But it does make it a thousand times more likely Back outside the entrance to the reading room, Kelso yanked open the narrow wooden drawer and searched through it quickly until he found the index cards to Yepishev, A. A. (1908-85). The old man had written a score of books, of uniform dullness and hackery: History Teaches: The Lessons of the Twentieth Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War (1965), Ideological Warfare and Military Problems (1974), We Are True to the Ideas of the Party (1981). Kelso's hangover had gone, to be replaced by that familiar phase of post-alcoholic euphoria - always, in the past, his most productive time of day - a feeling that alone was enough to make getting drunk worthwhile. He ran down the flight of steps and along the wide and gloomy corridor that led to the Lenin's military section. This was a small and self-contained area, neon-lit, with a subterranean feel to it. A young man in a grey pullover was leaning against the counter, reading a 1970s MAD comic.
'What do you have on an army man named Yepishev?' asked Kelso. 'A. A. Yepishev?'
'Who wants to know?'
Kelso handed over his reader's card and the young man examined it with interest.
'Hey, are you the Kelso who wrote that book a few years back on the end of the Party?'
Kelso hesitated - this could go either way - but finally he admitted he was. The young man put down the comic and shook his hand. 'Andrei Efanov. Great book. You really stuffed the bastards. I'll see what we have.'
THERE were two reference books with entries for Yepishev:
the Military Encyclopaedia of the USSR and the Directory of Heroes of the Soviet Union, and both told pretty much the same story, if you knew how to read between the lines, which was that Aleksey Alekseevich Yepishev had been an armour-plated, ocean-going Stalinist of the old schooclass="underline" Komsomol and Party instructor in the twenties and thirties; Red Army Military Academy, 1938; Commissar of the Komintern Factory in Kharkov, 1942; Military Council of the Thirty-Eighth Army of the 1St Ukrainian Front, 1943; Deputy People's Commissar for Medium Machine Building, also 1943 -
'What's a "medium machine",' asked Efanov, who was peering at the books over Kelso's shoulder. Efanov turned out to have done his military service in Lithuania - two years of hell - and to have been refused admittance to Moscow University in the communist time on the grounds he was a Jew. Now he was taking a huge delight in poking over the dust and ashes of Yepishev's career.
'Cover-name for the Soviet atomic bomb programme, said Kelso. 'Beria's pet project.' Beria. He made a note.
- Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ukrainian Communist Parry, 1946 -
'That was when they purged the Ukraine of collaborators, after the war,' said Efanov. 'A bloody time.'
- First Secretary of the Odessa Regional Party Committee, 1950; Deputy Minister of State Security, 1951 -Deputy Minister...
Each entry was illustrated with the same official photograph of Yepishev. Kelso looked again at the the square jaw, the thick brow, the grim face set above the boxer's neck.
'Oh, he was a big bastard, boy. A fleshy tank...
'Gotcha,' whispered Kelso to himself.
After Stalin's death, Yepishev's career had taken a dive. First he had been sent back to Odessa, then he had been packed off abroad. Ambassador to Romania, 1955-61. Ambassador to Yugoslavia, 1961-62. And then, at last, the long-awaited summons back to Moscow, as Head of the Central Political Department of the Soviet Armed Forces -its ideological commissar - a position he held for the next twenty-three years. And who had served as his deputy? None other than Dmitri Volkogonov, three-star general and future biographer of Josef Stalin.
To extract these small plums of information it was necessary to dig through a great pudding of cliche and jargon, praising Yepishev for his 'important role in shaping the necessary political attitudes and enforcing Marxist- Leninist orthodoxy in the Armed Forces, in strengthening military discipline and fostering ideological readiness'. He had died aged seventy-seven. Volkogonov, Kelso knew, had died ten years later.
The list ofYepishev's honours ancE medals took up the rest of his entry: Hero of the Soviet Union, winner of the Lenin Prize, holder of four Orders of Lenin, the October Revolution Order, four Orders of the Red Banner, two Orders of the Great Patriotic War (ist class), the Order of the Red Banner, three Orders of the Red Star, the Order of Service to the Motherland...
'It's a wonder he could stand up.'
'And I'll bet you he never shot anyone,' sneered Efanov, 'except on his own side. So what's so interesting about Yepishev~ if you don't mind me asking?'
'What's this?' said Kelso suddenly. He pointed to a line at the foot of the column: 'V. P. Mamantov.'
'He's the author of the entry.
'Yepishev's entry was written by Mamantov? Vladimir Mamantov? The KGB man?'
'That's him. So what? The entries are usually written by friends. Why? D'you know him?'
'I don't know him. I've met him.' He frowned at the name. 'His people were demonstrating - this morning -'Oh, them? They're always demonstrating. When did you meet Mamantov?'
Kelso reached for his notebook and began skimming back through the pages. About five years ago, I suppose. When I was researching my book on the Party.
Vladimir Mamantov. My God, he hadn't thought about Vladimir Mamantov in half a decade, and suddenly here he was, crossing his path twice in a morning. The years fluttered through his fingers - ninety-five, ninety-four. . . Some details of the meeting were starting to come back to him now: a morning in late spring, a dead dog revealed in the thawing snow outside an apartment block in the suburbs, a gorgon of a wife. Mamantov had just finished serving fourteen months in Lefortovo for his part in the attempted coup against Gorbachev, and Kelso had been the first to interview him when he came out of jail. It had taken an age to fix the appointment and then it had proved, as so often in these cases, not worth the effort. Mamantov had refused point-blank to talk about himself, or the coup, and had simply spouted Party slogans straight out of the pages of Pravda. He found Mamanrov's home telephone number from 1991, next to an office address for a lowly Party functionary, Gennady Zyuganov.
'You're going to try to see him?' asked Efanov, anxiously. 'You know he hates all Westerners? Almost as much as he hates the Jews.'
'You're right,' said Kelso, staring at the seven digits.
Mamanrov had been a formidable man even in defeat, his Soviet suit hanging loose off his wide shoulders, the grey pallor of prison still dull on his cheeks; murder in his eyes. Kelso's book had not been flattering about Vladimir Mamantov, to put it mildly. And it had been translated into Russian - Mamantov must have seen it.
'You're right,' he repeated. 'It would be stupid even to try.
FLUKE Kelso walked out of the Lenin Library a little after two that afternoon, pausing briefly at a stall in the lobby to buy a couple of bread rolls and a bottle of warm and salty mineral water. He remembered passing a row of public telephones opposite the Kremlin, close to the Intourist office, and he ate his lunch as he walked - first down into the gloom of the metro station to buy some plastic tokens for the phone, and then back along Mokhavaya Street towards the high red wall and the golden domes.
He was not alone, it seemed to him. His younger self was ambling alongside him now - floppy-haired, chain-smoking, forever in a hurry; forever optimistic, a writer on the rise. ('Dr Kelso brings to the study of contemporary Soviet history the skiiis of a first-rate scholar and the energy of a good reporter' - The New York Times.) This younger Kelso wouldn't have hesitated to call up Vladimir Mamantoy, that was for sure - by God, he would have battered his bloody door down by now if necessary.