And did Yepishev tell you the same story about Stalin's papers as he told Volkogonov?'
'He did. He talked more freely towards the end. He was often ill. I visited him in the leadership clinic. Brezhnev and he were treated together by the parapsychic healer, Davitashvili.'
'I don't suppose he left any papers.
'Papers? Men like Yepishev didn't keep papers.
'Any relatives?'
'None that I knew of. We never discussed families.' Mamantov pronounced the word as if it was absurd. 'Did you know that one of the things Aleksey had to do was interrogate Beria? Night after night. Can you imagine what that must have been like? But Beria never cracked, not once in nearly half a year, until right at the very end, after his trial, when they were strapping him to the board to shoot him. He hadn't believed they'd dare to kill him.'
'How do you mean, he cracked?'
'He was squealing like a pig - that's what Yepishev said. Shouting something about Stalin and something about an archangel. Can you imagine that? Beria, of all people, getting religious! But then they put a scarf in his mouth and shot him. I don't know any more.' Mamantov closed the albums tenderly and placed them back on the shelf. 'So,' he said, turning to face Kelso with a look of menacing innocence, someone came to see you. When was this?'
Kelso was on his guard at once. 'I'd prefer not to say. 'And he told you about Stalin's papers? He was a man, I assume? An eyewitness, from that time?'
Kelso hesitated.
'Named?'
Kelso smiled and shook his head. Mamantov seemed to think he was back in the Lubyanka.
'His profession then?'
'I can't tell you that, either.'
'Does he know where these papers are?'
'Perhaps.
'He offered to show you?'
'No.'
'But you asked him to show you?'
'No.'
'You're a very disappointing historian, Dr Kelso. I thought you were famous for your diligence –
''If you must know, he disappeared before I had the chance.'
He regretted the words the instant they were out of his mouth.
'What do you mean, he "disappeared"?'
'We were drinking,' muttered Kelso. 'I left him alone for a minute. When I came back he'd run away.
It sounded implausible, even to his own ears.
'Run away?' Mamantov's eyes were as grey as winter. 'I don't believe you.
'Vladimir Pavlovich,' said Kelso, meeting his gaze and holding it, 'I can assure you this is the truth.'
'You're lying. Why? Why?' Mamantov rubbed his chin. 'I think it must be because you have the notebook.'
'If I had the notebook, ask yourself: Would I be here?
Wouldn't I be on the first flight back to New York? Isn't that what thieves are supposed to do?'
Mamantov continued to stare at him for a few more seconds, then looked away. 'Clearly we need to find this man.
We...
'I don't think he wants to be found.'
'He will contact you again.'
'I doubt it.' Kelso badly wanted to get out of here now. He felt compromised, somehow; complicit. 'Besides, I'm flying back to America tomorrow. Which, now I come to think of it, really means I ought -'
He made a move towards the door but Mamantov barred it. Are you excited, Dr Kelso? Do you feel the force of Comrade Stalin, even from the grave?'
Kelso laughed unhappily. 'I don't think I quite share your ... obsession.'
'Go fuck your mother! I've read your work. Does that surprise you? I'll pass no comment on its quality. But I'll tell you this: you're as obsessed as I am.'
'Perhaps. But in a different way.'
'Power,' said Mamantov, savouring the word in his mouth like wine, 'the absolute mastery and understanding of power. No man ever matched him for it. Do this, do that. Think this, think that. Now I say you live, and now I say you die, and all you say is, "Thank you for your kindness, Comrade Stalin." That's the obsession.~
'Yes, but then there's the difference, if you'll permit me, which is you want him back.'
'And you just like to watch, is that it? I like fucking and you like pornography?' Mamantov jerked his thumb at the room. 'You should have seen yourself just now. "Isn't this a note for a speech?" "Isn't that a copy of an earlier painting?" Eyes wide, tongue out - the western liberal, getting his safe thrill. Of course, he understood that, too. And now you tell me you're going to give up trying to find his private notebook and just run away back to America?'
'May I get by?'
Kelso stepped to his left but Mamantov moved smartly to block him.
'This could be one of the greatest historical discoveries of the age. And you want to run away? It must be found. We must find it together. And then you must present it to the world. I want no credit - I promise you: I prefer the shadows -the honour will be yours alone.
'So, what's all this then, Comrade Mamantov?' said Kelso, with forced cheerfulness. 'Am I a prisoner?'
Between him and the outside world there were, he calculated, one fit and obviously crazy ex-KGB man, one armed bodyguard, and two doors, one of them armour-plated. And for a moment, he thought that Mamantov might indeed be intending to keep him: that he had everything else connected with Stalin, so why not a Stalin historian, pickled in formaldehyde and laid out in a glass case, like V. I. Lenin? But then Madame Mamantov shouted from the passage -'What's going on in there?' - and the spell was broken.
'Nothing,' called Mamantov. 'Stop listening. Go back to your room. Viktor!'
'But who is everyone?' wailed the woman. 'That's what I want to know. And why is it always so dark?' She started to cry. They heard the shuffle of her feet and the sound of a door closing.
'I'm sorry,' said Kelso.
'Keep your pity,' said Mamantov. He stood aside. 'Go on, then. Get out of here. Go.' But when Kelso was halfway down the passage he shouted after him: 'We'll talk again about this matter. One way or another.'
THERE were three men now in the car downstairs, although Kelso was too preoccupied to pay them much attention. He paused in the gloomy portal of the House on the Embankment, to hoist his canvas bag more firmly on to his shoulder, then set off in the direction of the Bolshoy Kamenniy bridge.
'That's him, major,' said the man with the scar, and Feliks Suvorin leaned forward in his seat to get a better look. Suvorin was young to be a full major in the SVR - he was only in his thirties - a dapper figure, with blond hair and cornflower blue eyes. And he wore a western aftershave, that was the other thing that was very noticeable at this moment: the little car was fragrant with the smell of Eau Sauvage.
'He had that bag with him when he went in?'
'Yes, major.'
Suvorin glanced up at the Mamantovs' ninth-floor apartment. What was needed here was better coverage. The SVR had managed to get a bug into the flat at the start of the operation, but it had lasted just three hours before Mamantov's people had found it and ripped it out.
Kelso had begun climbing the flight of stairs that led up to the bridge.
'Off you go, Bunin,' said Suvorin, tapping the man in front of him lightly on the shoulder. 'Nothing too obvious, mind you. Just try to keep him in view. We don't want a diplomatic protest.
Grumbling under his breath, Bunin levered himself out of the car. Kelso was moving rapidly now, had almost reached road-level, and the Russian had to jog across to the bottom of the steps to make up part of the distance. Well, well, thought Suvorin, he's certainly in a hurry to get somewhere. Or is it just that he wants to get away from here?
He watched the blurred pink faces of the two men above the stone parapet as they headed north across the river into the grey afternoon and then were lost from view.
KELSO PAID HIS two-rouble fare at the Borovitskaya metro station, collected his plastic token, and descended gratefully into the Moscow earth. At the entrance to the northbound platform something made him glance back up the moving staircase to see if Mamantov was following, but there was no sign of him among the tiers of exhausted faces.