The Labyrinth Makers

'For your benefit?' The smile was bitter. 'No, not for your benefit, Dr Audley.'

Audley felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

'Not for your benefit,' Panin repeated.

'For whose, then?'

'Guriev's masters.'

Guriev's masters? It flashed across Audley's mind with horrible certainy that he had been too clever by half, yet not half clever enough. Panin hadn't been playing to him at all, but to someone else. Which meant–which meant he'd been right about Steerforth, but for utterly false reasons. And wrong about Panin . . .

Panin looked at him. 'You did well, Dr Audley,' he said, almost soothingly. 'In fact you did too well. It is ironical, is it not, that dummy4

when I wanted the boxes to be found I could not find them. But when I did not need them, you found them at once.'

'You didn't need them?'

'I never believed they could be found. I wasn't even sure they'd reached England. It was enough that Guriev's people should believe I had found them, and I made all the preparations for that.'

Panin paused. 'It seems that I prepared for everything except what actually happened.'

All for Guriev's people! So Panin also had been too clever: it had not occurred to him that Audley would act on the same stimulus.

Irony indeed! Whatever this elaborate scheme of Panin's was, it had failed because there was a self-destructive factor built into it–

he had convinced Audley that the boxes existed and could be found.

So Audley had found them, by following his own incorrect reasoning.

There was a sharp cracking of wood behind them. Butler was methodically splintering open the metal box's outer wooden cocoon.

Panin watched Butler sombrely for a moment, and then turned towards Audley again.

'How long have you known that there was an extra box, Dr Audley? When all the others just accepted it as part of the collection?'

'You were hunting Forschungsamt files back in '45, and I never could quite convince myself that Schliemann was enough to bring you all this way today. The–the psychology was wrong.' Thank dummy4

you for that, Theodore Freisler; for tipping the balance. 'So there had to be more to it. There had to be something else.'

'But you never knew what it was?'

It would never do to admit just how much he'd been in the dark, and no use denying how much in the dark he still was. But there was still something to play for.

'I never knew, no. But that doesn't matter now.'

Panin shrugged.

'You're missing the point, Professor Panin,' Audley said gently. 'I'm sure all the answers aren't in the box, but you can put that right.'

The Russian regarded him woodenly.

'To threaten me, Dr Audley, is mere stupidity. What can you do to me? You cannot hold me. You are not big enough. You can merely inconvenience me by withholding the box from me for a short time.'

'I wouldn't threaten you, Professor–I'd leave that to Guriev.' Audley smiled. 'I think I'm just big enough to hold you for an hour or two.

And small enough to let Guriev loose right now. Then it would be no business of mine what mischief he could organise in a couple of hours. On the other hand, if I knew what I was doing I could very easily sit on Guriev for a day or two and obey my instructions to the letter.'

It was a crude bluff, but it was the best Audley could manage. Its strength lay in the fact that Panin had not dealt with the British for years and might still believe in their traditional perfidy. Or if there was an element of doubt there, at least, there could be no doubt about the ruthlessness of Guriev's masters, whoever they were.

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'Tukhachevsky,' said Panin. 'Marshal Tukhachevsky.'

Marshal Tukhachevsky?

'I would have thought that name would not be unknown to you,'

Panin continued. 'But possibly not–it was before your time, and there are many of your generation even in Russia who have never heard of him.'

That made it a matter of honour, and Audley flogged his memory.

Marshal Tukhachevsky: the trial of Marshal Tukhachevsky.

'The Great Purge of the thirties–the "Yezhovshchina".'

Panin nodded. ' "The Yezhovshchina", that is right.'

Millions had been exiled or imprisoned, and untold thousands had died, among them nearly all the old Bolsheviks–Zinoviev, Kamenev, Bukharin, Rykov. And the great Marshal Tukhachevsky, the hero of 1920. Russia had seen nothing like it since the days of Ivan the Terrrible.

'The Army trials,' said Audley. 'He was one of the marshals Stalin liquidated. Yezhov framed him for spying for the Germans. And it was the Nazis who actually supplied the forged evidence.'

'Very good, Dr Audley–a very fair summary. Except that Tukhachevsky was not merely one of the marshals–he was the greatest Russian soldier of his time. And he didn't die alone, either: he took four hundred senior officers with him, the cream of the Red Army. One cannot blame the Nazis for helping to frame them; they were winning their first battle against us without firing a shot.

But tell me, Dr Audley –why would Stalin want his best soldiers branded as traitors?'

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'Tukhachevsky was too popular, I suppose. He was just another rival. It used to be pretty standard Soviet practice, didn't it? From Trotsky onwards.'

Panin should know that well enough.

'Discredit, then eliminate.' Panin spoke as though he hadn't heard Audley.

The forgeries. Heydrich would have been the Nazi boss to organise them, and Heydrich had mixed some of his old Sicherheitsdienst files among the Forschungsamt records –that brought Tukhachevsky and Panin together.

But if that was in the box the old objection still held: even back in

'45 the full details of this scandal would have been a mere embarrassment to Stalin. And today they were utterly valueless.

Stalin was dead and discredited; the Party itself could not err; and the ancestors of the KGB had neither honour nor credit to lose.

'But the Tukhachevsky forgeries don't matter now, Professor.

They're just dirty water down the drain.'

'And the truth behind the forgeries?'

The truth?'

'Stalin was a butcher, but he was not a stupid butcher, as the West likes to think. He knew the risk when he ruined his own army.'

'Professor, you can't tell me that Tukhachevsky and four hundred generals and colonels were all in league with Hitler. It won't wash.'

'Not in league with Hitler. But in league against Stalin and the Party, Dr Audley.'

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Panin gestured abruptly as though tired of arguing and being forced to explain simple facts–and tired above all of pretending that the real Panin was a grey nonenity on a derelict English airfield.

'In 1937 there really was an army plot against the Party.

Tukhachevsky had no direct part in it–he was like Rommel in 1944. But it was a genuine plot and a very dangerous one. The soldiers planned to reverse the whole collectivisation policy–the Party's cornerstone.'

He spoke harshly.

'Stalin had a nose for such things–it is a talent some Georgians have–and he moved first. He knew it was so, but we never uncovered the proof, the full details. It didn't matter then, for it was better that they should be destroyed as traitors than mere party enemies.

'And then it was discovered that the details did exist. One of the plotters escaped to East Prussia–an air force colonel. He took with him a list of names and details of the take-over plans. The Nazis sent him back, and they sent back some of the details. But they kept the documents.'

The Russian faced Audley squarely.

'That's what is in the extra box, Dr Audley: the details of the 1937

Army Plot which everyone believes was just a figment of Stalin's suspicious mind. Everyone except those in the Party and the Army who know the truth beneath the legend. You see, I wasn't the only one looking for those documents back in 1945–which is why I sent dummy4