The Labyrinth Makers

But tell me, Dr Audley –why would Stalin want his best soldiers branded as traitors?'

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'Tukhachevsky was too popular, I suppose. He was just another rival. It used to be pretty standard Soviet practice, didn't it? From Trotsky onwards.'

Panin should know that well enough.

'Discredit, then eliminate.' Panin spoke as though he hadn't heard Audley.

The forgeries. Heydrich would have been the Nazi boss to organise them, and Heydrich had mixed some of his old Sicherheitsdienst files among the Forschungsamt records –that brought Tukhachevsky and Panin together.

But if that was in the box the old objection still held: even back in

'45 the full details of this scandal would have been a mere embarrassment to Stalin. And today they were utterly valueless.

Stalin was dead and discredited; the Party itself could not err; and the ancestors of the KGB had neither honour nor credit to lose.

'But the Tukhachevsky forgeries don't matter now, Professor.

They're just dirty water down the drain.'

'And the truth behind the forgeries?'

The truth?'

'Stalin was a butcher, but he was not a stupid butcher, as the West likes to think. He knew the risk when he ruined his own army.'

'Professor, you can't tell me that Tukhachevsky and four hundred generals and colonels were all in league with Hitler. It won't wash.'

'Not in league with Hitler. But in league against Stalin and the Party, Dr Audley.'

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Panin gestured abruptly as though tired of arguing and being forced to explain simple facts–and tired above all of pretending that the real Panin was a grey nonenity on a derelict English airfield.

'In 1937 there really was an army plot against the Party.

Tukhachevsky had no direct part in it–he was like Rommel in 1944. But it was a genuine plot and a very dangerous one. The soldiers planned to reverse the whole collectivisation policy–the Party's cornerstone.'

He spoke harshly.

'Stalin had a nose for such things–it is a talent some Georgians have–and he moved first. He knew it was so, but we never uncovered the proof, the full details. It didn't matter then, for it was better that they should be destroyed as traitors than mere party enemies.

'And then it was discovered that the details did exist. One of the plotters escaped to East Prussia–an air force colonel. He took with him a list of names and details of the take-over plans. The Nazis sent him back, and they sent back some of the details. But they kept the documents.'

The Russian faced Audley squarely.

'That's what is in the extra box, Dr Audley: the details of the 1937

Army Plot which everyone believes was just a figment of Stalin's suspicious mind. Everyone except those in the Party and the Army who know the truth beneath the legend. You see, I wasn't the only one looking for those documents back in 1945–which is why I sent dummy4

them to Moscow with the Schliemann Collection. There were generals then who knew what that box could do– to the Army. It can still do as much, and I've made sure that there are generals who know about it.'

The Army! Discredit, then eliminate!

So that was what was at the centre of Panin's labyrinth: the means to discredit the over-mighty Red Army as a political ally.

Elimination then wouldn't even be necessary.

It didn't matter that it was ancient history. An army which could turn against the Party once could do so again: even the breath of such a scandal would open a credibility gap a mile wide between the politicians and the generals in the delicate balance of Kremlin politics. Not even the most ambitious civilians would dare to cross that gap.

'You'd discredit your own army?'

'Discredit?' Panin shook his head. 'It would never have come to that. The generals would have taken the hint, just as they took the bait. This way there would have been retirements, but no disgrace.

And no more nonsense about preventive wars in the east.'

It was true. No general could afford to allow the glorious Red Army's loyalty to the Party to be publicly tarnished. The Tukhachevsky documents were quite simply an incomparable piece of blackmail, and the Army knew it. Guriev's presence was proof of that.

God! The Army had taken the bait! And so it had been the Army–

the GRU–which had followed him to Morrison, and had raided his dummy4

home, not Panin. For Panin hadn't been in the least interested in what Audley was doing. He had been far too busy creating an illusion and laying a false trait for the GRU to follow. The overtures to the British had simply been part of the illusion–and Audley himself had been irrelevant. A bit player in a farce with far more important actors in it.

Except that the farce had got out of Panin's hands because of the bit player's stupidity.