The Margin of Evil! by Simon Boxall Read Free Book Online

everything on his own. Maybe he was reading too much into the conversation. Maybe she was going soft in the head! He started sifting through his overflowing in-tray. As he went through it, he realised that the paperwork was not as he had left it. More importantly, at the bottom of it a brown file had been concealed. He discreetly opened the file. The contents were astonishing:
     
     
    CHEKA File: Ref 06851YD3.
    Kevshors.
    The Kevshors are a secret religious order of self styled Knights originating in Georgia around 1150. They are closely linked with the Maltese Knights and The Knights Templar. All members have one distinguishable marking. There is a tattoo of a cross inbetween two shields tattooed on their right armpit: (+).
    For centuries they have wandered the southern borde r regions performing good deeds such as giving money and food to the poor, healing the sick and taking in orphaned children.
    By the eighteenth century this nomadic group was in decline. They no longer were to be seen wandering around in their chain mail uniforms sporting their crosses of Saint George. All reference to The Kevshors seemed to disappear from Georgian folklore and history. Very few were left and those that remained had by and large, been consigned to the remote region near the Chechen border.
    By the late nineteenth century The Kevshor Knights seemed to be going through some kind of resurgence. But it was a strange kind of renaissance. This time, they seemed to be moving into the areas of crime: vice, blackmail, armed robbery and black marketeering. Black-marketeering being the favourite.  Various regional police reports of the time confirm this.
    Starting in Tbilisi , their operations fanned out to encompass the whole of the southwest. Once again their Modus Operandi was to absorb any competition into their rank and file. Those that resisted were liquidated.
    By the early nineteen hundreds rumour had it that the Kevshor sphere of influence extended as far as Kiev itself and was moving rapidly towards Moscow and St Petersburg. Here their cause was aided by the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and The Great War; they were also abetted by the bad organisation of their rivals. The arrival of limited democracy after 1905 extended another opportunity for them to move into the world of politics. This they did with relative ease.
    By the late summer of 1918 vague reports started circulating around Moscow of the arrival of an extremely well organised gang of Georgian Black- marketeers. Local villains and gangs started disappearing. The assumption was that The Kevshors had finally arrived and secured a base in Moscow.
    All attempts to penetrate this organisation, so far, have met with failure. The evidence here is by and large secondary. When arrests have been successfully prosecuted against them, witnesses have either disappeared or been found dead in police/ Militsya custody.  Thereby indicating that they have successfully bribed police officers and other officials of state.
    In this respect their modus operandi is always the same:
    Move in to a new area. Contact the opposition; present them with a fait accomplis. Join or go out of business. If they don't cooperate, they wipe them out.
    Bribe police, judiciary and local/ regional officials.
    More recently, security services acting on behalf of the state have managed to place an operative within their ranks. The information received so far confirms, and indeed corroborates, earlier unreliable information on their progress and history.
    But the most astonishing piece of information we have so far received is that they now seemed to have penetrated right into the heart of the 'Bolshevik' party itself. They seem to be aided by senior officials from the central caucus of the party. A parallel investigation is going on right now. The compiler of the report is due to submit to Comrade Sverdlov within the next week. He will then take his evidence and present it to Lenin.
     
    Georgii took in a deep breath,