Triumph (1993) Read online

Delivered by an invisible hand.

  He smoked a cigarette, sitting tiredly in the beat-up old upholstered chair, trying to relax enough to feel sleepy.

  Dawn would be breaking soon and Stalin would expect him back in the office to start the new day within a few hours.

  Get some sleep, Grigori told himself. Go to bed and try to sleep.

  But his hands reached out to the letter. His fingers were trembling as he tore the envelope apart and pulled out the single sheet of paper inside.

  It was a letter from some woman he had never heard of, Valentina Markova. She addressed Grigori as if they were old friends. Grigori's hands shook as he realized that someone, someone had gone to a good deal of trouble to invent this woman and this relationship. Why? What did they want? Who was deviling him so?

  With an effort of will he forced his hands to remain steady enough so he could read the letter clearly. He read it twice. Three times. It made no sense.

  Markova, whoever she was (if she even existed), was telling him about a toy that she had bought for her son. A toy sword. Nonsense! snorted Grigori. Where would anyone find a toy sword these days? There was no metal for toys of any kind, not even wood; everything went to the war effort. But the letter blithely described this toy sword with a secret compartment in its hilt.

  "If you take the magic jewel out of the secret compartment and hide it someplace such as a desk drawer," the letter said, "it will make your most secret dream come true. It will grant you your heart's most impossible desire. Truly it will. If you use the sword as described."

  Grigori had no idea how long he sat there staring at the letter. It was written in a woman's graceful flowing hand. It was a death warrant.

  At last he realized that sunlight was brightening the sky outside his one window. He lit another cigarette, got up from his chair and went into the kitchen, the letter clutched tightly in his fist. Standing at the sink, he burned the letter and its envelope, then washed their ashes down the drain.

  He no longer trembled. His innards were calm. He felt almost as if he were frozen into a block of ice. Yet he moved. He undressed, splashed water on his face, shaved, combed his hair, dressed in a clean shirt and his second suit.

  A death warrant, he knew. For both of us.

  As he walked through the cold early morning toward Red Square, the streets empty except for the old women sweeping with their straw brooms, his breath steaming in the crisp April air, Grigori heard the mysterious man at Tehran telling him to use the Sword when the time came. And the drunken Englishman from years earlier with his story about the warnings that Stalin ignored. In his mind's eye he saw once again Churchill handing Stalin the Sword of Stalingrad.

  Treacherous murdering Englishman. Smiling as he handed over the weapon of assassination. They want me to be a traitor. They want me to be the hand that strikes.

  The wall of the Kremlin loomed above him as he walked past Lenin's Tomb. The ornate spires of St. Basil's Cathedral rose into the milky morning sky, glinting in the newly risen sun. As he did every morning, Grigori presented his identification card at the heavily guarded gate.

  "A bit early, even for you. Comrade Gagarin," said the soldier who inspected his credentials.

  Grigori had no idea that he had ever seen this man before. The guards had all been faceless soldiers to him.

  How many have gone from this guard post into the front lines? he asked himself as he walked toward the Presidium building. How many faceless sons of Russia have been thrown into the meatgrinder?

  It all came back to him as he entered the office complex and started up the dark wooden stairs. The starvings and deportations before the war; his own parents, half his village dead of hunger while the soldiers carried the harvest to Moscow. The blunders when the Nazis first invaded, whole armies surrounded and butchered because Stalin would not let them retreat to safer positions.

  And Yuri. It all came down to Yuri. The only kin I have left in this world. Gagarin knew what Stalin was planning.

  He had already swallowed Poland. The plans in his desk would make him master of Eastern Europe up to the Elbe River. Then would come the move westward, to take the rest of Germany from the British and Americans, to sweep to the Channel and make all Europe a Soviet colony. Not for the betterment of the people. Not for the triumph of communism over the hated capitalists. Not even for the glory of Mother Russia.

  For Stalin. For his personal power. He would sacrifice anyone, kill millions, torture hundreds of millions, to satisfy his own insane greed for power.

  He will drag Yuri into his wars. Yuri will become a flier and be killed for the gratification of Stalin's lust.

  Grigori saw that future as clearly as he saw the details of Stalin's office: the desk with its hidden dais, the sawed-off chairs in front of it. And the Sword of Stalingrad hanging on the wall behind it.

  He knew that once he reached for the Sword, once he stepped behind the Great One's desk, his course was marked for death. He found himself standing beside the desk, knowing that at any moment Stalin might open the door and enter the office. He took a deep breath. He no longer trembled. He had made his decision.

  Swiftly he moved behind the desk and took the Sword from the wall. It was heavy in his hands. No surprise that Voroshilov had dropped it. Grigori wondered how warriors of old could wield such weapons without wearying their arms within minutes.

  Laying the Sword on Stalin's clear desktop, Grigori tried to unscrew the pommel. It did not open easily; he had to apply all the strength he could muster. His sweating hands kept slipping on the smooth rock crystal of the pommel. He pulled out his handkerchief and wrapped it around the crystal, which was etched with a gold Rose of England.

  Finally it gave slightly, then turned in his hand. He unscrewed it and removed the pommel. The hilt seemed solid inside, until he lifted the Sword almost straight up in the air.

  Then a small oblong cylinder slid out and thumped on the desktop hard enough to make Grigori jump. He glanced at both doors to the office, the Sword clutched in his two hands, its blade resting on his shoulder. Nothing. No one had heard. The cylinder sat on the desktop, dark and small and heavy-looking. There was a dent in the wood where it had struck.

  Feeling like a boy in a fairy tale who had just discovered the magic talisman, he put the Sword down again and unscrewed one end of the black cylinder. Inside it was a tiny wafer, almost as small as his own thumbnail.

  This is the magic weapon that will slay the ogre? he asked himself. He slid the wafer out of the lead cylinder. It felt warm in his hand. Opening the top drawer of Stalin's desk, he slipped the wafer deep into its farthest reaches, under the papers that marked the course of future conquests.

  His hands began to tremble again as he slid the empty lead cylinder back inside the Sword's hilt and screwed the pommel back in place. Then he lifted the Sword once more and hung it back on the wall.

  It's done, he told himself as he went to his own desk and sat down. He was perspiring. Whatever that thing is, I've done what they wanted me to do. Maybe it's the voice of God telling me to smite the tyrant. He laughed to himself, bitterly. He had not thought of God or religion since his parents had died. More likely than the voice of God, he thought, he had taken his instructions from British Intelligence.

  Stalin entered the office, coughing, shuffling in his bedroom slippers, and went to his desk without saying a word to Grigori. He opened the top desk drawer and began rummaging inside it. Grigori's heart stopped. What if he finds it? What if he notices the dent in the desktop? What if he was watching me?

  Stalin pulled out a thick sheaf of papers. "There are a few more names I want added to this list," he said, his voice thick with phlegm this morning.

  Grigori leaped up from his chair and hurried to his master's side. "Which list is that, comrade secretary?"

  "The names of people to be rounded up in Hungary, once the army has cleared the Nazis out," said Stalin. "Beria thinks that we should take all the university professors who are not members of t
he Party. I agree."

  "But that would be hundreds of men, wouldn't it, sir?"

  Stalin reached for his tobacco humidor. "What difference?" he snapped, with some irritation. "If we are to set up our own regimes in these countries we can't leave intellectuals there to act as centers of opposition."

  "No, I suppose not," said Grigori. He took the papers from Stalin's desk and retreated from the smell of the tobacco and the heat of the man's presence. Or was it the heat of the wafer in the desk drawer? Grigori half-thought he could see the thing through the thick wooden sides of the desk, burning away like a magic amulet of old.

  Chapter 11

  Paris, 4 April

  General Dwight David Eisenhower was angry; furious, in fact. His bald frog's face was splotched with red, he huffed and snorted and grumbled as he stood at the hotel window, looking out at the Tuileries gardens, still green and beautifully tended even after four years of Nazi occupation.

  "How could he?" Eisenhower muttered. He turned to face his closest aide and confidant. General Bedel Smith.

  "Beetle, how in hell could he do this to me?"

  Smith had spent the war placating British officers angered by the upstart Yanks and American officers riled by the know-it-all Brits. But now the commander of the whole kit and kaboodle was ready to kick one of their own in the backside. Hard.

  "Do you know what they call him?" Eisenhower snapped, his voice brittle, testy. "Jesus Christ Himself Lee. That's what they call him."

  Smith thought that J. C. H. Lee's family name was lustrous enough to stand on its own, but he kept his thoughts to himself. As usual.

  Lieutenant General John C. H. Lee was in charge of the support operations for Eisenhower's headquarters. Where Ike had planned to use Paris as an R&R center for his battle wearied troops, Lee had grandly filled every hotel in the city with his own rear-echelon officers and men. Eisenhower was blazing with fury once he found out.

  "I'll kick his butt all the way back to Kansas," Ike muttered.

  "Every GI in Europe knows that Paris has been turned into a soft deal for headquarters types. They're writing letters back home blaming me for this screw-up!"

  Beetle Smith knew how sensitive Ike was to criticism, especially criticism from the front-line troops that made its way back to the voters in the States. Ike always denied that he was interested in going into politics after the war, but somehow these days he seemed more concerned with those mothers and fathers and wives and sweethearts back home than with polishing off the Germans.

  "Let me talk to Lee," Smith suggested, walking slowly across the luxurious sitting room toward his boss at the window. "I think we can work this out without blowing it up into a major set-to."

  "He's got to go," Eisenhower said firmly, shaking his head.

  "He's got a lot of connections back home, you know. Might be better if you just let me work it out. We don't need to give the newspapers something like this to chew on."

  Eisenhower snorted, paced away from the window. The hotel had been used by the German generals and their staff's during the occupation. Now the victorious American generals and staff's filled it. That seemed normal enough to Smith, but Eisenhower was worried about how it would look back home. Not about Montgomery and his insistence on being the star of the show, not about Bradley's increasing difficulties keeping Patton quiet, not even about Churchill's hasty mission to Washington to try to get the Berlin decision reversed. Ike was worried about the home front.

  Smith figured that his boss needed some good news, something to take his mind off frying General Lee.

  "G-2 has gotten wind of something interesting," he said mildly, following Eisenhower step for step across the lavish oriental carpeting.

  Eisenhower said nothing, just kept pacing.

  "OSS is asking Washington for permission to meet with Goering."

  "What?" Eisenhower spun around.

  "Looks like Fatso might be trying to cut a deal for himself."

  "Where? When? Who's going to this meeting?"

  Smith shook his head. "Don't know. You know these cloak-and-dagger boys. They play everything close to the vest."

  "How'd G-2 hear about it?"

  "That's their business, Ike."

  "We've got to get one of our own people in on this,"

  Eisenhower said.

  "It's a little dicey," Smith answered. "If we admit that we know about it, OSS will know we've got a pipeline into their communications."

  Eisenhower locked his hands behind his back, his face in that same tight-lipped expression he had worn when he made the final decision to go on June sixth despite the marginal weather.

  "Beetle, we've got to work something out here. If Goering is willing to talk to the OSS, that could mean the surrender of the entire German front. We've got to have a man there, someone we know and trust, someone who can assess the military aspects of this situation."

  Eisenhower started pacing across the room again, but now he was rattling off names, running through a list of officers who might be able to get into this meeting with the number two man of Nazi Germany.

  Bedel Smith smiled to himself. He had gotten Ike off this silly business of J. C. H. Lee. Maybe, with luck, I'll even be able to get him to rethink his decision on Berlin, Smith hoped.

  London. 4 April Winston Churchill sat up in bed, alone in the little bedroom just off the war room deep below 10 Downing Street. His afternoon nap was a ritual that seldom was interrupted. Not that he slept each afternoon. Often there was too much to do, too many decisions to make. He used the siesta as an excuse to get away from all the others, away from the telephone and the messengers and the printed sheets of yellow paper that so often bore terrible tidings.

  So he sat in his silk pajamas, propped by a small mountain of pillows, the bedclothes covered with a scattering of reports. A weak whiskey and water stood on the night table beside him, and the lockbox to which only he and one other man had the key sat unopened beside him. He hated this set of rooms so deep underground. Hated the thick wooden beams that supported the ceilings, hated the artificial light, the lack of sunshine and fresh air. Yet he had run the war from these rooms and he had no intention of changing now, not when things were going so well.

  He read some of the reports for a while, sipping at his whiskey, trying to ignore the small red leather lockbox. The Americans were arranging a meeting with Goering, alone, without a British representative accompanying them.

  Churchill's first instinct was to reach for the telephone and call Washington, but he held himself in check. No sense adding another strain to the relationship with Franklin. Let them have this meeting by themselves. If anything comes of it, we will attend the later meetings.

  He started in on the other reports, but the lockbox seemed to beckon to him, to call with the softly irresistible voice of a siren. He could not concentrate on what he was reading; his eyes constantly wandered to the lockbox. With a sigh, he reached inside his pajama shirt for the key on the chain around his neck. He opened the box and adjusted his reading glasses on his nose.

  There was a single sheet of paper inside. It bore a hand-lettered message. No letterhead, no department code, nothing that could be traced to any person or branch of the government.

  The order has been given.

  That is all that the message said. The order has been given. There was no date on the message, either, but Churchill knew it was at least two days old. Nothing new has transpired in the past forty-eight hours. The order has been given, but has it been carried out?

  Relocking the leather-covered box, Churchill thought to himself, We'll know soon enough if it's been carried out.

  Soon enough.

  What if the entire scheme backfires? It could mean a complete rupture between us and the Russians. So be it. I will take the complete blame. It will be the end of my career, worse than the Dardanelles fiasco of the last war. I'll be known to history as a failed murderer. A blunderer.

  What would Franklin say? I don't mind a split with
the Russians, but would the Americans break with us? That would be catastrophic. Surely Franklin will see that we must stand against Stalin sooner or later. Franklin knows by now that his "Uncle Joe" cannot be trusted. But the rest of them—Marshall and Stimson and that little man who's Vice President now. They will be shocked. Angry. Furious at my perfidy.

  Churchill thought back to the early days of the war when Britain stood alone against the Nazis and he worked night and day to get America to come in and help. Franklin understood the need, but the rest of the country was deadset against becoming involved in what they thought of as England's war.

  With a shake of his head, Churchill tried to cast his mind forward. No sense mulling over the past. What will the future be like?

  Europe is shattered. Hardly a city still stands intact. The Red Army looms like a colossus over the eastern half, and if Eisenhower has his way the Soviets will control everything east of the Elbe: half of Germany, half of Austria, and all the nations of Central Europe and the Balkans. Perhaps even Greece. Vienna in their grasp. Prague. Budapest and all the other ancient capitals along the Danube. Stalin had promised to allow free elections in the nations under Soviet control but Churchill saw that the Soviet dictator had no intention of keeping his promise.

  He will turn Eastern Europe into a Soviet colony, Churchill told himself. And what's to stop him from moving into our half of Germany? From marching into France and Italy? Both those nations have huge Communist parties that will work tirelessly for Moscow.

  It will mean war. Sooner or later we shall have to draw a line and try to stop them. The British Empire no longer has the strength to do it; our fight against Hitler has bled us white. There's no one else except the Americans. The Yanks against the Russians.

  Churchill shuddered at the thought. Those same Americans who wanted to stay out of "England's war" will clamor for their boys to be brought home as soon as the fighting stops. The demand to demobilize their army will be irresistible; if Franklin tries to keep his army intact the Congress will destroy him.