Once more, Gregory could not understand the words, but he, too, had now recognised the fat Mongolian-featured Ogpu officer, and instantly guessed what he was shouting about.
Within twenty seconds his loud cries had caused a score of heads to turn; within sixty a crowd of half a hundred people was milling round Gregory, Kuporovitch, Dakov, the Ogpu man and his sailor son; and from all directions another hundred were running up to find out the cause of the commotion. Except for a few longshoremen and two Soviet Wrens the crowd was mainly composed of fine healthy-looking young fellows with flattish faces and shaven heads, all wearing the uniform of the Soviet Navy.
Nothing short of being possessed of wings could have enabled the two friends to get away. Even if they had taken to their heels at the very first shout they could not have covered twenty yards along the busy quay without being surrounded. They could only stand there, stricken silent by the overwhelming disaster which, in one brief second, had brought their hopes and plans crashing like a house of cards about their ears.
Brief, excited explanations followed, punctuated by the angry shouts of the milling crowd. The Ogpu man insisted that they were the escaped prisoners and vouched for having booked them into the Lubianka himself four nights before. Dakov told how they had been rescued only a few hours previously from a German submarine. Just as Gregory had only too rightly feared, in the case of such a misfortune, it was immediately assumed that they must be German agents and that a daring coup had been staged by their Nazi friends to rescue them.
As scraps of the conversation drifted to the nearest onlookers and a garbled version of these were passed back to those behind the crowd became angrier and angrier. Shouts of, “They’re German! Hitlerite bandits! Spies! Nazi spies!” began to go up in increasing volume, and it looked as if the two friends were in grave danger of being lynched.
In vain Kuporovitch strove to drown the uproar by yelling: “We’re British! We’re British, I tell you! We were captured by the Germans and taken aboard the U-boat against our will.”
A sailor struck him a blow on the back of the neck; another seized Gregory by the arm and attempted to drag him off the pavement. A dozen hands were stretched out to grab at them and pull them down.
The situation began to look really ugly, but they were saved by the intervention of several officers who were among the crowd. Dakov and the Ogpu man called for their assistance. After a few curt threats that disciplinary action would be taken if the prisoners were harmed, the sailors sullenly drew off and made a passage so that they could be marched back to the Admiralty.
Realising that there was no possibility of their learning the dénouement of this exciting scene the crowd now melted away as rapidly as it had gathered, so that by the time they reached the door of the big block Gregory and Kuporovitch were accompanied only by Dakov, the Ogpu man and his son. The youngster was sent into a waiting-room while the other two, having shown their passes, silently escorted the prisoners upstairs to the first floor.
On reaching the door of the room where they had been interviewed Dakov went in, leaving the others outside in the corridor. The fat Mongolian evidently had no fear that the prisoners might attempt to escape, now that they were actually inside the building, and it did not even cross the minds of either of them to attempt to do so since he was armed, which they were not, and at his first cry help would have been so readily available to detain them.
The whole disaster had occurred so suddenly, and so little time had elapsed since their denunciation, that neither of them had had a chance to think out a story which might offer even the remotest possibility of getting them out of their mess; but, while he was walking up the stairs, Gregory had realised that they must at least endeavour to adopt the same line when questioned, otherwise they would damn themselves irretrievably by contradicting one another. So when they halted in the passage he took a chance that the Ogpu man might understand French and seized the opportunity to say to Stefan:
“Quick! Tell me what course you mean to adopt.”
“We’d better deny everything and refuse to talk,” suggested Kuporovitch.
“Silence!” snapped the Ogpu man, in Russian. Evidently he had not understood, but all the same had no intention of allowing the prisoners to formulate a common policy before they were examined.
Gregory nodded quick approval, just as Dakov reappeared and said:
“The captain has just put through a long-distance call on the telephone, so we must wait five or ten minutes before going in to him.”
The little group then remained there for some moments in complete silence. As Gregory thought it over he did not feel that in the face of their positive identification by the Mongolian there would be very much point in denying that. In fact, it was absurd to do so since he had booked them into the Lubianka under the same names as they had on their passports, and these were already known to the captain before whom they were shortly to be re-examined. On the other hand, to refuse to talk at all seemed much the best policy for the present, as if they were left together they might yet have an opportunity of concocting an account of what had happened which would appear slightly less damaging than their case as presented in the facts known to the Russians at the moment. With that in mind he ignored the Ogpu man’s order and said:
“We must admit our identity, but let’s say that only Marshal Voroshilov knows the truth about us and that we refuse to discuss matters until we are brought before him.”
“Silence!” snapped the Mongolian once more; and, drawing his pistol, he jabbed it into Gregory’s side.
Having got his point across Gregory shook his head and smiled at him, as though he had not understood. The four of them then fell silent again.
The thing that worried Gregory so intensely was their apparent complicity in their own escape. There was no avoiding the Naval Intelligence captain learning in the next few moments that they had told him a pack of lies about their having been in Sweden and Esthonia. In consequence, he would be furious with them for having tricked him so completely and immediately become convinced that his first theory, about their being German agents who, on the sinking of the U-boat, had endeavoured to plant themselves, was correct. The fact that they had escaped while being moved from the Lubianka the previous night would only serve to corroborate that. He would have every possible reason for condemning them out of hand, and their only tenuous line of temporary safety lay in that, as they had escaped from the Lubianka, he might send them back there to be dealt with. Even if that happened the odds were that Voroshilov would not grant them another interview but order the suspended sentence of death to be carried out at once, merely on the written report that they had succeeded in escaping and been recaptured. The more Gregory thought about it the more slender he felt their chances were.
They had been standing there for about three minutes when Kuporovitch looked at the Ogpu man, pointed at the next door along the corridor, and said something in Russian.
There was some lettering on the door which Gregory could not read, but on the Mongolian nodding Kuporovitch moved towards it and Gregory stepped after him. As the door swung open at a touch he saw that the room beyond was a man’s washplace and lavatory.
As they went in the Ogpu man and Dakov followed them inside. Kuporovitch walked straight over to one of the cabinets, entered it, and shot the bolt behind him. Gregory stepped into the one next door and did likewise.
The bottom of the window was open a few inches. Easing it gently up, Gregory saw that it looked down into a small courtyard surrounded by a well in the building. As they were on the first floor the ground was only about twelve feet below; and the courtyard was empty. The second Gregory realised that, he stepped up on to the seat and thrusting a leg over the sill began to wriggle through the window. However slender this chance of escape might be, to take it was better than submitting tamely to being shot that night, or, at best, being sent back to the Lubianka.
Turning over on his tummy, he lowered himself till his hands were gripping the sill and his legs dangling. As he dropped, he blessed Stefan with all his heart for the brilliant idea that had inspired this eleventh-hour attempt to get away, since it would at least enable them to give their captors a run for their money.
He came down feet first, staggered, and fell heavily. In a moment he was up again and looking round for Kuporovitch, whom he had expected to reach the ground as soon as, or perhaps even before, himself. To his amazement no trace of his friend was to be seen. He certainly had not had time to get down and out of the courtyard without Gregory catching a glimpse of him as he jumped himself, and not even a projecting limb showed that he was, so far, attempting to get out of his window.
“Stefan!” Gregory cried in a low, urgent whisper.
There was no reply, so he ran back a few paces and looked up again. The bottom of Kuporovitch’s window was a little open, just as his own had been. Through it he could see the back of the Russian’s neck and the grizzled hair at the base of his skull. Apparently he had simply made a natural request, without the least thought of escape, and was just sitting there doing his business.
“Stefan!” called Gregory, slightly louder this time.
Kuporovitch did not even budge.
Gregory cast a frantic glance about him at the surrounding windows. The rooms on the ground floor appeared to be mainly store-rooms. The first and second floors were offices and through some of their windows he glimpsed vague signs of activity, but no one was actually looking down at him.
“Stefan!” he called again, raising his voice to a pitch which made him fearful that half the people in the rooms overlooking the courtyard must hear it.
At last Kuporovitch responded. Screwing round his head he peered out over the sill and, on seeing Gregory, his heavy black eyebrows shot up with surprise.
Gregory ran back to the wall below the row of lavatories, then slid along it to a corner of the courtyard, so that he should be visible from only two of its sides while he waited. For the next few moments he stood there almost hopping from foot to foot with impatience while Kuporovitch did up his clothes. He did not hear the window raised because the Russian was clever enough to pull the plug in order to drown the sound, but next minute there was a heavy thump and he landed within a few yards of Gregory.
Near the far corner of the courtyard there was a door. As Kuporovitch scrambled to his feet Gregory ran towards it. To his immeasurable relief he found that it was not locked, but gave on his turning the handle. With Kuporovitch now close on his heels he slipped inside it. The door opened on to an empty side passage; closing it gently behind them they paused there a moment.
“D’you mean to hide?” whispered the Russian, still gasping for breath.
Gregory shook his head. “No. Once they have a chance to check up that we haven’t left the building they’d start a systematic search, and they’d be bound to find us within a few hours. We haven’t got an earthly unless we can get out of the building in the next five minutes.”
“We’d have to show passes to get out.’
“Not necessarily. The chap from the destroyer showed his both times when he came in, but they didn’t bother him for it as he came out. That’s the practice in lots of Government buildings. But it means our using the same entrance. D’you think you could find it?”
“First right, right again, left, then right,” Kuporovitch said after a moment. “That is, if the passages here are on the same as the first floor.”
“That’s as I remember it,’ agreed Gregory. “Come on, we haven’t got a second to lose.”
As they started off, Gregory went on: “When we get to the hall we mustn’t seem in a hurry and you must be talking to me loudly in Russian. Better choose a subject now. Something we might be arguing about that has nothing to do with the war. I know, you’ve read Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, haven’t you?”
“Of course.”
“Then you can be laying down the law to me that Dostoevsky was a far greater writer than the old Count. If we can raise the nerve for it the strongest card we could possibly play would be for you to grab my arm just as we got opposite the desk, and pull me up for a minute while you angrily hammer home some point or other. I only hope to God that these passages do run under those on the first floor.”
They passed a messenger, two girl clerks and an officer, none of whom took any notice of them. While they traversed the echoing stone corridors Gregory was desperately trying to calculate times. After Kuporovitch had pulled the plug the Ogpu man would have given him a couple of minutes, at least, to put himself to rights before becoming suspicious about his non-appearance. The fact that only one plug had been pulled would probably cause their captors to wait a moment or two more before doing anything about either of them. The odds were, therefore, that from the time Stefan had dropped out of the window they would not have less than three and not more than five minutes’ clear start before the Mongolian began to bang on the doors. They had crossed the courtyard in something less than a minute, their swift conference had lasted about the same length of time, and, at a fast walk, one can cover a lot of ground in sixty seconds. It looked as if they should reach the hall with about a minute to spare before the Ogpu man had definitely made up his mind that they were staying in the lavatories too long.
What would happen then? Gregory wondered, his thoughts racing on. The Mongolian might think that they were still in there, having both taken poison, or hanged themselves, from fear that if they remained alive they might be tortured. Both he and Dakov were only visitors to the building. That might make all the difference to the escapers between getting away and immediate recapture. The two visitors would, perhaps, hesitate before destroying Admiralty property by breaking down or forcing the doors of the compartments. They would probably waste precious time in finding someone to summon the guard to do that.
It was possible, of course, that they might look out of one of the other windows and see the tracks of the fugitives in the snow that covered the courtyard, but even if they did, they would not be able to give a general alarm themselves. It was a safe bet that in the Soviet Admiralty some form of alarm system existed at the sounding of which all exits were closed and guards turned out, and it was probably operated from the command post. But the visitors would not know where to find that, so in any case they would have to go to the bald captain’s office and explain matters to him before a general search could be ordered.
He had got so far in his agitated speculations when, to his immense relief, they saw that the fourth passage into which they had turned was leading them out into the main hall.
Kuporovitch had realised that at the same instant and immediately began his literary dissertation in a loud voice. As they entered the hall he was declaiming heatedly that the Brothers Karamazov was a far greater work than War and Peace. Pulling up with a jerk in front of the desk, he suddenly looked straight at the man behind it and appealed to him for his support.
“Do you not agree with me, Comrade? This blockhead here contends that Tolstoy is our greatest Russian writer, while I say that there are many superior to him.”
Gregory halted too, and was on tenterhooks at this audacity. He thought it a splendid piece of bravado on Stefan’s part but was terrified that they might become involved in a general argument, in which it must soon transpire that he could not understand what was being said.
The man looked a little surprised, but smiled and said: “Tolstoy was a fine writer in a dark age, Comrade, but I agree with you that there have been many better since. My own favourite is Maxim Gorky.”
“There!” cried Kuporovitch triumphantly. “You see!” And grabbing Gregory by the arm he turned him quickly towards the door.
Gregory smiled, shrugged as though he was still not convinced and allowed himself to be led away by his verbose companion. With every step he took he feared to hear the man call out after them to see their passes, but he was just smiling amusedly at their backs. He had recognised them as having entered the building with the Ogpu men and the destroyer officer a quarter of an hour before. There had been nothing to show that they were under arrest or that one of them was a foreigner. Strictly speaking, as they were civilians and had no passes of their own, they should have been seen out by the officers who had brought them in; but officers were sometimes slack about that sort of thing if they were pressed for time, and such minor breaches of the regulations were not infrequent.
When they had passed the sentry on the door their sense of relief was tremendous, but so fleeting as to be gone in a bare moment, since they knew that they had yet to get off the fortress island and that a hue-and-cry might start up after them at any second.
They turned right, as they had done before on leaving the building with Dakov, the same thought being in both their minds—that their one chance of getting clear was to catch the liberty boat before their descriptions had been circulated and the dock police warned to keep a look-out for them.
“D’you know where the main jetty is?” Gregory asked in a low voice.
Kuporovitch nodded. “I think so; and unless things have changed since I was last here they use as a liberty boat one of those old two-funnelled flat-bottomed ferries, so we ought to be able to spot her. It’s five to twelve though, so we’ll have to step out if we’re to make it.”
Side by side they hurried down the quay. It was still thronged, but the twenty minutes that had elapsed since the mob had surged round them had greatly altered the composition of the crowd. The passing pedestrians who had witnessed the excitement had now left the spot to proceed upon their various activities, and many of the small boats that had then been loading up with stores or waiting for officers from the ships had now put off, others with different crews having taken their places. Nevertheless they dared not break into a run for fear of attracting attention, as some of the sailors who had seen them arrested when they passed that way before might recognise them, and tumble to it that, having eluded their guards, they were escaping.
They reached the jetty at one minute to twelve. There could be no mistaking it as, at its far end, lay the old-fashioned, two-funnelled ferry. Three sailors reached its entrance at the same moment, and began to run. Now that they had an obvious reason for hurrying, Gregory and Stefan followed their example.
As they pelted along just behind the sailors both of them were wondering desperately if they would get over the next hurdle that lay immediately ahead of them. Barely eight minutes had elapsed since Kuporovitch had dropped from the window, but by this time it was pretty certain that the Ogpu man would be giving excited explanations to the Naval Intelligence captain. Would they jump to it at once that the prisoners had lost not a second in getting out of the Admiralty building, and, having their liberty boat passes still on them, make a desperate effort to get away on her? If so they would telephone to the jetty and the fugitives would be stopped at the control post at its head before they could get aboard. Against that there was a fair chance that the speed and audacity with which they had acted might yet save them. Back at the Admiralty it might not occur to anyone that they could have got out so quickly. In that case the guards would be put on to searching the ground floor store-rooms for them and the doorkeeper might not even be questioned for a quarter of an hour or so yet.
Breathless they arrived at the end of the jetty. Two Marines were standing in front of a hut there examining all passes. The sailors showed theirs and ran down the gangway. The fugitives had already taken the flimsy papers from their pockets as they ran and pulled up panting to show them. One of the Marines just glanced at the papers and signed to their bearers to go on.
The twelve o’clock hooter blew; the ferry sounded her siren in reply. As Gregory and Stefan charged down the gangplank two sailors were undoing the ropes; the moment the fugitives reached the deck the gangway was pulled in and the ferry put off.
Still panting, they looked at one another and grinned. They had performed the almost impossible feat of escaping not only from the Admiralty building but also from Kronstadt island in the brief space of nine minutes. Yet in a moment they were gravely sober again, as they knew that they had still to get through the third barrier which separated them from their liberty, and that their chances of doing so were even less than they had been at the other two.
It was the best part of five miles from Kronstadt to Oranienbaum, and it was unlikely that the old ferry would cover such a distance in less than twenty-five minutes. Before that time had elapsed it was as good as certain that the doorkeeper at the Admiralty would have been questioned and reported their audacious escape. It was possible that it still might not occur to anyone that they had gone straight to the liberty boat, or, since their escape had been made so close on twelve o’clock, that they would have had time to catch it. If so the Naval Police would be put on to comb the town and later the island for them. But if it was once suspected that they had made a dash for the liberty boat the Admiralty would telephone the port authorities at Oranienbaum, and the fugitives would be re-arrested on landing there.
Getting out of the crowd they stood nervously about on a quiet corner of the deck, cudgelling their brains in vain for a possible way to evade the strong possibility that they would be recaptured the moment they set foot on shore.
Kuporovitch suggested that they should hide somewhere in the terry, go back in her to Kronstadt, then attempt their landing after she had completed her next trip, which would probably start about three o’clock; his idea being that if the port police at Oranienbaum were on the look-out for them now and they did not appear it would be assumed that they had not taken the liberty boat after all, and that nobody would be expecting them when she came into Oranienbaum again about three-thirty.
But Gregory pointed out that the fact of their being in civilian clothes, among so many sailors, made them terribly conspicuous, and that it was even more likely that an order would have been given to the Oranienbaum police to keep a watch for them by three-thirty than it was at present. In fact, it was practically certain that precautions would be taken to prevent their getting away from the island in any later boat as a matter of routine; whereas there was still a chance that during the comparatively short space of half an hour nobody would have thought of doing so.
It was not snowing, but as soon as the terry was halt a mile out she lost the protection of the southernmost promontory of Kronstadt island and was fully exposed to a chill wind blowing in from the open gulf. On Gregory’s suggestion that they should try to find a more sheltered spot they walked slowly aft, still feverishly seeking a way to minimise the risk of their becoming prisoners again in some twenty minutes’ time.
As they approached the after part of the ferry they saw that beyond a set of rails the ultimate section of the vessel’s stern consisted of a separate, almost semi-circular platform somewhat lower than her main deck, and that this half-deck was allocated to the transport of vehicles. At the moment it was about two-thirds full, its cargo consisting of some half-hundred bicycles standing in racks, several motor-bikes, two small cars and a box van.
The second Gregory’s eye lit on the latter he asked, “What’s the writing on that van mean, Stefan?”
“The Red Fleet,” replied Kuporovitch promptly. “That is the name of the newspaper published mainly for the Soviet Navy. As Kronstadt is our principal naval base the paper would be printed in Leningrad, and I expect that van comes out each morning to make deliveries to the shore establishments on the island. I wonder if it is locked?”
The idea of getting into it had occurred to both of them almost simultaneously. Its driver, and those of the two cars, were nowhere about; they had evidently mingled with the crowd on the main deck or, as a large proportion of that was now doing, gone below to get out of the wind. There was no one on the transport deck at all, but unfortunately it was overlooked by the bridge deck of the ferry.
“By Jove! If only we could get into that van unseen!” exclaimed Gregory. “I bet they never bother to search it the other end, if it does a routine job; our chances of evading capture would be increased enormously.”
“They wouldn’t search it anyhow,” Kuporovitch remarked. “No one crossing on this ferry has to go through the Customs at Oranienbaum, because they can have come only from the island, and there is nothing dutiable obtainable there for anyone to attempt to smuggle across. The van will drive straight up a ramp and back to Leningrad, I expect.”
Neither of them had the least desire to return to Leningrad, but where the van might take them when it landed was of small importance compared to the chance of getting ashore unobserved. Both of them turned and gave the forward part of the ferry a quick, anxious scrutiny.
The crowd on deck had thinned considerably and was still drifting below; most of those who remained were now huddled on seats and in corners to the leeward side of the vessel; three figures were visible through the glass screens of the bridge, but all of them appeared intent on their business of steering the vessel, so their backs were turned; but there was one little group of sailors still standing within twenty feet of the fugitives and they did not look like moving as they were engaged in a heated argument.
Seeing Kuporovitch’s glance come to rest upon the group, Gregory said softly: “Let’s give them another ten minutes or so. Then, if they haven’t moved by the time the transport deck is coming into view from the shore, we’ll have to chance it.”
Barely a third of the time limit he suggested had expired when one of the sailors broke off the argument with an angry shrug and stalked away towards the nearest companion-way. The others followed, more slowly, but in another minute they had disappeared below.
The two friends threw a swift glance at the bridge; the officers on it still had their backs turned. Without a word to one another they both jumped up on to the rail, swung their legs over and slipped down on to the half-deck below.
Controlling their impatience to get under cover, they advanced between the bicycle racks as though simply strolling there, until they reached the van. There were chocks under its tyres, to prevent it moving, and it was facing the starboard rail of the ferry, so its back was sideways on to the bridge; but luckily the rear doors were partially hidden by one of the cars which was parked a little forward of it.
“I’ll keep a watch on the bridge,” said Gregory tensely. “See if the doors are open.” As he stood there staring forward over the car top he added: “All’s well! Go ahead!”
Kuporovitch grabbed the handle of the door, turned it and pulled. To his joy, it swung open. Without losing an instant he stepped inside and, pulling it half-to cried: “Our luck is in! Come on!”
Gregory gave one last swift glance at the bridge and the upper deck of the ferry, then he turned, followed Kuporovitch into the van, and pulled the door to behind him.
To their great satisfaction they found that the van was absolutely empty, so there was no possibility of its driver coming to get anything out of it, or even any likelihood of his looking inside until he wished either to clean it or load it up again. They sat down side by side on the floor in the semi-darkness and at last relaxed a little. For the first time since they had been recognised by the Ogpu man it really seemed that they had a decent chance of getting away.
About twelve minutes later they heard the ferry’s engines stop, some shouts exchanged and the faint smack of ropes being thrown down on to her deck, then she bumped gently and came to rest alongside the Oranienbaum jetty. Now that the crucial moment of getting ashore had arrived they instinctively stilled their breathing and grew tense again.
“What shall I say if someone does open the van door?” Kuporovitch whispered.
“Let’s lie down and pretend we are asleep,” Gregory suggested. “Then you could say that we got in here to get out of the cold, and that having been up all night we dropped off.”
“What reason can we give for having been up all night?”
“Say that we’re journalists who have just returned from a trip on a minesweeper, and that we made it to get material for an article in the Red Fleet. We can still show our chits for the liberty boat and our vouchers for going on by rail to Leningrad, so those ought to get us through, providing the police are not waiting on the quay to nab us.”
They lay down at full length, closed their eyes and waited. A good ten minutes later there came the sounds of bumping on the deck near by as a heavy ramp was lowered to it and made fast. Suddenly the engine of the van started up. Her clutch was thrown in and she jolted up the steep ramp on to the quay. There she halted for a minute and the gruff voice of her driver could be heard talking to someone. Then she moved on, her speed increased and the two fugitives at last were able to give free vent to their immense relief, as they felt certain that she was out of the dockyard and running down a street.
Opening their eyes, they sat up and began to wonder how long it would be before the van stopped and they had a chance to get out. As Leningrad was well over twenty miles away, and they assumed that the driver was returning to the yard of the newspaper office there, they expected that the best part of an hour would elapse before he pulled up; but their guess was wrong. Within five minutes of having left the quay the van slowed down, stopped, backed a few yards and came to a halt.
As it did so they noticed that the light which percolated through the chinks of the door had dimmed. Then came the noise of the driver scrambling down from his seat, footsteps and the dragging to of a heavy door. The last light from the chinks disappeared and they were left in darkness.
For a full five minutes they sat on in silence, scarcely breathing; but as no sound came, Gregory eased the door open a crack and peered out. There was a faint light outside, so he pushed the door open a little further and saw that the van had been driven into a garage. The continued silence was a clear indication that the driver, having put his van away, had gone off about his own affairs; so they got out and walked softly over to the garage doors. Kuporovitch gave one of them a gentle push. Their luck was still in; it had not been padlocked on the outside, but merely shut.
Opening it a few inches, they peeped out and saw that they were in a mews. No one seemed to be about and the silence still continued.
“Let’s go!” said Gregory, and opening the door wider they stepped out into the mews.
Further up it a woman was hanging out washing on a line and at its far end a few ragged children were busily making a snowman; but they passed both the woman and the urchins without either giving them more than a disinterested glance. The mews abutted on a railway goods yard, so evidently, the bundles of papers came from Leningrad by train each day and the driver of the Red Fleet van collected his quota for distribution from the station, which they could now see a few hundred yards down the street.
Instinctively they turned in the opposite direction. Even if there had been no risk in doing so they would not have used the railway vouchers they had been given, since it would have been both pointless and dangerous for them to return to Leningrad; while, as it was, the railway police might by this time have been warned to watch for them on the offchance that they would attempt to get away from Kronstadt island by stealing a small boat.
They set off at a good pace, to get well clear of the harbour and station area, with lighter hearts than they had had for a long time, and Kuporovitch said quite cheerfully:
“Well, here we are, free men again, but with passports that we dare not use now that the Ogpu are after us, still in the encircled Leningrad area, and several thousand miles from London. Have you any ideas as to how we should get home?”
“Let’s be modest,” Gregory suggested, “and adopt the old policy of breaking the faggot one stick at a time. It will be soon enough to talk of the Vistula when we are over the Rhine, or, if you prefer, of London when we have reached Moscow.”
“Moscow is over four hundred miles away, mon vieux. To get there we have to pass through the Leningrad defence lines, which are about thirty miles deep at this point, then penetrate the German-held zone, which probably now extends about two hundred miles, then get across the main Russian front and, finally, cover the balance of another hundred and fifty miles or more.” Kuporovitch had not spoken despondently but as making a plain statement of fact.
“I know,” agreed Gregory. “It’s a bit of a teaser, isn’t it? Of course, if we worked round to the north-east of Leningrad the total distance would not be much greater, whereas the German-held belt is very much thinner there; probably not more than twenty miles deep.”
“That doesn’t seem to offer us any great advantage, since the Russians and the Germans are now equally anxious to have our blood.”
“True, and while the Russians are actively on the hunt for us the Germans are not, so it seems that the more German-held territory we cover on our trip the less risk we shall run.”
“What’s more, our worst danger lies in remaining in the Leningrad area, and to work our way round to the north-east of the city would prolong our stay in it, so I am in favour of striking due south with the object of getting clear of Clim’s command as soon as possible.”
“You’re right, Stefan. And there’s another thing. As I can’t speak a word of Russian, I’m a constant liability to you as long as we remain here, whereas once we are in the German lines I can easily pass for a German myself and you can speak enough German to pose as a Pole of German blood from the Poznan area, or something of that kind.”
“That’s so. But one of our worst troubles is lack of transport. Of course, I suppose we could walk the four hundred miles, but it would take us a devilish long time and if the information we’ve got is to be of any value we must get it to London within the next few weeks.”
Gregory nodded. “That’s been worrying me too. It would be suicidal for us to attempt to use the railways in either zone without papers, and at the moment I see no possible means of getting any.”
“We might hop a series of freight cars as the hobos do in America.”
“Yes, that’s a possibility. Let’s find a place to get a meal and think it over while we eat.”
“If you wish,” Kuporovitch shrugged, “but personally, I am not very hungry. We didn’t breakfast till ten o’clock, and in the middle of the night we had that splendid meal with the Gruppenführer.”
“So we did!” exclaimed Gregory. “Yet somehow that seems days ago. So much has happened recently it seems impossible to believe that this time yesterday we were still prisoners in the Lubianka, and that we only left there in the Black Maria a little over fourteen hours ago.”
“Yet it is true, and today is only the twenty-fourth of September.”
“Since you mention it, I’m not particularly hungry myself, but, all the same, I think we’d better have a meal. It is still less than an hour since we escaped from the Admiralty building, so they won’t have had time to circulate our descriptions through the local police-stations to the men who are already on duty yet; whereas if we wait until the evening every patrolman in the town will be keeping an eye open for us.”
“You’re right; and they are sure to watch the eating-places. So let’s fill up while we can, without undue anxiety.”
Two streets further on they found a fairly clean-looking but unpretentious fish restaurant, and going in sat down at a table. Kuporovitch ordered the meal without consulting Gregory, so that it should not become apparent that he was a foreigner, and, for the same reason, they did not converse during it. Although they were not hungry they ate as much as they could manage, as they were well aware of the value of being well lined in such a cold climate, and had no idea when they would see hot food again.
On leaving the place, Gregory said, “Well, any ideas?”
“Yes,” Kuporovitch smiled. “Why should we not return to the garage and find the Red Fleet van? It is unlikely that the driver will go back there until he has to collect his papers tomorrow morning, and by that time we should be well into the battle area.”
“What then, though? Directly we entered the German zone the Red Fleet van would be held up by every enemy patrol we met.”
“Oh, we’d have to abandon it, and adopt other measures from then on—jumping freight trains, perhaps.”
“No. We ought to keep away from the railway if we possibly can, and I think I’ve got a better idea than that. Let’s use the Black Maria that’s in Grauber’s garage.”
“First we must find it, and that may not be too easy.”
“I know; but think of the terrific advantage it will give us if we can. Anyone can see that it is a prison van from a quarter of a mile away, and who would think of interfering with a van that would presumably have prisoners inside it? In fact, it will have—one, at all events.”
“It sounds a grand idea, but I don’t quite get your point about it having a prisoner inside it.”
“Look!” Gregory smiled. “We’d work it this way. If the van has not been discovered or moved it will still have that dead Ogpu guard inside. We’ll strip him of his clothes and you can put them on to act as driver, while I’ll be locked up but visible through the bars of one of the little windows as your prisoner. The fact of my not being able to talk Russian won’t matter then, if you’re pulled up and questioned. That, of course, is while we are within the Leningrad defence ring. As soon as we are out of it we’ll find a dead German on the battlefield and strip him of his clothes. I put them on and we change places. When we enter the Russian zone two hundred miles further on we swap places once more and I become your prisoner again for the last lap. How’s that?”
“Sacré nom! It is a stroke of genius!” Kuporovitch beamed. “Truly a stroke of genius! Let us not delay but set about finding Grauber’s garage at once, before the police get after us.”
They had got through their meal as quickly as possible, in order to avoid it being remarked that while Kuporovitch occasionally muttered something in Russian to Gregory, he never spoke but replied only by nods, smiles and shrugs, so it was only a quarter past one, and they returned to the harbour district with a fair amount of confidence that no general search was as yet being made for them in Oranienbaum.
The water-front of the town extended for a considerable distance on each side of the harbour, and, as they had not the slightest idea whether the tumble-down wharf to which Grauber had brought them lay to the west or east of it, they were, at first, undecided in which direction to begin their search. It then occurred to Gregory that if the police were already hunting for them on the mainland they would be looking for two men in company, so that they were much less likely to be identified apart than if they remained together. In consequence, it was clear that not only would it be wise for them to separate but that by so doing they might achieve their object more quickly; upon which they agreed that Gregory should take the east side of the harbour and Stefan the west, and that they should meet again in an hour’s time outside a decayed-looking onion-spired church near which they were standing when they made the arrangement.
Gregory spent his hour poking about among mean streets and evil-smelling cul-de-sacs, but he could find nothing resembling the wharf for which he was seeking; but having had only a glimpse of it in the darkness of a snowy night, he feared that he might have seen but failed to recognise it, and returned in rather a depressed mood to the rendezvous.
Kuporovitch was there and had proved more fortunate. Within twenty minutes he had found the place and had spent the rest of his hour very profitably in buying a roomy hold-all, provisions which would keep them going for several days to go into it, and two new torches. Having announced his good news, he set off for the wharf again, while Gregory followed him at a discreet distance.
The garage proved to be padlocked, but there was no one about, so they forced the doors with a rusty strip of iron that they found in the gutter. To their relief the Black Maria was still there and inside it lay the twisted body of the murdered Ogpu guard. Rigor mortis had set in hours before, so they had great difficulty in getting his uniform off, but by considerable exertions and the breaking of some of his limbs, they managed it. Their gruesome task was made slightly less repugnant by the fact that the cold had prevented the onset of decay, so the corpse smelt no more unpleasant than would have a living specimen of unwashed humanity.
Having stripped the guard to his underclothes they carried the body over to a far corner of the garage and pushed it behind some cases that were there. Kuporovitch then proceeded to change into the uniform. It was a chilly business and the guard’s tunic proved uncomfortably tight across his broad shoulders, but it would just button up at any time it should seem necessary for him to appear properly dressed. Meanwhile, Gregory remembered having heard Grauber say that the cases contained explosives, so, feeling that a few charges might possibly come in useful, he opened some of the cases with the rusty iron and transferred several packages of gelignite and fuses to one of the cells of the van.
It was now getting on for half past three but they thought it much too risky to drive the stolen Black Maria through the town in daylight and, knowing that they would be up all night, decided to put in a few hours’ sleep while they had the chance. Owing to the cold they thought it sensible to climb into the van for such little additional protection as it might afford, and on doing so they stumbled on a bonus—in the form of the guard’s pistol, which must have jerked from its holster as he fell dead. It was fully loaded and, much heartened at being armed once more, Kuporovitch slipped it back into the holster at his belt. Then they both settled down to sleep.
When they awoke it was a little after seven o’clock. Opening the doors of the garage a crack, they saw that the autumn night had already closed down on the north Russian town, and that it was snowing again. The cover it afforded suited them very well, provided the fall was not too heavy and blocked the roads, but that was unlikely, as winter was only just setting in and every mile would take them further southward to somewhat warmer regions.
The only preparation they had to make was locking Gregory into one of the cells and, when it came to the point, he found himself distinctly loth to adopt his own suggestion; as, once he was locked in, should anything happen to Stefan his prisoner would be in no position to regain his freedom. They found that the cells had spring locks which there was no way of opening from the inside but could be slipped back from the outside by a pressure of the hand; so they got over the difficulty by jamming one of them with a small piece of wood so that the door could be shut, and appeared to be locked, but could be forced open by a firm pressure from within.
When Gregory had settled himself in the cell, Kuporovitch backed the van out of the garage, got down again to close its doors, then climbed into the driver’s seat, and they set off on their long journey.
For Gregory the first hour was so uneventful that, in the blackness of his cell with nothing to occupy him, he nearly fell asleep again. For Stefan, it was nearly, but not quite, so monotonous, as he had to guess his way as best he could in the snow and darkness. It was easy enough to find the main road that led south out of the town, as they had passed it that afternoon after turning away from the railway station, but once clear of the houses he had to run on blind for a time until he could pick up the distant mutter of the guns as a guide to the direction in which the battle-front lay.
They had covered the best part of twenty-five miles, meeting only a few cars and an occasional column of lorries, and he could hear the guns clearly above the noise of his engine, before he was met with his first challenge. As he pulled up a little party of soldiers appeared from the side of the road and asked him for a lift.
On getting close enough to recognise the vehicle as a Black Maria, they were greatly amused and started to joke about it. Kuporovitch told them he was taking an important prisoner to headquarters, and that to unlock the back of the van for them was more than his job was worth; so, seeing that they could not all crowd on to the box beside him they pressed him no further. He took the opportunity to ask them the name of the next town along the road, and they said that if he drove straight on he would come to Krasnogvardeisk in another three versts or so.
From this point on there were increasing signs of military activity and it was clear that they were now passing through the back area of the defence line. Outside the town he was pulled up again, and twice more while going through it. On each occasion he told the same story and it sounded so plausible that only in one instance was he asked to which headquarters he was going.
“The location of all headquarters are secret,” he replied severely. “You should know better than to ask.”
Abashed by this rebuke, and no doubt impressed by his Ogpu uniform, the leader of the patrol apologised, and Kuporovitch chuckled quietly to himself as he drove on.
From the little he could see of the town and the dim red lights that were placed to give warning of numerous shell craters in the streets, he judged the place to be half in ruins. On the far side of it guns banged every few minutes with increasing noise and about a mile further on he was pulled up again.
When questioned, he made his usual reply, but the N.C.O. in charge of the patrol said, “If you go on much further in this direction you’ll find yourself in No-Man’s-land.”
“I must have taken the wrong turning then, back there in the town,” Kuporovitch growled, adding a fluent spate of Russian curses. “Is there a by-road leading east before I’m likely to run into the Germans? If so, to take it will save me going back.
“There’s a cross-roads about half a mile south from here. They shell it sometimes, but their patrols haven’t yet penetrated that far,” replied the N.C.O.
“Thanks, chum. How are things going round here?” asked Kuporovitch in a conversational tone.
“Not so bad,” the N.C.O. shrugged phlegmatically. “They gained a bit of ground today—took the wood down there in the valley. But we’ve been shelling it for the last four hours, so they’ve probably withdrawn by now. If not our boys will have ’em out of it tomorrow.”
“That’s the spirit!” Kuporovitch grinned. “Good luck, soldier!” and with a wave of his hand he got going again.
When he reached the cross-roads he did not turn east, but continued straight down the road. He was praying now that he would not be halted again, as, if he was, he would have to say that he had lost his way, and turn back. The road began to dip gently and he knew that he must have reached the edge of the valley.
Suddenly calls to halt rang out from both sides of the road, and he guessed that he must now be running through the main defence zone. He hesitated only a second. The snow was still falling thickly. Visibility was poor, and it was all that he could do to make out the road in front with his hooded headlights. Fortunately he was on a long straight strip. Switching out the lights, he jammed his foot down on the accelerator, taking a chance that if the van was shot at in the darkness most of the bullets would go wide.
For a few moments his heart was in his mouth. It seemed certain that even if the van escaped coming to grief through running off the road some bullets were bound to hit it. But as it had come from the soldiers’ rear they knew that it must be a Russian vehicle, so they refrained from firing at it, simply cursing its driver for some poor fool who did not realise that the enemy had gained a mile that morning.
After five hundred yards, Kuporovitch flicked on his headlights to get a sight of the road, narrowly escaped a shell crater, and flicked them out again. Then he reduced his speed to ten miles an hour and nosed his way cautiously downhill. Going slowly, the light was just sufficient for him to sense rather than see a steep bank that ran along one side of the road and provided a rough guide to its direction.
Another fainter challenge reached him, doubtless from a picket ensconced in a fox-hole somewhere on the roadside, but again he ignored it. A machine-gun began to stutter.
“Ping … ping … ping!” Three of the bullets rang loudly on the side of the van and others whistled overhead. But the sound brought sudden comfort to Kuporovitch. It had not previously occurred to him that a Black Maria would be constructed of metal, in order that prisoners should not be able to cut their way out through its sides; and that he was, in fact, driving what amounted to a light armoured vehicle which would resist most things short of a direct hit by a shell.
He had accelerated again as the machine-gun opened, but realising that the post could have caught no more than a glimpse of the van through the curtain of falling snow, he slowed down once more. A few hundred yards further on he could dimly make out the forms of trees along the roadside and knew that he must have reached the wood about which the N.C.O. had spoken. Pulling up, he got down and went round to the back of the van to consult with Gregory.
They agreed that they must now be in No-Man’s-Land, and that the time had come to change places. Night and the snowstorm rendered any but minor operations impossible, so only the sporadic activity which continues day and night on even the quietest front was in progress. Occasionally a heavy German shell trundled overhead in the direction of Krasnogvardeisk and at intervals of about five minutes a Russian field battery was sending salvoes crashing into the wood. As swiftly as they could, they changed places and, with Gregory driving, set off again.
As quickly as he dared he drove on through the wood, to get away from the crashing of the Russian shells. After a quarter of a mile the road forked, and as Moscow lay to the south-east he took the left-hand turning. From that point the road began to rise again and a few hundred yards further on the wood ended.
They had scarcely reached open country when another machine-gun opened on them. The bullets went wide, but they were coming from the front so he felt fairly confident that they must be German. As he could not get off the road the only thing to do was to halt, otherwise the Germans would take the noise of his engine for that of a tank or armoured car and, imagining that the Russians were launching a night attack, turn their artillery on to him. At the top of his voice he began to shout:
“Hi, there! Help! I am lost in this blasted snowstorm!”
The machine-gun fired two more short bursts and its bullets spattered down on to the road about fifty feet ahead of the Black Maria. Between the bursts Gregory kept on shouting with all the power of his lungs; then he took a big chance, switched on his headlights and, jumping down, ran to the side of the road. Even there, another burst aimed at the lights with a traversing gun might have caught him, but the firing ceased and he recommenced his yelling.
After about three minutes a group of dim figures appeared through the snow. He put his hands above his head and waited, a prey to terrible anxiety. If they were Germans he had good hopes that things would be alright, but if they proved, after all, to be Russians, the game was up.
To his immense relief one of the figures stepped forward and, covering him with a sub-machine gun, asked him in German who he was and what the hell he was doing there.
“Gottseidank!” he exclaimed. “I lost my way in the storm, and for the last half-hour I’ve been terrified that I’d be captured by the Russians.” He then went on to explain that he was driving a captured Black Maria with an important prisoner in it, had taken a wrong turning further west, gone down the other fork road into the valley, and finding that the wood was being shelled had realised, to his horror, that he was in No-Man’s-land.
In such conditions of darkness and snow the story was perfectly plausible, as the Unteroffizier who was questioning him knew that in such weather pickets kept under cover as much as possible, and that if the van had gone down the road further west the outposts there might quite well have taken the noise of its engine for that of an armoured car going forward to reconnoitre.
Having growled that Gregory was darned lucky not to have been captured or shot, he told him that he could proceed, and ordered one of his men to get in the driver’s cab as a guide up to company headquarters.
They drove off up the hill, on the brow of which they were challenged by another picket, but the soldier on the box gave the password for the night and, half a mile further on, they pulled up at a burnt-out farmhouse.
Against one of its walls a row of rough lean-tos had been erected. From one of them came a few chinks of light and the soldier led Gregory into it. A young officer was sitting dozing there beside a small table that had a field telephone on it.
Gregory thanked his stars that the place was not a house or heated hutment, in which he would have been expected to remove his furs, as his main danger now was that he was not wearing a German uniform, so his furs were his only protection against discovery. When he had told his story again the officer seemed fairly satisfied but demanded to see the prisoner.
Taking him outside, Gregory undid the van, pretended to unlock the cell and exposed Kuporovitch to view. He, too, was wearing his furs, but at the sight of his visitors he stood up and let them fall open, sufficient for it to be seen that underneath he had on a foreign uniform.
In halting Russian the officer asked him where he had been captured, and he replied, “At Kingisepp on the Luga.”
The officer then asked Gregory where he was taking his prisoner to, and he replied: “To the Gestapo headquarters in Novgorod. This man is a native of Kalinin and it is hoped that we may be able to get information out of him which will prove useful on our Moscow front—at least that is what my officer told me.”
There seemed no more to be said, so Kuporovitch was again locked in his cell, the officer gave Gregory careful directions as to the road he should take, and, with an immensely lighter heart, he drove off.
The journey from Oranienbaum and the crossing of the front had taken only a little over two hours, so it was not yet half past nine and they still had the best part of the long Russian night before them. As they penetrated further behind the German lines they now and again met a convoy bringing up supplies and passed occasional cars or solitary lorries, but no one bothered any longer to challenge them, taking it for granted that any vehicle in that area must be German.
Gradually the sound of the guns grew fainter until they could no longer be heard. Soon after midnight the snow ceased falling. Every few miles they passed through a village or small township but all of them consisted of the blackened shells of buildings, having been burnt out in accordance with the scorched earth policy. At a quarter past two in the morning, on passing through a long street of scattered buildings, many of which still had their roofs on, Gregory felt sure that he was entering the north-eastern suburbs of the ancient city of Novgorod, once the capital of all northern Russia. They had accomplished the first hundred miles of their journey in seven hours, and seeing the state of the roads, he was well satisfied.
His main fear now was that he might run into a Gestapo man who would be intrigued by the sight of a Russian Black Maria and pull it up to ask awkward questions. Fortunately, it was still the middle of the night, and the only people about were a few belated soldiers but, feeling certain there would be a police post in the centre of the city, having driven a little way into it, he took a turning to the left and continued on by a succession of by-ways, until he had worked his way round to its south-western suburbs. He lost half an hour in this manoeuvre, but eventually found his way back on the main road to Kresti, Kalinin and Moscow.
Since the snow had ceased he had been making much better going, and two hours after leaving Novgorod he reached the outskirts of the little town of Kresti. Here he followed the same manœuvre as in Novgorod, but the place being much smaller, did not lose so much time in skirting it, and was clear of the town by five o’clock.
He was very tired now after seven and a half hours’ continuous driving, but he knew that if he could cover another twenty miles or so he should reach the Valdai Hills, where there would be woods, and good cover in which to lie up during the daytime. By six o’clock he was leaving the flat plain behind and entering an undulating area of broken forest land. At twenty past six he found a turning to the right which would bring him deeper into the hilly area. Two miles down it he found a by-road leading east, so he drove some way along it until he was deep in the forest, then finding a track took the van in among the snow-covered trees and pulled up. Dawn was only just breaking and during the long night they had successfully negotiated some hundred and eighty miles.
When he entered Kuporovitch’s cell, Gregory found the old campaigner curled up in his furs, sound asleep on the floor. On being wakened he declared that he had had a very good night, and that from about an hour after the German officer had come in to look at him he had only one prolonged period of wakefulness.
As they breakfasted off some of their iron rations they congratulated themselves on their good fortune to date, and discussed the future. They agreed that had it not been for the snowstorm they would probably have had much difficulty in getting through the battle zone that now lay a hundred and fifty miles behind them, and that they could not count upon a repetition of such luck when they made their bid to cross the other, which lay forty to sixty miles further on along the road to Moscow.
However, as Gregory pointed out, the two fronts differed considerably. The one about Leningrad had formed into a solid ring, whereas the main line of conflict was so immensely long that it was occupied in strength by either army only in certain strategic areas. He likened the situation to two forks with a great number of irregular prongs pointed at one another, and constantly being jabbed together so that some of the points met with a clash while others went a little way into the empty spaces between the opposing prongs.
Kuporovitch nodded. “Yes. That must be so; otherwise nothing like so many prisoners would be taken or spearheads cut off. And if only we can find a space between two German prongs, with luck we’ll get through unmolested.”
“Exactly! So our best plan is to keep well away from strategic areas like Kalinin, through which the main Leningrad-Moscow railway runs, or Staritza and Rahev, further south.”
“Staritza is the best part of fifty miles south of the railway and there is nothing worth capturing in between; so we should stand a good chance of slipping through there. You’ll be driving again until we know that we’re in Russian-held territory, I suppose?”
“Yes. But it shouldn’t take us long to cover fifty miles, so we won’t start till dusk. It’s too risky since I’ve had no chance to get a German uniform off a stiff, as I had planned.”
“Perhaps that’s just as well,” Kuporovitch said thoughtfully. “I’m inclined to think that on the route we mean to take you will be in more danger from the Partisans than from the Germans.”
“We must chance that. Anyhow, it’s a good thing that I drove most of last night as I can get a sleep now while you keep watch; then if a band of them is lurking in these woods, and some of them come to investigate, you can explain matters to them in their own lingo.”
With a tired sigh Gregory got into the Black Maria, curled himself up, and was almost immediately asleep.
When he awoke it was well on in the afternoon. To his considerable interest Kuporovitch reported that a little band of ragged Partisans had appeared on the scene shortly before midday, but they had been perfectly satisfied on his telling them that he was a Russian officer trying to get through to Moscow and that he had stolen the Black Maria from a park of vehicles captured by the Germans. They had said that he could drive on for twenty-five miles at least, without fear, as not a single German had been seen in the whole district for days.
They had another meal and, in view of the information of the Partisans, decided to set off immediately dusk began to fall, so by five o’clock they were on their way. A little under an hour later Gregory turned off the main road and began to run through by-ways in a generally south-easterly direction.
A few miles further on, just as it was getting dark, a group of men and women ran out of a roadside coppice and, brandishing an odd assortment of weapons, yelled at him to halt. Instead of doing so he increased his speed. As a result a spatter of duck-shot rattled against the van. Momentarily, he was alarmed by the thought that some of the pellets might have punctured a tyre, but the old Black Maria continued to run on steadily and after another mile or so he knew that his fears had been groundless.
Soon after nine o’clock he found himself on a straight road leading directly towards a town which, it appeared, there was no way of avoiding. In consequence, just before reaching the first houses, he pulled up and went round to the back of the van to consult with Kuporovitch.
They were now in something of a quandary as, according to their calculations, they should by this time be out of the German zone; but not far back Gregory had passed a string of lorries that, even in the semi-darkness, he felt fairly certain had been German and it might prove that in the past week the enemy had made a considerable advance on this sector.
As it was of paramount importance to find out which army held the town it was decided that Kuporovitch should go forward on foot to reconnoitre. He returned half an hour later having questioned some of the inhabitants, to say that the town was Torshok, and that it had recently been captured by the Germans. The front was now fifteen miles beyond it.
The question now was whether to go back and try another way or risk being pulled up at a German police post. Their success so far had, perhaps, inclined them to rashness and they decided to go on. As they entered the small square of the half ruined town they were called on to halt and, in a wave of fresh apprehension, cursed their temerity.
Gregory told the usual story to two military policemen, but they asked him for his area pass and as he could not produce one, they at once became suspicious.
In his cell Kuporovitch could not hear what was being said outside, but from the longish halt he sensed that Gregory was in trouble, so he began to shout and bang violently on the side of the van.
On hearing the noise the two policemen made Gregory get down from his seat and take them round to his prisoner. While doing so he protested vehemently that he had had a pass, but somehow mislaid it. As he opened Kuporovitch’s cell door the Russian, seeing the two Germans behind Gregory, struck him in the chest and, still shouting, attempted to force his way out.
With the assistance of the policemen, Gregory forced him back into the cell and relocked it. But Kuporovitch’s demonstration had convinced the two Germans of Gregory’s bona fides, as it seemed to them that none but a genuine prisoner would behave with such violence, and that Gregory’s obvious business as a driver of a Black Maria was to take him from one safe place to another.
One of them asked what the prisoner was shouting about, and Gregory replied in a surly tone that he did not speak the fellow’s filthy language, but perhaps it was because he had not been given any food all day, and added that he did not believe in wasting food on dirty Russians.
This sentiment so warmed the German hearts of his listeners that they not only agreed to his proceeding, but the senior even wrote out for him a temporary area pass on a perforated sheet of his field pocket-book.
Mutually cursing the country, the weather, the Russians and particularly such Russians as the violent prisoner in the van, they parted, and Gregory breathed again as he drove out of the town.
Having extracted an area pass from the German military police gave him special pleasure; but he was never called upon to use it. He passed some artillery tractors and a squadron of tanks some way outside the town, but covered another twenty miles without being challenged. Then, feeling that he must, at last, be out of the German zone, he pulled up again. They ate another scratch meal from their provisions, after which Gregory shut himself into the cell and Kuporovitch took the wheel.
As they had supposed, the front was fluid almost to the point of non-existence in this sector without objectives. His first indication that they had actually entered the Russian zone was when some soldiers at a cross-road shouted at him to know if he could direct them to a village of which he had never heard. After that his principal anxiety was petrol, since the engine was already being fed from the reserve tank which he knew must now be getting low.
Half an hour after having taken over from Gregory, Kuporovitch found himself running into another small town. Pulling up in its centre, he boldly shouted to some men who were standing about a row of lorries parked in its square asking to be told where the nearest filling station was to be found. They directed him to it and, five minutes later, the tanks of the Black Maria were being filled up. He learned that the town was called Ivanitch and was one hundred and seventy-five versts from Moscow, the equivalent to one hundred and twenty miles. The church clock was striking eleven as he drove out of it.
After that, everything was plain sailing. Soon after three in the morning he was within a few miles of Moscow, and could just make out against the starry night sky the vague outline of its massed buildings, domes and spires. Pulling in to the side of the road, he got off the box and went round to rouse Gregory.
It was clear that to drive into the capital in the Black Maria and abandon it outside the British Embassy would have been positively suicidal. The vehicle that had proved such a godsend to them was so conspicuous and unusual that even to abandon it anywhere in the neighbourhood of Moscow might easily set on foot enquiries which would disclose its origin, lead the Leningrad Ogpu to conclude that Gregory and Stefan had used it as a means to get through the German zone, and result in an intensive search being made for them in the whole of the Moscow area. In fact, their only hope of permanently retaining their hard-won freedom seemed to lie in the total destruction of the van, and, at first sight, this seemed almost impossible of achievement.
They both thought hard for a moment, then Gregory exclaimed: ‘I’ve got it! I felt sure that those explosives of Grauber’s would come in handy sooner or later. Let’s blow the old bus up.”
“Nom d’un nom! What a splendid idea!” Kuporovitch laughed. “Get in the back again and I’ll drive her well off the road into a field.”
Both of them had often handled explosives before so it took them only about ten minutes to arrange the charges and, while Gregory set the fuses, Kuporovitch hastily changed back from his Ogpu uniform into his own clothes. Leaving the uniform on the floor of the van they closed its doors for the last time and, side by side, ran for the road.
They had scarcely reached it when the Black Maria went up with a fine bang, but they had no fear that this would cause undue excitement and bring people hurrying to the scene as German aircraft often dropped bombs on the outskirts of Moscow, and the bang might easily have been the explosion of a time bomb dropped several nights before.
Under a starry sky they completed the last five miles of their journey on foot, arriving at the British Embassy as the bells of Moscow were chiming five o’clock.
They were very tired, very dirty, and with a five days’ growth of stubble on their chins; so at first the porter regarded them with some suspicion, but on their producing their passports he let them in. Going straight up to their little office at the top of the building, they found it just as they had left it only six days—although it seemed to them like six weeks—ago. Sinking into their chairs, they put their feet up on their desks and slept.
After dozing for a few hours, as soon as they thought the Press Attaché would be in his office, Gregory rang through and asked him to come up to see them. He arrived a few minutes later and, on seeing their bedraggled appearance, gave them a surprised and rather anxious grin.
Gregory explained that they had succeeded in their mission, but at the price of falling foul of the Soviet authorities.
“You can’t stay here then,” the Attaché said in quick alarm. “It would make the Ambassador’s position extremely difficult if you are traced to the Embassy.”
“I know that,” Gregory agreed. “But it’s very unlikely that we shall be traced, providing that nobody here gives away the fact that we are back in Moscow. That is why we did not go to the annexe when we arrived early this morning. We dare not risk any indiscretion by one of the Press Section which might lead to General Alyabaiev learning that we have returned. What we have to do now is to get to London by the quickest possible means.”
“That is not going to be easy, since His Excellency is in no position to help you officially. In fact, I don’t think I ought even to inform him that you are here.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to. The information that we have is of the very greatest importance. Of course it can be sent to London by Most Secret Cypher Telegram, but I imagine that only he can give authority to use one-time pads. And that’s the way our stuff must be sent.”
“In that case I’ll do my best to arrange matters,” the Attaché agreed. “But the trouble is that the whole Embassy is in a flat spin at the moment owing to the arrival of this War Cabinet Mission the day after tomorrow.”
“What is the reason for the Mission?” Gregory inquired.
“Lord Beaverbrook and Mr. Averill Harriman are arriving for a Three-Power Conference on aid to Russia. The Russians want Britain and the States to supply the Soviet with masses of tanks, lorries, aircraft, and all sorts of other war equipment, and the whole matter is to be thrashed out here.”
“Is it, by jove!” exclaimed Gregory with a quick grin at Kuporovitch. “Then you needn’t bother the Ambassador after all. But you must get us an interview with Lord Beaverbrook before the Conference opens. If you say that we have information which may be of assistance to him in his Mission, and that we have been travelling in Russia on behalf of Sir Pellinore Gwaine-Cust, I feel sure he will give us half an hour. In the meantime the fewer people who see us the better, so we had best remain in this room.”
The Attaché obviously felt that he was taking on a pretty heavy responsibility in agreeing to their remaining at the Embassy without the Ambassador’s knowledge, now that they were wanted by the police; but he gamely consented to the proposal. Then, having seen that the coast was clear, he took them down to the next floor, so that they could have a bath and shave, and collected their bags from his office, which enabled them to change their underclothes; after which he promised to bring some cold food up to them himself, from time to time, in order that as few people as possible should be let into the secret of their return.
It was the morning of Saturday, the 26th of September, and the three days that followed provided a strange interlude. They had nothing to do but chat and doze, yet they were not bored. In the preceding six days they had had enough excitement for six months; their self-imposed prison was far from comfortable, but it was positively palatial compared with the underground cells of the Lubianka, and they were perfectly content to spend the long hours quietly recovering from the appalling strain through which they had gone.
On the Monday night, round eleven o’clock, the Press Attaché came to fetch them for an interview with Lord Beaverbrook. In spite of the tiring and hazardous flight he had made that day, followed by a long conference with the Ambassador, the indefatigable statesman gave them two and a half hours, and showed no trace of fatigue at the end of it. He asked innumerable questions and with an extraordinarily quick grasp of each situation extracted every ounce of information they had to give. When they finally left him at twenty-five to two in the morning he spoke glowingly of the great help their information would be to him, and they knew that their mission had been well and truly completed.
Next morning they again raised with the Press Attaché the matter of their getting safely back to London. As the imperative need for speed was no longer a factor they were less well placed than ever to ask the Ambassador to compromise himself by giving his assistance; so it seemed that the only thing for them to do was to set off under their own steam, and they agreed to start as soon as darkness fell that night.
The Attaché still knew nothing of the secret of their mission, but their two and a half hours with Lord Beaverbrook the previous night was sufficient guarantee that they had done some very special job of work, and, in any case, as a patriotic Briton the thought of two of his compatriots falling into the hands of the Ogpu worried him considerably. In consequence, at the risk of losing his own post he made a spontaneous and very handsome gesture.
As they were about to leave that evening he produced two British passports which had been issued in Moscow to ex-members of the Consul-General’s staff, and said:
“It may prove a bit dangerous to show your own passports anywhere in the Soviet Union now, so I thought you might like to use these instead. I selected them from a pile that had been sent in for cancellation, and although the descriptions and photographs don’t fit too well, I think they’ll pass at a push. But for goodness’ sake don’t let anybody know that I gave them to you.”
For this invaluable help they could not thank him enough. Then, having done their best to express their gratitude, they left the Embassy by its back door.
They had had ample time to plan their journey and had decided against attempting to go straight through on the trunk railway to the Russian frontier. Foreigners travelling direct to and from Moscow were sufficiently few to be subject to careful scrutiny, as they knew from their journey to the capital, so they had agreed to take only local trains and hitch-hike wherever possible.
By these means, and using their priceless supply of soap for bribes wherever necessary, having left Moscow on the evening of the 29th of September, and averaging a little under a hundred miles a day along by-routes, they reached Astrakhan on the morning of the 29th of October. It took them two days to find a tramp going south across the Caspian, and before they could leave the port they had to secure exit visas from the Soviet Emigration authorities.
At Gregory’s suggestion, inspired by his sardonic humour, they posed as two English Communists who, now that Russia had been attacked by Hitler, had decided that they ought to wind up their affairs there and go home to fight for Britain. This absurd illogicality, having the backing of a world-wide appeal by the Comintern, met with such an excellent reception that the passports given them by the Press Attaché were scarcely glanced at, and with great inward relief they went on board.
For three days they were running down the vast inland sea, and on the fourth landed at Bandar Shah, the northern extremity of Persia’s only mainline railway. Three days of rail travel brought them to its southern extremity, Bandar Shahpur, at the head of the Persian Gulf. Thence, they continued their journey northwestward via Basra to Baghdad, where they had to wait for a series of aircraft to take them via Damascus and Jerusalem down to Cairo.
Having reached Middle East Headquarters on the 26th of October their hopes were high of arriving home by the end of the month; but these were doomed to grievous disappointment. The situation in the central Mediterranean had materially worsened in the past two months and the line of Imperial Communications now hung only by a hair. Aircraft were still going through every few days but only Generals and other key men needed in London on the highest priority could secure passages. Not only all munitions, food and stores, but also almost the entire personnel needed to maintain the British forces in the Middle East were now having to be brought across eleven thousand miles of sea, right round Africa.
Gregory thought of cabling Sir Pellinore, but, on reflection, decided that he ought to save such appeals for cases where either real urgency or an imperative need for help required them. The only alternative was to return home via South Africa and, on reaching this decision, they were at least spared the long trip by ship down the Red Sea and East Coast. After a wait of only four days they got seats in an aircraft going down to the Cape, and having left Cairo on the 1st of November they reached Cape Town on the evening of the 5th.
A return K.L.M. Convoy was coming round from Durban almost empty, so they had no difficulty in securing berths when it called at the Cape on the 8th. West Africa still being in the hands of the Vichy French no alternative route by air up the West Coast was possible, so for three weeks they had to submit to the dreary routine of constant boat drills, airless cabins, blacked-out portholes and a prohibition against smoking on deck after dark. At last, on the 29th of November, they docked in the Clyde.
Their baggage was so light that it took them only a moment to pass the Customs, but at the passport office they were temporarily held up. Having looked at Gregory’s passport the man behind the guichet asked him if he and his friend would mind waiting for a minute, as he had a message for them.
Mildly surprised, they allowed one of his colleagues to usher them into a small room, but Gregory knew that all sailing lists were cabled from the Cape, so he assumed that Sir Pellinore, having learned from Lord Beaverbrook that they had completed their mission, had since been watching such lists for their names and, on learning that they were travelling in the convoy, had chosen this means of communicating some urgent news to one of them.
They were somewhat perturbed that the message might be to go to Gwaine Meads at once, as either Erika or Madeleine was seriously ill, and they were still speculating when, a few minutes later, a police inspector walked in.
“Good morning, sir,” he said to Gregory. “Are you Mr. Gregory Sallust?”
“I am,” replied Gregory.
“And you, sir,” he turned to Kuporovitch, “will be Mr. Stephen Cooper?”
“That’s right,” Stefan agreed, after only a second’s hesitation.
“Well, gentlemen,” the inspector went on, “I must give you the usual warning that anything you say may be used in evidence——”
“God’s boots!” exclaimed Gregory. “What the hell are you talking about?”
The inspector was a kindly-faced, grey-haired man. “I hope you don’t mean to make any trouble, sir,” he said quietly. “But I have a warrant here for the detention of you and this other gentleman under Eighteen-B.”