The Keeper of Secrets (20 page)

Chapter 36

Russian Embassy, London

Winter 1965

I
t was a freezing cold concrete room with just one small table and two chairs. Yulena shivered and drew her wrap tightly around her body. She wore a thin black evening dress, her performance dress. At her feet sat the violin case and she glanced at it regularly, as if to reassure herself that it was still there.

So they’d ordered her to return to Moscow. Why? And why had she been brought here instead of taken to the hotel to collect her things? The guard had said they’d take her to the airport. She hadn’t argued, much.

Other guards were talking to the remaining three members of the quartet independently, and she assumed they’d meet up again at the airport. But this room truly frightened her; this room had a bad feel. It wasn’t in the dungeon, it had no sense of the Lubyanka, and besides she was a war hero, with a Gold Star, they wouldn’t dare. The door swung open, and a man in a military uniform stepped into the room. His insignia told her he was a captain.

“Comrade Valentina.” His voice was cold, his eyes blank, his face expressionless.

“Good evening, Captain.”

He sat down.

“What do you know about ideological subversion?”

“What?”

Her astonishment was genuine. His expression, or lack of, didn’t alter.

“How long have you been a practicing lesbian?”

There was a sudden stab of fear through Yulena’s chest.

“I want to talk to my father on the phone,” she said quietly, “Colonel General Vladimir Valentino.”

T
he day that changed Sergei’s life forever started like any other. He was in his first year of getting a
bakalavr
’s degree in geology at Moscow State University, and he loved the work. It was his aim to finish this degree inside the normal four years and then work for another two years to get a
magistr
’s degree, before taking a job in one of the huge State-owned mineral refining companies.

His grandparents supported his plans and were considering retiring to the dacha in Sochi, which would leave the large Moscow apartment his alone. His father had returned to Moscow to work for the new general secretary, Comrade Leonid Brezhnev, leaving his German wife behind. Koyla didn’t want to live in such luxury and couldn’t imagine living day to day with members of his own family, so he had been given a small apartment close to the Kremlin. Yulena was in Europe with the quartet, and Sergei knew his grandpapa kept in regular contact with her. Sergei loved to speak to her on the phone, and she told him all the new English words she’d learned, even if there was usually a terrible echo.

On this day he finished class and walked briskly across the frozen ground to catch the Metro home. He was already showing the build of his grandfather, but his body was heavily muscled from the ice-skating and football he loved. As he reached the apartment building he stopped. Something was different. There was a plain black car parked outside, innocent enough, but his lifetime of experience told him this was a Party car. He took the steps two at a time and paused again outside the main door; there was a muffled sound he couldn’t identify coming from inside. Quickly he unlocked the door and opened it.

They were in the lounge. His grandpapa stood at the window, his back to the room, his broad shoulders slumped. His grandmama sat on the sofa, her face in her hands, sobs shaking her whole body. His father was beside her, his face pale, his hair streaked with gray, and his cheap, ill-fitting suit straining against the muscles in his arms. A man Sergei didn’t know stood apart, in one corner, a hat in his hands, his eyes downcast. Sergei recognized instantly that it was a tableau of grief.

“What’s happened?”

Everyone looked at him.

“Sergei.”

His grandmama’s voice almost caught in her throat, as if the thought of him had suddenly occurred to her. His grandpapa strode over to him and hugged him very tightly. Sergei could smell pipe tobacco and old sweat. What could’ve upset them all so much, something too awful to contemplate, too terrible to articulate into a question?

“Sit down, my boy.”

He guided Sergei to the sofa, beside his grandmama, who reached out a hand and stroked his hair. His father spoke for the first time.

“We have something to tell you.”

“Who’s died?”

“What makes you ask that?” His father’s voice was sharp.

“Whatever’s happened, it’s very bad and that usually means someone’s died.”

“Your aunt has had an accident in London. She was told to return to Moscow and two security guards were escorting her to the airport—”

“Is she dead?”

Sergei shouted at his father, rising to his feet at the same time. It was his grandpapa who intervened and turned the boy around to face him.

“Yes, she’s dead. We don’t know—”

Sergei wrestled away from him, ran straight to his room, and slammed the door, throwing himself on the bed and screaming into his pillow. An emotion he’d never felt before was forcing its way up his throat. He could taste the acid bile in his mouth. He felt sick, and he wished the ugly sound he could hear would stop. Someone was screaming. The door opened and his grandfather walked quickly to the bed. Sergei sat up and threw himself at the old man’s chest. The large arms held him tight, and the screams turned to heartbreaking wrenching sobs from deep, deep within his soul.

T
hey weren’t told much more. She’d begun to party with the European jet set and had slipped away from her escort to meet regularly with a Soviet exile, Sasha Orlov, who was living in London. When she was warned about her behavior, she ranted to her escort about lack of freedom and Party oppression. They feared she was going to defect so they ordered her back to Moscow, but on the way to the hotel to collect her belongings there was a car accident. They would send her body back for burial, and all her possessions would be returned to her family. Vladimir applied for permission to travel to London and bring her home himself, but that was declined. Comrade General Secretary Brezhnev himself told him to be patient and to wait for her to be returned to the Motherland, where she’d be buried with all the honor due a Soviet war hero.

Sergei was inconsolable. He refused to believe that his aunt had had any intention of defecting. She simply would not have left him, of that he was certain. He told everyone about the promise she’d made to him three years earlier at the dacha, and then he decided she’d been murdered by the KGB. Finally his grandpapa had to talk severely to him and tell him that such stupidity must stop. It was a tragic accident and that was that.

In the end, Vladimir declined a military funeral and they buried her in the Novodevichy Cemetery, within the leafy gardens of a tranquil convent situated inside a bend in the Moscow River. She was surrounded by some of Russia’s most famous poets and writers, and Nada remembered that Yulena had once told her that her beloved professor Dmitri Shostakovich had expressed a desire to be buried there. Her headstone had a violin engraved on it and a quote from Beethoven, “To play without passion is inexcusable!”

Sergei visited her grave as often as he could and brought her flowers and poured out his heart to her. When her possessions were delivered to the apartment, he took the violin to her and plucked the strings, held it in his arms, and promised her he’d always keep it safe. Vladimir wanted to discuss what to do with the violin, but Nada persuaded him to leave it for now, to let the boy keep it as a comfort until his grief had abated.

There were a hundred things he wished he’d said to her and now it was too late for all but one. When no one was around to overhear, Sergei swore an oath to his aunt that he would discover the truth about her death, that one day someone would be held accountable.

Chapter 37

Moscow

Spring 1990

S
omething inside of him made him feel like running, or skipping, or cartwheeling, an unusual emotion for a large, forty-three-year-old man. He was wandering through the Hermitage Gardens, his favorite park. You could keep Gorky Park; this place had an air of culture and refinement about it. People sat and played chess in the early spring sunshine, stretched out on the banks of the pond and read books, or strolled arm in arm through the stunning gardens. It made Sergei feel alive just being here, being back in Moscow after so many years.

He’d graduated in 1971 with a
magistr
’s degree and joined the exodus to the Urals but more willingly than most. The Urengoy gas field was in need of prospecting, and instinct told Sergei it’d turn out to be worth the trouble. Discovered in 1966 just south of the Arctic Circle, it was to be the world’s second-largest natural gas field with over ten trillion cubic meters in deposits.

After a short, successful career in natural gas, he’d moved on to something more glamorous, diamonds. It meant moving east, to Siberia, but the Mir diamond pipe was a strong pull. And so he found himself in the town of Mirny. Once again it was just below the Arctic Circle, where winter could last up to ten months of the year with the temperature -50˚C or colder, and the brief summer would bring temperatures in excess of 40˚C. Nowhere else on earth was the temperature range so extreme.

After the war, the Soviet Union had found itself totally dependent on the De Beers cartel for the supply of industrial diamonds; without diamond drilling stones you couldn’t prospect for oil and gas, without diamond die stones you couldn’t produce precision parts, and without diamond abrasives you couldn’t grind machine parts or armaments. So prospecting had begun in earnest and eventually resulted in significant discoveries in one of harshest climates on the planet.

When Sergei first arrived, he was confronted with environmental problems that seemed insurmountable: steel tools frozen and brittle, oil frozen into solid blocks, and rubber tires that shattered when you tapped them. Then when summer came, the permafrost became a sea of mud. What began as a search for industrial diamonds had become a huge source of gem diamonds, two million carats a year, a production rate that rose dramatically over the years to come.

Sergei worked long, dirty hours in the mine and learned quickly what to look for; he rapidly progressed to identifying the stones and sorting them. Then he caught the eye of management and began to climb the ladder of promotion. Eventually he applied for a transfer to Moscow, and now he was working in the cutthroat business of polished diamond trading.

After a short walk through the gardens, it was time to return to his office on the Kalinin Prospekt. He had clients from Japan, Belgium, and Italy to see and deals to do. As he sat down at his large desk the telephone rang.

“Hello?”

“Sergei? It’s Papa.”

Almost imperceptibly his heart sank. What could his father want at this time of day?

“Hello, Papa.”

They never wasted time with small talk.

“I’m at Sochi, got here an hour ago. Your grandpapa’s very ill; I think you should come.”

“I’m on my way.”

He flew into Adler-Sochi International Airport, his papa picked him up, and they drove to the dacha in silence. Vladimir was ninety-four and had been a widower for six years. He lived quietly at the dacha, and his son and grandson visited him when they could. His heart had grown progressively weaker during the last few months, and he’d suffered several little strokes over recent days. He could still speak but with difficulty, his breathing was labored, and the doctors had given him morphine. Sergei asked why he hadn’t been transferred to a hospital but Koyla was adamant that he’d expressed a strong desire to stay at home.

“His time has come.”

Sergei didn’t argue with his father; he knew his grandpapa missed his beloved wife terribly and that life had become a burden. Nothing much had changed in the house in over forty years and Sergei loved returning to it. He’d been born here and his mother had died soon after. He’d spent many happy childhood days here with his grandparents and Aunt Yulena. Now he sat in the sparsely furnished lounge, drinking tea and waiting for his father to come down from his grandpapa’s room and invite him to go up.

If he closed his eyes, he could trawl back through the clouds of memory and find the sound that he held dearer than anything in the world. The sound of a violin. He could see her standing beside the piano, her slender body swaying in time to the music, her hair cascading around her shoulders, her face a picture of concentration and joy. As always, the music was indescribably sad when he remembered her.

“You can go up. It won’t be long.”

His father’s measured tone crashed through the reverie and shattered it. He opened his eyes.

“Thank you,” he said stiffly.

S
unlight filtered in through the gap between the curtains and the room smelled of medicine and urine. His grandpapa was resting on large pillows, raised at an angle off the big bed. His face was drawn, and his eyes had sunk into the sockets. His hands, bony and covered with liver spots, lay limply on the covers. Sergei crossed the room and sat on the chair beside the bed.

“Grandpapa,” he said softly.

The old man stirred and moved his head slightly toward the noise.

“Sergei?”

His voice was hoarse, and his lips were cracked and dry. Sergei dipped the cloth into the bowl on the bedside table and gently wiped his face. Then he took a teaspoon of water from the glass and dribbled it into his grandpapa’s mouth.

“I’m here, Grandpapa.”

“Thank you.”

For a few moments neither man spoke, and then his grandfather stirred again.

“I’m . . . very proud . . . of you. Always be your own man.”

“I will, Grandpapa.”

“Not like . . . your papa; he belongs . . . to the Party.”

This surprised Sergei and he smiled.

“No chance of me being a Party man, I’m afraid.”

Suddenly the thin hand moved across the bed and grasped his with a rush of strength. At the same time he turned his head toward his grandson and his eyes opened; they were clear and bright.

“I have to . . . tell you something, son. About . . . the violin.”

“I have it, Grandpapa, at home, in Moscow. It’s locked in my safe—”

“There are things . . . things . . . you don’t know.”

The pressure on his hand was strong, pulling him closer. Sergei felt a wave of curiosity. He turned and glanced at the door. It was shut, and they were alone.

“I’m listening,” he said quietly.

V
ladimir was accorded a full military funeral. Sergei and Koyla stood side by side in their very different suits and masked their grief behind impassive expressions. They were complete opposites, with different loyalties and opinions.

Koyla was retired now and lived in his small apartment in Moscow. The reforms of Mikhail Gorbachev had devastated him, and he’d watched the last four years with growing horror. First the Chernobyl disaster occurred in 1986; then the next year a German, Mathias Rust, had flown a plane into Red Square and Gorbachev had used it as an excuse to revamp the military; then glasnost brought freedom of speech and the release of thousands of political prisoners; and finally laws were instituted that allowed limited private ownership of businesses in the services, foreign trade, and manufacturing sectors.

To Koyla it felt like everything he believed in, everything he’d worked for, everything he would gladly have died for was being undermined and unraveled. Sergei knew this, but his opinions were so far removed from his father’s he avoided discussions on the subject. He believed in the new Soviet era and the vision that Comrade Gorbachev had. Despite the food shortages and the increased lawlessness and no matter what the future held, he believed that the dragon Gorbachev had awoken would not be held back and Sergei intended to ride it for all it was worth.

Had Sergei known what direction that dragon would take he would’ve been astonished. His ambitious goals had been to reach the top of the State-owned diamond trading company that employed him, to own a large house in one of the best Moscow suburbs, wear designer suits, drive an Italian sports car, and to one day travel to Europe, to complete unfinished business. Instead he witnessed the attempted coup to replace Gorbachev, the reunification of Germany, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, and the rise to power of Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.

Sergei summed up the new leader very quickly; Yeltsin was from the Urals and had a background in construction. Sergei knew these men and he knew how to manipulate them. He gained a position of influence with Yeltsin’s inner circle and became a regular supplier of top-quality gems and a financier for the thriving black market in luxury goods. When the reform policies began to bite and skyrocketing prices were combined with heavy new taxes, Sergei started a sideline in the provision of credit and the manipulation of loans.

Then in 1995 Yeltsin passed a presidentail decree allowing businesses to be privatized by a series of auctions. Sergei’s considerable wealth was kept very well hidden, but political influence and power helped him to buy a large multitiered State company in the mineral extraction industry. It took two years of secret bidding to acquire complete control, but when he got Yeltsin’s final approval, he pounced. The company had noncore assets in the construction, agriculture, and medical fields, and he spun those off and sold them. He was left with oil exploration rights, a thriving natural gas pipeline and field, very productive diamond mines, and a laboratory that created synthetic industrial diamonds.

It was beyond his wildest dreams, and Koyla was incensed. After some furious rows, he cut off all communication with his son and died six months later, bitter and alone. When Sergei heard of his death, he paused for a moment and then kept reading the report in front of him.

But the master stroke was yet to come. He was supplying Gazprom, the largest Russian company of all and the biggest extractor of natural gas in the world. Gazprom supplied nineteen different countries with natural gas and ran the world’s longest pipeline network, more than 150,000 kilometers of pipe. In one deal, Sergei sold his natural gas assets back to Gazprom and catapulted from being very rich into the rarefied air of a billionaire.

He lost no time in moving his base to London and buying a magnificent Mayfair property and a country estate in Sussex. Six months later, he added the Monte Carlo mansion and an apartment in New York. The world outside of Russia was a revelation to him; his opportunities had expanded at a terrifying rate, and he greedily embraced all the experiences on offer. Life became a heady round of gambling, champagne, fast cars, women, cocaine, and luxury adventures. But there was a reason why he’d chosen London as his base, and at last he was ready to fulfill a certain promise.

The first step was a visit to a small semidetached house deep in the East End of London. He dressed casually and took a taxi, unsure what he’d find after all these years.

Sasha Orlov was nearly eighty, but his blue eyes twinkled with fun and his handsome face had aged well. With his wife, Olga, he greeted Sergei warmly and invited him into the comfortable front room for coffee and a banquet of Russian food. Sergei sampled the honey cookies, blintzes, strudel, and
rogaliky
pastries filled with nuts and fruit and complimented Olga on her wonderful cooking.

It was the framed picture on the sideboard that afforded him the opportunity to raise the reason for the visit. His aunt, young and carefree, her hair blowing in the breeze and her strong face smiling happily at the photographer, drew him like a magnet. As he gazed at it he was aware of Sasha watching him.

“I remember the day that was taken as if it was yesterday,” the old man said quietly.

Sergei replaced it carefully and returned to his chair. “What can you tell me about her last trip? Was she planning to defect?”

Sasha shook his head emphatically.

“Absolutely not. We talked about it, constantly. I admit I tried to persuade her, for lots of reasons. But she was adamant and she never wavered. She had to return to Russia.”

Sergei felt a sense of relief and something else he couldn’t quite identify, closure perhaps?

“She loved us too much, I believe.”

“Especially you; she talked constantly about you. She adored you.”

Sergei smiled at him. “Thank you, Sasha. I can’t tell you what that means to me.”

“Is that what you came to ask me, son? If I believed she was going to defect?”

Sergei hesitated, weighed up the old man’s likely reaction, and then made up his mind.

“How did you hear about her death?”

“The exile community was very strong. We had contacts, even then, people who knew people, within the embassy. I heard the truth, almost immediately.”

“The truth?” Sergei asked sharply.

“About her death.”

His heart was pounding and he tried to control the emotion roaring inside his head.

“How did she die?”

“She was murdered, Comrade, by her own people. By the KGB.”