by CW Hawes
From the Files of Lady Dru Drummond
THE MOSCOW AFFAIR
by CW Hawes
ISBN-10: 1942376065 (ePub)
ISBN-13: 978-1-942376-06-4 (ePub)
ISBN-10: 1942376073 (Kindle)
ISBN-13: 978-1-942376-07-1 (Kindle)
Copyright © 2014 CW Hawes. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission of the author. All characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover Art by Raihana Dewji
This one is for Jodi. Thanks, Sis, for all your hard work.
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
One: To Berlin, By Airship
Two: Arrival in Moscow
Three: The Communist Capital
Four: Impressions
Five: Taken
Six: Mikhail
Seven: A Talk With Dunyasha
Eight: Kit
Nine: This Is It
Ten: You Are One Of Us Now
Eleven: First Blood
Twelve: I Shall Make You My Wife
Thirteen: His Face Darkened
Fourteen: Standing On The Blood Of The Innocent
Fifteen: Leave Me
Sixteen: Sod's Law
Seventeen: Prisoner
Eighteen: Attack
Nineteen: And Give Our Love To No One But A Maid
Twenty: Buddies
Twenty-One: Fool
Twenty-Two: Planning
Twenty-Three: Mosquitoes
Twenty-Four: Sod's Law Redivivus
Twenty-Five: Showdown
Twenty-Six: Reunion
Twenty-Seven: Attack
Twenty-Eight: Escape
Twenty-Nine: We Are Moved By Love
Thirty: On The Way To The Border
Thirty-One: We Kiss The Soviets Goodbye
Thirty-Two: August In The Catskills
The Golden Fleece Affair
Author
ONE
To Berlin, By Airship
The back of my hand covered my mouth to stifle the cry our fellow passengers might hear through the thin walls. Waves of ecstasy washed over me and my body shuddered with my climax. A groan escaped from my lover’s lips as he too achieved release. We lay together on the narrow bed in the warm glow our coupling had produced.
He nuzzled my neck and I whispered in his ear, “Karl, my darling, I love you.”
“Don’t ever leave me Dru Drummond,” he replied.
A few minutes later, he dressed and left my cabin. Peeking out the door first to make sure no one was in the corridor. I dressed, waited for ten minutes, and left. I met Karl in the lounge. He was standing looking out one of the windows into the dark night. I stood next to him. Close enough so I could touch his fingers on the window ledge.
“We should be landing in London in another ten hours,” Karl said.
I looked at my watch. The time was ten after two in the morning. “A six hour layover until we board the Deutschland for Berlin and then Moscow.”
Karl nodded.
There was no sound. Our fellow passengers must all be asleep, although a few might be in the bar and smoking lounge on B deck. I opened a window. In the distance I heard the thrum of the engines. The night air was cool. There was no breeze due to the slipstream around the airship. But leaning out the open window I could touch and smell the ocean air.
My hand moved over Karl’s. “I know I said I wouldn’t bring it up again, but…”
“Oh, Dru.”
I turned to look at him. His eyes met mine.
“I can’t leave Ilene. I love you, but I can’t leave her. Isn’t our love enough for you?”
How long have Karl and I been lovers? Five years? At first love was enough. But now…? I wasn’t so sure anymore. The thought of having someone to come home to or being there when he came home weighed heavily on my mind. And I thought perhaps was worth experiencing again.
My eyes returned to the blackness of the night and I left the question hanging in the air. He too looked out the window. We stood there for sometime. Finally, I said, “I’m sorry,” and left the lounge to return to my cabin. Once there, I slipped off my clothes in the dark, crawled into the bed where we’d made love, and wiped the tears from my eyes.
I washed and dressed and was in the starboard lounge by ten. I wore a dark blue, mid-calf length dress with pleats running from my knees to the hemline with a white leather belt. The sleeves were long and the collar was wide. A simple dark blue beret sat on my head, leaving my dark brown hair mostly showing. I didn’t see Karl. Perhaps he wasn’t up yet or he was in the other lounge. I went to the windows.
The City of Houston is a large airship fitted with wings and a hull to travel on the water, if it needs to. Two years ago I flew on her sister ship, the City of Hollywood, and we landed on Lake Nicaragua because the airstrip was not large enough to handle an eight hundred foot airship with a two hundred foot wing span.
Half of the eighty-seven passengers were in the lounge waiting for us to land. I’d missed breakfast and would have to get lunch once we landed. Supper will be aboard the Deutschland. Technically still at war with Germany, the British only started allowing German airships to land at Cardington in the past two years. The French continue to disallow German airship flights over their territory.
Four days ago the world learned of the death of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator. The very next day our boss, Walter Ramsey Hall, of the Hall Media Network, told Karl and I to fly to Moscow and report on the developments taking shape there. Tomorrow, by ten at night, we should be in the Soviet capital. For all my travels around the world I’ve never been in Moscow. Karl was, though, soon after the Phoney War started, not quite fourteen years ago. I’m eager to see the Russian capital, although Karl tells me it is bleak, drab, and boring like all things communist.
I turned away from the window, found a table, and took out from my dress pocket a notebook and fountain pen. For a time, I sat, my eyes on the blank paper, and then I uncapped the pen and began drafting a dispatch to send off when we land. After only a few lines, a shadow fell across the table. I looked up and saw Karl smiling at me.
“Are you still cross with me?” he asked.
“Yes, very,” I replied, “but do sit. I still like you.”
He sat. “I’m the one who’s sorry, Dru, and –”
I waved his comment away. “The sun is shining. The day is beautiful. Let’s leave yesterday and last night in the past.”
He nodded. “You preparing a dispatch for Hall?”
“Yes. Nothing special. Mostly speculation on what we’ll find in Moscow based on conversations with our fellow passengers.”
“Are many flying on to Moscow?”
“None I could find. Business in London or Berlin. One going on to Rome.”
“Not a good time to go. I’ve heard eight members of the Presidium are jockeying for power. Could be bloodshed. That’s usually how these Communists solve things. Take the person to a basement and shoot him.”
“Oh, Karl, you make the Communists out to be as bad as the Fascists or the Nazis. They’re for the working people.”
He grunted. “That’s what they’d have you believe. But they’re no more for the common man than the Nazis or Fascists. If anything, their methods are far worse than those of the Fascists or the Nazis.”
“Yes, I know, you’re in love with Hitler and Mussolini.”
“I wouldn’t say that. But they have actually done good for th
eir people. Stalin? He just sent them like cattle to the slaughter house.”
“But what about the rumors and reports of German concentration camps? People are saying they are for the Jews and other political prisoners.”
“Yes, that’s what is being said. But we know Stalin butchered millions of Jews and other so-called undesirables. We know he starved millions of Ukrainians to death to enforce collectivization. We know he set up an extensive Gulag system to imprison millions. Stalin was far worse than Hitler or Mussolini. Now he’s dead and some other dictator will take his place.”
“I’ve interviewed many Communists, Karl, and I find they’re greatest fault to be their idealism and hope. They impress me as being rather naïve.”
“Academics. Party leaders in the free world. I tell you, Dru, when the Bolsheviks murdered the Czar and his family, they were telling the world how they do business.”
“The Czar wasn’t a cream puff, Karl. He had his secret police and was quite repressive. And look at how poor the Russian people were. Under Stalin, there are cars for the people and Russia has become industrialized. The lot of the laborer is surely improved.”
“Nowhere near the improvement of the German or Italian worker. They actually have money to buy things. But you can see for yourself when we get to Moscow.”
“Yes I will and I for one am looking forward to the adventure.”
Karl chuckled. “That’s what I love about you, Dru: you’re always ready for an adventure. Nothing stops you. When I’m with you, life is in Technicolor. Life is effervescent.”
I smiled. I wanted so very much to hear the words he was saying and he was saying them. But he’ll never say those other words I want to hear: Dru Drummond will you marry me? Is it enough for me to be Karl’s lover? There are advantages to not being married. I’m truly my own person. I can take love from whomever I choose. I’m beholding to no one. No one “owns” me. Today, right now, I’m free. If I were to be married again, I wouldn’t be completely my own person. I wouldn’t be completely free. Sir John Drummond Hurley-Drummond was fifty years my senior. Stuffy and rigid. Very old-fashioned. I loved him after a fashion but I was expected to play a role. I was Lady Drummond Hurley-Drummond. At times this could be so very suffocating. When John died, I was free of all that and I do so very much like my freedom. I’m the color and the bubbles in Karl’s world. Maybe that’s enough. Maybe I should be careful what I ask for.
“I’m glad, Karl, I give you such amusement.”
“It’s not amusement, Dru, it’s life itself.”
I touched his hand. Most everyone was crowded by the windows. We must be very near Cardington. In 1930, everything almost ended for the British airship program. The horrific crash of the R101 turned public opinion against “the gas bags.” If it weren’t for a rare bit of honesty on the part of the government in shouldering the blame, the airship field would today be nothing but crumbling buildings and the village nothing more than a village. But the success of the R100 restored the public’s confidence in lighter-than-air flight. Today Shortstown is a thriving airfield and Cardington rivals Bedford.
We got up and joined the throng at the windows. I put my pen and notebook back in my pocket. We were too far back to really see anything and returned to the table.
“Tomorrow night we should be in Moscow,” I said.
“And in Hotel Moskva again,” Karl replied.
I laughed at the sour expression on his face and he let a hint of a smile show on his lips. “The Russians are amazingly inept, thoroughly incompetent, and completely devoid of any sense of aesthetic beauty. The Hotel Moskva.” He shook his head. “An ugly and badly designed building if ever I saw one. A child using wooden blocks could have done better.”
“Now, now, Comrade von Weidner. Ve shall zen you to ze Gulag for zuch talk.”
We burst out laughing and several of our fellow passengers turned around to look at us. Then there was the familiar bump and we knew we had landed. There was the usual crush of passengers in a hurry to leave. We held back. The stewards had instructions for our bags to be taken to the Deutschland.
The German behemoth, visible through the windows, was even larger than the City of Houston. A thousand feet long and one hundred seventy feet wide. Powered by six large diesel engines. Of far more conventional design than the American ship, it was also more luxurious. The Deutschland displayed the glory of German engineering. The American ship worshipped at the altar of speed and efficiency. Although on both accounts it was not superior to the German ship. Just different.
When the passengers were mostly gone, Karl and I made our way down the gangway and across the tarmac to the terminal. On the way to the terminal, with no one around, he leaned over and said, “I do love you very much, Dru, please believe me.”
“That’s what makes this all the more damnable.”
In front of the terminal Karl hailed a cab and told the driver, “Rogers.” He caught me rolling my eyes.
“What?” he said.
“You. We always go to Rogers.”
“What’s the matter with Rogers?”
“It’s all chrome and sweeping lines.”
“Just because it isn’t four centuries old, made of heavy dark oak beams, and has centuries of tobacco smoke clinging to the walls doesn’t mean it isn’t good.”
“I just prefer the traditional pub look and smell.”
“We can go to the Iron Horse or Philpott’s, if you prefer.”
“Next time.”
Despite my tweaking of Karl for his choice, the food at Rogers is very good. There aren’t a lot of traditional English choices, however. The menu is heavily French with some American. After fifteen minutes, the cab pulled up in front of the restaurant. Karl paid the driver and we walked in.
The place was crowded and ten minutes passed before we were seated in a booth. Our waiter was equally slow. When he finally arrived I ordered stout and a Ploughman’s Lunch. Karl ordered ale and Bangers and Mash.
“What,” I said, “no elaborate French dish with Bordeaux?”
“Ja,” he replied, “Ich bin eine Hessisches heute.”
I gave him a smile. “And all the other times you eat, you’re from Paris?”
“Oui.”
He reached across the table and ran a finger over the back of my hand.
“I wish we were staying longer,” I said. “I’d love to hear the swing band and dance.”
He nodded. “We’ll be in the air two hours by the time they start playing. Perhaps the Deutschland will have an ensemble on board.”
“They might. Won’t be playing swing. It’s degenerate according to Herr Goebbels.”
“My poor Dru,” Karl said.
The waiter brought our lunches, we ate, and when we finished we decided to go walking since the weather was very nice. Down the row of shops we went until one in particular caught my eye.
“Oh, Karl, let’s stop!”
He chuckled. “You and your chocolates.”
We went in and I took a deep breath. Reluctantly I exhaled. “Oh, God, this is heaven,” I murmured. I wandered through the shop, my eyes taking in the boxed and packaged chocolates. The glass counter held trays of milk and dark chocolate confections.
“May I help you, madam?” The clerk asked me.
“Yes,” I replied, “I’d like a dozen rose and violet creams, a dozen vanilla fudge, a dozen of the dark chocolate orange fondants, a dozen framboise, a dozen of the pink Marc de Champagne truffles, and a tin of the dark chocolate enrobed orange sticks.”
I noticed the big grin on Karl’s face. “What?” I asked.
“I think it very considerate of you to leave some for the other customers.”
“Come now, Karl, I only got five dozen and a tin. Besides, it’s British chocolate. The best in the world, you know, and I can’t get it in America.”
He got the clerk’s attention and pointed to a red heart-shaped box. He then handed the clerk a thirty pound note.
“What are you do
ing?” I asked.
“I’m buying you chocolates.”
“Karl, really, there’s no need –”
He put his finger on my lips. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Thank you,” I said, touched his arm, and mouthed the words, “I love you.”
He smiled in response and took the package from the clerk.
We continued walking around Cardington. “Do you ever miss Germany? I asked.
He shrugged. “Sometimes. I’ve lived in America for such a long time and Germany is so changed.”
“I love England. America is wonderful, but there is no place like home.”
“Okay, Dorothy.”
We laughed and I took his hand ever so briefly to give it a squeeze.
At quarter to four Karl hailed a cab for the trip back to Shortstown and the airship terminal. As we were getting into the sleek yet functional vehicle a man in a black suit called out to us, “Good day! Are you by chance going to the airship terminal?” His English was touched with just a hint of a German accent.
Karl said, “Yes. Would you care to join us?”
“Thank you, sir,” he responded.
He got in the cab. I noticed a gold colored lapel pin in the shape of an eagle with outspread wings and clutched in the eagle’s claws was a circle with a swastika inside.
I held out my hand. “Hello. I’m Lady Hurley-Drummond.”
He took my hand. His was warm and soft. He bowed his head and said, “Enchanted. I am von Neuradt. Hans von Neuradt.”
