The Relic (11 page)

She paused then. She made a great effort not to lose control. He was challenging her in a way he never had before. Not with the petulance of the weak; not striking a feeble blow that she could ward off easily. She was used to his gestures of defiance, tokens of independence that meant nothing.

‘What's the matter with you? Why are you suddenly saying all this?'

‘Because I'm sick of being put on display. Here's Irina with that poor dummy of a husband … Wasn't he something to do with the human rights movement in Russia? Never sober. Must have had a hard time in prison. Only it wasn't prison, Irina. It was you! I wouldn't make me go if I were you.'

And then he said, from the comfort of his armchair, ‘What kind of a hard day
did
you have? Found some poor devil to set up for those bastards back home?'

She snapped. She stood facing him and shouted. She was shaking with anger.

‘I'll tell you. I'll tell you about the poor devil! I spent my day listening to how he helped to rape and murder a Russian woman and her child in the war. How he held her down while she was sodomized by another brute. A Ukrainian, one of the scum who joined the Germans. Ukrainians like you! He robbed her and he's got the loot out on display in his nice big mansion! He's going to pay for it. And I'm going to see that he does!'

She rushed into the bedroom and slammed the door. She stripped off her clothes, changed into a silk dress, put on earrings and a necklace. She took deep breaths, urging herself to be calm. She dialled the Schmidt's number and said she'd be a little late. And Dimitri wasn't too well, so she was afraid he might not make it.

She lit a cigarette and walked out to face him. He was reading. There was a glass full of cognac beside him.

‘I'm going,' she said. ‘I made up some excuse for you. I'm sorry I shouted. Forget what I said. It's nothing to do with you anyway. It's my problem. Try not to drink too much.'

‘Have a lovely evening,' he said, putting the book down.

She turned her back on him and left the apartment.

Volkov waited. He went and watched from the window till he saw her car edge out from the garage, its headlights raking the road, then turn and speed away. He took the glass of brandy in to the kitchen and poured it down the sink.

Chapter 2

‘Good morning, Sister Duval.' Irina had changed into her white coat. She never wore it with ordinary patients. It intimidated them. She liked to project herself more as a friend than a doctor.

‘Good morning,' the sister said. Her tone was hostile. ‘Here are the night staff's notes on Monsieur Brückner. As you instructed, we gave no sedatives. He became seriously agitated. We had to call in male nurses to restrain him. I couldn't take the responsibility for what was happening. At six a.m. I called in Doctor Minden and he sedated the patient.'

She was a very experienced psychiatric nurse and Doctor Volkov's callousness verged on deliberate cruelty. The unfortunate man had suffered such violent panic attacks that he tried to throw himself out of the window. She saw the Russian flush angrily.

‘Doctor Minden had no right to interfere with my treatment programme,' she snapped. ‘I shall take this up with him. You should have called me, Sister!'

The sister said, ‘I'm sorry', in a chilly voice.

‘I'll see my patient now,' Irina said. ‘We're not to be disturbed.'

He was unconscious; his pallor was frightening and he'd bitten through his lower lip. He was strapped down to his bed and as Irina stood watching him he stirred, the eyelids fluttered open for a second and then closed tight. There was nothing she could do till the sedative wore off. She had cancelled all other appointments. The morning was free.

She'd slept very badly. She felt tired and low spirited. And frustrated because Brückner was out of her reach for some hours.

Volkov had been asleep when she came home. The dinner with the Schmidts hadn't been a success. It was her fault; she had been tense and ill at ease. Volkov worried her. She sensed he was pretending to be asleep when she got in to bed. How many times had she reached out to him, trying to rouse the passion they used to share? And been rejected. In the end she had subdued her body as she disciplined her emotions.

Sex had brought them together, bound them through the difficult and dangerous years when he was actively opposing the authorities. Sex and a strong maternal instinct made her love him. There was no child at her breast, but a vulnerable, misguided husband who was doomed unless she took control. They might still have come together in spite of what she had done. If it hadn't been for Müller.

She sat in her bright office and thought of Müller coming to the apartment that day. He often visited her in the early months, talking as if the passive figure in the background wasn't there. It hadn't mattered what he said. Dimitri Volkov was in a fog of mental apathy and confusion. Müller had said to her once, ‘How can you live with him like that? Why don't you just keep him in the clinic?' and shrugged her angry retort aside. And then, that fatal day when he came early. She hadn't time to get Volkov out of the room. He had been off drugs for three months. Müller in high spirits, boasting, ‘I've got a client for you Irina. French diplomat. Likes little boys. Doesn't fancy anything over six years old. He's got a big job in the French Foreign Ministry. Centre will love this one!' And he'd laughed out loud, talking through her, ignoring her frantic attempts to stop him.

It had been too late. He had seen the signals too late. He had stared at Dimitri Volkov and grimaced. ‘What's the matter? He wouldn't know if it was Christmas or Easter.'

That was how Volkov had discovered the real implications of his release. His wife had been put in place as a Soviet agent. Centre was Moscow Centre, the heart of Soviet Intelligence. They had financed the clinic and prepared the set-up in Geneva especially to make use of her talent. A unique talent, honed and polished in the Lenin Institute, where brainwashing was a fine art.

Müller had brazened it out. He'd tried to bluff and bully his way out of his terrible mistake, but Volkov wouldn't be intimidated. He was physically frail, but mentally clear. He had got up and faced them both. He'd said to Müller, ‘You do it for money. You'd have sold Christ for dollars,' and turned his back on the German.

‘You fool,' Irina remembered shouting in desperation at him. ‘You big mouth! Get out! Get out of here!'

She sat for a while, the inevitable cigarette burning out in the ashtray.

She had tried to explain, to make excuses, but he wouldn't listen. His contempt shrivelled them on her tongue. She had burst into tears. He was so soft-hearted, he hated anyone to cry. But he recoiled in disgust when she came near him. He had actually held up his hands as if to ward off something evil.

‘If I'd know what you were, I'd have killed myself in the Lubianka.'

He'd locked himself in their room and drunk himself insensible. He hadn't denounced her. Irina had waited, gambling that he wouldn't turn her in.

For the next four years he had lived in his private hell, and his silence had condemned her to live in it with him.

But last night he had been different. It wasn't brandy bravado that spoke. She knew that too well. She was reminded of the man she had seen fight the invincible power of the KGB and refuse to back away. For only a moment, hardly discernable, except to a trained eye, the old Dimitri Volkov had shown himself.

Her telephone rang. She was startled back in to the present. It was the ward sister.

‘Your patient, Monsieur Brückner, is awake.'

‘Thank you,' Irinia said. ‘I'll come right away.'

Brückner was sitting up in a chair. He was gaunt and hollow-eyed; his voice trembled. Irina sat behind him, a disembodied voice asking questions through the drugged haze that was his mind.

‘Why did you spare the two children, Adolph?'

‘I didn't want Boris to kill them.'

‘That was a good thing you did. A kind thing. I'm proud of you for doing that. Did Boris like killing people?'

‘He didn't care. If it suited him, he'd kill them.'

‘Were you together for long?'

‘About a year. We were a team. We fought at Kiev together. He was decorated. He only laughed. “They can stuff the Iron Cross,” he said. “The one I've got is going to make me rich!”'

‘The cross he stole from the woman?'

‘Yes. He was always talking about it. He was going to sell it to some Jew. That's why he joined the Einsatz Commando.'

‘The SS extermination squad?'

‘They were wiping out all the Jews they could find. He thought he'd find a rich one and sell him the cross for a good price. Then shoot him. He thought it was a great joke.'

‘Did you join with him?' the quiet voice asked him.

‘No. I was a soldier. They were murderers. The Ukrainians hated the Jews as much as we did. A lot of them joined the SS. We got drunk together the night before Boris left. He got the cross out and showed it to me. He kissed it. “There's my beauty,” he said. “With what I'll get for it, I'll live like a prince! All the girls I want, all the drink. You'll make a few roubles out of that clock, old lad. But I'm going to be rich!”'

‘When did you see him again?'

‘I never saw him. I was wounded and sent back home. I was put on light duties. My leg was very bad.'

‘So you never found out what happened to him?' She went on probing.

‘No. I didn't even think about him. I wanted to forget. I never told anyone about what it was like. I kept the clock and the calendar. I didn't want to sell them. They were beautiful. I wanted to make money, so I could have more things like them.'

‘And you did,' she encouraged him. ‘You worked hard after the war. You made a lot of money and became a powerful man, didn't you, Adolph? You're well respected. You have a lovely wife and three nice children. And a fine art collection. So long as nobody knows how it started.'

She had inserted the point of the knife. He didn't seem to notice.

‘That's the irony,' he muttered. ‘If it wasn't for the desk set I wouldn't have got interested in Russian art. I'll never forget the day I saw it. I couldn't believe it. There it was. Boris's cross! The medieval treasure lost during the Revolution.'

She said sharply, ‘What was lost? What are you talking about?'

‘The holy Cross of St Vladimir. Priceless. Thirteenth-century gold and jewels. It was the same. It was the cross Boris stole. And he'd taken it. Without knowing what he'd got. I could have wept thinking what I'd missed. I made enquiries. I tried to find it. I'd have paid anything.'

‘What did you find out?'

‘Someone had taken it to a French jeweller after the war and tried to sell it. The jeweller said the jewels weren't rubies. They were spinels. He offered very little, so the man didn't sell.'

‘Was the man Boris?'

‘No way of knowing. The jeweller was vague. He said the man was a foreigner. He wouldn't part with the cross. If that fool had known what it was, he'd have given him the money!' Brückner wiped the saliva from his mouth. ‘To think of it—what a treasure I missed! With such a history! I found out all about it. It's in all the reference books. The Bolsheviks never found it. It disappeared from the cathedral at Kiev. The White armies would have beaten the Reds if they'd got that cross.'

Irina didn't move, she didn't interrupt. He was ranting now, venting his frustration.

‘When I think of that marvellous treasure being hawked around for sale … I went back to that idiot, the jeweller who turned it down. I kept asking him questions. What did the man look like? Couldn't he try and describe him? He couldn't. I told him what Boris looked like. He didn't think it was the same man. I could have strangled him. He was my only link with the cross. I put detectives on it; they found nothing. I even advertised in the art magazines. I was careful, very careful.' He looked sly. ‘I didn't want the Russians on my track if they knew what I was looking for—just think what it would mean if it turned up now? Just think—that'd put Gorbachev in trouble! There'd be a blood bath.' He cackled wildly. He was becoming very agitated.

Irina interrupted him. ‘You were mistaken,' she said firmly. ‘It wasn't a treasure. The jeweller would have known. You've imagined it, Adolph. It's not what you think.'

He croaked at her, trying to raise his voice. ‘I held it. I counted the stones. It's unique! There's not another cross like it in the world. Don't you know I'm an expert on that period? Just because of that cross. I've spent all these years thinking about it, wondering how it got in to that house. Like the Fabergé.' Sweat was running down his face. ‘If Boris had known they weren't rubies, he'd have taken that instead.'

He leaned back exhausted. ‘He couldn't have sold it to a Jew. All the Jews were killed. Perhaps he was killed. Perhaps it was stolen from him. I'll never know. I'll never find it now.'

‘No,' Irina said quietly. ‘You never will. But you couldn't have shown it to anyone, could you? You couldn't have risked people finding out you'd stolen it from a woman you'd raped during the Russian campaign. Fabergé pieces were on sale. You could lie about them. But not a holy Russian cross. The only one in the world. People would have found out you were a thief and a rapist who'd let a woman and child be butchered in cold blood. No wonder you got headaches, living with a crime like that for all these years. No wonder you were driving yourself mad. You wanted to kill yourself last night, didn't you?'

He had sunk again, and his eyes were full of tears.

‘Yes.' It was a mumble.

‘And you will kill yourself if I don't help you. You know you can trust me, don't you?'

‘Yes.'