Archangel

'Bribing bartenders?' said an American voice at Kelso's elbow. 'That's smart. Never thought of that. Get served first? Impress the ladies? Hello, Dr Kelso. Remember me?'

In the half-light, the handsome face was patched with colour and it took Kelso a couple of seconds to work out who he was. 'Mr O'Brian.' A television reporter. Wonderful. This was all he needed.

They shook hands. The young man's palm was moist and fleshy. He was wearing his off-duty uniform - pressed blue jeans~ white T-shirt, leather jacket - and Kelso registered broad shoulders, pectorals, thick hair glistening with some aromatic gel.

O'Brian gestured across the dance floor with his bottle. 'The new Russia,' he shouted. 'Whatever you want, you buy, and someone's always selling. Where're you staying?'

'The Ukraina.'

O'Brian made a face. 'Save your bribe for later's my advice. You'll need it. They're strict on the door at the old Ukraina. And those beds. Boy.' O'Brian shook his head and drained his bottle, and Kelso smiled and drank as well.

'Any other advice?' he yelled.

'Plenty, since you ask.' O'Brian beckoned him in close. 'The good ones'll ask for six hundred. Offer two. Settle on three. And we're talking all-night rates, remember, so keep some money back. As an incentive, let's say. And be careful of the real, real babes, 'cause they may be spoken for. If the other fellow's Russian, just walk away. It's safer, and there's plenty more - we're not talking life partners here. Oh, and they don't do triples. As a rule. These are respectable girls.'

'I'm sure.'

O'Brian looked at him. 'You don't get it, do you, professor? This ain't a whorehouse. Anna here -' he curled his arm around the waist of a blonde girl standing next to him and used his beer bottle as a microphone ' - Anna, tell the professor here what you do for a living.'

Anna spoke solemnly into the bottle. 'I lease property to Scandinavian businesses.

O'Brian nuzzled her cheek and licked her ear and released her. 'Galina over there - the skinny one in the blue dress? -she works at the Moscow stock exchange. Who else? Damnit, they all look alike, after you've been here a time. Nataliya, the one you spoke to outside - oh, yes, I was watchin' you, professor, you sly old dog Anna, darlin', what does Nataliya do?'

'Comstar, R.J.,' said Anna. 'Nataliya works for Comstar, remember?'

'Sure, sure. And what was the name of that cute kid at Moscow U? The psychologist, you know the one -'

'Aiissa.'

'Alissa, right. Alissa - she in tonight?'

'She got shot, R.J.'

'Boy! Did she? Really?'

'Why were you watching me outside?' asked Kelso.

'That's commerce, I guess. You wanna make money, you gotta take risks. Three hundred a night. Let's say three nights a week. Nine hundred dollars. Give three hundred for protection. Still leaves six hundred clear. Twenty thousand dollars a year - that's not hard. What's that - seven times the average annual wage? And no tax? Gotta pay a price for that. Gotta take a risk. Like working on an oil rig. Let me get you a beer, professor. Why shouldn't I watch you? I'm a reporter, goddamnit. Everyone comes here watches everyone else. There's half a billion dollars worth of custom here tonight. And that's just the Russians’.

'Mafia?'

'No, just business. Same as any place else.'

The dance floor was packed now, the noise louder, the smoke denser. A new kind of lightshow had been switched on - lights that made everything that was white stand out dazzlingly bright. Teeth and eyes and nails and banknotes flashed in the gloom like knives. Kelso felt disorientated and vaguely drunk. But not, he thought, as drunk as O'Brian was pretending to be. There was something about the reporter that gave him the creeps. How old was he? Thirty? A young man in a hurry, if ever he'd seen one.

He said to Anna, 'What time does this finish?'

She held up five fingers. 'You want to dance, Mister professor?'

'Later,' said Kelso. 'Maybe.'

'It's the Weimar Republic,' said O'Brian, coming back with two bottles of beer and a can of Diet Coke for Anna. 'Isn't that what you wrote? Look at it. Christ. All we need is Marlene Dietrich in a tuxedo and we might as well be in Berlin. I liked your book, professor, by the way. Did I say that already?'

'You did. Thanks. Cheers.'

'Cheers.' O'Brian raised his bottle and took a swig, then he leaned over and shouted in Kelso's ear. 'Weimar Republic, that's how I see it. Like you see it. Six things the same, okay? One: you have a big country, proud country, lost its empire, really lost a war, but can't figure out how - figures it must've been stabbed in the back, so there's a lot of resentment, right? Two: democracy in a country with no tradition of democracy

- Russia doesn't know democracy from a fuckin' hole in the ground, frankly - people don't like it, sick of all the arguing, they want a strong line, any line. Three: border trouble - lots of your own ethnic nationals suddenly stuck in other countries, saying they're getting picked on. Four: anti-semitism - you can buy SS marchin' songs on the street corners, for Christ's sake. That leaves two.

'All right.' It was disconcerting, hearing your own views so crudely parroted; like an Oxford tutorial -'Economic crash, and that's coming, don't you think?'

'And?'

'Isn't it obvious? Hitler. They haven't found their Hitler yet. But when they do, it's watch out, world, I reckon.' O'Brian put his left forefinger under his nose and raised his right arm in a Nazi salute. Across the bar, a group of Russian businessmen whooped and cheered.

AFTER that, the evening accelerated. Kelso danced with Anna, O'Brian danced with Nataliya, they had more drinks the American stuck to beer while Kelso tried the cocktails:

B-52s, Kamikazes - they swapped girls, danced some more and then it was after midnight. Nataliya was in a tight red dress that was slippery, like plastic, and her flesh beneath it, despite the heat, felt cold and hard. She had taken something. Her eyes were wide and poorly focused. She asked if he wanted to go somewhere - she liked him a lot, she whispered, she'd do it for five hundred - but he just gave her fifty, for the pleasure of the dance, and went back to the bar.

Depression stalked him. He wasn't sure why. He could smell desperation, that was it: desperation stank as strongly as the perfume and the sweat. Desperation to buy. Desperation to sell. Desperation to pretend you were having a good time. A young man in a suit, so drunk he could barely walk, was being led away by his tie by a hard-faced girl with long blonde hair. Kelso decided he would have a smoke at the bar and then go - no, on second thoughts, forget the cigarette - he stuffed it back into the pack - he would go.

'Rapava,' yelled the barman.

'What?' Kelso cupped his hand to his ear.

'That's her. She's here.'

'What?'

Kelso looked to where the barman was pointing and saw her at once. Her. He let his gaze travel past her and then come back. She was older than the others: close-cropped black hair, black eyeshadow like bruises, black lipstick, a dead white face at once broad and thin, with cheekbones as sharp as a skull. Asiatic-looking. Mingrelian.

Papu Rapava: released from the camps in 1969. Married, say 1970, 1971. A son just old enough to fight in Afghanistan. And a daughter?

My daughter's a whore...

'Night night, professor -' O'Brian swept past with a wink over his shoulder, Nataliya on one arm, Anna on the other. The rest of his words were lost in the noise. Nataliya turned, giggled~ blew Kelso a kiss. Kelso smiled vaguely, waved, put down his drink and moved along the bar.

A black cocktail dress - fabric shiny, knee-length, sleeveless - bare white throat and arms (not even a wrist watch), black stockings, black shoes. And something not quite right about her, some disturbance in the atmosphere around her, so that even at the crowded bar she was in a space, alone. No one was talking to her. She was drinking a bottle of mineral water without a glass and looking at nothing, her dark eyes were blank, and when he said hello she turned to face him, without interest. He asked if she wanted a drink.

No.

A dance, then?

She looked him over, thought about it, shrugged.

Okay.

She drained the bottle, set it on the bar, and pushed past him on to the dance floor, turned, waited for him. He followed her.

She didn't make much of a pretence and he rather liked her for that. The dance was merely a polite prelude to business, like a broker and a client spending ten seconds inquiring after each other's health. For about a minute she moved idly, at the edge of the pack, then she leaned over and said, 'Four hundred?'

No trace of perfume, just a vague scent of soap.

Kelso said, 'Two hundred.'

'Okay.'

She walked straight off the floor without looking back and he was so surprised by her failure to haggle that for a moment he was left alone. Then he went after her, up the spiral staircase. Her hips were full in the tight black dress, her waist thick, and it occurred to him that she didn't have long to go at this end of the game, that it was a mistake to invite immediate comparison with women eight, ten, maybe even twelve years her junior.

They collected their coats in silence. Hers was cheap, thin, too short for the season.

They went out into the cold. She took his arm. That was when he kissed her. He was slightly drunk and the situation was so surreal that he actually thought for a moment that he might combine business and pleasure. And he was curious, he had to admit it. She responded immediately, and with more passion than he'd expected. Her lips parted. His tongue touched her teeth. She tasted unexpectedly of something sweet and he remembered thinking that maybe her lipstick was flavoured with liquorice: was that possible?

She pulled away from him.

'What's your name?' he said.

'What name do you like?'

He had to smile at that. His luck: to find the first postmodern whore in Moscow. When she saw him smiling, she frowned.

'What's your wife's name?'

'I don't have a wife.'

'Girlfriend?'

'No girlfriends either.'

She shivered and thrust her hands deep into her pockets. It had stopped snowing, and now that the metal door had closed behind them the night was silent.

She said, 'What's your hotel?'

'The Ukraina.'

She rolled her eyes.

'Listen,' he began, but he had no name to ease the conversation. 'Listen, I don't want to sleep with you. Or rather,' he corrected himself, 'I do, but that isn't what I had in mind.'

Was that clear?

'Ah,' she said, and looked knowing - looked like a whore for the first time, in fact. 'Whatever you want, it's still two hundred.'

'Do you have a car?'

'Yes.' She paused. 'Why?'

'The truth is,' he said, wincing at the lie, 'I'm a friend of your father's. I want you to take me to see him -'

That shocked her. She reeled back, laughing, panicky. 'You don't know my father.'

'Rapava. His name's Papu Rapava.'

She stared at him, slack mouthed, then slapped his face -hard, the heel of her hand connecting with the edge of his cheekbone - and started walking away, fast, stumbling a little: it couldn't have been easy in high heels on freezing snow. He let her go. He wiped his mouth with his fingers. They came away black with something. Not blood he realised: lipstick. Oh, but she packed a punch, though: he was hurting. Behind him, the door had opened. He was aware of people watching, and a murmur of disapproval. He could guess what they were thin king: rich westerner gets honest Russian girl outside, tries to renegotiate the terms, or suggests something so disgusting she can only turn and run bastard He set off after her.

She had veered on to the virgin snow of the pitch and had stopped, somewhere near the halfway line, staring into the dark sky. He trod along the path of her small footprints, came up behind her and waited, a couple of yards away.

After a while, he said, 'I don't know who you are. And I don't want to know who you are. And I won't tell your father how I found him. I won't tell anyone. I give you my word. I just want you to take me to where he lives. Take me to where he lives and I'll give you two hundred dollars.'

She didn't turn. He couldn't see her face.

'Four hundred,' she said.

FELIKS SUVORIN, IN a dark blue Crombie overcoat from Saks of Fifth Avenue, had arrived at the Lubyanka in the snow a little after eight that evening, sweeping up the slushy hill in the back of an official Volga.

His path had been eased by a call from Yuri Arsenyev to his old buddy, Nikolai Oborin - hunting crony, vodka partner and nowadays chief of the Tenth Directorate, or the Special Federal Archive Resource Bureau, or whatever the Squirrels had decided to call themselves that particular week.

'Now listen, Niki, I've got a young fellow in the office with me, name of Suvorin, and we've come up with a ploy ... That's him . . . Now, listen, Niki, I can't say more than this:

there's a foreign diplomat - western, highly placed - he's got a racket going, smuggling... No, not icons, this time, wait for it - documents - and we thought we'd lay a trap

That's it, that's it, you're way ahead of me, comrade -something big, something irresistible . . Yes, that's an idea, but what about this: what about that notebook the old NKVDers used to go on about, what was it? . . . That's it, "Stalin's testament" . . . Well, this is why I'm calling now. We've got a problem. He's meeting the target tomorrow .

Tonight? He can do tonight, Niki, I'm certain - I'm looking at him now, he's nodding - he can do tonight...'

Suvorin hadn't even had to repeat the tale, let alone elaborate upon it. Once inside the Lubyanka's marble hall, his papers checked, he'd followed his instructions and called a man named Blok, who was expecting him. He stood around the empty lobby, watched by the silent, uncurious guards and contemplated the big white bust of Andropov, and presently there were footsteps. Blok - an ageless creature, stooped and dusty, with a bunch of keys on his belt - led him into the depths of the building, then out into a dark, wet courtyard and across it and into what looked like a small fortress. Up the stairs to the second floor: a small room, a desk, a chair, a wood-block floor, barred windows -'How much do you want to see?'

'Everything.'

'That's your decision,' said Blok, and left.

Suvorin had always preferred to look ahead rather than to live in the past: something else he admired about the Americans. What was the alternative for a modern Russian? Paralysis! The end of history struck him as an excellent idea. History couldn't end soon enough, as far as Feliks Suvorin was concerned.

But even he could not escape the ghosts in this place. After a minute he got to his feet and prowled around. Craning his head at the high window he found he could see up to the narrow strip of night sky, and then down to the tiny windows, level with the earth, that marked the old Lubyanka cells. He thought of Isaak Babel, down there somewhere, tortured into betraying his friends, then frantically retracting, and of Bukharin, and his final letter to Stalin ('I feel, toward you, toward the Party. toward the cause as a whole nothing but great and boundless love.~ I embrace you in my thoughts, farewell forever . . .') and of Zinoviev, disbelieving, being dragged away by his guard to be shot ('Please comrade, please, for God~ sake call Josef Vissarionovich...')

He pulled out his mobile phone, tapped in the familiar number and spoke to his wife.

'Hi, you'll never guess where I am . . . Who's to say?' He felt better immediately for hearing her voice. 'I'm sorry about tonight. Hey, kiss the babies for me, will you ...? And one for you, too, Serafima Suvorina...

The secret police was beyond the reach of time and history. It was protean. That was its secret. The Cheka had become the GPU, and then the OGPU, and then the NKVD, and then the NKGB, and then the MGB, and then the MVD, and finally the KGB: the highest stage of evolution. And then, lo and behold!, the mighty KGB itself had been obliged by the failed coup to mutate into two entirely new sets of initials: the SVR - the spies - stationed out at Yasenevo, and the FSB - internal security - still here, in the Lubyanka, amid the bones.

And the view in the Kremlin's highest reaches was that the FSB, at least, was really nothing more than the latest in the long tradition of rearranged letters - that, in the immortal words of Boris Nikolaevich himself, delivered to Arsenyev in the course of a steam bath at the Presidential dacha, 'those motherfuckers in the Lubyanka are still the same old motherfuckers they always were'. Which was why, when the President decreed that Vladimir Mamantov had to be investigated, the task could not be entrusted to the FSB, but had to be farmed out to the SVR - and never mind if they hadn't the resources.

Suvorin had four men to cover the city. He called Vissari Netto for an update. The situation hadn't changed: the primary target - No. 1 - had still not returned to his apartment, the target's wife - No. 2 - was still under sedation, the historian - No. 3-was still at his hotel and now having dinner.

'Lucky for some,' muttered Suvorin. There was a clatter in the corridor. 'Keep me informed,' he added firmly, and pressed END. He thought it sounded like the right kind of thing to say.

He had been expecting one file, maybe two. Instead, Blok threw open the door and wheeled in a steel trolley stacked with folders - twenty or thirty of them - some so old that when he lost control of the heavy contraption and collided with the wall, they sent up protesting clouds of dust.

'That's your decision,' he repeated.

'Is this the lot?'

'This goes up to sixty-one. You want the rest?'

'Of course.

HE couldn't read them all. It would have taken him a month. He confined himself to untying the ribbon from each bundle, riffling through the torn and brittle pages to see if they contained anything of interest, then tying them up again. It was filthy work. His hands turned black. The spores invaded the membrane of his nose and made his head ache.

Highly confidential

28 June 1953

To Central Committee, Comrade Malenkov

I hereby enclose the deposition of the cross examination of prisoner A. N. Poskrebyshev, former assistant to J. V. Stalin, concerning his work as an anti Soviet spy. The investigation is continuing.

USSR Deputy Minister of State Security,

A. A. Yepishev

This had been the start of it - a couple of pages, in the middle of Poskrebyshev's interrogation, underscored in red ink almost half a century ago, by an agitated hand: Interrogator: Describe the demeanour of the General Secretary in the four years, 1949-53.

Poskrebyshev: The General Secretary became increasingly withdrawn and secretive. After 1951, he never left the Moscow district. His health deteriorated sharply, I should say from his 70th birthday. On several occasions I witnessed cerebral disturbances leading to blackouts, from which he quickly recovered. I told him: "Let me call the doctors, Comrade Stalin. You need a doctor." The General Secretary refused, stating that the 4th Main Administration of the Ministry of Health was under the control of Beria, and that while he would trust Beria to shoot a man, he would not trust him to cure one. Instead I prepared for the General Secretary herbal infusions.

Interrogator: Describe the effect of these health problems upon the General Secretary's conduct of his duties.

Poskrebyshev: Before the blackouts commenced, the General Secretary would sustain a workload of approximately two hundred documents each day. Afterwards, this number declined sharply and he ceased to see many of his colleagues. He made numerous writings of his own, to which I was not permitted access.

Interrogator: Describe the form of these private writings.

Poskreybshev: These private writings took various forms. In his final year, for example, he acquired a notebook.

Interrogator: Describe this notebook.

Poskrebyshev: This notebook was of an ordinary sort,

which might be bought in any stationers, with a black oilskin cover.

Interrogator: Which other persons knew of the existence of this notebook?

Poskrebyshev: The chief of his bodyguard, General Vlasik, knew of it. Beria also knew of it and asked me on several occasions to obtain a copy of it. This was not possible, even for me, as the General Secretary confined it to an office safe to which he alone possessed the key.

Interrogator: Speculate as to the contents of this notebook.

Poskrebyshev: I cannot speculate. I do not know.

Highly Confidential

30 June 1953

To USSR Deputy Minister of State Security, A. A.Yepishev

You are instructed to investigate the whereabouts of the personal writings of J. V. Stalin referred to by A. N.

Poskrebyshev as a matter of supreme urgency and using all appropriate measures.

Central Committee,

Malenkov

Cross-examination of prisoner Lieutenant-General N.S. Vlasik 1 July 1953 [Extract]

Interrogator: Describe the black notebook belonging to J. V. Stalin.

Viasik: I do not remember such a notebook.

Interrogator: Describe the black notebook belonging to J. V. Stalin.

Viasik: I remember now. I first became aware of this in December 1952. One day I saw this notebook on Comrade Stalin's desk. I asked Poskrebyshev what it contained, but Poskrebyshev could not tell me. Comrade Stalin saw me looking at it and asked me what I was doing. I replied that I was doing nothing, that my eye had merely fallen upon this notebook, but that I had not touched it. Comrade Stalin said: "You as well, Vlasik, after more than thirty years?" I was arrested the following morning and brought to the Lubyanka.

Interrogator: Describe the circumstances of your arrest.

Viasik: I was arrested by Beria, and subjected to numberless cruelties at his hands. Beria questioned me repeatedly about the notebook of Comrade Stalin. I was unable to tell him details. I know nothing further of this matter.

Statement of Lieutenant A. P. Titov, Kremlin Guard 6 July 1953 [Extract]

I was on duty in the leadership area of the Kremlin from 22:00 on 1 March 1953 until 06:00 the following day. At approximately 04:40, I encountered in the Passage of Heroes Comrade L. P. Beria and a second comrade whose identity is not known to me. Comrade Beria was carrying a small case or bag.

Interrogation of Lieutenant P. G. Rapava, NKVD 7 July 1953 [Extract]

Interrogator: Describe what happened following your departure from J. V. Stalin's dacha with the traitor

Beria.

Papaya: I drove Comrade Beria to his home.

Interrogator: Describe what happened following your departure from J. V. Stalin's dacha with the traitor Beria.

Papaya: I remember now. I drove Comrade Beria to the Kremlin to enable him to collect material from his office.

Interrogator: Describe what happened following your departure from J. V. Stalin's dacha with the traitor Beria.

Papaya: I have nothing to add to my previous statement.

Interrogator: Describe what happened following your departure from J. V. Stalin's dacha with the traitor Beria.

Papaya: I have nothing to add to my previous statement.

Interrogation of L. P Beria 8 July 1953 [Extract]

Interrogator: When did you first become aware of the personal notebook belonging to J. V. Stalin?

Beria: I refuse to answer any questions until I have been allowed to express myself before a full meeting of the Central Committee.

Interrogator: Both Vlasik and Poskrebyshev have confirmed your interest in this notebook. Beria.' The Central Committee is the proper forum in which all these matters should be addressed.

Interrogator: You do not deny your interest in this notebook.

Beria: The Central Committee is the proper forum.

Highly Confidential

30 November 1953

To USSR Deputy Minister of State Security, A. A. Yepishev,

You are instructed to bring the investigation into the anti-Party criminal and traitor Beria to a rapid conclusion, and to move this matter to trial.

Central Committee, Malenkov, Khrushchev

Interrogation of L. P. Beria 2 December 1953 [Extract]

Interrogator: We know that you took possession of the notebook of J. V. Stalin, yet you continue to deny this matter. What was your interest in this notebook? Beria: End it.

Interrogator: What was your interest in this notebook? Beria: [The accused indicated by gesture his refusal to co-operate]

Highly confidential

23 December 1953

To Central Committee, Comrades Malenkov, Khrushchev

I beg to report that the sentence of death by shooting imposed on L. P. Beria was carried out today at 01:50.

T. R. Falin,

Procurator General

27 December 1953

Judgement of the People's Special Court in the case of Lieutenant P. G. Rapava: 15 years' penal servitude.

Suvorin couldn't bear the filth of his hands any longer. He wandered the empty corridor until he found a toilet with a sink where he could wash himself down. He was still in there, trying to get the last of the dust out from under his fingernails, when his mobile phone rang. In the silence of the Lubyanka it made him jump.

'Suvorin.'

'It's Netto. We've lost him. No. 3.'

'Who? What're you talking about?'

'No. 3. The historian. He went in to eat with the others. He never came out. It looks as though he left through the kitchens.'

Suvorin groaned, turned, leaned against the wall. This whole business was spinning out of control.

'How long ago?'

About an hour. In defence of Bunin, he has been on duty for eighteen hours.' A pause. 'Major?'

Suvorin had the phone wedged between his chin and shoulder. He was drying his hands, thinking. He didn't blame Bunin, actually. To mount a decent surveillance took at least four watchers; six for safety.

'I'm still here. Stand him down.'

'Do you want me to tell the chief?'

'I think not, don't you? Not twice in one day. He might begin to think we're incompetent.' He licked his lips, tasting dust. 'Why don't you go home yourself, Vissari? We'll meet in my office, eight tomorrow.

'Have you discovered anything?'

'Only that when people go on about "the good old days" they're talking shit.'

' He rinsed his mouth, spat, went back to work.

BERIA was shot, Poskrebyshev released, Viasik got a sentence of ten years, Rapava was sent to Kolyma, Yepishev was taken off the case, the investigation meandered on.

Beria's house was searched from attic to cellar and yielded no further evidence, apart from some pieces of human remains (female) that had been partially dissolved by acid and bricked up. He had his own private network of cells in the basement. The property was sealed. In 1956, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs asked the KGB if it had any suitable premises which might be offered as an embassy to the new Republic of Tunisia, and, after a final brief investigation, Vspolnyi Street was handed over.

Vlasik was interrogated twice more about the notebook, but added nothing new. Poskrebyshev was watched, bugged, encouraged to write his memoirs and, when he had finished, the manuscript was seized 'for permanent retention'. An extract, a single page, had been clipped to the file:

What went through the mind of this incomparable genius in that final year, as he confronted the obvious fact of his own mortality, I do not know. Josef Vissarionovich may have confided his most private thoughts to a notebook, which rarely left his side during his final months of unstinting toil for his people and the cause of progressive humanity. Containing, as it may do, the distillation of his wisdom as the leading theoretician of Marxism-Leninism, it must be hoped that this remarkable document will one day be discovered and published for the benefit...

Suvorin yawned, closed the bundle and put it to one side, grabbed another. This turned out to be the weekly reports of a Gulag stool-pigeon named Abidov, assigned to keep an eye on the prisoner Rapava during his time at the Butugychag uranium mine. There was nothing of interest in the smudged carbons, which ended abruptly with a laconic note from the camp KGB officer, recording Abidov's death from a stab wound, and Rapava's transfer to a forestry labour detail.

More files, more stoolies, more of nothing. Papers authorising Rapava's release at the conclusion of his sentence, reviewed by a special commission of the Second Chief Directorate - passed, stamped, authorised. Appropriate work selected for the returning prisoner at the Leningrad Station engine sheds; KGB informer-in-place: Antipin, foreman. Appropriate housing selected for the returning prisoner at the newly built Victory of the Revolution complex; KGB informer-in-place: Senka, building supervisor. More reports. Nothing. Case reviewed and classified as 'diversion of resources', 1975. Nothing on file until 1983, when Rapava was briefly re-examined at the request of the deputy chief of the Fifth Directorate (Ideology and Dissidents).

Well, well...

Suvorin pulled out his pipe and sucked at it, scratched his forehead with the stem, then went searching back through the files. How old was this fellow? Rapava, Rapava, Rapava -here it was, Papu Gerasimovich Rapava, born 9.9.27.

Old, then - in his seventies. But not that old. Not so old that even in a country where the average male life expectancy was fifty-eight and falling - worse than it had been in Stalin's time - not so old that he need necessarily be dead.

He flipped back to the 1983 report, and scanned it. It told him nothing he didn't know already. Oh, he was a tight one, this Rapava - not a word in thirty years. Only when he reached the bottom, and saw the recommendation to take no further action, and the name of the officer accepting this recommendation did he jolt up in his chair.

He swore and fumbled for his mobile, tapped out the number of the SVR's night duty officer and asked to be patched through to the home of Vissari Netto.

THEY SETTLED ON three hundred, and for that he insisted on two things: first, that she drove him there herself and, secondly, that she waited an hour. An address on its own would be useless at this time of night, and if Rapava's neighbourhood was as rough as the old man had implied it was ('it was a decent block in those days, boy, before the drugs and the crime. . .9 then no foreigner in his right mind would go stumbling around there alone.

Her car was a battered, ancient Lada, sand-coloured, parked in the dark street that led to the stadium, and they walked to it in silence. She opened her door first and then reached across to let him in. There was a pile of books on the passenger seat - legal textbooks, he noticed - and she moved them quickly into the back.

He said, Are you a lawyer? Are you studying the law?'

'Three hundred dollars,' she said, and held out her hand.

'US.'

'Later.

'Now.'

'Half now,' he said, cunningly, 'half later.'

'I can get another fuck, mister. Can you get another ride?'

It was her longest speech of the night.

'Okay, okay.' He pulled out his wallet. 'You'll make a good lawyer.' Jesus. Three hundred to her, after more than a hundred at the club - it just about cleaned him out. He had thought he might try offering the old man some cash, this evening, as a downpayment for the notebook, but that wouldn't be possible now. She re-counted the notes, folded them carefully and put them away in her coat pocket. The little car rattled down to the Leningradskly Prospekt. She made a right into the quiet traffic, then did a U-turn, and now they were heading out of the city, back past the deserted Dinamo stadium, north-west, towards the airport.

She drove fast. He guessed she wanted to be rid of him. Who was she? The Lada's interior offered him no clues. It was fastidiously clean, almost empty. He gave her profile a surreptitious look. Her face was tilted downwards slightly. She was scowling at the road. The black lips, the white cheeks, the small and delicately pointed ears below the lick of short black hair - she had a vampirish look: disturbing, he thought again. Disturbed. He still had the taste of her in his mouth and he couldn't help wondering what the sex would have been like - she was so utterly out of reach now, yet fifteen minutes earlier she would have done whatever he asked.

She glanced up at the mirror and caught him looking at her. 'Cut that out.'

He continued to stare anyway - more frankly now: he was making a point, he had paid for the ride - but then he felt cheap and turned away.

The streets beyond the glass had become much darker. He didn't know where they were. They had passed the Park of Friendship, he knew that, and passed a power station, a railway junction. Thick pipes carrying communal hot water ran beside the road, across the road, along the other side, steam leaking from their joints. Occasionally, in the patches of blackness, he could see the flames of bonfires and people moving around them. After another ten minutes, they turned off left into a street as wide and rough as a field, with scruffy birch trees on either side. They hit a pothole and the chassis cracked, scraped rock. She spun the wheel and they hit another. Orange lights beyond the trees dimly lit the gantries and stairwells of a giant housing complex.

She had slowed the car now almost to walking pace. She stopped beside a broken-down wooden bus shelter.

'That's his place,' she said. 'Block number nine.'

It was about a hundred yards away, across a snowy strip of waste ground.

'You'll wait here?'

'Entrance D. Fifth floor. Apartment twelve.'

'But you'll wait?'

'If you want.'

'We did agree.

Kelso looked at his watch. It was twenty-five past one. Then he looked again at the apartment block, trying to think what he would say to Rapava, wondering what reception he would get.

'So this is where you grew up?'

She didn't answer. She switched off the engine and turned up her collar, put her hands in her pockets, stared ahead. He sighed and got out of the car, walked around it. The powdery snow creaked as it compacted under his feet. He shivered and began to pick his way over the rough ground.

He was about halfway across when he heard the grating of an ignition and an engine firing up. He swung round to see the Lada moving off slowly, lights doused. She hadn't even bothered to wait until he was out of sight. Bitch. He began running towards her. He shouted - not loudly, and not in anger really: it was more a groan at his own stupidity. The little car was shuddering, stalling, and for a moment he thought he might catch up with it, but then it coughed, 'lurched, the lights came on and it accelerated away from him. He stood and watched it helplessly as it vanished into the labyrinth of concrete.

He was alone. Not a soul in view. He turned and began quickly retracing his steps, crunching across the snow towards the building. He felt vulnerable in the open and panic sharpened his senses. Somewhere to his left, he could hear the bark of a dog and a baby's cry, and ahead of him there was music - it was faint, there was scarcely more than a thread of it, but it was coming from Block Nine and it was getting louder with each step. His eyes were making out details now - the ribbed concrete, the shadowed doorways, the stacked balconies crammed with junk: bed frames, bike frames, old tyres, dead plants; three windows were lit, the rest in darkness.

At Entrance D something crunched beneath his foot and he bent to pick it up, then dropped it, fast. A hypodermic syringe.

The stairwell was a sump of piss and vomit, stained newsprint, limp condoms, dead leaves. He covered his nose with the back of his hand. There was an elevator, and it might have been working - a Moscow miracle that would have been - but he didn't propose to try. He climbed the stairs, and by the time he reached the third floor he could hear the music much more clearly. Someone was playing the old Soviet national anthem - the old old anthem, that was -the one they used to sing before Khrushchev had it censored. 'Party of Lenin!' shouted the chorus. 'Party of Stalin!' Kelso took the last two flights more quickly, with a sudden rush of hope. She hadn't entirely tricked him, then, for who else but Papu Rapava would be playing the greatest hits of Josef Stalin at half-past one in the morning? He came out on to the fifth floor and followed the noise along the dingy passage to number twelve. The block was largely derelict. Most of the doors were boarded over, but not Rapava's. Oh no, boy. Rapava's door wasn't boarded over. Rapava's door was open and outside it, for reasons Kelso couldn't begin to fathom, there were feathers on the floor. The music stopped.

COME on then, boy. What're you waiting for? What's up? Don't tell me you haven't the balls -For several seconds, Kelso stood on the threshold, listening. Suddenly there was a drumroll.

The anthem began again.

Cautiously, he pushed at the door. It was partially open, but it wouldn't go back any further. There was something behind it, blocking it. He squeezed around the edge. The lights were on.

Dear God -Thought you'd be impressed, boy! Thought you'd be surprised'

I/you're going to get fucked over, you might as well get fucked over by professionals, eh? At Kelso's feet were more feathers, leaking from a cushion that had been disemboweled. These feathers could not be said to be on the floor, however, because there was no floor. The boards were all prised up and stacked around the edges of the room. Strewn across the rib-cage of the joists were the remains of Rapava's few possessions - books with splayed and shattered spines, punched-through pictures, the skeletons of chairs, an exploded television, a table with its legs in the air, bits of crockery, shards of glass, shredded fabric. The interior walls had been skinned to expose the cavities. The exterior walls were bruised and dented, apparently by a sledgehammer. Much of the ceiling was hanging down. Plaster dust frosted the room.

Balanced in the centre of this chaos, amid a black and jagged pool of broken records, was a bulky 1970s Telefunken record player, set to automatic replay.

Party of Lenin!

Party of Stalin!

Kelso stepped carefully from rib to rib and lifted the needle.

In the silence: the dripping of a broken tap. The extent of the destruction was so overwhelming, so utterly beyond anything he had ever seen, that once he was satisfied the apartment was empty, it barely occurred to him that he ought to be scared. Not at first. He peered around him, baffled.

So where am I, boy? That's the question. What have they done with poor old Papu? Come on then, come and get me. Chop, chop, comrade - we haven't got all night!

Kelso, wobbling, tightrope-walked along a joist, into the kitchen alcove: slashed packets, upended ice-box, wrenched-down cupboards...

He edged backwards and round the corner into a little passage, scrabbling at the broken wall to stop himself from slipping.

Two doors here, boy - right and left. You take your pick. He swayed, indecisive, then reached out a hand. The first - a bedroom.

Now you're getting warm, boy. By the way: did you want to fuck my daughter?

Slashed mattress. Slashed pillow. Overturned bed. Empty drawers. Small and tatty nylon carpet, rolled and stacked. Clumps of plaster everywhere. Floor up. Ceiling down. Kelso back in the passage, breathing hard, balanced on a rib, summoning the nerve.

The second door -Very warm now, boy!

- the second door: the bathroom. Cistern lid off, propped against the toilet. Sink dragged away from the wall. A white plastic tub brimming with pinkish water that made Kelso think of diluted Georgian wine. He dipped his finger in and pulled it out sharply, shocked at the coldness, his fingertip sheathed in red.

Floating on the surface: a ring of hair still attached to a small flap of skin.

Let's go, boy.

Rib to rib, plaster dust in his hair, on his hands, all over his coat, his shoes -He stumbled in his panic, lost his footing on the beam, and his left shoe punched a hole into the ceiling of the flat beneath. A piece of debris detached itself. He heard it fall into the darkness of the empty apartment. It took him half a minute and both hands to pull his foot free, and then he was out of there.

He squashed himself around the door and into the corridor and moved quickly back along the passage, past the abandoned apartments, towards the stairs. He heard a thump.

He stopped and listened.

Thump.

Oh, you're hot, now, boy, you're very, very hot...

It was the elevator. It was someone inside the elevator.

Thump.

THE Lubyanka, the still of night, the long black car with the engine running, two agents in overcoats charging down the steps - was there no escaping the past? thought Suvorin, bitterly, as they accelerated away. He was surprised there were

(no tourists on hand to record this traditional scene of life in Mother Russia. Why not put it in the album, darling, between St Basil's Cathedral and a troika in the snow?

They thumped into a dip at the bottom of the hill near the Metropol Hotel, and his head connected with the cushioned roof. In the front seat, next to the driver, Netto was unfolding a large-scale map of the Moscow streets of a detail that no tourist would ever see because it was still officially secret. Suvorin snapped on the interior light and leaned forward for a better look. The apartment blocks of the Victory of the Revolution complex were scattered like postage stamps across the Tagansko-Krasno metro line, in the north-west outer suburb.

'How long do you reckon? Twenty minutes?'

'Fifteen,' said the driver, showing off. He gunned the engine, shot the lights, swung right, and Suvorin was pitched the other way, against the door. He had a brief impression of the Lenin Library flashing past.

'Relax,' he said, 'for pity's sake. We don't want to get a ticket.'

They sped on. Once they were clear of the centre, Netto unlocked the glove compartment and handed Suvorin a welloiled Makarov and a clip of ammunition. Suvorin took it reluctantly, felt the unfamiliar weight in his hand, checked the mechanism and sighted briefly at a passing birch tree. He hadn't joined the service because he enjoyed this kind of thing. He had joined because his father was a diplomat who had taught him early on that the best thing to do if you lived in the Soviet Union was to get a posting abroad. Guns? Suvorin hadn't set foot on the Yasenevo range inside a year. He gave the weapon back to Netto who shrugged and stuffed it in his own pocket.

A blue dot grew noisily in the road behind them, swelled and flashed past like an angry fly - a patrol car of the Moscow militia. It dwindled into the distance.

'Asshole,' said their driver.

A few minutes later they turned off the main road and headed into the wilderness of concrete and wasteland that was the Victory of the Revolution. Fifteen years in Kolyma, thought Suvorin, then welcome home to this. And the joke was, it must have seemed like paradise.

Netto said, According to the map, Block Nine should be just round this corner.

'Slow down,' ordered Suvorin, suddenly, putting his hand on the driver's shoulder. 'Can you hear something?'

He wound down his window. Another siren, off to the left. It faded for a moment, muffled by a building, then became very loud, and colours burst ahead - a blue and yellow light-show, rather pretty, moving fast. For a couple of seconds the patrol car seemed to be coming straight at them but then it swung off the road and bounced over the rough ground, and a moment later they were level with it and could see the entrance to the block themselves, lit up like a fairyland -three cars, an ambulance, people moving, shadowed tracks in the snow

They cruised round the building a couple of times, a trio of ghouls, unnoticed, as the stretcher men brought out the body and then Kelso was driven away.

IMONOV TELLS THE following story.

At meetings of the Council of People's Commissars, it was Comrade Stalin's habit to rise from his place at the head of the long table and to pace behind the backs of the participants. Nobody dared to look round at him: they could establish where he was only by the soft squeak of his leather boots or by the passing fragrance of his Dunhill pipe. On this particular occasion, the conversation concerned the large number of recent plane crashes. The head of the air force, Rychagov, was drunk. 'There will continue to be a high level of accidents, ' he blurted out, 'as long as we're compelled by you to go up in flying coffins.' There was a long silence, at the end of which Stalin murmured. 'You really shouldn't have said that. 'A few days later, Rychagov was shot.

One could quote any number of such stories. His favourite technique, according to Khrushchev, was suddenly to look at a man and say: 'Why is your face so shifty today? Why can't you look Comrade Stalin directly in the eyes?' That was the moment when one's l~fr hung in the balance.

Stalin's use of terror seems to have been partly instinctive (he was naturally physically violent: he sometimes struck his subordinates in the face) and partly calculated 'The people. 'he told Maria Svanidze, 'need a tsar. 'And the tsar upon whom he modelled himself was Ivan the Terrible. We have written confirmation of that here in this archive, in Stalin’s personal library, which contains a copy of A. M Tolstoy's 1942 play. Ivan Grozny (F558 03 D350). Not only has Stalin corrected the speeches of Ivan to make them sound more laconic - to sound more like himself in fact - but he has also scrawled repeatedly over the title page 'Teacher-

Indeed, he had only one criticism of his role model: that he was too weak. As he told the director, Sergei Eisenstein: 'Ivan the Terrible would execute someone and then spend a long time repenting and praying God got in his way in this matter. He ought to have been still more decisive!' (Moskovskie novosti, no. 32, 1988).

Stalin was nothing lf not decisive.

Professor L A. Kuganov estimates that some sixty-six million people were killed in the USSR between 1917 and 1953 - shot, tortured, starved mostly, frozen or worked to death. Others say the true figure is a mere forty-five million. Who knows?

Neither estimate, by the way, includes the thirty million now known to have been killed in the Second World War.

To put this loss in context: the Russian Federation today has a population of roughly 150 million. Assuming the ravages inflicted by communism had never occurred, and assuming normal demographic trends, the actual population should be about 300 million.

And yet - and this is surely one of the most astounding phenomena of the age - Stalin continues to enjoy a wide measure of popular support in this half-empty land His statues have been taken down, true. The street names have been changed But there have been no Nuremberg Trials, as there were in Germany There has been no process here equivalent to de-Nazification. There has been not been a Truth Commission, of the sort established in South Africa.

And the opening of the archives? 'Confronting the past? Co me, ladies and gentlemen, let us say frankly what we all know to be the case. That the Russian government today is scared, and that it is actually harder to gain access to the archives now than it was six or seven years ago. You all know the facts as well as I do. Beria's files: closed The Politburo's files: closed Stalin's files -the real files, I mean, not the window dressing on offer here: closed

I can see my remarks are not being well received by one or two colleagues - All right, I shall draw them to a conclusion, with this

observation: that there can now be no doubt that it is Stalin rather than Hitler who is the most alarming figure of the twentieth century.

I say this -I say this not merely because Stalin killed more people than Hitler - although clearly he did - and not even because Stalin was more of a psychopath than Hitler - although clearly he was. I say it because Stalin, unlike Hitler, has not yet been exorcised, and also because Stalin was not a one-off like Hitler, an eruption from nowhere. Stalin stands in a historical tradition of rule by terror which existed before him, which he refined, and which could exist again. His, not Hitler's, is the spectre that should worry us.

Because, you know, you think about it. You hail a taxi in Munich -you don't find the driver displaying Hitler's portrait in his cab, do you? Hitler's birthplace isn't a shrine. Hitler's grave isn't piled with fresh flowers every day You can't buy tapes of Hitler's speeches on the streets of Berlin. Hitler isn't routinely praised as 'a great patriot' by leading German politicians. Hitler's old party didn't receive more than forty per cent of the votes in the last German election -But all these things are true of Stalin in Russia today, which

is what makes the words of Yevtushenko, in 'The Heirs of Stalin’s more relevant now than ever:

'So I ask our government,

To double,

To treble,

The guard,

Over this tomb.'

FLUKE Kelso was escorted into the headquarters of the central division of the Moscow City Militia shortly before three a.m. And there he was left, washed up with the rest of the night's detritus - half a dozen hookers, a Chechen pimp, two white-faced Belgian bankers, a troupe of transsexual dancers from Turkestan and the usual midnight chorus of outraged lunatics, tramps and bloodied addicts. High-corniced ceilings and half-blown chandeliers gave proceedings a Revolutionary epic look.

He sat alone on a hard wooden bench, his head leaning back on the peeling plaster, staring ahead, unseeing. So that - that was what it looked like? Oh, you could spend half a lifetime writing about it all, about the millions - about Marshal Tukhachevsky, say, beaten to a pulp by the NKVD:

there was his confession in the archives, still sprinkled with his dried blood: you even held it in your hands - and you thought for a moment you had a sense of what it must have been like, but then you confronted the reality and you realised you hadn't understood it at all, you hadn't even begun to know what it was like.

After a while two militia men wandered up and stood at the metal drinking fountain next to him, discussing the case of the Uzbeki bandit, Tsexer, apparently machine-gunned earlier that evening in the cloakroom of the Babylon.

'Is anyone dealing with my case?' interrupted Kelso. 'It is a murder.'

'Ah, a murder!' One of the men rolled his eyes in mock surprise. The other laughed. They dropped their paper cones in the trash can and moved off

'Wait!' shouted Kelso.

Across the corridor, an elderly woman with a bandaged hand started screaming.

He sank back on to the bench.

Presently, a third officer, powerfully built, with a Gorky moustache, came wearily downstairs and introduced himself as Investigator Belenky, a homicide detective. He was holding a piece of grubby paper.

'You're the witness in the business involving the old man, Rapazin?'

'Rapava,' corrected Kelso.

'Right. That's it.' Belenky squinted at the top and bottom of the paper. Perhaps it was the walrus moustache or maybe it was his watery eyes but he seemed immensely sad. He sighed. 'Okay. We'd better have a statement.

Belenky led him up a grand staircase to the second floor, to a room with flaking green walls and an uneven, shiny woodblock floor. He gestured to Kelso to sit, and put a pad of lined forms in front of him.

'The old man had Stalin's papers,' began Kelso, lighting a cigarette. He exhaled quickly. 'You ought to know that. Almost certainly he had them hidden in his apartment. That's why -'

But Belenky wasn't listening. 'Everything you can remember.' He slapped a blue biro down on the table.

'But you hear what I'm saying? Stalin's papers -'

'Right, right.' The Russian still wasn't listening. 'We'll sort out the details later. Need a statement first.'

'All of it?'

'Of course. Who you are. How you met the old man. What you were doing at the apartment. The whole story. Write it down. I'll be back.'

After he had gone, Kelso stared at the blank paper for a couple of minutes. Mechanically, he wrote his full name, his date of birth and his address in neat Cyrillic script. His mind was a fog. 'I arrived,' he wrote, and paused. The plastic pen felt as heavy between his fingers as a crowbar. 'I arrived in Moscow on -'He couldn't even remember the date. He who was normally so good at dates! (25 October 1917, the battle-cruiser Aurora shells the Winter Palace and begins the Revolution; 17 January 1927, Leon Trotsky is expelled from the Politburo; 23 August 1939: the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact is signed. . .) He bent his head to the desk. '- I arrived in Moscow on the morning of Monday October 26 from New York at the invitation of the Russian Archive Service to deliver a short lecture on Jose/Stalin. .

He finished his statement in less than an hour. He did as he was told and left nothing out - the symposium, Rapava's visit, the Stalin notebook, the Lenin Library, Yepishev and the meeting with Mamantov, the house on Vspolnyi Street, the freshly dug earth, Robotnik and Rapava's daughter ... He filled seven pages with his tiny scrawl, and took the final section even quicker, hurrying over the scene in the apartment, the discovery of the body, his desperate search for a working telephone in the next-door block, eventually rousing a young woman with a baby on her hip. It felt good to be writing again, to be imposing some kind of rational order on the chaos of the past.

Belenky put his head round the door just as Kelso added the final sentence.

'You can forget that now'

'I've done.'

'No?' Belenky stared at the small pile of sheets and then at Kelso. There was a commotion in the corridor behind him.

He frowned, then yelled over his shoulder, 'Tell him to wait.

He came into the room and closed the door.

Something had happened to Belenky, that much was obvious. His tunic was unbuttoned, his tie loose. Dark patches of sweat stained his khaki shirt. Without taking his eyes off Kelso's face, he held out his massive hand and Kelso gave him the statement. He sat down with a grunt on the opposite side of the table and took a plastic case from his breast pocket. From the case he withdrew a surprisingly delicate pair of gold-framed, half-moon glasses, shook them open, perched them on the end of his nose, and began to read.

His heavy chin jutted forwards. Occasionally, his eyes would flicker up from the page to Kelso, study him for a moment, then return to the text. He winced. His moustache sagged lower over his tightening lips. He chewed the knuckle of his right thumb.

When he laid the final page aside he gave a sigh.

And this is true?'

'All of it.'

'Well, fuck your mother.' Belenky took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with the side of his hand. 'Now what am I supposed to do?'

'Mamantov,' said Kelso. 'He must have been involved. I was careful not to give him any details but -'

The door opened and a small, thin man, a Laurel to Belenky's Hardy, said, in a frightened voice, 'Sima! Quick! They're here!'

Belenky gave Kelso a significant look, gathered the statement together and pushed back his chair. 'You'll have to go down to the cells for a bit. Don't be alarmed.'

At the mention of cells Kelso felt a spasm of panic. 'I'd like to speak to someone from the embassy.'

Belenky stood and slid his tie back up into a tight knot, fastened the buttons of his tunic, tugged the jacket down in a hopeless attempt to straighten it.

'Can I speak to someone from the embassy?' repeated Kelso. 'I'd like to know my rights.'

Belenky squared his shoulders and moved towards the door. 'Too late,' he said.

IN the cells beneath the headquarters of the Central Division of the Moscow City Militia, Kelso was roughly frisked and parted from his passport, wallet, watch, fountain pen, belt, tie and shoelaces. He watched them shovelled into a cardboard envelope, signed a form, was handed a receipt. Then, with his boots in one hand, his chit in the other and his coat over his arm, he followed the guard down a whitewashed passage lined on either side with steel doors. The guard was suffering from a plague of boils - his neck above his greasy brown collar looked like a plate of red dumplings - and at the sound of his footsteps, the inmates of some of the cells began a frantic shouting and banging. He took no notice.

The eighth cubicle on the left. Three yards by four. No window. A metal cot. No blanket. An enamel pail in the corner with a square of stained wood for a lid.

Kelso went slowly into the cell on his stockinged feet, threw his coat and boots down on the cot. Behind him, the door swung shut with a submarine clang.

Acceptance. That, he had learned in Russia many years ago, was the secret of survival. At the frontier, when your papers were being checked for the fifteenth time. At the road block, when you were pulled over for no reason and kept waiting for an hour and a half. At the ministry, when you went to get your visa stamped and no one had bothered to show up. Accept it. Wait. Let the system exhaust itself. Protest will only raise your blood pressure.

The spyhole in the centre of the door clicked open, stayed open for a moment, clicked shut. He listened to the guard's footsteps retreat.

He sat on the bed and closed his eyes and saw, at once, unbidden, like the after-image of a bright light imprinted on his retina, the white and naked body revolving in the down draught of the elevator shaft - shoulders, heels and trussed hands rebounding gently off the walls.

He sprang at the door and hammered on it with his empty boots and yelled for a while, until he'd got something out of himself. Then he turned and rested his back against the metal, confronting the narrow limits of his cell. Slowly he allowed himself to slide down until he was resting on his haunches, his arms clasped around his knees.

TIME. Now here is a peculiar commodity, boy. The measurement of time. Best accomplished, obviously, with a watch. But, lacking a watch, a man may use instead the ebb and flow of light and dark. Lacking, however, a window through which to see such movement, the reliance must be devolved upon some inner mechanism of the mind. But if the mind has received a shock, the mechanism is disturbed, and time becomes as the ground is to a drunkard, variable.

Thus Kelso, at some point indeterminate, transferred his body from the doorway to the cot and drew his coat across himself. His teeth were chattering. His thoughts were random, disconnected. He thought of Mamantov, going back over their meeting again and again, trying to remember if he had said anything that could have led him to Rapava. And he thought about Rapava's daughter and the way he had broken his word in his statement. She had abandoned him. Now he had revealed her as a whore. So the world turns. Somewhere, presumably, the militia would have her address on file. Her name as well. The news about her father would be broken to her, and she would be - what? Dry-eyed, he was fairly sure. Yet vengeful.

In his dreams he moved to kiss her again but she evaded his embrace. She danced jerkily across the snow outside the apartment block while O'Brian paraded up and down pretending to be Hitler. Madame Mamantov raged against her madness. And behind a door somewhere, Papu Rapava went on knocking to be let out. In here, boy! Thump. Thump. Thump.

HE woke to find a cool blue eye regarding him through the spyhole. The metal eyelid drooped and closed, the lock rattled.

Behind the pustulous guard there stood a second man -blond-headed, well-dressed - and Kelso's first thought was a happy one: The embassy, they've come to get me out. But then blond-head said, in Russian, 'Dr Kelso, put your boots on, please,' and the guard shook the contents of the envelope out on to the cot.

Kelso bent to thread his laces. The stranger, he noticed, was wearing a smart pair of western brogues. He straightened and strapped on his watch and saw that it was only six twenty. A mere two hours in the cells, but enough to last him a lifetime. He felt more human with his boots on. A man can face the world with something on his feet. They passed down the corridor, triggering the same desperate hammering and shouting.

He assumed he would be taken back upstairs for more questioning~ but instead they came out into a rear courtyard where a car was waiting with two men in the front seats. Blond-head opened the rear passenger door for Kelso -'Please,' he said, with cold politeness - then went round and got in the other side. The interior of the car was hot and fetid, as if at the end of a long journey, sweetened only by blond-head's delicate aftershave. They pulled away, out of militia headquarters and into the quiet street. Nobody spoke.

It was beginning to get light - light enough, at least, for Kelso to recognise roughly where they were heading. He had already marked this trio down as secret police, which meant the FSB, which meant the Lubyanka. But to his surprise he realised they were travelling east, not west. They came down the Noviy Arbat, past the deserted shops, and the Ukraina came into view. So they were taking him back to the hotel, he thought. But he was wrong again. Instead of crossing the bridge they turned right and followed the course of the Moskva. Dawn was coming on quickly now, like a chemical reaction, darkness dissolving across the river, first to grey and then to a dirty alkali blue. Streaks of smoke and steam from the factory chimneys on the opposite bank - a tannery, a brewery - turned a corrosive pink.

They drove on in silence for a few more minutes and then suddenly swung off the embankment and parked in a derelict patch of reclaimed land that jutted out into the water. A couple of big sea-birds flapped and rose, and span away, crying. Blond-head was out first and then, after a brief hesitation, Kelso followed him. It crossed his mind that they had brought him to the perfect spot for an accident: a simple push, a flurry of news reports, a long investigation for a London colour supplement, suspicions raised and then forgotten. But he put a brave face on it. What else could he do?

Blond-head was reading the statement Kelso had given to the militia. It flapped in the breeze that was coming off the river. Something about him was familiar.

'Your plane,' he said, without turning round, 'leaves Sheremetevo-2 at one-thirty. You will be on board it.'

'Who are you?'

'You'll be taken back to your hotel now, and then you'll catch the bus to the airport with your colleagues.'

'Why are you doing this?'

'You may try to re-enter the Russian Federation in the near future. In fact, I'm sure you will: you're a persistent fellow, anyone can see that. But I must tell you that your application for a visa will be rejected.'

'This is a bloody outrage.' It was stupid, of course, to lose his temper, but he was too tired and shaken-up to help himself. A complete bloody disgrace. Anyone would think that I was the killer.'

'But you didkill him.' The Russian turned round. 'You are the killer.'

'This is a joke, is it? I didn't have to come forward. I didn't have to call the militia. I could have run away.

And don't think I didn't consider it -'It's here in your own words.' Blond-head slapped the

statement. 'You went to Mamantov yesterday afternoon and told him a "witness from the old time" had approached you with information about Stalin's papers. That was a death sentence. Kelso faltered. 'I never gave a name. I've been over that conversation in my mind a hundred times -, 'MamantOv didn't need a name. He already hadthe name.' 'You can't be certain -'Papu Rapava,' said the Russian, with exaggerated

patience~ 'was re-investigated by the KGB in nineteen eighty-three. The investigation was at the request of the deputy chief of the Fifth Directorate - Vladimir Pavlovich Mamantov. Do you see?'

Kelso closed his eyes.

'Mamantov knew precisely who you were talking about. There is no other "witness from the old time". Everyone else is dead. So: fifteen minutes after you left Mamantov's apartment, Mamantov also left. He even knew where the old man lived, from his file. He had seven, possibly eight hours to question Rapava. With the assistance of his friends. Believe me, a professional like Mamantov can do a lot of damage to a person in eight hours. Would you like me to give you some of the medical details? No? Then go back to New York, Dr Kelso, and play your games of history in somebody else's country, because this isn't England or America, the past isn't safely dead here. In Russia, the past carries razors and a pair of handcuffs. Ask Papu Rapava.'

A gust of wind swept the surface of the river, raised waves, set a nearby buoy clanking against its rusting chains.

'I can testify' said Kelso after a while. 'To arrest Mamantov, you'll need my evidence.'

For the first time, the Russian smiled. 'How well do you know Mamantov?'

'Hardly at all.'

'You know him hardly at all. That is your good fortune. Some of us have come to know him well. And I can assure you that Comrade V. P. Mamantov will have no fewer than six witnesses - none of them below the rank of full colonel -who will swear that he spent the whole of last evening with them, discussing charity work, one hundred miles from Papu Rapava's apartment. So much for the value of your testimony.

He tore Kelso's statement in half, then halved it again, and again - kept on until it couldn't be reduced further. He crumpled the pieces between his hands, cupped them and threw the fragments out across the water. The wind caught them. The seagulls swooped in the hope of food then wheeled away, shrieking with disappointment.

'Nothing is as it was,' he said. 'You ought to know that. The investigation begins again from scratch this morning. This statement was never taken. You were never detained by the militia. The officer who questioned you has been promoted and is being transferred, even as we speak, by military transport plane to Magadan.'

'Magadan?' Magadan was on the eastern rim of Siberia, four thousand miles away.

'Oh, we'll bring him back,' said the Russian, airily, 'when this is sorted out. What we don't want is the Moscow press corps trampling over everything. That really would be embarrassing. Now, I tell you all this, knowing there's nothing we can do to prevent you publishing your version of events abroad. But there will be no official corroboration from here, you understand? Rather the contrary. We reserve the right to make public our record of your day's activity, in which your motives will be made to look quite different. For example: you were arrested for indecent exposure to a couple of children in the Zoopark, the daughters of one of my men. Or you were picked up drunk on the Smolenskaya embankment, urinating into the river, and had to be locked up for violent and abusive behavior.'

'Nobody will believe it,' said Kelso, trying to summon a last vestige of outrage. But, of course, they would. He could make a list now of everyone who would believe it. He said, bitterly, 'So that's it then? Mamantov goes free? Or perhaps you'll try to find Stalin's papers yourselves, so you can bury them somewhere, like you people bury everything else that's "embarrassing"?'

'Oh, but you irritate me,' said the Russian, and now it was his turn to lose his temper. 'People like you. How much more is it you want of us? You've won, but is that enough? No, you have to rub our faces in it - Stalin, Lenin, Beria: I'm sick of hearing their damn names - make us turn out all our filthy closets, wallow in guilt, so you can feel superior -'

Kelso snorted, 'You sound like Mamantov.'

'I despise Mamantov,' said the Russian. 'Do you understand me? For the same reason I despise you. We want to put an end to Comrade Mamantov and his kind - what d'you suppose this is all about? But now you've come along - blundered into something much bigger - something you can't even begin to understand -'

He stopped - goaded, Kelso could tell, into saying more than he intended - and then Kelso realised where he must have seen him before.

'You were there, weren't you?' he said. 'When I went to see him. You were one of the men outside his apartment -But he was talking to himself. The Russian was striding

back to the car.

'Take him to the Ukraina,' he said to the driver, 'then come back here and pick me up. I need some air.

'Who are you?'

'Just go. And be grateful.'

Kelso hesitated but suddenly he was too tired to argue. He climbed, weary and defeated, into the back seat as the engine started. The Russian slammed the door on him, emphatically. He felt numb and shut his eyes again and there was Rapava's corpse swinging in the darkness. Thump. Thump. He opened his eyes and saw that it was the blond-headed man, knocking on the window. Kelso wound it down.

A final thought.' He was making an effort to be polite again. He even smiled. 'We're working on the assumption, obviously, that Mamantov now has this notebook. But have you considered the alternative? Remember, Papu Rapava withstood six months of interrogation back in fifty-three, and then fifteen years in Kolyma. Suppose Mamantov and his friends didn't manage to break him in one evening. It's a possibility: it would explain the . . . ferocity of their behaviour: frustration. In that case, if you were Mamantov, who would you want to question next?' He banged on the roof. 'Sleep well in New York.'

Suvorin watched the big car as it bounced over the rough ground and out of sight. He turned away, towards the river, and walked along the quayside, smoking his pipe, until he came to a big metal post set into the concrete, to which ships had moored in the communist time, before economics had accomplished what Hitler's bombers had never managed, and laid waste the docks. His performance had exhausted him. He wiped the surface with his handkerchief, sat down, and pulled out his photocopy of Kelso's statement. To have written so much - perhaps two thousand words - so quickly and with such clarity, after such an experience . . . Well, it proved his hunch: he was a clever one, this fellow, Fluke. Troublesome. Persistent. Clever. He went through the pages again with a gold propelling pencil and made a list of matters for Netto to check. They needed to visit the house on Vspolnyi Street - Beria's place, well, well. They ought to find this daughter of Rapava's. They should compile a list of every forensic document examiner in the Moscow region to whom Mamantov might take the notebook for authentication. And every handwriting expert. And they should find a couple of tame historians and ask them to make the best guess possible as to what this notebook might contain. And and and. . . He felt as though he was trying to stuff gas back into a cylinder with his hands.

He was still writing when Netto and the driver returned. He rose stiffly. To his dismay he found that the mooring-post had left a rust-coloured mark on the back of his beautiful coat, and he spent much of the journey to Yasenevo picking at it obsessively, trying to make it clean.

KELSO'S HOTEL ROOM was in darkness, the curtains closed. He pulled aside the cheap nylon drapes. There was an odd smell of something - talcum powder? Aftershave? Someone had been in here. Blond-head, was it? Eau Sauvage? He lifted the telephone receiver. The line hummed. He felt breathless. His skin was crawling. He could have done with a whisky but the mini-bar was still empty after his night with Rapava; there was nothing in it apart from soda and orange juice. And he could have done with a bath but there wasn't a plug.

He guessed now who the blond-headed man was. He knew the species - smooth and sharply-dressed, westernised, deracinated - too sharp for the secret police. He had been meeting men like that at embassy receptions for more than twenty years, dodging their discreet invitations for lunch and drinks, listening to their carefully indiscreet jokes about life in Moscow. They used to be called the First Chief Directorate of the KGB. Now they called themselves the SVR. The name had changed but the job had not. Blond-head was a spy. And he was investigating Mamantov. They had set the spies on Mamantov, which was not much of a vote of confidence in the FSB.

At the thought of Mamantov, he stepped quickly over to the door and turned the heavy lock and set the chain. Through the spy-hole he took a fish-eyed squint down the empty corridor.

'But you did kill him... You are the killer.'

He was shaking now with delayed shock. He felt filthy, somehow, defiled. The memory of the night was like grit against his skin.

He went into the little green-tiled bathroom, took off his clothes and turned on the shower, set the water as hot as he could bear, and soaped himself from head to foot. The suds turned grey with the Moscow grime. He stood under the steaming jet and let it scourge him for another ten minutes, thrashing his shoulders and his chest, then he stepped out of the tub, slopping water over the uneven lino. He lit a cigarette and smoked as he shaved, transferring it from one side of his mouth to the other, working his razor around it, standing in a puddle. Then he dried himself off, got into bed and pulled the cover up to his chin. But he didn't sleep.

A little after nine o'clock the telephone began to ring. The bell was shrill. It rang for a long while, stopped, then started again. This time, though, whoever it was hung up quickly.

A few minutes later, someone knocked softly on his bedroom door.

Kelso felt vulnerable now, naked. He waited ten minutes, threw off the sheet, dressed, packed - that didn't take long -then sat in one of the foam rubber chairs facing the door. The cover of the other chair was rucked, he noticed, the seat still slightly depressed from the imprint of poor Papu Rapava.

AT ten-fifteen, carrying his suitcase in one hand and with his raincoat over his arm, Kelso unlocked and unchained his door, checked the corridor and descended via the express elevator into the hubub of the ground floor.

He handed in his key at the reception desk and was in the act of turning away, towards the main entrance, when a man shouted 'Professor!'

It was O'Brian, hurrying over from the news-stand. He was still wearing his clothes from the night before - jeans a little less pressed, T-shirt no longer as white - and he had a couple of newspapers tucked under his arm. He hadn't shaved. He seemed even bigger in the daylight. 'Morning, professor. So. What's new?'

Kelso made a groaning noise in the back of his throat but managed to hoist up a smile. 'Leaving, I'm afraid.' He displayed his suitcase, bag and coat.

'Now I'm sorry to hear that. Let me help you with those.'

'I'm fine.' He began to move around O'Brian. 'Really.' Aw, come on.' The reporter's arm flashed out, grabbing the handle, squeezing Kelso's fingers out of the way. In a second he had the suitcase. He quickly transferred it to his other hand, out of Kelso's reach. 'Where to, sir? Outside?'

'What the fuck are you playing at?' Kelso strode after him. People sitting in reception turned to watch. 'Give me back my case -'That was some night, though, wasn't it? That place?

Those girls?' O'Brian shook his head and grinned as they walked. 'And then you go and find that body and all -must've been one hell of a shock. Look out, professor, here we go.

He plunged through the revolving door and Kelso, after a hesitation, followed him. He came out the other side to find O'Brian looking serious.

'All right,' said O'Brian, 'don't let's embarrass one another. I know what's going on.'

'I will take my case now, thank you.'

'I decided to hang around outside Robotnik last night. Forgo the pleasures of the flesh.'

'My case-'

'Let's say I had a hunch. Saw you leave with the girl. Saw you kiss her. Saw her hit you - what was that all about, by the way? Saw you get in her car. Saw you go into the apartment block. Saw you run out ten minutes later like all the hounds of hell were after you. And then I saw the cops arrive. Oh, professors you are a character, you are a man of surprises.'

'And you're a creep.' Kelso began pulling on his raincoat, making an effort to seem unconcerned. 'What were you doing at Robotnik anyway? Don't tell me: it was a coincidence.'

'I go to Robotnik, sure,' said O'Brian. 'That's how I like my relationships: on a business footing. Why get a girl for free when you can pay for one, that's my philosophy.'

'God.' Kelso held out his hand. 'Just give me my case.

'Okay, okay.' O'Brian glanced over his shoulder. The bus was in its usual place, waiting to ferry the historians to the airport. Moldenhauer was taking a picture of Saunders with the hotel in the background, Olga was watching them, fondly. 'If you want to know the truth, it was Adelman.'

Kelso drew his head back slowly. 'Adelman?'

'Yeah, at the symposium yesterday, during the morning break, I asked Adelman where you were and he told me you were after some Stalin papers.'

'Adelman said that?'

'Oh, come on, don't tell me you trusted Adelman?' O'Brian grinned. 'One sniff of a scoop and you guys make the paparazzi look like choirboys. Adelman proposed a deal. Fifty-fifty. He said I should try to find the papers, see if there was anything in it, and if there was then he'd authenticate them. He told me everything you'd told him.'

'Including Robotnik?'

'Including Robotnik.'

'Bastard.'

Now Olga was taking a picture of Moldenhauer and Saunders. They stood shyly, side by side, and it struck Kelso for the first time that they were gay. Why hadn't he realised it before? This trip was nothing but surprises -'Come on, professor. Don't get all shocked on me. And don't get shocked about Adelman, either. This is a story. This is a hell of a story. And it just keeps on getting better. Not only d'you find this poor bastard hanging in the elevator shaft with his pecker in his mouth, you also tell the militia that the guy who did it is none other than Vladimir Mamantov. And not only that - the whole investigation's now been canned on the orders of the Kremlin. Or so I hear. What's so funny?'

'Nothing.' Kelso couldn't help smiling, thinking of the blond-headed spy. ('What we don't want is the Moscow press corps trampling over everything. . .') 'Well, I'll say this for you, Mr O'Brian: you have good contacts.

O'Brian made a dismissive gesture. 'There's not a secret in this town that can't be bought for a bottle of Scotch and fifty bucks. And man, I tell you, they're in a rage down there, you know? They're leaking like a nuclear reactor. They don't like being told what to do.'

The driver of the bus sounded his horn. Saunders was on board now. Moldenhauer had taken out his handkerchief to wave goodbye. Kelso could see the faces of the other historians through the glass, like pale fish in an aquarium.

He said, 'You really had better give me my case now. I've got to go.

'You can't just run out, professor.' But there was a defeated tone to his appeal and this time he let Kelso take the handle.

'Come on, Fluke, just one little interview? One brief comment?' He followed at Kelso's heels, an importunate beggar. 'I need an interview, to stand this thing up.

'It would be irresponsible.'

'Irresponsible? Balls! You won't talk because you want to keep it all for yourseWJ Well, you're crazy. The cover-up isn't working. This story's going to blow - if not today, tomorrow.

'And you want it today, naturally, ahead of everyone else?'

'That's my job. Oh, come on, professor. Stop being so goddamn snooty. We're not so very different -'

Kelso was at the door of the bus. It opened with a pneumatic sigh. From the interior came a ragged, ironic cheer.

'Goodbye, Mr O'Brian.'

Still O'Brian wouldn't give up. He climbed up on to the first step. 'Take a look at what's happening here.' He jammed his roll of newspapers into Kelso's coat pocket. 'Take a look. That's Russia. Nothing here keeps until tomorrow. This place might not be here tomorrow. You're - oh, shit -'

He had to jump to avoid the closing door. He gave a last, despairing thump on the bodywork from outside.

'Dr Kelso,' said Olga, stonily.

'Olga,' said Kelso.

He pushed his way down the aisle. When he came level with Adelman he stopped, and Adelman, who must have watched his whole encounter with O'Brian, glanced away. Beyond the muddy glass the reporter was trudging towards the hotel, his hands in his pockets. Moldenhauer's white handkerchief fluttered in farewell.

The bus lurched. Kelso turned, half-walking, halftumbling, towards his usual place, alone and at the back.

FOR five minutes he did nothing except stare out of the window. He knew he ought to write this down, prepare another record while it Was still clear in his mind. But he couldn't, not yet. For now, all roads of thought seemed to lead back to the same image of the figure in the elevator-shaft.

Like a side of beef in a butcher's shop -He patted his pockets to find his cigarettes and pulled out O'Brian's newspapers. He threw them on the seat beside him and tried to ignore them. But after a couple of minutes he found himself reading the headlines upside down, then reluctantly he picked them up.

They were nothing special, just a couple of English-language freesheets, given away in every hotel lobby.

The Moscow Times. Domestic news: the President was ill again, or drunk again, or both. A serial cannibal in the Kemerovo region was believed to have killed and eaten eighty people. Interfax reported that 60,000 children were sleeping on the streets each night in Moscow. Gorbachev was recording another television commercial for Pizza Hut. A bomb had been planted at the Nagornaya metro station by a group opposed to plans to remove Lenin's mummified body from public display in Red Square.

Foreign news: The IMF was threatening to withold $700 million in aid unless Moscow cut its budget deficit.

Business news: interest rates had tripled, stock market prices halved.

Religious news: A nineteen-year-old nun with ten thousand followers was predicting the end of the world on Hallowe'en. A statue of the Virgin Mother was trundling around the Black Earth region, weeping real blood. There was a holy man from Tarko-Sele who spoke in tongues.

There were fakirs and Pentecostalists, faith healers, shamans, workers of miracles, anchorites and marabouts and followers of the skoptsy, who believed themselves the Lords Incarnate. It was like Rasputin's time. The whole country was a tumult of bloody auguries and false prophets.

He picked up the other paper, The exile, this one written for young westerners like O'Brian working in Moscow. No religion here, but a lot of crime:

In the village of Kamenka, in the Smolenskaya Oblast, where the local collective farm is bankrupt and state employees haven't been paid all year, the big summer activity for kids is hanging around the Moscow-Minsk highway and sniffing gasoline, bought in half-litre jugs for a rouble. In August, two of the biggest gasoline addicts, Pavel Mikheenkov, 11, and Anton Malyarenko, 13, graduated from their favourite pastime - torturing cats - to tying a five year-old boy named Sasha Petrochenkov to a tree and burning him alive. Malyarenk was deported to his native Tashkent, but Mikheenkov has had to stay in Kamenka, unpunished:

sending him to reform school would cost 15,000 roubles and the town doesn't have the money. The victim's mother, Svetlana Petrochenkova, has been told she can have her son's killer sent away if she digs up the money herself, but failing that must live with him in the village. According to police, Mikleenkov had been drinking vodka regularly with his parents since the age of four. He turned the page quickly and found a guide to Moscow night life. Gay bars - Dyke, The Three Monkeys, Queer Nation; strip clubs - Navada, Rasputin, The Intim Peep Show; nightclubs - the Buchenwald (where the staff wore Nazi uniforms), Bulgakov; Utopiya. He looked up Robotnik:

'No place could better exemplify the excesses of the New Russia than Robotnik: bitchin interior, ear-splitting techno, Babe-OLitas and their flathead keepers, Die Hard security, black-eyed patrons sucking down Evians. Get laid and see someone get shot.'

That sounded about right, he thought.

THE departure terminal at Sheremetevo-2 was crammed with people trying to get out of Russia. Queues formed like cells under a microscope - grew from nothing, wormed back on themselves, broke, re-formed, and merged into other queues: queues for customs, for tickets, for security, for passport controls. You finished one and joined the next. The hall was dark and cavernous, sour with the reek of aviation spirit and the thin acid of anxiety. Adelman, Duberstein, Byrd, Saunders and Kelso, plus a couple of Americans who had been staying at the Mir - Pete Maddox of Princeton and Vobster of Chicago - stood in a group at the end of the nearest line while Olga went off to see if she could speed things up.

After a couple of minutes, they still hadn't moved. Kelso ignored Adelman who sat on his suitcase reading a biography of Chekhov with extravagant intensity. Saunders sighed and flapped his arms with frustration. Maddox wandered away and came back to report that customs seemed to be opening every bag.

'Shit, and I bought an icon,' complained Duberstein. 'I knew I shouldn't've bought an icon. I'll never get it through.'

'Where'd you get it?'

'That big bookstore on the Noviy Arbat.'

'Give it to Olga. She'll get it out. How much d'you pay?' 'Five hundred bucks.'

'Five hundred?'

Kelso remembered he hadn't any money. There was a news-stand at the end of the terminal. He needed more cigarettes. If he asked for a seat in smoking he could keep clear of the others.

'Phil,' he said to Duberstein, 'you couldn't lend me ten dollars, could you?'

Duberstein started laughing. 'What're you going to do, Fluke? Buy Stalin's notebook?'

Saunders sniggered. Velma Byrd raised her hand to her mouth and looked away.

'You told them as well?' Kelso stared at Adelman in disbelief.

'And why not?' Adelman licked a finger and turned over a page without looking up. 'Is it a secret?'

'Tell you what,' said Duberstein, pulling out his wallet. 'Here's twenty. Buy one for me as well.'

They all laughed at that, and openly this time, watching Kelso to see what he would do. He took the money.

'All right, Phil,' he said, quietly. 'I'll tell you what. Let's make a deal. If Stalin's notebook turns up by the end of the year, I'll just keep this and then we're quits. But if it doesn't, I'll pay you back a thousand dollars.'

Maddox gave a low whistle.

'Fifty to one,' said Duberstein, swallowing. 'You're offering me fifty to one?'

'We've got a deal?'

'Well, you bet.' Duberstein laughed again, but nervously this time. He glanced around at the others. 'You hear that everyone?'

They'd heard. They were staring at Kelso. And for him, at that moment, it was worth a thousand dollars - worth it just for the way they looked: 'open-mouthed, stricken, panicked. Even Adelman had temporarily forgotten his book.

'Easiest twenty dollars I ever made,' said Kelso. He stuffed the bill into his pocket and picked up his suitcase. 'Save my place for me, will you?'

He moved off across the crowded terminal, quickly, quitting while he was still ahead, easing his way through the people and the piles of luggage. He felt a childish pleasure. A few fleeting victories here and there - what more could a man hope for in this life?

Over the loudspeaker, a woman with a harsh voice made a deafening announcement about the departure of an Aeroflot flight to Delhi.

At the news-stand he made a quick check to see if they had the paperback of his book. They did not. Naturally. He turned his attention to a rack of magazines. Last week's Time and Newsweek, and the current Der SpiegeL So. He would take Der Spiegel. It would do him good. It would certainly last him an eleven-hour plane ride. He fished in his pocket for Duberstein's $20 and turned towards the till. Through the plate glass window he could see the wet sweep of concrete, a jammed line of cars and taxis and buses, grey buildings, abandoned trolleys, a girl with cropped dark hair, a white face watching him. He looked away casually. Frowned. Checked himself.

He stuffed the magazine back into the rack and returned to the window. It was her, all right, standing alone, in jeans and a fleece-lined leather jacket. His breath misted on the cold glass. Wait, he mouthed at her. She stared at him blankly. He pointed at her feet. Stay there.

To get to her he had to walk away from her, following the line of the glass wall, trying to find an exit. The first set of doors was chained shut. The second opened. He came out into the cold and wet. She was standing about fifty yards 'away. He looked back at the crowded terminal - he couldn't see the others - and then at her, and now she was moving away from him, heading across a pedestrian crossing, heedless of the cars. He hesitated: what to do? A bus momentarily wiped her from view and that made his mind up for him. He hoisted his luggage and set off after her, breaking into a trot. She drew him on, always maintaining the same distance, until they were into the big outdoor car park, and then he lost her.

Grey light, snow and frozen slush. The stink of fuel much sharper here. Row upon row of boxy cars, some muffled white, others thinly wrapped in a film of mud and grit. He walked on. The air shook. A big old Tupolev jet swept directly over his head, so low he could see the lines of rust where the plates of the fuselage were welded together. Instinctively, he ducked, just as a sandy-coloured Lada emerged slowly from the end of the line and stopped, its engine running.

SHE didn't make it easy for him, even then. She didn't drive over to where he was; he had to walk to her. She didn't open the door; he had to do it. She didn't speak; it was left to him to break the silence. She didn't even tell him her name - not then, at least, although he discovered it later. She was called Zinaida. Zinaida Rapava.

She knew what had happened, that was obvious by the strain on her face, and he felt guiltily relieved at that, because at least he wouldn't have to break the news. He had always been a coward when it came to breaking bad news - that was one reason he'd been married three times. He sat in the front passenger seat, his suitcase wedged across his knees. The heater was running. The windscreen wiper flicked intermittently across the dirty glass. He knew he would have to say something soon. Delta to New York was the one event of the symposium he had no intention of missing.

'Tell me what I can do to help.'

'Who killed him?'

A man named Vladimir Mamantov. Ex-KGB. He knew of your father from the old time.

'The old time,' she said, bitterly.

Silence - long enough for the wiper to scrape back and forth, back and forth.

'How did you know where to find me?'

'Always, all my life: the old time.'

Another Tupolev rumbled low overhead.

'Listen,' he said, 'I've got to go in a minute. I've got to catch a plane to New York. When I get there, I'm going to write everything down - are you listening? I'll send you a copy. Tell me where to send it. You need anything, I'll help.'

It was hard to move with his case on his lap. He unbuttoned his coat and reached awkwardly into his inside pocket for his pen. She wasn't listening to him. She was staring straight ahead, talking almost to herself

'It'd been years since I saw him. Why would I want to? I hadn't been near that dump in eight years till you asked me to take you.' She turned to him for the first time. She had washed off her makeup. She looked younger, more pretty. Her leather jacket was old, brown, zipped tight to the neck. 'After I left you, I went home. Then I went back to his place again. I had to find out - you know - what was going on. Never saw 50 many cops in my life. You'd been taken away by then. I didn't say who I was. Not to the cops. I had to think things through. I -' She stopped. She seemed baffled, lost.

'What's your name?' he said. 'Where can I reach you?'

'Then, this morning, I went to the Ukraina. I rang you. Went up to your room. When they said you'd checked out I came here and waited.'

'Can't you just tell me your name?' He looked at his watch, hopelessly. 'Only I've got to catch this plane, you see.

'I don't ask favours,' she said fiercely. 'I never ask favours.' 'Listen, don't worry. I want to help. I feel responsible.' 'Then help me. He said you'd help me 'He?'

'The thing is, mister, he's left me something.' Her leather jacket creaked as she unzipped it. She felt around inside and brought out a scrap of paper. 'Something worth a lot? In a toolbox? He says that you can tell me what it is.'

THEY DROVE OUT of the airport perimeter onto the St Petersburg highway and turned south towards the city. A big truck overtook them, its wheels as high as their roof, rocking them in its wake, soaking them in a filthy spray.

Kelso had promised himself he wouldn't look back, but of course he did - looked back and saw the terminal building, like a great grey ocean liner, sink out of sight behind a line of birch trees until only a few watery lights were visible, and then they disappeared.

He winced and nearly asked the girl to take him back. He gave her a sideways glance. In her scuffed flying jacket she looked intrepid: an aviatrix at the controls of her battered plane.

He said, 'Who's Sergo?'

'My brother.' She glanced in the rear-view mirror. 'He's dead.'

He turned the note over and read it again. Rough paper. Pencil scrawl. Written quickly. Stuffed under the door of her apartment, or so she said: she had found it when she got back after dropping Kelso outside her father's block.

My little one, Greetings!

I have been a bad one, you're right. All you said was right. So don't think I don't know it! But here is a chance to do some good. You wouldn't let me tell you yesterday, so listen now. Remember that place I used to have, when Mama was alive? It’s still there! And there's a toolbox with a present for you that’s worth a lot.

Are you listening, Zinaida?

Nothing will happen to me, but if it does - take the box and hide it safe. But it could be dangerous, so mind yourself You'll see what I mean.

Destroy this note. I kiss my little one, Papa.

- There's a Britisher called Kelso, get him through the Ukraina, he knows the story. Remember your papa!

I kiss you again, Zinaida. Remember Sergo!!

'So he came to see you - when was it? The day before yesterday?'

She nodded, without looking round at him, concentrating on the road. 'It was the first time I'd seen him in nearly ten years.

'You didn't get on, then?'

'Oh, you're a smart one.' Her laugh was brief, sarcastic: a short expulsion of breath. 'No, we didn't get on.'

He ignored her aggression. She was entitled to it. 'What was he like, the last time you saw him?'

'Like?'

'His mood.'

A bastard. Same as always.' She frowned at the oncoming traffic. 'He must have been waiting for me all night, outside my place. I got back about six. I'd been at the club, you know, been working. The moment he saw me he started shouting. Saw my clothes. Called me a whore.' She shook her head at the memory.

'Then what happened?'

'He followed me in. Into my place. I said to him, I said:

"You hit me, I'll take your fucking eye out, I'm not your little girl any more." That calmed him down.'

'What did he want?'

'To talk, he said. It was a shock after all that time. I didn't think he knew where I lived. I didn't even know he was still alive. Thought I'd got away from him for good. Oh, but he'd known, he said - known where I was for a long time. Said he used to come and watch me sometimes. He said, "You don't get away from the past that easily." Why did he come to see me?' She looked at Kelso for the first time since they'd left the airport. 'Can you tell me that?'

'What did he want to talk about?'

'I don't know. I wouldn't listen. I didn't want him in my place, looking at my things. I didn't want to hear his stories. He started going on about his time in the camps. I gave him some cigarettes to get rid of him and told him to go. I was tired and I'd got to go to work.'

'Work?'

'I work at GUM in the daytime. I learn law at college in the evenings. Some nights, I screw. Why? Is it a problem?'

'You lead a full life.'

'I have to.

He tried to picture her behind the counter at GUM. 'What do you sell?'

'What?'

At the store. What do you sell?'

'Nothing.' She checked the mirror again. 'I work the switchboard.'

Closer to the city, the road was clogged. They slowed to a crawl. There had been an accident up ahead. A rickety Skoda had run into the back of a big old Zhiguli. Broken glass and bits of metal were scattered across two lanes. The militia were on the scene. It looked as though one of the drivers had punched the other: he had splashes of blood on the front of his shirt. As they passed the policemen, Kelso turned his head away. The road cleared. They picked up speed.

He tried to fit all this together: Papu Rapava's last two days on earth. Tuesday 27 October: he goes to see his daughter for the first time in a decade, because, he says, he wants to talk. She throws him out, buys him off with a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches labelled 'Robotnik'. In the afternoon, he turns up, of all places, at the Institute of Marxism- Leninism and listens to Fluke Kelso deliver a paper on Josef Stalin. Then he follows Kelso back to the Ukraina and sits up all night drinking. And talking. He certainly talked. Perhaps he told me what he would have told his daughter if she'd only listened.

And then it's dawn and he leaves the Ukraina. This is now Wednesday 28 October. And what does he do after he's slipped away into the morning? Does he go to the deserted house on Vspolnyi Street and dig up the secret of his life? He must have done. And then he hides it, and he leaves a note for his daughter, telling her where to find it ('remember that place I used to have when Mama was alive?') and then, late in the afternoon, his killers come for him. And either he had told them everything, or he hadn't, and if he hadn't, then it must have been partly out of love, surely? To make certain that the only thing he had in the world that might be worth anything should go not to them but to his daughter.

God, thought Kelso, what an ending. What a way to leave a life - and how in keeping with the rest of it.

'He must have cared for you,' said Kelso. He wondered if she knew how the old man had died. If she didn't, he couldn't bring himself to tell her. 'He must have cared for you, to have come to find you.'

'I don't think so. He used to hit me. And my mother. And my brother.' She glared at the oncoming traffic. 'He used to hit me when I was little. What does a child know?' She shook her head. 'I don't think so.'

Kelso tried to imagine the four of them in the one-bedroom apartment. Where would her parents have slept? On a mattress in the sitting-room? And Rapava, after a decade and a half in Kolyma - violent, unstable, confined. It didn't bear contemplating.

'When did your mother die?'

'Do you ever stop asking questions, mister?'

They came off the highway and down a slip road. Half of it had never been completed. One lane curved like a water-chute, ending abruptly in a row of dripping metal rods and a ten-yard drop to waste ground.

'When I was eighteen, if that makes any difference.'

The ugliness around them was heroic. In Russia it could afford to be - could afford to take its time, stretch out a bit. Minor roads ran as wide as motorways, with flooded potholes the size of ponds. Each concrete stack of apartments, each belching industrial plant had an entire wilderness to itself to pollute. Kelso remembered the night before - the endless run from Block Nine to Block Eight to raise the alarm: it had gone on and on, like a journey in a nightmare.

Rapava's place in the daylight looked even more derelict than it had seemed in the darkness. Scorch marks shot up the wall from a set of windows on the second floor where an apartment had been torched. There was a crowd outside and Zinaida slowed so they could take a look.

O'Brian was right. The word was out. That much was obvious. A solitary militia man blocked the doorway, holding at bay a dozen cameramen and reporters, who were themselves being watched by a straggling semi-circle of apathetic neighbours. Some kids kicked a ball on the waste ground. Others hung around the media's fancy western cars.

'What was he to them?' Zinaida said suddenly. 'What was he to any of you? You're all vultures.'

She gave a grimace of disgust, and for the third time Kelso noticed her adjusting the rear-view mirror.

'Is someone behind us?' He turned round sharply. 'Maybe. A car from the airport. But not any more. "'What sort of a car?' He tried to keep his voice calm. A BMW. Seven series.

'You know about cars?'

'More questions?' She shot him another look. 'Cars were my father's interest. Cars and Comrade Stalin. He was a driver, wasn't he, for some big shot in the old days? You'll see.'

She put her foot down.

She knows nothing, thought Kelso. She has no idea of the risks. He began making promises to himself of what he would do: you take a quick look now to see if this toolbox is here (it wouldn't be) then ask her to take you back to the airport and see if you can talk your way on to the next flight out -Two minutes from Rapava's apartment they turned off the main street and on to a muddy track that led through a scrappy copse of birch to a field that had been divided into small-holdings. A pig snuffled in the earth in an enclosure made of old car doors tied together with wire. There were a few scrawny chickens, some frost-blasted vegetables. Children had made a snowman out of yesterday's fall. It had melted in the light rain and looked grotesque in the dirt, like a lump of white fat.

Facing this rural scene was a row of lock-up garages. On the long flat roof sat the remains of half a dozen small cars -rusted red skeletons picked bare of windows, engines, tyres, upholstery. Zinaida switched off the engine and they climbed out into the mud. An old man leaned on his shovel and watched them. Zinaida stared him down, her hands on her hips. Eventually, he spat on the ground and returned to his digging.

She had a key. Kelso looked back along the deserted track. His hands felt numb. He stuffed them into his coat pockets. She was the calm one. She was wearing a pair of knee-length leather boots and to avoid getting them dirty she stepped carefully across the lumpy ground. He looked around again. He didn't like it: the encroaching trees, the derelict cars, this bewildering woman with her kaleidoscope of roles - GUM telephonist, would-be lawyer, part-time hooker and now griefless daughter.

He said, 'Where did you get the key?'

'It was with the note.'

'I don't understand why you didn't come here on your own straight away. Why do you need me?'

'Because I don't know what I'm looking for, do I? Are you coming or not?' She was fitting the key into a big padlock on the nearest lock-up. 'What are we looking for, anyway?'

'A notebook.'

'What?' She stopped fiddling with the key and stared at him.

A black oilskin notebook that used to belong to Josef Stalin.' He repeated the familiar phrase. It was becoming his mantra. (It wouldn't be here, he told himself again. It was the Holy Grail. The quest was all that mattered. It wasn't supposed to be found.)

" 'Stalin's notebook? And what's that worth?'

'Worth?' He tried to make it sound as if the question had never occurred to him. 'Worth?' he repeated. 'It's hard to put an exact figure on it. There are some rich collectors. It depends what's in it.' He spread his hands. 'Half a million, maybe.'

'Roubles?'

'Dollars.'

'Dollars? Shit. Shit.' She resumed her efforts to undo the padlocks clumsy now with her eagerness.

And suddenly, watching her, he caught her mood and then of course he knew why he had come. Because it was everything, really, wasn't it? It was much more than mere money. It was vindication. Vindication for twenty years of freezing his arse off in basement archives, and dragging himself to lectures in the winter dark - first to listen, then to give them - twenty years of teaching and faculty politics and trying to write books that mostly didn't sell and all the while hoping that one day he would produce something worthwhile - something true and big and definitive - a piece of history that would explain why things had happened as they did

'Here,' he said, almost pushing her out of the way, 'let me try.

He jiggled the key in the lock. At last it turned and the arm sprang open. He pulled the chain through the heavy eyebolts.

COLD, oily darkness. No window. No electricity. An ancient paraffin lamp hanging on a nail by the door.

He took down the lamp and shook it - it was full - and she said she knew how to light it. She knelt on the earth floor and struck a match, applied itto the wick. A blue flame, then yellow. She held it up while he dragged the door shut behind them.

The garage was a bone-yard of old spare parts, stacked around the walls. At the far end in the shadows was a row of car seats arranged to form a bed, with a sleeping bag and a blanket, neatly folded. Suspended from a beam in the roof was a block and tackle, a chain, a hook. Beneath the hook were floorboards forming a rectangle a yard and a half wide by two yards long.

She said, 'He's had this place for as long as I've been alive. He used to sleep here, when things were bad.'

'How bad did they get?'

'Bad.'

He took the lamp and walked around, shining it into the corners. There was nothing like a toolbox that he could see. On a work bench was a tin tray with a metal brush, some rods, a cylinder, a small coil of copper wire: what was all that? Fluke Kelso's ignorance of mechanics was deep and carefully maintained.

'Did he have a car of his own?'

'I don't know. He fixed them up for people. People gave him things.'

He stopped next to the makeshift bed. Something glinted above it. He called to her, 'Look at this,' and raised the light to the wall. Stalin's sombre face gazed down at them from an old poster. There were a dozen more pictures of the General Secretary, torn from magazines. Stalin looking thoughtful behind a desk. Stalin in a fur hat. Stalin shaking hands with a general. Stalin, dead, lying in state.

'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?

LATER: In the darkness, the sound of cars. He is home.

12.6.51 This is a day! I can hardly set it down. My hand shakes so. (It did not at the time but now it does!) At seven I go to the kitchen. Valechka is already up, sorting through a great mess of broken crockery glass, spilled food, which lies in a heap in the centre of a big tablecloth. She explains how the table is cleared every night: two guards each take two corners of the cloth and carry everything out! So our first task every morning is to rescue all that isn't broken, and wash it. As we work, Valechka explains the routine of the house. He rises quite late and sometimes likes to work in the garden. Then he goes to the Kremlin and his quarters are cleaned He never returns before nine or ten in the evening, and then there is a dinner At two or three He goes to bed This happens seven days a week. The rules: when one approaches Him, do so openly. He hates it when people creep up on Him. If a door has to be knocked on, knock upon it loudly don’t stand around don’t speak unless you are spoken to. And if you do have to speak, always look Him in the eyes.

She prepares a simple breakfast of coffee, bread and meat, and takes it out. Later she asks me to collect the tray Before I go, she makes me tie up my hair and turn around while she examines me. I will do, she says. She says He is working at a table at the edge of the lawn on the south side of the house. Or was. He moves restless, from place to place. It is His way The guards will know where to look.

What can I write of this moment? I am calm. You would have been proud of me. I remember what to do. I walk around the edge of the lawn and approach Him in plain view. He’s sitting on a bench, alone, bent over some papers. The tray is on a table beside Him. He glances up at my approach, and then returns to His work. But as I walk away across the grass - then, I swear I feel His eyes upon my back, all the way until I’m out of sight. Valechka laughs at my white face.

I don't see Him again after that.

Just now (it is after ten): the sound of cars.

14.6.51 Last night. Late. I’m in the kitchen with Valechka when Lozgachev (a guard) comes rushing in, all steamed up, to say the Boss is out of Ararat. Valechka fitches a bottle, but instead of giving it to Lozgachev, she gives it to me: Let Anna take it in.' She wants to help me - dear Valechka! So Lozgachev takes me down the passage to the main part of the house. I can hear male voices. Laughter He knocks hard on the door and stands aside. I go in. The room is hot, stuffy, seven or eight men around a table - familiar faces, all of them. One - Comrade Khrushchev, I think - is on his fret, proposing a toast. His face is flushed sweating He stops. There is food all over the place, as if they have been throwing it. All look at me. Comrade Stalin is at the head of the table. I set the brandy next to him. His voice is soft and kindly He says, And what is your name, young comrade?' Anna Safanova Comrade Stalin.' I remember to look into his eyes. They are very deep. The man next to him says, She’s from , Boss.' And Comrade Khrushchev says, 'Trust Lavrenty to know where she’s from! 'More laughter 'Ignore these rough fellows,' says Comrade Stalin. 'Thank you, Anna Safanova. 'As I close the door, their talk resumes. Valechka is waiting for me at the end of the passage. She puts her arm around me and we go back in to the kitchen. I am shaking, it must be with joy.

16.6.51 Comrade Stalin has said that from now on I am to bring him breakfast.

21.6.51 He is in the garden as usual this morning How I wish the people could see him here! He likes to listen to the birdsong, to prune the flowers. But his hands shake. As lam setting down the tray I hear him curse. He has cut himself I pick up the napkin and take it over to him. At first, he looks at me suspiciously Then he holds out his hand I wrap it in the white linen. Bright spots of blood soak through. 'You are not afraid of Comrade Stalin, Anna Safanova?' 'Why should I be afraid of you, Comrade Stalin?' 'The doctors are afraid of Comrade Stalin. When they come to change a dressing on Comrade Stalin, their hands shake so much, he has to do it himself Ah, but if their hands didn't shake - well then, what would that mean? Thank you, Anna Safanova.'

Oh, mama and papa, he is so lonely! Your hearts would go out to him. He is only flesh and blood after all like us. And close up he is old Much older than he appears in his pictures. His moustache is grey, the underside stained yellow by his pipe smoke. His teeth are almost all gone. His chest rattles when he breathes. I fear for him. For all of us.

30.6 51 Three a.m. A knock at my door Valechka is outside, in her nightdress, with a pocket torch. He has been in the garden, pruning by moonlight, and he has cut himself again! He is calling for me! I dress quickly and follow her along the passage. The night is warm. We pass through the dining room and in to his private quarters. He has three rooms and he moves between them, one night in this one, one night in another Nobody is ever sure where. He sleeps beneath a blanket on a couch. Valechka leaves us. He is sitting on the couch, his hand outstretched It is a graze. It takes me half a minute to bind it with my handkerchief 'The fearless Anna Safanova...'

I sense he wants me to stay He asks me about my home and parents, my Party work, my plans for the future. I tell him of my interest in the law. He snorts: he doesn't think much of lawyers! He wants to know of life in in the winter Have I seen the lights of the Northern Aurora? (Of course!) When do the first snows come? At the end of September I tell him, and by the end of October the city is snowbound and only the trains can get through. He is hungry for details. How the Dvina freezes and wooden tracks are laid across it and there is light for only four hours a day How the temperature drops to 35 below and people go into the forests for ice-fishing...

He listens most intently 'Comrade Stalin believes the soul of Russia lies in the ice and solitude of the far north. When Comrade Stalin was in exile - this was before the Revolution, in Kureika, within the Arctic Circle - it was his happiest time. It was here Comrade Stalin learned how to hunt and fish. That swine Trotsky maintained that Comrade Stalin used only traps. A filthy lie! Comrade Stalin set traps, yes, but he also set lines in the ice holes, and such was his success in the detection of fish that the local people credited him with supernatural powers. In one day Comrade Stalin travelled Forty-five versts on skis and killed twelve brace of partridge with twenty-four shots. Could Trotsky claim as much?'

I wish I could remember all he said Perhaps this should be my destiny: to record his words for History?

By the time I leave him to return to my bed it is light.

8.7.51 The same performance as last time. Valechka at my door at 3 a.m.: he has cut himself he wants me. But when I get there, I can see no wound. He laughs at my face - his joke! - and tells me to bind his hand in any case. He strokes my cheek, then pinches it. 'You see, fearless Anna Safanova, how you make a prisoner of me?!'

He is in a different room from the last time. On the walls are pictures of children, torn from magazines. Children playing in a cherry orchard A boy on skis. A girl drinking goat’s milk from a horn. Many pictures. He notices me staring at them and this prompts him to talk frankly of his own children. One son dead One a drunkard His daughter married twice, the first time to a Jew: he never even allowed him in to the house! What has Comrade Stalin done to deserve this? Other men produce normal children. Was it bad blood or bad upbringing? Was there something wrong with the mothers? (He thinks so, to judge from their families, who have been a constant plague to him.) Or was it impossible for the children of Comrade Stalin ever to develop normaly given his high position in the State and Party? Here is the age-old conflict, older even than the struggle between the classes.

He asks if I have heard of Comrade Trofim Lysenko’s 1948 speech to the Lenin All- Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences? I say that I have. My answer pleases him.

'But Comrade Stalin wrote this speech! It was Comrade Stalin’s insight, after a lifetime of study and struggle, that acquired characteristics are inheritable. Though naturally these discoveries must be put into the mouths of others, just as it isfi~r others to turn the principle into a practical science.

'Remember Comrade Stalin’s historic words to Gorky: 'It is the task of the proletarian state to produce engineers of human souls.

Are you a good Bolshevik, Anna Safanova?'

I swear to him that I am.

Will you prove it? Will you dance for Comrade Stalin?'

There is a gramophone in the corner of the room. He goes to it. I-

AND THAT’S HOW it ends?' said O'Brian. His voice was heavy with disappointment. 'Just like that?'

'See for yourself' Kelso turned the book round and showed it to the other two. 'The next twenty pages have been removed. And here - look - you can see the way it's been done. The torn edges attached to the spine are all different lengths.'

'What's so significant about that?'

'It means they weren't torn out all at once, but one by one. Methodically.' Kelso resumed his examination. 'There are some pages left at the back, about fifty, but they've not been written on. They've been drawn on - doodled on, I should say - in red pencil. The same image again and again, d'you see?'

'What are they?' O'Brian moved in closer with the camera running. 'They look like wolves.'

'They are wolves. The heads of wolves. Stalin often drew wolves in the margins of official documents when he was thinking.'

'Jesus. So it's genuine, you think?'

'Until it's been forensically tested, I'm not prepared to say. I'm sorry Not officially.'

'Unofficially, then - not for attribution until later - what d'you think?'

'Oh, it's genuine,' said Kelso, without hesitation. 'I'd stake my life on it.

O'Brian switched the camera off.

THEY had left the lock-up by this time and were sitting in the Moscow bureau of the Satellite News System which occupied the top floor of a ten-storey office block just south of the Olympic Stadium. A glass partition separated O'Brian's room from the main production office, where a secretary sat listlessly before a computer screen. Next to her, a mute television, tuned to SNS, was showing clips of the previous night's baseball games. Through a skylight Kelso could see a big satellite dish, raised like an offertory plate to the bulging Moscow clouds.

O'Brian said, And how long is it going to take us to get this stuff tested?'

A couple of weeks, perhaps,' said Kelso. A month.'

'No way,' said O'Brian. 'No way can we wait that long.'

'Well, think about it. First of all this material technically belongs to the Russian government. Or Stalin's heirs. Or someone. Anyway, it isn't ours - Zinaida's, I mean.'

Zinaida was standing at the window, staring out through a gap she had made with her fingers in the slatted blinds. At the mention of her name she glanced briefly in Kelso's direction. She had barely said a word in the last hour - not when they were still in the garage, not even on their cautious drive across Moscow, following O'Brian.

'So it isn't safe to keep it here,' continued Kelso. 'We've got to get it out of the country That's the first priority God knows who's after it now. Just being in the same room is bloody dangerous as far as I'm concerned. The tests themselves - well, we can have those done anywhere. I know some people in Oxford who can check the ink and paper. There are document examiners in Germany, Switzerland -'

O'Brian didn't seem to be listening. He had his feet up on his desk, his long body lolling back in his chair, his hands clasped behind his head. 'You know what we've really got to do?' he mused. 'We've got to find the girl.'

Kelso stared at him for a moment. 'Find the girl? What are you talking about? There isn't going to be a girl. The girl's going to be dead.'

'You can't be sure of that. She'd only be - what? - sixty-something?'

'She'd be sixty-six. But that's hardly the point. It's not old age she'll have died of Who d'you think she was getting mixed up with here? Prince Charming? She won't have lived happily ever after.'

'Maybe not, but we still need to find out what happened to her. What happened to her folks. Human interest. That’s the story.'

The wall behind O'Brian's head was plastered with photographs: O'Brian with Yasser Arafat, O'Brian with Gerry Adams, O'Brian in a flak jacket next to a mass grave in the Balkans somewhere and another of him, in protective gear, stepping through a minefield with the Princess of Wales. O'Brian in a tuxedo, collecting an award - for the sheer genius of simply being O'Brian, perhaps? Citations for O'Brian. Reviews of O'Brian. A herogram from the Chief Executive of SNS, praising O'Brian for his 'relentless dedication to triumphing over our competitors'. For the first time, and far too late, Kelso began to get a measure of the man's ambition.

'Nothing,' said Kelso very deliberately, so there was no room for misunderstanding, 'nothing is to be made public until this material is out of the country and has been forensically verified. Do you hear me? That's what we agreed.'

O'Brian clicked his fingers. 'Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right.

But in the meantime we should find out what happened to the girl. We've got to do that anyway. If we go on air with the notebook before we find out what happened to Anna, someone else'll come along and get the best part of the story' He lifted his feet off the desk and spun around in his chair to a set of bookshelves beside his desk. 'Now where the hell is Archangel, anyway?'

IT happened with a kind of inexorable logic so that later, when Kelso had the time to review his actions, he still could never identifr a precise moment when he could have stopped it, when he could have diverted events on to a different course -"'Archangel,"' said O'Brian, reading aloud from a

guidebook. "'Northern Russian port city. Population: four hundred thousand. Situated on the River Dvina, thirty miles upstream from the White Sea. Principal industries: timber, shipbuilding and fishing. From the end of October until the beginning of April, Archangel is snowbound." Shit. What's the date?'

'October the twenty-ninth.'

O'Brian picked up the telephone and jabbed out a number. From his position on the sofa Kelso watched through the thick glass wall as the secretary reached silently for the receiver.

'Sweetheart,' said O'Brian, 'do me a favour will you? Get on to the System's weather centre in Florida and get the latest weather prediction for Archangel.' He spelt it out for her. 'That's it. Quick as you can.

Kelso closed his eyes.

The point was - he knew it in his heart - that O'Brian was right. The story was the girl. And the story couldn't be pursued in Moscow. If the trail could be picked up anywhere, it could only be in the north, on her home territory where it was possible there might still be some family or friends who would remember her: remember the Komsomol girl of nineteen and the dramatic summons to Moscow in the summer of 1951- "'Archangel,"' resumed O'Brian, "'was founded by Peter the Great and named after Archangel Michael, the Warrior-Angel. See the Book of Revelation, chapter twelve, verses seven to eight: And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels,/And prevailed not.' In the nineteen-thirties -"

'Do we really have to listen to this?'

But O'Brian held up his finger, in the nineteen-thirties, Stalin exiled two million Ukrainian kulaks into the Archangel oblast, a region of forest and tundra larger than the whole of France. After the war, this vast area was used for testing nuclear weapons. Archangel's outport is Severodvinsk, centre of Russia’s nuclear submarine construction programme. Until the fall of communism, Archangel was a closed city, forbidden to all outside visitors.

"'Traveller's tip,"' concluded O'Brian. "'When arriving at the Archangel Railway Station, always be sure to check the digital radiation meter - if it shows 15 micro Rads per hour or below, it's safe."' He closed the book with a cheerful snap. 'Sounds like a fun place. What d'you think? You up for this?'

I am trapped, thought Kelso. I am a victim of historical inevitability Comrade Stalin would have approved

'You know I've no money -?'

'I'll lend you money.

'No winter clothes -

'We've got clothes.' 'No visa-'

A detail.'

A detail?'

'Come on, Fluke. You're the Stalin expert. I need you.

'Well that's touching. And if I say no, presumably you'll go anyway?'

O'Brian grinned. The telephone rang. He picked it up, listened, made a few notes. When he put it down, he was frowning and Kelso entertained a brief hope of reprieve. But no.

The weather in Archangel at 11:00 GMT that day (3 p.m. local time) was being reported as partly cloudy, minus four degrees, with light winds and snow flurries. However, a deep depression was rolling westwards from Siberia and that was promising snow heavy enough to close the city within a day or two.

In other words, said O'Brian, they would have to hurry.

HE fetched an atlas and opened it on his desk.

The fastest way into Archangel, obviously, was by air, but the Aeroflot flight didn't leave until the following morning and the airline would require Kelso to show his visa which would expire at midnight. So that was out. The train took more than twenty hours, and even O'Brian could see the risks in that - trapped on board a slow-moving sleeper for the best part of a day.

Which left the road - specifically, the M8 - which ran nearly 700 miles, more or less direct, according to the map, swerving slightly to take in the city of Yaroslavl, then following the river plateaux of the Vaga and the Dvina, across the taiga and the tundra and the great virgin forests of northern Russia, directly into Archangel itseW where the road ended. Kelso said, 'It's not a freeway, you know. There are no motels.'

'It's nothing, man. It'll be a breeze, I promise. What've we got now - let's see - couple of hours of daylight left? That should get us well clear of Moscow. You drive, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'There you go. We'll take turns. These journeys, I tell you, they always look worse on paper. Once we're in the groove, we'll eat those miles. You'll see.' He was making a calculation on a pad. 'I figure we could hit Archangel about nine or ten tomorrow morning.'

'So we drive through the night?'

'Sure. Or we can stop if you'd sooner. The thing is to quit talking and start moving. Quicker we hit the road, quicker we get there. We need to pack that book in something -'

He came round from behind his desk and headed towards the notebook that was lying on the coffee table, next to the congealed mass of papers. But before he could reach it, Zinaida grabbed it.

'This,' she said in English, mine. "What?'

'Mine.'

Kelso said, 'That's right. Her father left it for her.'

'I only want to borrow it.'

'Nyet!'

O'Brian appealed to Kelso. 'Is she crazy? Supposing we find Anna Safanova?'

'Supposing we do? What do you have in mind exactly? Stalin's grey-haired old lover in a rocking chair, reading aloud for the viewers?'

'Oh, funny guy. Listen: people are a whole lot more likely to talk to us if we're carrying proof. I say that book should come with us. Why's it hers, anyhow? It's no more hers than mine. Or anybody else's.'

'Because that was the deal, remember?'

'Deal? Seems to me it's you two've got the only deal going round here.' He slipped back into his wheedling mode. 'Come on, Fluke, it's not safe for her in Moscow. Where's she gonna keep it? What if Mamantov comes after her?'

Kelso had to concede this point. 'Then why doesn't she come with us?' He turned to Zinaida, 'Come with us to Archangel -'

'With him?' she said in Russian. 'No way. He'll kill us all.'

Kelso was beginning to lose patience. 'Then let's postpone Archangel,' he said irritably to O'Brian, 'until we can get the material copied.'

'But you heard the forecast. In a day or two we won't be able to move up there. Besides, this is a story. Stories don't keep.' He raised his hands in disgust. 'Shit, I can't stand around here bitching all afternoon. Need to get some equipment together. Need supplies. Need to get going. Talk some sense into her, man, for God's sake.'

'I told you,' said Zinaida, after O'Brian had stamped out of the office, banging the glass door behind him. 'I told you we couldn't trust him.'

Kelso sank back into the sofa. He rubbed his face with both hands. This was starting to get dangerous, he thought. Not physically - in a curious way that was still unreal to him

- but professionally. It was professional danger he scented now. Because Adelman was right: these big frauds did usually follow a pattern. And part of it involved being rushed to judgement. Here he was - a trained scholar, supposedly -and what had he done? He'd read through the notebook once. Once. He hadn't even done the most basic check to see whether the dates in the journal tallied with Stalin's known movements in the summer of 1951. He could just imagine the reaction of his former colleagues, probably leaving Russian airspace right now. If they could see how he was handling this -The thought bothered him more than he cared to admit.

And then there was the other bundle of papers, lying on the table, mouldering and congealed. Those he hadn't even begun to look at.

He pulled on O'Brian's gloves and leaned forwards. He ran his forefinger experimentally through the grey spores on the top sheet. There was writing underneath. He rubbed again and the letters NKVD appeared.

'Zinaida,' he said.

She was sitting behind O'Brian's desk, turning the pages of the notebook, her notebook. At the sound of her name she looked up.

KELSO borrowed her tweezers to peel away the outer layer of paper. It came off like dead skin, flaking here and there, but cleanly enough for him to make out some of the words on the page underneath. It was a typed document, a surveillance report of some kind by the look of it, dated 24 May 1951, signed by Major I. T. Mekhlis of the NKVD.

... summary of finding to the 23rd instant ... Anna Mikhailovna Safanova, born 27.2.32 ... Maxim Gorky Academy... reputation (see attached). Health: good... diptheria, aged 8yrs. 3 mths.. . Rubella, l0yrs. 1 mth. . . No family history of genetic disorder Party work: outstanding... Pioneers . . Komsomol .

Kelso peeled back more layers. Sometimes they came away singly, sometimes fused in twos or threes. It was painstaking work. Through the glass partition he caught occasional glimpses of O'Brian, lugging suitcases across the outer office to the elevator doors, but he was too absorbed to pay much attention. What he was reading was as full a record of a nineteen-year-old girl's life as it was possible for a secret police force to compile. There was something almost pornographic about it. Here was an account of every childhood ailment, details of her blood group (0), the state of her teeth (excellent), her height and weight and hair-colour (light auburn), her physical aptitude ('in gymnastics she displays a particularly high aptitude . . .'), mental abilities ('overall, in the 90th percentile . . . '), ideological correctness ('the firmest grasp of Marxist theory . . .

interviews with her doctor, coach, teachers, Komsomol group leader, school friends.

The worst that could be said about her was that she had, perhaps 'a slightly dreamy temperament' (Comrade Oborin) and 'a certain tendency to subjectivity and bourgeois sentimentalism rather than objectivity in all her personal relations' (Elena Satsanova). Against a further criticism from the same Comrade Satsanova, that she was 'na:ive,' a marginal comment had been appended, in red pencil: 'Good!' and, later, 'Who is this old bitch?' There were numerous other underlining’s, exclamation marks, queries and marginalia:

'Ha ha ha', And so?', Acceptable!'

Kelso had spent enough time in the archives to recognise this hand and style. The jagged scrawl was Stalin's. There was no question of it.

After half an hour he put the papers back in their original order and took off his gloves. His hands felt claw-like, raw and sweaty. He was suddenly overcome with self-disgust.

Zinaida was watching him.

'What do you think happened to her?'

'Nothing good.'

'He brought her down from the north to screw her?'