Archangel (Mass Market Paperback)

by Robert Harris

  'And who's this? This is you?'

  It was a photograph of Zinaida, aged about twelve, in school uniform. She stepped closer to it, surprised.

  'Who'd have thought it?' She laughed uneasily. 'Me up there with Stalin.'

  She stared at it a while longer.

  'Let's find this thing,' she said, turning away. 'I want to get out of here.'

  Kelso was prodding one of the floorboards with his foot. It rested loosely on a wooden frame set into the earth. This was it, he thought. This had to be the place.

  They worked together, watched by Stalin, stacking the short planks against the wall, uncovering a mechanic's pit. It was deep. In the weak light it looked like a grave. He held the lamp over it. The floor was sand, stamped smooth and hard, stained black with oil. The sides were shored up with old timber, into which Rapava had let alcoves for tools. He gave her the lamp and wiped his palms on his coat. Why was he so damned nervous? He sat on the edge for a moment, legs dangling, before cautiously lowering himself. He knelt on the floor of the pit, his bones cracking, and felt around in the damp gloom. His hands touched sacking.

  He called up to her, 'Shine the light here.'

  The rough cloth pulled away easily. Next came something solid, wrapped in newspaper. He passed it up to Zinaida. She set down the lamp and unwrapped a gun. She was surprisingly deft with it, he noticed, sliding out the clip of ammunition, checking it - eight rounds loaded - sliding it back again, pushing the safety catch down then up.

  'You know how it works?'

  'Of course. It's his. A Makarov. When we were little, he taught us how to strip it, clean it, fire it. He always kept it by him. He said he'd kill if he had to.'

  'That's a nice memory.' He thought he heard a sound outside. 'Did you hear that?'

  But she shook her head, preoccupied with the gun.

  He sank back down to his knees.

  And here, jammed into the aperture, was the square end of a metal box, flaking with rust and dried mud. If you didn't know what you were looking for, you would never have bothered with it. Rapava had hidden well. He put his hands on either side of it and tugged. Well, something was heavy. Either the box or what was in

  it. The handles had rusted flat. It was hard to get a grip. He dragged it into the centre of the pit and hoisted it up to the edge. His cheek was close to it. He could taste the smell of rusted steel, like blood in his mouth. Zinaida bent to help. And this was peculiar: for an instant he thought that the box was exuding an unearthly, blue-grey light. There was a rush of cold air. But then he saw that the garage door was open and that framed in it was the silhouette of a man, watching them.

  AFTERWARDS, Kelso was to recognise this as the decisive moment: as the point at which he lost control of events. If he didn't see it at the time it was because his main concern was simply to stop her blowing a hole in R. J. O'Brian's chest.

  The reporter stood against the garage wall, his hands above his head. Kelso could tell he didn't quite believe she would shoot. But a gun was a gun. They could go off accidentally. And this one was old.

  'Professor, do me a favour, would you, and tell her to put that thing down?'

  But Zinaida jabbed it again towards his chest and O'Brian, groaning, raised his hands still further.

  Okay, okay, he said. He was sorry. He had followed them from the airport. It hadn't been hard, for Christ's sake. He was only doing his job. Sorry.

  His eyes flickered to the toolbox. 'Is that it?'

  Kelso's immediate reaction on seeing the American had been relief: thank God it was only O'Brian who had followed them from Sheremetevo and not Mamantov. But Zinaida had grabbed the gun and had backed him against the wall.

  She said, 'Shut up.

  'Look, professor, I've seen these suckers go off. And I have to tell you: they really make a mess.

  Kelso said to her, in Russian, 'Put it away, Zinaida.' It was the first time he had used her name. 'Put it away and let's sort this out.'

  'I don't trust him.'

  'Neither do I. But what can we do? Put it away.

  'Zinaida? Who is she? Don't I know her from someplace?'

  'She goes to the Robotnik.' Kelso spoke through his teeth. 'Will you let me handle this?'

  'Does she, by God?' O'Brian passed his tongue across his thick lips. In the yellow lamplight his broad and well-fed face looked like a Hallowe'en pumpkin. 'That's right. Of course she does. She's the babe you were with last night. I thought I knew her.'

  'Shut up,' she said again.

  O'Brian grinned. 'Listen, Zinaida, we don't have to be in competition. We can share, can't we? Split this three ways? I just want a story. Tell her, Fluke. Tell her I can keep her name out of it. She knows me. She'll understand. She's a businessminded kind of a girl, aren't you, darlin'?'

  'What's he saying?'

  He told her.

  'Nyet,' she said. And then, in English, to O'Brian, 'No way.

  'You two,' said O'Brian. 'You make me laugh. The historian and the whore. Okay, tell her this. Tell her she can either deal with me or we can stand around like this for an hour or two and you'll have half the Moscow press pack on your back. And the militia. And maybe the guys who killed the old man. Tell her that.'

  But Kelso didn't need to translate. She understood.

  She stood there for another quarter of a minute, frowning, then clicked on the safety catch and slowly lowered the gun. O'Brian let out a breath.

  'What's she doing in all this anyway?'

  'She's Papu Rapava's daughter.'

  'Ah.' O'Brian nodded. Now he got the picture.

  THE toolbox lay on the earth floor. O'Brian wouldn't let them open it, not right away. He wanted to capture the great moment, he said - 'for posterity and the evening news'. He went off to get his camera.

  Once he'd gone, Kelso shook a cigarette out of his half-empty pack and offered it to Zinaida. She took it and leaned towards him, looking at him steadily as he lit it for her, the flame reflected in her dark eyes. He thought: less than twelve hours ago you were going to go to bed with me for $200 -who the hell are you?

  She said, 'What's on your mind?'

  'Nothing. Are you all right?'

  'I don't trust him,' she repeated. She threw back her head and blew smoke at the roof. 'What's he doing?'

  'I'll tell him to hurry up.

  Outside, O'Brian was sitting in the front seat of a four wheel drive Toyota Land Cruiser, snapping a new battery on to the back of a tiny video camera. At the sight of the Toyota, Kelso felt a fresh sweat of anxiety.

  'You don’t drive a BMW?'

  'A BMW? I'm not a businessman. Why should I?'

  The field was deserted. The old man who had been digging had gone.

  'Zinaida thought we were followed from the airport by a BMW Seven series.'

  'Seven series? That's a mafia car.' O'Brian got out of the Toyota and put the camera to his eye. 'I wouldn't pay any attention to Zinaida. She's crazy.' The pig emerged from its sty and trotted over for a look at them, hopeful of some food. 'Here, piggy piggy.' He began filming it. 'Remember what the man said? 'A dog looks up to you, a cat looks down on you, but a pig looks you straight in the eye"?' He swung round and pointed the camera at Kelso's face. 'Smile, professor. I'm going to make you famous.'

  Kelso put his hand over the lens. 'Listen, Mr O'Brian -'

  'And what does that stand for?'

  'Everybody calls me R. J.'

  'All right, R. J. I'm going to do this. I'll let you film me. If you insist. But on three conditions.~

  'Which are?'

  'One, you stop calling me bloody professor. Two, you keep her name out of it. And three, none of this is shown - not a second, you hear? - until this notebook, or whatever it is, has been forensically verified.'

  'Agreed.' O'Brian slipped the camera into his pocket. Actually, it may surprise you to hear this, but I've got a reputation of my own to consider. And from what I hear, doctor, it's one hell of a sight better than yours.

  He pointed
a remote key at the Toyota. It bleeped and locked. Kelso took a last look around and followed him into the garage.

  O'BRIAN made Kelso put the toolbox back in its hiding place and drag it out again. He made him do this twice, filming him once from the front and then from the side. Zinaida watched them closely but was careful to keep out of shot. She smoked incessantly, one arm clasped defensively across her stomach. When O'Brian had what he needed, Kelso carried the box over to the workbench and brought the lamp up close to it. There wasn't a lock. There were two spring-loaded catches at either end of the lid. They had been cleaned up recently, and oiled. One was broken. The other opened.

  Here we go, boy.

  'What I want you to do,' said O'Brian, 'is describe what you see. Talk us through it.'

  Kelso contemplated the box.

  'D'you have any gloves?'

  'Gloves?'

  'If what's inside is genuine, Stalin's fingerprints should be on it. And Beria's. I don't want to contaminate the evidence.'

  'Stalin's fingerprints?'

  'Of course. Don't you know about Stalin's fingers? The Bolshevik poet, Demyan Bedny, once complained that he didn't like lending his books to Stalin because they always came back with such greasy finger marks on them. Osip Mandelstam - a much greater poet - got to hear about this, and put the image into a poem about Stalin: "His fingers are fat as grubs".'

  'What did Stalin think of that?'

  'Mandelstam died in a labour camp.

  'Right. I guess I should have figured that out.' O'Brian dug around in his pockets. 'Okay: gloves. There you go.

  Kelso pulled them on. They were dark blue leather, slightly too big, but they would do. He flexed his fingers - a surgeon before a transplant, a pianist before a concert. The thought made him smile. He glanced at Zinaida. Her face was clenched. O'Brian's expression was hidden by the camera.

  'Okay. I'm running. In your own time.

  'Right. I'm opening the lid, which is... stiff as you'd... expect.' Kelso winced with the effort. The top wrenched up a crack, just wide enough for him to jam his fingers into the gap, and then it took all his strength to break the two edges apart. It came open suddenly, like a broken jaw, with a scream of oxidised metal. 'There's only one object inside.

  a bag of some kind.., leather, by the look of it ... badly moulded.'

  The satchel had grown a shroud of fungus - of different fungi - pale blues and greens and greys, vegetative filaments and white patches mottled black. It stank of decay. He lifted it clear of the box and turned it round in the light. He rubbed at the surface with his thumb. Very faintly, the ghost of an image began to appear. 'It's embossed here with the hammer and sickle. . . That suggests it's an official document pouch of some kind.. . Oil here on the buckle.. . Some of the rust has been cleaned off . . . ' He imagined Rapava's nail-less fingers, fumbling to discover what had cost him so much of his life.

  The strap unthreaded through the pitted metal, leaving a floury residue. The satchel opened. The hyphae had spread inside, feeding off the dank skin, and as he lifted out the contents he knew, whatever else it was, that this was genuine,

  that no forger would have done all this, would have allowed so much damage to be inflicted on his work: it went against nature. What had once been a packet of papers had fused together, swollen, and was covered in the same destructive cancer of spores as the leather. The pages of the notebook had also warped, but less badly, protected as they were by a smooth outer layer of black oilskin.

  The cover opened, the binding split.

  On the first page: nothing.

  On the second: a photograph, neatly cut out of a magazine, glued down in the centre of the page. A group of young women, in their late teens, dressed as athletes - shorts, singlets, sashes - marching in step, eyes right, carrying a picture of Stalin. Parading in Red Square by the look of it.

  Caption: Komsomol Unit No. 2 from oblast display their paces! Front row, I. to r. I. Primakova, A. Safanova, D. Merkulova, K Ti!, M Arsenyeva... Against the youthful face of A. Safanova there was a tiny red cross.

  He picked up the notebook and blew, to separate the second page from the third. His hands were sweating inside the gloves. He felt absurdly clumsy, as if he were trying to thread a needle while wearing gauntlets.

  On the third page: writing, in faint pencil.

  O'Brian touched his shoulder, prompting him to say something.

  'It's not Stalin's writing, I'm sure of that . . . It reads more like someone writing about Stalin. . .' He held it closer to the lamp. "'He stands apart from the others, high on the roof of Lenin's tomb. His hand is raised in greeting. He smiles. We pass beneath him. His glance falls across us like the rays of the sun. He looks directly into my eyes. I am pierced by his power. All around us, the crowd breaks into stormy 'applause? The next part is nudged. And then it’s written,

  ‘Great Stalin lived,

  Great Stalin lives!

  Great Stalin will live forever!’

  12.5.51 Our picture is in Ogonyok! Maria runs in at the end of the first class to show me. I am displeased with my appearance and M chides me for my vanity (She always says I think too much of being pretty: it is not fitting for a candidate-member of the Party Fine for her to say who always looks like a tank!) All morning comrades hurry up to us to offer their congratulations. The usual trouble of this time is forgotten for once. We’re so happy...

  5.6.51 The day is hot and sunny The Dvina is gold I return home from the Institute. Papa is there, much earlier than usual looking grave. Mama is strong, as ever with them is a stranger a comrade from the organs of the Central Committee in Moscow! I am not afraid of him. I know I have done nothing wrong. And the stranger is smiling. A little man – I like him. Despite the heat he is carrying a hat and wears a leather coat. This stranger is named I think, Mekhlis. He explains that after a thorough investigation, I have been selected for special tasks relating to the high Party leadership. He cannot say more for reasons of security If I accept, I must travel to Moscow and stay for one year perhaps for two. Then I may return to and resume my studies. He offers to come back the next morning for my answer but I give it now, with all my heart: But because I am nineteen, he needs the permission of my parents. Oh, please papa! Please, please! Papa is deeply moved by the scene. He goes with Comrade Mekhlis into the garden and when he returns his face is solemn. If it is my wish, and if it is the will of the Party he will not prevent me. Mama is so proud.

  To Moscow, then, for the second time in my life! I know His hand is behind this.

  I am so happy, I could die...

  8.6.51 Mama brings me to the station. Papa stays behind I kiss her dear cheeks. Farewell to her, farewell to childhood. The carriages are crowded, the train moves off and Others run along the platform, but mama stays still and is quickly lost. We cross the river I am alone. Poor Anna! And this is the worst of days to travel but I have my clothes, some food, a book or two, and this journal in which I shall record my thoughts - this will be my friend. We plunge south through the forest, the tundra. A great red sunset blazes like a fire through the trees. Isakogorka. Obozerskiy And now I have written down everything that has happened until this time and I can no longer see to write.

  11.6.51 Monday morning. The town of Vbzhega appears with the dawn. Passengers alight to stretch their legs, but I stay where I am. From the corridor comes a smell of smoke. A man watches me write from the opposite seat, pretending to be asleep. He is curious about me. If only he knew! And still there are eleven hours to Moscow. How can one man rule such a nation? How could such a nation exist without such a man to rule it? Konosha. Kharovsk. Names on a map become real to me. Vologda. Danilov. Yaroslavt

  A fear has come upon me. I am so far from home. Last time there were twenty of us, silly laughing girls. oh, papa!

  And now we reach the outskirts of Moscow. A tremor of excitement runs through the train. The blocks and factories stretch as far and wide as the tundra. A hot haze of metal and smoke. The June sun is much warmer than at home
. I am excited again.

  430! Yaroslavskaya station!And now what?

  LATER. The train halts, the man opposite, who had been watching me all journey leans Forward ‘lnna Mikhailovna Safanova?' For a moment I am too amazed to speak. Yes? 'Welcome to Moscow. Come with me, please. He wears a leather coat, like Comrade Mekhlis. He carries my case along the platform to the station entrance on Komsomolskaya Square. A car is waiting, with a driver We drive For a long while. An hour at least. I don't know where. Right across the city it seems to me, and out again. Along a highway that leads to a birch forest. There is a high fence and soldiers who check our papers. We drive some more. Another fence. And then a house, in a large garden.

  (And Mama, yes, it is a modest house! Two storeys only Your good Bolshevik heart would rejoice at its simplicity!)

  I am taken around the side of the house to the back. A servants' wing, connected to the main quarters by a long passageway Here in the kitchen a woman is waiting. She is grey haired almost old And kindly. She calls me 'child'. Her name is Valechka Istomina. A simple meal has been prepared- cold meat and bread, pickled herring, kvas. She watches me. (Everyone here watches everyone else: it is strange to look up and find a pair of eyes regarding you.) From time to time, guards come by to take a look at me. They don't talk much but when they do they sound like Georgians. One asks, 'Well now, Valechka, and what was the Boss’s humour this morning?' but Valechka hushes him and nods to me. I am not such a young fool as to ask any questions. Not yet. Valechka says: 'Tomorrow we shall talk. Now rest.'

  I have a room to myself. The girl who had it before has gone away Two plain black blouses and skirts have been left behind for me.

  I have a view of a corner of the lawn, a tiny summer house, the woods. The birds sing in the early summer evening It seems so peaceful. Yet every couple of minutes a guard goes past the window. I lie on my little bed in the heat and try to sleep. I think of in the winter: the coloured lanterns strung out across the frozen rivet skating on the Dvina, the sound of ice cracking at night, hunting for mushrooms in the Forest. I wish I was at home. But these are foolish thoughts. I must sleep. Why did that man watch me on the train for all that time?