The Red Gods

by Christopher Nicole

“Innocent? Innocent of what? What am I supposed to have done?”

  Andrei stood up. “You had better come with me.”

  “You mean I can leave this cell? Just like that? I thought you said you had no authority to take me out of here?”

  “I can move you about the prison,” Andrei said. “There is something you need to see.”

  Joseph stood up also. His legs nearly gave way and Andrei had to catch his arm. “It is not far,” his brother-in-law said reassuringly.

  The medical attendant took his other arm, and the female attendant followed. Joseph remembered that the stairs down which he had been thrown were to the right. But instead they went left, past other cells, from which there came various noises, mostly groans or screams, but which his escort ignored, until they came to a somewhat larger door.

  Andrei knocked on this, and it was opened by a uniformed man. “Comrade?” he asked.

  Andrei showed him a pass, and the door was opened to allow them into a sort of antechamber; there was a door in the far wall, presently closed. “How is it going?” Andrei asked.

  The man shrugged. “We are making progress.”

  “You need to look through this window,” Andrei said, and slid back a panel in the wall. Joseph hesitated, then moved forward and looked through the glass. He caught his breath. There were four people in the room, which was at a lower level than the antechamber, so that he was looking down on what was happening. “It is one-way glass,” Andrei said. “He cannot see you.”

  And I cannot hear him, Joseph thought. In front of him, in the centre of the room, there was an upright crossed by an iron bar, some three feet from the floor. Over this bar Leonid Nikolaiev was draped, naked. Nikolaiev’s wrists were tied to hooks in the floor on one side of the bar, his ankles to similar hooks on the other, thus his body was arched, buttocks uppermost, and held tightly in position. Never had Joseph seen a man looking quite so exposed. Surprisingly, there were no bruise marks on his very white skin, save for some cane stripes across his buttocks. But that he had recently suffered severe pain was obvious from his twisted expression. He was about to suffer some more, because as Joseph watched, two of the men in the room were attaching electrical wires to Nikolaiev’s penis, securing the alligator clips in place with strips of adhesive tape. Then they took another pair of clips, attached to the first, and forced them into Nikolaiev’s anus, causing his mouth to sag open in pain and terror; these too they taped into place. The third man stood by the table in the corner, hand resting on a square box to which the wires were attached. Now the two men stepped away, and the man by the table turned a handle on the box.

  Instantly, Nikolaiev’s body stiffened, and the muscles in his legs tautened as he tried to move, while his mouth again sagged open in a scream of what Joseph knew was purest agony, even if he could not hear him through the partition. Andrei had been looking over his shoulder. “Comrade Lenin’s solution to everything,” he remarked. “Electricity. We have come a long way from broken glass, eh?” He closed the window.

  “You can just stand here and watch that man being tortured? They’ll kill him!”

  “I shouldn’t think so. As long as his heart is sound he can stand a great deal of electricity. But the pain is exquisite. People always tell us everything we wish to know when we use electricity on them.”

  “Why did you show me that?” Joseph asked.

  “Because I would not like to think of my own brother-in-law undergoing such an experience,” Andrei said. “Those men enjoy their work. It would be far better for you to tell us everything we need to know, now.”

  “Need to know about what?” Joseph shouted. “I came to Moscow to see Jennie. There is no other reason.”

  “Come.” Andrei led him out of the torture chamber and along the corridor to a comfortably furnished office. “Sit down. Would you like some breakfast?”

  Joseph shook his head. “I couldn’t eat a thing, but I would like some more of that coffee.”

  “Of course.” Andrei nodded to the man and the woman, who had followed them, and the woman left. “Now I want you to listen to me, very carefully. We know all about it. So my advice to you is to co-operate fully. If you do that, I may be able to help you. If you do not, the matter will be taken out of my hands.”

  “I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about,” Joseph said. “I came here to see my sister. Your wife. Allow me to do that, and I will leave again.”

  Andrei leaned back as the woman returned bearing a tray with two steaming mugs of coffee. She placed them on the table and left, closing the door behind her. “Please do not treat us as if we are fools, Joseph,” Andrei said, gesturing him to take one of the mugs. Joseph sipped, and again felt the pain in his battered mouth. But that at least was reality. What Andrei was saying bore no resemblance to reality. “Let me put some things to you,” Andrei said. “Jennie and I have been married now for two years. Why did you suddenly decide to come to see her?”

  “Well...I had to get a safe-conduct into the country, and it was not practical until after Lenin had died.”

  “I see. Now we are getting a glimmer of the truth. So, you were given a safe-conduct by Trotsky. That is itself a proof of your guilt. Then you made contact with a Trotskyite agent on the train.”

  “I did what?”

  “That man in there, Leonid Nikolaiev, works for Trotsky.”

  “But the policemen accused him of being a homosexual.”

  “Well, it is not the custom of our police to tell those they arrest the exact reason. But I imagine he is one.”

  “For God’s sake tell me what is going on?”

  “Tell me about Leonid Nikolaiev.”

  “I know nothing about the man at all. We met on the train. Then he turned up in my room, in the middle of last night, and tried to rape me. It’s as simple as that.”

  “You realise that is not what he is telling our interrogators at this moment?” Andrei asked. “And he is undergoing torture, therefore he is more likely to be telling the truth.”

  “You people are all paranoid,” Joseph said. “OK, let us assume Trotsky brought me here for some reason other than to see Jennie. Tell me what that reason was.”

  “That is what you have to tell us,” Andrei pointed out.

  “I have nothing to tell you.”

  Andrei regarded him for some moments, then sighed, and stood up. “Then I am truly sorry for you,” he said, and nodded.

  Joseph swung round in his chair, and saw that the man and the woman had been replaced by four men.

  “How did I do?” asked Leonid Nikolaiev. He was curled up on a settee, wearing a dressing gown, and drinking coffee.

  “You did excellently,” Andrei told him. “He is in a state of total confusion, and he is concerned that you may be made to suffer some more.”

  “Ha!” Nikolaiev remarked. “I have already suffered. I did not know they were going to use real electricity.”

  “Well, with Cromb looking on, it had to be authentic. It was not a very severe charge, was it?”

  “No,” Nikolaiev said. “But it certainly made me jump. I’m still tingling.”

  “And you thoroughly enjoyed it,” Andrei pointed put. “Well, I can assure you the shocks Cromb is presently receiving are going to make him jump even more.”

  “Can I watch?”

  “If it amuses you.”

  Nikolaiev got up, went to the door and checked, looking back at Andrei. “Is he going to die?” he asked.

  “Good lord, no! Not now, anyway.”

  “What I meant was...he is quite innocent, you know. He has absolutely nothing to tell you, about anything.”

  Andrei smiled. “He will tell us everything we wish him to. In the course of time. Would you not have, my dear Leonid, if you had had to stay in that chamber until we were finished with you?”

  Sonia strode into the foyer of the Hotel Berlin and went straight to the elevators, while various members of the staff gave her stiff little bows. Sonia was not in a good m
ood. She had telephoned Jennie last night to set up a meeting for today, not quite certain whether or not she would tell her over the phone that Joseph was in Moscow, or whether it would be better just to surprise her.

  But she had been unable to get through. Comrade Gosykinya’s phone was out of order. Living in this new Russia one simply had to be as paranoid as everyone else, thus Sonia did not for a moment believe that Jennie’s phone was really out of order; clearly Gosykin had discovered that Joseph was in Moscow and wished to prevent his wife from seeing her brother. But he was a simpleton if he thought he could accomplish that by merely cutting off her phone. Sonia had considered going straight round there herself, but had decided it would be better to appear at the apartment with Joseph, and call Gosykin’s bluff. She had no doubt that Jennie would want to see him, if he was actually there. She rode up in the elevator, stepped on to the corridor, walked along to Joseph’s door, and knocked. The door was opened immediately, and she gazed at Andrei. “What are you doing here?” she snapped, refusing to consider the various possibilities.

  “Waiting for you,” Andrei said, and stepped back to allow her into the room.

  Sonia went to the bedroom door, looked in. The bed was neatly made; the wardrobe doors were open, but there were no clothes inside. There was no evidence that the room had been occupied at all within the past twenty-four hours. She turned. “I suppose you think you have been very clever. If you have harmed a hair on his head...”

  “I am afraid quite a few hairs have had to be harmed, Comrade Bolugayevska.”

  “You wouldn’t dare! He has a safe-conduct from the Commissar of the Army!”

  “Yes. It was very careless of Comrade Trotsky to do that, again, even for such an old friend.”

  “Do you seriously suppose you can arrest someone just because you do not wish him to see your wife?” Sonia demanded. “I wish to see him, now. And I wish him released.”

  “Joseph Cromb is under arrest because he is a Tsarist agent,” Andrei said, quietly.

  “Now I know you are mad.”

  “Am I? Did he not fight for Denikin?”

  “Five years ago. And he was not fighting for either Denikin or the Tsar. He was fighting for his Uncle Alexei and to avenge the death of his mother. You want to remember those things, Comrade Gosykin. Joseph Cromb’s mother was a personal friend of Lenin’s...” she paused, biting her lip.

  “And Comrade Lenin is now dead,” Andrei said.

  Sonia changed her tactics. “And what do you think Jennie is going to say when she learns that you have arrested her brother and are torturing him to discover information he does not have?”

  Andrei crossed the floor to stand before her. “Jennie is not going to know. Because neither you nor I are going to tell her, Aunt Sonia.”

  “Do you think you can threaten me?”

  “I am threatening you.” To Sonia’s utter consternation, he suddenly wrapped his fingers in the silk of her blouse, under her throat and against her breasts, and pulled her against him. “Listen to me. You are in trouble for bringing Cromb here. Give me the slightest excuse and I will have you down at the Lubyanka. I should be very happy to have you in one of our cells. Oh, I know you have been arrested and tortured by the Okhrana. Well, let me tell you, give me the opportunity to have you, naked and bound, in front of me and you will never be beautiful again. And I will have had the time of my life.”

  He pushed her away from him. Sonia staggered across the room and fell across the bed. She had lost her breath and in any event she was too shocked to speak. He was accurate in reminding her that she had suffered this kind of mistreatment in her youth, and she had never expected to suffer it again, especially as Trotsky’s mistress. She sat up. “When Trotsky hears of this...”

  Andrei crossed the room to stand above her. “If you have any sense, you will not tell Comrade Trotsky of this. Remember: he signed the safe-conduct bringing Cromb to Russia. Just as he signed a safe-conduct five years ago to allow Cromb to pass through our lines. And remember, too, that Cromb is going to tell us anything we wish him to tell us, before we are finished with him.”

  Sonia could not believe this was happening, that she, Trotsky’s mistress, should be maltreated and threatened by this thug. She needed time to think, time away from this frightening aggression. But Joseph...if only Trotsky were here. But he was away in the south, sorting out some trouble in Georgia, but he was coming back. It was a matter of time. “What will happen to him?” she asked.

  Andrei smiled. “That depends on how soon he decides to co-operate.”

  Sonia licked her lips. “You mean, if he does not — co-operate — soon enough, you will kill him.”

  “I do not think it will come to that. In fact, I am sure of it. He is a sensible fellow.” He held her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Now, straighten your dress and freshen your make-up. Otherwise, when we go downstairs, people will think we have been having sex. I am sure you would not wish them to think that, Aunt Sonia.”

  When Sonia got home she found she was shaking. Gosykin had that power over people, that ability to reveal naked, ruthless aggression. And he was now working for Stalin, supreme ruler of Russia! But what to do? Was she that afraid of that thug? Trotsky was Commissar of the Army. Well, now he would just have to act the moment he returned.

  “That is most satisfactory,” Stalin said, laying the paper on his desk. “This is dynamite. Oh, indeed. As always, Andrei Vassilievich, you are to be congratulated.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Chairman. However, I should inform you that Cromb’s signature is actually forged.” Stalin picked up the ‘confession’ again. “It is a very good forgery,” Andrei explained. “We found some documents in his briefcase, and one of our experts was able to practice it sufficiently to reproduce that. It will stand up to anything but the most careful scrutiny, and we are not going to allow that.”

  “Is he dead?”

  “No, Comrade Chairman. He is a most remarkably tough man. Within the parameters given to us, we have done everything we can think of. We have deprived him of sleep, made him drunk on vodka, given him ice-cold baths, put informers in his cell, and of course, treated him electrically, and he has refused to utter a single incriminating word, or to sign that confession. So we did it for him.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In a cell. Do you wish him shot? What I mean is, Comrade Chairman, that we cannot put him on trial, or in the witness stand against Trotsky. Therefore he might as well be dead, for all the use he is to us.”

  Stalin filled his pipe. “We do not need to put him on the stand, Andrei Vassilievich. I have no intention of putting Trotsky on trial. People still remember him as the hero of the Civil War. What I intend to do is have him stripped of his office, expelled from the Politburo, and then from the Party.”

  “And then...” Andrei said eagerly.

  “And then sent into internal exile.” Stalin struck a match and puffed for some seconds. “Do not look so downcast, Andrei Vassilievich. You have done splendidly. You have frightened the Jewish bitch. Now I will frighten the Jewish dog. Between us we will frighten them so much that they will eventually flee the country. Once they have done that, they are all yours.”

  Andrei licked his lips. “And the man Cromb?”

  “Send him to a gulag. Who knows, that may soften him up. And one day he may be useful.”

  Part Three - The Tragedy

  ‘If the red slayer think he slays,

  Or the slain think he is slain,

  They know not well the subtle ways

  I keep, and pass, and turn again.’

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Brahma

  Chapter 10 - The End of a Dream

  “Thank God you are back!” Sonia dragged Trotsky through the door. “The most terrible thing has happened.”

  He glanced at her, then walked past her to the sideboard, and poured himself a glass of vodka. This he drained in a single gulp, before pouring another. “As you prophesied,” he s
aid.

  Sonia had never heard him use such a voice of doom. But she did not understand what he was talking about. “I, prophesied? My God! If you knew...”

  Trotsky sat down. “I should have known,” he said. “I have been a fool. You were right all along. Now...” he sighed.

  “You must get him out of there,” Sonia said.

  Trotsky raised his head. “Get who out of where?”

  Sonia frowned at him. “Joseph, of course.”

  He sat up. “Joseph! Of course. The evidence...thanks to you and your wretched family, I am ruined.”

  “I don’t know what you are talking about.” She sat beside him.

  “You mean you don’t know what has happened? I have been relieved of my duties as Commissar of the Army. The order was signed by the Party Chairman himself,” Trotsky said, the words dripping from his lips like vitriol. “They were brought to me by that henchman of his, Gosykin.”

  “Oh, my God,” Sonia said. “Joseph!”

  “That bastard you had me sign into the country,” Trotsky said. “You stupid bitch! It may interest you to know that I have also been removed from the Politburo, and, according to Gosykin, I am to be expelled from the Party.”

  Sonia could not believe her ears. “But...how can Stalin do that? You are Trotsky! You are the architect of victory!”

  He got up, and poured himself another glass of vodka. “Architects are not necessary once the building has been completed, and unless there is another building required, and Stalin has set his face against that. As of this moment I am a nobody. I am a nuisance. So you had better start packing,” Trotsky told her. “We are required to vacate this apartment today.”

  “To go where?”

  “I am required to take up residence in Alma-Ata.”

  “Alma-Ata?” She was not even sure where that was.

  “It is the capital of Kazakhstan. A long way from Moscow.”

  “Stalin is sending you there? He told you this, himself’?”

  “I have not seen Stalin. Gosykin told me this.”

  “But...Gosykin? He is a murderer. You know that. If Stalin is sending you away from Moscow, it is because he means to kill you.”