Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  “Yes, why, what’s happened?”

  Grigori felt a wave of relief. He was not too late. He stepped inside. “They’re going to arrest him.”

  Anna slammed the door. “Volodya!” she called, using the familiar form of Lenin’s first name. “Come quickly!”

  Lenin appeared, dressed as always in a shabby dark suit with a collar and tie. Grigori explained the situation rapidly.

  “I’ll leave immediately,” Lenin said.

  Anna said: “Don’t you want to throw a few things in your suitcase—”

  “Too risky. Send everything later. I’ll let you know where I am.” He looked at Grigori. “Thank you for the warning, Grigori Sergeivich. Do you have a car?”

  “Yes.”

  Without another word Lenin went out into the hall.

  Grigori followed him to the street and hurried to open the car door. “They have also issued warrants for Zinoviev and Kamenev,” Grigori said as Lenin got in.

  “Go back to the apartment and telephone them,” Lenin said. “Mark has a phone and he knows where they are.” He slammed the door. He leaned forward and said something to Isaak that Grigori did not hear. Isaak drove off.

  This was how Lenin was all the time. He barked orders at everyone, and they did what he said because he always made sense.

  Grigori felt the pleasure of a great weight being lifted from his shoulders. He looked up and down the street. A group of men came out of a building on the other side. Some were dressed in suits, others wore army officers’ uniforms. Grigori was shocked to recognize Mikhail Pinsky. The secret police had been abolished, in theory, but it seemed men such as Pinsky were continuing their work as part of the army.

  These men must have come for Lenin—and just missed him by going into the wrong building.

  Grigori ran back inside. The door to the Yelizarovs’ apartment was still open. Just inside were Anna; her husband, Mark; her foster son, Gora; and the family servant, a country girl called Anyushka, all looking shocked. Grigori closed the door behind him. “He’s safely away,” he said. “But the police are outside. I have to telephone Zinoviev and Kamenev quickly.”

  Mark said: “The phone is there on the side table.”

  Grigori hesitated. “How does it work?” He had never used a telephone.

  “Oh, sorry,” said Mark. He picked up the instrument, holding one piece to his ear and the other to his mouth. “It’s quite new to us, but we use it so much that we take it for granted already.” Impatiently he jiggled the sprung bar on top of the stand. “Yes, please, operator,” he said, and gave a number.

  There was a banging at the door.

  Grigori held his finger to his lips, telling the others to be quiet.

  Anna took Anyushka and the child into the back of the apartment.

  Mark spoke rapidly into the phone. Grigori stood at the apartment door. A voice said: “Open up or we’ll break down the door! We have a warrant!”

  Grigori shouted back: “Just a minute—I’m putting my pants on.” The police came often to the kinds of buildings where he had lived most of his life, and he knew all the pretexts for keeping them waiting.

  Mark jiggled the bar again and asked for another number.

  Grigori shouted: “Who is it? Who’s at the door?”

  “Police! Open up this instant!”

  “I’m just coming—I have to lock the dog in the kitchen.”

  “Hurry up!”

  Grigori heard Mark say: “Tell him to go into hiding. The police are at my door now.” He replaced the earpiece on its hook and nodded to Grigori.

  Grigori opened the door and stood back.

  Pinsky stepped in. “Where is Lenin?” he said.

  Several army officers followed him in.

  Grigori said: “There is no one here by that name.”

  Pinsky stared at him. “What are you doing here?” he said. “I always knew you were a troublemaker.”

  Mark stepped forward and said calmly: “Show me the warrant, please.”

  Reluctantly, Pinsky handed over a piece of paper.

  Mark studied it for a few moments, then said: “High treason? That’s ridiculous!”

  “Lenin is a German agent,” Pinsky said. He narrowed his eyes at Mark. “You’re his brother-in-law, aren’t you?”

  Mark handed the paper back. “The man you are looking for is not here,” he said.

  Pinsky could sense he was telling the truth, and he looked angry. “Why the hell not?” he said. “He lives here!”

  “Lenin is not here,” Mark repeated.

  Pinsky’s face reddened. “Was he warned?” He grabbed Grigori by the front of his tunic. “What are you doing here?”

  “I am a deputy to the Petrograd soviet, representing the First Machine Guns, and unless you want the regiment to pay a visit to your headquarters you’d better take your fat hands off my uniform.”

  Pinsky let go. “We’ll take a look around anyway,” he said.

  There was a bookcase beside the phone table. Pinsky took half a dozen books off the shelf and threw them to the floor. He waved the officers toward the interior of the flat. “Tear the place apart,” he said.

  { III }

  Walter went to a village within the territory won from the Russians and gave an astonished and delighted peasant a gold coin for all his clothes: a filthy sheepskin coat, a linen smock, loose coarse trousers, and shoes made of bast, the woven bark of a beech tree. Fortunately Walter did not have to buy his underwear, for the man wore none.

  Walter cut his hair with a pair of kitchen scissors and stopped shaving.

  In a small market town he bought a sack of onions. He put a leather bag containing ten thousand rubles in coins and notes in the bottom of the sack under the onions.

  One night he smeared his hands and face with earth then, dressed in the peasant’s clothes and carrying the onion sack, he crossed no-man’s-land, slipped through the Russian lines, and walked to the nearest railway station, where he bought a third-class ticket.

  He adopted an aggressive attitude, and snarled at anyone who spoke to him, as if he feared they wanted to steal his onions, which they probably did. He had a large knife, rusty but sharp, clearly visible at his belt, and a Mosin-Nagant pistol, taken from a captured Russian officer, concealed under his smelly coat. On two occasions when a policeman spoke to him he grinned stupidly and offered an onion, a bribe so contemptible that both times the policeman grunted with disgust and walked off. If a policeman had insisted on looking into the sack, Walter was ready to kill him, but it was never necessary. He bought tickets for short journeys, three or four stops at a time, for a peasant would not go hundreds of miles to sell his onions.

  He was tense and wary. His disguise was thin. Anyone who spoke to him for more than a few seconds would know he was not really Russian. The penalty for what he was doing was death.

  At first he was scared, but that eventually wore off, and by the second day he was bored. He had nothing to occupy his mind. He could not read, of course: indeed, he had to be careful not to look at timetables posted at stations, or do more than glance at advertisements, for most peasants were illiterate. As a series of slow trains rattled and shook through the endless Russian forests, he entered into an elaborate daydream about the apartment he and Maud would live in after the war. It would have modern decor, with pale wood and neutral colors, like that of the von der Helbard house, rather than the heavy, dark look of his parents’ home. Everything would be easy to clean and maintain, especially in the kitchen and laundry, so that they could employ fewer servants. They would have a really good piano, a Steinway grand, for they both liked to play. They would buy one or two eye-catching modern paintings, perhaps by Austrian expressionists, to shock the older generation and establish themselves as a progressive couple. They would have a light, airy bedroom and lie naked on a soft bed, kissing and talking and making love.

  In this way he journeyed to Petrograd.

  The arrangement, made through a revolutionary social
ist in the Swedish embassy, was that someone from the Bolsheviks would wait to collect the money from Walter at Petrograd’s Warsaw Station every day at six P.M. for one hour. Walter arrived at midday, and took the opportunity to look around the city, with the aim of assessing the Russian people’s ability to fight on.

  He was shocked by what he saw.

  As soon as he left the station he was assailed by prostitutes, male and female, adult and child. He crossed a canal bridge and walked a couple of miles north into the city center. Most shops were closed, many boarded up, a few simply abandoned, with the smashed glass of their windows glittering on the street outside. He saw many drunks and two fistfights. Occasionally an automobile or a horse-drawn carriage dashed past, scattering pedestrians, its passengers hiding behind closed curtains. Most of the people were thin, ragged, and barefoot. It was much worse than Berlin.

  He saw many soldiers, individually and in groups, most showing lapsed discipline: marching out of step or lounging at their posts, uniforms unbuttoned, chatting to civilians, apparently doing as they pleased. Walter was confirmed in the impression he had formed when he visited the Russian front line: these men were in no mood to fight.

  This is all good news, he thought.

  No one accosted him and the police ignored him. He was just another shabby figure shuffling about his own business in a city that was falling apart.

  In high spirits, he returned to the station at six and quickly spotted his contact, a sergeant with a red scarf tied to the barrel of his rifle. Before making himself known, Walter studied the man. He was a formidable figure, not tall but broad-shouldered and thickset. He was missing his right ear, one front tooth, and the ring finger of his left hand. He waited with the patience of a veteran soldier, but he had a keen blue-eyed gaze that did not miss much. Although Walter intended to watch him covertly the soldier met his eye, nodded, and turned and walked away. As was clearly intended, Walter followed him. They went into a large room full of tables and chairs and sat down.

  Walter said: “Sergeant Grigori Peshkov?”

  Grigori nodded. “I know who you are. Sit down.”

  Walter looked around the room. There was a samovar hissing in a corner, and an old woman in a shawl selling smoked and pickled fish. Fifteen or twenty people were sitting at tables. No one gave a second glance to a soldier and a peasant who was obviously hoping to sell his sack of onions. A young man in the blue tunic of a factory worker followed them in. Walter caught the man’s eye briefly and watched him take a seat, light a cigarette, and open Pravda.

  Walter said: “May I have something to eat? I’m starving, but a peasant probably can’t afford the prices here.”

  Grigori got a plate of black bread and herrings and two glasses of tea with sugar. Walter tucked into the food. After watching him for a minute, Grigori laughed. “I’m amazed you’ve passed for a peasant,” he said. “I’d know you for a bourgeois.”

  “How?”

  “Your hands are dirty, but you eat in small bites and dab your lips with a rag as if it was a linen napkin. A real peasant shovels the food in and slurps tea before swallowing.”

  Walter was irritated by his condescension. After all, I’ve survived three days on a damn train, he thought. I’d like to see you try that in Germany. It was time to remind Peshkov that he had to earn his money. “Tell me how the Bolsheviks are doing,” he said.

  “Dangerously well,” said Grigori. “Thousands of Russians have joined the party in the last few months. Leon Trotsky has at last announced his support for us. You should hear him. Most nights he packs out the Cirque Moderne.” Walter could see that Grigori hero-worshipped Trotsky. Even the Germans knew that Trotsky’s oratory was enchanting. He was a real catch for the Bolsheviks. “Last February we had ten thousand members—today we have two hundred thousand,” Grigori finished proudly.

  “This is good, but can you change things?” Walter said.

  “We have a strong chance of winning the election for the Constituent Assembly.”

  “When will it be held?”

  “It has been much delayed—”

  “Why?”

  Grigori sighed. “First the provisional government called together a council of representatives which, after two months, finally agreed on the composition of a sixty-member second council to draft the electoral law—”

  “Why? Why such an elaborate process?”

  Grigori looked irate. “They say they want the election to be absolutely unchallengeable—but the real reason is that the conservative parties are dragging their feet, knowing they stand to lose.”

  He was only a sergeant, Walter thought, but his analysis seemed quite sophisticated. “So when will the election be held?”

  “September.”

  “And why do you think the Bolsheviks will win?”

  “We are still the only group firmly committed to peace. And everyone knows that—thanks to all the newspapers and pamphlets we’ve produced.”

  “Why did you say you were doing ‘dangerously’ well?”

  “It makes us the government’s prime target. There’s a warrant out for Lenin’s arrest. He’s had to go into hiding. But he’s still running the party.”

  Walter believed that, too. If Lenin could keep control of his party from exile in Zurich, he could certainly do so from a hideaway in Russia.

  Walter had made the delivery and gathered the information he needed. He had accomplished his mission. A sense of relief came over him. Now all he had to do was get home.

  With his foot he pushed the sack containing the ten thousand rubles across the floor to Grigori.

  He finished his tea and stood up. “Enjoy your onions,” he said, and he walked to the door.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the man in the blue tunic fold his copy of Pravda and get to his feet.

  Walter bought a ticket to Luga and boarded the train. He entered a third-class compartment. He pushed through a group of soldiers smoking and drinking vodka, a family of Jews with all their possessions in string-tied bundles, and some peasants with empty crates who had presumably sold their chickens. At the far end of the carriage he paused and looked back.

  The blue tunic entered the carriage.

  Walter watched for a second as the man pushed through the passengers, carelessly elbowing people out of his way. Only a policeman would do that.

  Walter jumped off the train and hurriedly left the station. Recalling his tour of exploration that afternoon, he headed at a fast walk for the canal. It was the season of short summer nights, so the evening was light. He hoped he might have shaken his tail, but when he glanced over his shoulder he saw the blue tunic following him. He had presumably been following Peshkov, and had decided to investigate Grigori’s onion-selling peasant friend.

  The man broke into a jogging run.

  If caught, Walter would be shot as a spy. He had no choice about what he had to do next.

  He was in a low-rent neighborhood. All of Petrograd looked poor, but this district had the cheap hotels and dingy bars that clustered near railway stations all over the world. Walter started to run, and the blue tunic quickened his pace to keep up.

  Walter came to a canalside brickyard. It had a high wall and a gate with iron bars, but next door was a derelict warehouse on an unfenced site. Walter turned off the street, raced across the warehouse site to the waterside, then scrambled over the wall into the brickyard.

  There had to be a watchman somewhere, but Walter saw no one. He looked for a place of concealment. It was a pity the light was still so clear. The yard had its own quay with a small timber pier. All around him were stacks of bricks the height of a man, but he needed to see without being seen. He moved to a stack that was partly dismantled—some having been sold, presumably—and swiftly rearranged a few so that he could hide behind them and look through a gap. He eased the Mosin-Nagant revolver out of his belt and cocked the hammer.

  A few moments later, he saw the blue tunic come over the wall.

  The man wa
s of medium height and thin, with a small mustache. He looked scared: he had realized he was no longer merely following a suspect. He was engaged in a manhunt, and he did not know whether he was the hunter or the quarry.

  He drew a gun.

  Walter pointed his own gun through the gap in the bricks and aimed at the blue tunic, but he was not close enough to be sure of hitting his target.

  The man stood still for a moment, looking all around, clearly undecided about what to do next. Then he turned and walked hesitantly toward the water.

  Walter followed him. He had turned the tables.

  The man dodged from stack to stack, scanning the area. Walter did the same, ducking behind bricks whenever the man stopped, getting nearer all the time. Walter did not want a prolonged gunfight, which might attract the attention of other policemen. He needed to down his enemy with one or two shots and get away fast.

  By the time the man reached the canal end of the site, they were only ten yards apart. The man looked up and down the canal, as if Walter might have rowed away in a boat.

  Walter stepped out of cover and drew a bead on the middle of the man’s back.

  The man turned away from the water and looked straight at Walter.

  Then he screamed.

  It was a high-pitched, girlish scream of shock and terror. Walter knew, in that instant, that he would remember the scream all his life.

  He squeezed the trigger, the revolver banged, and the scream was cut off instantly.

  Only one shot was needed. The secret policeman crumpled to the ground, lifeless.

  Walter bent over the body. The eyes stared upward sightlessly. There was no heartbeat, no breath.

  Walter dragged the body to the edge of the canal. He put bricks in the pockets of the man’s trousers and tunic, to weight the corpse. Then he slid it over the low parapet and let it fall into the water.

  It sank below the surface, and Walter turned away.