Snow Wolf (79 page)

The colonel crossed the room and
whispered something into his ear. After a few moments the colonel stepped back.

Stalin put down his pipe and glass and
crooked a finger-.

"Comrade Major Lukin, come
here."

As Stanski stepped forward, Stalin turned
to the colonel.

"Leave us, Zinyatin."

The colonel seemed to hesitate, his
cautious eyes flicking to Stanski, then he saluted and left, closing the double
doors softly after him.

A thin smile played across Stalin's lips,
but the gray eyes regarded Lukin coldly. "Step closer, Major. Let me see
you."

His voice sounded slurred. He motioned
with the fingers of his right hand and Stanski noticed the stiff and withered
left arm. He stepped closer, enough to smell the man's body odor, A strong
mixture of alcohol and stale tobacco. He had been drinking heavily, that much
was obvious.

Suddenly Stalin leaned forward and kissed
Stanski on both cheeks. As he stepped back, he studied Stanski's face. His eyes
clouded for a moment in doubtful recognition, then he said, "So, you
brought me the American's body."

"Yes, Comrade Stalin."

"And what about the woman?"

"Under lock and key in Lefortovo
prison."

The gray eyes smiled coldly. "You
have surpassed my expectations, Major Lukin. My congratulations. You will have
a drink."

"No thank you, comrade."

Stalin frowned. "I insist. No one
refuses a drink with Stalin."

The old man shuffled to the drinks
trolley and poured vodka into a tumbler. He came back, handed it to Stanski,
and raised his own glass.

"I drink to your success, Comrade
Lukin. And to your promotion. You have my thanks and my promised reward. As of
now, you are a full colonel."

"I don't know what to say, Comrade
Stalin."

"Perhaps, but I do, If only all my
officers were as capable. Drink, Lukin. It's good Armenian vodka."

Stanski raised his glass and sipped.

Stalin swallowed his drink in one gulp,
put the glass down and moved around the table.

He looked over at Lukin suspiciously.

"But you know, something bothers
me."

"Comrade Stalin?"

"A small matter, but an important
one. You didn't see fit to follow protocol and inform Comrade Beria of your
visit here, nor of the American's capture. I've just been on the phone to him.
He's as surprised as I am by your success. According to him, you've been
avoiding answering his calls and deliberately obstructing one of his officers,
Colonel Romulka, in his duty. Your behavior has been somewhat unusual and
unorthodox, Comrade Beria thinks.,And I agree. In fact, before I informed him
of your call, he wanted you arrested. He's on his way here now, to confront
you. He claims you have kept the woman from him." Cold eyes stared into
Stanski's face. "Why is that, Lukin? Did you want all the glory for
yourself? Or are you keeping a Secret? Comrade Stalin doesn't like secrets kept
from him."

Stanski put his glass down carefully on
the table. "There is a matter I needed to discuss in private. It concerns
the American plot. I have information of vital importance for your ears
only."

The bushy eyebrows rose slightly.
"And what information is that?"

Stanski slipped off the black leather
glove and the small Na gant appeared in his hand. There was the softest of
clicks as he cocked the hammer and aimed the weapon at Stalin's head.

Horror shone like torchlight in the old
man's eyes as Stanski leaned in closer and whispered.

"Not something you're going to
enjoy. But you'll listen or I'll take your head off. Sit down. The chair to
your right. Make a sound and I kill you."

Stalin's face turned an angry red.
"What's the meaning of this ... ?"

"Sit. Or I put a bullet in you here
and now."

Stalin lowered himself shakily into the
chair. Stanski re moved his officer's cap. Stalin stared in shock at the face,
then at the ungloved hand.

"YOU. - you're not Lukin. Who are
you? What do you want?"

"I'm sure the answer to the first
two questions should be obvious by now. As for the last, I want you."

There was a terrible look of icy fear on
Stalin's face, as if the alcoholic haze had suddenly lifted, everything
becoming perfectly clear.

Stanski smiled chillingly. "But
first, comrade, I'm going to tell you a story."

Lukin opened his eyes in the freezing
blackness of the air-raid shelter and shivered violently.

Icy cold seeped into his bones and his
brain throbbed. He shook his head and a million stars exploded inside his
skull.

He sat there groggily for several
moments, rubbing his neck, before he found the strength to stagger to his feet.

He found a damp, cold wall to support him,
and as he stood shakily he smelled the garbage and saw the snow falling be yond
an open door. It took several moments before the throbbing in his skull ebbed
away, and then he staggered out of the door and up the steps of the shelter,
blinking in pain and taking deep breaths, the air steaming in front of his
face.

He realized where he was and what had
happened.

Then all hell broke loose inside his head
and his heart raced wildly. How long had he been unconscious? He looked at his
watch and tried to focus in the poor light.

One-twenty A.M. He must have been out
cold for over five minutes.

He suddenly remembered the van. Half a
kilometer away. Five minutes if he ran. Nadia's face flashed before his eyes.
His grief returned, but he forced the image and the emotion away, letting only
anger in, a powerful anger and a terrible Just for revenge, knowing what he had
to do, that he wasn't going to be cheated of this moment.

He could still make it to Stalin's villa.

He fumbled madly for the keys, found
them, then staggered through the trees toward the road.

"My father's name was lilia Ivan
Stefanovitch. Do you remember him?"

Stalin shook his head.

"No."

"wrong again."

A clock ticked softly somewhere and
beyond the oak doors came faint sounds, distant voices; the click of heels on
wood approached and faded. Stalin's nervous eyes flicked to the door, then
back.

"I don't remember him."

Stanski pressed the Na gant hard into his
temple.

"Think.

"I ... I don't know who you're
talking about."

"Yuri Lukin is my brother. Illia
Ivan Stefanovitch was our father. You killed him. You killed his wife. And his
daughter. Our sister. You killed them all. Our family."

Stanski stared hard into Stalin's
frightened eyes. "And you haven't stopped trying to kill us. You pitted my
brother against me.

"No ... you're mistaken. Who told
you this? Who told you I was responsible? Lies!"

The old man ran a trembling hand around
his tunic collar. Stanski wrenched it away.

"Move again and I'll tear your heart
out."

A wind gusted flurries of snow outside,
rattling the windows. Beads of sweat glistened on Stalin's face. His breathing
came in short gasps.

"Please, some water ..."

A crystal water decanter stood on the
drinks cart opposite but Stanski ignored it.

"Then let me remind you of the lies
you speak of. My father was a village doctor. We lived near Smolensk. One day
the secret police came to our village. They demanded the summer harvest. It was
the time of the kulak wars and there was a famine raging. A famine deliberately
caused by you. The villagers barely had enough to feed their children. Already
they were starving. Men, women and children thin as corpses and dying by the
dozens. So the people refused. Half the men of the village were shot in reprisal
and their grain stolen. There was nothing to eat. Women and children starved.
My father was spared but he couldn't believe Comrade Stalin would allow such a
thing to happen to his village. So he decided to do something." Stanski
removed the file from his tunic and placed it on the table. "Open it. Look
and read," When Stalin hesitated, Stanski said again, "Open it!"

Stalin opened the file with shaking
hands. He glanced at the pages, the photographs, then looked up, "I don't
remember this man."

"What you see was in my file. You
read all this before you sent my brother to find me."

Stalin swallowed, ashen-faced.

Stanski said, "I want you to
remember what happened to my family. Let me remind you. Illia Ivan
Stefanovitch, my father, called on the local commissar and told him he wanted
to speak to Stalin, to condemn what had happened in his village in Stalin's
name. It was his right as a citizen. He was given a pen and paper and told to
write his grievance and it would be passed to Moscow. He wrote about what had
happened in his village. He expressed his revulsion and resigned from the
Party. You read the letter, but the reply wasn't what my father expected.

"You sentenced him to death as a
traitor. The secret police came to his surgery. They thought they'd make this
troublesome doctor's death a little more interesting than merely shooting him.
So they made his wife watch while they held him down and injected him with a
lethal dose of one of his drug-" Adrenalin. Do you know the effect such an
amount of Adrenalin has on a body? It's not a pleasant way to die. The heart
races, the body weakens and trembles, the lungs swell, the stomach vomits. A
fatal dosage can cause the blood vessels in the brain to burst, but death may
still come slowly. My father's did.

"They made my mother watch every
moment. And then they raped her. All of them raped her. Until one of them had
the pity to put a bullet in her head. Only it didn't kill her. They left her
lying there, bleeding to death, slowly, for hours. I heard it happen because
one of the men held me in the next room. I heard her screams and later I saw
her die. Everything that happened after that is in the file. But then you know
that, don't you? You knew when you selected Yuri Lukin. You chose him because
having him kill me would be another of your sick jokes. One more laugh at your
victims' expense."

Stanski leaned in close, his eyes wet,
his voice almost a whisper. "You say you don't remember my father, but you
will. Illia Ivan Stefanovitch. Remember that name. It's the last name you're
going to hear before you go screaming to hell."

Stanski placed the Na gant on the table
and removed a bypodcrmic from his pocket. With one finger he flipped off the
metal sheath and exposed the needle. The glass was full of clear liquid.

"Pure Adrenalin. And now I'm going
to kill you the way you killed my father."

As Stanski moved in, the old man rose and
lunged at him like a bull.

NO! "

Stalin grabbed at the Na gant and the
weapon exploded. As the shot rang around the room Stanski struck him a hard
blow to the neck and he slumped back in the chair.

Then everything seemed to happen at once.

The dacha went mad, screams and voices
everywhere.

The doors burst open and the big colonel
was the first in, crashing into the room like an enraged animal, staring at the
scene in horror.

Stanski stabbed the needle into Stalin's
neck and the plunger sank.

"For my father."

Then the Na gant came up smartly and
pressed against Stalin's temple.

"And this for my mother ... and
sister..

The Na gant exploded and Stalin's head
was flung back.

As the colonel frantically wrenched out
his weapon, he watched in disbelief as the major smiled in certain death, turn
ing the Na gant toward himself, slipping the barrel into his mouth.

The weapon exploded again.

The Emka's wipers brushed away the snow
but it was ceaseless.

A hundred meters from the dacha entrance
Lukin heard the sirens going off and his heart jolted. The shrill noise erupted
through the woodland air like the shrieks of a thousand wild animals in pain.

Klieg lamps sprang to life, illuminating
the woods, beams of powerful light sweeping through the darkness, casting a
silver wash over the snowy birch trees. Dogs barked; voices screamed orders.
The forest seemed to come alive with light and noise.

Through the windshield, in the distance,
Lukin could make out the dacha's green-painted gates, searchlights sweeping
wildly through the trees as the sirens wailed ceaselessly.

He slowed the Emka. There was a rutted
lane off to the right and he pulled in and switched off the engine. His body
was shaking violently, and his heart was racing.

He was too late.

He felt a lump rise in his throat and it
almost choked him. He stumbled out of the car and filled his lungs with air,
then he fell to his knees and vomited.