Andrei said nothing. What could be happening? He had to see Stalin. He had failed in his mission, his career as an assassin was now over. But that had been pure bad luck. He had followed Trotsky home, with no idea that there were two other women in the flat. Now...surely he could still be useful. He had counted on the ten years he had worked for Stalin. Surely...
They all heard the feet on the stairs together. Jennie rose to her feet and faced the door, holding her breath. Andrei remained seated, but he also stared at the door. Then looked at Jennie. “If you do not open it, they will break it down,” he said.
Jennie got to her feet and opened the door. Four men stood there. “Comrade Gosykin,” one of them said, looking past her. “You are under arrest. You must come with us.”
Andrei stood up without a word. Jennie grasped the policeman’s arm. “There must be some mistake. My husband works for Comrade Stalin. How can he be arrested?”
“My warrant is signed by Comrade Stalin,” the man said.
Jennie turned to Andrei in consternation. “I am sure it will be sorted out,” Andrei said. “Where are you taking me, Comrade?”
“Why, to the Lubyanka, of course, Comrade Gosykin. You will be in familiar surroundings.”
Jennie paced up and down the antechamber watched by three secretaries. Tatiana had wanted to come too, but Jennie had persuaded her not to. She did not know to what lengths she would have to go to have Andrei released. That he should have been arrested at all was unthinkable. That he should not have immediately been released was incomprehensible.
The door to the inner office opened. “You may enter, Comrade Gosykinya.” Jennie hurried through the doorway, checking in dismay. Instead of Stalin, the man standing beside the desk, smiling at her, was Ivan Ligachev. She knew him, of course, but he was not the man she wished to see.
“Thank you, Peter Petrovich,” Ligachev said, and Jennie heard the door close behind her. “My dear Comrade Gosykinya!” Ligachev came forward, and took her hands. “Jennie! You do not mind if I call you Jennie?”
“No.” Jennie did not care what he called her. “Comrade Ligachev, something terrible has happened.”
“My name, to you, is Ivan,” Ligachev said. “We are surrounded by treachery and crimes against the state. Won’t you sit down?”
He was still holding her hands, but he released them and Jennie sank on to the chair before his desk. “I must see Comrade Stalin,” she said.
“Sadly, Comrade Stalin is both very busy and grief-stricken at this time: Sergei Kirov was perhaps his dearest friend. However, I can assure you that I have his complete confidence, and his instructions, to assist you in any way I can.”
“My husband has been arrested,” Jennie said. “The man said the orders were given by Comrade Stalin. That must be a mistake. I want Andrei released, Comrade Ligachev.”
“Ivan,” Ligachev reminded her, gently, and leaned forward across the desk. “Can it be that you do not know?”
“Know what? I only know that my husband has been a faithful servant of Comrade Stalin for more than ten years now.”
“That is true. Well, for most of the ten years. But do you not know the nature of your husband’s employment?”
“He is a colonel in the NKVD, and undertakes special diplomatic missions for Comrade Stalin.”
“Special diplomatic missions,” Ligachev said thoughtfully. “Yes, perhaps they could be so described. Jennie, you must brace yourself. You may not wish to hear what I have to tell you. But it is the truth. Andrei Gosykin is a professional assassin. He worked for Comrade Lenin. Almost his last duty for Comrade Lenin was to go to England and bring you, or any, Bolugayevski back to Russia. In effect, he kidnapped you.”
“That can’t be true. We...” she bit her lip.
“You fell in love rather rapidly. I think you should look at these.” He picked up several sheets of paper from his desk and held them out. Jennie hesitated before taking them from his hand. “They are an exchange of wireless telegrams between Gosykin and Comrade Lenin in 1922. You will note the dates.” Jennie could not believe what she was reading. This man was the father of her child. Ligachev went on, “It is generally accepted that Gosykin became quite fond of you as time went by. However, that did not curtail his activities. Do you remember that he had to leave you, just before Christmas 1923? It was then that your cousins Colin and Anna Bolugayevska, were shot.”
“I thought it was only Colin,” Jennie muttered.
“It was undoubtedly both, although Gosykin was only instructed to kill the so-called prince, so far as we know.”
“Andrei did that?”
“I am afraid so. It was shortly after this that he began to be employed by Comrade Stalin.” Ligachev selected his false dates with care. “Comrade Stalin was of course unaware of the true nature of Gosykin’s work. He wished to employ him because, as you and he supposed, Gosykin had worked for Comrade Lenin as a private ambassador. It was in this capacity that Gosykin was made a Colonel in the NKVD and given the task of persuading the kulaks that they should accept collectivisation.”
“He made a success of that,” Jennie protested, instinctively loyal even while she was trying to come to terms, less with the murder of Colin and Anna than with the knowledge that she had been wooed and won as part of a job of work. And made a mother!
“In his own peculiar manner,” Ligachev said. “It is only now coming to light how many people he ordered shot during that period. I am afraid the number is distressing. Certainly upwards of a million.”
Jennie could only stare at him. “A million people! Andrei killed a million people?”
“Men, women and children. Not all himself, you understand. But he certainly killed some with his bare hands. And we have evidence that it was his habit, when a number of kulaks had been rounded up, to choose the prettiest of the women and take her to his bed. Such immorality!” Ligachev sighed. “After having had the woman, Jennie, he had her shot as well. In every case.”
“Oh, my God!” Jennie whispered.
“In addition to all this, we have now learned that some three million people died from starvation as a result of his methods. Andrei Gosykin will go down to history as the greatest mass murderer of all time.” Jennie was panting. “He knew of course that he would be found out, eventually,” Ligachev went on. “So do you know what he did? Do you know where he went the last time?”
“He said Egypt.”
“He went to Istanbul and attempted to murder Trotsky.” Jennie’s jaw dropped. “He thought this fresh crime would atone for all his other crimes. As if Comrade Stalin would ever agree to the assassination of anyone, much less a Hero of the Revolution such as Comrade Trotsky.”
“But...did he succeed?”
“No. He botched the affair. He intended to kill your Aunt Sonia as well, of course. But the Trotskys had house guests. Your cousin Priscilla Bolugayevska, and her maid Grishka Tamara.”
Jennie gasped. “Priscilla? Grishka? In Istanbul?”
“It was the woman Tamara who opened the door to Gosykin’s knock. He shot her, but that gave Trotsky time to shoot at him and hit him. Gosykin escaped to a house belonging to a Russian citizen living in Istanbul who knew nothing of his true activities, just that he had been shot, and when he discovered that Gosykin was working for our government, as he claimed, arranged for his secret transportation back to Russia.”
“You say he shot Grishka? Is she all right?”
“Grishka Tamara is dead, Jennie.”
Jennie gave a little gasp, and Ligachev supposed she was about to faint. He leapt from his desk, poured a glass of water from the carafe waiting there and held it to her lips. Jennie sighed and raised her head. Oh, Grishka! Grishka had survived so much, so many experiences, only to be brought down by the hand of an assassin. Her husband! She stared at Ligachev. “Can it really be true?”
“You have seen the telegrams,” Ligachev said. “And as your husband has confessed to all of his crimes, you may, if you wish, hear it from h
is own lips. Would you like to do that? Would you like to see your husband?”
Jennie stared at him for several seconds. Then she said, “No. I would like to go home.”
“When she said go home,” Stalin asked. “What did she mean?”
“I assume she meant her apartment,” Ligachev said. “May I ask what is to happen to Gosykin, Comrade Chairman?”
“He has confessed everything we require?”
Ligachev smiled. “He is not so good at resisting what he has imposed on so many others.”
“Kamenev? Zinoviev? Bulganin?”
“He implicates them completely. Would you believe it, he even implicates Tuchachevsky? And quite a few other generals.”
Stalin began to fill his pipe. “That is excellent. Comrade Gosykin will be put on trial. Maximum publicity.”
Ligachev frowned. “But, Comrade Chairman...if he goes on trial in public and denounces half the Politburo...and people like Tuchachevsky, Commander of the Red Army...”
“You had better make sure he does, Ivan Ivanovich. You see,” Stalin said as he struck a match, “the trial of Gosykin and Nikolaiev will only be the first of many trials. It is necessary to weed out and destroy all those who would betray the Soviet State.”
Ligachev opened his mouth and then closed it again. There was absolutely no evidence, save for what had been planted in Gosykin’s tortured imagination, that people like Kamenev or Bulganin or Zinoviev, much less Tuchachevsky, had ever attempted to betray the Soviet Union. The various members of the Politburo might have opposed Stalin from time to time, but was everyone who ever opposed Stalin going to be shot? As for Tuchachevsky, his crime was having been Trotsky’s favourite general. But since Trotsky’s fall, Tuchachevsky had remained absolutely loyal to the State, and to the Army. However, arguing with his boss was the last thing he had in mind. “I will see to it, Comrade Chairman.”
“There are other matters to be cleared up, Ivan Ivanovich,” Stalin went on, now puffing contentedly. “Trotsky.”
“He has left Turkey, Comrade Chairman.”
“And gone where?”
“Nobody seems quite sure. There was some talk of Mexico.”
“I wish him found, Ivan Ivanovich. By someone who will not fail me.”
“I shall attend to it, Comrade Chairman. It will not be easy. Now that an attempt has been made, and failed, he will be on his guard. It may well have to be a suicide mission.” He gazed at Stalin’s expression. “But I will see to it.”
“Then there is Joseph Cromb.”
Ligachev looked away. “I do not understand how that happened, Comrade Chairman.”
“It is these confounded Bolugayevskis again, plotting against me,” Stalin grumbled. “You told me this Dagmar Steklova, as she now calls herself, hated her family. You told me that she would execute Cromb without hesitation. Now she has helped him escape, after murdering her own servant. That is inexcusable. And they have disappeared without trace.”
“In Siberia, with winter coming on, they are as good as dead, Comrade Chairman.”
Stalin shot him a glance. “You think so? I want them found, Ivan Ivanovich. I want them brought to Moscow, their bodies if they are dead, themselves if they are alive. I want to see them dead.”
Ligachev swallowed. “I will see to it, Comrade Chairman.” He hesitated. “And Gosykin’s woman? She is a Bolugayevska.”
“She is not to leave Russia,” Stalin said. “If she were to fall into the hands of some Western journalist there is no saying what she might tell him. But she is not to be liquidated along with her husband. That would be a shame. She is such a lovely woman.”
Ligachev gave another quick circle of the lips. “Would you like me to take care of her?”
Stalin gazed at him, and he flushed.
“Why, Ivan Ivanovich,” Stalin remarked. “I always thought you preferred little boys?”
*
“What do you think about it?” Jimmy Robbins asked his sister.
Priscilla had re-read the newspaper report of Gosykin’s trial and execution several times. “I suppose you’d think I was a savage if I told you my gut reaction is thank God there is some justice left in the world. That I think merely to shoot such a bastard is an absurdity. He should have been hanged, drawn and quartered.”
“Spoken like a Russian princess.”
Priscilla glared at him, and then smiled. “I guess I will always be a Russian princess.”
Jimmy made no reply to that. “Seems as if Gosykin was just part of a huge conspiracy, going on all these other big shots who’ve been arrested.”
“Stalin hinted at something big,” Priscilla said.
“Am I glad you are out of it! You are out of it now, Sis. Colin and Anna have been avenged, Joe has been avenged, Grishka has been avenged...”
“I wonder what has happened to Jennie? Do you think I let her down by not going to see her?”
“No. I would say that as she knew what her husband was doing you wouldn’t have had anything to say to her.”
Priscilla sighed. “She was such a sweet child. I think it’s quite tragic that her life has turned out as it has. It’s all Sonia’s fault. If she hadn’t written that letter...”
“There’s no point in looking that far back,” Jimmy said. “Speaking of Sonia, she must be as relieved as anyone that Gosykin has got his just desserts. Where did you say she and Trotsky are now?”
“They said something about going to Mexico.”
“Well, they should be safe there. Now, Sis, there’s this party at the Lawrence’s on Saturday...”
“Not another man you’ve found for me,” Priscilla protested.
“I just hate to think of you wasting your life, now you’ve turned forty.”
“And that bothers you? Jimmy, I’ve been through two husbands, three if you count Joe. Good God, four if you count the year I spent with Rotislav. I’ve had all the male attention any woman should be required to experience in one lifetime. Now there’s only one man in my life: Alexei. He’s going to be a great surgeon, and I am going to bask in his reflected glory in my old age.”
“You’re looking far ahead,” Jimmy pointed out, “he’s only just started medical school, and you have only just turned forty. And what harm can one party do?”
“Oh, isn’t that the post?”
Caroline was already there, and returned with a handful of letters. “Here’s one for you, Prissy,” she said with some surprise. Priscilla did not receive a lot of letters. “It’s from Shanghai.”
Priscilla was on the bridge as the SS Tarawa nosed her way into the mouth of the great Yangste-Kiang; Captain Richardson had been made aware by his San Francisco agent that this woman was a member of the Cromb family of Boston and should be extended every privilege. As to why she was visiting Shanghai, he had no idea. But she seemed in a great hurry to get there, even if she had an ongoing ticket for when his ship left again in three days’ time — and for a double cabin which only she was presently occupying. He mistrusted women of mystery. “You understand, Mrs Mann,” he explained anxiously as the sea walls came into view, and the Chinese pilot walked up and down, “that this ain’t exactly the most salubrious part of the world at this moment.”
“What is the latest news?” Priscilla asked.
Maybe he might glean a glimmer of information now. “Well, Mrs Mann, like I said, it’s not the healthiest place in the world right this minute. There’s the Chinese City, occupied by people who claim to be faithful to Chiang Kai-Shek, but who’re really paddling their own canoes. Half of them are secretly Communist, and the Commies are engaged in a civil war with Chiang’s people. Then there’s the International Concession, outside of the city, where the Europeans, Americans and Japanese live. All the foreign nationalities have their own contingents of soldiers in and around the Concession, what they call Concession Guards, but they’re all regulars. Now there has always been a lot of angst between the Europeans and the Chinese, ever since the Brits shot up some students more than
ten years ago. Now in addition there’s this on-going trouble between China and Japan, so the Japs have raised their body of Concession Guards to more than battalion strength, and they’re not above taking pot shots at any Chinks they don’t like the look of. You could say Shanghai is like a volcano waiting to erupt.” He paused, hopefully.
“Well, I’m only going to be there as long as you, I hope,” Priscilla said. “But where exactly is the city?” There was nothing immediately visible on either bank, both were half hidden in the morning mist.
“Shanghai is actually up a tributary called the Whang-po,” Richardson explained. “That’s a few miles away on our left. You’ll start to see the pagodas in half an hour.”
“Tell me...it is possible to get into the Chinese City?”
Richardson gazed at her in consternation. “You can’t go in there.”
“You mean it’s forbidden?”
“It’s not forbidden. You can get papers. But...you’d need an escort.”
“May I ask your reason for entering the Chinese City, Mrs Mann?” inquired the American consular official.
He was disturbingly young, certainly not more than thirty-five, and had a broken nose. She had asked to see the consul himself, and had not entirely believed it when she had been told he was unfortunately out of Shanghai at this time. So she was left with this overgrown youth. “There is someone I wish to meet,” she told him. “Someone I have to meet.”
She had refused even to think from the moment she received Joseph’s letter. It had taken several months to reach her, and he had been in extreme distress when he had written it. Jimmy and Caroline had again tried to convince her that he would probably be dead before she could possibly find him. But she had been told so often in the past that he was dead. And when they had realised that she would never be able to live a normal life if she did not go and learn the truth for herself, they had helped her in every possible way. Now she was so close . . . but Joseph had told her he could not leave his hiding place in the Chinese City.
The Red Gods Page 28
