Three strapping young men, athletes all, entered the ante-chamber wearing flamboyant cream, braided, golden uniforms that wouldn’t have been out of place in an Offenbach opera. One even had a golden cloak. In their wake shuffled Lerner, the tailor, his nimble white-tipped fingers a-twitch with tape measure and chalk.
‘Very smart,’ chuckled Beria.
‘Stand over there,’ said Poskrebyshev to the youths. He then lifted one of his many phones and said: ‘Comrade Stalin, Lerner’s here. The uniforms.’
Sometimes life was just too absurd, Beria reflected as the double doors opened and Stalin emerged, drawn in the face, his grey hair standing on end as if razor cut. He was wearing a plain tunic with just his marshal’s shoulderboards and a single Order of Lenin.
‘Who are they?’ he asked gruffly, looking at the youths. ‘What are these peacocks doing here?’ The three models saluted. Lerner bowed.
‘The generalissimo’s uniforms for your approval, Comrade Stalin,’ said Poskrebyshev. ‘Lerner’s here to show you the finer details.’
Lerner, who’d started work sewing the Tsar’s uniforms, bowed again.
‘Comrade Stalin is grateful to you, Lerner,’ Stalin said, always polite to ‘service workers’. But to Beria and Poskrebyshev, he snarled: ‘Whose idea was this? Yours, Lavrenti? Well, they’re not right for me. I need something more modest. Lerner, do you want me to look like a doorman or a bandmaster?’ He turned and went back into his office.
‘You’re designing for Comrade Stalin not Hermann Göring!’ hissed Beria to Lerner. ‘It’s back to the drawing-board!’
Lerner wrung his hands and backed away into the ante-chamber.
As Poskrebyshev closed the doors behind him, Beria entered Stalin’s spacious room with its ruffled white blinds covering most of the windows. On the far wall were portraits of Marx and Lenin and the latter’s death mask. A long table with twenty seats, each with notebooks and ink blotters, filled the centre. At the far end was a desk with an extension holding about eight Bakelite telephones and a small table at right angles that formed a T-shape. The desk was very neat with scarcely anything on it except a blotter, an ashtray with a pipe that contained a lit cigarette smoking in its bowl, and a glass of steaming tea. Behind was a grey safe as large as a man and a small door whence Stalin now appeared, bearing a bottle of Armenian cognac. He sat down at the desk, poured two teaspoons of the spirit into the tea which he stirred and then looked up.
‘
‘Much to report, Josef Vissarionovich.’
‘What’s the plan for the German trip?’
Beria opened the leather portfolio and brought out some papers. Even after all these years, all their shared schemes, triumphs of war and construction, and their little secrets of ‘black work’, murder and torture, Stalin still treated Beria like a trusted servant who specialized in dirty jobs. Yes, there had been family holidays on the Black Sea – Stalin liked Beria’s wife Nina and trusted his son Sergo – but still Beria felt under-appreciated. Just in January, at one of the dinners in Yalta, Stalin had introduced him to President Roosevelt as ‘my Himmler’. It was at that moment that he started to hate Stalin. The drunken braggart! Where would Stalin be without him?
‘The meetings with the American President and British Prime Minister are set to begin on the seventeenth of July,’ said Beria.
‘I’ll arrive last. Let the others arrive first,’ Stalin said.
‘Understood.’
‘I miss Roosevelt. This Truman’s not a patch on Roosevelt. As for Churchill, he’ll reach into your pocket to steal a kopeck; yes, even a kopeck.’
‘Everything is ready for you in Berlin,’ Beria told him. ‘The route to Potsdam is 1,923 kilometres. To provide proper security, 1,515 MVD/MGB operatives and 17,409 MVD troops are placed as follows: in USSR, 6 men per kilometre; in Poland, 10 men per kilometre; in Germany, 15 per kilometre. On the route, 8 armoured trains will patrol. Seven MVD regiments and 900 bodyguards will protect you. Inner security by the 6th Department will function in three concentric circles of 2,041 men and—’
‘All right,’ said Stalin, waving his hand. He relit the pipe, puffing clouds of smoke and watching them waft up, his eyes moist slits, almost closed.
‘It’s all in the memo here.’ Beria handed over some typed sheets.
‘I don’t want honour guards and brass bands when I arrive. I mean it. I’m tired.’
‘Understood.’
‘Anything more about the new American weapon?’
‘The nuclear device. Our agents in the British Foreign Office report that it is almost complete. It is possible America will use it against the Japanese. It has astonishing destructive power.’
‘Keep me closely informed. Now, what about the schoolchildren?’
‘We have made some progress…’
‘Some of them are with you?’
Beria knew that ‘with you’ meant in his prisons. ‘Yes, four of them,’ and he gave their names.
‘One of Satinov’s boys, eh? What were they playing at?’
