“Indeed so. Your predecessor, the Poisonous Dwarf, made little progress in this regard. I am hoping you will do better.”
The Poisonous Dwarf, otherwise known as Nikolas Yezhov, had been eased aside by Stalin a few months earlier and had entered that black limbo land of disfavour, which seldom ended happily.
“I am just familiarising myself with the papers, Comrade Stalin.”
“You may think, Lavrentiy, that in the scheme of things the loss of this gold might be of little account. When you consider that the bullion equivalent of at least five hundred million dollars ended up in our coffers, the loss of five or ten million dollars here or there might seem irrelevant. That, Lavrentiy Pavlovich, is not how I view things.”
“No, sir. The theft of such an amount cannot be ignored.”
“I want it back. Is that clear? And I want those responsible to pay the penalty – a particularly unpleasant penalty, understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Stalin sucked on his pipe and nodded. “Very good. And Lavrentiy?”
Beria could feel a trickle of sweat running down the back of his neck into his collar. “Sir?”
“People always seem to let me down in the end. You won’t, will you?”
“No, sir.”
The wind whistled outside as Beria closed the door.
Chapter 1
Sunday, September 1, 1940
In his dream he was lying on a bed. There was someone lying next to him. He wasn’t sure who it was. It might be his wife. His dead wife. Or it might be someone else. He was in a room with white walls. The ceiling was white too or was it pale blue? There was a buzzing sound. Flies were walking on or flying to the ceiling. Their droning noise was soothing. A window was open somewhere and a pleasant warm breeze was blowing over his face. He felt something on his arm. A little pressure and then his arm was being shaken.
“Come on, Frank.” He could hear a soft female voice. A voice with an accent. An attractive accent, he thought. “Come on, Frank, we’ll miss the train.” His eyes slowly opened to reveal a clear blue sky above. Someone was giggling and stroking his shoulder. “Oh, Frank.”
He came fully to his senses and the soft comfort of the mattress in his dream gave way to the uncomfortable reality of Brighton’s pebbled beach. He could still hear the droning noise above him, but it was the drone of aeroplanes rather than insects, very high above. He wasn’t as well up on aircraft recognition as his sergeant, but he thought that they were Hurricanes and, as some of the planes were engaged in an elaborate dance around each other, he presumed he was seeing Messerschmitts as well. Suddenly, one of the fighters banked away from the others and started to drop through the sky. A trail of smoke followed it as its descent picked up pace. He sat up and watched in fascination as the aircraft pursued its deadly downward spiral into the sea. It disappeared some way out from the beach and he saw no parachute. “Let’s hope that’s one of theirs, eh, Sonia?” He rubbed the sleep from his eyes before rising stiffly to his feet.