Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  Monika put a hand on his arm. “I have never done anything like that in my whole life, and I’m ashamed. But you must see that I was desperate. Oh, Walter, I could fall in love with you so easily, and I can tell that you could love me too—I can see it, in your eyes and the way you smile when you see me. But you said nothing!” There were tears in her eyes. “It was driving me out of my mind.”

  “I’m sorry for that.” He could no longer feel indignant. She had now gone beyond the bounds of propriety, and opened her heart to him. He felt terribly sad for her, sad for both of them.

  “I just had to understand why you kept turning away from me. Now I do, of course. She’s beautiful. She even looks a bit like me.” She wiped her tears. “She found you before I did, that’s all.” She stared at him with those penetrating amber eyes. “I suppose you’re engaged.”

  He could not lie to someone who was being so honest with him. He did not know what to say.

  She guessed the reason for his hesitation. “Oh, my goodness!” she said. “You’re married, aren’t you?”

  This was disastrous. “If people found out, I would be in serious trouble.”

  “I know.”

  “I hope I may trust you to keep my secret?”

  “How can you ask?” she said. “You’re the best man I’ve ever met. I wouldn’t do anything to harm you. I will never breathe a word.”

  “Thank you. I know you’ll keep your promise.”

  She looked away, fighting back the tears. “Let’s go inside.”

  In the hall she said: “You go ahead. I must wash my face.”

  “All right.”

  “I hope—” Her voice broke into a sob. “I hope she knows how lucky she is,” she whispered. Then she turned away and slipped into a side room.

  Walter put on his coat and composed himself, then went up the marble staircase. The drawing room was done in the same understated style, with blond wood and pale blue-green curtains. Monika’s parents had better taste than his, he decided.

  His mother looked at him and knew instantly something was wrong. “Where is Monika?” she said sharply.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. It was not like her to ask a question to which the answer might be Gone to the toilet. She was obviously tense. He said quietly: “She will join us in a few minutes.”

  “Look at this,” said his father, waving a sheet of paper. “Zimmermann’s office just sent it to me for my comments. Those Russian revolutionaries want to cross Germany. The nerve!” He had had a couple of glasses of schnapps, and was in an exuberant mood.

  Walter said politely: “Which revolutionaries would those be, Father?” He did not really care, but was grateful for a topic of conversation.

  “The ones in Zurich! Martov and Lenin and that crowd. There’s supposed to be freedom of speech in Russia, now that the tsar has been deposed, so they want to go home. But they can’t get there!”

  Monika’s father, Konrad von der Helbard, said thoughtfully: “I suppose they can’t. There’s no way to get from Switzerland to Russia without passing through Germany—any other overland route would involve crossing battle lines. But there are still steamers going from England across the North Sea to Sweden, aren’t there?”

  Walter said: “Yes, but they won’t risk going via Britain. The British detained Trotsky and Bukharin. And France or Italy would be worse.”

  “So they’re stuck!” said Otto triumphantly.

  Walter said: “What will you advise Foreign Minister Zimmermann to do, Father?”

  “Refuse, of course. We don’t want that filth contaminating our folk. Who knows what kind of trouble those devils would stir up in Germany?”

  “Lenin and Martov,” Walter said musingly. “Martov is a Menshevik, but Lenin is a Bolshevik.” German intelligence took a lively interest in Russian revolutionaries.

  Otto said: “Bolsheviks, Mensheviks, socialists, revolutionaries, they’re all the same.”

  “No, they’re not,” said Walter. “The Bolsheviks are the toughest.”

  Monika’s mother said with spirit: “All the more reason to keep them out of our country!”

  Walter ignored that. “More importantly, the Bolsheviks abroad tend to be more radical than those at home. The Petrograd Bolsheviks support the provisional government of Prince Lvov, but their comrades in Zurich do not.”

  His sister, Greta, said: “How do you know a thing like that?”

  Walter knew because he had read intelligence reports from German spies in Switzerland who were intercepting the revolutionaries’ mail. But he said: “Lenin made a speech in Zurich a few days ago in which he repudiated the provisional government.”

  Otto made a dismissive noise, but Konrad von der Helbard leaned forward in his chair. “What are you thinking, young man?”

  Walter said: “By refusing the revolutionaries permission to pass through Germany, we are protecting Russia from their subversive ideas.”

  Mother looked bewildered. “Explain, please.”

  “I’m suggesting we should help these dangerous men get home. Once there, either they will try to undermine the Russian government and cripple its ability to make war, or alternatively they will take power and make peace. Either way, Germany gains.”

  There was a moment of silence while they all thought about that. Then Otto laughed loudly and clapped his hands. “My own son!” he said. “There is a bit of the old man in him after all!”

  { II }

  My dearest darling,

  Zurich is a cold city by a lake,

  Walter wrote,but the sun shines on the water, on the leafy hillsides all around, and on the Alps in the distance. The streets are laid out in a grid with no bends: the Swiss are even more orderly than the Germans! I wish you were here, my beloved friend, as I wish you were with me wherever I am!!!

  The exclamation marks were intended to give the postal censor the impression that the writer was an excitable girl. Although Walter was in neutral Switzerland, he was still being careful that the text of the letter did not identify either the sender or the recipient.

  I wonder whether you suffer the embarrassment of unwanted attention from eligible bachelors. You are so beautiful and charming that you must. I have the same problem. I don’t have beauty or charm, of course, but despite that I receive advances. My mother has chosen someone for me to marry, a chum of my sister’s, a person I have always known and liked. It was very difficult for a while, and I’m afraid that in the end the person discovered that I have a friendship that excludes marriage. However, I believe our secret is safe.

  If a censor bothered to read this far he would now conclude that the letter was from a lesbian to her lover. The same conclusion would be reached by anyone in England who read the letter. This hardly mattered: undoubtedly Maud, being a feminist and apparently single at twenty-six, was already suspected of Sapphic tendencies.

  In a few days’ time I will be in Stockholm, another cold city beside the water, and you could send me a letter at the Grand Hotel there.

  Sweden, like Switzerland, was a neutral country with a postal service to England.

  I would love to hear from you!!!Until then, my wonderful darling,

  remember your beloved—

  Waltraud.

  { III }

  The United States declared war on Germany on Friday, April 6, 1917.

  Walter had been expecting it, but all the same he felt the blow. America was rich, vigorous, and democratic: he could not imagine a worse enemy. The only hope now was that Russia would collapse, giving Germany a chance to win on the western front before the Americans had time to build up their forces.

  Three days later, thirty-two exiled Russian revolutionaries met at the Zähringerhof Hotel in Zurich: men, women, and one child, a four-year-old boy called Robert. They walked from there to the baroque arch of the railway station to board a train for home.

  Walter had been afraid they would not go. Martov, the Menshevik leader, had refused to leave without permission from the provisional gov
ernment in Petrograd—an oddly deferential attitude for a revolutionary. Permission had not been given, but Lenin and the Bolsheviks decided to go anyway. Walter was keen that there should be no snags on the trip, and he accompanied the group to the riverside station and boarded the train with them.

  This is Germany’s secret weapon, Walter thought: thirty-two malcontents and misfits who want to bring down the Russian government. God help us.

  Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, known as Lenin, was forty-six years old. He was a short, stocky figure, dressed neatly but without elegance, too busy to waste time on style. He had once been a redhead, but he had lost his hair early, and now he had a shiny dome with a vestigial fringe, and a carefully trimmed Vandyke beard, ginger streaked with gray. On first acquaintance Walter had found him unimpressive, without charm or good looks.

  Walter was posing as a lowly official in the Foreign Office who had been given the job of making all the practical arrangements for the Bolsheviks’ journey through Germany. Lenin had given him a hard, appraising look, clearly guessing that he was in reality some kind of intelligence operative.

  They traveled to Schaffhausen, on the border, where they transferred to a German train. They all spoke some German, having been living in the German-speaking region of Switzerland. Lenin himself spoke it well. He was a remarkable linguist, Walter learned. He was fluent in French, spoke passable English, and read Aristotle in ancient Greek. Lenin’s idea of relaxation was to sit down with a foreign-language dictionary for an hour or two.

  At Gottmadingen they changed again, to a train with a sealed carriage specially prepared for them as if they were carriers of an infectious disease. Three of its four doors were locked shut. The fourth door was next to Walter’s sleeping compartment. This was to reassure overanxious German authorities, but it was not necessary: the Russians had no desire to escape, they wanted to go home.

  Lenin and his wife, Nadya, had a room to themselves, but the others were crowded four to a compartment. So much for egalitarianism, Walter thought cynically.

  As the train crossed Germany from south to north, Walter began to sense the force of character beneath Lenin’s dull exterior. Lenin had no interest in food, drink, comfort, or possessions. Politics consumed his entire day. He was always arguing about politics, writing about politics, or thinking about politics and making notes. In arguments, Walter noted, Lenin always appeared to know more than his comrades and to have thought longer and harder than they—unless the subject under discussion was nothing to do with Russia or politics, in which case he was rather ill-informed.

  He was a real killjoy. The first evening, the bespectacled young Karl Radek was telling jokes in the next compartment. “A man was arrested for saying, ‘Nicholas is a moron.’ He told the policeman: ‘I meant another Nicholas, not our beloved tsar.’ The policeman said: ‘Liar! If you say moron you obviously mean the tsar!’” Radek’s companions hooted with laughter. Lenin came out of his compartment with a face like thunder and ordered them to keep quiet.

  Lenin did not like smoking. He himself had given it up, on his mother’s insistence, thirty years ago. In deference to him, people smoked in the toilet at the end of the carriage. As there was only one toilet for thirty-two people this led to queues and squabbles. Lenin turned his considerable intellect to solving this problem. He cut up some paper and issued everyone with tickets of two kinds, some for normal use of the toilet and a smaller number for smoking. This reduced the queue and ended the arguments. Walter was amused. It worked, and everyone was happy, but there was no discussion, no attempt at collective decision-making. In this group, Lenin was a benign dictator. If he ever gained real power, would he manage the Russian empire the same way?

  But would he win power? If not, Walter was wasting his time.

  There was only one way he could think of to improve Lenin’s prospects, and he made up his mind to do something about it.

  He left the train at Berlin, saying he would be back to rejoin the Russians for the last leg. “Don’t be long,” one of them said. “We leave again in an hour.”

  “I’ll be quick,” said Walter. The train would depart when Walter said, but the Russians did not know that.

  The carriage was in a siding at the Potsdamer station, and it took him only a few minutes to walk from there to the Foreign Office at 76 Wilhelmstrasse in the heart of old Berlin. His father’s spacious room had a heavy mahogany desk, a painting of the kaiser, and a glass-fronted cabinet containing his collection of ceramics, including the eighteenth-century creamware fruit bowl he had bought on his last trip to London. As Walter had hoped, Otto was at his desk.

  “There’s no doubt of Lenin’s beliefs,” he told his father over coffee. “He says they have got rid of the symbol of oppression—the tsar—without changing Russian society. The workers have failed to take control: the middle class still runs everything. On top of that, Lenin personally hates Kerensky for some reason.”

  “But can he overthrow the provisional government?”

  Walter spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “He is highly intelligent, determined, and a natural leader, and he never does anything except work. But the Bolsheviks are just another little political party among a dozen or more vying for power, and there’s no way to tell who will come out on top.”

  “So all this effort may have been for nothing.”

  “Unless we do something to help the Bolsheviks win.”

  “Such as?”

  Walter took a deep breath. “Give them money.”

  “What?” Otto was outraged. “The government of Germany, to give money to socialist revolutionaries?”

  “I suggest a hundred thousand rubles, initially,” Walter said coolly. “Preferably in gold ten-ruble pieces, if you can get them.”

  “The kaiser would never agree.”

  “Does he have to be told? Zimmermann could approve this on his own authority.”

  “He would never do such a thing.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Otto stared at Walter in silence for a long time, thinking.

  Then he said: “I’ll ask him.”

  { IV }

  After three days on the train, the Russians left Germany. At Sassnitz, on the coast, they bought tickets for the ferry Queen Victoria to take them across the Baltic Sea to the southern tip of Sweden. Walter went with them. The crossing was rough and everyone was seasick except Lenin, Radek, and Zinoviev, who were on deck having an angry political argument and did not seem to notice the heavy seas.

  They took an overnight train to Stockholm, where the socialist Borgmastare gave them a welcome breakfast. Walter checked into the Grand Hotel, hoping to find a letter from Maud waiting for him. There was nothing.

  He was so disappointed that he wanted to throw himself into the cold water of the bay. This had been his only chance to communicate with his wife in almost three years, and something had gone wrong. Had she even received his letter?

  Unhappy fantasies tormented him. Did she still care for him? Had she forgotten him? Was there perhaps a new man in her life? He was completely in the dark.

  Radek and the well-dressed Swedish socialists took Lenin, somewhat against his will, to the menswear section of the PUB department store. The hobnailed mountain boots the Russian had been wearing vanished. He got a coat with a velvet collar and a new hat. Now, Radek said, he was at least dressed like someone who could lead his people.

  That evening, as night fell, the Russians went to the station to board yet another train for Finland. Walter was leaving the group here, but he went with them to the station. Before the train left, he had a meeting alone with Lenin.

  They sat in a compartment under a dim electric light that gleamed off Lenin’s bald head. Walter was tense. He had to do this just right. It would be no good to beg or plead with Lenin, he felt sure. And the man certainly could not be bullied. Only cold logic would persuade him.

  Walter had a prepared speech. “The German government is helping you to return home,” he said. “You know
we are not doing this out of goodwill.”

  Lenin interrupted in fluent German. “You think it will be to the detriment of Russia!” he barked.

  Walter did not contradict him. “And yet you have accepted our help.”

  “For the sake of the revolution! This is the only standard of right and wrong.”

  “I thought you would say that.” Walter was carrying a heavy suitcase, and now he put it down on the floor of the railway carriage with a thump. “In the false bottom of this case you will find one hundred thousand rubles in notes and coins.”

  “What?” Lenin was normally imperturbable, but now he looked startled. “What is it for?”

  “For you.”

  Lenin was offended. “A bribe?” he said indignantly.

  “Certainly not,” said Walter. “We have no need to bribe you. Your aims are the same as ours. You have called for the overthrow of the provisional government and an end to the war.”

  “What, then?”

  “For propaganda. To help you spread your message. It is the message that we, too, would like to broadcast. Peace between Germany and Russia.”

  “So that you can win your capitalist-imperialist war against France!”

  “As I said before, we are not helping you out of goodwill—nor would you expect us to. It’s practical politics, that’s all. For the moment, your interests coincide with ours.”

  Lenin looked as he had when Radek insisted on buying him new clothes: he hated the idea, but could not deny that it made sense.

  Walter said: “We’ll give you a similar amount of money once a month—as long, of course, as you continue to campaign effectively for peace.”

  There was a long silence.

  Walter said: “You say that the success of the revolution is the only standard of right and wrong. If that is so, you should take the money.”

  Outside on the platform, a whistle blew.