The Berkut (38 page)

He grinned. "And you would expect that?"

"I would demand it," she said.

"What about your sons?"

"They're in good hands. They're going to be strong. They will accept and support whatever decision I make."

"They're very young. They're not yet at the age where they can grasp the abstractions that affect adult decisions," Petrov said.

Her nostrils flared, her first sign of emotion. "They are Russian boys," she said curtly, but with pride. "They will understand that if their mother must leave them again it is for the sake of their future."

"You're a hard woman, Talia Pogrebenoi."

"Yes, I am," she said proudly.

Petrov sat back in his chair. "How sharp is your Italian?" "Dim." She laughed. "But it comes back quickly. It takes only a few days."

"Dialects?
"

"Four when I was proficient. But now I think I could get by in Milanese or Neapolitan. Everything else is a shade of these."

They studied each other for a while. "Do you want me or not?" Pogrebenoi asked finally.

"That's never been the issue. You understand the term
s?"

Her head bobbed once. "They
are not complex."

Petrov's mind was made up. "Pour more tea for yourself," he told her. "You have a lot to learn and not much time to do it."

They stayed in the office talking until nearly
11
:00 P.M. When they had finished, he gave her a black leather portfolio containing the Red Badge-his own-and instructions on when and where to report to him next.

44 – June 14, 1945, 1:00 A.M.

The Poteshny Palace is a tall stone building, Mediterranean in suggestion but entirely Russian in its character and peculiarities. The roof is oddly shaped and covered with azure terrazzo tile. All of the windows on the ends of the oblong structure have been sealed with cement reinforced by steel rods. It sits on a narrow side street inside the Kremlin's walls, a short walk from the complex of buildings that houses the Senate and Politburo.

Petrov knew that Stalin kept an apartment in the palace, but he had never been inside it. It was after midnight, the peak of the Soviet leader's day. The summons had come after nine, forcing Petrov to hurry his briefing of Pogrebenoi, ending it before he was ready. But it was necessary to finish early; getting through Kremlin security was time-consuming. Inside the palace, guards were stationed every ten paces on the floors, stairs and landings. Every ten paces. This was Stalin's order, and it was done unquestioningly. There were four checkpoints between the palace entrance and the door that ultimately admitted the visitor to Stalin's suite. A guard tapped lightly on the door with the back of his hand while staring straight ahead. An old woman opened the door, waited to take Petrov's hat, received it, stepped to the side and disappeared.

"In here, my Berkut," Stalin bellowed. From what Petrov could see, there were four rooms, furnished with simple, heavy furniture. The office was awash with paper. Documents were piled on a long couch and on three large wooden tables. A single black telephone stood on an end table. The light in the room came from two brass
necked floor lamps and a small light on the main table. Even though the weather had turned warm and the buildings of the Kremlin tended to be stuffy, Stalin still wore a blue tunic of winter weight. He looked tired, but beamed crookedly when Petrov entered, grasped him by the arms and squeezed him in a bear hug, in an uncharacteristic display of affection. "I'm glad you could come."

Petrov laughed. "Who would dare refuse such an invitation? You wished to see me."

The Soviet leader frowned. "So direct, my dear Petrov? You
stinker,"
he hissed, using a word he had learned from the American gangster movies he loved to watch late at night when he was on holiday. "Always with the business, always so formal. Relax tonight: we eat, we drink, then we talk."

The dining room was a small box off the office. Its white linen tablecloth was soiled, and for some reason the mildewed canvas curtains covering the windows reminded Petrov of the bunker in Berlin. Once again the table was covered with food. A small pig sat smoky
eyed on a cast-iron platter, baked to a glaze with a reddish-brown hue, tomato and onion slices pinned to its flesh. Loaves of black bread were stacked at one end of the table in a circular arrangement. There was more than any four men could possibly eat. All to be wasted, Petrov thought. Yet it was understandable; given his countrymen's propensity for political intrigue and assassination, Stalin's caution was to be expected. If there was too much to eat, an enemy could not guess which particular dish to poison and would be forced to administer the poison to everything. With Stalin's habits, someone else would always sample before he ate. It had always been so for rulers.

Grasping a bottle of Kakhitian wine by its thin neck, Stalin pushed a badly scratched water glass toward his guest. "My only concession to decadence," he confided. Kakhitian was known throughout the world as the best of Russia's many wines. It was rarely found outside the borders, and what smugglers did manage to bring out fetched an incredible price; even the arrogant French had to admit that the wine was "interesting."

Petrov sipped, enjoying the flavor and bouquet. They drank in silence, and when they had emptied their glasses, Stalin refilled them. "Help yourself," he said, spreading his arms before the food table. Much to his leader's delight, Petrov filled his plate and ate heartily. "Such an appetite for so small a bird," the premier said with admiration.

It was Stalin's style to focus on the physical peculiarities of his visitors, often likening them to the animals he believed they resembled. For Petrov such assaults had always been of minor proportion, but there were stories of real ordeals; the strongest of men were said to walk away wobbly-legged from an audience with the premier, stung by his sharp tongue and hour-long barrages of criticism. It was also Stalin's practice to invite a man to dinner, feed him lavishly, praise him generously, then have him taken out and shot. There was a saying: A visit to Stalin has three possible endings, and only one of them is good.

After eating, the two men returned to the office. Stalin cleared the couch with a powerful sweep of his hand, sending papers skittering across the room to distant corners. He was in a mood that Petrov had not seen before, and he reminded himself to be careful. Stalin laughed as he surveyed his handiwork and dropped stiffly onto a cushion, bouncing several times until his rump settled in. Then he leered at Petro v as if they were conspirators in some dark secret, and
magically produced a bottle of P
ertsovka, the thick brown vodka that resembled dark vinegar and packed a w
allop. To Russian aficionados, P
ertsovka was the ultimate, to be savored-and above all, to be respected.

There was an apocryphal story that two Georgians-the nationalities depended upon what part of the country you were in-hap
pened upon a half bottle of P
ertsovka, which they took to their favorite place in a forest outside their village. As they were draining the final drops, a bolt of lightning struck a nearby tree, sending a large limb crashing down on both of them. Their skulls were fractured and they were near death. Villagers found them the next morning and rushed them to a doctor in a nearby city. The doctor lacked the necessary expertise, but miraculously the badly injured men clung to life, though still unconscious. They were loaded onto an aircraft and flown to Moscow, where neurosurgery was performed. Alas, their injuries were so severe that the doctors decided that they would be vegetables even if they ever regained consciousness. The two men were installed in a sanitarium near Red Square, and each day young nurses took them in wheelchairs to the balcony that overlooked Saint Basil's. Years passed. One day the two miraculously regained their faculties at the same moment. They looked at each other, old, their hair and teeth gone, then gazed out on the magnificence of Russian culture, a blurred tapestry of color dazzling their long-idled senses. Finally a great smile filled one man's face and he spoke. "Pertsovka," he whispered to his friend. "The best, yes?"

Stalin drank directly from the bottle and passed it to Petrov, who did the same. It went back and forth until both could feel their senses numbing. Finally Stalin fumbled with his pipe, spilling tobacco from a hefty leather pouch onto his lap. Ignoring the mess, he lit the bowl clumsily.

Petrov had to call on all his concentration to maintain his equilibrium. He could hold his vodka better than most, but this, he warned himself, was vodka only in name. The ember of fire in his belly flowed outward through his limbs, making his fingertips and toes throb. "You wanted to talk," Petrov tried to say but his speech was badly slurred.

Stalin laughed deeply, his body listing heavily. "I want to
drink,
you bastard!" He slapped Petrov so hard on the back that the blow sent him crashing to the floor. Stalin was small, but he had been a wrestler in his youth and was powerful. Petrov's back did not hurt now, but he knew that when he recovered his senses it would ache.

Precisely when it happened Petrov never knew, but he passed out. When he awoke with a violent headache, Stalin was sprawled beside him on the floor, snoring loudly,
his mouth wide open. Two empty P
ertsovka bottles were at their feet.

Petrov struggled to his feet and stumbled in search of his hat. He badly needed sleep and time to recover; his brain, he knew, was still impaired. Not finding the hat, he decided to leave it. As he reached the door he felt a steely grip on his arm. Stalin's face was inches from his; his breath was putrid, but his eyes were clear and focused, his lips wide in a crooked smile.
"That
was a night, eh, Petrov?"

The chief of the Special Operations Group could not respond. His brain searched frantically for language with no success.

The premier's face changed to a hard mask. "Berkut, you bring him back to me," he hissed. "Alive. Here to Moscow." He handed Petrov another wallet, flipping it open to reveal a new Red Badge. "Talia Pogrebenoi," he growled. "An interesting choice by the Berkut," he added just before he closed the door in Petrov's face.

So Grigory
was
connected directly to Stalin. This proved it, but he was in no condition to ponder the implications. He needed sleep. Outside the dawn was breaking.

45 – June 15, 1945, 6:00 P.M.

While Waller tolerated the harem arrangement and her unremarkable status within it, she relished her time alone with Brumm. Neither of them had spoken of it, but she felt that he shared her feelings. She found him to be physically expressive, a gentle and accommodating lover in their infrequent intimate moments, but they never talked about it and she had to guess at his thoughts.

The night that Brumm told the group he planned to leave the valley on a hunting expedition, they were excited. When Brumm selected Waller to accompany him, the others did not question his choice. His intent was to travel to a nearby area where there was a large population of boars. The meat, he told them, was exceptionally sweet when prepared properly, and he felt they could use the change in fare.

Now they were together outside their valley, and Waller was feeling light-headed, both from the freedom and from Brumm's closeness. The hunt had gone well. He had shot three large animals with an ancient shotgun that had once belonged to his grandfather. She found it curious that only he did the hunting. In the canyon it was a shared activity, the women and men alternating as drivers and shooters, but this time her role was limited to watching at a safe distance.

It was late afternoon when Brumm led her up a narrow draw. He had butchered the game, keeping only the hind quarters of the three animals, which he carried in nets. She assumed that he was taking her to a campsite, so she was puzzled when he dropped his gear at the head of a rock formation. When she questioned him, he only smiled and walked off to a stand of small trees. He returned with a long staff of freshly cut white ash, which he trimmed to a point.

"What are we doing?" she demanded.

"What we came here to do, to hunt." But she could tell by his demeanor that he was up to something more.

"You're going to hunt with a cudgel?"

"No," he said solemnly. "You are-with a spear, in the old way."

He refused to explain further; instead, he showed her how to handle the weapon. At first it felt crude and clumsy, but in a short time she managed to achieve a sense of balance and comfort with it. Among the rocks he showed her a place where two large boulders were less than a meter apart. A narrow, well-worn trail led from the underbrush up the draw to the rocks, passing directly underneath where they stood. She still did not understand.

Brumm took a long time to position her correctly. He had her hold the spear with two hands close together but with her arms extended in front of her. "The animal will come up this trail," he said, showing her its path. "When you see it, push the spear out. Like this." He showed her what he expected. "Aim with the bottom of the point. When its nose passes the tip, pull the shaft into your chest and step off the rocks with both feet. Don't jump," he cautioned. "Step. You want to go straight down." He demonstrated for her. "Your body weight and gravity will do the rest."