Death of a Tyrant

by Christopher Nicole

  “Help!” Beria shouted. He ran to the door, threw it open. “Help! Get a doctor! Help!” Istomina pushed him out of the way as she ran past him into the room, knelt beside her employer. The two guards from the front room also hurried in. “Get a doctor!” Beria shouted again.

  The two men stared at him, then at the Premier, who, assisted by Istomina, was slowly sitting up. Beria also turned to look at Stalin. Stalin waved his hand. The guards exchanged glances, then left the room. “You need a doctor, Josef Vissarionovich,” Beria said.

  Istomina had gone to the sideboard and poured a glass of vodka. This Stalin now drank, while his colour slowly returned to normal. “Doctors,” he growled. “Quacks who are trying to poison me.”

  “I do think you should be examined,” Beria said. Damnation, he thought; that had really looked like it. But…it was obviously close.

  “I am all right,” Stalin snapped. “Go and carry out my instructions. But no one is to know of them. Or this.”

  “Of course. Your birthday…”

  “We will celebrate my birthday as usual,” Stalin said. “There is nothing the matter with me.”

  Beria looked at Istomina, who waggled her eyebrows. Then he left the room. So near, he thought. So near. But surely one more push — Stalin’s birthday was always an occasion for a great deal of drinking, followed by…it was a time to act, once and for all. “I will leave the Premier in your care, Comrade Istomina, as he seems to prefer you to a doctor.” He had no doubt that the two guards were listening at the door.

  “Oh, get out!” Stalin shouted. “Find those women.”

  *

  Beria drove back to Lyubyanka, disturbed sleepy sentries and clerks; it was now three in the morning. But Maria had prudently remained on duty, leaving the Commissar’s apartment to go to his office. “You are a good girl, Maria Feodorovna,” Beria said.

  “Is there trouble, Lavrenty Pavlovich?” she asked. She was permitted to be familiar when they were alone together.

  Beria stroked her hair. “Yes, there is trouble. But nothing with which I cannot deal. Now, I must go to Astrakhan. Call the airport and have my plane ready; I will be there in an hour.”

  Maria looked at her watch. “The weather is bad in the east, Lavrenty.”

  “This is an affair of state,” he said sternly. My state, he thought. Maria picked up the phone. As for Tatiana and Priscilla… Beria wondered what they would do. If they attempted to see Stalin they would be arrested and brought to his cells. If they attempted to shoot it out and got themselves killed, his arrangements would have been proved correct. If they got through the guards and reached Stalin…they could tell him nothing he did not already know. He might even have another attack. Beria did not think there was anything he need fear from Tatiana and the Princess. They would fall into his hands like overripe apples, the moment Stalin died.

  *

  Tatiana handcuffed Priscilla and Andrew once again just before they landed. “This is purely cosmetic,” she assured them. “From now on we must trust each other, eh? Without me, you are lost.” They had to believe she was telling the truth; there was no other reason for her to have rescued them from the gulags.

  The aircraft taxied to the military section of Moscow Airport, where, as the pilot had radioed ahead, they were met by various local KGB officials. Priscilla had feared that they would immediately be rearrested, but apparently no one had as yet any reason to challenge Tatiana’s credentials, and a car was immediately provided for their drive into Moscow, while the crew of the aircraft busied themselves with refuelling in order to make the return flight to Semipalatinsk. “We are just that far ahead of them,” Tatiana said. “And now they will never find us.”

  “Then where to now?” Andrew asked. “The Kremlin?”

  “It is a matter of reaching Premier Stalin,” Tatiana said. “And he prefers to spend his nights at his dacha just outside the city. But that is where they will expect us to go, I think, and I do not know how much time we have.”

  “They?” Priscilla asked.

  “Those who wish to eliminate me,” Tatiana explained. “It is better you do not know their names, yet. What we need to do is out-think them. So, in the first instance, I think we will go to my mother. She will be able to gain access to the Premier without anyone suspecting, or at least, being able to stop us.” They had no difficulty in gaining the city, Tatiana passing the various checkpoints with a simple flash of her identity wallet. They drove along beside the Moscow River, and took the bridge below the Kremlin, into the Kiti-Gorod, the old market centre. It was now midnight, and the city was dark except for the street lights, but at almost every one there was a policeman, seeking the identity of the driver of this car so strangely about at such an hour.

  As always, Tatiana had no problem with these, and when they were into the Kiti-Gorod she pulled down a side street and stopped. “We get out here,” she said. “They will have made a note of the number, and when the alarm is given, they will look for this car; it must not be found near my mother’s apartment. Now, I am going to unlock your cuffs. But I must tell you that any sign of treachery and I will shoot you both. Please understand this.”

  “Treachery, from us?” Andrew asked.

  Tatiana smiled. “Times change, Andrew.” She released them, and they rubbed their hands together. “Follow me,” she said.

  It was three in the morning, Priscilla calculated; she had no watch. She walked beside Andrew, and occasionally their hands touched. Then she grasped his fingers, and he squeezed back. How odd it is, how things turn out, she thought. She had loved Josef and would always love his memory. But she had liked this young man from the moment of their first meeting, and if he had never actually touched her body, he yet knew more of her than perhaps even Josef had ever managed; Josef had never watched her being immersed, screaming and struggling, into a freezing bath, and held there to the point of death. Josef had only ever known her on top of the world. This man knew her better. And now they might be going to die together.

  They returned across another bridge and now she remembered where they were, although it was several years since she had been in Moscow, and visiting Jennie. The Moscow River ran by on their right, and behind it was the bulk of the Kremlin, always to her mind a sinister building. While in front of them, rising above the average apartment block, was the Government Building. The ground floor of this showpiece contained a restaurant and a cinema. Both were shut at this hour in the morning, but on the first-floor landing there was a concierge, blinking sleepily at the KGB officer and her two companions, then staring in consternation as he recognised Tatiana. “Comrade Captain,” he stammered. “Oh, Comrade Captain.”

  Tatiana frowned. “Is there something the matter, Boris?”

  Boris licked his lips and hastily wiped them on the back of his sleeve before they froze. “Comrade Ligachevna…” he panted.

  “My mother is unwell?” Tatiana’s voice was soft. Behind her, Andrew and Priscilla could only wait.

  “She… Oh, Comrade Captain!”

  Tatiana stepped against him, forcing him against the wall. “Speak, man.”

  “She did not come home, yesterday. She was meeting her American friend, and she did not come home. Instead…” he rolled his eyes.

  “How many are upstairs?” Tatiana asked.

  “There is nobody upstairs, Comrade Captain. The apartment is sealed.”

  “When are you due to be relieved?” Tatiana asked, drawing her pistol.

  The concierge licked his lips in terror. “Istvoltna comes in at eight, Comrade Captain. But I will not tell of your visit. You can trust me, Captain.”

  “I know you will not speak of it, Boris,” Tatiana said, and hit him a savage blow on the side of the head with the butt of her pistol. He subsided down the wall without a sound. “Until eight o’clock, at any rate. Help me.”

  Andrew hurried forward, and between them they carried the unconscious Boris into his cubbyhole of an office. There they laid him on the floor, an
d Tatiana efficiently bound and gagged him, using his belt and tie and socks. Priscilla watched them. “What did he mean, about an American friend?”

  “Your son,” Tattie said. “My old friend Prince Alexei.”

  “Oh, my God! But…you mean Alexei is in Moscow? And has been arrested by the KGB?”

  “Along with my mother,” Tatiana said. She was angry, but she was also realising that the crisis was far bigger than she had imagined. There was only one person in Russia would have dared order the arrest of Jennie Ligachevna, while Stalin lived. So, either Stalin was dead, and Beria was concealing that fact, or it was Stalin who had ordered her execution, at the same time as he had ordered the arrest of Jennie. Her Uncle Joe!

  And by now the KGB would know that she had returned to Moscow. With two prisoners. They would be in no hurry. They would know she had to fall into their lap, some time. By eight o’clock this morning they would be able to trace her movements, at least this far, “What are you going to do?” Andrew asked; he remembered that this woman’s mother was all she really had in the world.

  “We have to disappear, until I can find out exactly what is happening,” Tatiana said. “And I know the very place. Follow me. Quietly.” She went to the stairs.

  “You are going to remain here?” Priscilla was aghast.

  “It is the one place they will never look for us,” Tatiana said. Priscilla and Andrew exchanged glances, then followed her up the stairs. They reached the landing opposite the door to Jennie’s flat, and saw the seals. Tatiana jerked her head and they went up another fight, to the floor above. Here she again cautioned them to be quiet, while she took a key from her wallet, inserted it into the latch, and turned it, very carefully. The door swung in, and Tatiana stepped through, beckoning them to follow her. “Stand still,” she whispered, and closed the door behind them.

  They waited, while their eyes became accustomed to the darkness; but it was still impossible to move without tripping over something, unless one knew the apartment very well. Which Tatiana apparently did. She moved across to the inner door, then again beckoned them to follow her, exactly. Again, very carefully, Tatiana turned the knob, and the door swung in. But this door squeaked, very faintly. Instantly there was movement from the bed, and Tatiana switched on the light.

  There were two women in the bed, both now sitting up, the covers pulled to their throats, blinking at the sudden light, and at Tatiana, standing now above them. One of the women was in her late forties, Priscilla estimated; she remembered her very well from her visit to Moscow during the War. The other was a younger edition, clearly her daughter. “Tatiana!” The older woman was incredulous. “Oh, Tatiana!” Her voice rose.

  “Sssh,” Tatiana said. “You remember the Princess Bolugayevska?” Tatiana said. “Princess, you remember my mother’s friend, Galina Schermetska?”

  “Yes,” Priscilla said.

  Galina Schermetska gazed at her in consternation, then looked past her at Andrew “And I am sure you also remember Mr Andrew Morgan,” Tatiana explained. “As you can see, both he and the Princess have been guests of the government for the past few years.” She smiled at the young woman. “Good morning, Helena.”

  Helena Schermetska stared at her as a rabbit might look at a snake. “But Tatiana,” Galina said. “Your mother…”

  “I know,” Tatiana said. “They are after me, too. And my friends. Thus you must help us.”

  “Me? But…if they come here…”

  “There is no reason for them to come here, as this is the last place they will look for us,” Tatiana said. “We will only stay for a few days…”

  “A few days?” Galina looked left and right.

  “It will be crowded, I know,” Tatiana agreed. “But we are all friends.” She took off her coat.

  “If they find you here we will all be executed,” Galina said.

  “That is the best of reasons for them not to find us here,” Tatiana pointed out. “Listen, we could do with a meal and some hot tea. And then a bath. And I will tell you what we will do.”

  *

  They ate first, as both Galina and Tatiana knew that for the apartment block to be filled with the sound of running water in what was still the middle of the night might cause questions to be asked. The woman Helena sat in a corner of the lounge while her mother prepared food, staring at them. Both Andrew and Priscilla, exhausted and basically undernourished as they were, could do no more than sit and sip tea, enjoying the warmth, enjoying the fact that they were still alive when they had each supposed the other dead. Galina’s hands trembled as she set the table. Only Tatiana was as cheerfully confident as ever. “Are you not afraid?” Galina asked. “Do you not know what they will do to you?”

  “What they are already doing to Mother,” Tatiana said thoughtfully, as she sipped tea. “And Alex. Well, Alex is hopefully still as tough as when we were fighting the Nazis. Mother now, she has always fallen on her feet. We must hope she does so again.”

  “You are callous,” Galina declared.

  “I have been trained to look life in the face,” Tatiana said. “But you should remember that I wept for your daughter, when she died in the Pripet.”

  Galina flushed. She had never discovered the truth of her youngest daughter’s death. She only knew that she had gone to that fateful summer camp in 1941 as a protégée of Tatiana, the daughter of her best friend, that she had been trapped in the Pripet by the sudden German onslaught, like Tatiana, that she had become a partisan, like Tatiana, and that she had died in those endless marshes…unlike Tatiana. “What can you hope to achieve?” she asked, seeking to change the subject.

  “I had hoped to achieve three things,” Tatiana said. “One is to find out just what is going on at the top, because there is something going on. I do not know if I am going to be able to do that, now, but I intend to try. The second is to try to find out why Mother and Prince Alexei were arrested, and what has happened to them.”

  Galina snorted. In common with most loyal Russians, she knew there were only two certainties in life. One was that those taken into the Lyubyanka never emerged again save for the purpose of being tried and then executed. The second was that everyone taken into the Lyubyanka was by definition, guilty, of whatever the charge. To consider another possibility was not only disloyalty to the regime — it filled the mind with unacceptable thoughts. “The third thing I need to do,” Tatiana said, “supposing I cannot find acceptable answers to the first two, is to get out of the country, with Mother and the Princess and Mr Morgan. And Prince Alexei.”

  Galina snorted again. “From Moscow? With the entire KGB looking for you? That is a dream.”

  “Perhaps. Perhaps not. But here is where you will help us. There is an address I wish you to visit. There, either today or tomorrow, you will find a certain Comrade Peter Romanowski. You will tell him you are from Atya, that she is hurt and is desperate to see him, and you will bring him here.”

  Galina licked her lips. “Romanowski? Well…”

  “You will pay this address your first visit today,” Tatiana told her.

  “Well…it would be better if Helena did it.”

  “Me?” Helena’s voice was a squawk.

  “Helena will not do it,” Tatiana said, “because she is not going out to work today. She had a touch of ’flu. You will telephone her office and tell them this.” Galina looked from face to face. Tatiana smiled. “I am a cautious woman, Galina. When you return this evening, with or without Romanowski, I will be waiting for you, with Helena, and if anyone enters that door I do not like I will shoot her in the stomach, in such a way that she will die before your eyes, in great agony.” Galina clasped both hands to her throat. So did Helena. “But so long as you do nothing stupid, why, we shall all be one happy family. Won’t that be nice?”

  *

  There was only sufficient hot water for a single tub, and Tatiana, with a sudden awareness of their respective positions, allowed Priscilla first go. There was no door to the bathroom, only a curtain, a
nd thus privacy was next to impossible, but after her six years in the gulag Priscilla was not bothered by that. Galina had already left. Helena washed up the breakfast dishes at the sink. Tatiana lay on the bed; highly trained as she was to withstand the worst of emotional or physical fatigue, she was more exhausted than she would dare admit to any of them. There was so much to be thought about, but that would have to wait until she had rested.

  Andrew prowled the apartment, restlessly. He was only just coming to terms with the complete overturn in his situation, his recall to life from the living death he had experienced for the past five years. But he too was exhausted. “Who’s next?” Priscilla asked.

  Tatiana drew the curtains. Priscilla gave a little start, but did not attempt to conceal herself in any way. It was slowly dawning on Tatiana that this woman, who, for all of her looks she would have described as old, was perhaps far tougher, and certainly more resilient, than anyone she knew — perhaps even herself. “I will be next,” she said. “But all three of you, in here.”

  Andrew and Helena went into the bathroom, glancing at each other; the woman — he supposed she was perhaps a year or two older than Tatiana — was not at all bad looking; there were pink spots in her cheeks; she was embarrassed by the whole thing. He looked at the Princess, who continued to dry herself with the utmost composure, only half turned away from him. Tatiana placed her pistol on the side of the bath, then undressed, facing them. “Anyone would suppose you do not trust us,” Andrew ventured.

  “I do not,” Tatiana agreed. Naked, she stepped into the bath and slipped beneath the still warm water with a little sigh. “Please remember, darling Andrew, that I can reach the gun long before you.”

  “Has it occurred to you that if you shoot at any of us, everyone in the building will hear?” Priscilla had finished drying and was picking up her prison uniform.