Archangel (6 page)

'But if it was a set-up,' said Kelso, weighing the matchbook in his palm, 'why would he run away.

'Obviously, because he doesn't want it to look like a set-up. He wants you to have to work at it - track him down, persuade him to help you. That's the psychology of a clever fraud - the victims wind up doing so much chasing around, they start wanting to believe it's true. Remember the Hitler diaries. Either that or he's a lunatic.'

'He was very convincing.'

'Lunatics often are. Or it's a practical joke. Someone wants
to make you look a fool. Have you thought of that? You're not exactly the most popular kid in the school.'

Kelso glanced up the corridor towards the lecture hall. It wasn't a bad theory. There were plenty in there who didn't like him. He had appeared on too many television programmes~ knocked out too many newspaper columns, reviewed too many of their useless books. Saunders was loitering at the corner, pretending to talk to Moldenhauer, both men obviously straining to overhear what he was saying to Adelman. (Saunders had complained bitterly after Kelso's paper about his 'subjectivity': 'Why was he even invited, that's what one wants to know. One had been given to understand this was a symposium for serious scholars . .

'They don't have the wit,' he said. He gave them a wave and was pleased to see them duck out of sight. 'Or the imagination.

'You sure have a genius for making enemies.

'Ah well. You know what they say: more enemies, more honour.'

Adelman smiled and opened his mouth to say something, but then seemed to think better of it. 'How's Margaret, dare one ask?'

'Who? Oh, you mean poor Margaret? She's fine, thank you. Fine and feisty. According to the lawyers.'

'And the boys?'

'Entering the springtime of their adolescence.'

'And the book? That's been a while. How much of this new book have you actually written?'

'I'm writing it.'

'Two hundred pages? A hundred?'

'What is this, Frank?'

'How many pages?'

'I don't know.' Kelso licked his dry lips. Almost unbelievably, he realised he could do with a drink. 'A hundred maybe.' He had a vision of a blank grey screen, a cursor flashing wealdy, like a pulse on a life-support machine begging to be switched off He hadn't written a word. 'Listen, Frank, there could be something in this, couldn't there? Stalin was a hoarder, don't forget. Didn't Khrushchev find some letter in a secret compartment in the old man's desk after he died?' He rubbed his aching head. 'That letter from Lenin, complaining about Stalin's treatment of his wife? And then there was that list of the Politburo, with crosses against everyone he was planning to purge. And his library -remember his library? He made notes in almost every book.'

'So what are you saying?'

'I'm just saying it's possible, that's all. That Stalin wasn't Hitler. That he wrote things down.'

'Quod volimus credimus libenter,' intoned Adelman. "Which means -'I know what it means -'- which means, my dear Fluke, we always believe what we

want to believe.' Adelman patted Kelso's arm. 'You don't want to hear this, do you? I'm sorry. I'll lie if you prefer it. I'll tell you he's the one guy in a million with a story like this who turns out not to be full of shit. I'll tell you he's going to lead you to Stalin's unpublished memoirs, that you'll rewrite history, millions of dollars will be yours, women will lie at your feet, Duberstein and Saunders will form a choir to sing your praises in the middle of Harvard Yard.

All right, Frank.' Kelso leaned the back of his head against the wall. 'You've made your point. I don't know It's just -Maybe you had to be there with him -, He pressed on, reluctant to admit defeat. 'It's just it rings a bell with me
somewhere. Does it ring a bell with you?'

'Oh sure. It rings a bell, okay. An alarm bell.' Adelman pulled out an old pocket watch. 'We ought to be getting back. D'yoLI mind? Olga will be frantic.' He put his arm round Kelso's shoulders and led him down the corridor. 'In any case, there's nothing you can do. We're flying back to New York tomorrow. Let's talk when we get back. See if there's anything for you in the faculty. You were a great teacher.'

'I was a lousy teacher.'

'You were a great teacher, until you were lured from the path of scholarship and rectitude by the cheap sirens of journalism and publicity. Hello, Olga.'

'So here you are! The session is almost starting. Oh, Doctor Kelso - now this is not so good - no smoking, thank you.' She leaned over and removed the cigarette from his lips. She had a shiny face with plucked eyebrows and a very fine moustache, bleached white. She dropped the stub into the dregs of his coffee and took away his cup.

'Olga, Olga, why so bright?' groaned Kelso, putting his hand to his brow. The lecture hail exuded a tungsten glare.

'Television,' said Olga, with pride. 'They are making a programme of us.'

'Local?' Adelman was straightening his bow tie. 'Network?'

'Satellite, professor. International.'

'Say, now, where are our seats?' whispered Adelman, shielding his eyes from the lights.

'Doctor Kelso? Any chance of a word, sir?' An American accent. Kelso turned to find a large young man he vaguely recognised.

'I'm sorry?'

'R. J. O'Brian,' said the young man, holding out his hand. 'Moscow correspondent, Satellite News System. We're making a special report on the controversy -'I don't think so,' said Kelso. 'But Professor Adelman, here

- I'm sure he'd be delighted -'

At the prospect of a television interview, Adelman seemed physically to swell in size, like an inflating doll. 'Well, as long as it's not in any official capacity. .

O'Brian ignored him. 'You sure I can't tempt you?' he said to Kelso. 'Nothing you want to say to the world? I read your book on the fall of communism. When was that? Three years ago.

'Four,' said Kelso.

'Actually, I believe it was five,' said Adelman.

Actually, thought Kelso, it was nearer six: dear God, where were all the years going? 'No,' he said, 'thanks all the same, but I'm keeping off television these days.' He looked at Adelman. 'It's a cheap siren, apparently.'

'Later, please,' hissed Olga. 'Interviews are later. The director is talking. Please.' Kelso felt her umbrella in his back again as she steered him into the hall. 'Please. Please -'

By
the time the Russian delegates were added in, plus a few diplomatic observers, the press, and maybe fifty members of the public, the hall was impressively full. Kelso sank heavily into his place in the second row. Up on the platform, Professor Valentin Askenov of the Russian State Archives had launched into a long explanation of the microfilming of the Party records. O'Brian's cameraman walked backwards down the central aisle, filming the audience. The sharp amplification of Askenov's sonorous voice seemed to pierce some painful chamber of Kelso's inner ear. Already, a kind of
metallic, neon torpor had descended over the hall. The day stretched ahead. He covered his face with his hands.
Twenty-five million sheets... recited Askenov, twenty-five thousand reels ofmicrofilm. . . seven million dollars.

Kelso slid his hands down his cheeks until his fingers converged and covered his mouth. Frauds! he wanted to shout. Liars! Why were they all just sitting here? They knew as well as he did that nine-tenths of the best material was still locked up, and to see most of the rest required a bribe. He'd heard that the going rate for a captured Nazi file was $1,000 and a bottle of Scotch.

He whispered to Adelman, 'I'm getting out of here.'

'You cant.

'Why not?'

'It's discourteous. Just sit there, for pete's sake, and pretend to be interested like everyone else.' Adelman said all this out of the side of his mouth, without taking his eyes off the platform. Kelso stuck it for another half minute.

'Tell them I'm ill.'

'I shall not.

'Let me by, Frank. I'm going to be sick.'

'Jesus...'

Adelman swung his legs to one side and pressed himself back in his seat. Hunched in a vain effort to make himself less conspicuous, Kelso stumbled over the feet of his colleagues, kicking in the process the elegant black shin of Ms Velma Byrd.

'Aw, fuck, Kelso,' said Velma.

Professor Askenov looked up from his notes and paused in mid-drone. Kelso was conscious of an amplified, humming silence, and of a kind of collective movement in the audience, as if some great beast had turned in its field to
watch his progress. This seemed to last a long time, for at least as long as it took him to walk to the back of the hall. Not until he had passed beneath the marble gaze of Lenin and into the deserted corridor did the droning begin again.

KELSO sat behind the bolted door of a lavatory cubicle on the ground floor of the former Institute of Marxism-Leninism and opened his canvas bag. Here were the tools of his trade:

a yellow legal pad, pencils, an eraser, a small Swiss army knife, a welcome pack from the organisers of the symposium, a dictionary, a street map of Moscow, his cassette recorder, and a Filofax that was a palimpsest of ancient numbers, lost contacts, old girlfriends, former lives.

There was something about the old man's story that was familiar to him, but he couldn't remember what it was. He picked up the cassette recorder, pressed REWIND, let it spool back for a while, then pressed PLAY He held it to his ear and listened to the tinny ghost of Rapava's voice.

Comrade
Stalin’s
room was a plain man's room. You've got to say that for Stalin. He was always one ofus...

REWIND. PLAY

and here was an odd thing, boy - he had taken off his shiny new shoes and had them wedged under one fat arm...

REWIND. PLAY

Know what I mean by Blizhny. boy?...'

by Blizhny. boy?...'

byBlizhny...

THE MOSCOW AIR tasted of Asia - of dust and soot and eastern spices, cheap petrol, black tobacco, sweat. Kelso came out of the Institute and turned up the collar of his raincoat. He walked across the rutted concourse, skirting the frozen puddles~ resisting the temptation to wave at the sullen crowd

- that would have been 'a western provocation'.

The street sloped southwards, down towards the centre of the city. Every other building was encased in scaffolding. Beside him, debris hurtled down a metal chute and exploded into a fountain of dust. He passed a shady casino, anonymous except for a sign showing a pair of rolling dice. A fur boutique. A shop selling nothing but Italian shoes. A single pair of handmade loafers would have cost any one of the demonstrators a whole month's wages and he felt a stab of sympathy. He remembered a line of Evelyn Waugh's he had used before about Russia: 'The foundations of Empire are often occasions of woe; their dismemberment, always.'

At the bottom of the hill he turned right, into the wind. The snow had stopped but the cold blast was hard and unyielding. He could see tiny figures bent into it, across the road, beneath the red rock-face of the Kremlin wall, while the golden domes of the churches rose above the parapet like the globes of some vast meteorological machine.

His destination lay straight ahead. Like the Institute of Marxism-Leninism, the Lenin Library had been renamed. It was now the Central Library of the Russian Federation, but everyone still called it the Lenin. He stepped through the familiar triple doors, gave his bag and coat to the babushka
behind the cloakroom counter, then showed his old reader's ticket to an armed guard in a glass booth.

He signed his name in the register and added the time. It was eleven minutes past ten.
They had yet to get around to computerising the Lenin, which meant forty million titles were still on index cards. At the top of a wide flight of stone steps, beneath the vaulted ceiling, was a sea of wooden cabinets, and Kelso moved among them as he had done years ago, sliding open one drawer after another, riffling through the familiar titles. Radzinsky he would need, and the second volume of Volkogonov, and Khrushchev and Alliluyeva. The cards for these last two were marked with the Cyrillic symbol '~' which meant they had been held in the secret index until 1991. How many titles was he allowed? Five, wasn't it? Finally, he decided on Chuyev's series of interviews with the ancient Molotov. Then he took his request slips to the issuing desk and watched as they were fitted into a metal canister and fired down the pneumatic tube into the Lenin's lower depths.

'What's the wait today?'

The assistant shrugged. Who was she to say?

An hour?'

She shrugged again.

He thought: nothing changes.

He wandered back across the landing into Reading Room No. 3, and trod softly down the path of worn green carpet that led to his old seat. And nothing had changed here, either
- not the rich brownness of the wood-panelled, galleried hail, nor the dry smell of it, nor its sacrilegious hush. At one end was a statue of Lenin reading a book, at the other an astrological clock. Maybe two hundred people were bent over their desks. Through the window to his left he could see
the dome and spire of St Nicholas's. He might never have left; the past eighteen years might have been a dream.