The Relic (33 page)

Leon Gusev said, ‘Why didn't he produce the Relic? What's he planning? So far we've heard him saying the same thing to everyone. I'm going home to offer myself in the service of my fellow Ukrainians. If they'll accept me. All good humble stuff and the West are loving it. He's the biggest hero since Solzhenitsyn. The nationalists are planning a big demonstration. He's just what Rykhoh wanted.'

‘What Rykhoh doesn't want is for the government to upstage them, and that is what we're going to do. I'm leading a group of Politburo members and we'll be there to shake his hand as he steps off the plane. We're not going to make a martyr of him, whatever he does. We had our chance and we bungled it. Thanks to Müller's treachery.'

It was the accepted view that their agent, Peter Müller, had warned British Intelligence of the attack planned in Jersey. It had mitigated the official anger at the failure of Viktor's department.

‘And if he preaches sedition, with the Relic as a rallying point? Are we going to kiss and hug him because of what the West thinks? I can't see it working. I can only see disaster.'

‘That's what I said to the President,' Viktor admitted.

‘
Then I am relying on you, Viktor Alexzandrovich, to see it doesn't happen.
' That was the response. He hadn't repeated it to Leon. Leon was still young and inclined to be nervous. He suffered from the legacy of the past.

‘I'm leaving in half an hour,' Viktor said. ‘You can watch it all on television.'

He waited alone for the official car to take him to Sheremetov airport. They were catching the internal flight to Kiev, scheduled to arrive an hour before the Illuyshin jet came in from London. Volkov had made a point of refusing Western air transport. ‘I'm a Russian. I shall go home on a Russian aircraft.'

He'd said that during a final interview. Bringing his wife. He had married Yuri Varienski's daughter in a Catholic ceremony in London. That closed the file on Irina. It was significant to Rakovsky that none of the activists who'd been present at the Makoff Galleries when he called the Press and television, was coming to the Ukraine with him. None had asked for entry visas. Whatever Volkov was planning, he was doing it alone.

Only the Relic could have given him this new authority, the steadfast sense of purpose that came across in every interview. Volkov was no longer the firebrand who'd talked himself into arrest and persecution. Viktor had monitored every appearance before the television cameras and studied every word. This was a man with a mission and the maturity to accomplish it.

He'd noted his wife, too; she had dignity and a quiet beauty. They were a disturbing pair. She must be an unusual woman, Viktor judged, to have rescued the lost soul in Geneva and inspired him to escape and take up the challenge. She looked as if she'd suffered some baptism of fire. He recognized the marks it left; he'd borne them himself all his life.

Müller had sent the desk set back to Moscow via the embassy. For a few hours it had stood on Viktor's desk in the same room in the Lubiyanka where Lepkin had wound the clock and changed the calendar every day, until he brought them home to the house in the woods and gave them to Viktor's mother. He remembered his mother putting the clock and the calendar on the shelf above the stove. His brother, Stefan, had been forbidden to handle them. He himself was content to draw the exquisite trifles and admire them from a distance.

He found he couldn't bear to look at them. By the evening he had formally presented the Fabergé set to the State and it was put on display in the Hermitage Museum in Leningrad. It was out of the reach of human greed.

It was time to leave. He went down in the lift and out on to the square, where his car was waiting. At the intersection he joined the cavalcade of officials on their way to the airport. The Illuyshin had left London on time and would touch down on schedule.

Susan Müller picked up the telephone.

‘Hello?'

‘This is Eloise Brückner.'

She wasn't really concentrating.

‘Hello, how are you? I'm just watching this Russian arrive on television. Isn't it fascinating?'

‘I want to speak to Peter. I've been robbed!'

‘How terrible!' Susan Müller exclaimed, still eyeing the screen. The jet had landed and was taxiing along the runway. A group of men were gathering on the tarmac.

‘Look, Eloise, could I call you back?'

‘No.' The voice was shrill. ‘Just tell Peter I know he did it. I'm going to the police.'

Susan immediately forgot about the scene at Borispol airport.

‘Peter? You've got a goddamned nerve. You must be crazy!'

‘I showed him how the alarm worked.' Eloise's voice was rising hysterically. ‘He's the only person who could have done it. He stole the desk set! The first night he slept with me! Just tell him, he's not going to get away with it!'

The line went dead. Slowly Müller's wife put the phone down. ‘
The first night he slept with me.
' Her husband had told her he'd bought back the gold boxes and sold them immediately for a huge profit. He had assured her that when he stayed the night it was only to comfort a nervous woman. She believed him when he said that it was always innocent. She wanted to believe him. And he had stopped seeing Eloise Brückner. She was becoming too demanding, he explained. It was time to phase out.

‘Oh, Peter,' she said. ‘You shit. Just for business!'

She switched the set off. After a few minutes she calmed down. She was a practical woman. Anyway, if he had screwed the bitch, he'd soon dropped her. That's why she was accusing him. He would never be involved in anything like theft.

She rang Müller at the shop and told him what had happened.

‘I can explain,' he said. ‘Don't worry. I'll talk to her.'

He sent the prints round to the Brückner house by special courier. He put a note inside the envelope: ‘
My dear, I thought you might like to have these as a memento of our wonderful first night together. I treasure my set. Peter.
'

When they woke that first morning he had persuaded her to pose for him. She had been excited by the idea. ‘We can look at them together,' he'd suggested. She had adopted every erotic pose he suggested and then photographed him naked in turn. She had supplied the camera from one of Adolph's collection. They'd joked about it. A little different from his holiday snaps. She wouldn't put
them
in the album. Best of all, since Adolph was such an enthusiast, it was possible to take photographs by remote control. Müller had staged a series of unusual couplings, which the camera recorded. Eloise Brückner wouldn't go to the police and risk these photographs being produced as evidence. He wasn't in the least alarmed by her threat.

In their apartment overlooking the Bremner Canal, the Dutch couple were also watching television.

‘Isn't it amazing, Derk,' she turned to him. They were side by side watching the replay on Amsterdam television. ‘Just think, we helped that man get out of France!'

‘I know,' he said. ‘It makes you feel part of history. Nobody'd believe us if we told them.'

His wife smiled broadly.

‘I've told everyone!' she announced. ‘Your sister says I should write about it for the newspapers.'

‘No, Beta, you mustn't do anything like that! We don't want a lot of journalists asking us questions. We were just doing a kindness. We leave it at that, eh?'

‘All right, but it's amazing all the same. They're coming out of the plane now. Look at all those people!'

‘Ssssh,' he admonished. ‘Beta, listen to the commentary.'

She had a bad habit of talking through a programme, if she got excited.

‘I'm nervous,' Lucy whispered to him as the plane door opened and the stewardess beckoned them forward.

‘Me too,' he admitted. ‘It's so long since I've been home. Last time I left in handcuffs.'

The sunlight was blinding as they came down the steps and on to the tarmac at Borispol. They saw the flashing cameras and the television crews behind a simple barrier. He breathed in the earthy sun of his country, the whiff of dust and pine trees borne on a hot breeze, and suddenly his heart lifted and he was happy. He caught her hand and walked towards the group of dignitaries: the President of the Ukrainian parliament and his deputy; bureaucrats, one high-ranking army officer, and another smaller group ahead of them all. The representatives of Central Government in Moscow, making his welcome official. There were handshakes, warm smiles. The media captured every moment of it. Viktor Rakovsky was almost the last to greet him.

‘Welcome back,' he said. ‘I represent our Foreign Ministry. There's a reception and a Press conference arranged for you. I hope you had a smooth flight?'

‘Very smooth,' Volkov said. He brought Lucy forward. ‘My wife,' he said.

Viktor shook her hand. He wondered how Irina had died.

‘Welcome to the Soviet Union, Comrade Volkova.'

She answered him in Russian. ‘Thank you.'

It had all been arranged beforehand.

Viktor said, ‘Before we go in to meet the Press, I'd like to speak to you in private. Just a few minutes.'

‘I thought you'd suggest something like that. What ministry are you representing?' Volkov looked at him coldly. ‘I believe you were a friend of my late wife's father.'

‘I've known all the family for a long time,' Viktor answered. There was a dark hatred in Volkov's gaze. His task was not going to be easy. ‘This way.'

He ushered them ahead of him; his manner was friendly, even deferential. They were VIPs and they entered the exclusive lounge reserved for the highest Party members when they used the airport.

‘A drink?' he enquired. ‘What would you like? We have excellent Russian champagne or vodka.'

‘I don't drink,' Volkov said.

Lucy shook her head.

‘Then I'll have to toast to your homecoming on my own,' Viktor said.

He poured a measure of vodka into a glass and raised it to them.

‘What do you want from me?' Volkov cut the pantomine short.

‘I want your assurance that you haven't come back to cause civil unrest in the Ukraine.'

Viktor had dropped the pose. He stood taller than Dimitri Volkov. He was a man of years and hard authority facing an adversary.

‘I bring you a message from the President himself. We welcome you back. We apologize for the harsh way you were treated in the past. We hope you will forgive and forget, and agree to work towards a Russia where such things can never happen again. If your intention is to stir up unrest, then we are not going to stop you. That's the measure of the changes Mikhail Gorbachev has made. You speak a lot about democracy and justice, Comrade Volkov. You always did, when there was no hope of either under the old system. That is being swept away. But we need peace to do it. Peace and stability. Any other way means bloodshed and misery. Are you prepared for that?'

To his surprise it was Lucy who answered. ‘Dimitri would never want that!'

Viktor said quietly, ‘Have you brought the Relic with you?'

‘I think it's time for the Press conference,' Volkov replied.

‘One more question, Comrade Volkov. What happened to your activist friends in London? They've left you to lead their crusade on your own.'

Volkov took Lucy by the hand.

‘They didn't like my speech.'

Viktor opened the door for them and stood aside. He watched as Volkov took his place before the journalists and television crews. He looked very slight standing there with the lights beating down on him. Viktor moved closer to the woman who was responsible for it all. She was watching Volkov; she didn't seem to notice him standing beside her.

‘I've heard his broadcasts from London,' he remarked. ‘He's a fine speaker.'

‘Yes,' Lucy answered. ‘He speaks as he thinks.'

‘You know what he's going to say?'

‘We wrote it together.'

‘With help from your friends in British Intelligence?'

‘They're no friends of ours!'

Her vehemence surprised Viktor. For a moment, they turned their attention to the Ukrainian President, who was paying tribute to Volkov's stand against tyranny.

‘We understood they saved his life in Jersey,' said Viktor.

She stared at him. ‘It was the cross that saved us. They came when it was all over. We owe them nothing!'

He believed her. Perhaps Müller hadn't betrayed them after all.

‘I don't want to talk about it,' she said. ‘My husband is going to speak now.'

Volkov glanced briefly at his sheaf of notes and put them away in his pocket. He adjusted the microphone, and looked out over the expectant faces, the TV cameras, the journalists, with their notebooks ready.

A slight flush appeared on his cheeks; he brushed his hair back from his forehead. In the audience Lucy tensed, knowing the gesture so well. Then he spoke, and his voice was clear and resonant.

‘My friends. Thank you for your kind words and your welcome. I would never have believed I'd live to see this day.' He paused, and took the notes out of his pocket again. ‘I wrote all this when I knew I was coming home. With help from my wife, who's here with me. But I don't need any notes. I can speak from my heart. When you've been silent for five long years, you can't imagine you'll ever stand up, face an audience and talk openly again.

‘I left this country in handcuffs.

‘But I was luckier than many of my friends who weren't sent into exile. Some are still in prison. Most of them are dead.

‘Times have changed, they told me. Russia has changed. I have to accept that because I'm here. But as long as one man or woman is in prison because of their beliefs, then nothing has really changed.

‘The President has spoken about what happened to me. He talked about injustice and suffering. But for seventy years we have all been in chains. My country, the Ukraine, was perhaps the worst victim of oppression. Our culture, our religion, our land were all taken from us. Millions died. Stalin built upon their bones. But our people refused to abandon hope, held on to their faith that one day they would be free.