The Tamarind Seed (12 page)

He learned his trade of carpentry and in his spare time he borrowed books from the school teacher. He read everything, making a determined effort to improve himself. He was fourteen when one summer afternoon the local police arrived and took the teacher and his wife away. A store of revolutionary books and pamphlets was discovered at their house and publicly burned. Nobody found the literature which the teacher had entrusted to Golitsyn. He had buried them in a canvas bag in a ditch behind his home; they remained there for a year. The new teacher was an old man so ignorant that he could hardly read his own text books. Loud mouthed and slovenly, he was unlikely to inspire independent thought or revolutionary activity in the youth of the district. It was Pavlov Golitsyn who performed that office, in the name of the teacher who had been sentenced to twelve years' hard labour in the Siberian mines. His wife had died of the flogging given to both of them after their arrest. But through those early years Golitsyn conducted himself with extreme caution. He had never possessed that reckless ardour that brought so many of his contempararies into the brutal hands of the Tsarist Okhrana. Golitsyn took no risks; he saw no virtue in martyrdom when there was so much work to be done and so few with the education to do it. He was a revolutionary in the mould of his hero, Lenin, one of whose great achievements was to spend only four years in jail during that turbulent political period. At the outbreak of war between Russia and Germany the revolutionary fever abated. The natural patriotism of the people supported the war and endured crippling losses, criminal bungling and inefficiency at the highest level for the first year. By 1917 the Russian soldiers' morale collapsed as a result of rumours that the government was in the control of the German-born Empress, their casualties had assumed horrific proportions, and in many cases, there were no bullets to fire at the enemy. The Army dethroned the Tsar and marched back from the front. One of the leaders of the Volinsky Regiment, which garrisoned St. Petersburg at the time, was Pavlov Golitsyn; the regiment shot its officers, raised the Red flag and joined the revolutionary crowd in the street.

Forty-five years later he was a General, one of the last survivors of early Bolshevism, a man whose caution had kept him safe during the terror reign of Stalin; unswerving, dedicated, immovable in his belief that the ideological war could only be won by total victory, never through peaceful compromise. He had changed very little in mentality from the youth of seventeen who had tied the Red flag to his rifle and led the mob through the streets of St. Petersburg to change the course of the world's history. He thought and felt much the same as an old man as he had done all those years ago. His absolute obedience to the authority of his Party was identical with the submission of his great-grandfather the serf, to the Prince who owned him.

He hated Feodor Sverdlov; he regarded him as one of the most dangerous men in the Intelligence Service, someone whose attitudes had become contaminated through contact with the Capitalist enemy, an advocate of compromise and co-existence. Golitsyn himself had joined the Cheka in 1919, and set about suppressing the counterrevolution with bloody fervour and utter lack of mercy. He regarded his career as a vocation; he had accepted and adopted the methods of Beria without question. The idea that he was supporting a rule of terror as inhuman as the original tyranny he had rejected, could never have occurred to him.

And yet he retained the one quality which had left him in his job after the fall of Beria. He was a follower, rather than a man whose ambitions made him suspect. He was content to serve under Feodor Sverdlov, who had a brilliant reputation and an impressive record during the Hungarian uprising. Personal gain would not have influenced Golitsyn against his chief; political deviation inspired him to the depths of cunning and disloyalty to Sverdlov which previously he had not dared expose to their chief in Moscow. He had the peasant's suspicion of intellectuals; he disliked Sverdlov as a man and a member of a generation with which he felt little sympathy; too young to have known either war, the edges of their belief blunted by liberalism, the old man watched and grumbled silently, but for Sverdlov he waited with infinite patience and implacable hate. He was betraying the Party with the subtelty of the politically corrupt. Now, because of the change in Russian policy, Golitsyn could denounce him with safety. The General was on his way to Sverdlov's office that morning; he walked slowly down the corridor; everyone knew his ponderous foot, thudding along the ground.

This was his last post. He was long past retiring age, but at his plea he had been allowed to stay on in the States for the full term of his appointment. He was a widower with grown children leading lives independent of him; without work he had nothing to live for, no destination beyond the armchair in transit for the grave. Anna Skriabine had made her report to him after working for Sverdlov for three days. He had studied the copies of Sverdlov's reply to the information passed on to them by ‘Blue' and written his comments in the margin. The copies, along with Sverdlov's original report, would go to Dzershinsky Square. The soft line again; cleverly advocated, with the Cambodian venture as a covering excuse. Only a traitor would advise that the relentless Soviet presure in the Middle East should be lifted. The idea of encouraging Egypt to receive an emissary from Tel Aviv was only further confirmation of Sverdlov's conversion to the Capitalist world. He had said this in his marginal comments.

Sverdlov's decision to take a holiday had given Golitsyn the opportunity to do something which was a vital part of the plan to remove and ultimately indict him. In his absence Golitsyn had been able to get his hands on the secretary Kalinin. Kalinin's loyalty immediately made him suspect; it was easy for Golitsyn to arrange for the young man's return home, where he had been arrested and taken for interrogation. Whatever could be got out of him would be produced at Sverdlov's trial. Golitsyn was not a coward, but he had been anxious about Sverdlov's reaction to losing his secretary and finding him replaced. He had trusted in the attractiveness and charm of the replacement to divert Sverdlov's attention from the true significance of Kalinin's ‘illness'.

He had covered himself very carefully, by getting the secretary examined by the Embassy doctor, who obediently pronounced him in danger of a nervous breakdown and prescribed that he be sent home for a long rest. Kalinin had protested angrily against the examination and then the verdict. In the end he had been forcibly sedated and confined to his bed till a car removed him, with male nurses in attendance, to Kennedy International Airport. The doctor's report had been given to Sverdlov on Monday morning, with an explanatory note from Golitsyn. He had waited till the report was read, and then decided to present himself.

Anna Skriabine was one of his best girls; he had chosen her, rather than another member of the Embassy secretarial staff, because she had been trained to spy on her employers, and also because he knew that she was the type that Sverdlov admired. Sverdlov had a weakness for women; it was well known that there had always been competition among the girls on the staff of his attentions. The attentions were always businesslike and brief. Anna Skriabine needn't survive for long; just long enough to keep him quiet while the experts got at Kalinin in the Lubiyanka.

One of the other items which Golitsyn had collected during Sverdlov's absence was his association with an English woman at the Barbadian hotel. It had been easy to arrange surveillance; they had a permanent man on the island, mainly because political unrest was making the Caribbean an important zone, and Barbados might be expected to follow Trinidad and Guiana on the bloody path of Black Power. So an insignificant little man had been recruited as a ‘pick-up'—establishing the nucleus for a proper network on the island when the need arose. He had passed money to the hotel waiter who served Sverdlov, and in turn he bribed the chambermaid. Nothing was found in his room, no visitors from outside were recorded; however every detail of his friendship with Judith Farrow was also on the file Golitsyn had compiled for his superiors in Moscow.

He reached the outer office and walked in. Anna Skriabine was at her desk, filing a thick sheaf of documents. She looked up and got quickly out of her chair.

‘Tell Comrade Sverdlov I am here.'

She knocked on the inner door and opened it. He saw Sverdlov behind his desk look at her and smile.

There was a brief exchange between them, and then she held the door open and Golitsyn went in.

They shook hands, he accepted a cigarette and sat down; they faced each other across Sverdlov's desk. He looked extremely well; he had put on some weight, and his expression was humorous. Golitsyn disliked the twisted mouth. It was difficult to decide sometimes whether he smiled or sneered.

‘You look very well, Comrade,' he said. ‘Your holiday was a success?'

‘In more ways than one, but I'll come to that later, Tell me,' Sverdlov's eyes flickered against a plume of cigarette smoke, ‘tell me about Kalinin.'

Golitsyn was ready. ‘I made a full report.'

‘I've read it. But tell me the details.'

‘He was showing signs of strain,' Golitsyn said. ‘It was reported by several people that he didn't sleep at night, and he was drinking. Did you know about that, Comrade? No? Well, his room was searched and there were empty bottles under the bed and hidden in his drawers. I became alarmed; in your absence, and knowing he had access to a lot of very confidential information, I asked him not to leave the Embassy until you returned. He refused to give the undertaking. I decided he should be medically examined. The rest you have already read in my report. It's most unfortunate.'

‘An understatement,' Sverdlov said. ‘He was invaluable to me. I feel responsible for his illness. Perhaps I worked him too hard.'

‘Yes,' Golitsyn's grizzled head nodded. ‘That was the doctor's opinion. If you are not satisfied with Skriabine—I can replace her with a man if you prefer.'

‘She does very well,' Sverdlov said. ‘Her standards are high. It may be that I shall keep her permanently. Maybe not. A man in this position is more reliable. Women tend to get too involved.' He watched Golitsyn through his half closed eyes. He was like a rock. He had placed his spy, a specially manufactured arsenic pellet coated in sugar. It wouldn't do to pretend to swallow it too quickly.

‘I have seen the reports you compiled during the two weeks,' Sverdlov said. ‘Including that very interesting contribution from “Blue”. I have made my recommendations.'

‘I saw them,' Golitsyn said.

‘You disagree?' The question was asked quietly. Two years ago the old General would not have dared to tell the truth. Two years ago Sverdlov held the power of life and death over him and everybody in the Embassy, the Ambassador included. But no longer. He didn't know it, but now the executioner's pistol was pointing at
his
neck. Golitsyn answered with confidence.

‘I don't think we should encourage any peace moves in the Middle East, Comrade. I think we should carry the war against Capitalism into every corner where Imperialist influence survives.'

‘You don't consider that if Cambodia becomes a full-scale American intervention, we are inviting the participation of China … I don't believe we can afford to tie ourselves to an Arab-Israel war any longer. We have to keep the Far Eastern sphere independent of Chinese influence. That is my point, Comrade. Whether the Jews murder the Arabs or the Arabs kill the Jews is not as important to us as the maintenance of Soviet power against the aggression of Maoism. Nothing will alter my conviction on that. I'm surprised you don't share it.'

‘I don't believe we can't solve our differences with Socialist China,' Golitsyn answered. He was being put to the test, and he felt sure enough to respond truthfully. ‘Our general aims are the same; the misunderstandings which arose were due to leadership errors in the past. Too soft an attitude towards our true enemies. The Capitalist world has to be destroyed, Comrade Sverdlov. Our way of life and theirs cannot co-exist. The phrase itself is treachery to Revolutionary Socialism. We must overcome their system if our own is to survive. We should ally more closely with China in this common aim.'

‘I don't believe that the aim is common,' Sverdlov said. He too was putting his case; if the old enemy opposite him has any sense of global reality, he just might see what Sverdlov saw. He might, but it was doubtful. That type had never seen beyond the precepts of their Bolshevik upbringing. For that reason it has been necessary to kill so many of them after the Revolution was established.

‘I believe that China is what she has always been—a nationalistic power with Imperialist traditions that have not been fundamentally changed by Marxism. I believe that if you look at the position historically, China has not progressed so much as turned backwards. She has rejected her immediate past, ceased being a federation of disunited provinces, ruled by gangsters like Chiang Kai-shek, and become what she was eight centuries ago. A huge, hungry land mass, with the largest population on earth, ruled by Mao Tse-tung, Emperor of China. They will certainly destroy the Capitalist world and rule over what is left. If anything is … But equally, they will turn upon us, as their only surviving contender for absolute power. I love my country, General; I don't believe it's possible to ride the Chinese tiger; I don't believe it's possible to get close enough to try, without being eaten alive.'

Golitsyn shook his head. He had been listening carefully, without hearing the sense of what was said. He had only noticed that Sverdlov had attacked China without referring once to the iniquities of Western Capitalism.

‘You see it this way,' Golitsyn said. ‘But I do not.'

‘Then we agree to disagree,' Sverdlov said. ‘But that will not prevent us continuing the morning's work. Among ourselves at least, we know how to co-exist.'