AND NOW THE drama, in the course of which my husband had vanished and Marie Schultz had gone to an unknown fate, was drawing to its close. The terrible ‘Trust’ had done its work of provocation mercilessly. First Sidney, and then Maroussia had fallen into the pit which had been dug for them. One had not even the consolation of knowing that they had died doing their duty. Fooled by a sham conspiracy, initiated into a bogus organisation, they had obeyed the instructions of their implacable enemies in going to a relentless doom. Life seems very vain and profitless.
But one more victim was to die before the close. Immediately after receiving the news about Marie I had written to her husband – George Nicholaivitch Radkevitch, to give him his true name – a letter of condolence and deep commiseration. He was then in Warsaw. I shortly received the following reply in his poor, pathetic, misspelt, broken French.
Dear Madame Pepita,
I thank you very much for your kind letter and I regret that I cannot send you any good news. The story is always sad and black.
I am writing to you, because I well know that you can understand me better than all the others. You have undergone the same suffering, and, what causes me infinite distress, your sorrow has come on you, without your will, through myself and Maroussia. You ought to hate us for that, but you have so much goodness that you pardon our fault.
God bless you for that, for otherwise existence would be entirely insupportable, and the only thing that would remain for me would be to die – for I do not see how I could possibly help you and make good the injury we have done. I am certain that it was for this reason that Marie put herself in that frightful position, where death was almost certain.
I did not see Marie for four months before that happened, but from her last letter I realise that she suffered terribly and wished to die.
You tell me that I ought to have a feeling whether Marie is alive or not. I think that it is impossible for me, particularly after what I have told you. I fear that my soul is not so sensitive as to receive impressions of what takes place on the border line or beyond the veil. Marie often used to tell me that I had a brain like a horse. I do not know if you can understand me: it is so difficult to explain in French, but I know that you will not laugh even if I make a mess of what I am saying.
I beg you to go to the fortune teller. Marie has told me how once she said a great deal that was true with regard to herself and Sidney Georgevitch. On one occasion to a man, who was a complete stranger, she named Marie and said that Marie would have to perish. I wanted very much to go to her myself but I have not the time for it. The same cause has prevented me from meeting you. Perhaps sometime in the future I will be in Paris, when I want to see you and explain what I cannot say in a letter.
You say that you are going to London to find out something. I send you the last photograph of Maroussia. Take it with you. Perhaps it will help you.
Perhaps the others will laugh at my letter, but I know that you won’t laugh, for you are good.
I want to tell you once again that I feel myself very blameworthy before you, and all the more I thank you for the interest you take in Marie.
It was not long before George Nicholaivitch followed his letter to Paris. His experience meantime had been terrible. At first he had been despairingly resigned to the blow. Then as time went on and he realised more clearly what had happened and that he would have to live without Marie forever, his soul rose in revolt, and his hopes, overthrowing his reason, declared to him that Marie was still alive. He longed for company and for comfort. He was not the sort of man who can face life alone. Never have I seen a face so desperate. He was completely broken down. The sight of his sorrow-stricken countenance first, I think, drew me out of my morbid grieving for my husband, over whose doubtful fate I had been brooding all these months. I realised that there were others as wretched as myself and for a similar cause. George Nicholaivitch had relied on his wife as I had on Sidney. She had been his prop and stay. I have no doubt that she had ordered him to marry her as she ordered all the other activities of his life. He was not what you would call a strong character, only simple, loyal, kind-hearted.
I found him waiting in my room one morning when I came down, sitting with staring, vacant eyes, with dishevelled hair, with drawn, desperate face. He looked as if he had had no sleep for nights, and as if he had been drinking too. There is something sacred in so much grief. I could say nothing. I had felt the death of Marie myself very keenly. I felt in a measure responsible for it. She had gone to avenge my husband, whom she had unwittingly betrayed. She had offered her blood for his blood by way of atonement. We had somehow been drawn into the vortex of horrible things, where death was piled on death, and fresh blood dripped on the old. So I sat and regarded whether George Nicholaivitch should go.
‘Now Marie is gone,’ he said at last.
I said nothing. What could I say? I was acutely conscious of the clock ticking impertinently loud on the mantelpiece.
‘Now Maroussia is gone,’ he repeated after a long pause. ‘But she will come back. She will come back.’
‘Of course she will come back,’ said I, to soothe him.
He laughed vacantly.
‘Of course she will come back,’ he repeated. ‘I will go fetch her. I will go to Russia to fetch her.’
‘Wait and there will be news,’ I told him. ‘Wait here as I am waiting.’
‘Poor Mme Reilly,’ he said, seeing me, it seemed, for the first time. ‘You have been waiting a long time.’
‘A very long time.’
‘I cannot wait,’ said George Nicholaivitch. ‘I cannot wait a long time. I am going to Russia to fetch her. I cannot get on without her. I am going today.’
‘No, I must go at once.’ He started reaching for his hat. And then suddenly he turned round and looked me straight in the face. ‘You don’t think she’s dead?’
‘I am sure she is not,’ I answered, to comfort him, though my own heart was like ice.
‘That’s right. Not dead. That’s what I say. They say she’s dead. They say she shot herself. But we know better. You and I know better – eh?’
‘Of course we do,’ I answered.
‘That’s what I say. You and I know better. She’s wounded. She’s a prisoner. They have captured her and have her in prison. That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘That’s right,’ I assured him.
‘Very well, then. Now what am I going to do? I am going to Russia and have her out. That’s what I am going to do. Your husband is there too, isn’t he? He’s not dead, is he?’
‘No, he’s not dead either.’
‘Very well then. I am going to Russia and have him out. Have them both out. That’s what I’m going to do.’
I saw him later in the day in a café much frequented by Russian exiles. He was drowning his sorrows in drink. Without Marie to rule him and order him about, as that amazing woman did, poor George Nicholaivitch was going to pieces. But his desire to return to Russia remained unshaken. I asked him to stay and work with General K., but it was of no avail. Very worried, I sought out the General, and asked him to exercise his authority, but the General thought it better that George Nicholaivitch should go.
‘You see what it is,’ said the General to me. ‘He is lost either way. If he stays here he just goes to waste and ends a gallant career in ignominy. It is better for him to die like a man in the open.’
Of course George could not use his old passport. One day he came to me and asked me to get him another one. I was still diffident, but I had to admit the cogency of General K.’s reasoning.
Besides George Nicholaivitch himself was most pathetically serious and eager. After temporising a little I told him I would do my best.
It was from a Rumanian friend that I secured the false passport, which I gave to George, and now nothing stood in the way of his immediate departure. We lunched together at Drouan before he went, the General, George Nicholaivitch and myself. It was a queer meal. It seemed to me that poor Marie Schultz’s husband was already dead. My heart was very heavy as I sat there and made a pretence of eating. Over the table General K. gave his final instructions, as quietly and normally as if George Nicholaivitch was going out for a day’s hunting. His first task was to find out whether Maroussia or Sidney was still alive: secondly, where they were confined: thirdly to get word to them: or, if that proved impossible, he was to blow up a part of the prison and endeavour to get at them during the confusion. But, before making any attempt, he was to inform the General and myself at two different addresses.
It seemed best that he should go, but God knows it was bitter to watch him depart to a certain doom. I wanted even then to call him back, but he went that afternoon, proceeding to Rumania and thence crossing into Russia, and the whole way the eyes of the trackers of blood were upon him.
With the exposure of the ‘Trust’ my interest in Russian politics had waned. At the beginning of the year I had applied for a Bolshevik passport to enable me to go and see my husband in Russia. I had told the full story, keeping nothing back, and admitting that Captain Reilly had entered Russia under an assumed name on espionage work. But my request had been refused. However anxious they were to get me into Russia, the Tcheka did not wish me to enter the country thus openly. Any hopes I now had – and I am still convinced that my husband is alive in Russia – were centred in George Nicholaivitch.
The weeks went by. There was no news from George.
Then one morning there was a notice in the paper:
EXPLO SION AT THE LOUBIANKA (MOSCOW)
On the evening of 6 July, two White Russian officers, who came from Paris through Rumania and Bulgaria, aided by Rumanian secret agents, threw two bombs in the Passport offices of the Tcheka. By the explosion one was killed and the other gravely injured. Mr G. N. Radkevitch was killed, the other, an émigré, was arrested near Polosk (Moscow). A communiqué from Warsaw says that the Red Cross wagons have taken away many dead and wounded.
And so ended poor George Nicholaivitch Radkevitch, taking in his death a terrible revenge on the Tcheka, which had robbed him of all he held dear. About two months afterwards a letter reached me from Warsaw, written by him on the very day before his death and reading ‘trying to save both tomorrow. If I fail, adieu.’
It was the report he was to send to the General and myself before he took action, according to the General’s instructions. Were they both really still alive? Had George Nicholaivitch succeeded on his quest? Had he ascertained in what dungeon the victims of the Tcheka were lying? What happened to Sidney Reilly? Is he alive or dead? For my part I am sure that he is lying without trial or conviction in a Russian prison.
A memorial service was held for poor George Nicholaivitch in the Russian church in the Rue Crimée. It was for the third victim of the ‘Trust’. As the priest from the altar pronounced the solemn and magnificent words promising immortal life to the soul of George Nicholaivitch Radkevitch, I saw their figures rise before me, saw them trailing up the shaft of summer light which shone through the window, saw Sidney and Madame Schovalovsky and Marie Schultz and George Nicholaivitch rising and soaring up the sunbeam into infinite space. My mind ranged over all the adventures which had befallen me in these few short years, I thought of the meeting at the Hotel Adlon, of our marriage, of Drebkoff, of Savinkoff, of what had happened to us in New York, Paris and London. I lived again through our parting on the platform at Cologne, and endured the agony of bereavement at Hamburg once more. The figures marshalled themselves before me and hurried into space. All that portion of my life seemed like a strange interlude, in which it was impossible to believe. And now I was quite alone. The sun had sunk to his setting; the streets were bathed in the religious gleams of evening; here and there lights were beginning to show in the windows, as I walked disconsolately home.