“Never easy to try to second-guess a jury,” said Trelford, touching the envelope in his inside pocket, although he was fairly sure it wasn’t his client who needed the extra two votes to win the action. So perhaps the time had come to allow Mrs. Clifton to see the major’s letter, and decide if she wanted it read out in court.

He would advise her to do so if she still hoped to win the case, but having come to know the lady over the past few months, he would not have been surprised if she thought otherwise.

*   *   *

While Stalin was serving his first prison sentence in 1902 at the age of twenty-three, like many ambitious party members, he decided to learn German, so he could read Karl Marx in the original—but he only ended up with a cursory knowledge of the language. During his time in jail, he formed a self-appointed political committee of murderers and thugs who ruled over the other prisoners. Anyone who disobeyed him was beaten into submission. Soon, even the guards became intimidated by him, and were probably relieved when he escaped. He once told me that he’d never murdered anyone, possibly true, because he only had to hint, drop a name, and that person was never heard of again.

The most damning thing I learned about Stalin during my time at the Kremlin, and never repeated, even to my wife, for fear it would compromise her, was that when he was a young man and had been exiled to Kuneika in Siberia, he fathered two children by a 13-year-old schoolgirl, Lidia Pereprygina, and once he left Kuneika, he not only never returned, but never contacted them again.

Harry unfastened his seat belt and walked up and down the length of the cabin as he thought about the next chapter. He began writing again the moment he returned to his seat.

Another incident that Stalin regularly regaled us with was his claim that he carried out a series of bank robberies all over the country to raise funds for Lenin in support of the revolution. This certainly accounted for his rapid promotion, although Stalin yearned to be a politician, and not simply thought of as a Caucasian bandit. When Stalin told his friend Comrade Leonov of his ambitions, he just smiled and said, “You can’t carry out a revolution wearing silk gloves.” Stalin nodded to one of his thugs, who followed Leonov out of the room. Leonov was never seen again.

“We are no longer in Russian airspace, Mr. Clifton,” said the steward.

“Thank you,” said Harry.