Robert Harris: Archangel

'And Stalin died,' he said, trying to avoid taking a sip. His words slurred into one another. His jaw was numb.

'And Stalin died.' Rapava shook his head in sorrow He suddenly leaned forward and clinked glasses. 'To Comrade Stalin!'

'To Comrade Stalin!'

They drank.

AND Stalin died. And everyone went mad with grief. Everyone, that is, except Comrade Beria, who delivered his eulogy to the thousands of hysterical mourners in Red Square like he was reading a railway announcement, and had a good laugh about it afterwards with the boys. Word of this got around. Now Beria was a clever man, much cleverer even than you are, boy - he'd have eaten you for breakfast. But clever people all make one mistake. They all think everyone else is stupid. And everyone isn't stupid. They just take a bit more time, that's all. The Boss thought he was going to be in power for twenty years. He lasted three months. It was late one morning in June and Rapava was on duty with the usual team - Nadaraya, Sarsikov, Dumbadze -when word came through that there was a special meeting of the Presidium in Malenkov's office in the Kremlin. And because it was at Malenkov's place, the Boss thought nothing of it. Who was fat Malenkov? Fat Malenkov was nothing. He was just a dumb brown bear. The Boss had Malenkov on the end of a rope.

So when he got in to the car to go to the meeting, he wasn't even wearing a tie, just an open-necked shirt and a worn-out old suit. Why should he wear a tie? It was a hot day and Stalin was dead and Moscow was full of girls and he was going to be in power for twenty years. The cherry orchard at the bottom of the garden had not long finished flowering. They arrived at Malenkov's building and the Boss went upstairs to see him, while the rest of them sat around in the ante-room by the entrance. And one by one the big guys arrived, all the comrades Beria used to laugh about behind their backs - old 'Stone Arse' Molotov and that fat peasant Khrushchev and the ninny Voroshilov, and finally Marshal Zhukov, the puffed-up peacock, with his boards of tin and ribbon. They all went upstairs and Nadaraya rubbed his hands and said to Rapava: 'Now then, Papu Gerasimovich, why don't you go to the canteen and get us some coffee?'

The day passed and from time to time Nadaraya would wander upstairs to see what was happening, and always he came back with the same message: meeting still in progress. And again: so what? It wasn't unusual for the Presidium to sit for hours. But by eight o'clock, the chief of the bodyguard was starting to look worried and, at ten, with the summer darkness gathering, he told them all to follow him upstairs.

They crashed straight past Malenkov's protesting secretaries and into the big room. It was empty. Sarsikov tried the phones and they were dead. One of the chairs had been tipped back and on the floor around it were some folded scraps of paper, on each of which, in red ink, in Beria's writing, was the single word 'Alarm!'

THEY could have made a fight of it, perhaps, but what would have been the point? The whole thing was an ambush, a Red Army operation. Zhukov had even brought up tanks -stationed twenty T34s at the back of the Boss's house (Rapava heard this later). There were armoured cars inside the Kremlin. It was hopeless. They wouldn't have lasted five minutes. The boys were split up there and then. Rapava was taken to a military prison in the northern suburbs where they proceeded to beat ten kinds of shit out of him, accused him of procuring little girls, showed him witness statements and photographs of the victims and finally a list of thirty names that Sarsikov (great big swaggering Sarsikov - some tough guy he turned out to be) had written down for them on the second day. Rapava said nothing. The whole thing made him sick. And then, one night, about ten days after the coup - for a coup was how Rapava would always think of it - he was patched up and given a wash and a clean prison uniform and taken up in handcuffs to the director's office to meet some big shot from the Ministry of State Security. He was a tough-looking, miserable bastard, aged between forty and fifty -said he was a Deputy Minister - and he wanted to talk about Comrade Stalin's private papers. Rapava was handcuffed to the chair. The guards were sent out of the room. The Deputy Minister sat behind the director's desk. There was a picture of Stalin on the wall behind him. It seems, said the Deputy Minister - after looking at Rapava for a while - that Comrade Stalin, in recent years, to assist him in his mighty tasks, had got into the habit of making notes. Sometimes these notes were confided to ordinary sheets of writing paper and sometimes to an exercise book with a black oilskin cover. The existence of these notes was known only to certain members of the Presidium, and to Comrade Poskrebyshev, Comrade Stalin's long-standing secretary, whom the traitor Beria recently had falsely imprisoned on fraudulent charges. All witnesses agree that Comrade Stalin kept these papers in a personal safe in his private office, to which he alone had the key.

The Deputy Minister leaned forwards. His dark eyes searched Rapava's face. Following Comrade Stalin's tragic death, attempts were made to locate this key. It could not be found. It was therefore agreed by the Presidium to have this safe broken into, in the presence of them all, to see if Comrade Stalin had left behind material that might be of historical value, or which might assist the Central Committee in its stupendous responsibility of appointing Comrade Stalin's successor. The safe was duly broken open, under the supervision of the Presidium, and found to be empty, apart from a few minor items, such as Comrade Stalin's party card.

'And now,' said the Deputy Minister, getting slowly to his feet, 'we come to the crux of the matter.

He walked around and sat on the edge of the desk directly in front of Rapava. Oh, he was a big bastard, boy, a fleshy tank.

We know, he said, from Comrade Malenkov that in the early hours of the second of March, you went to the Kuntsevo dacha in the company of the traitor, Beria, and that you were both left alone with Comrade Stalin for several minutes. Was anything removed from the room?

No, comrade.

Nothing at all?

No, comrade.

And where did you go when you left Kuntsevo?

I drove Comrade Beria back to his house, comrade.

Directly back to his house?

Yes, comrade.

You are lying.

No, comrade.

You are lying. We have a witness who saw you both inside the Kremlin shortly before dawn. A sentry who met you in a corridor.

Yes, comrade. I remember now. Comrade Beria said he needed to collect something from his office -Something from Comrade Stalin's office!

No, comrade.

You are lying! You are a traitor! You and the English spy Beria broke into Stalin's office and stole his papers! Where are those papers?

No, comrade -Traitor! Thief! Spy!

Each word accompanied by a punch in the face. And so on.

I'LL tell you something, boy. Nobody knows the full truth of what happened to the Boss, even now - even after Gorbachev and Yeltsin have sold off our whole fucking birthright to the capitalists and let the CIA go picnicking in our files. The papers on the Boss are still closed. They smuggled him out of the Kremlin on the floor of a car, rolled up in a carpet, and some say Zhukov shot him that very night. Others say they shot him the following week. Most say they kept him alive for five months - Jive months! - sweated him in a bunker underneath the Moscow Military District - and shot him after a secret trial. Either way, they shot him. He was dead by Christmas Day. And this is what they did to me.

Rapava held up his mutilated fingers and wiggled them. Then he clumsily unbuttoned his shirt, pulled it from the waistband of his pants, and twisted his scrawny torso to show his back. His vertebrae were criss-crossed with shiny roughened panes of scar-tissue - translucent windows on to the flesh beneath. His stomach and chest were whorls of blue-black tattoos. Kelso didn't speak. Rapava sat back leaving his shirt unbuttoned. His scars and his tattoos were the medals of his lifetime. He was proud to wear them. NOT a word, boy. You listening? They did not get. One. Single. Word.