The Red Gods

by Christopher Nicole

  They encountered virtually no resistance: the shooting of Father Peter and the hetman Voloshin had seen to that. Over the next few days the kulaks and their families stood outside their houses and watched their cattle being driven away, their fields divided into very small holdings, their personal possessions ransacked and anything of value appropriated by the soldiers. Andrei left them each a single cow, a table, four chairs, and their personal photographs. “There is only Korolov left,” Captain Boldin said at the end of the week. “I am informed that he will resist. And he has apparently prepared himself.”

  “Then let us do our duty,” Andrei said.

  “Excellent.” Stalin beamed at his protégé. “You have done a brilliant job, Andrei Vassilievich. Now we can move on to our next step. A five-year plan. I have made all the preparations. In five years from now we will have turned Russia from an agricultural to an industrial society. What do you think of these?”

  Andrei scanned the sheet of paper. “These are very severe targets, Comrade. Some might say they are unattainable.”

  “They will be attained, Andrei Vassilievich. People never know what they can do until they try. Until they are driven to it, eh?”

  “Am I to command this operation, Comrade?”

  “In the course of time. We shall see how it goes.”

  Andrei nodded. “I am glad of that. My staff has made up an estimate of how many people have died over the past four years, as a result of the collectivisation programme.”

  “That is very efficient of them. Do you mean you have had them count every body?”

  “The total is approximate. But we are speaking of well over a million. The figure could be much higher. We have also sent to the various gulags at least another million people, again perhaps considerably more. It is realistic to consider these people as also dead. There has also been another famine, as you know. My people estimate that not fewer than three million people have died over the past year from starvation. That is a total of several million Russian people, who are dead or soon will be dead.”

  “I asked you once before, Andrei Vassilievich, whether a million deaths bother you. You told me no.”

  “I am bothered by world opinion should these figures ever get out.”

  Stalin smiled. “I do not see how they ever can, as those who might wish to publicise them are, as you have said, either dead, or in suitable gulags. In any event, the West is entirely preoccupied by this financial crisis they have inflicted upon themselves. Everyone appears to be bankrupt. There is every possibility of some revolutions over there, certainly in places like Germany. Not,” he added, as he saw Andrei’s eyes light up, “that I intend that we should become involved in such goings-on, at least overtly.”

  “There have been financial crashes before,” Andrei said. “Which have eventually been sorted out.”

  “Oh, absolutely. However, I have anticipated the possibility, and I am arranging to have the outside world suitably distracted, while at the same time leading them to understand that we are still facing a good deal of opposition inside the country, opposition fomented by the capitalists of the West, and opposition which any sane man must realise we have to deal with. This new dam we are building is employing a large number of foreign technicians.”

  “Whom you invited here under safe-conducts, Comrade.”

  “In good faith, Andrei Vassilievich. How was I to know they would turn out to be a nest of spies and saboteurs.” Andrei frowned. “This has been proven?”

  “Not yet. But it will be proven, when there has been a series of sabotage attempts at the dam, attempts which will be linked to the foreign technicians.”

  “You think the world will believe this?”

  “They will have to believe it. I am planning a show trial which will attract attention from all over the world, at the end of which the technicians, having been found guilty, will be sentenced to death. That will powerfully distract the minds of the Western governments. I anticipate that that they will be very happy to, how do they say, play ball, with us, to get their people, their guilty people, back.”

  Andrei scratched his nose. The more he grew to know this man, the more he grew to understand how devious, and how ruthless, was his personality. This could not help but arouse disquieting thoughts: his own existence depended entirely upon Stalin’s need to employ him. When that need ceased, he could not anticipate any degree of comradeship sustaining him. So, he had to keep on being more useful than anyone else in the country. “Is this my next brief?” he asked.

  “No, no,” Stalin said. “I do not think you would be suited to legal niceties and undercover work. You are essentially a front runner. And I know that, despite your protestations, you have been affected by your recent task. You are disturbed at having had to eliminate so many ‘Russians’, as you call them. My dear Andrei, a Russian is only someone who either belongs to the Party, or does what the Party tells him to do. All others are aliens. However, I am sure you need a change of scenery, shall we say. I am going to allow you to go after the biggest alien of them all, Andrei Vassilievich.”

  Andrei took a deep breath. “Trotsky?”

  “He has now been exiled for several years. I doubt many people remember him, or would care if they did. Besides, it is necessary, now. If there is going to be a great deal of unrest in the West, we do not want Trotsky attempting to take advantage of it. Now Andrei, I wish you to take your time, and plan very carefully. There must be no mistake about this. Were Trotsky to survive an assassination attempt, it would be bad for us.”

  “There will be no mistake, Comrade Chairman.”

  “You have made mistakes before, Andrei Vassilievich. Did you not fail to kill Colin Bolugayevski the first time you were sent against him?”

  “That was a long time ago, Comrade Chairman. I do not make mistakes like that nowadays.”

  “And you also failed to kill Anna Bolugayevska, when you had her at your mercy.”

  “That too is a mistake I will not repeat,” Andrei insisted. “In any event, as we have heard nothing of her for eight years, she is undoubtedly dead.”

  “I would like to hope so. Well, then, deal with Trotsky.”

  “And the woman?”

  “Oh, her as well, certainly.”

  They walked in the Lenin Hills, as the slopes north of the city had been renamed. Andrei and Jennie were hand in hand, while ten-year-old Tatiana bounced in front of them, picking wild flowers and singing, auburn hair flowing in the breeze. She was the happiest child, and gave every promise of taking after both her mother and her grandmother, Jennie thought. But then, they were such a happy family. Jennie was desperately sorry that Joseph had never bothered to reply to her letters. Nor had Andrei’s attempts to contact him in London been successful; he had apparently left England for America, presumably with Priscilla and Alexei, and had left no forwarding address. Jennie had even tried writing the Cromb family in Boston — Andrei had mailed the letter for her — but there had never been a reply. She was definitely estranged from her family. How she wished they could come to Russia and see her, and understand how, far from making a mistake, she was happier than she could ever have been in the West.

  Her only true sadness was the regular absence of her husband for long periods. But she understood how hard he was working at making Uncle Josers plans and ambitions understood by the people, and she could see how successful he was, by the adulation and respect, almost the awe, in which he was held by the rest of the Party. The material consequences of his success were also very evident. Apart from their five-room apartment, they now had the use of a Party car as well as, on the rare occasions when he could spare the time, a Party dacha in the Crimea, the Russian riviera so dimly remembered from her childhood.

  And the absences were more than made up for by the glorious time they had when he was home. He adored her, and made it very evident whenever they were together. She worried about him, because whenever he first came home from one of his trips he was so obviously exhausted, in body
and mind, as if he had gone through some traumatic experience. Well, that she could understand. If she had to travel for days on end making speeches to ignorant muzhiks she would be fairly traumatised at the end of it. She sometimes thought he was working too hard, and complained to Uncle Josef about it. Uncle Josef was what she called the Party Chairman because he had asked her to do so. Uncle Josef was very fond of her, and she spent a lot of time in the company of his daughters and his new wife. She knew all about the tragedy of his first wife the previous year; Nadya Stalin had committed suicide, why, no one seemed entirely sure. She had asked Andrei about it, and he had preferred not to discuss it.

  Uncle Joe was such a kind and gentle man she could not imagine why Nadya had killed herself. Certainly he could not have been kinder and more gentle to her. He had known Mother, of course, and admired her. Not in Siberia. He had not been a member of that original group of exiles. But he had met Mother in Moscow during the abortive revolt of 1905, and could not stop praising both her beauty and her resolve. Mother had had that effect on a lot of people. Uncle Josef had agreed that Andrei was perhaps working too hard. “But soon he will be having a rest,” he assured her. “A proper vacation.”

  How she longed for that moment. But she knew it was not yet, as they rolled together in the long grass, Tatiana jumping up and down beside them. “I have to leave again tomorrow,” he said.

  Jennie sat up. “Oh, Andrei!”

  “This will not be a long trip,” he assured her. “Not more than a month. And when it is done, I have been promised a proper holiday. Will you not enjoy that?”

  “Oh, yes,” she said.

  *

  Priscilla sat very straight, knees pressed together, as she listened to the feet on the stairs. She looked neither to left nor right at the elegance of the sitting room in the Boston apartment. The room was not as large as the average sitting room in Bolugayen Palace, but it was every bit as elegantly furnished. Carlie had gone out of his way to let her appoint it as she might have done in her previous existence. And all for what?

  The footsteps stopped outside the door, and remained stopped, for several seconds. It had to be worse than she had feared. The door opened, and she stood up.

  Carlisle Mann the Third stepped in. He was a big, handsome man. In a vague way he had always reminded her of Alexei, which had made him the more acceptable in her bed. But he was considerably younger than Alexei had been, even when they had married, before the war. Carlie was only five years older than herself. He had inherited money, and had expanded his wealth. But it had all been in shares. He had had no solidity, such as the Cromb Shipping Line, behind him. That had hardly seemed important, when the value of his shares had been added up. So, some went down from time to time, but others went up. It had never seemed possible for them all to go down together. Thus marriage to Carlie had taken her back into the good times, the great parties, the yachting holidays, the trips to Europe...they had done the proper thing and honeymooned in Venice.

  Carlie had accepted that he was buying extreme beauty, and a wildly romantic background; he had never imagined he was buying love. But she had accepted that he was buying the use of her body, that if he never referred to her rape and the year she had spent as the sexual plaything of her first husband’s valet he still had that part of her life very much in his mind at all times, and had responded to the best of her ability. She would, indeed, willingly have had a child, or more than one, for him. But that hadn’t happened.

  As for thinking about Joe, well, she had expected that to fade. But it hadn’t, and now she knew it wouldn’t. There was too much guilt involved. She had allowed herself to be persuaded there was nothing she could do and surrendered to family pressure. She had feared that would happen if she ever returned to Boston, and it had happened. Maybe Joe was dead. If he was, he hadn’t been properly mourned. But the far worse thought was that he was alive in some Russian prison camp, the helpless plaything of Communist sadism. He would be dreaming of her, as he suffered, while she lived in luxury.

  She had even drifted apart from Grishka. Grishka was still there, of course. Grishka was solidly permanent in the life of a Bolugayevska. But Grishka, who had loved Joe just as much as herself, and still did, made her feel most guilty of all. Grishka had never said a word. But her eyes were too expressive for her thoughts not to be understood. Left to herself, Grishka would be in Russia, fighting, and if necessary dying, to save Joe. Even Alexei had drifted away from her. That was not actually to do with Joe, she knew. Alexei was a teenager now, and going to an exclusive private school. To survive in those surroundings, he had to be an American first and a Russian second, and a prince last of all. This attitude he had necessarily brought home in the holidays, and in it he had been encouraged by his stepfather. Priscilla could not fault Carlie as a stepfather.

  He treated Alexei as his own. But he wanted an American as his son, not a Russian prince.

  The most difficult thing of all to accept was her growing realisation that Alexei actually enjoyed this new life more than any other he could remember, because his childhood, for all its material advantages, had been surrounded with crisis. As she had once remarked to Joe, he had never known anything but war, until they had fled Sevastopol. But his new life had left her adrift. It was not that easy for her to change, even if she had wanted to. She was the Princess Dowager Bolugayevska, and she had never wanted to be anything else. Nor did her wide circle of social friends wish her to be anything else. “Darling, you must meet Carlie’s wife, Priscilla. Priscilla was the Princess Bolugayevska when she was in Russia.”

  Without that last sentence, she was merely a very lovely woman. With the addition of that last sentence, she became every man’s dream. And Carlie’s proudest possession. She even continued to defy fashion and wear her hair long; she was a Russian princess. She wondered if she was still his proudest possession. She was the only possession he still had.

  “How did it go?” she asked.

  “It didn’t. There isn’t any market for million-dollar yachts right this minute.”

  “But you’d settle for less.”

  “Princess...” his favourite name for her, “I would settle for anything. But there wasn’t anything.”

  “Nothing?”

  “There was not a single, solitary bid.”

  “But there will be, one day. I mean, a ship like that...”

  “Is now repossessed by the yard. Unpaid bills from her last refit.”

  “Oh, my God!” Priscilla sat down again. They had struggled on for four years since the crash, with steadily dwindling resources. First of all the house on Long Island had gone, for a pittance, then the ski lodge in Vermont, then the apartment in Miami. That had brought them down to this apartment in Boston. She knew this was also gone, like all the others, for a fraction of its price; they were due to move out the following week. But the yacht had always remained in the background, solid as a rock, to tide them over until things picked up again.

  “So,” Carlie said, “I’m afraid that’s it. I am cleaned out. Don’t worry, I’ve had a word with Jimmy. They’ll look after you and the boy. Things are bad at Cromb, but they’re not busted. You’ll eat.”

  “Carlie,” Priscilla said. “I’m your wife. Your problems are my problems.” She forced a smile. “I’ve been busted before. Anyway, what about Roosevelt? All this legislation he’s passing...”

  “Roosevelt’s legislation is designed to help the poor of this country. Not people like us,” Carlie said. “As for us...you have never been my wife. You’ve been my toy. I bought you. Don’t get me wrong. I’ve enjoyed having you. I can’t think of a woman I’ve ever met I’d rather have between the sheets. But I knew the odds. Frankly, I never expected them to change quite so drastically. But as they have...” he shrugged. “I’m releasing you, Princess. The cage door is open. So flap your wings and fly away, and I wish you every good fortune in the world.” He closed the door.

  For several seconds Priscilla sat absolutely still. She had
never understood that he was as aware of the situation as that. But she couldn’t just walk away from him...and then she heard the shot.

  Chapter 12 - The Quest

  Jimmy and Caroline walked away from the graveside, one on each side of Priscilla and Alexei; Grishka walked behind. Like Caroline and Grishka, all wore black.

  There had been quite a few other people at the funeral; Carlie Mann the Third had been popular, although that had been, in part, because of his lavish hospitality. Now the mourners were all leaving as rapidly; it is difficult to know what to say to the widow of a suicide. The door of the limousine was held open and they got into the back. Priscilla, Caroline and Grishka sat together, facing Jimmy and Alexei. Jimmy took off his hat, and sighed. “If only he’d told us how bad things were. If only you’d told us, Sis.”

  “I couldn’t tell you,” Priscilla said. “If Carlie didn’t wish to. He had his pride.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know myself how bad things were. I knew he was bust. I knew all the houses were gone. I knew my jewellery was gone. I knew there wasn’t going to be all that much left, that we were going to have to start from scratch, that Alex was going to have to leave private school, but...” she glanced at Grishka. “We have started from scratch before.” She gazed at Alexei, who reached across to squeeze her hand.

  “I am fifteen now, Mother,” he reminded her. “I can leave school and get a job.”

  “What as?” Priscilla asked.

  Jimmy took Priscilla into the study, closed the door. “Drink?”

  “Yes, please. Champagne.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Was it that bad?”

  “It was not really bad at all. Carlie was a very nice person. But I am a Russian princess. We drink champagne to mourn as well as to celebrate.”

  “I’ll see what I can find.” She sat patiently until he returned with a bottle of Clicquot. But all the time the resolve was hardening in her mind. She could do nothing about Carlie, now. But she could set her own life back on track. Jimmy filled two glasses, sat beside her. “I suppose I should apologise.”