Archangel (11 page)

He crossed the street and went up close to it, patting the coarse stone with his palm. He stood on tiptoe and tried to see through the windows. But they were set too high and besides were blanked off by the ubiquitous grey netting. He
gave up and followed the fac
ade around the corner. The house went on down this street, too. Thirteen windows again, no door, thirty or forty yards of heavy masonry -immense, impregnable. Where this elevation of the house eventually ended there was a wall made of the same stone, about eight feet high, with a locked, iron-studded wooden door set into it. The wall ran on - down this street, along the side of the ring-road, and finally back up the narrow alley which formed the fourth side of the property. Walking round it, Kelso could see why Beria had chosen it, and why his rivals had decided the only place to capture him was inside the Kremlin. Holed up in this fortress he could have withstood a siege.

In the neighbouring houses, the lights were becoming sharper as the afternoon faded into dusk. But Beria's place
remained a square of darkness. It seemed to be gathering the shadows into itself He heard a car door slam and he walked back up to the corner of Vspolnyi Street. While he had been at the back of the property, a small van had arrived at the front.
He hesitated, then began to move towards it.

The van was a Russian model - white, unmarked, unoccupied. Its engine had just been switched off and it was making a slight ticking noise as it cooled. As he came level with it, he glanced towards the door of the house and saw that it was slightly open. Again he hesitated, looking up and down the quiet street. He went over and put his head into the gap and shouted a greeting.

His words echoed in the empty hall. The light inside was weak and bluish, but even without taking another step he could see that the floor was of black and white tiles. To his left was the start of a wide staircase. The house smelled strongly of sour dust and old carpets, and there was an immense stillness to it, as though it had been shut up for months. He pushed the door wide open and took a step inside.

He called out again.

He two options now. He could stay by the door, or he could go further inside. He went further inside and immediately, like a laboratory rat in a maze, he found his options multiplied. He could stay where he was, or he could take the door to his left, or the stairs, or the passage that led off into the darkness beyond the stairs, or one of the three doors to his right. For a moment, the weight of choice paralysed him. But the stairs were straight ahead and seemed the obvious course - and perhaps, subconsciously, he also wanted to get the advantage of height, to get above whoever
might be on the ground floor, or at least to get on equal terms with them if they were already above.

The stairs were stone. He was wearing brown suede boots with leather soles he'd bought in Oxford years ago and no matter how quietly he tried to walk his steps seemed to ring like gunshots. But that was good. He wasn't a thief, and to emphasise the point he called out again. Pree-vyet! Kto tam? Hello? Is anybody there? The stairs curled round to his right and he had a good, high view now, looking down into the dark blue well of the hall, pierced by the softer shaft of blue that shone from the open door. He reached the top of the stairs and came out into a wide corridor that stretched to right and left, vanishing at either end into Rembrandt gloom. Ahead of him was a door. He tried to take his bearings. That must lead to the room above the front entrance, the one with the iron balcony. What was it? A ballroom? The master bedroom? The corridor floor was parquet and he remembered Rapava's description of Beria's damp footprints on the polished wood as he hurried off to take the call from Malenkov.

Kelso opened the heavy door and the stale air hit him like a wall. He had to clamp a hand to his mouth and nose to keep from gagging. The smell that pervaded the whole house seemed to have its source in here. It was a big room, bare, lit from the opposite wall by three tall, net-curtained windows, high oblongs of translucent grey. He moved towards them. The floor seemed to be strewn with pools of tiny black husks. His idea was that if he pulled back the curtain, he could throw light on the room, and see what he was treading on. But as his hand touched the rough nylon net, the material seemed to split and ripple downwards and a shower of black granules went pattering across his hand and brushed the back
of his neck. He twitched the curtain again and the shower became a cascade, a waterfall of dead, winged insects. Millions of them must have hatched and died in here over the summer, trapped in the airless room. They had a papery, acid smell. They were in his hair. He could feel them rustling under his feet. He stepped backwards, furiously brushing at himself and shaking his head.

Down in the lobby, a man shouted. Kto idyot?Is somebody up there?

Kelso knew he should have shouted back. What greater proof could he have offered of his blameless intentions - of his innocence - than to have stepped at once out on to the landing, identified himself and apologised? He was very sorry. The door was open. This was an interesting old house. He was a historian. Curiosity had got the better of him. And obviously, there was nothing here to steal. Really, he was truly sorry -That was Kelso's alternative history. He didn't take it. He
d
idn't choose not to take it. He merely did nothing, which was a form of choice. He stood there, in Lavrenty Beria's old bedroom, frozen, half bent, as if the creaking of his bones might give him away, and listened. With each second that passed, his chances of talking his way out of the building dwindled. The man began to climb the staircase. He came up seven steps - Kelso counted them - then stopped and stayed very still for perhaps a minute.

Then he walked down again and crossed the lobby and the front door closed.

Kelso moved now. He went to the window. Without touching the curtain he found it was possible, by pressing his cheek to the wall, to peer around the edge of the dusty nylon mesh, down into the street. From this oblique angle, he
could see a man in a black uniform, standing on the pavement next to the van, holding a flashlight. The man stepped off the kerb and into the gutter and squinted up at the house. He was squat and simian. His arms seemed too long for his thick trunk. Suddenly, he was looking directly at Kelso - a brutal, stupid face - and Kelso drew back. When he next dared to risk a look, the man was bending to open the door on the driver's side. He threw in the flashlight and climbed in after it. The engine started. The van drove off
Kelso gave him thirty seconds then hurried downstairs. He was locked in. He couldn't believe it. The absurdity of his predicament almost made him s
mile. He was locked inside Beria’
s house! The front door was huge, with a big iron ball for a handle and a lock the size of a telephone directory. He tried it hopelessly, then looked around. What if there was an intruder alarm? In the gloom, he couldn't see anything attached to the walls, but maybe it was an old-fashioned system - that would be more likely, wouldn't it? - something triggered by pressure-pads rather than beams? The idea froze him.

What set him moving again was the gathering darkness and the realisation that if he didn't find an escape route now he might be trapped by his blindness all night. There was a light switch by the door but he didn't dare try it - the guard was obviously suspicious: he might drive by for a second look. In any case, something about the silence of the place, its utter deadness, made him sure all forms of life-support had been disconnected, that the house had been left to rot. He tried to recall Rapava's description of the lay-out when he came in to answer Malenkov's call. Something about coming in off a verandah, through a duty room, past a kitchen and into the hall.

He headed into the blackness of the passage beyond the stairs, feeling his way along the left-hand wall. The plaster was cool and smooth. The first door he encountered was locked. The second wasn't - he felt a draught of cold air, but sensed a drop, into a cellar, presumably - and closed it quickly. The third opened on to the dull blue gleam of metal surfaces and a faint smell of old food. The fourth was at the end, facing him, and revealed the room where he guessed that Beria's guards must once have sat.

Unlike the rest of the house, which seemed to have been stripped bare, there was furniture here - a plain wooden table and a chair, and an old sideboard - and some signs of life. A copy of Pravda - he could just make out the familiar masthead - a kitchen knife, an ashtray. He touched the table and felt crumbs. Pale light leaked through a pair of small windows. Between them was a door. It was locked. There was no key. He looked again at the windows. Too narrow for him to squeeze through. He took a breath. Some habits, surely, are international? He ran his hand along the sill to the right of the door and it was there and it turned easily in the lock.
When the door was opened he removed the key, and - a nice touch this, he remembered thinking - replaced it on the sill.

HE emerged on to a narrow
veranda
, about two yards wide, with weathered floorboards and a broken handrail. He could hear traffic at the bottom of the garden and the laborious whine of a big jet, dropping towards Sheremetevo Airport. The breeze was cold, scented by the smoke of a bonfire. There was a last pale flush of daylight in the sky.
He guessed the garden must have been abandoned at the same time as the house. Nobody could have worked in it for
months. To his left was an ornate greenhouse with an iron chimney, partially overgrown by Russian vines. To his right, a ragged thicket of dark green 'shrubs. Ahead were trees. He stepped down off the
veranda
on to the carpet of leaves that covered the lawn. The wind stirred and lofted some of them, sent a detachment
cart wheeling
towards the house. He kicked through the drifts towards the orchard - a cherry orchard he could see now as he came closer: big old trees, maybe twenty feet high, at least a hundred of them, a Chekhovian scene. Suddenly he stopped. The ground beneath the trees was flat and level except in one place. At the base of one tree, close to a stone bench, was a patch of blackness, darker than the surrounding shadows. He frowned. Was he sure he wasn't imagining it?

He went over, knelt and slowly sank his hands into the leaves. On the surface they were dry but the lower levels were damp and mulchy. He brushed them back, releasing a rich smell of moist soil - the black and fragrant earth of Mother Russia.

'Don't make so wide. It's not a grave. You're making work for yourself. .

He cleared away the leaves from an area about a yard square, and although he couldn't see much, he could see enough, and he could feel it. The grass had been removed and a hole had been dug. And then it had been filled in again and an attempt had been made to jam the turfs back into their original positions. But some parts had crumbled and others overlapped the lip of the hole and the result was a mess, like a broken, muddy jigsaw
it
had been done in a hurry, thought Kelso, and it had been done recently, possibly even today. He stood and brushed the wet leaves from his coat.

Beyond the high wall he could hear the traffic on the wide highway. Normality seemed close enough to touch. He used the side of his foot to scrape a covering of leaves back across the scarred surface, grabbed his bag and stumbled through the orchard towards the end of the garden, towards the sounds of life. He had to get out now. He didn't mind admitting it. He was rattled. The cherry trees stretched almost to the wall which rose up blank and sheer before him, like the perimeter of a Victorian gaol. There was no way he could scale it.

A narrow cinder path followed the line of the wall. He headed left. The path turned the corner and took him back in the direction of the house. About halfway along, he could see a darkened oblong - the garden door he had noticed from the street - but even this was overgrown and he had to pull back the trailing branches of a bush to get at it. It was locked, maybe even rusted shut. The big iron ring of the handle wouldn't turn. He flicked his cigarette lighter and held it close to get a better view. The door was solid but the frame looked weak. He stood back and aimed a kick at it, but nothing happened. He tried again. Hopeless.

He stepped back on to the path. He was now about thirty yards from the house. Its low roof was clearly silhouetted. He could see an aerial and the bulk of a tall chimney with a satellite dish attached to it. It was too big to be an ordinary domestic receiver.

It was while he was staring distractedly at the dish that his eye was caught by a glimmer of light in an upstairs window. It vanished so quickly he thought he might have imagined it and he told himself to keep his nerve, just find a tool, get out
of here. But then it flashed again, like the beam of a lighthouse - pale, then bright, then pale again - as someone holding a powerful torch swivelled anti-clockwise towards the window then back towards the blackness of the room.

The suspicious security guard was back.

'God.' Kelso's lips were so tightly drawn he could barely shape his breath into the syllable. 'God, God, God.'

He ran up the path towards the greenhouse. A rickety door slid back just far enough for him to slip through. The vines made it darker inside than out. Trestle tables, an old trug, empty trays for seedlings, terracotta pots - nothing, nothing. He blundered down a narrow aisle, a frond of something brushed his face and then he collided with an object immense and metal. An old bulbous, cast-iron stove. And next to it, a heap of discarded implements - shovel, scuttle, riddling iron, poker. Poker.