Robert Harris - Archangel

Suvorin tried to stay calm. 'Then we reach them how?'

'By snow plough,' said Kretov, as if it was obvious. 'Four of us can just fit in the cab. Or three, if you prefer not to wet your fancy footwear.'

Again, and with difficulty, Suvorin controlled his temper. 'So what's the plan? We clear a way for them to drive back into town behind us, is that it?'

'If that proves necessary.'

'If that proves necessary,' repeated Suvorin, slowly. Now he was beginning to understand. He gazed into the major's cold grey eyes, then looked at the two MVD men who had finished unloading the jeep. 'So what are you people running nowadays? Death squads, is that it? It's a little bit of South America you've got going up here?'

Kretov began folding up the map. 'We must move out immediately.'

'I need to speak to Moscow.'

'We've already spoken to Moscow.'

'Ineed to speak to Moscow, major, and if you attempt to leave without me, I can assure you that you will spend the next few years building helicopter pads.'

'I don't think so.'

'If it comes to a trial of strength between the SVR and the MVD, be aware of this: the SVR will win every time. Suvorin turned and bowed to Vavara Safanova. 'Thank you for your assistance.' And then, to Korf, who was watching all this, goggle-eyed: 'Take her home, please. You did well.'

'I told them,' said the old woman suddenly. 'I told them nothing good could come of it.'

'That may be true,' said Suvorin. 'All right, lieutenant, off you go. Now,' he said to Kretov, 'where's that fucking telephone?'

O'BRIAN had insisted on shooting another twenty minutes of footage. By sign language he had persuaded the Russian to pack up his relics and then to unpack them again, holding each object up to the camera and explaining what it was. ('His book.' 'His picture. His hair.' Each was dutifully

kissed and arranged on the altar.) Then O'Brian showed him how he wanted him to sit at the table smoking his pipe and to read from Anna Safanova's journal. ('Remember Comrade Stalin's historic words to Gorky: "It is the task of the proletarian state to produce the engineers of human souls..

'Great,' said O'Brian, moving around him with the camera. 'Fantastic. Isn't this fantastic, Fluke?'

'No,' said Kelso, 'it's a bloody circus.'

Ask him a couple of questions, Fluke.'

'I shall not.

'Go on. Just a couple. Ask him what he thinks of the new Russia.'

'No.'

'Two questions and we're out of here. I promise.'

Kelso hesitated. The Russian stared at him, stroking his moustache with the stem of his pipe. His teeth were yellowish and stumpy. The underside of his moustache was wet with saliva.

'My colleague would like to know,' Kelso said, 'if you have heard of the great changes that have taken place in Russia and what you think of them.'

For a moment, he was silent. Then he turned from Kelso and stared directly into the lens.

'One feature of the history of the old Russia,' he began, was the continual beatings she suffered. All beat her for her backwardness. She was beaten because to do sowas profitable' and could be done with impunity. Such is the law of the exploiters - to beat the backward and the weak. It is the jungle law of capitalism. You are backward, you are weak -therefore you are wrong; hence, you can be beaten and enslaved.'

He sat back, sucking on his pipe, his eyes half closed. O'Brian was standing directly behind Kelso, holding the camera, and Kelso felt the pressure of his hand on his shoulder, urging him to ask another question.

'I don't understand,' Kelso said. 'What are you saying? That the new Russia is beaten and enslaved? But surely most people would say the opposite: that however hard life might be, at least they now have freedom?'

A slow smile, directly into the camera. The Russian removed his pipe from his mouth and leaned forwards, jabbing it at Kelso's chest.

'That is very good. But, unfortunately, freedom alone is not enough, by far. If there is a shortage of bread, a shortage of butter and fats, a shortage of textiles, and if housing conditions are bad, freedom will not carry you very far. It is very difficult, comrades, to live on freedom alone.'

O'Brian whispered, 'What's he saying? Does it make sense.

'It makes a kind of sense. But it's odd.'

O'Brian persuaded Kelso to ask a couple more questions, each of which drew similar, stilted replies, and then, when Kelso refused to translate any more, he insisted on taking the Russian outside for a final shot.

Kelso watched them for a minute through the narrow, dirty window: O'Brian making a mark in the snow and then walking towards the cabin, returning, pointing to the line, trying to make the Russian understand what he wanted him to do. It was almost as if he had been expecting them, Kelso thought. 'You are the ones,' he had said. 'You are truly the ones’.

'This is the book of which it is spoken...'

He had been educated, obviously - indoctrinated, perhaps~ a better word. He could read. He seemed to have been brought up with a sense of destiny: a messianic certainty that one day strangers would appear in the forest, bearing a book, and that they, whoever they were - even if they were a couple of imperialists - they would be the ones...

The Russian was apparently in a great good humour, bringing his index finger up close to his eye and wiggling it at the camera, grinning, stooping and making a snowball, tossing it playfully at O'Brian's back.

Homo Sovieticus, thought Kelso. Soviet man.

He tried to remember something, a passage in Volkogonov's biography, quoting Sverdlov, who had been exiled with Stalin to Siberia in 1914. Stalin wouldn't associate with the other Bolsheviks, that was what had struck Sverdlov. Here he was: unknown, almost forty, had never done a day's work in his life, had no skills, no profession, yet he would simply go off on his own to hunt or fish, and 'gave the impression that he was waiting for something to happen'.

Hunting. Fishing. Waiting Kelso turned from the window and quickly slipped the notebook back into the satchel, stuffed the satchel into his jacket. He checked the window again, then stepped over to the table and began leafing through Stalin's Collected Works.

It took him a couple of minutes to find what he was looking for: a pair of dog-eared pages in different volumes, both passages heavily underlined with black pencil. And it was as he thought: the Russian's first answer was a direct quotation from a Stalin speech - to the All-Union Conference of Managers of Socialist Industry, February 4 1931, to be exact - while the second was lifted from an address to three thousand Stakhanovites, November 17 1935.

The son was speaking the words of the Father.

He heard the sound of Stalin's boots on the wooden steps and hastily replaced the books.

SUVORIN followed one of the MVD men out of the hangar and across the runway towards a single-storey block next,-to the control tower. The wind tore through his coat. Snow leaked through the tops of his shoes. By the time they reached the office he was freezing. A young corporal looked up as they came in, without interest. Suvorin was beginning to feel thoroughly sick of this tin pot, backwoods town, this . He slammed the door.

'Salute, man, damn you, when an officer comes into the room!'

The corporal leapt up so quickly he knocked over his chair.

'Get me a line to Moscow. Now. Then wait outside. Both of you wait outside.'

Suvorin didn't start to dial until they had gone. He picked up the chair and righted it and sat down heavily. The corporal had been reading a German pornographic magazine. A stockinged foot poked out glossily from beneath a pile of flight logs. He could hear the number ringing faintly. There was heavy static on the line.

'Sergo? It's Suvorin. Give me the chief.'