COMRADE TROFIM
They had fallen so very far, he and the other. A nightmare glimpse of eternity until he met the singularity and became one with it. Then he was released and the other continued to fall.
"Comrade Stalin?"
"Comrade Trofim, enter. Petrov, bring us tea and vodka."
Stalin notes the cold level look Trofim gives Petrov. The look a man might give a side of beef when deciding how best to butcher it.
"You do not approve of Petrov, comrade?"
" He thinks only of lining his pockets and servicing his fat mistress."
Stalin shrugs, "You will find me a replacement then. To business, the red list?"
Trofim slides a single sheet of paper across the desk. Columns of names, close typed in black, many crossed out in red. Stalin raises his brows, peers at Trofim. "Krushchev and Brezhnev but not Beria?"
"A traitor and his lapdog comrade, they will betray the revolution." Trofim leans forward in his chair, one fist clenched. " We did not achieve enough in the Great Purge, that must be put right."
"And Beria?"
"He shows promise. He lives. For now."
Stalin stares at Trofim, the Hero of Stalingrad, the Kursk Bear, his most able captain. He recalls how he appeared fom nowhere during the purges of 1937. A minor party officer burning with revolutionary zeal, white hot and merciless, like one of the old Bolsheviks.
"So to the front. We will be in Berlin by the turn of the year?"
"As I promised, Comrade Stalin."
"Molotov informs me that since Hitler's death the Germans are willing to sue for peace. We should accept this offer?"
"Only once they are all dead."
Stalin has seen the reports from Trofim's divisions. German children nailed living to the front of Soviet tanks, men slit open, sawed apart in front of thier comrades. The purges in the ranks. There have been no German prisoners for many months.
There is a light in Trofim's eyes now, lambent and feral. He leans closer. "We do not stop at Germany. The west is weak."
"And what cost in Russian lives, Trofim?"
"Does the anvil feel the hammer? Does the forge care for the coal in the furnace? If you would sacrafice one then why not one million?"
"We will speak of this again comrade. Leave me now."
Stalin turns once more to the speech Trofim has written for him for the approaching October.
"I exhort you all to be pure to our revolutionary ideas, to be vigilant in our defence of the motherland and to behave as true Soviet citizens..."
As Torquemada leaves, he feels the singularity burning inside him, a point in space where anything is possible. The seed for a new Termight.
And if Stalin failed him, there were so many more in this century, time without end.
