Robert Harris - Archangel

'We're going to find the man who did this terrible thing to your father. and we're going to lock him up.'

She grabbed a towel and darted back to the screen, hastily drying her face, and scrutinised him, and, oh yes, she knew it was him right enough, she could believe it of him - he looked a pitiless, cold bastard, with his wire-framed glasses and his thin, hard lips, and his Soviet-style hat and coat. He looked capable of anything.

He was saying something about 'the fascist usurper in the Kremlin' and it took her a minute to realise that actually he wasn't being arrested. On the contrary: he was being treated with respect. He was moving towards the train. He was boarding it. Nobody was stopping him. She could even see a couple of militia men, watching him. He turned on the step to the carriage and raised his hand. Lights flickered. He flashed his hangman's smile and disappeared inside.

Zinaida stared at the screen.

She searched through the pockets of her jacket until she found the telephone number Suvorin had given her.

It rang, unanswered.

She replaced the receiver calmly enough, wrapped the towel around her torso and unlocked her door.

Nobody was on the landing.

She went back into the flat and lifted the blind.

No sign of any militia car. Just the normal Saturday morning traffic beginning to build for the Izmaylovo market.

Afterwards, several witnesses came forward who claimed to have heard the sound of her cry, even above the noises of the busy street.

KELSO was overpowered with humiliating ease. He was pushed back on to the banquette, the satchel and the papers were taken from him, the door was wedged shut, and the young man in the black leather jacket took the seat opposite him, stretching one leg across the narrow aisle to prevent his prisoner from moving.

He unzipped the jacket just .far enough to show Kelso a shoulder holster, and Kelso recognised him then:

Mamantov's personal bodyguard from the Moscow apartment. He was a big, baby-faced lad, with a drooping left eyelid and a blubbery lower lip, and there was something about the way he let his boot rest against Kelso's thigh, cramming him against the window, that suggested hurting people might be his pleasure in life: that he needed violence as a swimmer requires water.

Kelso remembered Papu Rapav&s slowly twisting body and began to sweat.

'It's Viktor, isn't it?'

No reply.

'How long am I supposed to stay here, Viktor?'

Again, no answer, and after a couple more half-hearted attempts to demand his release, Kelso gave up. He could hear the sound of boots in the corridor and he had the impression that the whole of the train was being secured.

After that, not much happened for several hours.

At 10.20 they stopped as scheduled at Danilov and more of Mamantov's people poured aboard.

Kelso asked if he could at least go to the lavatory.

No answer.

Later, outside the city of Yaroslavl, they passed a derelict factory with a rusting Order of Lenin pinned to its windowless side. On its roof, a line of youths was silhouetted, their arms raised high in a fascist salute.

Viktor looked at Kelso and smiled, and Kelso looked away.

IN Moscow, Zinaida Rapava's apartment was empty.

The Klims who lived in the flat beneath afterwards swore they had heard her go out soon after eleven. But old man Amosov, who was fixing his car in the street directly across from the block, insisted it was some time after that: more like noon, he thought. She went straight by him without uttering a word, which wasn't unusual for her - she had her head down, he said, and was wearing dark glasses, a leather jacket, jeans and boots - and she was heading in the direction of the Semyonovskaya metro station.

She didn't have her car: that was still parked outside her father's apartment.

The next authenticated sighting came an hour later, at one o'clock, when she turned up at the back of Robotnik. A cleaner, Vera Yanukova, recognised her and let her in and she went directly to the cloakroom where she retrieved a leather shoulder bag (she showed her ticket; there was no mistake). The cleaner opened up the front entrance for her to leave, but she preferred to go out the way she had come, thus avoiding the metal detectors which were switched on automatically whenever the door was unlocked.

According to the cleaner, she was nervous when she arrived, but once she had the bag she seemed in good spirits, calm and self-possessed.

DID KELSO FALL asleep? He afterwards wondered if he might have done, for he had no real recollection of that long afternoon until he heard footsteps in the corridor and the sound of someone knocking softly on the door. And by then they were into the northern fringes of Moscow and the flat October light was already falling on the endless iron and concrete of the city.

Viktor idly swung his foot off the banquette and stood, hitching up his trousers. He removed his knife from

He was all false smiles and apologies: so sorry if Kelso had been inconvenienced in any way, such a pity they had not been able to meet much earlier in the journey, but he had had other, more pressing matters to attend to. He was sure that Kelso understood.

His overcoat was unbuttoned. His face was sheened with sweat. He tossed his hat on to the banquette opposite Kelso and sat down next to it, grabbing the satchel, removing the documents, gesturing to Viktor to take the seat next to Kelso, calling to the second bodyguard he had left in the corridor to close the door and not to let anyone in.

This was not the Mamantov Kelso had met seven years ago on his release from prison. This was not even the Mamantov from earlier in the week. This was Mamantov in his prime again. Mamantov rejuvenated. Mamantov redux.

Kelso watched him as his thick fingers checked through the notebook and the NKVD reports.

'Good,' he said, briskly, 'excellent. Everything is here, I think. Tell me: were you really were planning to destroy all this?'

'Yes.'

All of it?'

'Yes.'

He looked at Kelso in wonderment and shook his head.

'And yet you are the one who is always bleating about the need to open every historical document for inspection!'

'Even so, I'd still have destroyed it. In the interests of stopping you.

Kelso felt the increasing pressure of Viktor's elbow in his ribs, and he knew that the young man was longing for an opportunity to hurt him.

Ah! So history is only to be permitted where it suits the subjective interests of those who hold the records?' Mamantov smiled again. 'Has the myth of so-called western "objectivity" ever been more completely exposed? I can see I shall have to take these documents back into my possession for safe-keeping.'

'Take them back?' said Kelso. He couldn't keep the incredulity out of his voi~e-'You mean you had them before?'

Mamantov inclined his head graciously. Indeed.

MAMANTOV had replaced the papers in the satchel and had fastened the straps. But he couldn't quite bring himself to leave. Not yet. After all, he had waited so long for this moment. He wanted Kelso know. It was fifteen years since Yepishev had first told him about this 'black oilskin notebook' and he had never lost faith that one day he would find it. And then, like a miracle, in the very darkest hours of the cause, who should turn up on the membership lists of Aurora but the very same Papu Rapava whose name had cropped up so often in the KG B's files? Mamantov had summoned him. And at long last - hesitantly, reluctantly at first, but eventually out of loyalty to his new chief - Rapava had told him the story of the night of Stalin's stroke.

Mamantov had been the first to hear it.

That had been a year ago. It had taken him a whole nine months to get into the garden of Beria's mansion on Vspolnyi Street. And do you know what he had had to do? No? He had had to set up a property company - Moskprop - and buy the goddamn place off its owners, the former KGB, although that hadn't been too hard because Mamantov had plenty of friends at the Lubyanka who, in return for a percentage, were happy to sell state assets for a fraction of their true value. Some might call it corruption, or even robbery. He preferred the western term: privatisation.