The Berkut (81 page)

Valentine leaned his head back against the trunk of the tree and smiled. "That's a hell of a question," he said, as he slipped his arm around her and pulled her close. "A hell of a question."

"Do you think they'll try him?"

Valentine grinned and traced her mouth with his forefinger. "Not a chance."

144 – July 18, 1947, 11:00 A.M.

In the summer of 1947 Berlin was still cluttered with the debris of war, but the streets were finally clear and Berliners had returned to their independent and self-indulgent ways, learning to cope in their divided city and making the political differences wrought by the Allies work for them instead of against them. At night the cafes and clubs along the Friedrichstrasse were filled with soldiers in uniforms speaking many languages, and once again the whores were prosperous.

Vasily Petrov stood across the street from the ruins of the Reich Chancellery. It was hot, and a Russian demolition crew nearby was raising clouds of dust.

He had placed the charges himself. The bunker had been closed and padlocked for nearly a year by order of Joseph Stalin. It was dark inside and cool, full of mold that constricted Petrov's breathing. Even so, he had worked slowly and meticulously, selecting each site and connecting each firing wire as if it were the only one.

Several workers, waiting, stood along the street behind him. Petrov wiped his forehead with a handkerchief, folded it and tucked it into the back pocket of his trousers. Taking a final look at the squat concrete structure across the street, he depressed the lever with a smooth, unhurried stroke.

The ground rumbled underfoot as a huge plume of dirt and smoke burst upward into the swirling currents overhead. Satisfied that the destruction was complete, Petrov walked slowly up the street to the waiting construction superintendent. When he nodded, the man began barking out orders, and instantly the motors of bulldozers coughed into life.

"What the hell was that?" a voice said near Petrov. "One of those Nazi buildings," someone replied
.

145 – March 5, 1953, 2:00 P.M.

Petrov was feeding a family of Russian geese when he was approached by a brevet colonel, resplendent in winter dress uniform. "Comrade Petrov?" The little Russian, stooped by arthritis that seemed to grow worse by the day, looked up without speaking. "You must come to Kuntsevo; the end is near."

"How long?" Petrov asked quietly.

"Not long," the officer told him. "He's unconscious now."

So it had happened. On February twenty-eighth Stalin had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, and had been lingering near death since. It had been almost seven years since he had stood with the team along the railroad siding outside Odessa. Seven years.

"Tell them I will be there," Petrov said. As he shuffled slowly toward his automobile his driver scrambled to open the rear door for him. "The Kremlin."

The guard at the door of the Poteshny Palace snapped to a position of readiness as Petrov approached. The soldier's sergeant challenged him while the guard held his Kalashnikov at the ready. When Petrov showed them the Red Badge, the men melted away.

There was a chill in the basement. It had always been a problem in the great halls and monuments built by Russian royalty. At the end of the corridor he passed through another security station and descended in a small elevator far down into the earth. At the bottom another security unit checked his credentials before admitting him through a square steel door. Inside was another door, which he opened with a key that he kept around his neck at all times. For seven years he had followed this procedure twice a day, missing only once for a period of less than forty-eight hours when he had flown to Berlin. The room was painted with thick white enamel, like that in a surgery; the floors were of tightly fitted ivory tiles. But despite the sterility and cleanliness of its surfaces, the odor from the room always brought Petrov to the brink of nausea.

In
the middle of the room, suspended from the ceiling, was a cage of stainless steel bars, and in it, a living thing that looked vaguely
human squatted. There was not enough room for it either to stand or to lie down. Stalin had designed the cage and personally overseen its construction by captured German engineers. Over the years it had become increasingly difficult to keep the beast alive. Sores had formed on its legs and induced gangrene, causing an amputation first of the left leg above the knee, and later of the right leg just above the ankle. Dr. Gnedin had performed the operations, with Petrov assisting. Technically the beast lived, but it was no longer a man. To be sure, ther
e
was a body in the cage and its heart beat, but its mind and soul had long ago evaporated and it had not spoken in five years.

When they arrived from Odessa, they had been met by a special panel truck, and the prisoner had been taken directly to the palace and to the room where Petrov now stood. The monster had been stripped of his clothes and locked into the cage, and Petrov had watched alone as the man struggled violently, screaming first for vengeance, later for mercy.

Thereafter the beast was fed only enough to sustain life. It lived in the wastes of its own body and was not allowed to wash. The structure in which it was suspended prevented normal sleep and rest, and so it began a cycle of short naps, always interrupted by pain from its body's extremities.

It was amazing to him that a living creature could deteriorate so far and still be alive. Watching the creature now it seemed that it had happened fast, the increments of change suddenly collected in a single moment. But it was not true; the present always deceived. The process had been slow and agonizing and Stalin had relished every moment.

Normally Stalin came on Sundays, usually in the early afternoon, and he never skipped a Sunday unless he was away from Moscow. But there were other visits too, and each time the premier wished to visit, Petrov was fetched from wherever he was to escort his leader. Sometimes during these unscheduled visits Stalin would be seething, the blue veins in his temples sticking out. Other times he would be brooding, and while to Petrov the mood resembled sadness, he knew that Stalin was incapable of this emotion. On rare occasions Stalin would be joyous and ebullient, and as the years passed Petrov came to understand that the beast was a secret reality from which the premier drew his resolve, as if its existence was living proof that whatever he wanted done could and would be done.

Stalin's routine never varied, even when the visits were unscheduled. Petrov would walk two steps ahead. When they entered the room
the eyes of the two adversaries immediately locked. In the early years the eyes of the beast in the cage flashed hatred; it screamed, howled and threw itself against the bars until the room flooded with sound and Petrov's ears ached for hours afterward. But no matter what the beast said or did, Stalin never reacted. He stood with his hands clasped in front of him and watched. After no more than a few minutes, he would smile, nod slowly once, walk out of the room, board the elevator and return to his world outside. As the years passed, the beast's outbursts faded to incoherence, then to the whine of an injured animal: finally it lapsed into silence and its eyes went blank.

Now the legless beast in the cage shifted its weight on its stumps as Petrov approached. The man dressed in black always meant food, and it had learned over the years to behave itself in Petrov's presence lest the food be withheld. Time no longer had meaning. In the white room it was always bright. The beast slept with its arm curled over its eyes, jamming itself against the bars in peculiar positions in an effort to find the darkness that would bring sleep. Its eyes were swollen red and protruded from the skull. Its hair was caked and matted and stuck out from its head and face at odd angles. It hissed as Petrov drew nearer, anticipating, yet dully apprehensive and wary. This was not the normal feeding time; yet the man was here. Danger. Different. The beast pulled back its arm and held it across its face like a narrow shield.

Petrov pulled his revolver from his holster and put it on the floor just out of reach of the cage. He spoke softly to the beast, in the same tone of voice that he used to speak to his geese. "I am instructed to inform you that Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili is dying." The beast scratched at its crotch violently, suddenly tortured by the burrowing of the vermin that lived on its flesh. It cocked its head to the side and studied Petrov, blinking slowly. For a moment the eyes flashed brightly, and the Russian saw recognition in the dark pools. "Stalin," it said slowly, trying to remember. It was the first word it had said in five years.

Suddenly the beast voided itself, spraying the cage with feces. It looked at Petrov and a ghastly smile began to form on its face. Its lips were dry, cracked and covered with sores. The mouth opened to reveal blackened stumps of broken teeth, and it gripped the bars tightly, pulling itself toward Petrov, pressing its face to the bars. It opened its mouth wide like an attacking predator, turned its head to the left, raised its eyebrow and hissed with an intensity that sent a chill down Petrov's spine. "I ... still ... live," it said hoarsely, its eyes gleaming.

Suddenly it thrust its arms through the bars at Petrov, and from deep inside it came a ringing scream of defiance. Petrov felt the hairs on the nape of his neck stand straight up, but he stepped forward, reached into the cage and caught the beast by the throat with both hands. Its eyes widened at the strength in Petrov's grip and it tried to pull away. Its head began to roll slowly from side to side. "I still live," it croaked again, pounding its chest, pushing feebly at Petrov's arms, trying to loosen the crushing grip, saliva spilling in long strands from its mouth.

Petrov concentrated on touching the fingertips of his two hands together at the back of the beast's neck. As the moment drew closer, all strength left it and it slumped against the cage bars, beginning to convulse in the throes of death. But even then, it kept repeating, softer and softer, "I live, I live, I live." Finally Petrov's fingers touched and he twisted his hands upward so that the beast's spine cracked loudly. The beast was dead.

The guards were nervous when Petrov rejoined them. Over the years they had become familiar with the strange, limping little man who came twice a day. Only Petrov, Gnedin and Stalin had ever been inside the room. Over the years the guards had learned not to think about what might be kept inside. Their entry was forbidden, and though some of them were consumed by curiosity, it was a subject they never discussed even with each other, and none would have dared to go inside even if he could. When one lived in the heart of the Supreme Soviet, one learned to be deaf, dumb and blind.

When Petrov told them to leave their posts, they hesitated, but seeing a look in his eyes that frightened them, they cleared out; he was the one with the Red Badge. When they were gone, Petrov went to a small storage room and fetched supplies that had been cached long ago. Working alone, he constructed a wall three bricks deep over the steel doors and then ascended in the elevator. When he reached the ground floor, he directed the security detachment to move to the other end of the building. Then, with another key, which he had also carried for seven years, he opened a small wall safe and pulled the lever inside, detonating a charge that brought down the elevator and its shaft, closing the hole for eternity.

146 – March 5, 1953, 9:50 P.M.

Petrov had driven to Kuntsevo and was taken directly through a phalanx of security men to Stalin's bedroom. The premier looked small and insignificant in his canopied bed. Candles flickered on nearby tables, and a huge Chinese tapestry of a dragon hung over the headboard, the light making it seem alive. "Comatose," someone said as Petrov entered; when he showed them his Red Badge, they cleared the room. Standing at the end of the bed, he waited. On the floor there was a sheet of paper covered with simple drawings of a wolf's head in red ink.

Stalin stirred and his head lifted slightly. His eyes flickered and opened. "My Berkut," he said, his voice clear but weak. "I'm dying."

Petrov nodded, picked up the paper and a pen, drew an X through one of the heads, and held it up. "It's done."

Stalin's eyes widened; his nostrils flared and a wide smile swept across his face. "When?"

"A few hours ago."

The Russian leader eased his head back to his pillow and exhaled, his face freezing into a mask, the mouth wide open. Petrov touched the premier's throat to check for a pulse; there was nothing. He checked his watch: it was 9:50 P.M. and Joseph Stalin was dead. He set his Red Badge on the end of the bed, put on his hat, took a last look and left. Finally it had ended.

Author’s Note

The Berkut
is fiction, a creature of imagination spawned in the cracks and uncertainties of history. We know a lot about the final days of Hitler and his Third Reich, but despite everything at our disposal, we do not know what happened to Hitler at the end. We suspect, we theorize, we speculate, but we don't
know.