Last Call for Blackford Oakes by William F.; Buckley

late friend, Konstantin Chernenko, for giving it to him. Kuntsevo had a very special history. It was there that Josef Stalin finally died on March 5, 1953, after lying insensate for four days, attended by frightened doctors and courtiers.
    For three years after that fateful day, the abandoned dacha, twenty minutes from Moscow, was under military supervision. It was thought, generally, that it would one day be made a national memorial site. But when Khrushchev delivered his historic speech to the 20th Congress in 1956, denouncing Stalin and his works, Kuntsevo began a long life of studied neglect. A small posting of military police maintained watch at the gatehouse at the beginning of the long roadway that led to the dacha. No one was permitted on the property, and no one of any importance was designated to look after it in any custodial sense. It was eerily reminiscent of Tsarskoe Selo, the palace inhabited by Nicholas and Alexandra before they were taken to Siberia to be shot.
    Kuntsevo sat there until Konstantin Chernenko decided to do something about it. On being named general secretary, he had begun to act on a number of private resolutions he had stored up, one of them to pull the dacha out of limbo. It would not do to attempt, after thirty years, to create a memorial site associated with Stalin, but it would be sheer waste to demolish so carefully constructed and capacious a country house. The best way to demystify Kuntsevo was to award it to a Soviet official.
    This was one of several items Chernenko planned to discuss at a private dinner meeting with Nikolai Dmitriev, his most trusted friend in the Politburo. General Baranov had spent much anxious time on the matter of possible arms talks with President Ronald Reagan and was eager to take up the question with the new general secretary. Before meeting with Baranov, Chernenko wanted Dmitriev’s advice on attendant political problems.
    They had a genial dinner, with wine, discussing matters on Chernenko’s agenda. After twenty minutes on Star Wars, Chernenko ticked off that topic on his notepad. “Now, Kolya, I propose that action be taken on the matter of Stalin’s dacha at Kuntsevo. I think that it should be reoccupied, and I propose that you should make it your own.”
    Dmitriev knew well the old associations of his senior political friend, the general secretary. Chernenko, now seventy-two, had been forty-one years old when Josef Stalin died. As was so with many members of the Politburo, he had had close associations with Stalin. Dmitriev therefore greeted this news with caution.
    He began—of course—by expressing his gratitude that such a—he thought better than to call it an “honor,” which would risk passing by insouciantly the demythologization of Stalin. And so he expressed gratitude for such “deference as turning over to him so splendid a … property.”
    â€œYou will need a great deal of work done on it before it is habitable. I have therefore designated it a historical ‘site’ but intend to keep it that way only until the workmen are finished repairing the house and the lawn and surrounding woods—were you ever there, Kolya?”
    â€œNo, Kostya, I never was.”
    â€œWell I was. Twice. In fact the second time, in February, was only one month before … the monster”—Dmitriev was glad to hear him use the word—“died. They will be arguing into the next millennium whether the doctors in attendance gave him adequate advice, the wrong advice, or perhaps killed him. Anyway, it is, as you say, a splendid property, and it is now—yours.”
    Dmitriev bowed his head, to suggest his gratitude.
    â€œWe move now to the matter of President Reagan’s re-election. We should consider replacing our ambassador. Yes. And”—he looked down at his notes—“we need to find an … asymmetrical means of responding to the CIA’s arming of the rebels in