Archangel (Mass Market Paperback)

by Robert Harris

  LATER: In the darkness, the sound of cars. He is home.

  12.6.51 This is a day! I can hardly set it down. My hand shakes so. (It did not at the time but now it does!) At seven I go to the kitchen. Valechka is already up, sorting through a great mess of broken crockery glass, spilled food, which lies in a heap in the centre of a big tablecloth. She explains how the table is cleared every night: two guards each take two corners of the cloth and carry everything out! So our first task every morning is to rescue all that isn't broken, and wash it. As we work, Valechka explains the routine of the house. He rises quite late and sometimes likes to work in the garden. Then he goes to the Kremlin and his quarters are cleaned He never returns before nine or ten in the evening, and then there is a dinner At two or three He goes to bed This happens seven days a week. The rules: when one approaches Him, do so openly. He hates it when people creep up on Him. If a door has to be knocked on, knock upon it loudly don’t stand around don’t speak unless you are spoken to. And if you do have to speak, always look Him in the eyes.

  She prepares a simple breakfast of coffee, bread and meat, and takes it out. Later she asks me to collect the tray Before I go, she makes me tie up my hair and turn around while she examines me. I will do, she says. She says He is working at a table at the edge of the lawn on the south side of the house. Or was. He moves restless, from place to place. It is His way The guards will know where to look.

  What can I write of this moment? I am calm. You would have been proud of me. I remember what to do. I walk around the edge of the lawn and approach Him in plain view. He’s sitting on a bench, alone, bent over some papers. The tray is on a table beside Him. He glances up at my approach, and then returns to His work. But as I walk away across the grass - then, I swear I feel His eyes upon my back, all the way until I’m out of sight. Valechka laughs at my white face.

  I don't see Him again after that.

  Just now (it is after ten): the sound of cars.

  14.6.51 Last night. Late. I’m in the kitchen with Valechka when Lozgachev (a guard) comes rushing in, all steamed up, to say the Boss is out of Ararat. Valechka fitches a bottle, but instead of giving it to Lozgachev, she gives it to me: Let Anna take it in.' She wants to help me - dear Valechka! So Lozgachev takes me down the passage to the main part of the house. I can hear male voices. Laughter He knocks hard on the door and stands aside. I go in. The room is hot, stuffy, seven or eight men around a table - familiar faces, all of them. One - Comrade Khrushchev, I think - is on his fret, proposing a toast. His face is flushed sweating He stops. There is food all over the place, as if they have been throwing it. All look at me. Comrade Stalin is at the head of the table. I set the brandy next to him. His voice is soft and kindly He says, And what is your name, young comrade?' Anna Safanova Comrade Stalin.' I remember to look into his eyes. They are very deep. The man next to him says, She’s from , Boss.' And Comrade Khrushchev says, 'Trust Lavrenty to know where she’s from! 'More laughter 'Ignore these rough fellows,' says Comrade Stalin. 'Thank you, Anna Safanova. 'As I close the door, their talk resumes. Valechka is waiting for me at the end of the passage. She puts her arm around me and we go back in to the kitchen. I am shaking, it must be with joy.

  16.6.51 Comrade Stalin has said that from now on I am to bring him breakfast.

  21.6.51 He is in the garden as usual this morning How I wish the people could see him here! He likes to listen to the birdsong, to prune the flowers. But his hands shake. As lam setting down the tray I hear him curse. He has cut himself I pick up the napkin and take it over to him. At first, he looks at me suspiciously Then he holds out his hand I wrap it in the white linen. Bright spots of blood soak through. 'You are not afraid of Comrade Stalin, Anna Safanova?' 'Why should I be afraid of you, Comrade Stalin?' 'The doctors are afraid of Comrade Stalin. When they come to change a dressing on Comrade Stalin, their hands shake so much, he has to do it himself Ah, but if their hands didn't shake - well then, what would that mean? Thank you, Anna Safanova.'

  Oh, mama and papa, he is so lonely! Your hearts would go out to him. He is only flesh and blood after all like us. And close up he is old Much older than he appears in his pictures. His moustache is grey, the underside stained yellow by his pipe smoke. His teeth are almost all gone. His chest rattles when he breathes. I fear for him. For all of us.

  30.6 51 Three a.m. A knock at my door Valechka is outside, in her nightdress, with a pocket torch. He has been in the garden, pruning by moonlight, and he has cut himself again! He is calling for me! I dress quickly and follow her along the passage. The night is warm. We pass through the dining room and in to his private quarters. He has three rooms and he moves between them, one night in this one, one night in another Nobody is ever sure where. He sleeps beneath a blanket on a couch. Valechka leaves us. He is sitting on the couch, his hand outstretched It is a graze. It takes me half a minute to bind it with my handkerchief 'The fearless Anna Safanova...'

  I sense he wants me to stay He asks me about my home and parents, my Party work, my plans for the future. I tell him of my interest in the law. He snorts: he doesn't think much of lawyers! He wants to know of life in in the winter Have I seen the lights of the Northern Aurora? (Of course!) When do the first snows come? At the end of September I tell him, and by the end of October the city is snowbound and only the trains can get through. He is hungry for details. How the Dvina freezes and wooden tracks are laid across it and there is light for only four hours a day How the temperature drops to 35 below and people go into the forests for ice-fishing...

  He listens most intently 'Comrade Stalin believes the soul of Russia lies in the ice and solitude of the far north. When Comrade Stalin was in exile - this was before the Revolution, in Kureika, within the Arctic Circle - it was his happiest time. It was here Comrade Stalin learned how to hunt and fish. That swine Trotsky maintained that Comrade Stalin used only traps. A filthy lie! Comrade Stalin set traps, yes, but he also set lines in the ice holes, and such was his success in the detection of fish that the local people credited him with supernatural powers. In one day Comrade Stalin travelled Forty-five versts on skis and killed twelve brace of partridge with twenty-four shots. Could Trotsky claim as much?'

  I wish I could remember all he said Perhaps this should be my destiny: to record his words for History?

  By the time I leave him to return to my bed it is light.

  8.7.51 The same performance as last time. Valechka at my door at 3 a.m.: he has cut himself he wants me. But when I get there, I can see no wound. He laughs at my face - his joke! - and tells me to bind his hand in any case. He strokes my cheek, then pinches it. 'You see, fearless Anna Safanova, how you make a prisoner of me?!'

  He is in a different room from the last time. On the walls are pictures of children, torn from magazines. Children playing in a cherry orchard A boy on skis. A girl drinking goat’s milk from a horn. Many pictures. He notices me staring at them and this prompts him to talk frankly of his own children. One son dead One a drunkard His daughter married twice, the first time to a Jew: he never even allowed him in to the house! What has Comrade Stalin done to deserve this? Other men produce normal children. Was it bad blood or bad upbringing? Was there something wrong with the mothers? (He thinks so, to judge from their families, who have been a constant plague to him.) Or was it impossible for the children of Comrade Stalin ever to develop normaly given his high position in the State and Party? Here is the age-old conflict, older even than the struggle between the classes.

  He asks if I have heard of Comrade Trofim Lysenko’s 1948 speech to the Lenin All- Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences? I say that I have. My answer pleases him.

  'But Comrade Stalin wrote this speech! It was Comrade Stalin’s insight, after a lifetime of study and struggle, that acquired characteristics are inheritable. Though naturally these discoveries must be put into the mouths of others, just as it isfi~r others to turn the principle into a practical science.

  'Remember Comrade Stalin’s historic words to Gorky: 'It is
the task of the proletarian state to produce engineers of human souls.

  Are you a good Bolshevik, Anna Safanova?'

  I swear to him that I am.

  Will you prove it? Will you dance for Comrade Stalin?'

  There is a gramophone in the corner of the room. He goes to it. I-

  AND THAT’S HOW it ends?' said O'Brian. His voice was heavy with disappointment. 'Just like that?'

  'See for yourself' Kelso turned the book round and showed it to the other two. 'The next twenty pages have been removed. And here - look - you can see the way it's been done. The torn edges attached to the spine are all different lengths.'

  'What's so significant about that?'

  'It means they weren't torn out all at once, but one by one. Methodically.' Kelso resumed his examination. 'There are some pages left at the back, about fifty, but they've not been written on. They've been drawn on - doodled on, I should say - in red pencil. The same image again and again, d'you see?'

  'What are they?' O'Brian moved in closer with the camera running. 'They look like wolves.'

  'They are wolves. The heads of wolves. Stalin often drew wolves in the margins of official documents when he was thinking.'

  'Jesus. So it's genuine, you think?'

  'Until it's been forensically tested, I'm not prepared to say. I'm sorry Not officially.'

  'Unofficially, then - not for attribution until later - what d'you think?'

  'Oh, it's genuine,' said Kelso, without hesitation. 'I'd stake my life on it.

  O'Brian switched the camera off.

  THEY had left the lock-up by this time and were sitting in the Moscow bureau of the Satellite News System which occupied the top floor of a ten-storey office block just south of the Olympic Stadium. A glass partition separated O'Brian's room from the main production office, where a secretary sat listlessly before a computer screen. Next to her, a mute television, tuned to SNS, was showing clips of the previous night's baseball games. Through a skylight Kelso could see a big satellite dish, raised like an offertory plate to the bulging Moscow clouds.

  O'Brian said, And how long is it going to take us to get this stuff tested?'

  A couple of weeks, perhaps,' said Kelso. A month.'

  'No way,' said O'Brian. 'No way can we wait that long.'

  'Well, think about it. First of all this material technically belongs to the Russian government. Or Stalin's heirs. Or someone. Anyway, it isn't ours - Zinaida's, I mean.'

  Zinaida was standing at the window, staring out through a gap she had made with her fingers in the slatted blinds. At the mention of her name she glanced briefly in Kelso's direction. She had barely said a word in the last hour - not when they were still in the garage, not even on their cautious drive across Moscow, following O'Brian.

  'So it isn't safe to keep it here,' continued Kelso. 'We've got to get it out of the country That's the first priority God knows who's after it now. Just being in the same room is bloody dangerous as far as I'm concerned. The tests themselves - well, we can have those done anywhere. I know some people in Oxford who can check the ink and paper. There are document examiners in Germany, Switzerland -'

  O'Brian didn't seem to be listening. He had his feet up on his desk, his long body lolling back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. 'You know what we've really got to do?' he mused. 'We've got to find the girl.'

  Kelso stared at him for a moment. 'Find the girl? What are you talking about? There isn't going to be a girl. The girl's going to be dead.'

  'You can't be sure of that. She'd only be - what? - sixty-something?'

  'She'd be sixty-six. But that's hardly the point. It's not old age she'll have died of Who d'you think she was getting mixed up with here? Prince Charming? She won't have lived happily ever after.'

  'Maybe not, but we still need to find out what happened to her. What happened to her folks. Human interest. That’s the story.'

  The wall behind O'Brian's head was plastered with photographs: O'Brian with Yasser Arafat, O'Brian with Gerry Adams, O'Brian in a flak jacket next to a mass grave in the Balkans somewhere and another of him, in protective gear, stepping through a minefield with the Princess of Wales. O'Brian in a tuxedo, collecting an award - for the sheer genius of simply being O'Brian, perhaps? Citations for O'Brian. Reviews of O'Brian. A herogram from the Chief Executive of SNS, praising O'Brian for his 'relentless dedication to triumphing over our competitors'. For the first time, and far too late, Kelso began to get a measure of the man's ambition.

  'Nothing,' said Kelso very deliberately, so there was no room for misunderstanding, 'nothing is to be made public until this material is out of the country and has been forensically verified. Do you hear me? That's what we agreed.'

  O'Brian clicked his fingers. 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.

  But in the meantime we should find out what happened to the girl. We've got to do that anyway. If we go on air with the notebook before we find out what happened to Anna, someone else'll come along and get the best part of the story' He lifted his feet off the desk and spun around in his chair to a set of bookshelves beside his desk. 'Now where the hell is Archangel, anyway?'

  IT happened with a kind of inexorable logic so that later, when Kelso had the time to review his actions, he still could never identifr a precise moment when he could have stopped it, when he could have diverted events on to a different course -"'Archangel,"' said O'Brian, reading aloud from a

  guidebook. "'Northern Russian port city. Population: four hundred thousand. Situated on the River Dvina, thirty miles upstream from the White Sea. Principal industries: timber, shipbuilding and fishing. From the end of October until the beginning of April, Archangel is snowbound." Shit. What's the date?'

  'October the twenty-ninth.'

  O'Brian picked up the telephone and jabbed out a number. From his position on the sofa Kelso watched through the thick glass wall as the secretary reached silently for the receiver.

  'Sweetheart,' said O'Brian, 'do me a favour will you? Get on to the System's weather centre in Florida and get the latest weather prediction for Archangel.' He spelt it out for her. 'That's it. Quick as you can.

  Kelso closed his eyes.

  The point was - he knew it in his heart - that O'Brian was right. The story was the girl. And the story couldn't be pursued in Moscow. If the trail could be picked up anywhere, it could only be in the north, on her home territory where it was possible there might still be some family or friends who would remember her: remember the Komsomol girl of nineteen and the dramatic summons to Moscow in the summer of 1951- "'Archangel,"' resumed O'Brian, "'was founded by Peter the Great and named after Archangel Michael, the Warrior-Angel. See the Book of Revelation, chapter twelve, verses seven to eight: And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,/And prevailed not.' In the nineteen-thirties -"

  'Do we really have to listen to this?'

  But O'Brian held up his finger, in the nineteen-thirties, Stalin exiled two million Ukrainian kulaks into the Archangel oblast, a region of forest and tundra larger than the whole of France. After the war, this vast area was used for testing nuclear weapons. Archangel's outport is Severodvinsk, centre of Russia’s nuclear submarine construction programme. Until the fall of communism, Archangel was a closed city, forbidden to all outside visitors.

  "'Traveller's tip,"' concluded O'Brian. "'When arriving at the Archangel Railway Station, always be sure to check the digital radiation meter - if it shows 15 micro Rads per hour or below, it's safe."' He closed the book with a cheerful snap. 'Sounds like a fun place. What d'you think? You up for this?'

  I am trapped, thought Kelso. I am a victim of historical inevitability Comrade Stalin would have approved

  'You know I've no money -?'

  'I'll lend you money.

  'No winter clothes -

  'We've got clothes.' 'No visa-'

  A detail.'

  A detail?'

  'Come on, Fluke. You're the Stal
in expert. I need you.

  'Well that's touching. And if I say no, presumably you'll go anyway?'

  O'Brian grinned. The telephone rang. He picked it up, listened, made a few notes. When he put it down, he was frowning and Kelso entertained a brief hope of reprieve. But no.

  The weather in Archangel at 11:00 GMT that day (3 p.m. local time) was being reported as partly cloudy, minus four degrees, with light winds and snow flurries. However, a deep depression was rolling westwards from Siberia and that was promising snow heavy enough to close the city within a day or two.

  In other words, said O'Brian, they would have to hurry.

  HE fetched an atlas and opened it on his desk.

  The fastest way into Archangel, obviously, was by air, but the Aeroflot flight didn't leave until the following morning and the airline would require Kelso to show his visa which would expire at midnight. So that was out. The train took more than twenty hours, and even O'Brian could see the risks in that - trapped on board a slow-moving sleeper for the best part of a day.

  Which left the road - specifically, the M8 - which ran nearly 700 miles, more or less direct, according to the map, swerving slightly to take in the city of Yaroslavl, then following the river plateaux of the Vaga and the Dvina, across the taiga and the tundra and the great virgin forests of northern Russia, directly into Archangel itseW where the road ended. Kelso said, 'It's not a freeway, you know. There are no motels.'

  'It's nothing, man. It'll be a breeze, I promise. What've we got now - let's see - couple of hours of daylight left? That should get us well clear of Moscow. You drive, don't you?'