Duncan Kyle - The King's Commisar

Next day he was taking tea in mid-afternoon when the call came. 'A Mr Ed Sochaki is on the line,' Mrs Frobisher reported, 'from the Custerbank in Santa Barbara, California.'

Malory glanced at his watch. Mr Sochaki, he reflected, must be one of those tiresome people who went to his desk at seven in the morning. He picked up the phone. 'Hello, Mr Sochaki?'

'Sir Malory?'

'Horace Malory speaking, yes.' Curious how often people got it wrong.

'I got your picture.'

'Must be a little puzzling to you,' Malory said. 'Matter of fact it puzzles us, too. Eccentric client, just following his instruction. Haw, haw.'

'Yeah, well we got something for you. Deposited years ago, along with the instructions.'

'Oh? Well, good,' Malory said. 'What is it?'

'Looks like some papers. In a packet.'

'That's fine, MrSochaki. I'd be grateful if you could send them - express if you would. '

'Why, sure. Be glad to. There's just one thing.'

'What's that?'

Sochaki said, 'Well, it sounds kinda crazy, but this packet only gets sent to you after we read something in the newspapers. You understand that, Sir Malory?'

'At the moment, no. What is it you are required to read?'

'That you people have given something to your country.'

'We do it all the time,' Malory said. 'It's called income tax.' But he knew what was coming. And it came. 'A painting. By a guy called Turner.'

'When you read that,' Malory said sadly, 'then you send the packet. Not before?'

'Why, no. Our client's instructions -'

'Cannot be varied?'

'Certainly not, Sir Malory. This is the Custerbank of California.'

Malory thanked him and hung up.

Later in the day something drew him to the boardroom. It was an old-fashioned place, not often used, furnished in heavy Victorian mahogany. The long table shone with polish; the hide upholstery remained soft from much waxing over the years. For Horace Malory the place was full of people and memories. Half-close his eyes and he could see his father again, frock-coated at the side table, pouring one of the brandies that finally felled him at eighty-eight. His grandfather, too, had sat in this boardroom, though Malory, hardly surprisingly, had never met him. Few people, in fact, actually believed in Malory's grandfather, who had been born before the French Revolution (i.e, in 1786), had served as a lieutenant in Collingwood's flagship Royal Sovereign at Trafalgar, had fathered his only son at the age of 68 in 1854, and had lived to ninety on a diet of lobster and Mosel wine. At Malory's birth, his own father had been fifty years of age, and the three of them therefore spanned better than two centuries. Years of increasing prosperity, too, Malory thought. Until now. There were cigars in the humidor, and as he stood selecting one, his eye fell upon the chair that was the only piece of oak in the room ; it was dark and very old, and of a design that was probably Greek. A tiny silver plate affixed to the side of one arm bore the initials ZZ.

Malory lit the cigar with care, and in the wreathing fumes had little difficulty in picturing Sir Basil seated in the chair.

'What would you have done?' he murmured. 'Would you have given away three million and more in money?'

On this day, it was as though he heard the answer in his head: 'I did, I did.' Malory smiled. 'Yes, but with a purpose. Always that.'

It was extraordinary how clear the image was: the blazing eyes, the little Second Empire beard and moustache, the authority. Malory daydreamed infrequently, but his visual memory was powerful, and as a young man he had conversed often with the great man, and always in this interrogatory style; somehow, under the influence of Zaharoff's personality, people discovered answers to their own questions. Three million and more to find out - what? That the Tsar was dead, had been murdered in Ekaterinburg? At least I'd know, then, he thought. Hell of a price, but I'd know. A long echo seemed to float down the years, of a light voice, faintly accented: 'It is necessary always to know.'

Malory smiled to himself. He'd tell his wife tonight, and she'd be impatient, but then she believed in ghosts. He didn't: but his memories were powerful and could be used. He reached for the telephone on the side table beside the chairman's place. 'I should like to talk to whoever administers The Turner Bequest,' he told Mrs Frobisher. 'And then to the Press Association, Reuters, and - no, make it the Associated Press first!’ Mr Sochaki's expressed packet arrived two days later, bearing Pan American stickers.

CHAPTER TWELVE

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Sixth instalment of the account, written by Lt-Cdr H. G. Dikeston RN, of his journeyings

in Russia in the spring and summer of 1918

The Germans it was, right enough, though if I'd had to rely on Nadezhda the secretary or her master, Sverdlov, for information, I'd never have known. I've wondered often, since, what became of that woman, for she had the makings of power if ever a woman had. A real bluestocking, with one of those cold and superior brains: she was the kind that makes grown men feel like small boys, with all the snap of the scrubbed schoolroom about her.

Daily I went to see Nadezhda, and daily she told me nothing. But no-that's not entirely true, though it might as well have been. Every afternoon I went through the same drill, showing Sverdlov's pass at the Spassky gate and proceeding to her office, there to be told that the Romanov family remained in good health in the hands of the Urals Oblast Soviet. Thereafter I was virtually obliged to leave. After many days of this, and with time on my hands, I began to cast about for other sources. I went to see Robert Bruce Lockhart in his room at the Elite Hotel and had short shrift. At the time I had the impression he was strongly pro-Bolshevik, but it was untrue, though certainly he and Trotsky liked and admired each other. All Bruce Lockhart did was treat me courteously for a minute or two and then throw me out with the advice to make my way to Murmansk and take a British ship home. There were others I tried of the scattered Britons in Moscow. Arthur Ransome, for one, then a reporter for the Manchester Guardian, and a naval man named Le Page who had some strange liaison assignment. But mention of the Tsar to any of them produced at the very least impatience, if not outright boredom. And so, it went on, until one day when I was in the corridor after leaving Nadezhda's office, I saw a group of men walking confidently towards me and stood aside to let them pass. Suddenly I believed I heard my name spoken. I turned to see one of this approaching band had halted and was repeating my name:

'It is Dikeston - yes, I knew it!'

I blinked at him, and from him to his companions, two of whom were in German uniform!

'Come now, you recognize me!'

'Oh yes,' I said, goggling.

'What are you doing here?' he demanded. He was jovial, but looking at me sidelong all the same; for this was Graf Wilhelm von Mirbach, German ambassador, since the treaty was signed at Brest-Litovsk, to the Bolshevik Government.

It was a difficult question, but fortunately I did not have to answer; or not at that moment. He said, 'Can you wait? I shall not be more than twenty minutes.'

I nodded and he and his group strode off, I noted where they went, for it was through a familiar door: the German Ambassador was now closeted with Sverdlov. As for me, I felt myself to be in a dilemma. As a serving officer of the Royal Navy, I had no business to be greeting Germans on terms of friendship, even on neutral soil. Yet it was at once clear that my acquaintance with Willi von Mirbach might be of great value. Remembering the man Le Page and his naval liaison work, I decided quickly to pretend his role was my own, at least for Willi's ears, and then stood smoking a cigarette and awaiting the promised return.