Death of a Tyrant

by Christopher Nicole

  “You have a Russian sister-in-law?”

  “She is actually English. Or American. She is something of a cosmopolitan. But she lives in Moscow, yes. The important thing is that she is the Countess Patricia’s daughter.”

  “Oh, that would be splendid, your highness. Would you?”

  Priscilla studied him while she considered. She had no doubt that Joseph’s sister Jennie Ligachevna — Ligachev happened to be the name of Jennie’s last husband, although she might well have married again since his death in the Great Patriotic War — had betrayed her in 1942, which had led to her imprisonment. Just as she knew Joseph himself felt that Jennie’s late husband had tried to murder him. But those had all been orders from above, as it were. And despite it all, she also knew Jennie to be an essentially simple, gregarious soul — they had become quite friends again once the intrigue was over. And of one thing she was quite sure: Jennie worshipped the memory of her mother. Here was the son of her mother’s most devoted servant, seeking only what glories could be discovered in the past. Jennie would have to respond to that. Especially as he was such a charming young man. “It will be my pleasure, Mr Morgan,” she said.

  *

  “Did I do right?” she asked Joseph, at lunch.

  “I suppose no harm can come of it. It might lead to regaining some contact with her.” Joseph was wearing that haunted expression which overtook him every time they discussed his sister. Priscilla knew he had attempted several times to reopen communication with her since the end of the War, and that she had not answered any of his letters.

  Joseph’s problem was guilt. He blamed his own prolonged absence from England when he had gone off to fight for the White Armies of General Denikin — and, incidentally, first met and fell in love with the Princess Priscilla — for the fact that Jennie had returned to Russia at all, in the 1920s, eloping with Andrei Gosykin, an agent of the NKVD, as the Russian secret police had then been known. Priscilla knew there was nothing he could have done about it, save lock her up, and that had not been practical in laissez-faire England. Jennie was a true daughter of Patricia Bolugayevska, a wildly romantic spirit who had been at heart more of an anarchist than a revolutionary. Jennie had sobered up over the years of experience in Soviet Russia, but even if she had to know a great deal about the awful crimes that had been committed in those years — both her husbands had been heavily involved in carrying out Stalin’s directives — she remained devoted to that terrible man. While as for that gorgon of a daughter of hers… Priscilla had never met Tatiana Gosykinya, but her son Alexei had fought beside the Heroine of the Soviet Union during the Hitler War. Alexei had described her as a killing machine, who had used her beauty not less than her ability with gun and grenade to lure men, and women, to their deaths. But Priscilla had more than a suspicion he had almost fallen under her spell himself, although he would never even talk about it, much less admit anything that might have happened in the Pripet Marshes during those desperate days when the hand of Hitler had lain heavy across European Russia. Yet the country, and its people, not less than its history, and the part she had played in it, continued to stir her blood. How she wished she could be accompanying that handsome young man on his odyssey!

  *

  “My dear Jennie. How good it is to see you. It has been too long.” Josef Stalin beamed, as was his habit when he wished to charm. Now he stood before his desk in the Kremlin, drawing Jennie Gosykinya into his arms for an embrace.

  Stalin was now sixty-nine years old, but superficially he looked as healthy as ever in his life. The hair was iron-grey, as was the moustache, but they had been grey for some years. The eyes were occasionally opaque, but this was surely because the great man was lost in thought, while the occasional slowness to respond to a question or a remark could be put down to the same cause. He still ruled the most servile nation on earth. That it was not at that moment the most powerful nation on earth was known only to himself and a few close associates. Certainly not to Jennie.

  Their relationship was a peculiar mixture of utter intimacy and cautious regard. Stalin, as Lenin’s eventual successor, had inherited Jennie’s first husband, the man with whom she had so romantically eloped from England as a sixteen-year-old, as his own private assassin. As such, he had welcomed Jennie almost as a daughter, had always, indeed, treated her daughter Tatiana as a grandchild. But the requirements of the state had led him to have Gosykin executed in the great purges of the thirties. Jennie did not bear him a grudge for that, he knew; she had been utterly horrified when she had learned Gosykin’s true character and occupation, the more so as her Uncle Joe had been able to prove to her that Gosykin had only married her on orders from Lenin, in order to bring at least one member of the famous Bolugayevskis back to Russia, for propaganda purposes. She had endured all a woman’s fury that she could have been so used, and been made a mother, by such a despicable lout.

  The truly surprising thing was that she loved her daughter, Gosykin’s child. Just as she remained totally committed to the Soviet Union, as run by Josef Stalin. Of course she was unaware of many of his more devious or vicious machinations. But she, and her daughter, remained two of his favourite people. They were links with the past he had played so big a part in destroying, but which he secretly envied. He thought he would have made a splendid prince, in the old days. Well, now he was a splendid monarch, even if that word no longer had any place in the Russian vocabulary. “You have something on your mind,” he suggested, gently.

  “I have had a letter, from Joseph. Well, it is from Priscilla, really. But Joseph has added a note.”

  Stalin’s face remained impassive, shielded as it was by his huge moustache. But his brain was seething. He was a man who over the years had succeeded in achieving everything he had set his heart on. Now he was regarded as virtually a god by his people. No man could want more than that. But he had never succeeded in taking the Princess Bolugayevska to his bed. He knew now that even to consider doing that had been the folly of an old man. But the woman haunted him. When he had first met her, more than ten years ago now, he had lied to her and betrayed her, only to discover that she had resources of courage and determination far beyond those which he had ever expected to find in any woman, or perhaps in any man.

  Thus when she had slipped back into his clutches during the Great Patriotic War he had been unable to resist the temptation to seize her, hold her, have her. Well, he had seized her, and he had held her. But he had never had her. He, Josef Stalin, the Man of Steel, had been impaled upon those china-blue eyes, so utterly cold, at least when returning his stare. She had been utterly in his power. He had dreamed of what he would do to her, and perhaps with her, from the obscene to the romantic. And he had done absolutely nothing. He had opened his hands, and like the fabulously beautiful butterfly that she was, she had fluttered her wings and flown away.

  He did not think he would be so foolish another time. Another time, he would simply crush her to death, before she had the opportunity to captivate, and then do whatever he wished to her corpse. But he had never dreamed there could ever be another time. Now he frowned at Jennie. “She is not proposing to return to Russia?” That would be fortune indeed.

  “No, no.” Jennie had no idea what had happened to Priscilla on her previous visit, but she did know it had been a traumatic experience; she could not conceive of any circumstances in which her sister-in-law would ever set foot in Russia again. “It is to do with a man named Morgan, who wishes to visit us.”

  “You will have to explain,” Stalin said, still with the utmost gentleness.

  “This man’s father worked for my father and mother,” Jennie said. “I remember Harold Morgan very well. He left England in 1917 to accompany Mother back to Russia, when she came to take the family out. Well, as you know, she was murdered, and Morgan himself died trying to defend Bolugayen House. Now this man, who says he is Morgan’s son, wishes to visit his father’s grave. And Priscilla has written to say she has given me his address, and that anything I c
an do to help him will be much appreciated.”

  Stalin smoothed his moustache. “You say this man says he is Morgan’s son. Is there some doubt about this?”

  “Well…as I say, I remember Morgan just before Mother left England. He was Father’s servant, had been for some years. He was a bachelor. I mean…” Jennie flushed. She might have eloped as a girl, but over the years she had become the most orthodoxly moral of women. “Well, it’s possible, I suppose.”

  “But improbable, you think, having knowledge of this fellow.”

  “Well…yes, I do think Priscilla is being taken for a ride. And then, well, Harold Morgan doesn’t have a grave, as I understand it. He was burned with Bolugayen House. And that later became a collective. There can’t possibly be a trace of him anywhere. All of the family, save for Priscilla and Sonia and Alexei and Anna, were burned with the House. Now they are all dead as well. Except for Priscilla.”

  “Except, as you say, for Priscilla,” Stalin agreed. “A devious woman, who has ever dreamed of avenging herself for the destruction of her family and her home. And her wealth, of course.”

  “Oh? Do you really think so, Josef? I mean, as the last Cromb, save for her son Alexei, she is a very wealthy woman in her own right.”

  “There are degrees of wealth, and power,” Stalin said severely. “When Priscilla was twenty years old, she had both, in total abundance. Then it was all torn away from her, in conditions of extreme pain and grief, and humiliation. Hell hath no fury like a woman humiliated, eh?”

  Jennie was not going to argue with the misquotation. She thought he might well be right. “So…you would like me to write and tell her I shall be unable to receive this man Morgan?”

  “Of course you must not do that,” Stalin said. “Priscilla is your sister-in-law. Whatever devious machinations she may be up to, I think you must assist her in so far as it is possible. No, no, write back and say you will be pleased to welcome this Morgan, and give him all the assistance possible. That way we may find out what he is really after. And Priscilla, to be sure.”

  “Well, if you’re sure it will be all right.”

  Stalin handed her back the letter. “I am sure it will be all right.” He kissed her fingers, and she left the office. He waited until the door was closed, then pressed the switch on his intercom. “I wish to see Comrade Beria,” he said.

  Chapter Two: The Trigger

  “What is the news from Larionov?” Stalin asked, having gestured his Interior Minister to a seat in front of his desk.

  Beria took off his pince-nez to polish them. “Nothing recent. I know he is working on the project. But obtaining such information will obviously be very difficult. It is a matter of persuading certain people to betray their country.”

  “Or forcing them to betray their country,” Stalin suggested. “That is always a possibility. But persuasion is a better bet. More people yearn after money they do not have and cannot believe they will ever have, than are sufficiently interested in deviant sex to allow themselves to be blackmailed. And it is often a surprisingly small amount of money.”

  “Meanwhile,” Stalin said. “Our own program goes slowly.”

  “We will just have to sit it out,” Beria said, polishing away. “We will get the atomic secrets in time. Meanwhile, we keep our noses clean and stay close friends with the West, eh?”

  “That would be the biggest mistake we could make,” Stalin remarked. Beria replaced the pince-nez on his nose. “There are three reasons why it would be a mistake,” Stalin said.

  Beria waited, while his employer commenced filling his pipe. Beria was as aware as anyone that this meant the mighty brain was working overtime. “The first is that should we, how shall I put it, change our accepted behaviour, the West would become suspicious. They would know we were waiting for something to turn the tide of events in our favour, and it would not require too much thought on their part to deduce what that something would be. The second is that this new man, Truman, is a different kettle of fish to Roosevelt. Roosevelt was an aristocrat, and had all the arrogance of an aristocrat. He believed he could handle me. He has said so in his writings. He believed he could do so better than that other aristocrat, Churchill. Because Churchill has been around longer, and has hated us for that much longer. He has said this in his writings. Truman is not an aristocrat. He comes from a small town and has had his ups and downs, including a bankruptcy, I am informed. He will have a suspicious, careful nature. And when we met at Potsdam I did not like him. Nor do I think he liked me.” Beria shifted in his chair, uneasily. “But the third factor is the important one,” Stalin said. “America, not even Truman, will never use the Bomb, in the present circumstances. He is still feeling the guilt of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is too aware of the weight of public opinion. While America herself feels the weight of world opinion. That is the big problem all democracies have to face. Their leaders have always to look to the next election. Their people always seek to justify their very existence by being loved and respected. We can only benefit from such weaknesses. No, no, Lavrenty Pavlovich, we shall press ahead with our plans to communise as much of Europe as is possible, before we obtain the secrets of the Bomb. Secure in their power, the Americans will attempt to contain us with rhetoric rather than force.”

  “As you say, Josef Vissarionovich,” Beria conceded. Having read detailed accounts of what had happened in Japan, and seen the photographs, he fervently hoped the Party Leader was correct in his assumption.

  “We must also forward our plans to get them out of Berlin. It will be difficult to transform all of Germany into a Communist state while we have the Americans and the British and the French in the very heart of the country.”

  Beria swallowed. “That will be a very dangerous procedure, Josef Vissarionovich. Suppose they refuse to go?”

  “I think they will go, if we exert enough pressure. Right up to the brink of war, Lavrenty Pavlovich. The democracies will not fight another war, while the memory of the last one is so fresh. Their people will not let them. And as I have said, having the Bomb is a positive disadvantage to them. Their people will say, and are saying, why do you fear anything the Soviet Union can do? The Soviet Union can never attack us, while we have the Bomb. That is our strength.” Beria was back to polishing his pince-nez. “Once we have the Bomb, of course,” Stalin went on. “Things will be different. The Americans will cease to treat us as a nuisance which can always, at the end of the day, be contained, and have to treat us as an equal.”

  “A nuclear war is unthinkable,” Beria ventured. “It would destroy us as much as them.”

  “True. But always remember they have more to be destroyed, in terms of wealth and what they call civilisation. However, it must be our business to use the time we have as successfully as possible. Thus we must keep the West guessing as to how far we have progressed towards obtaining a Bomb of our own for as long as possible. This is why I have sent for you. The West is very interested in our progress. Especially the British are very interested. The British, as I am sure you appreciate, Lavrenty Pavlovich, are basically a far more aggressive people than the Americans, if only because they are less diverse, racially. They are also jealously anxious to preserve their position as a world power, even if they must know that has gone forever. But they will try, and they are undoubtedly in cahoots with the Americans. There can also be no doubt that they possess the best secret service in the world, simply because it has been around the longest. This is what I wish to discuss with you. Have you ever heard of a man called Halstead?”

  “He is a spy. Or was a spy,” Beria said. “We have a file on him from when he was here in 1942.”

  “Some say he was the best spy there ever was. Certainly when it came to obtaining information. Why do you say was?”

  “Well, nothing has been heard of him since just before the invasion of Normandy. It is supposed he was caught and executed by the Nazis.”

  “Then what do you make of this?”

  Stalin picked up the sheet of
paper from his desk and held it out. Beria took it suspiciously, and studied it even more suspiciously. Then he raised his head. “Where did you get this, Josef Vissarionovich?”

  Stalin had got his pipe alight, and now he puffed contentedly. “From one of my private sources in England.”

  Beria breathed heavily. He was the chief of Russian security. It was humiliating, and it was downright dangerous, for his boss to possess sources of information to which he did not have access. Why, he might even have such sources inside Russia! In Astrakhan, for instance. Stalin was smiling at his Commissar’s obvious discomfort. “You will see that my informant says that Halstead is not only alive and well but has been observed entering the building on Curzon Street in London that is known to contain the headquarters of the British Secret Intelligent Services. This can only mean that he has been brought out of retirement.”

  “Why was I not informed of this, immediately?” Beria demanded.

  “I am afraid simply because I did not take it very seriously,” Stalin confessed. “One interview, between a retired secret agent and his erstwhile masters, well…it was something to be considered, but not necessarily to require immediate action.”

  “And now you would like action taken,” Beria remarked. “Well, as you have this secret source of information in England, I am sure you also have this man’s address. Disposing of him will not be difficult.”

  “Disposing of him in England might not be difficult, but it would be a mistake,” Stalin said. “No matter what he is presently pretending to be, what he is, or was, is certainly known to British Intelligence, and if he were suddenly to fall under a bus they would certainly suspect he was pushed. As only we would have been interested in doing the pushing, it would reveal that we are onto their activities. Specifically, Halstead’s activities. This would put them on their guard. No, no, it is not necessary to play our hand that openly. Halstead is on his way to Russia. Once he is here, well, we will be able to handle it as we wish.”