Snow Wolf (81 page)

The funeral at Novodevichy was a small
affair and it had already started when I arrived. A half-dozen or more Israeli
embassy staff were huddled around the open grave as an Orthodox priest chanted
his prayers for the dead and the snow gusted around us.

I saw Anna Khorev's granddaughter holding
on to the arm of a handsome woman in her forties whom I guessed was Sasha, both
their faces pale with grief. The coffin was open and I took my turn to kiss
Anna Khorev's cold marble face and say my final goodbye. For a brief moment I
looked down at her, thinking how beautiful she looked even in death, then I
walked back and stood at the edge of the mourners as the gravediggers went to
work, Something remarkable happened then.

As I stood watching the coffin being lowered
into the frozen ground, I noticed an old couple standing arm in arm among the
mourners. The woman's face was deeply wrinkled, but under the headscarf she
wore could see a fading tint of red in her graying hair. The man was very old,
his body almost bent double with age.

He wore a black leather glove on his
stiff left hand.

I felt a shiver go through me.

The couple waited until the coffin had
been lowered into the ground before the old man came forward and placed a bunch
of winter roses in the open grave. When he stepped back he stood there for
several moments, then I saw his eyes look over at Alex Stanski's headstone. For
a long time the old man stood there, as if lost in thought, until the woman
took his arm and kissed his cheek and led him away.

As they shuffled past me, my mind was on
fire with excitement.

My heart pounded in my chest as I touched
his shoulder and asked the question in Russian. "Major Lukin'? Major Yuri
lukin?"

The old man started and his watery eyes
looked up to study my face.

For a time he seemed undecided about
something, then he glanced over at his wife, before replying to my question in
a frail voice.

"I'm sorry, sir. You're mistaken. My
name is Stefanovitcli."

The couple walked on. I started to say
something then, remembering the name, Stanski's family nai-the, but I was
struck dumb. I saw the couple step into one of the black cars parked nearby and
drive off down the narrow cemetery track before the red taillights disappeared
in a mist of snow. Was it Yuri Lukin?

Perhaps. I like to think he hadn't really
died as Anna Khorev had said.

But it was all such a long time ago. I
had found my own truth. I had resurrected my ghosts and now it was time to bury
them.

I took one last look at the three graves,
then turned and walked back toward the cemetery gates.

AUTHOR'S NOTE Although the exact date and
time cannot be confirmed, history relates that Joseph Stalin was taken fatally
ill on the night of1-2 March 1953. He died almost four days later.

To this day the exact circumstances of
his death remain a mystery.

Some sources claim he was poisoned by a
girl friend, whose gloating at Stalin's deathbed is well recorded, but the
claim has never been proven.

Stalin's immediate family claimed that he
had almost certainly been killed, and had not died of a cerebral hemorrhage as
was widely reported, and that the true circumstances of his death were covered
up for reasons of state security.

There are historically recorded facts
that point to an answer that supports this view.

Some months before Stalin's death, the
CIA had been receiving reports of the Soviet leader's worsening mental health.

Stalin was displaying alarming signs of a
deep psychological disturbance, and the CIA was also aware of Stalin's almost
manic wish to perfect the hydrogen bomb ahead of the U.S.and acutely aware of
the fact that the Soviets were ahead in their research, and that Stalin
intended a "final solution to the Jewish problem," on a par with Hitler's.

All these were serious and troubling
signs, especially at the time of a dangerous Cold War. And the likelihood of
war, as those who lived during the period will recall, both in America and the
Soviet Union, was both very real and very threatening.

Was Stalin assassinated to prevent the
situation from worsening?

There were numerous intended plots to
kill him. So far as history records, all failed, or never materialized. But
history rarely records or reveals its true secrets. What is true is that the
CIA had already sent a number of agents with military training to Moscow at the
time of Stalin's death. It also seems likely that the CIA would at least have
considered such a plot. And almost immediately after his demise, the KGB
unleashed an unexplained and savage program of assassination against top
anti-Soviet immigrant leaders who were working with the CIA.

Former senior CIA officers, responsible
for such missions during the period, remain curiously tight-lipped, even for
very elderly men long since retired. Nor to this day will they reveal the
identities of those they dispatched, invoking the fact that certain details of
the period remain top secret, and claiming that some of the agents are still
alive and living in Russia to this day.

So what exactly happened on the night of
1-2 March at Stalin's dacha seems destined to remain a mystery.

It is known that his last days prior to
that eventful night were spent in seclusion, heavily guarded, apparently
fearful for his life, and with strict instructions to his guards that all the
big wooden log fires in the dacha be kept lit, just as the Russian hunters and
shepherds of old kept fires burning to keep away wolves. And on pieces of paper
Stalin drew, obsessively, pictures of a wolf with sharp fangs.

But one very remarkable incident, never
fully explained, is confirmed fact.

In the early hours of 2 March, after
Stalin was reported to have been taken seriously ill, several members of his
guard at the Kuntsevo villa witnessed the bodies of two men being removed from
the grounds. Both had apparently died from bullet wounds.

Rumors spread within the KGB itself about
the mysterious incident, but not until many months later was an official
internal explanation offered.

The two men, the KGB report claimed, were
bodyguards of Stalin's, so overcome with grief at their leader's certain demise
that they had shot themselves.

Stalin certainly incited awe in many of
his unsuspecting countrymen, but those closest to him who witnessed his rages
and his incredible malice, who knew too well his evil crimes, lived in fear of
him and breathed a deep collective sigh of relief when he died.

The names of the two alleged bodyguards
were not divulged, nor was any further explanation offered. The matter was
firmly closed and the file on the incident destroyed.

The two men who died were buried in a Moscow cemetery.

To this day their graves remain.

Curiously, they each bear a nameless
headstone.