Archangel (47 page)

He didn't hear the door open. All he knew was that
som
ething rustled in the compartment for a fraction of a second, and then a hard pad of flesh clamped down over his mouth. His eyes jerked open as the point of a knife began to be inserted into his throat, at that point where the flesh of the under-jaw meets the ridged tube of the windpipe. He struggled to sit up but the hand pressed him down. His arms were somehow pinned beneath the twisted sheet. He couldn't see anyone but a voice whispered close to his ear - so close he could feel the hot wetness of the man's breath - 'A comrade who deserts a comrade is a cowardly dog, and all such dogs should die a dog's death, comrade-'

The knife slid deeper.

KELSO was awake in an instant - a cry rising in his throat, his eyes wide, the thin sheet balled and clenched between his sweating hands. The gently swaying compartment was empty above him, the blue-edged darkness faintly tinged by grey. For a moment he didn't move. He could hear O'Brian breathing heavily and when eventually he turned he could see him - head lolling, mouth open, one arm flung down almost to the floor, the other crooked across his forehead.
It took another couple of minutes for his panic to subside. He reached over his shoulder and lifted a corner of the curtain to check his watch. He thought it must be still the middle of the night, but to his surprise it was just after seven. He had slept for the best part of nine hours.

He raised himself up on to his elbow and pushed the curtain a fraction higher and saw at once the head of Stalin floating towards him, disconnected in the pale dawn beside the railway track. It drew level with the window and passed away very quickly.

He stayed at the window but saw nobody else, just the
scrubby land beyond the rails and the faint gleam of the electricity lines strung between the pylons seeming to swoop and rise, swoop and rise as the, train trundled on. It wasn't snowing here, but there was a cold, bleached emptiness to the emerging sky.

Someone must have been holding up a picture, he realised. Holding up a picture of Stalin.
He let the curtain drop and swung his legs to the floor. Quietly, so as not to wake O'Brian, he tugged on his rubber boots and cautiously opened the door to the empty corridor. He peered both ways. Nobody about. He closed the latch behind him and began walking towards the rear of the train.

He passed through an empty carriage identical to the 6ne he had just left, all the while glancing at the passing landscape, and then 'soft' class gave way to 'hard'. The accommodation here was much more crowded - two tiers of berths in open compartments down one side of the corridor, a single row arranged lengthwise on the other. Sixty people to a car. Luggage crammed everywhere. Some passengers sitting up, yawning, raw-eyed. Others still snoring, impervious to the waking carriage. People queuing for the stinking toilet. A mother changing a baby's filthy nappy (he caught the sour reek of milky faeces as he pushed past). The smokers huddled at the open windows at the far end of the carriage. The scent of their untipped tobacco. The sweet coldness of the rushing air.

He went through four 'hard' carriages and was on the threshold of the fifth, and had decided this would be the last
- had concluded he was worrying about nothing: he must have dreamt it, the countryside was empty - when he saw another picture. Or, rather, he realised it was a pair of pictures coming towards him, one of Stalin, the other of
Lenin, being held aloft by an elderly couple, the man wearing medals, standing on a sl
ight embankment. The train was s
lowing for a station and he could see them clearly as he passed - creased and leathery faces, almost brown, exhausted. And a couple of seconds later he saw them turn, suddenly years younger~ smiling and waving at someone they had just seen in the carriage Kelso was about to enter.

Time seemed to decelerate, dreamily, along with the train. A line of railway workers in quilted jackets, leaning on their pick-axes and shovels, raised their gloved fists in salute. The carriage darkened as it drew alongside a platform. He could hear music, faintly, above the metallic scrape of the brakes -the old Soviet national anthem again -Party of Lenin!

Party of Stalin!

- and a small band in pale blue uniforms slid past the window.

The train stopped with a sigh of pneumatics and he saw a sign: VOLOGDA. People were cheering on the platform. People were running. He opened the door to the carriage and there facing him was the Russian, still in his father's uniform, asleep, sitting no more than a dozen paces away, his suitcase wedged in the rack above his head, a clear space all around him, passengers standing back, respectful, watching.

The Russian was beginning to wake. His head stirred. He batted something away from his face with his hand and his eyes flickered open. He saw diat he was being observed and carefully, warily, he straightened his back. Someone in the carriage started to clap and the applause was taken up by the others, spreading outside to the platform where people had crammed up against the window to watch. The Russian stared around him, the fear in his eyes giving way to
bewilderment. A man nodded encouragingly at him, smiling, clapping, and he slowly nodded back, as
if gradually beginning to understand some foreign ritual, and then he started to applaud softly in return, which only increased the volume of adulation. He nodded modestly and Kelso imagined he must have spent thirty years dreaming of this moment. Really, comrades,
his expression seemed to say, I
am only one of
you - a pla
in man, rough in my ways - but if venerating me in some way giv
es you pleasure -
He wasn't aware of Kelso watching him - the historian was
just another face in the crowd - and after a few seconds Kelso turned and began fighting his way back through the jostling throng.

His mind was in a turmoil.

The Russian must have got on board the train in
Archangel, a minute or so after them - that was conceivable, if he had copied what they'd done and flagged down a car. That he could understand.

But this?

He knocked into a woman who was pushing her way roughly along the corridor, struggling with a pair of carrier bags, a red flag and an old camera.

He said to her, 'What's happening?'

'Haven't you heard? Stalin's son is with us! It's a miracle!' She couldn't stop smiling. Some of her teeth were metal.

'But how do you know?'

'It's been on the television,' she said, as if this settled matters. 'All night! And when I woke, his picture was still there and they were saying he'd been seen on the Moscow train!'

Someone pushed into her from behind and she was pitched into him. His face was very close to hers. He tried to
disen
tangle himself but she clutched on to him, staring hard into his eyes.

'But you,' she said, 'you know all this! You were on the television, saying it was true!' She threw her heavy arms around him. Her bags jabbed into his back. 'Thank you. Thank you. It's a miracle!'

He could see a bright, white light moving along the platform behind her head and he scrambled past her. A television light. Television cameras. Big grey microphones. Technicians walking backwards, stumbling over one another. And in the middle of this meke, striding ahead towards his destiny, talking confidently, surrounded by a phalanx of black-jacketed bodyguards, was Vladimir Mamantov.

IT took Kelso several minutes to claw and squeeze his way back through the crowds. When he opened the door to their compartment O'Brian had his back to him and was staring through the window. At the sound of Kelso entering, he wheeled round quickly, his hands up, his palms outwards -pre-emptive, guilty, apologetic.

'Now, I didn't know this was going to happen, Fluke, I swear to you -'What have you done?'

'Nothing -''What have you done?'

O'Brian flinched and muttered, 'I filed the story.

'You what?'

'I filed the story,' he said, sounding more defiant now. 'Yesterday, from the river bank, while you were talking to him in the hut. I cut the pictures to three minutes forty, laid a commentary, converted them to digital and sent them over
the satellite. I nearly told you last night, but I didn't want to upset you -'Upset me?'

'Come on, Fluke, for all I knew the story might not have gone through. Battery could've failed or something. Gear could've been shot up -'

Kelso was struggling to keep pace with all that was happening - the Russian on the train, the excitement, Mamantov. They still hadn't left Vologda, he noticed.

'These pictures - what time would they have been seen here?'

'Maybe nine o'clock last night.'

'And they would have run - what? Often? "On the h6ur, every hour"?'

'I guess so.'

'For eleven hours?And on other channels, too? Would they have sold them to the Russian networks?'

'They'd've given them to the Russians, as long as they were credited. It's good advertising, you know? CNN probably took them. Sky. BBC World -,

He couldn't help looking pleased.

'And you also used the interview with me, about the notebook?'

The hands came back up, defensively.

'Now, I don't know anything about that. I mean, okay, they had it, sure. I cut that and sent it back from Moscow before we left.'

'You irresponsible bastard,' said Kelso, slowly. 'You do know Mamantov's on the train?'

'Yeah. I saw him just now.' He glanced nervously at the window. 'Wonder what he's doing here?'

And there was something in the way he said this - a slight
falseness of tone:
a pretence at being o
ffhand - that made Kelso freeze. After a long pause he said, quietly, 'Did Mamantov put you up to this?'

O'Brian hesitated and Kelso was conscious of swaying slightly~ like a boxer about to go down for the final time, or a drunk.

'Christ almighty, you've set me up -'

'No,' said O'Brian, 'that's
not true. Okay, I admit Mamanto
v called me up once - I told you we'd met a few times. But all of this - finding the notebook, coming up here

- no: that was all us, I swear. You and me. I knew nothing about what we'd find.'

Kelso closed his eyes. It was a nightmare.

'When did he call?'

'At the very beginning. It was just a tip. He didn't mention Stalin or anything else.'

'The very beginning?'

'The night before I showed up at the symposium. He said:

"Go to the Institute of Marxism-Leninism with your camera, Mr O'Brian" - you know the way he talks - "find Dr Kelso, ask him if there is an announcement he wants to make." That was all he said. He put the phone down on me. Anyway, his tips are always good, so I went. Jesus -' he laughed ' - why else d'you think I was there? To film a bunch of historians talking about the archives? Do me a favour!'

'You irresponsible, duplicitous bloQ4y bastard-'

Kelso took a step across the compartment and O'Brian backed away. But Kelso ignored him. He'd had a better idea. He dragged down his jacket from the luggage rack.

O'Brian said, 'What're you doing?'

'What I would have done at the beginnings if I'd known the truth. I'm going to destroy that bloody notebook.'

He pulled the satchel out of the inside pocket.

'But then you'll ruin the whole thing,' protested O'Brian. 'No notebook - no proof- no story. We'll look like complete assholes.'

'Good.'

'I'm not sure I can let you do that -'

'Just try and bloody stop me -'

It was the shock of the blow as much as the force of it that felled him. The compartment turned upside down and he was lying on his back.

'Don't make me hit you again,' begged O'Brian, looming over him. 'Please, Fluke. I like you too much for that.'

He held out his hand, but Kelso rolled away. He couldn't get his breath. His face was in the dust. Beneath his hands he could feel the heavy vibrations of the locomotive. He brought his fingers up to his mouth and touched his lip. It was bleeding slightly. He could taste salt. The big engine revved again, as if the driver was bored of waiting, but still the train didn't move.

IN MOSCOW, COLONEL Yuri Arsenyev, clumsily juggling technologies, had a telephone receiver wedged between his shoulder and his ear, and a television remote control in his plump hands. He pointed it at the big television screen in the corner of his office and tried hopelessly to raise the volume, boosting first the brightness and then the contrast before he was at last able to hear what Mamantov was saying.

.... flew up here from Moscow the moment I heard the news. I am therefore boarding this train to offer my protection, and that of the Aurora movement, to this historic figure, and we deft the great fascist usurper in the Kremlin to try to prevent us from reaching together the once and fi4ture seat of Soviet power .

The past twelve hours had already delivered a succession of unpleasant shocks to the chief of the RT Directorate, but this was the greatest. First, at eight o'clock the previous evening, there had been the anxious call reporting that Spetsnaz HQ had lost all communication with Suvorin and his unit in the forest. Then, an hour later, the first television pictures of the lunatic raving in his hut had begun to be broadcast ('Such is the law ofcapitalism - to beat the backward and the weak. It is the jungle law of capitalism...) Reports that the man had been seen on ~lie Moscow sleeper had reached Yasenevo just before dawn and a scratch force of militia units and MVD had been assembled at Vologda to stop the train. And now this!