Keeper of Secrets (9780062240316)

by Thomas, Julie

  Sergei worked long, dirty hours in the mine and learned quickly what to look for; he rapidly progressed to identifying the stones and sorting them. Then he caught the eye of management and began to climb the ladder of promotion. Eventually he applied for a transfer to Moscow, and now he was working in the cutthroat business of polished diamond trading.

  After a short walk through the gardens, it was time to return to his office on the Kalinin Prospekt. He had clients from Japan, Belgium, and Italy to see and deals to do. As he sat down at his large desk the telephone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Sergei? It’s Papa.”

  Almost imperceptibly his heart sank. What could his father want at this time of day?

  “Hello, Papa.”

  They never wasted time with small talk.

  “I’m at Sochi, got here an hour ago. Your grandpapa’s very ill; I think you should come.”

  “I’m on my way.”

  He flew into Adler-Sochi International Airport, his papa picked him up, and they drove to the dacha in silence. Vladimir was ninety-four and had been a widower for six years. He lived quietly at the dacha, and his son and grandson visited him when they could. His heart had grown progressively weaker during the last few months, and he’d suffered several little strokes over recent days. He could still speak but with difficulty, his breathing was labored, and the doctors had given him morphine. Sergei asked why he hadn’t been transferred to a hospital but Koyla was adamant that he’d expressed a strong desire to stay at home.

  “His time has come.”

  Sergei didn’t argue with his father; he knew his grandpapa missed his beloved wife terribly and that life had become a burden. Nothing much had changed in the house in over forty years and Sergei loved returning to it. He’d been born here and his mother had died soon after. He’d spent many happy childhood days here with his grandparents and Aunt Yulena. Now he sat in the sparsely furnished lounge, drinking tea and waiting for his father to come down from his grandpapa’s room and invite him to go up.

  If he closed his eyes, he could trawl back through the clouds of memory and find the sound that he held dearer than anything in the world. The sound of a violin. He could see her standing beside the piano, her slender body swaying in time to the music, her hair cascading around her shoulders, her face a picture of concentration and joy. As always, the music was indescribably sad when he remembered her.

  “You can go up. It won’t be long.”

  His father’s measured tone crashed through the reverie and shattered it. He opened his eyes.

  “Thank you,” he said stiffly.

  Sunlight filtered in through the gap between the curtains and the room smelled of medicine and urine. His grandpapa was resting on large pillows, raised at an angle off the big bed. His face was drawn, and his eyes had sunk into the sockets. His hands, bony and covered with liver spots, lay limply on the covers. Sergei crossed the room and sat on the chair beside the bed.

  “Grandpapa,” he said softly.

  The old man stirred and moved his head slightly toward the noise.

  “Sergei?”

  His voice was hoarse, and his lips were cracked and dry. Sergei dipped the cloth into the bowl on the bedside table and gently wiped his face. Then he took a teaspoon of water from the glass and dribbled it into his grandpapa’s mouth.

  “I’m here, Grandpapa.”

  “Thank you.”

  For a few moments neither man spoke, and then his grandfather stirred again.

  “I’m . . . very proud . . . of you. Always be your own man.”

  “I will, Grandpapa.”

  “Not like . . . your papa; he belongs . . . to the Party.”

  This surprised Sergei and he smiled.

  “No chance of me being a Party man, I’m afraid.”

  Suddenly the thin hand moved across the bed and grasped his with a rush of strength. At the same time he turned his head toward his grandson and his eyes opened; they were clear and bright.

  “I have to . . . tell you something, son. About . . . the violin.”

  “I have it, Grandpapa, at home, in Moscow. It’s locked in my safe—”

  “There are things . . . things . . . you don’t know.”

  The pressure on his hand was strong, pulling him closer. Sergei felt a wave of curiosity. He turned and glanced at the door. It was shut, and they were alone.

  “I’m listening,” he said quietly.

  Vladimir was accorded a full military funeral. Sergei and Koyla stood side by side in their very different suits and masked their grief behind impassive expressions. They were complete opposites, with different loyalties and opinions.

  Koyla was retired now and lived in his small apartment in Moscow. The reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev had devastated him, and he’d watched the last four years with growing horror. First the Chernobyl disaster occurred in 1986; then the next year a German, Mathias Rust, had flown a plane into Red Square and Gorbachev had used it as an excuse to revamp the military; then glasnost brought freedom of speech and the release of thousands of political prisoners; and finally laws were instituted that allowed limited private ownership of businesses in the services, foreign trade, and manufacturing sectors.

  To Koyla it felt like everything he believed in, everything he’d worked for, everything he would gladly have died for was being undermined and unraveled. Sergei knew this, but his opinions were so far removed from his father’s he avoided discussions on the subject. He believed in the new Soviet era and the vision that Comrade Gorbachev had. Despite the food shortages and the increased lawlessness and no matter what the future held, he believed that the dragon Gorbachev had awoken would not be held back and Sergei intended to ride it for all it was worth.

  Had Sergei known what direction that dragon would take he would’ve been astonished. His ambitious goals had been to reach the top of the State-owned diamond trading company that employed him, to own a large house in one of the best Moscow suburbs, wear designer suits, drive an Italian sports car, and to one day travel to Europe, to complete unfinished business. Instead he witnessed the attempted coup to replace Gorbachev, the reunification of Germany, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise to power of Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.

  Sergei summed up the new leader very quickly; Yeltsin was from the Urals and had a background in construction. Sergei knew these men and he knew how to manipulate them. He gained a position of influence with Yeltsin’s inner circle and became a regular supplier of top-quality gems and a financier for the thriving black market in luxury goods. When the reform policies began to bite and skyrocketing prices were combined with heavy new taxes, Sergei started a sideline in the provision of credit and the manipulation of loans.

  Then in 1995 Yeltsin passed a presidentail decree allowing businesses to be privatized by a series of auctions. Sergei’s considerable wealth was kept very well hidden, but political influence and power helped him to buy a large multitiered State company in the mineral extraction industry. It took two years of secret bidding to acquire complete control, but when he got Yeltsin’s final approval, he pounced. The company had noncore assets in the construction, agriculture, and medical fields, and he spun those off and sold them. He was left with oil exploration rights, a thriving natural gas pipeline and field, very productive diamond mines, and a laboratory that created synthetic industrial diamonds.

  It was beyond his wildest dreams, and Koyla was incensed. After some furious rows, he cut off all communication with his son and died six months later, bitter and alone. When Sergei heard of his death, he paused for a moment and then kept reading the report in front of him.

  But the master stroke was yet to come. He was supplying Gazprom, the largest Russian company of all and the biggest extractor of natural gas in the world. Gazprom supplied nineteen different countries with natural gas and ran the world’s longest pipeline networ
k, more than 150,000 kilometers of pipe. In one deal, Sergei sold his natural gas assets back to Gazprom and catapulted from being very rich into the rarefied air of a billionaire.

  He lost no time in moving his base to London and buying a magnificent Mayfair property and a country estate in Sussex. Six months later, he added the Monte Carlo mansion and an apartment in New York. The world outside of Russia was a revelation to him; his opportunities had expanded at a terrifying rate, and he greedily embraced all the experiences on offer. Life became a heady round of gambling, champagne, fast cars, women, cocaine, and luxury adventures. But there was a reason why he’d chosen London as his base, and at last he was ready to fulfill a certain promise.

  The first step was a visit to a small semidetached house deep in the East End of London. He dressed casually and took a taxi, unsure what he’d find after all these years.

  Sasha Orlov was nearly eighty, but his blue eyes twinkled with fun and his handsome face had aged well. With his wife, Olga, he greeted Sergei warmly and invited him into the comfortable front room for coffee and a banquet of Russian food. Sergei sampled the honey cookies, blintzes, strudel, and rogaliky pastries filled with nuts and fruit and complimented Olga on her wonderful cooking.

  It was the framed picture on the sideboard that afforded him the opportunity to raise the reason for the visit. His aunt, young and carefree, her hair blowing in the breeze and her strong face smiling happily at the photographer, drew him like a magnet. As he gazed at it he was aware of Sasha watching him.

  “I remember the day that was taken as if it was yesterday,” the old man said quietly.

  Sergei replaced it carefully and returned to his chair. “What can you tell me about her last trip? Was she planning to defect?”

  Sasha shook his head emphatically.

  “Absolutely not. We talked about it, constantly. I admit I tried to persuade her, for lots of reasons. But she was adamant and she never wavered. She had to return to Russia.”

  Sergei felt a sense of relief and something else he couldn’t quite identify, closure perhaps?

  “She loved us too much, I believe.”

  “Especially you; she talked constantly about you. She adored you.”

  Sergei smiled at him. “Thank you, Sasha. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

  “Is that what you came to ask me, son? If I believed she was going to defect?”

  Sergei hesitated, weighed up the old man’s likely reaction, and then made up his mind.

  “How did you hear about her death?”

  “The exile community was very strong. We had contacts, even then, people who knew people, within the embassy. I heard the truth, almost immediately.”

  “The truth?” Sergei asked sharply.

  “About her death.”

  His heart was pounding and he tried to control the emotion roaring inside his head.

  “How did she die?”

  “She was murdered, Comrade, by her own people. By the KGB.”

  Chapter 38

  Cornwall

  Summer 2002

  Yuri Slatkin was just finishing his lunch dishes when his doorbell rang. It was a glorious summer’s day and he’d decided to go for a walk. His farm was about half an hour’s walk from the village of Boscastle on the north Cornish coast. Perched up on the cliffs, with a stunning view out to sea, he farmed the land, owned by the National Trust, in much the same way that generations of Englishmen had for a thousand years. It was a good life, quiet and simple and hidden from view. If he chose, he could drop into the Cobweb Inn for a pint of ale and a cheese-and-onion pasty with chips; otherwise he was happy with his own company and the radio.

  For ten years he’d made this little corner of England his home, ever since that day when he’d boarded an Aeroflot jet at Sheremetyevo International Airport bound for Heathrow, and never once had he regretted the decision. It wasn’t his first trip to the United Kingdom; in fact he’d spent the whole of the 1960s in London attached to the Russian Embassy. He was a captain in the army and his responsibility had been security, but unofficially he’d aided the KGB officers when they had less-than-pleasant tasks to do and had gained a reputation as something of a “fix it” man. Consequently he didn’t sleep as well as he might’ve wished. When the nightmares plagued him, he liked to sit up and watch the moonlight reflected on the Atlantic Ocean. After years of State-reinforced atheism, he’d decided to read the Bible and been so fascinated by the concepts inside, he’d availed himself of repentance and forgiveness, just to be on the safe side.

  He opened the door to an average-looking man in a suit, slightly on the short side, not heavy but not thin, anywhere from thirty-five to fifty, wearing sunglasses and carrying a briefcase.

  “Yuri Slatkin?” he asked in Russian.

  Yuri paused.

  “Captain Yuri Slatkin?” the man repeated.

  “Yes. What do you want?” It felt strange to be speaking Russian after all these years.

  “To talk to you. It won’t take long.”

  “I’m on my way to the village. Could you come back later?”

  “Five minutes and I’ll be out of your way.”

  Reluctantly Yuri stood aside and let the man in.

  “Thank you.”

  The man sat down at his kitchen table and glanced at the kettle.

  “Would you like a cup of tea, sir?” Yuri was careful not to let the irritation show in his voice. He could be a Party man, wouldn’t be a good idea to upset him.

  “Thank you.”

  “Have you come from Russia?”

  “I travel, wherever my services are required.”

  Something in his voice made Yuri look at him; the man was taking off his sunglasses and putting them in his jacket pocket. His movements were very precise, clinical, and they made Yuri nervous.

  “What would you like to talk to me about?”

  “I have some questions to ask you, for a book.”

  Yuri put the teacups on the table and sat down opposite him.

  “A book? On what?”

  “Thank you. The Russian Embassy.”

  Yuri relaxed and took a sip of tea.

  “I worked there, you know, when it was the Soviet Embassy, keeping the staff safe.”

  The man put his briefcase on the table and opened it. The lid was toward Yuri so he couldn’t see what the man was doing.

  “Safe from what, Captain Slatkin?”

  “I’m not a captain anymore, I’m a farmer now.”

  “My mistake. Safe from what? What were the threats to the Party in 1965?”

  As he spoke the man rose to his feet and with lightning speed he moved around the table. Before Yuri knew what was happening, his arms were behind his back and he heard the loud click of handcuffs closing. Instinctively he tried to rise, but the man had already attached another pair around the wooden chair and locked them into the pair on his wrists, holding him in a sitting position. The metal bit into his flesh.

  “What the he—” he cried out, but the man pushed him back on the chair.

  “Sit still. I have some questions and I will get answers. I always do.”

  There was an expression in the cold eyes that Yuri recognized instantly. The man took a square of paper out of the briefcase.

  “Do you know this woman?”

  Yuri looked at the black-and-white picture. He said nothing but knew he was betrayed by his reaction. His mouth was dry.

  “This is Yulena Valentina,” the man said coldly as he laid the picture down on the table.

  “In 1965 she died, in London, and you”—he swung the briefcase around so that Yuri could see the tools inside—“are going to tell me what happened to her.”

  If Yuri hadn’t been seventy-seven years old and out of practice with the techniques he’d learned in the army, he might have lasted longer. As it was h
e agreed to talk before the man got to his third fingernail. The man told him he was disappointed; he was hoping he’d pull at least one tooth. He watched as the man pulled a cell phone from a suit pocket and dialed a number.

  “He’ll talk now.” The man put the phone on the table and hit the speaker button. There was no sound coming from it, but he could tell someone was listening, breathing heavily.

  “The KGB brought her in. They said she was going to defect and they wanted to send her back to Moscow, but someone had other plans. I don’t know who, I swear. One of the operatives said that she was a lesbian and they were going to jail her, or send her to a gulag. She was beautiful and he taunted her. She got angry and he slapped her. It got out of hand.”

  “What happened then?” The man in the room asked; the other stayed silent.

  “She was raped.”

  “Did you?”

  Yuri raised his head; this man was an idiot.

  “Did I what?”

  “Rape her.”

  His head sagged down again.

  “We all did. It happened sometimes, not often, but sometimes; the men called it a perk of the job. When it was over, we killed her.”

  “How?”

  “They had a dozen ways, untraceable poison, injecting an air bubble, pressure to the carotid artery, a nick to the jugular vein—”

  “Who killed her?”

  Yuri didn’t answer. The man leaned forward and picked up the bloodied pliers with his free hand.

  “You have two choices, Captain Slatkin. You can tell me or I will string you from that beam and pull your testicles out of your scrotum, cut off your dick, and leave you to bleed to death.”

  “Romans chapter twelve, verse nineteen,” Yuri said softly. “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord.”

  He looked up at the man and was met by a dry, humorless laugh.

  “You’re quoting scripture?” There was an obvious note of incredulity in the voice.