Mightier Than the Sword (The Clifton Chronicles 5)

Finally, the door behind the platform opened so the principal actors could make their entrance: three of them, one woman and two men, who took their seats behind the long table on the center of the stage.

The woman, who must have been about sixty and had fine gray hair tightly pinned up in a bun, could have been a retired headmistress. Harry even wondered if this had once been her classroom. She was clearly the most senior person present because everyone else in the room was looking in her direction. She opened the file in front of her and began to read out loud. Harry silently thanked his Russian tutor for the hours she’d spent making him read the Russian classics before getting him to translate whole chapters into English.

“The prisoner”—Harry had to assume she was referring to him, although she had not once acknowledged his presence “recently entered the Soviet Union illegally”—Harry would have liked to take notes, but he hadn’t been supplied with a pen or paper so he would have to rely on his memory, assuming he would even be given the chance to defend himself—“with the sole purpose of breaking the law.” She turned to the jury and did not smile. “You, comrades, have been selected to be the arbiters of whether the prisoner is guilty or not. Witnesses will come forward to assist you in making that judgement.”

“Mr. Kosanov,” she said, turning to face counsel, “you may now present the State’s case.”

The older of the two men seated on the front bench rose slowly to his feet.

“Comrade commissioner, this is a straightforward case that should not trouble the jury for any length of time. The prisoner is a well-known enemy of the State, and this is not his first offense.”

Harry couldn’t wait to hear what his first offense had been. He soon found out.

“The prisoner visited Moscow some five years ago as a guest of our country and took cynical advantage of his privileged status. He used the opening speech at an international conference to mount a campaign for the release of a self-confessed criminal who had previously pleaded guilty to seven offenses against the State. Anatoly Babakov will be well known to you, comrade commissioner, as the author of a book about our revered leader, Comra

de Chairman Stalin, for which he was charged with seditious libel and sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor.

“The prisoner repeated these libels despite the fact that it was pointed out to him on more than one occasion that he was breaking the law”—Harry couldn’t recall that, unless the scantily dressed young woman who’d visited him in his hotel room in the middle of the night was meant to have delivered the message, along with the bottle of champagne—“but for the sake of international relations, and to demonstrate our magnanimity, we allowed him to return to the West, where this kind of libel and slander is part of everyday life. We sometimes wonder if the British remember we were their allies during the last war and that our leader at the time was none other than Comrade Stalin.

“Earlier this year, the prisoner traveled to the United States for the sole purpose of making contact with Babakov’s wife, who defected to the West days before her husband was arrested. It was the traitor, Yelena Babakov, who told the prisoner where she had hidden a copy of her husband’s seditious book. Armed with this information, the prisoner returned to the Soviet Union to complete his mission: locate the book, smuggle it back to the West, and have it published.

“You may ask, comrade commissioner, why the prisoner was willing to involve himself in such a risky venture. The answer is quite simple. Greed. He hoped to make a vast fortune for himself and Mrs. Babakov by peddling these libels to whoever would publish them, even though he knew the book was pure invention from beginning to end, and written by a man who’d only met our revered former leader on one occasion when he was a student.

“But thanks to some brilliant detective work carried out by Colonel Marinkin, the prisoner was arrested while trying to escape from Leningrad with a copy of Babakov’s book in his overnight bag. In order that the court can fully understand the lengths to which this criminal was willing to go to undermine the State, I will call my first witness, Comrade Colonel Vitaly Marinkin.”

38

EMMA THOUGHT her legs would give way as she walked the short distance to the witness box. When the clerk of the court handed her a Bible, everyone could see her hands were shaking, and then she heard her voice.

“I swear by Almighty God that the evidence I give shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.”

“Would you please state your name for the record,” said Mr. Trelford.

“Emma Grace Clifton.”

“And your occupation?”

“I am chairman of the Barrington Shipping Company.”

“And how long have you been chairman of that distinguished company?”

“For the past eleven years.”

Emma could see Mr. Trelford’s head jerking from right to left, and then she recalled his words, “Listen to my questions carefully, but always address your answers to the jury.”

“Are you married, Mrs. Clifton?”

“Yes,” said Emma, turning to the jury, “for nearly twenty-five years.”

Mr. Trelford would have liked her to add, “My husband Harry, our son Sebastian, and my brother Giles are all present in the court.” She could then turn to face them and the jury would realize they were a happy and united family. But Harry wasn’t there, in fact Emma didn’t even know where he was, so she continued to look at the jury. Mr. Trelford moved quickly on. “Can you please tell the court when you first met Lady Virginia Fenwick?”

“Yes,” said Emma, returning to her script, “my brother Giles…” This time she did look across at him, and like an old pro, he smiled first at his sister and then at the jury. “My brother Giles,” she repeated, “invited my husband Harry and myself to dinner to meet the woman he’d just become engaged to.”

“And what was your first impression of Lady Virginia?”

“Stunning. The kind of beauty you normally associate only with film stars or glamorous models. It quickly became clear to me that Giles was totally infatuated with her.”

“And did you, in time, become friends?”