Mightier Than the Sword (The Clifton Chronicles 5)

“We have two varieties,” said the steward. “First class or economy, but I think economy will serve your purpose better—a heavier texture and less absorbent.”

Both of them giggled like schoolboys as the steward produced a roll in one hand and a box in the other. Henry took his advice and chose economy.

“By the way, sir, I love your books.”

“This isn’t my book,” said Harry, as he continued writing.

Another persistent rumor his enemies spread was that during his youth Stalin was a double agent, working for the tsar’s secret police at the same time as being one of Lenin’s most trusted lieutenants. When Stalin’s enemies found out about his regular meetings with the tsar’s secret police, he simply claimed he was turning them into double agents so they could work for the revolutionaries, and whenever anyone reported him, they mysteriously disappeared soon afterward. So no one could ever be sure which side Stalin was working for; one cynic suggested whichever side looked like winning. Someone else who was never seen or heard of again.

Harry paused as he tried to remember the opening line of the next chapter.

By now, you will be asking yourself if I feared for my own life. No, because I was like wallpaper: I simply blended into the background, so no one ever noticed me. Very few of Stalin’s inner circle even knew my name. No one ever sought my opinion on anything, let alone my support. I was an apparatchik, a junior civil servant of no significance, and had I been replaced by a different colored wallpaper, I would have been forgotten within the hour.

I had been working at the Kremlin for just over a year when I first thought about writing a memoir of the man no one spoke of unless it was in reverential tones—even behind his back. But it was another year before I summoned up the courage to write the first page. Three years later, as my confidence grew, whenever I returned to my little flat each evening I would write a page, perhaps two, about what had taken place that day. And before going to bed, like an actor, I would learn the newly minted script off by heart, and then destroy it.

So frightened was I of being caught that Yelena would sit by the window whenever I was writing, just in case anyone paid an unexpected visit. If that had happened, I was ready to throw the page I was working on into the fire. But no one ever did visit, because no one considered me a threat to anything or anybody.

“Please fasten your seat belts, as we will be landing in Stockholm in a few minutes’ time.”

“Can I stay on the plane?” asked Harry.

“I’m afraid not, sir, but we have a first-class lounge where they serve breakfast, and where I’m sure you’ll find an endless supply of paper.”

Harry was the first off the plane and within minutes had settled down at a table in the first-class lounge with a black coffee, several varieties of biscuits, and reams of typing paper. He must have been the only passenger who was delighted to learn that the flight had been delayed because of a mechanical fault.

Yakov Bulgukov, the Mayor of Romanovskaya, faced a potentially dangerous situation when he decided to build a massive image of Stalin, twice life-size, using convicts from a nearby prison to build the statue, which would be erected on the banks of the Volga-Don Canal. The mayor was horrified when he turned up for work each morning to find his leader’s head covered in bird droppings. Bulgukov came up with a drastic solution. He ordered that a constant electric current should be run through the statue’s head. A junior official was given the job of removing the little corpses every morning before the sun rose.

Harry gathered his thoughts before he began the fourth chapter.

Stalin had a hand-picked cadre of security guards led by General Nikolai Sidorovich Vlasik, whom he trusted with his life. He needed to, because he’d made so many enemies during the purges, when he’d eliminated anyone and everyone he considered to be a possible rival, at that time or in the future. I lost count of how many people were in favor one day and disappeared the next. If a member of his inner circle so much as hinted that someone was plotting against him, that person was never seen or heard of again. Stalin didn’t believe in early retirement or a pension plan. He once told me that if you kill one person, you’re a murderer; if you kill thousands, it becomes a mere statistic.

Stalin boasted that his personal security protection was in a different class to anything the president of the United States was getting from the American Secret Service, and that wasn’t hard to believe. When he left the Kremlin for his dacha each evening, and when he returned to the Kremlin the following morning, Vlasik was always by his side ready to take an assassin’s bullet, although the nine-kilometer route was permanently patrolled by three thousand armed agents, and his bulletproof Zil limousine rarely traveled at less than eighty miles an hour.

Harry was on page 79 of the manuscript when all passengers on the flight to London were requested to reboard the plane, by which time Stalin saw himself as something of a cross between Henry VIII and Catherine the Great. Harry walked up to the check-in counter.

“Would it be possible to change my flight to a later one?”

“Yes, of course, sir. We have one going via Amsterdam in two hours’ time, but I’m afraid there’s no connecting flight to London for another four hours.”

“Perfect.”

46

GILES READ William Warwick’s signed confession on the front page of the Times the following morning and couldn’t stop laughing.

How could they have failed to notice that it wasn’t Harry’s signature? He could only assume that the Russians were in such a hurry to get the confession into the hands of the international press before he arrived back in England that they’d made a cock-up. It had happened often enough in the Foreign Office when Giles was a minister, but it rarely got beyond the press department. Mind you, when Churchill was visiting America just after the war he asked the embassy to set up a meeting with the distinguished philosopher Isaiah Berlin, and ended up having tea with Irving Berlin.

Photographs of Harry dominated most of the morning papers, while leaders and opinion pieces about the popular author and his long-standing battle to have Anatoly Babakov released from prison filled many column inches on the inside pages.

The cartoonists had a field day, depicting Harry as either George slaying the dragon or David felling Goliath. But Giles’s favorite was one in the Daily Express of Harry fencing with a pen against a bear with a broken sword. The caption read: Mightier than the Sword.

Giles was still laughing when he read William Warwick’s confession for a second time. He assumed heads would be rolling, perhaps literally, in Russia.

“What’s so funny?” asked Emma when she joined him for breakfast, still looking as if she could have done with a good night’s sleep.

“Harry’s done more to embarrass the Russians in one day than the Foreign Office could manage in a year. And there’s even better news. Just look at the Telegraph’s headline.” He held the paper up so she could read it.

WILLIAM WARWICK ADMITS TO BEING A SPY.