While attending a conference in
Moscow, the historian Christopher "Fluke" Kelso is met by an old man named Papu Rapava, who claims to have been present at the death of
Joseph Stalin. Immediately after Stalin's death,
Lavrenty Beria supposedly took measures to secure a black notebook, which is believed to be Stalin's secret diary. Rapava spent years in
Kolyma after the authorities tried to extract the book's location from him, but he has never revealed it though he knows that shadowy agents are still watching him in case he goes near the mysterious thing. Kelso eventually locates the notebook, which Rapava had left to his daughter just before he was recaptured and tortured to death. It proves to be the memoirs of a young girl chosen by Stalin to be the mother of his secret heir. Following the trail to the remote northern city of
Arkhangelsk, Kelso comes face to face with Stalin's son. Raised in a log cabin filled with Stalin's personal effects, writings and recorded speeches, the son is a physical and ideological copy of his father. It is revealed that he had murdered the husband-and-wife
KGB agents who had raised him from infancy when he decided they were untrustworthy. Young Stalin has been told that he would be sent for when it was time for him to assume control of his country, and he believes that Kelso is the promised messenger. Stalin overcomes a
special forces unit sent to eliminate him, which alarms Kelso by his ruthless and dispassionate use of violence, and he boards a train headed for Moscow. At each station, ever-larger crowds gather to witness the apparent resurrection of the famous dictator, and it appears that he might be able simply to stride through the doors of the
Kremlin and assume command. As he steps off the train in Moscow, Rapava's daughter, who has made her way into the crowd at the railway station, takes out her father's pistol. The novel ends there. ==Television adaptation==