Death of a Tyrant Read online

  “Are you that impatient?” He went to the sideboard, where a bottle of champagne had hastily been placed in an ice bucket. He uncorked it, loudly, and poured. It might please him to live like one of those princes he and his followers had so rudely overthrown, but he understood none of the niceties of civilised living, and that the champagne had not been sufficiently cooled did not bother him in the least. Nor did he offer her a glass.

  “I am that curious,” she said, and sat down, her hands folded on her lap.

  “He is very concerned, about this bomb business.” Beria sat down himself, opposite her.

  Sonia frowned. “There has been an attempt on his life?”

  “No, no.” Beria waved his hand, impatiently. “The Bomb.”

  “I’m afraid I do not understand you,” Sonia said.

  Of course, he kept her locked away, with no access to newspapers or the radio. “Japan surrendered, year before last, because the Americans have manufactured a bomb of incredibly destructive power. Two of them were dropped, and the Japanese, even the Japanese, realised they had no chance. So they surrendered. I will confess we did not take this seriously enough at the time. All we knew was that it was a big bomb. The implications only became apparent later. It is an elemental force. It does not merely knock things down and kill people. It obliterates them. It generates the kind of heat we are told is found only at the earth’s core. It would be quite impossible to wage war against any nation that possesses such a bomb.”

  “A portent of the future,” she murmured.

  “Oh, indeed. The problem is that the West has such a bomb, and we do not. This is exercising his mind, greatly. Perhaps the strain will do the job for us. Perhaps you will not be necessary.”

  “I should hate to think that, having been kept a prisoner by you for four years now, I should suddenly become redundant.”

  Beria gave one of his cold smiles. “You will never be redundant, Comrade Bolugayevska. I shall find a use for you. But for the time being, we practice patience. He is sixty-nine years old. That is old, when one has led as stressful a life as Josef. I think the moment of decision is rushing at us. As long as we are ready, we have nothing to fear. There is no saying what might touch off a crisis that would be too much for him.”

  *

  They rolled and wrestled together, naked bodies glistening with passionate sweat. “I love you, Tatiana Andreievna,” Gregory Asimov whispered. “Oh, how I love you.”

  Tatiana playfully bit his ear, and as he had just climaxed, rolled off of him and lay on her back, taking deep breaths. He rose on his elbow beside her. Still in his early twenties, he looked much younger. Gregory Asimov had always had a baby face. Sometimes, when he had been shooting or knifing an enemy, in the Pripet, he had looked about to burst into tears. But he never had. “Will you not say you love me?” he asked.

  Tatiana’s face grew serious. Lies and deceit were part of her business, as a KGB officer. She refused to practice either in her private life. “I value you, Gregory Ivanovich,” she said. “I value you as an old comrade in arms, as a present comrade in arms, as a friend, and…” she smiled. “Most of all, as a lover. No one has ever satisfied me as you do. That is more important than love, which is transient. I will value you for the rest of our lives.”

  Gregory kissed her. “Then I will hope that we will grow old together, dearest Tattie.”

  *

  “This is rather good,” Josef Cromb said. “There is a lot of blah de blah, then we come to: ‘Another of the guests was the erstwhile Princess Bolugayevska, now Mrs Joseph Cromb, and her husband. The Princess, dare we say it, is now fifty-three years old, and yet no one can deny that, despite the exhausting adventures that have composed her life, her reputation as the most beautiful woman in Europe, or perhaps the world, remains unquestioned.’” He looked at his wife over the top of the fashion magazine.

  Priscilla Bolugayevska-Cromb was sitting up in bed, her breakfast tray on her lap. “Me,” she said. “Always me. You have led a much more adventurous life than I, Joseph.” But she smiled as she spoke. When Priscilla Bolugayevska-Cromb smiled electric lights were liable to dim. As she well knew. With her still golden hair, which she continued to wear long because Russian princesses — even ex-Russian princesses — never cut their hair, and with her features, which had clearly been chiselled by some immortal sculptor, not to mention her still flawless figure, she felt that the journalist had written nothing but the truth.

  As for the events of her life, from marrying her own uncle, the then Prince of Bolugayen, as a teenage girl before the First World War, to surviving the Red Revolution and all the horrors that it had inspired — for her more than almost anyone else — through a life of high society and financial crises that had involved the suicide of her second husband, she had indeed adventured, until she had at last been able to settle in domestic bliss with the only man she had ever loved. And even Joseph she had had to go to China to rescue from the clutches of the KGB. Now she stretched out her hand to touch his cheek. “We have adventured together, my love.”

  Joseph kissed her fingers. In this spring of 1947 they had now been partners and lovers for twenty-eight years — long before they had been able to marry — and he still adored her. Well, Priscilla Cromb was the sort of woman men did adore. But he knew her worth, her tremendous courage and determination — and, when necessary, ruthlessness — which far transcended her physical attributes. Just as he knew that she had adventured, and experienced, and endured, to a far greater extent than was even suspected by the media. Joseph was actually four years younger than his wife, although he looked a great deal older; his hair was grey and there were lines of suffering etched on his face. He put those down to the twelve years he had spent in the Gulag Archipeligo as a prisoner of Josef Stalin’s horrific government, more than anything he had experienced in two world wars.

  But even that was behind him now. He and Priscilla had not even entered the twilight of their years. There was so much still to do, still to experience, even if he hoped and prayed there would be no more brushes with death and destruction. He folded the magazine. “Anyway, it’s nice still to be famous. Now I must rush. I have a meeting with the bankers in an hour. Sure you do not wish to come?”

  “Absolutely.” If the family money was all Priscilla’s, she was perfectly content to let her husband have the management of it. “Just be sure to be back for lunch.”

  He kissed her lips, and hurried off. Priscilla picked up the house phone. “Send Mottram up, please.”

  The Savoy was one of the few truly civilised hotels left in the world, Priscilla considered, because it provided accommodation for one’s personal maids. She had had several personal maids in her life; one of them, the Tatar woman Grishka, had died for her. She did not anticipate Pamela Mottram, the very epitome of British correctitude, would ever have to go that far. “What a nice day, madam.” Mottram bustled into the room. “Will madam take her bath now?”

  “Thank you, Mottram.” Joseph had left the magazine, and she glanced at the report of the duchess’s ball before discarding it and picking up The Times. Mottram bustled happily in the bathroom, filling the huge tub, but reappearing as the phone rang. “I will take it,” Priscilla said.

  “Mrs Cromb?” asked the girl at reception. “I have a visitor for you.”

  Priscilla looked at her gold Omega. It was half-past nine, and she supposed there were people out and about. But… “Give me his name.”

  There was a moment’s silence, then the girl was back. “He says his name is Morgan, madam. He says you do not know him, but you knew his father.”

  *

  Priscilla stared at the phone in consternation. Harold Morgan’s son? But Harold Morgan hadn’t had a son. “Send him up,” she said, and replaced the phone. Mottram’s eyebrows were waggling. “My dressing gown, Mottram,” Priscilla said.

  Mottram produced the garment. “Your bath will grow cold, madam.”

  “Then you will have to draw another.” Priscilla g
ot out of bed, allowed herself to be encased in her dressing gown over her satin nightdress, sat before her mirror to have her hair brushed. She wished she had had the time at least to clean her teeth, as of course she had, merely by telling this man to wait…but if he was a relic from her past… There was a knock on the door. “Let the gentleman in, Mottram,” Priscilla said, and moved to sit in the chair beside the bed. She poured herself another cup of coffee, amazed to discover that her hand was shaking.

  Mottram was opening the door to the suite’s sitting room. A moment later she appeared in the doorway. “A Mr Morgan, madam.”

  “I am coming.” Priscilla drank the coffee, looked at herself in the mirror once again, then went into the sitting room. The young man stood in front of the window, looking down at the Thames. Now he turned. He was of medium height, stockily built. Like his father. His hair was black, his features chiselled. Like his father. He was conservatively dressed, and held his flat cap in front of him. As his father had used to do. “Mr Morgan?” she asked.

  “Andrew Morgan, your highness.”

  Priscilla smiled. It was a long time since anyone outside of her own family had called her by her erstwhile title. At the same time, there was a complete absence of any trace of a Welsh accent. She advanced into the room. “You find me in dishabille, Mr Morgan. Did the receptionist say I knew your father?”

  “My father was in the employ of your family, your highness. He died in that employ.”

  Priscilla sat down, gestured him to a chair on the far side of the room. “Tell me when and how that happened?”

  Andrew Morgan sat down. “He attempted to defend you, and your family, your highness, when your estate of Bolugayen outside Poltava was overrun by the Bolsheviks in 1917. He did not survive the attack.”

  “My God,” Priscilla said. “You’ll forgive me, Mr Morgan, but I did not know your father had any children. I did not know he was married. He was employed by my father and mother-in-law as a butler. For some twenty years before 1917. He was never married, to my knowledge.”

  Andrew Morgan looked suitably embarrassed. “That is quite true, your highness. However, my father, ah…had an acquaintance. An English lady.”

  “Who is your mother.”

  “Was, your highness. She has recently died.”

  “Oh. I am most terribly sorry. But I do not quite understand…”

  “When your mother-in-law, the late Countess Bolugayevska, determined to return to Russia to see if she could bring out her stepmother and the rest of your family…”

  “Which included myself,” Priscilla said softly.

  “Indeed, your highness. The Countess Patricia intended to bring you all to safety. However, because of the war she was forced to travel across the Atlantic, and then America, and then the Pacific, and then the whole of Russia, to reach Bolugayen. Naturally, in these circumstances, she could not make such a journey alone.”

  “I know. She brought Morgan and her maid with her.”

  “Yes, your highness. But immediately before leaving, she gave my father two days off, to put his affairs in order, and he, ah…visited my mother. They had been acquainted before, for some time. I was born in the spring of 1918.”

  “Good Lord!” Priscilla exclaimed. “You mean you never saw your father?”

  “I did not know who my father was, your highness,” Andrew Morgan said. “My mother always gave me to understand that he was her husband, and that he was killed in the Great War. It was not until she was on her deathbed, three months ago, that she told me the truth.”

  “There is nothing in what she told you that you need be ashamed of, Mr Morgan. Your father did die in the Great War. He died like a hero. He was one of the bravest men I ever knew.”

  “Thank you, your highness. Will you tell me of it? I know the memory must be painful for you,” he hurried on, as he saw the shadow cross her face. “But I would beg you to understand… I only learned of him, as I have said, three months ago. I was, well, astounded, I suppose, to know that I had been born out of wedlock, and indeed, remained, if you will pardon me, your highness, a bastard. I felt extreme resentment against the man who had done this to me. Then I knew I had to find out more about him. But I had very little idea how to set about it. I did trace his birth certificate, but of course there is no death certificate. My mother had told me that he was employed by the exiled Bolugayevski family, but she knew nothing of where they were now. I discovered that you lived in the States, but I had no means of getting there — I have very little money. And then, this morning, I read that you were in London.”

  “Pardon me,” Priscilla said. “But do you make a habit of reading society magazines?”

  He flushed. “Yes, your highness. Always seeking some kind of information about you or any Bolugayevski. Never before have I had any success. Then I knew I just had to speak with you, and see what you could tell me.”

  “Of course.” Priscilla leaned across to touch his hand. “I quite understand. Your father, as you say, accompanied the Countess Patricia to Bolugayen. They reached us in the summer of 1917. By then Kerensky had been in power for about six months, and Russia was officially a Socialist state, but there was very little evidence of it down in Bolugayen. We were far removed from the centres of strife and power. Thus I am afraid we did not respond to the Countess’s wish for us all to leave immediately and accompany her to England. The journey sounded horrendous, and Bolugayen was our home. No decision had been taken before that fateful day when a company of deserting soldiers reached us. The first we knew of it was when…” Priscilla paused, as terrible memory came flooding back. “When they came across the Countess out riding, and murdered her. They tore her to pieces, Mr Morgan.” Morgan swallowed. “With her was the previous Princess of Bolugayen, Sonia Bolugayevska.” Priscilla gave a wry smile. “She had sought shelter with me, her successor as Prince Alexei’s wife. We had become friends. The Princess Sonia escaped the mob and reached the house. When we heard what had happened, we realised immediately that we would have to defend ourselves. Mr Morgan was an old soldier…you knew he had been a soldier in his youth?”

  Andrew Morgan nodded. “My father served with the Twenty-Fourth of Foot, the South Wales Borderers. He was at Rorke’s Drift.”

  “That is absolutely right. So I placed him in charge of the defence of Bolugayen House. It was a forlorn hope. We had only a couple of men, and about a dozen women. We all expected to die. Your father was killed in the first attack. He was defending the front doors when they collapsed, and he was shot.”

  “But you did not die, your highness?”

  Priscilla’s head came up, her cheeks tinged with pink. “No, Mr Morgan. I did not die. I watched your father die, and I watched my grandmother die. But with some other women, including the Princess Sonia, I was taken by the Reds.” Her lips twisted. “We were reserved for what is popularly known as a fate worse than death.”

  “I do apologise…”

  “It happened, Mr Morgan. If I may say so, in view of what took place after the house was captured, your father was one of the most fortunate of us: his death was instantaneous. And I repeat, he died like a soldier, facing the foe.” Andrew Morgan sat in silence, but Priscilla guessed it was less out of a sense of grief for a father he had never known than embarrassment at having forced her to recall those memories. “Please do not blame yourself,” she said. “You had to find out, I know. As for me, well, as you have reminded me, I survived. Even rape can become only a memory with the passage of sufficient time. And at least I had the satisfaction of seeing my tormentors hanged, when my husband retook the village.” Andrew’s head came up. “Do you think it is unbecoming, in a woman, to wish to see people hanged?”

  “Of course not,” he protested. “They deserved it. Your highness, I have applied for a visa, to visit Russia.”

  Priscilla frowned. “Whatever for?”

  “I am a journalist, by profession. Not very successful, I’m afraid. I would also like to write a book. Again, my attempts
have not been very successful. But that was before I had ever heard of my father. Now… I would like to write of his life. I wish to visit this place Bolugayen. To see my father’s grave. Have you any objection to my doing that?”

  “Of course I do not. But I do not think you will be able to find your father’s grave, Mr Morgan. Bolugayen House was burned to the ground, by the Reds, with all the dead still inside it.”

  “Then that is his grave, is it not?”

  “It was. But so far as I know, the land was then made into a collective farm.”

  “Is there no trace at all of the house?”

  “I cannot say. I have never been back.”

  “Well, I shall go there,” he declared.

  Priscilla could not help smiling at his youthful enthusiasm. Although he had to be about thirty. “Are you sure that is wise?”

  “Why should it not be?”

  “Well…the Reds are not the most friendly people on earth.”

  It was his turn to frown. “Aren’t they our allies? We just won the war together.”

  “I’m not sure how important that is, to the Russians, at this moment. At least, to the Russians who run Russia. They’re a very suspicious people. Their leader is quite paranoid.”

  “You mean Premier Stalin?”

  “Yes.”

  “Have you ever met him?”

  “Oh, yes,” Priscilla said. “I spent some weeks as his ‘guest’, once upon a time.”

  The young man did not pick up the nuance. “Then…perhaps you could help me. A letter of introduction…”

  “To Josef Stalin? From me?” Priscilla gave a tinkle of laughter. “I do assure you, Mr Morgan, that would not help you in the least, except perhaps into a gulag.”

  “A gulag?”

  “A Russian political prison, Mr Morgan. That is not somewhere you should ever wish to be.” She considered. “I could give you a letter of introduction to my sister-in-law.”