Archangel Read Free Page B

it, through all the points of the compass. Beria, smiling now, let it circle slowly for at least half a minute, then abruptly snatched it away and caught it in his palm. He closed his fingers around it and offered his clenched fist to Stalin. Such a sound, boy! More animal than human! It pursued Rapava out of that room and along the passage and down all the years, from that night to this.
    The bottle of Scotch was drained and Kelso was on his knees now before the mini-bar like a priest before his altar. He wondered how his hosts at the historical symposium would feel when they got the bar bill, but that was less important right now than the task of keeping the old man fuelled and talking. He pulled out handfuls of miniatures - vodka, more s cotch, gin, brandy, something German made of cherries -and cradled them across the room to the table. As he sat down and released them a couple of bottles rolled on to the floor but Rapava paid them no heed. He wasn't an old man in the Ukraina any more; he was back in fifty-three - a frightened twenty-five-year-old at the wheel of a dark green Packard, the highway to Moscow shining white in the headlights before him, Lavrenty Beria rockl ike in the rear.
     
    The big car flew along the Kutuzovskiy Prospekt and through the silent sweep of the western suburbs. At three-thirty it crossed the Moskva at the Borodinskiy Bridge and headed at speed towards the Kremlin, entering through the south-western gate on the opposite side to Red Square. O nce they had been waved inside, Beria leaned forward and gave Rapava directions - left past the Armoury, then sharp right through a narrow entrance into an inner courtyard. There were no windows, just half a dozen small doors. The icy cobbles in the darkness glowed crimson like wet blood. Looking up, Rapava saw they were beneath a giant red neon star. Beria was quickly through one of the doors and Rapava had to scramble to follow him. A little flagstoned passage took them to a cage-lift that was older than the Revolution. A rattle of iron and the drone of an engine accompanied their slow ascent through two silent, unlit floors. They jolted to a stop and Beria wrenched back the gate. Then he was off again, down the corridor, walking fast, swinging the key on the end of its length of string.
    Don't ask me where we went, boy, because I can't tell you. There was a long, carpeted corridor lined with fancy busts on marble pedestals, then an iron spiral staircase which had to be climbed down, and then a huge ballroom, as vast as an ocean liner, with giant mirrors ten yards high, and fancy gilt chairs set around the walls. Finally, not long after the ballroom, came a wide corridor with lime-green, shiny plaster, a floor that smelt of wood-polish and a big, heavy door that Beria unlocked with a key he kept in a bunch on a chain. Rapava followed him in. The door, on an old imperial pneumatic hinge, closed slowly behind them. It wasn't much of an office. Eight yards by six. It might have done for some factory director at the arse-end of Vologda or Magnitogorsk - a desk with a couple of telephones, a bit of carpet on the floor, a table and a few chairs, a heavily-curtained window. On the wall was one of those big, pink, roll-up maps of the USSR - this was back in the days when there was a USSR - and next to the map was another, smaller door, to which Beria immediately headed. gain he had a key. The door opened into a kind of walk-in cupboard in which there was a blackened samovar, a bottle of Armenian brandy and some stuff for making herbal teas. There was also a wall-safe, with a sturdy brass front on which was a manufacturer's label - not in Russian Cyrillic but in some western language. The safe wasn't very big - a foot across, if that. Square. Well fashioned. Straight handle, also brass. Beria noticed Rapava staring at it and told him roughly to clear off back outside.
     
    N early an hour passed. Standing in the corridor, Rapava tried to keep himself alert,