The Relic

The Relic

Evelyn Anthony

By the Same Author

The Assassin

The Legend

The Malaspiga Exit

The Occupying Power

The Persian Ransom

The Poellenberg Inheritance

The Return

The Silver Falcon

The Tamarind Seed

The Grave of Truth

The Defector

The Avenue of the Dead

Albatross

The Company of Saints

Voices on the Wind

No Enemy But Time

The House of Vandekar

The Scarlet Thread

Historical Romances

Imperial Highness

Curse Not the King

Far Fly the Eagles

Anne Boleyn

Elizabeth

Charles the King

Clandara

The Heiress

Valentina

Anne of Austria

Victoria

To my dear friend

Blanche Kerman,

with love

Prologue

Commissar Gregor Lepkin was working at his desk. It was a handsome desk and it faced the big windows. His office was large and well equipped. He had status. He had been promoted. He was in favour. A beautiful little enamel clock with its matching calendar stood on the desk, flotsam rescued from the bloody tide of revolution. The rich translucence of the green enamel set off the delicate sparkle of diamonds. They gave Lepkin intense pleasure. He liked to wind the clock and change the date card on the calendar. He had done both that morning when he arrived: 20 May 1938. The Imperial cipher twinkled in the sunlight. The clock and the calendar had been looted from the Tsarist Palace of Tszarske Seloe. Years ago he had bought the beautiful little objects from a drunken soldier for a few roubles.

He worked hard; he was a man who prided himself on his attention to detail. Best of all, he had a sixth sense for trouble. On his last three visits to his mother in the devastated Ukraine, he'd discovered that the State security service in Kharkov was rotten with corruption. Old Partymen, grown fat and lazy, bloated like bluebottles on the corpses of Stalin's victims. Five million Ukrainians. Starved, imprisoned, hunted off their lands to die. The punitive forces had gone, their work was completed. The administration left behind had lined its pockets and neglected its duties. Lepkin had been compiling his report for months. It was not his province to question the methods Stalin used. He closed his eyes and hardened his heart in the name of the great cause he had followed since he was a student running from the Tsarist police. The
Cheka
, instrument of terror and repression, had been swept away. The Office of State Security had a new name, NKVD. A new hierarchy composed of dedicated men like himself, career officers, controlling an army of informers and armed enforcers. Even now the Revolution was threatened by foreign powers outside, and by traitors within.

Stalin was right; he had to be. The alternative was unthinkable. Lepkin dared not think it. He wasn't brave like his old friend Alexei Rakovsky. He refused to question, to doubt. Without his beliefs, he was lost; without the party and its leader, there was nothing but chaos. He held fast to that, like a man on a cliff face who knows that to look down is to fall. The little clock had a sweet silvery chime. It was like music. Eleven o'clock.

He got up and went to the window overlooking Dzerjhinsky Square. It was a bright spring day; sunshine struck gold off the cupolas of Saint Basil's Cathedral. A wonder of magnificance and imagination. It pleased his eye every time he looked across at the view. Tsar Ivan the terrible had blinded the architect so he could never build another like it. Lepkin thought sometimes that this was Russia: splendour and cruelty that went hand in hand like lovers. He saw the car sweep into the courtyard below and he sighed.

Memories made him sad. Memories of the old, close comradeship that bound him and Alexei Rakovsky together. The faith, the fierce idealism. How he had admired Alexei, how he had looked up to him! The dangers they shared in those early days! Rakovsky was the elder by two years, and by temperament he was the leader. Lepkin was cautious, Rakovsky gloried in risks.

Lepkin was proud to be Alexei Rakovsky's friend and follower. He had been caught delivering pamphlets and exiled to Gorki for two years. Lepkin was never arrested. He stayed on at university, quietly organizing.

Rakovsky joined the army when the war with Germany broke out. He was a Russian first and a Bolshevik second when the Motherland was threatened. Lepkin admired his patriotism, but remained in Moscow, co-ordinating workers' movements. When the Tsar's armies faced defeat in 1917, Rakovsky shot the Tsarist officers and led his regiment back to fight for the Revolution. He and Lepkin had stood together in the crowd that welcomed Lenin off the train when he returned from exile.

Now he watched the car draw up, the driver open the door for Rakovsky. Alexei had risen high in the Party. He had been a hero. He was Secretary to the Commissar of Internal Affairs. High office. Power and prestige. He had been chosen by Lenin. That, as Lepkin knew, was the reason for his downfall. All around them, men of the old Bolshevik tradition were toppling into the abyss.

He stepped forward as his door opened and he saw Rakovsky, his old friend. He held out his arms and embraced him.

‘Gregor Ivanovitch,' Rakovsky said, ‘It's so good to see you.'

‘Good to see you, Alexei,' was Lepkin's answer. Rakovsky managed a smile; it was a poor thing that sat uneasily on his mouth. It never reached the eyes. Lepkin knew that look. He'd seen it many times in the eyes of other men.

‘Sit down, my friend,' he suggested. ‘A cigarette?' Rakovsky took one, lit it and Lepkin noticed how his hand shook. ‘Vodka?' he asked.

‘Vodka,' Rakovsky repeated. ‘Why not? Congratulations on the new office. It goes with the rank, I suppose.'

‘I've got more room,' Lepkin said. ‘How is the family? It's ages since I've seen them, but I've been so busy with the new job.'

‘You asked about the family,' Rakovsky said. ‘That's why I've come.'

‘But why come here?' Lepkin frowned. He shook his head. Still rash, still taking risks.

‘Because I didn't want to compromise you,' Rakovsky answered. ‘I'm watched whatever I do, wherever I go. Your people are in my ministry, they're in my offices—everywhere. I've come to see you openly because no one can accuse me of having a secret meeting in the Lubianka. Or suspect you of plotting with an oppositionist.'

He paused. The cigarette had burned down to its cardboard holder. ‘My name is on the new list, Gregor. You knew that, didn't you? That's why you've stayed away from us. Not that I blame you.'

Lepkin said quietly, ‘That's not the reason, Alexei. But I do know about the list. I've seen your name.'

‘It's not just me, but my whole family.' Rakovsky's voice trembled. ‘You know what happens—you know what they'll do to them? They came for Rosengoltz's wife and daughter in the middle of the night and they were never seen again.'

He got up, a tall man grown thin, his clothes loose upon him.

‘Stalin's a madman, Gregor. A devil. I should have seen it; I should have done something about it. Now it's too late. I did nothing. I stood there and applauded while he slaughtered millions in the name of Lenin. And now it's my turn.'

He dropped back in to his chair. There was a cold sheen of sweat on his face.

Lepkin said quietly, ‘We're old friends, but you shouldn't say things like that. Not even to me.'

‘Why not? I'm already a dead man. But listen, listen, I've got something to show you. Something to offer you.'

‘No,' Lepkin raised his hand to stop him. ‘No bribes, Alexei. Don't offer me a bribe.'

Rakovsky came close; he leaned across the desk. He had one hand buried deep in his coat. ‘This isn't a bribe,' he said slowly. ‘I know money wouldn't buy you. But this hasn't a price. It could save your life one day.'

‘Then why can't it save yours?' Lepkin asked him.

‘Because Stalin is Stalin,' he said. ‘If I gave it to him he'd still kill me and send my family to the Gulag. And it would help to keep his foot on our necks for as long as he lived. I'm giving this to you, Gregor. In return, I want you to save Natalia and the boys.'

He brought out a parcel. It was roughly tied with a frayed cord. He untied the knots; it took time because his hands were shaking. The paper peeled back, splitting with age, and a yellowing cloth with embroidered edges fell away at his touch.

Lepkin couldn't help himself. He stared. He swore an old-fashioned blasphemous oath. ‘Holy Christ! It's the Relic!'

He reached out a hand, and Rakovsky said softly, ‘Take it. Hold it.'

Lepkin lifted it in his hands. The cross gleamed gold, the great red stones in the body flashed like huge drops of blood in the light. Lepkin shook his head. ‘Holy Christ,' he said again. ‘I don't believe it. St Vladimir's Cross. Alexei, where did you get it?'

Rakovsky said slowly, ‘The Patriarch at Kiev gave it to my mother in 1919. The Reds were winning. He knew they'd take the cross. My mother was only a poor woman, but she was devout.'

‘I remember your mother,' Lepkin muttered. An illiterate
matiushka
, with Tartar blood. A figure who served her menfolk and kept in the background. She had been entrusted with the Relic that could give victory to the Whites in the Civil War. Lenin had said publicly that he would grind the hated cross under the heel of his boot.

‘My father was ordered to take it from the cathedral,' Alexei went on. Serge Rakovsky was a fanatical Bolshevik, who had suffered the knout and exile to Siberia. Lepkin remembered him only too well. A terrifying man, brutalized by suffering and hate.

‘You know what they did to the Patriarch?' Rakovsky said. ‘They got nothing out of him. They shot the rest of the priests under the cathedral wall. My father was raging; he said to me, “If the Whites have got it, they'll hold Russia from the Urals to the Black Sea.” And all the time it was in a box under his bed, wrapped in my mother's petticoat. He would have killed her with his own hands if he'd known what she'd done.'

Lepkin laid the cross down on the desk. ‘How did you find it?' He felt shaken; he couldn't stop staring at the cross. The red stones were full of shifting light. It drew him like a magnet. He thought suddenly, this thing is in my blood. I'm afraid of it.

He heard Alexei say, ‘She called me when she was dying. She hated my father, but she loved me. She gave me the cross; and she made me swear on her soul's salvation that I wouldn't give it up. I swore, Gregor. I swore to please her and to let her die in peace. She said to me, “There's goodness in you, my son. One day your soul will be saved because of this.” But there's no chance of that.'

He poured himself another vodka, and drank it down. He said, ‘It fascinates you, doesn't it? I was the same. I kept looking at it. In the end it troubled me, so I wrapped it up and hid it under the floor in my house. I haven't looked at it for many years, till I knew my name was on the death list. I want you to have it, Gregor. Stalin may not last forever. Then it could be your salvation. And Russia's.'

Slowly, Lepkin re-made the parcel, the paper splitting and the string ravelling up. His hands were unsteady now. He put it in a drawer, closed it and turned the key.

He said, ‘I can save Natalia and the boys.'

‘And you will?' Rakovsky asked.

‘I will. I promise you. I'll get them out of Moscow, to my mother. They'll be safe there.'

Rakovsky nodded. He looked old, and drawn. He took a deep breath that came out as a deeper sigh. ‘I'm glad. I know they'll be safe with you. I can try to be calm now. Do you know how long I've got. Is there a date fixed?'

‘I wouldn't know,' Lepkin said. ‘But it won't be long. There are two Politburo members and eight army commanders on that list.'

‘They'll all be murdered,' Alexei said. ‘They'll be drugged and tormented till they get up and accuse themselves and ask for death. That's what I fear most, Gregor. I'm afraid of what they'll do to make a broken puppet out of me.'

Lepkin came close. He laid an arm around his shoulder. He looked in to his old friend's face and said, ‘Don't be afraid, Alexei. I'm not going to let that happen.'