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Dr. Probyn stood back from his multicolored chart beaming. Sir Nigel stared at the face in the photograph.

“Where does he live?”

“During the week, here in London. On weekends, at his place in the country. It’s listed in Debrett.”

“Perhaps I should have a word,” mused Sir Nigel. “One last thing, Dr. Probyn. Is there any other man who fulfills all the qualifications so completely?”

“Not on this planet,” said the herald.

That weekend Sir Nigel Irvine, having obtained his appointment, drove to western England to see the younger of the two princes at his country house. He was courteously received and gravely listened to. Finally the prince escorted him to his car.

“If half what you say is true, Sir Nigel, I find it perfectly extraordinary. Of course, I have followed events in Russia from the media. But this ... I shall have to consider carefully, consult my family extensively, and of course ask for a private meeting with Her Majesty.”

“It may never happen, sir. There may never be a plebiscite. Or the people’s reply might be the reverse.”

“Then, we shall have to wait until that day. Safe journey, Sir Nigel.”

¯

ON the third floor of the Metropol Hotel is situated one of the finest traditional Russian restaurants of Moscow. The Boyarsky Zal, or Boyars’ Hall, is named after the body of aristocrats who once flanked the czar and, if he was weak, ruled in his place. It is vaulted, paneled, and decorated with superb ornamentation recalling a long-bygone age. Excellent wines vie with iced vodka, the trout, salmon, and sturgeon are from the rivers, the hare, deer, and boar from the steppes of Russia.

It was here on the evening of December 12 that General Nikolai Nikolayev was taken by his sole living relative to celebrate his seventy-fourth birthday.

Galina, the little sister he had once carried on his back through the burning streets of Smolensk, had grown up to be a teacher, and in 1956, aged twenty-five, she had married a fellow teacher called Andreev. Their son, Misha, was born late that same year.

In 1963 she and her husband had been killed in a car crash, one of those stupid affairs in which a vodka-drunk idiot had driven right into them.

Colonel Nikolayev had flown home from the Far Eastern Command to attend the funeral. But there was more, a letter from his sister written two years earlier.

“If anything should ever happen to me and Ivan,” she wrote, “I beg you to look after little Misha.” Nikolayev stood at the grave beside a solemn little boy just turned seven who refused to weep.

Because both the parents had been employees of the state—under Communism everyone was an employee of the state—their apartment was repossessed. The tank colonel, who was then thirty-seven, had no Moscow apartment. When home on furlough he lived in bachelor quarters at the Frunze Officers’ Club. The commandant agreed the boy could stay with him on a strictly temporary basis.

After the funeral, he took the boy to the mess hall for a meal, but neither had much appetite.

“What the hell am I going to do with you, Misha?” he asked, but the question was more to himself.

Later he tucked the boy into his single bed and threw a handful of blankets onto the sofa for himself. Through the wall he could hear the boy starting to cry at last. To take his mind off things, he turned on the radio, to learn that Kennedy had just been shot in Dallas.

One thing about wearing the medals of a triple-Hero was that it gave the wearer a certain clout. Normally boys go to the prestigious Nakhimov Military Academy at the age of ten, but in this case the authorities agreed to make an exception. Very small and very frightened, the seven-year-old was fitted out in a cadet uniform and inducted into the Nakhimov. Then his uncle went back to the Far East to complete his tour.

Over the years General Nikolayev had done his best, visiting whenever he was home on leave and, when seconded to the general staff, acquiring his own apartment in Moscow where the growing youth could stay during vacations.

At eighteen Misha Andreev had graduated as a lieutenant and not unnaturally had opted for tanks. Twenty-five years later he was forty-three, and a major general commanding an elite division of tanks outside Moscow.

The two men entered the restaurant just after eight, their table booked and awaiting them. Viktor, the head-waiter, was a former tank man; he rushed forward with his hand out.

“Good to see you, General. You won’t remember me. I was a gunner with the One thirty-first Maikop in Prague in 1968. Your table’s over here facing the gallery.”

Heads turned to see what all the fuss was about. The American, Swiss, and Japanese businessmen stared in curiosity. Among the few Russian diners there was a muttered “That’s Kolya Nikolayev.”

Viktor had prepared two brimming tumblers of freezing Moskovskaya, on the house. Misha Andreev raised his glass to his uncle and the only father he could really remember.

“
Za vashe zdrovye.
Another seventy-four to come.”

“Bullshit.
Za vaslze zdrovye
.”

Both men threw back the liquid in one, paused, grunted as it hit the spot.

Above the bar at the Boyarsky Zal is a gallery from which the diners are serenaded with traditional Russian songs. That night the singers were a statuesque blonde in the robes of a Romanov princess, and a man in tuxedo possessed of a rich baritone voice.

When they finished the ballad they were performing as a duet, the male singer stepped forward alone. The live band at the end of the gallery paused and the deep, rich voice launched into the soldier’s love song to the girl he left back home, “Kalinka.”

The Russians stopped chattering and sat in silence; the foreigners followed suit. The baritone voice filled the hall … “Kalinka, Kalinka, Kalinka maya …”

When the last chords died away the Russians rose to toast the white-moustached man seated with his back to the tapestries. The singer bowed and took his applause. Viktor was next to a group of six Japanese diners.

“Who is old man?” asked one of them in English.

“War hero, Great Patriotic War,” replied Viktor.

The English speaker translated for the rest.

“Ah, so,” they said, and raised their glasses. “
Kampei
.”

Uncle Kolya nodded and beamed, raised his glass to the singer and the room, and drank.

It was a good meal, trout and duck, with Armenian red wine and coffee to follow. At the Boyarski’s prices, it was costing the major general a month’s salary. He reckoned his uncle was worth it.

It was probably not until he was thirty, and had seen some thoroughly bad officers, not a few in high office, that he understood why his uncle had become a legend among tank men. He possessed something bad officers never had, a passionate concern for the men serving under him. By the time he got his first division and his first red tab, Major General Andreev, looking about him at the shambles in Chechnya, recognized that Russia would be lucky to see another like Uncle Kolya.

The nephew had never forgotten something that happened when he was ten. Between 1945 and 1965 neither Stalin nor Khrushchev had thought fit to erect a cenotaph to the war dead in Moscow. Their own cults of personality had been more important, despite the fact neither of them would have been on top of Lenin’s Mausoleum to take the salute on May Day had it not been for the millions who died between 1941 and 1945.

Then in 1966, with Khrushchev gone, the Politburo had finally ordered the construction of a cenotaph and an eternal flame to the memory of the Unknown Soldier.

Still, no open space was employed. The memorial was tucked away under the trees of the Alexandrovsky Gardens, close by the Kremlin wall, in a position that would never catch the eye of those in the endless queue to see Lenin’s embalmed remains.

After the May Day parade that year, when the wide-eye ten-year-old cadet had watched the rolling tanks, guns, and rockets, the goose-stepping troops and the dancing gymnasts pouring across Red Square, his uncle had taken him by the hand and led him down Kremlev Alley between the gardens and the Manege.

Under the trees was a flat-topped slab of red polished granite. Beside it burned a flame in a bronze bowl.

On the slab was written the words:
Your grave is unknown, your achievement immortal.

“I want you to make me a promise, boy,” said the colonel.

“Yes, Uncle.”

“There are a million of them out there, between here and Berlin. We don’t know where they lie, in many cases who they were. But they fought with me, and they were good men. Understand?”

“Yes, Uncle.”

“Whatever they promise you, whatever money, or promotion, or honors they offer you, I don’t want you ever to betray these men.”

“I promise, Uncle.”

The colonel slowly raised his hand to the peak of his cap. The cadet followed suit. A passing crowd in from the provinces, sucking ice cream bars, watched curiously. Their guide, whose job was to tell them what a great man Lenin had been, was clearly embarrassed and shooed them round the corner toward the mausoleum.

“Saw your piece in
Izvestia
the other day,” said Misha Andreev. “Caused quite a stir on the base.”

General Nikolayev stared at him keenly.

“Didn’t like it?”

“Surprised, that’s all.”

“Meant it, you know.”

“Yes, I suppose you did. You usually do.”

“He’s an arsewipe, boy.”

“If you say so, Uncle. Looks like he’s going to win, though. Perhaps you should have kept your mouth shut.”

“Too old for that. Speak as I find.”

The old man seemed lost in thought for a while, staring up at the “Romanov princess” singing in the gallery above. Foreign diners thought they recognized “Those Were the Days, My Friend,” which is not a Western song at all but an old Russian ballad. Then the general reached across and gripped his nephew’s forearm.

“Look, lad, if anything ever happens to me …”

“Don’t be daft, you’ll outlive the lot of us.”

“Listen, if anything happens, I want you to plant me in Novodevichi. All right? I don’t want a miserable civil affair, I want a bishop and all the trimmings, the whole deal. Understand?”

“You, a
bishop?
I didn’t think you believed in all that.”

“Don’t be a fool. No man who’s had a German eighty-eight land six feet away and not explode doesn’t believe there must be Somebody up there. Of course I had to pretend, we all did. Party membership, indoctrination lectures, it all went with the job, and it was all crap. So that’s what I want. Now let’s toss back the coffee and go. Got a staff car?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because we’re both plastered. You can run me home.”

¯

THE overnight sleeper train from Kiev, capital of the independent republic of the Ukraine, rumbled through the freezing darkness toward Moscow.

In the sixth carriage, compartment 2B, the two Englishmen sat and played gin rummy. Brian Vincent checked his watch.

“Half an hour to the border, Sir Nigel. Better get ready for bed.”

“I suppose so,” said Nigel Irvine. Still fully dressed he clambered to the top bunk and drew the blankets to his chin.

“Look the part?” he asked. The ex-soldier nodded.

“Leave the rest to me, sir.”

There was a brief halt at the border. The Ukrainian officials on the train had already checked the two passports. The Russians boarded at the halt.

Ten minutes later there was a tap on the door of the sleeper compartment. Vincent opened up.

“Da?”

“Pazport, pozhaluysta.”

There was only a dim blue light inside the compartment and though the light in the corridor was yellow and brighter, the Russian inspector had to peer.

“No visa,” he said.

“Of course not. These are diplomatic passports. Require no visa.”

The Ukrainian pointed to the word in English on the cover of each passport.

“Diplomat,” he said.

The Russian nodded, slightly embarrassed. He had an instruction from the FSB in Moscow, an all-crossing-point alert, to watch for a name and a face or both.

“The old man,” he said, gesturing at the second passport.

“He’s up there,” said the young diplomat. “Actually, as you see he’s very old. He’s not feeling well. Do you have to disturb him?”

“Who is he?”

“Well, actually he’s the father of our ambassador in Moscow. That’s why I’m escorting him there. To see his son.’’

The Ukrainian pointed up to the recumbent figure in the bunk.

“Father of ambassador,” he said.

“Thank you, I can understand Russian,” said the Russian. He was perplexed. The round-faced, bald man in the passport bore no relationship to the description he had been given. Nor did the name. No Trubshaw, no Irvine. Just Lord Asquith.

“It must be cold in the corridor,” said Vincent. “Cold to the bones. Please. For friendship. From our Kiev embassy’s special stock.”

The liter of vodka was of exceptional quality, the sort no money could buy. The Ukrainian nodded, smiled and nudged his Russian counterpart. The Russian grunted, stamped both passports and passed on.

“Couldn’t hear much under all those blankets, but it sounded good,” said Sir Nigel when the door was closed. He swung down from the upper bunk.

“Let’s just say, the fewer of those the better,” Vincent said, and set about destroying the two phony passports in the sink. The fragments would go down the lavatory hole and be scattered in the snows of southern Russia. One to get in, and one to get out. The exit passports, with their beautifully created entry stamps, were locked away.

Vincent looked at Sir Nigel with curiosity. At thirty-three he was aware the older man could not only be his father, but biologically his grandfather. As a former special forces soldier he had been in some tough places, not excluding lying in the desert of Western Iraq waiting to cream a passing Scud missile. But always there had been mates, a gun, grenades, a way of fighting back.

The world into which Sir Nigel Irvine had inducted him, albeit for a very large fee, a world of deception and disinformation, of endless smoke and mirrors, left him feeling in need of a double vodka. Fortunately there was a second bottle of the special stuff in his bag. He helped himself.