimmy is over the moon that you’re coming home.”

  She gave a little shudder and pulled her fur coat more tightly round herself. “Alex!” she called. “Come back here!” The boy had wandered off to be closer to the giant ship, and the dock was a mass of milling passengers, people, seeing them off, stevedores and officials, while Grishka, officially in charge, was too obviously awestruck, both by the size of the ship and by the life to which she was being whisked: if there was one thing Grishka would never have anticipated it was that one day she would find herself going to America. “Jimmy,” Priscilla muttered. “I’ve never even met his wife.”

  “Listen,” he told her. “Just remember that you are the Princess Dowager of Bolugayen.”

  “I’m sure I’m not going to be allowed to forget that; raped by the Reds...they’ll probably charge admission for anyone to meet me. Joe!” She clung to his arm. “How long?”

  “You’ll be back for Christmas,” he promised her. “It shouldn’t take longer than that for me to sort this business out.” He was still waiting for his visa.

  *

  “Tell me something,” Stalin said. “You had no idea that Anna Bolugayevska was living with her brother? Was in his apartment when you shot him?”

  “You know how I work, Comrade,” Andrei said. He was disturbed that the business of Colin Bolugayevski’s death should be raised again after several months. When he had completed an assignment he liked to forget it. “I am given a subject, choose my moment when there will be no one around, knock on the door, ascertain the subject is there, do what I have to do, and leave. Waiting to see if there is anyone else in the apartment would be highly dangerous. There could be more than one.”

  “But you spoke to Bolugayevski before shooting him? To ascertain who he was? Do you suppose this girl heard you?”

  “The door to the bedroom was ajar.”

  “So it is very likely this woman heard your voice. Had you ever met her?”

  “Yes,” Andrei said. “I met her in London.”

  “Then she would have recognised your voice?”

  “She could have.” Andrei looked up. “But if she did, why has she done nothing about it? Called the police? Denounced me? Instead, she has vanished into thin air.”

  “From what I have been able to learn, the French police think whoever killed Bolugayevski killed her as well. That is you. You are sure you did not? She is a Bolugayevska,” Stalin observed, in his quiet tones. “As I understand it, that means she is by definition a most attractive woman. Or indeed, girl.”

  “Comrade Stalin,” Andrei said. “I did not rape Anna Bolugayevska. Nor kill her. I never saw her. I did what I had to do, and left. I was on a train out of Paris at eight o’clock that night. I still have the ticket to prove it.”

  “Eight o’clock is two hours after the murder,” Stalin pointed out. “As established by the French Sitrete.”

  “I walked to the railway station. I always do this. I do not take the risk of a taxi driver remembering a fare from the scene of the crime, or even near the scene of the crime, to a station.”

  “Very cautious,” Stalin agreed. “So, explain the girl for me?”

  Andrei had been considering that question. “There are two possible solutions, Comrade, but both lead to the same conclusion. It seems clear that she was living with her brother, as some of her clothes were found in his apartment. So the first possibility is that she was out when I visited him, returned, found the body, and then ran away without notifying anyone. The second is that she was in the apartment all the time, but as I use a silencer she must have been unaware of what was happening until after I left.”

  “And grabbed a few clothes and ran away without notifying the police?”

  “You have not heard my conclusion, Comrade. That is a one-bedroom apartment. Bolugayevski had just left his bed; he was naked save for a blanket wrapped round his waist. The girl was not in the lounge. Therefore if she was at home she was in the bedroom as well. With her naked brother. Even if she was out, there seems no doubt that she was living there, sharing a bedroom, with her brother.”

  “The decadence of the aristocracy, even the ex-aristocracy, never ceases to disgust me,” Stalin said. “So you think she was afraid to go to the police in case her incestuous relationship with her brother was discovered? But that does not explain what has happened to her, how she managed to vanish into thin air. A sixteen-year-old girl?”

  “I agree that is a mystery. But as she has vanished into thin air...”

  “Filled with a desire for vengeance, Andrei Vassilievich.”

  “Do you suppose I am afraid of a sixteen-year-old girl?”

  “Well,” Stalin remarked, “she will not always be sixteen, you know. And if she recognised your voice, she knows where you live and to whom you are married.”

  “Are you suggesting, Comrade, that I should start looking for her?”

  “That would be a waste of time. I merely suggest that you should keep her in mind. No, we have more important fish to fry. This Bolugayevski family is proving very useful to us. I presume you remember your brother-in-law?”

  Andrei frowned. “Yes.”

  “Well, he is coming here.”

  Andrei sat up. “To Moscow?”

  “That is apparently his intention.”

  “He is a Tsarist.”

  “Oh, quite. However, the visit is a private one, to see his sister. Your wife.”

  “He has permission to do this?”
/>   “Given by Trotsky.”

  “But you can countermand such permission.”

  “Perhaps I can. But why should I? Trotsky is a highly regarded member of the Politburo. If he wishes to bring a Tsarist to Russia he must have a reason, would you not say?”

  Andrei stared at him, and Stalin stroked his moustache. “A better reason, surely, than merely to see his happily married sister. I am just about ready to move against our friend,” Stalin said. “I have material which should be sufficient to convince even a blockhead like Kamenev that Trotsky is a danger to the state, and there is more coming along every day, with this English scandal about correspondence between us and the Labour Government. I am informed they may well fall, and there can be no doubt that if there was such a letter, Trotsky inspired it. However, every little helps, and when the stupid man goes out of his way to give us additional ammunition, well, one should use it.”

  “But if Cromb is merely coming here to visit with his sister...” Andrei said.

  “My dear Andrei Vassilievich, that is the reason he is giving for coming here. But you and I know better than that, don’t we? As for example, we remember that Trotsky gave this known Tsarist safe-conduct once before, to enable him to regain his own lines during the Civil War. Now why do you suppose he did that? Remember,” Stalin said. “what we are looking for is evidence, not assassination.”

  “I understand.”

  “Cromb will have to be put up at an hotel, obviously,” Stalin went on. “There could not possibly be room for him in your apartment. By the way...does your wife know what you do for a living?”

  “She merely knows that I work for the Party.”

  Andrei smiled as he left the office. But he really had a lot on his mind. Using Joseph Cromb as a trap to bring down Trotsky did not really concern him, save that he would not wish Jennie, of whom he was genuinely fond, to find out. But it was a disconcerting thought that somewhere out there in the world was someone who knew who and what he was, and who had a reason for striking back at him. He had never been in such a position before. When he struck, it was always silently and secretly. No possible witness had ever seen his face, and if one or two might have heard his voice, they had nothing to relate it to; he spoke English, French and German fluently, and with hardly a trace of accent. But now...