Fall of Giants

by Follett, Ken

  “God forgive me,” he said.

  { IV }

  As it happened, both Ethel and Bernie were home from work that day. Bernie was ill in bed with influenza, and so was Lloyd’s child minder, so Ethel was looking after her husband and her son.

  She felt very low. They had had a tremendous row about which of them was to be the parliamentary candidate. It was not merely the worst quarrel of their married life, it was the only one. And they had barely spoken to one another since.

  Ethel knew she was justified, but she felt guilty all the same. She might well make a better M.P. than Bernie, and anyway the choice should be made by their comrades, not by themselves. Bernie had been planning this for years, but that did not mean the job was his by right. Although Ethel had not thought of it before, she was now eager to run. Women had won the vote, but there was more to be done. First, the age limit must be lowered so that it was the same as for men. Then women’s pay and working conditions needed improvement. In most industries, women were paid less than men even when doing exactly the same work. Why should they not get the same?

  But she was fond of Bernie, and when she saw the hurt on his face she wanted to give in immediately. “I expected to be undermined by my enemies,” he had said to her one evening. “The Conservatives, the halfway-house Liberals, the capitalist imperialists, the bourgeoisie. I even expected opposition from one or two jealous individuals in the party. But there was one person I felt sure I could rely on. And she is the one who has sabotaged me.” Ethel felt a pain in her chest when she thought about it.

  She took him a cup of tea at eleven o’clock. Their bedroom was comfortable, if shabby, with cheap cotton curtains, a writing table, and a photograph of Keir Hardie on the wall. Bernie put down his novel, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, which all the socialists were reading. He said coldly: “What are you going to do tonight?” The Labour Party meeting was that evening. “Have you made a decision?”

  She had. She could have told him two days ago, but she had not been able to bring herself to utter the words. Now that he had asked the question, she would answer it.

  “It should be the best candidate,” she said defiantly.

  He looked wounded. “I don’t know how you can do this to me and still say you love me.”

  She felt it was unfair of him to use such an argument. Why did it not apply in reverse? But that was not the point. “We shouldn’t think of ourselves, we should think of the party.”

  “What about our marriage?”

  “I’m not giving way to you just because I’m your wife.”

  “You’ve betrayed me.”

  “But I am giving way to you,” she said.

  “What?”

  “I said, I am giving way to you.”

  Relief spread across his face.

  She went on: “But it’s not because I’m your wife. And it’s not because you’re the better candidate.”

  He looked mystified. “What, then?”

  Ethel sighed. “I’m pregnant.”

  “Oh, my word!”

  “Yes. Just at the moment when a woman can become a member of Parliament, I’ve fallen for a baby.”

  Bernie smiled. “Well, then, everything’s turned out for the best!”

  “I knew you’d think that,” Ethel said. At that moment she resented Bernie and the unborn baby and everything else about her life. Then she became aware that a church bell was ringing. She looked at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was five past eleven. Why were they ringing at this time on a Monday morning? Then she heard another. She frowned and went to the window. She could see nothing unusual in the street, but more bells began. To the west, in the sky over central London, she saw a red flare, the kind they called a maroon.

  She turned back to Bernie. “It sounds as if every church in London is ringing its bells.”

  “Something’s happened,” he said. “I bet it’s the end of the war. They must be ringing for peace!”

  “Well,” said Ethel sourly, “it’s not for my bloody pregnancy.”

  { V }

  Fitz’s hopes for the overthrow of Lenin and his bandits were centered on the All-Russia Provisional Government, based in Omsk. It was not just Fitz, but powerful men in most of the world’s major governments, who looked to this town for the start of the counterrevolution.

  The five-man directory was housed in a railway train on the outskirts of the city. A series of armored railcars guarded by elite troops contained, Fitz knew, the remains of the imperial treasury, many millions of rubles’ worth of gold. The tsar was dead, killed by the Bolsheviks, but his money was here to give power and authority to the loyalist opposition.

  Fitz felt he had a profound personal investment in the directory. The group of influential men he had assembled at Tŷ Gwyn back in April formed a discreet network within British politics, and they had managed to foster Britain’s clandestine but weighty encouragement of the Russian resistance. That in turn had brought support from other nations, or at least discouraged them from helping Lenin’s regime, he felt sure. But foreigners could not do everything: it was the Russians themselves who had to rise up.

  How much could the directory achieve? Although it was anti-Bolshevik, its chairman was a Socialist Revolutionary, Nicholas D. Avkentsiev. Fitz deliberately ignored him. The Socialist Revoutionaries were almost as bad as Lenin’s lot. Fitz’s hopes lay with the right wing and the military. Only they could be relied upon to restore the monarchy and private property. He went to see General Boldyrev, commander in chief of the directory’s Siberian army.

  The rail carriages occupied by the government were furnished with fading tsarist splendor: worn velvet seats, chipped marquetry, stained lampshades, and elderly servants wearing dirty remnants of the elaborate braided and beaded livery of the old St. Petersburg court. In one carriage there was a lipsticked young woman in a silk dress smoking a cigarette.

  Fitz was discouraged. He wanted to return to the old ways, but this setup seemed too backward-looking even for his taste. He thought with anger of Sergeant Williams’s scornful mockery. “Is what we’re doing legal?” Fitz knew the answer was doubtful. It was time he shut Williams up for good, he thought wrathfully: the man was practically a Bolshevik himself.

  General Boldyrev was a big, clumsy-looking figure. “We have mobilized two hundred thousand men,” he told Fitz proudly. “Can you equip them?”

  “That’s impressive,” Fitz said, but he suppressed a sigh. This was the kind of thinking that had caused the Russian army of six million to be defeated by much smaller German and Austrian forces. Boldyrev even wore the absurd epaulets favored by the old regime, big round boards with fringes that made him look like a character in a comic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan. In his makeshift Russian Fitz went on: “But if I were you I’d send half the conscripts home.”

  Boldyrev was baffled. “Why?”

  “At most we can equip a hundred thousand. And they must be trained. Better to have a small, disciplined army than a great rabble who will retreat or surrender at the first opportunity.”

  “Ideally, yes.”

  “The supplies we give you must be issued to men in the front line first, not to those in the rear.”

  “Of course. Very sensible.”

  Fitz had a dismal feeling that Boldyrev was agreeing without really listening. But he had to plow on. “Too much of what we send is going astray, as I can see by the number of civilians on the streets wearing articles of British army uniform.”

  “Yes, quite.”

  “I strongly recommend that all officers not fit to serve be deprived of their uniforms and asked to return to their homes.” The Russian army was plagued by amateurs and elderly dilettantes who interfered with decisions but stayed away from the fighting.

  “Hmm.”

  “And I suggest you give wider powers to Admiral Kolchak as minister of war.” The Foreign Office thought Kolchak was the most promising of the members of the directory.

  “Very good, very good.”
>
  “Are you willing to do all these things?” Fitz said, desperate to get some kind of commitment.

  “Definitely.”

  “When?”

  “All in good time, Colonel Fitzherbert, all in good time.”

  Fitz’s heart sank. It was a good thing that men such as Churchill and Curzon could not see how unimpressive were the forces ranged against Bolshevism, he thought dismally. But perhaps they would shape up, with British encouragement. Anyway, he had to do his best with the materials to hand.

  There was a knock at the door and his aide-de-camp, Captain Murray, came in holding a telegram. “Sorry to interrupt, sir,” he said breathlessly. “But I feel sure you’ll want to hear this news as soon as possible.”

  { VI }

  Mildred came downstairs in the middle of the day and said to Ethel: “Let’s go up west.” She meant the West End of London. “Everyone’s going,” she said. “I’ve sent my girls home.” She was now employing two young seamstresses in her hat-trimming business. “The whole East End is shutting up shop. It’s the end of the war!”

  Ethel was eager to go. Her giving in to Bernie had not improved the atmosphere in the house much. He had cheered up but she had become more bitter. It would do her good to get out of the house. “I’ll have to bring Lloyd,” she said.

  “That’s all right, I’ll take Enid and Lil. They’ll remember it all their lives—the day we won the war.”

  Ethel made Bernie a cheese sandwich for his lunch, then she dressed Lloyd warmly and they set off. They managed to get on a bus, but soon it was full, with men and boys hanging on the outside. Every house seemed to be flying a flag, not just Union Jacks but Welsh dragons, French tricolors, and the American Stars and Stripes. People were embracing strangers, dancing in the streets, kissing. It was raining, but no one cared.

  Ethel thought of all the young men who were now safe from harm, and she began to forget her troubles and share the joyous spirit of the moment.

  When they passed the theaters and entered the government district, the traffic slowed to a crawl. Trafalgar Square was a heaving mass of rejoicing humanity. The bus could go no farther, and they got off. They made their way along Whitehall to Downing Street. They could not get near number 10, because of the crush of people hoping for a sight of Prime Minister Lloyd George, the man who won the war. They went into St. James’s Park, which was full of couples embracing in the bushes. On the far side of the park, thousands of people stood outside Buckingham Palace. They were singing “Keep the Home Fires Burning.” When the song ended they began “Now Thank We All Our God.” Ethel saw that a slim young woman in a tweed suit was conducting the singing, standing on top of a lorry, and she reflected that a girl would not have dared to do such a thing before the war.

  They crossed the street to Green Park, hoping to get nearer the palace. A young man smiled at Mildred, and when she smiled back, he put his arms around her and kissed her. She returned the kiss enthusiastically.

  “You seemed to enjoy that,” Ethel said a bit enviously as the boy walked away.

  “I did,” said Mildred. “I’d have sucked him off if he’d asked me.”

  “I won’t tell Billy that,” Ethel said with a laugh.

  “Billy’s not daft, he knows what I’m like.”

  They circled the crowd and reached the street called Constitution Hill. The crush thinned out here, but they were at the side of Buckingham Palace, so they would not be able to see the king if he decided to come out onto the balcony. Ethel was wondering where to go next when a troop of mounted police came down the road, causing people to scurry out of the way.

  Behind them came a horse-drawn open carriage and inside, smiling and waving, were the king and queen. Ethel recognized them immediately, remembering them vividly from their visit to Aberowen almost five years ago. She could hardly believe her luck as the carriage came slowly toward her. The king’s beard was gray, she saw: it had been dark when he came to Tŷ Gwyn. He looked exhausted but happy. Beside him, the queen was holding an umbrella to keep the rain off her hat. Her famous bosom seemed even larger than before.

  “Look, Lloyd!” Ethel said. “It’s the king!”

  The carriage came within inches of where Ethel and Mildred stood.

  Lloyd called out loudly: “Hello, king!”

  The king heard him and smiled. “Hello, young man,” he said; and then he was gone.

  { VII }

  Grigori sat in the dining car of the armored train and looked across the table. The man sitting opposite was chairman of the Revolutionary War Council and people’s commissar for military and naval affairs. That meant he commanded the Red Army. His name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein, but like most of the leading revolutionaries he had adopted an alias, and he was known as Leon Trotsky. He was a few days past his thirty-ninth birthday, and he held the fate of Russia in his hands.

  The revolution was a year old, and Grigori had never been so worried about it. The storming of the Winter Palace had seemed like a conclusion, but in fact it had been only the beginning of the struggle. The most powerful governments of the world were hostile to the Bolsheviks. Today’s armistice meant they could now turn their full attention to destroying the revolution. And only the Red Army could stop them.

  Many soldiers disliked Trotsky because they thought he was an aristocrat and a Jew. It was impossible to be both in Russia, but soldiers were not logical. Trotsky was no aristocrat, though his father had been a prosperous farmer, and Trotsky had had a good education. But his high-handed manners did him no favors, and he was foolish enough to travel with his own chef and clothe his staff in new boots and gold buttons. He looked older than his years. His great mop of curly hair was still black, but his face was now lined with strain.

  He had worked miracles with the army.

  The Red Guards who overthrew the provisional government had proved less effective on the battlefield. They were drunken and ill-disciplined. Deciding tactics by a show of hands at a soldiers’ meeting had turned out to be a poor way to fight, even worse than taking orders from aristocratic dilettantes. The Reds had lost major battles against the counterrevolutionaries, who were beginning to call themselves the Whites.

  Trotsky had reintroduced conscription, against howls of protest. He had drafted many former tsarist officers, called them “specialists,” and put them back into their old posts. He had also brought back the death penalty for deserters. Grigori did not like these measures, but he saw the necessity. Anything was better than counterrevolution.

  What kept the army together was a core of Bolshevik party members. They were carefully spread through all units to maximize their impact. Some were ordinary soldiers; some held command posts; some, such as Grigori, were political commissars, working alongside the military commanders and reporting back to the Bolshevik Central Committee in Moscow. They maintained morale by reminding soldiers they were fighting for the greatest cause in the history of humankind. When the army was obliged to be ruthless and cruel, requisitioning grain and horses from desperately poor peasant families, the Bolsheviks would explain to the soldiers why it was necessary for the greater good. And they reported rumblings of discontent early, so that such talk could be crushed before it spread.

  But would all this be enough?

  Grigori and Trotsky were bent over a map. Trotsky pointed to the Transcaucasia region between Russia and Persia. “The Turks are still in control of the Caspian Sea, with some German help,” he said.

  “Threatening the oil fields,” Grigori muttered.

  “Denikin is strong in the Ukraine.” Thousands of aristocrats, officers, and bourgeoisie fleeing the revolution had ended up in Novocherkassk, where they had formed a counterrevolutionary force under the renegade General Denikin.

  “The so-called Volunteer Army,” said Grigori.

  “Exactly.” Trotsky’s finger moved to the north of Russia. “The British have a naval squadron at Murmansk. There are three battalions of American infantry at Archangel. They are supplemented by
just about every other country: Canada, China, Poland, Italy, Serbia . . . it might be quicker to list the nations that don’t have troops in the frozen north of our country.”

  “And then Siberia.”

  Trotsky nodded. “The Japanese and Americans have forces in Vladivostok. The Czechs control most of the Trans-Siberian Railway. The British and Canadians are in Omsk, supporting the so-called All-Russia Provisional Government.”

  Grigori had known much of this, but he had not previously looked at the picture as a whole. “Why, we’re surrounded!” he said.

  “Exactly. And now that the capitalist-imperialist powers have made peace, they will have millions of troops free.”

  Grigori sought for a ray of hope. “On the other hand, in the last six months we have increased the size of the Red Army from three hundred thousand to a million men.”

  “I know.” Trotsky was not cheered by this reminder. “But it’s not enough.”

  { VIII }

  Germany was in the throes of a revolution—and to Walter it looked horribly like the Russian revolution of a year ago.

  It started with a mutiny. Naval officers ordered the fleet at Kiel to put to sea and attack the British in a suicide mission, but the sailors knew an armistice was being negotiated and they refused. Walter had pointed out to his father that the officers were going against the wishes of the kaiser, so they were the mutineers, and the sailors were the loyal ones. This argument had made Otto apoplectic with rage.

  After the government tried to suppress the sailors, the city of Kiel was taken over by a workers’ and soldiers’ council modeled on the Russian soviets. Two days later Hamburg, Bremen, and Cuxhaven were controlled by soviets. The day before yesterday, the kaiser had abdicated.