Mightier Than the Sword (The Clifton Chronicles 5)

The chosen one couldn’t have appeared at first glance to be a less likely leader, even of this disparate group. He must have been around sixty, and not an inch over five foot four, bald and wearing a three-piece suit, white shirt, and a striped tie that Giles guessed represented his club or his old school. You would have passed him in the street without giving him a first look. But the moment he opened his mouth, everyone understood why he had been selected. He spoke with a quiet authority, and Giles wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that he was a solicitor, a schoolmaster, or even a senior civil servant.

“Mr. Foreman,” the judge said, leaning forward, “have you reached a verdict on which you are all agreed?”

“No, my lady,” he replied in a calm, measured voice. “But I felt we ought to inform you of the impasse we have reached, in the hope you might advise us what we should do next.”

“I will certainly try,” said Mrs. Justice Lane, as if she was dealing with a trusted colleague.

“We have taken the vote a number of times, and on each occasion it has resulted in an eight-to-four deadlock. We were not certain if there was any purpose in us continuing.”

“I wouldn’t want you to give up at this early stage,” said the judge. “Considerable time, effort, and expense has been invested in this trial, and the least any of us can do is to be absolutely sure we have made every effort to reach a verdict. If you think it might help, I would be willing to accept a majority verdict of ten to two, but nothing less will be acceptable.”

“Then we will try again, my lady,” said the foreman and, without another word, he led his little band back out of the court, with the bailiff bringing up the rear of an exclusive club that no one else would be invited to join.

Once the door had closed behind them, a babble of chattering broke out, even before the judge had made her exit.

“Who’s got eight, and who’s got four?” was Virginia’s first question.

“You have the eight,” said Sir Edward, “and I can identify almost every one of them.”

“How can you be so sure?”

“Two reasons. While the foreman was speaking to the judge, I kept my eyes on the jury, and the majority of them were looking at you. Juries, in my experience, don’t look at the loser.”

“And the other reason?”

“Take a look at Trelford and you’ll see an unhappy man, because he will have carried out the same exercise.”

“Who got the majority?” asked Giles.

“Never easy to try to second-guess a jury,” said Trelford, touching the envelope in his inside pocket, although he was fairly sure it wasn’t his client who needed the extra two votes to win the action. So perhaps the time had come to allow Mrs. Clifton to see the major’s letter, and decide if she wanted it read out in court.

He would advise her to do so if she still hoped to win the case, but having come to know the lady over the past few months, he would not have been surprised if she thought otherwise.

* * *

While Stalin was serving his first prison sentence in 1902 at the age of twenty-three, like many ambitious party members, he decided to learn German, so he could read Karl Marx in the original—but he only ended up with a cursory knowledge of the language. During his time in jail, he formed a self-appointed political committee of murderers and thugs who ruled over the other prisoners. Anyone who disobeyed him was beaten into submission. Soon, even the guards became intimidated by him, and were probably relieved when he escaped. He once told me that he’d never murdered anyone, possibly true, because he only had to hint, drop a name, and that person was never heard of again.

The most damning thing I learned about Stalin during my time at the Kremlin, and never repeated, even to my wife, for fear it would compromise her, was that when he was a young man and had been exiled to Kuneika in Siberia, he fathered two children by a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Lidia Pereprygina, and once he left Kuneika, he not only never returned, but never contacted them again.

Harry unfastened his seat belt and walked up and down the length of the cabin as he thought about the next chapter. He began writing again the moment he returned to his seat.

Another incident that Stalin regularly regaled us with was his claim that he carried out a series of bank robberies all over the country to raise funds for Lenin in support of the revolution. This certainly accounted for his rapid promotion, although Stalin yearned to be a politician, and not simply thought of as a Caucasian bandit. When Stalin told his friend Comrade Leonov of his ambitions, he just smiled and said, “You can’t carry out a revolution wearing silk gloves.” Stalin nodded to one of his thugs, who followed Leonov out of the room. Leonov was never seen again.

“We are no longer in Russian airspace, Mr. Clifton,” said the steward.

“Thank you,” said Harry.

Stalin’s arrogance and insecurity reached the most farcical proportions when the great motion picture director, Sergei Eisenstein, was chosen to make a film called “October,” to be shown at the Bolshoi Theatre t

o mark the tenth anniversary of the October Revolution. Stalin turned up the day before the first screening and, after seeing the film, ordered Eisenstein to remove any reference to Trotsky, the man acknowledged by the Bolshevik Party as the genius behind the October coup, but now regarded by Stalin as his most dangerous rival. When the film was screened for the general public the following day, there was no mention of Trotsky from beginning to end, because he’d been consigned to the cutting-room floor. Pravda described the film as a masterpiece, and made no mention of the missing Trotsky. The paper’s previous editor, Sergei Peresky, was among those who had disappeared overnight for criticizing Stalin.

“We’ve run out of paper,” said the steward.

“How far are we from Stockholm?” asked Harry.

“About another hour, sir.” He hesitated. “I have one other source you might consider.”

“I’ll consider anything, rather than lose an hour.”