The street, freedom, and all that freedom meant were still only a couple of yards away, yet a barrier as impassable as a steel wall now shut Gregory and Stefan off from it. Even if they had instantly flung themselves upon the two fur-clad troopers and borne them down, before they could have got the heavy doors open again Gudarniev and the armed men inside the hall would have shot them from behind. As it was, the two soldiers already had their fingers on the triggers of their weapons. At one word from Gudarniev they could have filled the prisoners full of lead. There was nothing they could do but obey their captor, as he snapped at them:
“Come along. I promised you more suitable accommodation, and, by heavens, you shall have it! Two cells in the basement are the place for you, for the rest of the night; tomorrow we’ll find you two yards of earth and a bucket of quicklime apiece.”
“I protest!” declared Kuporovitch, turning swiftly back to him. “You heard the Marshal’s orders. How dare you disobey them!”
The Colonel’s dark eyes had gone black with anger. “That is my responsibility,” he flared.
“Damn you!” roared Kuporovitch. “You seem to forget that I am your superior officer. I demand to be released and taken back to the Astoria.”
But his bluff was useless. Gudarniev’s only answer was to draw his pistol and jab it in the ex-General’s ribs, as he yelled: “You’re a lousy traitor. Get over to that desk now, or I’ll shoot you where you stand.”
As they walked the length of the stone-floored hall, Kuporovitch muttered to Gregory in German. “Because the Marshal looked ill when we left him, and had apparently been telling us so much, we are suspected of having given him the Truth drug. It has sometimes been used at trials to make witnesses talk freely. Anyhow, that’s what Gudarniev thinks.”
At this announcement a great fight dawned in Gregory’s mind. Like most people, he had heard that the Russians possessed such a drug, but he had always supposed that it was administered by means of a hypodermic. Evidently they had now found a way of giving it to people in liquid form. Voroshilov must have decided to give him a dose of the drug in his drink; and, by changing the glasses, he had caused the Marshal to take it himself.
Gregory did not blame his recent host in the least for his attempted breach of hospitality. After all, he had sought out the Marshal with the view of attempting to trick him into giving some indication of Russia’s future plans, so he had no right to complain if the Marshal had tried to trick him, or at least to make quite certain that he was telling the truth. He had, too, presented himself as a German, and his own first principle was that “All is fair in love and war.” Since he had come ostensibly to disclose a project for the overthrow of Hitler, and had sought Voroshilov’s co-operation in the timing of his plan, he felt that the Marshal had the right to investigate his visitor’s integrity by every possible means at his disposal before he talked to him at all.
One thing was now clear beyond all doubt. If anything could have set the seal of unqualified success upon his mission, this was it. The Marshal’s extraordinary talkativeness was not only fully explained but there was now the best possible reason to believe that all he had said was the truth, the complete truth, and nothing but the truth.
Yet, by the most damnable piece of misfortune, at the very moment of achieving this staggering success Colonel Gudarniev had tumbled to what had happened; and now it looked as if Gregory’s exchanging those two glasses was about to cost him and his friend their lives.
When they reached the desk Gudarniev asked for the night-duty officer to be summoned. The man behind it rang through on a telephone. They waited for a few minutes in tense silence. A fat man with eyes in slits that seemed to turn up at the corners and the high cheekbones of a Mongolian appeared. Gudarniev gave his name, showed a headquarters pass, and then said to him:
“I am one of Marshal Voroshilov’s staff officers. These two men are under suspicion of being spies and saboteurs. They have gained possession of important military secrets. They are to be confined in such a way that they can neither talk together nor to anyone else. By that I mean that they are not even to be allowed to exchange remarks with any member of the staff here. You will have triple guards placed on their cells to watch one another and see that this order is obeyed. They are carrying British passports in the names of Stephen Cooper and Gregory Sallust. You will enter them in your register under those names and give me a receipt for them, but they are not to be searched. In no circumstances are these men to be released, except on an order signed by the Marshal in person.”
Kuporovitch again began a vigorous protest but the fat Mongolian took not the slightest notice. He pressed a button on the desk, a bell shrilled, and some more armed guards came hurrying out of a room at the side of the hall. In a guttural voice he gave instructions to an N.C.O., then sat down to write out the receipt. He was still writing it, with Gudarniev beside him, when two of the guards placed themselves on either side of the prisoners, and at an order from the N.C.O. marched them away.
They were taken down a passage, through another heavy door beside which a sentry was lounging, and out into a big high-walled courtyard.
“Ah, now I know where we are,” Kuporovitch murmured to Gregory. “This is the old Lubianka prison, but they must have built a new office to it and that infernal Colonel brought us in that way.”
“Silence!” barked the N.C.O. “My orders are that you are not to talk,” and he prodded Kuporovitch with the barrel of his pistol.
As they proceeded, Gregory thought grimly that this must be the courtyard in which the Bolsheviks had massacred thousands of innocent men, women and children during the Revolution, for the sole crime of belonging to the educated classes.
They entered a door on the far side of the courtyard, passed another sentry and were led down a flight of iron stairs to the basement. There, the N.C.O passed on his instructions to a head warder and saw the prisoners locked into cells some distance from one another.
Both of them had hoped that they might be able to communicate with each other on the alarming turn that events had taken, if only by tapping out messages in morse on the partition of two cells; but since even this hope had been frustrated, after sitting gloomily on the edges of their beds for a time, they lay down and went to sleep.
Their sleep was fitful, not alone owing to the desperate plight in which they knew themselves to be; but also on account of the intense cold in the underground cells. Fortunately they had their furs, but, even so, after a few hours’ restless dozing the cold was such that they found it unendurable to lie still any longer, and, getting up, began to stamp up and down the narrow confines of their prisons.
In due course a hunk of bread and a mug of something that passed for coffee was brought to each of them. The brown liquid was an unappetising brew, but, in spite of that, they were grateful for its warmth. A few hours later they were given a bowl of greasy stew apiece, and, still later, another mug of the coffee substitute. They then tried to get some sleep again, and were semi-comatose when they were roughly aroused and called outside by a little group of warders.
Glancing at his watch, Gregory saw that they had been incarcerated for the best part of twenty-two hours, so it was now the middle of the night again. He wondered miserably if an order had just arrived for them to be shot.
To his immense relief they were not halted in the sinister courtyard but taken across it, and through to the main hall in which they had been received. They were then taken up in a lift to the second floor and marched into a large, comfortably furnished office. In it were four men.
One of them, a grey-haired fellow in a smart uniform with silver rank badges, who appeared to be the prison commandant, was seated behind a heavy desk. Marshal Voroshilov occupied an armchair to one side of him, while Colonel Gudarniev and another officer, who, it transpired, was an interpreter, were standing side by side behind the Marshal.
The guards were ordered out of the room. Voroshilov lit a cigarette and began to address Kuporovitch. Evidently he had given instructions to the interpreter beforehand, as, after each sentence he paused, and the officer translated it into German for Gregory’s benefit. The Marshal said:
“You two beauties have landed yourselves in a fine mess. One of you, I don’t know which, had the bright idea of changing a drink that my servant handed to the Herr Baron last night for mine, so that I drank it instead. I don’t see how you could possibly have known at the time what was in it, but later it must have been clear to you that the drink had been doctored with our Truth drug.”
“I can only offer my profound apologies, sir,” Gregory said quickly. “I changed the drinks, and I did so only because I felt certain that your servant had forced that particular drink on me.”
“Did you think I meant to poison you?”
“No. Even the idea of your drugging me didn’t seem to make sense. I could see no earthly reason why you should wish to either poison or dope me. If I had known then what the drug was I should naturally have seen the reason for your wanting me to drink it. But as I didn’t know, the whole thing seemed quite pointless. My impulse was rather like ducking when one thinks one is being shot at; I simply changed the drinks over on the spur of the moment.”
“Well, in this case you ducked too successfully, Herr Baron. If you had left well alone, and it was the truth that you were telling me last night, your story would have been exactly the same, drug or no drug, and no harm would have come to you. But as it is, your act has placed you in possession of information which, whether you are an honest man or not, is more dangerous than poison.”
“You must admit that it’s not altogether my fault,” Gregory argued, risking a mild grin.
“No,” the Marshal admitted, “and I can see the funny side of it. As a matter of fact, that liquid preparation of the drug is quite a new thing. One of our scientists gave me a little as a present with the idea that it might be amusing to give it to somebody at a party. But I hardly cared to play that sort of joke on one of my friends, and I had forgotten all about the stuff until you turned up last night. Then it occurred to me that it would be interesting to try it out on you, and learn just how much of this conspiracy to liquidate Hitler is the truth. The joke, of course, turned out to be on me; but there is a saying that ‘he who laughs last, laughs best.’ ”
“I certainly don’t regard it as a laughing matter,” Gregory assured him hastily.
“No,” said the Marshal drily, “you have no cause to—now.”
“But, Marshal, has any real harm been done?” reasoned Gregory. “After all, the information you gave me was essential to the successful carrying out of the plan I put before you. The fact that you gave it to me unwittingly is surely of no serious account. If you had not done so, one way or the other, the whole point of my coming to Russia would have been lost. I am no more a danger to you now, if you allow me to go back to Germany, than if you had told me all you did of your own free will.”
“That remains to be seen. In any case I should not have talked to you as freely as I did, and certainly not before having found out much more about you. However, that oversight can fortunately be remedied. It will be doubly interesting now to ascertain just how much of your story really is true.”
As he finished speaking Voroshilov took a small phial from his pocket. Two glasses and a carafe of water had been placed ready on the desk. He poured a little of the brownish fluid from the phial into each of the glasses, added some water and said:
“Come along, both of you. Drink up.”
Gregory was still cold from the long hours spent in the chilly cell, but he felt the perspiration break out in little beads on his forehead. He had no doubt at all what was in the phial. It was the remainder of the drug, and the Marshal meant to play tit for tat.
He wondered wildly what he would say under the influence of the drug. Then, if he ought to refuse to drink it, and accept the obvious, although unannounced, alternative, of being led down to the courtyard and shot. If he did drink it and the stuff made him answer all questions without the least reserve he could hardly expect much mercy. But one swift consoling thought came to him. It flashed into his mind how wise old Sir Pellinore had been always to insist that he should work on his own. He had never been a member of the official British Secret Service. He knew no one in it and nothing whatever of the methods used. At least, even if they poured the drug into him by force, they would never get any information about that.
Kuporovitch had already stepped forward. With a faint grin he shrugged his broad shoulders and picked up one of the glasses. He knew perfectly well that by drinking it he would give away the tissue of lies he had told, but he was convinced that it was now only a matter of hours, or perhaps only moments, before he would be shot in any case. With Russian fatalism he was quite prepared to die, and it appealed to his sense of humour that he should provide his old friend Clim with half an hour’s fun before doing so.
Gregory was still frantically trying to think what he would give away that might compromise British interests with the U.S.S.R. The reason for his mission must come out, of course, but that was entirely unofficial, since Sir Pellinore, who had sent him, was a private individual. Moreover, he would not involve the British Minister in Moscow, as Sir Stafford Cripps knew nothing about it. Yet he was still terrified lest something that should remain a secret would come out. He had so little time to think and, with that awful thought agitating his mind, he took a step forward to grab his friend’s arm.
But Kuporovitch was, after all, a Russian, and it had not even occurred to him that he might damage British interests. He felt certain, too, that if they refused to drink the potion would be forced upon them both; and although he would never willingly have let Gregory down, he saw no reason to suppose that he would compromise him any more than his friend would compromise himself.
His arm jerked up; Gregory’s outstretched hand missed it by an inch, and in another second Kuporovitch had swallowed the draught. Gregory saw that his own scruples were now quite pointless. The two of them had been together ever since they had left Kandalaksha eighteen months before, so there was no point in the one making a fighting attempt to preserve secrets which the other would now, inevitably, give away. Picking up the other glass, he drank the sweetish brown liquid.
“Good,” said Voroshilov, pointing to two chairs near a big porcelain stove in a corner of the room. “Now you can go and sit over there and smoke a cigarette, while we give the drug a little time to work.”
“I’m afraid I smoked the last one I had on me hours ago,” said Gregory.
As the interpreter translated, the grey-haired Commandant pushed forward a box that was on his desk and motioned them to help themselves.
Having thanked him and lit up they went over to the stove and, grateful for its warmth, settled themselves as near it as they could. Voroshilov, meanwhile, had turned to Gudarniev and said: “Let me have that analysis of the shell position, Ivan. I’ll run through it while we are waiting.”
The Colonel produced some papers from a brief-case he was carrying and the Marshal set to work upon them, making pencil notes here and there in the margins.
Gregory and Stefan were now entirely concerned with trying to analyse their own feelings. For some moments neither of them were aware of any difference in their mental or physical reactions, but they waited with a mixture of anxiety and interest to see what would happen.
Gradually the anxiety faded from their minds. The warmth from the stove was very pleasant. It seemed to them both that their pulses were beating faster, but in spite of that they felt comfortably relaxed and filled with a strange sense of well-being. For the best part of the past twenty-four hours they had been acutely conscious that the next hour might prove their last, but now they were no longer worried about that. After a time they forgot all about it; then, when Gregory made a fresh effort to think of things that he ought to try to prevent himself from talking about, he found that he could not do so. With a sudden sense of panic he realised that his mind was becoming hazy, and that he could no longer remember events clearly, even in the immediate past. Then the sense of panic left him and he became possessed with a strange, happy exhilaration. He knew vaguely that his conscious mind was slipping and that the subconscious was taking charge. But that did not now seem to matter. All idea of resistance left him, and was replaced by a happy docility which made him as incapable of co-ordinating his thoughts as though he were in an opium dream.
The Marshal finished with his papers and said: “Now let us talk again. Bring your chairs over here.”
His voice and that of the interpreter came to them quite clearly. They stood up at once and obeyed. As they sat down again in front of the desk both smiled amicably, thinking what a fine fellow he was and how much they wanted him, and everyone else, to think well of them.
He looked first at Kuporovitch and enquired: “What was your reason for leaving the Soviet Union? I would like you to tell me about it again.”
“Well, Clim, it was this way.” Kuporovitch answered with easy familiarity. “You know my history. You know that as a young man I was a Czarist officer and that I only became a Bolshevik through force of circumstances. Before the war and the revolution came, life was good for young fellows like myself. We used to stay at the big houses where there were plenty of good horses and pretty girls to flirt with; good food, good wine, shooting in the autumn, bear hunts in the winter, and all that sort of thing. We were free men and we could even say that the Little Father and his Ministers were fools, if we thought it. But best of all, on our long leaves we were free to travel. I used to go to Paris and Monte Carlo every year, and what a time we had! You’d have loved Paris, Clim. You were always one for a interesting life when you could get it, and I bet you would never have come back until your money ran out. The lights of the cafés in the Rue Pigale made the place like a fairyland. You’d have loved the Moulin Rouge, the Rat Mort and all those places. At the Abbaye Thélême, we used to get the girls dancing on the tables without any drawers on, while we drank wine out of their slippers. Champagne was only a few roubles a bottle in those days, and at Voisin’s or Larue’s, for a golden louis d’or, you could get the sort of dinner you’ve never had the chance of eating in your life. Then in the daytime there were the races at Auteuil and Longchamp, and drives in the Bois, and boating parties at St. Cloud. And always there were girls—scores of them—beautiful women exquisitely gowned and perfumed; lovely as spring itself in their silks and laces and jewels; real girls whose whole life was love and laughter—the sort that we have not seen in Russia for nearly three generations.”
He paused for a moment to wonder what he was talking about. His own voice rang in his ears, bright and enthusiastic, yet he had no idea of the sense of what he had been saying.
“Go on,” prompted Voroshilov. “You were telling us about Paris.”
“Yes, of course. Well, I wanted to see it all again before I died. You know how it is here in the Soviet Union. Everyone works all the time and is terribly earnest about some dreary subject or other. Everything is shoddy and second-rate, and nobody ever has any fun. That’s what you and your friends have made of our wonderful Russia. I daresay things will be all right in another twenty years or so and that the children who are growing up now may live to see good times again, but I was getting on in life and I couldn’t afford to wait until all your dreams of the future came true.
“Then, after the Tukachevsky Putsch, God knows how many officers you shot. It must have run into thousands and the purge went on for months. Everybody who was even remotely suspected of being a reactionary came under suspicion. My hands were clean enough, because he had been your lifelong enemy, and nothing would ever have induced me to be disloyal to you. But, even so, somebody remembered that I was an ex-Czarist and they packed me off to a fifth-rate command in a fortress right up on the White Sea. Even there, I never knew from one day to the next if someone in the Kremlin wouldn’t put me on a list to be liquidated, without your knowing anything about it. So I decided to collect foreign exchange and, when I’d got a useful sum together, to get out. I was nearly ready to quit when my friend here was brought to the fortress as a prisoner, but he had a big sum in valuta on him and a plan for getting safely out of the country; so we did a deal and got out together.”
“You went back to Germany with him?” Voroshilov hazarded.
“Sacré Tonerre, no!” Kuporovitch exclaimed with a laugh. “Why should you think that? We had a girl with us, and a lovely one. A lady called the Countess von Osterberg. We went first to Norway and, while my friend stayed there for a time, I took her to Holland, then to Brussels. We met there again, and soon afterwards Hitler’s Blitzkrieg on the Low Countries broke. I took her to England while he remained behind, but I joined him once more in Paris the day before the city fell to the Nazis. By a stroke of great ill-luck I was knocked down by a car and nearly killed, so he left me for dead and made his way home, via Bordeaux, to England, while——”
“To England!” the Marshal interrupted, with a puzzled frown.
“Yes, of course. For the time being, after the collapse there was nothing more that he could do in France. I recovered and stayed on in Paris. Some months later he came over and we joined forces again. We did not leave until early June this year—a week or two before Hitler invaded Russia.”
“And what were you doing in Paris all that time?”
“We were plotting against the Germans. I was one of the earliest members of the French Resistance Movement.”
“And then?”
“We managed to get safely back to England, and I got married. You should see my little Madeleine, Clim. She is as sweet as a peach, and as plump as a partridge. Ah, Sacré Nom, it makes my old heart beat quickly even to think of her. She is a little Parisian and it was she who nursed me back to health and strength after my accident.”
“Where did your travels lead you after you got to England?”
“To Russia, of course. When I heard that Hitler had attacked us I naturally wanted to get back and fight. It is one thing to leave one’s country because a lot of politicals have turned it into a lousy hole, and quite another to stay away from it when foreign soldiers are polluting its soil. My friend here offered me an opportunity to get back, and although I knew that there was a good chance of my being shot for my long absence, I felt that I must chance it, if there was some hope of helping my country at the same time as I helped him with his mission.”
Voroshilov’s glance shifted to Gregory. “I should like to hear about this mission. From what has been said, it seems that you live in England. Is Colonel Baron von Lutz your real name?”
“Oh, no,” Gregory smiled. “The real Baron died a long time ago. I simply assumed his identity for the purposes of my work.”
“You are, then, an anti-Nazi agent? What is your nationality?”
“British.”
“I see. What was your object in coming to Russia?”
In the twenty minutes that followed the whole story came out. By a series of shrewd, quietly asked questions, the Marshal extracted all the information of any value that Gregory was capable of giving. For a little he kept on insisting that his prisoner must, in some way, be connected with the British Secret Service, but Gregory’s denials were so positive and his account of himself so circumstantial that, bearing in mind he was under the drug, Voroshilov could not possibly disbelieve him.
When the examination was concluded the prison commandant pressed a bell, the guards came in and the prisoners were taken back to their cells. They were both sweating freely and were so hot that they did not even notice the cold. They would certainly have caught pneumonia and, quite probably, died of it, had not a doctor visited them shortly afterwards. He made each of them swallow a draught and get into their beds, then he piled extra blankets as well as their furs on top of them, and left them.
By that time they were both feeling extremely sleepy, so they soon dropped off, and did not wake again until the doctor came to visit them, round about midday, next day.
When they awoke they remembered their interview with Marshal Voroshilov perfectly clearly up to the point where they had taken the drug and gone to sit by the stove; after that, their impressions were blurred and uncertain. They knew that they had talked a lot about themselves and their mission, but actual particulars as to what they had said escaped them. It was exactly as though they had dreamed the latter part of the scene. Their memories of most of it were vague, but isolated episodes stood out with the clarity of a flashlight photograph and these, with little to connect them, were all telescoped together in an almost senseless sequence.
Their apprehension of the peril in which they stood had been neither lessened nor increased by their interrogation. Before it they had known that all thought of escape from the Lubianka was quite hopeless and that an order for them to be shot might arrive at any time. Now, it seemed, if anything, more certain that the next time they were led out of their cells it would be to die.
After the doctor’s visit, they got up to eat their midday soup, but as time went on the chill of the cells began to worry them again; so, as soon as their evening coffee had been handed in, they repiled the furs and blankets on to their beds and got back into them. Once more they were aroused in the middle of the night, and this time neither of them doubted that they were about to be taken for their last walk.
It was almost with a sense of surprise that they found themselves on the far side of the dread courtyard, and realised they were being taken up through the modern block to the room in which they had been examined the night before. The same four officers were present and Marshal Voroshilov opened the proceedings without any waste of time.
“I have been thinking a lot about you two in the past twenty-four hours,” he announced. “I find the cases of both of you quite exceptional and intensely interesting. First, Stefan Kuporovitch, I will deal with you.”
Kuporovitch was already standing to attention. He now drew himself rigidly erect and with soldierly impassivity waited for sentence to be passed upon him.
“You must be aware,” the Marshal went on, “that you have merited death on half a dozen different counts. You abandoned your command, which technically, at least, was within a war zone. You deserted from the army. You betrayed the trust of your superiors and have clearly shown that you despise the régime that placed that trust in you. Your return to the Soviet Union was made under a false identity. You have screened yourself under the diplomatic privileges of a foreign power in order to undertake your subversive activities. You have aided and abetted the agent of a foreign power to obtain the military secrets of the Soviet Union. You connived in that foreign agent administering a drug to myself, a high officer of the Republic. Have you anything to say in your own defence?”
“Nothing, Marshal,” croaked Kuporovitch hoarsely.
“And you,” Voroshilov looked at Gregory. “You, too, have laid yourself open to the death penalty on more than one count. By assuming a false identity, as a German officer, for the purpose of obtaining access to me, you have forfeited any protection that you might normally claim as a member of the British Embassy staff in Moscow. By an amazing fabrication of lies and false pretences you obtained from me Soviet military secrets of the first importance. Moreover, although you may think that you had certain justification for doing so the fact remains that, on my having granted you an interview, you took advantage of an occasion that arose to give me what you had reason to believe to be a drink containing either poison or a drug; so, technically, you are guilty of an assault on the Garrison Commander of a beleaguered city, upon the holding of which much may depend. Have you anything to say in your own defence?”
“Yes, Marshal,” Gregory replied boldly. He had nothing to lose and everything to gain by talking, and was still amazed that any opportunity had been given him to do so; but, since it had, he meant to make a fight for it, however slender his chances of influencing the Marshal’s apparently already made decision might appear.
“In the first place,” he began, “whatever the technical aspect of this business of my swopping drinks with you may be, I think any impartial judge would agree that you were to blame every bit as much as I was. It just could not have happened if you had not first attempted to drug me. As for the rest, I submit that everything both Stefan Kuporovitch and I have done has been in the interests of the Soviet Union, and with the object of more rapidly defeating our common enemy. That is my defence; and if you will be kind enough to allow me, I am prepared to prove my case point by point from beginning to end.”
“You have no need to do so,” the Marshal replied quietly.
For a moment Gregory felt deflated. All the wind had been taken out of his sails by this calm admission, which seemed to render any defence he might put up not only pointless, but farcical. Yet a second later his alertness was rekindled as Voroshilov went on:
“That has been my trouble each time I have tried to snatch a few moments during the day to consider your case. By all the laws of the Medes and Persians you should both be shot. I have no doubt at all that you would be if we were all in Moscow—where it would be my duty to hand you over to the Ogpu. But here, as Garrison Commander, I am the supreme authority in such matters; and I find it difficult to strike a balance between the illegal acts of which you have been guilty and the fact that they were committed for the purpose of securing proof that Britain would be well advised to supply arms and munitions to the Soviet Union.
“You, Stefan Kuporovitch,” the Marshal’s voice suddenly became scathing, “have shown yourself to be unworthy of the high rank conferred upon you. It is expected, and rightly expected, that all persons in the Soviet State who are elevated to positions of authority, whether in or outside the armed forces, should devote their whole energy and every inspiration to the well-being of the State. You know the desperate plight in which our country was left after the Civil Wars. Every city and town in Russia either lay in ruins or had fallen into decay. From end to end the country was devastated; the railways almost ceased to run, the canals were blocked, and ninety per cent of our bridges were down. Out of that chaos we brought order; and you have only to look around you at the fine new cities with their universities, hospitals, factories, theatres, airports, hydro-electric plants and canal systems, to realise the immense amount that has been done. Yet you complain that you are no longer able to live here the easy, slothful, wasteful life of a petty noble, who spends most of his money abroad instead of in his own country. Instead of putting your shoulder to the wheel in order that a time may more quickly arrive when all of us can enjoy some of those relaxations and luxuries you hanker after, you behave like a spoilt, irresponsible child and abandon an honourable position because you wish to go whoring in Paris.”
Kuporovitch hung his head. “You are right, Marshal. I had not looked at it in that way. It is, perhaps, because I was born in a generation which knew a happier, freer life than can be had in the Soviet Union today. No one who has ever had the chance to be an individualist can take easily to the idea of becoming one of a colourless multitude, and denying himself any fullness of life in the vague hope of improving the lot of the majority.”
“I understand that,” replied the Marshal more kindly. “I also appreciate that, although you have remained an individualist, you have not lost your love for your country. It is clear that you could have remained abroad with your English friends and your young French wife in ease and comfort for the rest of your days, had you chosen to do so. Yet you deliberately gave up all that and returned to Russia, knowing quite well that all the chances were you would be recognised and shot as a deserter; because you believed that in doing so you could help bring immensely important aid to the Soviet Union.”
“I take no credit for that,” said Kuporovitch simply. “How could I do otherwise? Any decent man would have done as much, given the same opportunity.”
Voroshilov looked at Gregory. “And you, Mr. Sallust. From your involuntary disclosures last night it emerged that you have rendered great services to your country. You are a very clever, unscrupulous and dangerous man. None of us here could take exception to that, as long as you continued to employ your talents against our common enemy—the Germans. But you elected to ignore the conventional trust which exists between allies and came to Russia in the capacity of a spy. Although you are not officially connected with the British Secret Service, your activities were calculated to have a gravely adverse effect on the relations of our two countries—and that is a very serious matter.”
“There, I’m afraid I can’t agree,” Gregory protested mildly. “I was sent here simply as an independent observer. Had I got away with the material I managed to collect the relations of Britain and Russia would be greatly strengthened. The British would have far greater confidence that, whatever reverses Russia might suffer, she was determined to fight on with them until the Nazis were finally destroyed, and the Russians would feel a far stronger bond with Britain when they saw great consignments of British tanks and aircraft reaching them. And that most satisfactory situation can still be brought about if you are prepared to release me and help me to get back to England.”
“What! Release you, now that you are in full possession of all the important secrets of Russia’s future strategy.” The Marshal shook his head. “There is a limit to the trust which even the best of allies can afford to place in one another. Your Government does not trust us with information as to when and where they propose eventually to open a Second Front. Why should we trust them with our plans for ensuring the final defeat of the Germans? No. You and Kuporovitch now know far too much for it to be possible for me even to consider releasing you. I can see no alternative but to pass the death sentence on you both.”
As the Marshal paused, the hearts of the two prisoners sank. During the past few moments it had seemed that he accepted their plea of a pro-Russian motive as a justification for what they had done. But apparently their urging of extenuating circumstances, and all the weighing of pros and cons in which they had indulged, counted for nothing; as the central fact in their case had been known to him from the beginning, and he had evidently made up his mind to condemn them in advance.
Then he went on: “But you are a brave man, and you placed your life in jeopardy only through a desire to serve your country. Therefore, if you are prepared to accept my conditions, I will suspend the sentence.”
Gregory’s eyes quickened with a new light. “That’s very generous of you, Marshal. For my part, I will agree to any conditions short of giving you an undertaking to work against my own country.”
“You should know that I would not ask it of you,” replied Voroshilov coldly. “On the other hand, you will have to forgo any prospect of serving your country further in the present war. This is the situation. The information you have acquired must at all costs be kept secret. The easiest way to ensure that would be to have you liquidated. The only possible alternative is to hold you prisoner until the war is over. I could keep you confined in a cell here, but that would entail certain risks. A shell or a bomb might destroy a part of the prison, thus enabling you to escape in the resulting confusion. If that happened you would almost certainly attempt to get away through the German lines, and might be captured there. Again, one must envisage the possibility that the Germans may take Leningrad. As long as I live I shall never surrender. But I might be killed and, even if I am not, such immensely superior forces might be brought against me that our defences would be overwhelmed, and what was left of the city occupied. Once more in the ensuing confusion you might fall into the hands of the enemy.”
He lit a cigarette and continued: “Therefore, I must get you out of the city, to some part of the Soviet Union where it is impossible for you to be captured by the Germans. I can have you flown to a remote prison in Siberia. The death sentence is only suspended, you will remember, and any attempt to escape would result in its immediate execution. It is extremely difficult, but not absolutely impossible, to escape from such places. In consequence, my conditions are that, if I suspend your sentence, you will give me the additional guarantee for your security of your word of honour that in no circumstances will you attempt to escape; and you will also give me your word that while you are in prison you will not communicate anything that you have learned from me to any living person. Do you agree?”
Gregory barely hesitated. If he gave his word he felt that he would have to keep it. That would mean not only that his mission would remain uncompleted, but also that he would be out of the war for good. Yet the alternative was a bullet, and not just the possibility of a bullet a month hence, or in a few days’ time, but the definite certainty of a bullet in the next half-hour. Not an hour would be given him to try to think out a way of escape; no second chance to alter his mind. He must give his parole now, at once, or die.
“Yes,” he said, “I accept your conditions and give you my word of honour to stick to them.”
All this time Voroshilov had been addressing Gregory, who had formed the impression that his case was being dealt with separately, and that the conditions applied only to him. The Marshal’s look now shifted to Kuporovitch, and Gregory gave a quick glance sideways at him too. He knew that the Russian’s case must be far worse than his own, in the Marshal’s eyes, and felt that he must make every effort to save his friend.
Before Voroshilov could speak again he said: “I am in no position to make conditions on my side, sir. But I do want you to know that Kuporovitch was led into this thing entirely by me. That is true from the very beginning, when we first met at Kandalaksha. It is true that he was already toying with the idea of leaving Soviet Russia—but only toying with it; and I doubt very much if he would ever actually have done so if I had not come on the scene. It was I who persuaded him to leave and I did so because I felt that he would be of great help to me in my own work against the Germans. That had definitely proved the case, and I—well—I don’t think I want to accept my life if you will not also give him his.”
From having remained silent for a long time, Kuporovitch suddenly burst into a spate of words:
“Sacré nom, but this is absurd! Do not believe him, Marshal! He does not know what he is talking about! I may not be an intellectual, but I am no child to be led. What I did, I did of my own free will. He is lying now, out of friendship; but I will not have it. I deserve to die, and I am not afraid of death. I insist that you ignore——”
“Silence!” barked the Marshal, cutting him short. “I am dealing with this matter, not either of you!”
He lit another cigarette and went on more quietly: “It is a fine thing to see the loyalty of good comrades. There is nothing finer in this world. But in this case the efforts of you both to protect one another were unnecessary. I had already made up my mind about Stefan Kuporovitch.” His glance shifted to Gregory.
“He may, perhaps, never have told you of it, and it is praiseworthy in him that he should not have recalled the affair in an attempt to influence my judgment now; but many years ago, in the old war when we were fighting the White reactionaries together, he once saved me from being cut down by a Cossack. It is to his strong right arm that I owe the fact that I lived to become a Marshal of the Republic.”
Kuporovitch shrugged and smiled awkwardly. “Oh, it was nothing, Clim. You mean when we broke Deniken’s army at Novocherkassk, don’t you? But it all occurred in a mêlée, and it was the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone, in any battle.”
“Nevertheless, one does not forget such things,” Voroshilov replied. “And in return, I am prepared to give you your life on the same conditions as I have just given Mr. Sallust his.”
“Why, that’s mighty generous of you!” Kuporovitch laughed suddenly. “I must confess that I never expected to get out of this place alive. Of course I’ll promise not to try to escape, and I won’t breathe a word to anyone.”
“You will not write it either, or seek in any way to communicate any message, however seemingly harmless, to anyone at all,” added the Marshal with a sudden access of caution.
“I promise,” nodded Kuporovitch cheerfully.
“That applies to you, too.” Voroshilov looked at Gregory. “It is implied in the undertaking you have already given me. Is that understood?”
“Yes, I agree,” Gregory said, concealing his reluctance to concede this last promise. His agile brain had already been at work while the Marshal was talking to Kuporovitch, and it had occurred to him that somehow, some way, he might just possibly be able to get a message through to Sir Pellinore simply saying: “Am a prisoner in Siberia, but mission successful, go ahead.” It would not have carried one hundredth part of the weight of the personal report that had he been free to return he could now have made, but it would have been better than nothing, and would not have contravened the promise he had made not to disclose Russia’s future strategy. Now, the last hope was gone. His life was safe, but he was committed to remain as silent as the grave—in fact to pass into oblivion—until the end of the war.
Voroshilov looked from one to the other of them and said: “I would add only one thing. Since you have faced peril together and have this strong bond of friendship, whatever your political ideologies may be, I hope that when the war is over you will use your appreciation of one another as individuals to bring your two countries closer together, in order that the fruits of victory may not be lost.”
He signed to the prison commandant, who pressed his bell, and the guards came in. The two prisoners thanked the Marshal again for giving them their lives, and were marched back to their cells.
Kuporovitch lay down on his bed and gazed at the ceiling. He could still hardly realise that not only would he be alive tomorrow and the day after, but probably, all being well, for years to come. The idea of being sent to Siberia had no terrors for him. It was no colder there than it had been at Kandalaksha; and although it did not sound so good to be a prisoner as the governor of a fortress, the former rôle had certain compensations. In a political prison there would be no hard labour, but indefinite leisure to think and plan for the future, and probably quite a passable library of books to read. In any case, unless a prisoner was fool enough to assault a warder he was in no danger of losing his life. Whereas a Soviet Fortress Commander was never certain, from one day to the next, that a political commission might not arrive with the object of holding a court-martial on him, owing to some rumour that the Kremlin had got hold of, and having him shot.
He accepted the fact that they were debarred from completing their mission philosophically; feeling much more sorry about that on Gregory’s account than on his own. From what he had seen in Britain and now knew of his own country’s resources he had no doubt at all which side would win the war. The Germans would be licked to a frazzle in a year or two, then he would be able to get back to his little Madeleine.
Gregory was far from being so resigned to the fate that had befallen him. He still felt a rather breathless sensation from having so narrowly escaped paying the final penalty, but to him the idea of being incarcerated for an indefinite period seemed grim in the extreme. He knew far more about the strength of Germany and the relative weakness of Britain than Kuporovitch, and was by no means so optimistic about a comparatively early Allied victory. He saw himself, day after day, for weeks, months, years, performing some sort of forced labour in the most miserable conditions. He would be cold, ill-clothed, ill-fed and almost certainly subject to a harsh discipline. It was a nightmare picture of a soul-destroying existence that he conjured up; yet to save his life he had readily accepted it, and, by his promise, he had definitely burned his boats so far as any attempt to escape was concerned.
The fact that he had been so astonishingly successful in his mission, yet was now unable to get away from Russia, or even to pass on to Sir Pellinore some inkling of the facts he had gathered, made him livid with rage, but he knew that there was no way out. He tried to console himself with the thought that during the past two years he had been able to do far more to damage the Nazis than most of his countrymen would have the opportunity to do, even if the war went on for another three or four years. He knew, too, that he had been fantastically lucky not to have been caught and shot long before this. Even in this last venture his luck had not entirely run out, as a prison in Siberia would be incomparably better than a Nazi concentration camp. He had been lucky, too, in having to deal with a man like Voroshilov, instead of some official of the Ogpu, who would most certainly have had him shot out of hand.
His recent contacts with Voroshilov had engendered in him a great admiration for the Soviet Marshal, although he felt that he had been a bit harsh in his condemnation of poor old Stefan’s wish to spend his declining years in the ease and comfort still offered by the bourgeois cities of the West. After all, Stefan’s talk of nights on the spree in Montmartre was mostly froth, arising from memories of a hectic youth. He was very happily married now and, given a chance to settle down, would make a respectable and useful citizen in any country of the Old World.
As an intensely strong individualist himself Gregory did not agree with much that the Marshal had inferred. The doctrine of ensuring every child a good start in life and equal opportunities was fair and right, but the intelligent and hard-working would always rise above the rest, and it did not seem to him a practical proposition that the few should be expected to devote their lives exclusively to making things easy for the majority. In time, such a system was bound to undermine the vigour of the race. If the rewards of ability and industry were to be taken from those who rose to the top they would cease to strive, and if the masses were pampered too much, they would regard protection from all the hazards of life as their right and become lazy. There was only a limited amount of wealth in every national kitty. If it was not added to year by year by vigorous enterprise, made possible through the majority of the people doing an honest day’s work, but instead, gradually drained away in bettering the condition of the masses without their making an adequate return, the nation that followed such a policy was bound to go into a decline; then, the general standard of living would fall, instead of the country becoming a Utopia, as the theorists fondly imagined.
The Marshal was, Gregory knew, an idealist, and no doubt he still believed in the principles for which he had fought so desperately when he was young; but even in Russia the theories were not working out. The Communist leaders had achieved great things, but to do so they had been forced to enslave the people. In theory they were cared for from the cradle to the grave, but free education, medical services and coffins were small compensation for the fact that they lived in conditions, and were made to work hours, that would have appalled the working classes of any other country. And now that they were at war they were being herded like cattle to the slaughter, without those they loved even being given the opportunity to learn if they were still alive, wounded or dead.
Gregory thought it curious that Voroshilov should know that, yet persist in his belief that all must come right in the end, and condemn Stefan for his lack of desire to remain in the service of such a State. However, his political convictions apart, he had treated them with a justice and humanity that commanded the greatest respect. And it was that respect which made Gregory feel that, having freely given his word to such a man, he could not possibly break it.
The cold of his cell was now worrying him again, and made him even more gloomy as he thought of the still greater cold he would inevitably be called upon to endure in distant Siberia. He realised too with almost physical pain that it would be a long time—a very long time—before he would again see Erika. That she would wait for him he did not doubt at all, but it was desperately hard on them both that they should be condemned to a separation which could hardly last less than several years. She would, he knew, worry about him terribly, once his disappearance had been reported to London by the British Embassy in Moscow and his return became seriously overdue. A merciful Providence spared him the knowledge that for nearly a month she had been a prisoner of the Gestapo, as, had he known, the thought would have driven him crazy.
In his cell, further down the line, Kuporovitch was still thinking about Madeleine. He wondered if, after the war, she would want to go back to Paris to live. He was not altogether certain that he wanted to himself, now. When he had been brought before Voroshilov he had very sensibly refrained from producing his British passport and endeavouring to screen himself behind it, knowing that to do so would have been quite futile and might only have made matters worse; but that did not affect the fact that he was now a British citizen. True, he had accepted British nationality only for the purpose of this mission; but now he had it he did not think that they would take it away from him, except at his own request.
He still thought it a tragedy that there had been a revolution in Russia. There had been abuses of power before it, of course, but nothing like the abuses of power there had been since. The 1914–1916 war had already brought about a great change in the attitude of the Government and many reforms; practically the whole of the middle and upper classes had become convinced liberals and even the Grand Dukes had been for forcing a constitutional monarchy on the Czar. Had it not been that the weak-willed Czar was under the thumb of his German wife, and she, in turn, under the influence of the evil Monk Rasputin, Russia might have been spared those five years of bloodshed and anarchy; and by this time her liberal intellectuals would most probably have led her into a new era of individual liberty and prosperity.
He felt that Clim had behaved darned decently but, at the same time had his limitations. The Marshal did not know everything, and one thing that was a closed book to him was the pre-war way of life in the great democracies of the West; since he had never even visited them. Kuporovitch had taken his dressing-down in good part, but he reserved his right to his own opinion. One thing, however, was now quite clear. He had returned to Russia only in an endeavour to serve her when she appeared to be in peril, but from now on she had no use for him. Therefore he would stick to his new nationality. After all, if one could not be a Russian the next best thing was to be a Britisher. Perhaps Madeleine would want to live for part of each year in France. Well, that would be all right with him; but he would make his home in England, and settle down somewhere near Gregory and Erika. After all, things had not panned out so badly. The year or so in Siberia would soon pass. The simple but adequate food, the regular hours of prison routine and the enforced abstinence from drink would make him marvellously fit by the time he got out, and probably add ten years to his life. On this comforting thought he went to sleep.
But not so Gregory. He was pacing his cell like a lion in a cage and brooding miserably upon the incredibly depressing prospect that loomed ahead of him. Yet, whichever way he looked at it, there was no escape. He had been caught before and thrown into prison, but, then, he had always been able to occupy his active wits in seeking a way out. There was no prison in existence from which escapes had not been made by men possessing courage, resource, patience and determination. Tunnels could be bored under floors, the iron bars of windows gradually sawn through, and guards coerced or bribed. But now, all such thoughts were futile. It was no consolation to think of the thousands of soldiers, sailors and airmen who had become prisoners of war for the duration. They, at least, could still make plans and attempt a getaway; he was out of the game for good.
Eventually the hunk of bread and mug of brownish liquid that constituted his breakfast were brought to him. He ate the bread and swallowed the muck with the appallingly grim thought that his food for years to come would consist only of such miserable fare. He would not have minded that so much if only there had been one ray of hope that he could devise a way of bringing about his release within a not unreasonable time. But there was no way. He had got himself into a trap and in it he must remain, like a live man in a grave, until, years hence, the ending of the war brought about his resurrection. At last, more depressed than he had ever been in his life before, he flung himself down on his bed and sank into a heavy sleep from sheer mental exhaustion.
The guards who brought his midday and evening meals set them down inside his cell, but did not disturb him. He was still sleeping when they came again, roused him, and roughly ordered him out. Glancing at his watch he saw that it was close on ten o’clock, and realised that he had slept all day. Grimly he thought that, where he was going, he would at least have plenty of time to sleep in, and that he must try to learn to sleep as long as he could, because sleep brought forgetfulness.
He greeted Stefan as cheerfully as he could in the corridor, and they were both taken upstairs and out into the courtyard. They no longer had the fear of it that they had had the night before, and obediently got into a Black Maria which was waiting there for them. The van had a row of six cells on each side and they were locked into two of these. The other cells appeared to be empty, but there was a tip-up seat for a guard at the rear end of the narrow passage that separated the two rows of cells, and when a soldier with a machine pistol had taken it he was locked in with them. With a jolt the van started off and drove out of the courtyard.
The prisoners assumed that they were being driven to an airfield somewhere outside Leningrad, from which they were to be flown to Siberia. It seemed that the Marshal had lost no time in arranging for their departure; but that was hardly surprising seeing how anxious he had been that no mischance should occur which might possibly result in their capture by the Germans. Remote as such a possibility might be, he had ample justification for taking immediate steps to guard against it, as the capture of an Englishman in a Russian theatre of war would have been certain to lead to a particularly rigorous examination of the prisoner and, under torture, even Gregory himself could give no absolute assurance that he would not give away the vital secrets that he had learnt about Russia’s future strategy.
During their three days in the basement cells of the Lubianka they had hardly been conscious of the unceasing battle that raged in a great arc round the city. On a few occasions they had heard a dull crump, as a bomb or heavy shell had landed in the vicinity of the prison, and twice the floors of the cells had seemed to rock slightly from a nearby concussion. But now, as the van drove smoothly through the almost deserted streets they could again hear the distant rumble of the bombardment, punctuated here and there by a louder explosion.
After about a quarter of an hour the Black Maria came jerkily to a halt. There came the sound of muffled voices. A moment or two passed, then the guard in the back of the van shouted a question. A shell burst in the near distance with a reverberating roar Another shout came in reply and they started to move again.
As the van ran on Gregory thought of the many types of blitz which he had heard during the past two years of war; the sporadic shelling across the Maginot Lines, the devastating bombardment by the Russians of Vipuri in the Finnish war, the spectacular but comparatively harmless demonstration by the Luftwaffe against Oslo on the first night the Germans had gone into Norway, the concentrated fury that had devastated Rotterdam; the tragically light fire of the British artillery as they retreated on Dunkirk; the roar of the first months’ blitz on London and the thunder of the terrific anti-aircraft barrage that he had recently heard in Moscow.
And now he was leaving it all. Once the muffled booming was drowned by the drone of the engines in the aircraft that was to take him to Siberia, the odds were he would never hear another bomb or shell explode in his life. He disliked physical danger as much as any sane man, but his escape from it now was no consolation. He could not reconcile himself to the thought that he had been compelled to throw in his hand while the war was still unwon; but it was no good crying over spilt milk now, and he supposed that he would get used to a safe but monotonous existence in time.
The van seemed to be taking them further out of the city than the airfield lay at which they had arrived, but Voroshilov still held a dozen or more airfields within the wide perimeter of his defences, and there was no particular reason to suppose that they would be taken to the one which was used by aircraft going to and from Moscow.
They had been on their way for over three-quarters of an hour and must have covered, Gregory thought, well over twenty miles, when the van slowed down and pulled up.
Both he and Kuporovitch heard the rear door unlocked, then a sharp plop, as though a cork had been drawn from a bottle of champagne. There followed a curse, the sound of stumbling, a fall and more hearty cursing. Evidently the guard must have missed his footing in the darkness as he opened the door, and taken a tumble. He, or someone else, scrambled in; there was a jangling of keys and the two cells were unlocked. The man with the keys snapped a handcuff on Gregory’s right wrist and linked him to Kuporovitch by snapping the other bracelet on the left wrist of the Russian. Then he gave them a push towards the open doors of the van.
A little awkwardly they scrambled out of the back of the Black Maria. There was no moon but snow was falling gently, and by its faint light they realised at once that they had not been taken to an airfield. The van had pulled up at the far end of a mean back street, or, rather, a cul-de-sac, since it terminated abruptly in a tumbledown wharf, beyond which could be seen the glimmer of lapping water.
Facing them, as they jumped down, was a burly, fur-clad figure, with a big automatic clutched in one hand and a lightless torch in the other.
It was not until their feet were on the ground that either of them noticed another fur-clad figure, but this one lay face downwards in the snow, quite still, a few feet away where it had rolled into the gutter.
The man with the torch suddenly flicked it on and shone it in their faces.
“It’s them all right!” he said. “Quick now, and we’ll get them down to the boat!”
Every muscle in Gregory’s body stiffened. The light was too dim for him to make out the big man’s features, half-hidden as they were by the fur hood he wore, but he had spoken in German.
Gregory would have known that voice anywhere in the world. They had been rescued, if one could call it that, but only to fall, manacled, into the hands of his bitterest enemy—Herr Gruppenführer Grauber.