Mightier Than the Sword

Not one of them as much as glanced in his direction, which didn’t stop Harry staring at them. Their blank faces suggested they had only one thing in common: their minds had been confiscated by the State, and they were no longer expected to have opinions of their own. Even in that moment of darkness, Harry reflected on what a privileged life he’d led. Was it possible that among these blank-faced clones there was a singer, an artist, an actor, a musician, even an author, who had never been given the opportunity to express their talent? Such is the lottery of birth.

Moments later, two other men entered the room, made their way to the front bench and sat down, facing the stage, with their backs to him. One of them was in his fifties, far better dressed than anyone else in the room. His suit fitted, and he had an air of confidence that suggested he was the sort of professional even a dictatorship requires if a regime is to run smoothly.

The other man was much younger, and kept looking around the courtroom as if he was trying to find his bearings. If these two were the counsel for the state and for the defense, it wasn’t difficult for Harry to work out which of them would be representing him.

Finally, the door behind the platform opened so the principal actors could make their entrance: three of them, one woman and two men, who took their seats behind the long table on the center of the stage.

The woman, who must have been about sixty and had fine gray hair tightly pinned up in a bun, could have been a retired headmistress. Harry even wondered if this had once been her classroom. She was clearly the most senior person present because everyone else in the room was looking in her direction. She opened the file in front of her and began to read out loud. Harry silently thanked his Russian tutor for the hours she’d spent making him read the Russian classics before getting him to translate whole chapters into English.

“The prisoner”—Harry had to assume she was referring to him, although she had not once acknowledged his presence “recently entered the Soviet Union illegally”—Harry would have liked to take notes, but he hadn’t been supplied with a pen or paper so he would have to rely on his memory, assuming he would even be given the chance to defend himself—“with the sole purpose of breaking the law.” She turned to the jury and did not smile. “You, comrades, have been selected to be the arbiters of whether the prisoner is guilty or not. Witnesses will come forward to assist you in making that judgement.”

“Mr. Kosanov,” she said, turning to face counsel, “you may now present the State’s case.”

The older of the two men seated on the front bench rose slowly to his feet.

“Comrade commissioner, this is a straightforward case that should not trouble the jury for any length of time. The prisoner is a well-known enemy of the State, and this is not his first offense.”

Harry couldn’t wait to hear what his first offense had been. He soon found out.

“The prisoner visited Moscow some five years ago as a guest of our country and took cynical advantage of his privileged status. He used the opening speech at an international conference to mount a campaign for the release of a self-confessed criminal who had previously pleaded guilty to seven offenses against the State. Anatoly Babakov will be well known to you, comrade commissioner, as the author of a book about our revered leader, Comrade Chairman Stalin, for which he was charged with seditious libel and sentenced to twenty years’ hard labor.

“The prisoner repeated these libels despite the fact that it was pointed out to him on more than one occasion that he was breaking the law”—Harry couldn’t recall that, unless the scantily dressed young woman who’d visited him in his hotel room in the middle of the night was meant to have delivered the message, along with the bottle of champagne—“but for the sake of international relations, and to demonstrate our magnanimity, we allowed him to return to the West, where this kind of libel and slander is part of everyday life. We sometimes wonder if the British remember we were their allies during the last war and that our leader at the time was none other than Comrade Stalin.

“Earlier this year, the prisoner traveled to the United States for the sole purpose of making contact with Babakov’s wife, who defected to the West days before her husband was arrested. It was the traitor, Yelena Babakov, who told the prisoner where she had hidden a copy of her husband’s seditious book. Armed with this information, the prisoner returned to the Soviet Union to complete his mission: locate the book, smuggle it back to the West, and have it published.