“Oh, my God!” Priscilla muttered.
“It is the German way, when dealing with irregulars,” Stalin said. “But then it is their way when dealing with so many people. But you see, they have made no mention of the capture and execution of Tatiana, or of any Americans, and I have no doubt they would have found this a great propaganda ploy, so we may be sure it has not happened.”
“But you do not know what has happened,” Priscilla said. “They may be dead, for all you know.”
“That is certainly possible. You may rest assured that we are doing all we can to find them. Remember that Tatiana Gosykinya is almost like a daughter to me. So we have a common interest in what is happening in the Pripet.”
“And when you find them you will bring them out?”
“Well, we will see what needs to be done. We will have to see who wishes to be brought out. I am sure Tatiana will wish to remain and reconstitute the group. As for the Americans...”
“You keep saying ‘Americans’. Is there another doctor with my son?”
“Oh, indeed! A young lady, of whom I understand he is rather fond.”
Priscilla was frowning again. “You cannot mean Elaine Mitchell?”
“That is the name, certainly.”
“You sent her to join a partisan group?”
“No, no, she volunteered. Like your son.”
“They must be brought out, whether they wish to come or not.”
“As I have said, we will have to see what can be done.”
They gazed at each other, and he refilled her glass. “You are mad,” Priscilla said. “Do you really think you can blackmail me into your bed with the lives of my husband and my son?”
He studied her for a few seconds; colour had flared into her cheeks, but now it was fading again. “In Russia, but more particularly here in the Kremlin, Priscilla, I can do anything I please.”
Priscilla was surprised at how calm she felt, for all that her heart was pounding; that was mainly at the effrontery of the man. “Don’t you think my husband and my son will wish to know what has happened to me?”
“As I have suggested, Priscilla, whether or not they are ever able to do so also depends on you.”
He was overwhelming her with the sheer impossibility of resistance. But she was the Princess Dowager of Bolugayen. “Haven’t you forgotten that I had a travelling companion?”
“Of course, the famous Sonia. She is certainly never going to leave Russia again.”
Priscilla caught her breath. “Then Jennie led us into a trap?”
“No, no! She knows nothing of it. Jennie is not the sort of woman one can trust with a secret. But she will do and say whatever she is told to do or say, afterwards.”
Priscilla pushed back her chair. “You really think you can just kidnap two, if you’ll pardon me, well-known women, at whim?”
“It is my whim, Priscilla, if it comes to that. My whims are obeyed without question here in Russia. When someone needs to be arrested, he or she is merely tapped on the shoulder...and disappears. Everyone else looks the other way.”
“My God!” Priscilla said. “You admit this?”
“Who are you going to tell? Or, for that matter, who is going to believe you? Will you take coffee? Or tea?”
Priscilla licked her lips. “Tea.” Stalin rang a bell, and a waiter came in to remove their plates. Another poured the tea. Should I not call on them for assistance? Priscilla wondered. But they were their master’s creatures. So was everyone in the Kremlin, as he had just spelled out for her. She had walked, with that supreme confidence which many regarded as arrogance, straight into the centre of his spider’s web. She had wondered, when she had been in this same office eight years ago, if she had entered a trap...and had been treated almost like visiting royalty. Thus she had returned. But this time...
“Drink your tea,” Stalin recommended. “And tell me why you are so angry. You are a woman, I am a man. We are both no longer in the first flush of youth, You, however, have retained almost all of your beauty. While I, sadly, have aged more than I should because of my many responsibilities. But have I grown repulsive to you?”
Priscilla finished her tea and set down the cup; her hand was perfectly steady. “I should like to leave now.”
“And I should like you to stay for a while. As my guest, here in the Kremlin. I have had an apartment prepared for you. You will be very comfortable.”
“You mean I am your prisoner.”
“I mean you are my guest. I look forward to your becoming more than that, but I understand that you may need some time to think about it.”
“That was very satisfying,” Sonia remarked, sipping her coffee. “I shall have to revise my ideas on Russia at war. In the West we are constantly being told how very unpleasant it all is, how people are starving. And dying.”
“Oh, they are,” Jennie agreed.
“But not you. Not a member of the Party. Or that member’s wife. Does this not bother you at all?”
“Well...” Jennie shrugged. “Those who have to shoulder the burden of leadership have got to be as mentally and physically fit as possible. Would you not agree?” She grinned. “You certainly felt that way once.”
“Yes,” Sonia said. “When I was a lot younger. Do you ever hear from Tatiana?”
A cloud crossed Jennie’s face. “It is not possible. But Ivan says she is alive. I must believe that.” Her expression brightened. “And she is killing Germans. She is a Heroine of the Soviet Union, for killing Germans.”
“Is that so very important to you?”
“Of course! That is all that matters, at this time.”
“When do you think Priscilla will return from the Kremlin?”
“Not till quite late I imagine. Uncle Joe likes long, leisurely lunches. What would you like to do with your afternoon?”
“I think, if you do not object, I would like to go to the Mexican Embassy first, then I shall return to the hotel, and rest until Priscilla returns. It has been an exhausting journey.”
“Of course,” Jennie said, sympathetically. “My car will take you.” The two women walked to the door and were helped into their summer coats. Jennie studied the bill for some seconds before signing it.
“Will you not come with me?” Sonia asked.
“No. I have some shopping to do.”
Sonia frowned; Jennie had suddenly become almost breathless.
“Then no doubt we shall see you later,” Sonia said.
“Of course,” Jennie said, more breathless still. “It has been a great pleasure, Sonia, meeting you again after all of these years.”
Almost as if she doesn’t expect to see me later, Sonia thought. She got into the back of the limousine, and the car moved away from the kerb. It turned a corner, and then pulled into the kerb again.
“This is not the embassy,” Sonia remarked.
The driver made no reply, but each of the back doors opened simultaneously to allow two men to enter and sit on either side of her.
Chapter 11 – Treachery
Deja vu! Sonia thought. Oh, deja vu! She had been arrested so many times, the first when she had been 18 years old. But that was 47 years ago, and was a distant nightmare. Not that her later arrests had been any more pleasant. But this simply could not be happening. She forced her voice to remain calm. “What do you want?” she asked.
“We wish you to come with us, Madame Bolugayevska,” one of the men said.
“You have the wrong person,” Sonia said. “My name is not Bolugayevska. It is Cohen. Here—” She opened her handbag. “I am a Mexican citizen. My passport.”
The man did not even trouble to look at it. “In our records you are Bolugayevska, madam. Please do not make trouble.”
“Look,” she said, opening the passport to show him her visa. “I was granted permission to come to your country. I am also expected at both the American and Mexican Embassies.” Oh, how she wished she had insisted upon checking in at the Embassy before having lunch. But Jennie
...she had forgotten how enthusiastic a supporter of the Communist regime Jennie was.
“It is just down here,” the man said. The car had turned into Lubyanka Square.
“Have you been here before?” the man asked. His companion had remained silent throughout the drive.
“No,” Sonia said. What am I to do? she thought. Unlike Priscilla, I do not even have a husband waiting for me, and in time looking for me. She realised she was biting her lip to stop herself from screaming. Are you not afraid? she had asked Priscilla. But where was Priscilla?
“That is strange,” the man said, as the car swung through an arched gateway; the gates were opened for them by armed guards. Beyond there was a courtyard, entirely surrounded by the high walls of the NKVD headquarters. “I was told you had been arrested before?”
“Yes,” Sonia said. “By the Okhrana. But that was in Leningrad.”
“We have several ex-Okhrana people working for us,” the man said. Sonia wondered if he meant that to be reassuring.
The car stopped and it was indicated that she should get out. Here at least there was a difference; in strong contrast to her previous arrests, no one seemed very interested in her. Her escort showed her through a doorway into a corridor between offices, and then up a flight of stairs. As she recalled her youth, going up was not necessarily a good thing, but it was always better than going down. Another corridor, and then another door, opened for her by her more talkative escort. ‘The woman Bolugayevska,” he announced. “Please enter.”
Sonia drew a deep breath as she stepped into the room, and then let it go again in a rush of astounded terror. It was not that the room was identical with so many interrogation rooms in which she had found herself in the past, containing as it did a table and a chair, and nothing else at all. but the man rising from the chair, tall, bald, moon-faced, and wearing glasses...the most horrible moments of her life had been suffered at the hands of an almost identical man. But it couldn’t be; her tormentor had been hanged, by Trotsky, in 1919. Anyway, Michaelis had worn a monocle; this man wore rimless glasses. “Has she been searched?” he asked.
“No, Comrade Commissar.”
“Then do it,” the man snapped. “She may be armed.”
“I am not armed,” Sonia gasped. But protesting, as always with these people, was a waste of time. Her arms were gripped and she was pushed forward and across the table while fingers explored her. Her skirt was thrown up and she felt hands on her thighs and between her legs. Deja vu! she told herself.
The hands left her. Sonia’s knees had all but given way, and she had to hold on to the table to stand straight. But now she was angry as well as afraid. If they were going to destroy her, at last, she would go down with all her guns blazing. “Does it amuse you to assault helpless women?” she asked, loading her voice with as much contempt as she could.
The moon face merely gazed at her for some moments, then he indicated the chair. “You look distraught. Sit down, Madam Bolugayevska, before you fall down.”
For a moment Sonia was too surprised to move. The last time she had been in this situation she had been forced to lie on the floor, to be assaulted. Slowly she moved round the desk and sat in the chair, aware that her escort had left, closing the door; she was alone with the moon face. “My name is Cohen,” she muttered.
“I prefer Bolugayevska. You have been arrested before,” he said. “Therefore you will understand that to search you was necessary.”
“Of course,” Sonia said. “But not to find any concealed weapon I might have been carrying. Merely to begin the breaking down of my ability to resist you. But as I have been arrested before, surely you must have known it was a waste of time, in my case. So we are back to your desire to assault helpless women. Even those old enough to have been your mother.”
The lips parted in a brief smile. “That is an intriguing thought, Madam Bolugayevska. But I think we do understand each other. My name is Lavrenty Beria.”
“I have heard of you. You are head of the Secret Police.”
“That is a crude way of putting it. I am Commissar for Internal Security.”
Sonia shrugged. “A weed by any other name...”
“You are being deliberately antagonistic. Do you not realise that you are in an extremely dangerous situation?”
“Tell me about it!”
He stood before the desk, raised his hand and ticked off the fingers. “You were the mistress of Trotsky. With him you were condemned to perpetual exile from the Soviet Union. You remained with him while he wrote a series of articles and even a book denigrating the regime of Premier Stalin; you probably contributed to his work. “You have a distinguished record, Madam Bolugayevska. You are now an associate of an arch anti-Communist, Priscilla Cromb, and in the company of this woman you have chosen to return to Russia.”
“With a visa and safe conduct issued by your government.”
“Issued by me, personally, Madam Bolugayevska. What I have given, I can also take away.”
“I am expected at both the Mexican and American embassies.” She was clutching at straws, but straws were all she had.
Beria nodded. “Unfortunately, they do not even know you are in Moscow. Or indeed, where you are. And you must realise that the disappearance of one elderly female, who is of no importance to anyone, is not really going to be followed up in these tumultuous times.”
“If I am so unimportant, why am I under arrest?”
“Because it is possible that you may be important, to us, to me, if not to your embassies. I know that you were virtually standing beside Trotsky when he was assassinated. Did Mercador say anything?”
“Not to me. He was overpowered by the guards before he could say or do anything.”
“But I would say that you have an idea who sent him. So, tell me why you returned to Russia.”
“I came as a travelling companion to the Princess Bolugayevska.”
“I do not believe you,” Beria said. “You do realise that you are entirely in my power? That there is nothing I cannot do to you.”
Sonia’s nostrils flared as she inhaled. “I have been in this position before, Comrade, and I am still here.”
“So, you have a great deal of courage,” Beria said. “But you see, I already know why you have returned to Russia. It is to avenge your lover’s death. Is that not so? It is to kill Premier Stalin. Is that not so?”
“With my bare hands?”
“I am sure you have determined a way. In any event, your room at the hotel is now being searched. I can tell you that Premier Stalin certainly supposes you have come to assassinate him. That is why you are here. That is why it is his wish that you just...disappear. He is a very nervous man, is our premier. He is so paranoid he is virtually psychotic. And you see, as I am his faithful servant, I have no choice but to make you disappear.”
Sonia swallowed. “Just like that?”
Beria smiled. “Just like that, Madam Bolugayevska. But you know, people who disappear have a great potential asset — the effect they have when they reappear. That is unless, of course, one is so inadvertent as to kill them before they can do this. I do not think it would be such a good idea to kill a woman as famous, as experienced, and as vengeful as yourself, Madam Bolugayevska.” He went to the door and opened it. The two men who had arrested her had been replaced by two women. “You will go with these comrades,” Beria said. “Behave yourself, do not attempt to escape or anything stupid like that, and you will find that life can be quite pleasant.”
Sonia could hardly believe her ears. But she knew she was not actually being released — and she was curious: for all his moon face, Beria seemed to be playing a very deep game. “And when Premier Stalin learns of the little subterfuge you are planning?”
“He will not learn of it, until I am ready. Premier Stalin does not concern himself with what happens inside Lubyanka Street — or underneath it. That you have done as he wished, and disappeared, will make him pleased.”
Sonia glanced at the t
wo women, who waited, faces immobile.
“They are mine,” Beria said. “They stand with me, or they fall with me. They know that.”
“May I ask what has happened to the Princess?”
Beria shrugged. “You may ask. But I shall not tell you. I do not know.”
*
The rain teemed down. It was heavy rain and in the swamp it was incredibly loud as it thumped on branches and trunks, splashing into the pools of water which were growing by the second. The seven people huddled beneath the minimal shelter of a larger-than-usual clump of trees; they could not prevent themselves from getting wet, but they had been wet for so long it did not matter. The long, hot days of summer were already a distant memory, though they were only a month in the past.
But that was because the memory was so horrifying. Throughout the dry period the Germans had scoured the Marshes, hunting, finding, capturing, and killing. The vast majority of the partisans had been killed or captured in that first week, trapped between the paratroopers and the advancing infantry. Among them had been both Gerasimov and Natasha. Elaine did not suppose any member of the Group had grieved very much for Gerasimov. But Natasha, so young, so attractive — Tatiana had wept when she had heard. And even after that initial success the Germans had kept on looking and destroying. Some of those captured had been tortured to death right there in the marsh; their screams still seemed to echo through the trees as their mutilated bodies rotted on the ground. Others had been taken off to Brest-Litovsk for questioning before their tortured bodies had also been dumped in the marsh.
“They are trying to terrify us into surrender,” Tatiana had said.
But even the Germans had had to abandon their daily sweep when the rain had started. On the other hand, as the rain would be followed by the cold, they could reasonably anticipate that those few surviving partisans, lacking shelter and adequate food, would be frozen to death by next spring.
In the beginning, Tatiana had been inspiring in her confidence. “So, the Germans have won a small victory,” she had told them. “It does not compare with what we achieved in Brest-Litovsk.” And then, a fortnight later, “Moscow does not know what has been happening here, because we have been unable to call out. But they will find out soon enough, and then they will send help and replenishment.” Then, another fortnight later, “Of course they know what has happened, but they will not attempt to replenish us until the weather changes and the Germans withdraw. To drop supplies to us now would be to risk them falling into the hands of the Germans.”
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