Even Aronson was shocked, as behind him the crowd of escapees gave a great collective ‘Aw…’. He had seen many terrible things in the Revolution and the Civil War that had followed, but the scene which presented itself in the street that ran along the Neva was horrific. Trotsky’s car lay shattered, all four tyres burst, thick white smoke pouring from its ruptured engine. The force of the impact had burst the car’s roof above the driving seat and propelled the driver through it. Now he hung legless and headless and totally naked from one of the skeletal trees like some kind of obscene human fruit!
Aronson took in the situation at once. If Trotsky had not been delayed by the drunk and his demand for bread, he would be hanging up there dead, too, now. He didn’t hesitate. He knew swift action was needed. He pulled out his Cheka whistle and blew three shrill blasts on it: it was a signal only to be used by senior officers of the secret police. Immediately those Chekists who had been trying to control the crowd stopped and came running in his direction. ‘Seal off the whole area,’ he commanded while they were still running. ‘No one is to leave the scene. One of you, get my car and alert HQ. The frontier to Finland is to be closed forthwith. No one is to leave the country in that direction.’ He rapped out order after order until Trotsky interrupted him in a dazed voice, asking, ‘What has happened, comrade?’
Aronson thought the question was unnecessary; still, he told the bemused Commissar, adding, ‘Your life is in extreme danger, Comrade Trotsky. I must place you under Cheka guard at once.’ He nodded to the two policemen closest to him. ‘Escort Comrade Trotsky to the nearest police box, request a car to be sent there at once and take him to HQ.’ He looked sternly at the two Chekists. ‘You will answer to me with your heads if anything goes wrong.’ As an afterthought he took out his second pistol and handed it to a surprisingly speechless Trotsky. ‘Here you are, Comrade, use it if necessary.’
Trotsky let himself be led away while Aronson walked briskly over to the smoking car. He knew immediately what had happened. Someone had placed a bomb under the vehicle’s rear axle – a time bomb, timed to go off as soon as Trotsky had entered. But who had placed it there? He pulled out his torch and flashed around the area. There were bits of black metal from the shattered Rolls Royce everywhere. With his foot he turned them over here and there, searching for clues. He frowned. Not much to go on, he told himself. Then he had it. A piece of steel, not the sheet metal used to make the Rolls Royce. He picked it up and winced. It was still hot.
He flashed his torch closer on it, screwing up his eyes as he tried to make out the three letters stamped onto the bit of metal, which had obviously come from the bomb which had destroyed the car. B… S… A… he deciphered the letters. He whistled softly. ‘British Small Arms Company,’ he said to himself.
The English were behind the attempt on Trotsky’s life, not Stalin. That could mean only one thing. Reilly!
Forgetting the freezing cold, Aronson tried to pull the various strands together. Reilly was in Petrograd, of that he was sure. Because it would be here that the power struggle would take place once Lenin died. Aronson was sure, too, that the elusive British spy was behind this latest attempt on Trotsky’s life. The question was, now that the would-be murder had failed, would he stay in Petrograd?
He spotted a police car, crowded with heavily armed militia. He flagged it down and without hesitation turfed out one of the militiamen to make room for him and ordered the driver to take him to Cheka HQ at once. Even as they drew up at the Smolny Institute, once a school for the daughters of the aristocracy and upper class, he knew that something was wrong. Everywhere the lights blazed, although the day shift had gone home long ago. Motorcycle messengers were roaring to and fro. Telephones jingled.
Hurriedly he climbed up the steps and called to the duty officer. ‘What’s the matter?’ he demanded. ‘Has something gone wrong?’
The duty officer clicked to attention. To his surprise, Aronson could see the man had tears in his eyes. ‘Comrade, it has happened, finally,’ the man said in a thick voice.
‘What, man?’ Aronson barked impatiently.
‘Comrade Lenin, comrade… he’s dead,’ the duty officer stammered, tears now rolling down his hard face.
Aronson took the steps to his office at the double. There, he picked up the phone and called for Ilona down in the radio room. A minute later she appeared, cheeks flushed, bearing a piece of paper. She attempted to give it to him but he caught her wrist, handsome face hard and impatient. ‘Did he appoint a successor? Is it that monster, Stalin, or Trotsky?’
She shook her pretty head. ‘No, neither… and you’re hurting me!’
‘Sorry,’ he said and released his grip. ‘Neither,’ he echoed her words. ‘That’s impossible. Yo tuoyu mat!’
He spat out the obscene Russian curse angrily. ‘What a fine mess Russia will be in now.’ His eyes fell on the piece of paper. ‘What’s that?’
‘Our friends in Moscow managed to get some insight into Lenin’s political testament. This is part of it. Here.’
Hastily he grabbed the sheet of paper. His eyes flew across Lenin’s last words. ‘Comrade Stalin, having become a general secretary, has concentrated tremendous power in his hands, but I am not sure he knows how to use that power properly… Stalin is too rough… Therefore I propose that the comrades find a way to remove Stalin from that position…’
Aronson looked up momentarily and laughed bitterly. ‘What a blind fool Lenin was. Did he think, with the power that he has in his hands, that Stalin would tamely allow himself to be shuffled off to his native Georgia or somewhere?’
He bent his head once more and read on. ‘On the other hand, Comrade Trotsky is distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities – he is the most able man in the committee – but also by his too far-reaching self-confidence and a disposition to be too much attracted by the purely administrative side of affairs.’
Aronson flushed angrily. He dashed the paper angrily to his desk with so much force that the telephone bell rattled. ‘What an idiot!’ he exclaimed. ‘In essence, Lenin has appointed no one to succeed him.’
‘What does that mean?’ she asked, a little bewildered. ‘It means that the way is open now for an all-out power struggle between Stalin and Trotsky,’ he snapped. ‘It means that Russia might be plunged into civil war once more. It means that the way will soon be open for Reilly and his backers, the English, to impose their will on Mother Russia and put forward this supposed Romanov survivor as the country’s saviour.’
He sighed like a man sorely tried. ‘Bozhe moi, what a country!’
She bent over and kissed him gently on the cheek. ‘You are a good man,’ she said huskily and he could see the tears in her eyes now.
‘Thank you, Ilona. But what Russia needs today is hard men. Men who finally build our poor benighted people into an organised, purposeful nation.’
Ilona dropped her hand to his lap. Gently Aronson pushed it away. ‘Thank you again, Ilona. But not tonight. I must think, use all my powers of concentration. Mother Russia must be saved.’ He looked up and as she turned to go, she saw the look of absolute, total despair in his eyes. Sadly she went out…
Five versts away in a hired droschki heading steadily northwest through the falling snow, Reilly had despaired too for a while. Again the assassination of Trotsky had failed. But he had been immediately cheered up when he heard the news of Lenin’s death in his sleep. That information had cancelled out his disappointment.
Next to him, the boy, wrapped in an old fur rug by the coachman, slept, his head against Reilly’s shoulder. As he looked down at him he wondered again how the boy had escaped. Back in that terrible year of the Revolution some horrific things had happened to the aristocrats and the upper class. Reilly had been shocked, terribly shocked, at the rape of aristocratic ten-year-olds; at the Tsarist officers whose broad epaulettes had been nailed to their shoulders by their mutinous soldiers, with the men then cutting off their testicles and thrusting them into the dying officers’ mouths; at the slaughter of elderly ministers, whose beards had been torn from their faces with the flesh still attached before they were pushed into the sewage holes to drown in ordure.
That had been in the beginning. But his initial horror at the Revolution had given way to the realisation that here was the opportunity he had always sought – the opportunity for greatness in the manner of his hero, Napoleon.
But what a frustrating, heartbreaking task it had been! The Russians were a lazy, disorganised people, allowing themselves to be trodden on by those in power because they didn’t seem to have the will to fight back. Instead, they fled into alcohol and depravity.
How much time and money he had spent getting the counter-revolutionaries organised. Those anti-Semites of the Black Hundred were good at talking, but seemingly incapable of putting a plan into operation. The English under ‘C’ were slow and too cautious, though people like Churchill and Hozier had gingered them up a little. But in the end he had convinced them that his plan, the little he had told them of it, was workable.
Now at last his years of working and waiting were coming to fruition. The pawns were all in their places – C, the two young naval officers, his wife, and the boy. Reilly sat back in the padded coach, listening to the tinkling bells of the three horses pulling the coach, a little tired but happy. The great game could commence!