Voroshilov nodded. “As far as I remember, that was what happened. At all events, all I heard was that you had just disappeared, without leaving any indication as to whether you had met with an accident while out hunting early in the morning, been murdered, or gone off of your own free will. The Commissar probably thought he would look a fool if he admitted that you had locked him up in the grain store, so he burnt your letter and omitted the locking up from his report.”
“Exactly!” exclaimed Kuporovitch, with inward delight that this most satisfactory explanation should have been volunteered. “And you will appreciate now why it was that I left Kandalaksha in the way I did.”
“You have at least made clear your object,” the Marshal agreed. He had relaxed his stern, judicial air and was now obviously intrigued. Turning to a side table on which were some bottles and glasses he added: “Perhaps you and your friend would like a drink, while you tell me how it came about that you failed to achieve it.”
Murmuring their thanks, they joined him at the table while he mixed three brandies and sodas, then he motioned them towards the armchairs, and as they sat down, Kuporovitch replied:
“Ah, Marshal, my failure to get back before the invasion started was sad indeed; but it was through no fault of mine. I had the bad luck to be arrested by the Gestapo.”
“You’re lucky to have got back at all then,” commented Voroshilov.
“I certainly am, and I owe my escape to the Baron here. But for nearly thirteen months I was in a Nazi concentration camp.”
“Could he do nothing to help you during all that time?”
“Very little, unfortunately. We got back to Germany early in April, nineteen-forty. I had been there about six weeks and had managed to assimilate most of the information regarding German plans then available, when, by an unlucky fluke, a Gestapo man came to live in the same house as myself. His suspicions were aroused owing to my indifferent command of the German language. One night towards the end of May I was arrested without warning. They could find no fault in my cover story but apparently they were still unsatisfied; as, instead of letting me go, they sent me to Dachau.”
Kuporovitch took a long drink and went on: “After a few weeks the Baron succeeded in finding out where I was and secretly got in touch with me. On three occasions my escape was planned, but each time it was frustrated. The Commandant there was a fanatical supporter of Hitler, so nothing could be done through him, and after my unsuccessful attempts to get away he tumbled to it that people outside were trying to assist me. In consequence, my detention was made more rigorous and nothing could be done for me until the Commandant was changed. That did not occur until early June, but fortunately the new man could be bought, and he connived in my escape the week before Hitler launched his attack on the Soviet Union.”
“And then?”
“After my escape my description was, of course, circulated to all Gestapo and S.S. units, so the Baron and his friends would not accept the risk of allowing me to attempt getting back through Poland, and, in any case, it was then too late for them to pursue their original idea of my returning with plans to counter the invasion. They kept me in close hiding for a bit, then it was decided that the Baron should accompany me to Norway, and so round by the northern route to Russia. You see, it was felt that after my long absence I might no longer be believed when I got back, so he agreed to come with me in order to substantiate all that I am telling you.”
“But if you reached Norway early in July you should have been back here weeks ago!”
“Yes, yes. We should have been, had we not had the misfortune to be captured by the English.”
“Captured by the English!”
“Yes, Marshal.” Kuporovitch nodded solemnly. “The Baron smuggled me out of Germany in a small tramp steamer that was scheduled to ply up the coast of Tromsö. It should have proved a convenient method of accomplishing the most dangerous part of our journey, but at dusk one evening, off Stavanger, we fell in with a British destroyer that was carrying out a reconnaissance of the Norwegian coast, and we were both taken prisoners.”
“And they took you back to England?”
“To Scotland first, then to London. Fortunately, the Baron and myself were not separated, so we had a chance to consult as to what we should say. By that time Britain and the Soviet Union had become Allies, so we decided to tell the truth to the extent that I was a Soviet General and the Baron an anti-Nazi, and add that we had a plan for sabotaging the German war effort which we would disclose only to one of the Chiefs of the British Intelligence Service. This secured us an interview with a Brigadier, to whom we felt we should talk freely, and we told him about having been on our way to Russia, and why. At first he obviously did not believe us, but he was no fool; and at the end of our third meeting he agreed that, while we might conceivably be of considerable value to the Allied cause if he arranged for us to be sent to Moscow, we certainly could be of no use to anyone as long as we remained in a British prison.”
“How did you come?”
“Via Gibraltar, the Middle East and Persia.”
“I find it surprising that the British should have allowed a German officer to travel freely through their war zones, whatever he might have said about being an anti-Nazi.”
“They did not. During our six weeks’ trip from London to Teheran we were under escort the whole time. What was surprising is that they furnished us with English names and British passports for our journey from Teheran to Moscow. But the British are a very peculiar people. It is intensely difficult to convince them of anything, except their own superiority. Yet, once you have got them to see your point of view they adopt it as their own, and they will stick at nothing to carry it through. Our Brigadier was like that. Once he had made up his mind that if we could reach you we might prove of real value, he made no difficulty about acceding to my request that our real identities should not be disclosed to the Soviet Embassy in London, and providing us with the means to travel incognito.”
“But why,” Voroshilov enquired with a puzzled frown, “did you wish to do that?”
Kuporovitch’s dark eyebrows shot up. “But, my dear Marshal, we could never have got here in any other way, or at least only after a further delay of perhaps months, while all sorts of enquiries were being made about us. Just imagine what would have happened if we had presented ourselves at the Soviet frontier in our true colours—a German staff officer and a Soviet General who mysteriously disappeared from his post eighteen months ago. They would never have allowed us to proceed to Moscow. We should have been held up for endless interrogations by the Ogpu and perhaps even shot as spies. It was, of course, to prevent our mission being jeopardised in such a way that the Brigadier gave us our British passports and arranged for us to be attached to the Press section of the British Embassy in Moscow until we could get in touch with you.”
Having at last completed this account of his long absence, Kuporovitch finished his brandy-and-soda and sat back. Every phase of the story had been worked out and dovetailed by him and Gregory beforehand, with the cunning of two Machiavellis, so he had not had to think up any of his answers to the Marshal’s questions on the spur of the moment or make rash statements which might later cause him to contradict himself. All he had been called on to do was to say his piece without hesitation and with complete assurance, and this, he felt, he had done.
At first sight such a series of unforeseen happenings, delays, arrests and expedients might seem extraordinary, but, spread over eighteen months, they were no more extraordinary than the hazards which were now befalling scores of people of all nations who were attempting to carry out secret missions connected with the war. Every point concerning his disappearance from Kandalaksha with Gregory and their reappearance in Russia as British citizens had been fully explained, and there was no incident upon which the Marshal could bowl them out, should he decide to institute a check-up.
The one and only weakness in the fabrication was the fact that, had the story been true,
Kuporovitch would certainly never have left Kandalaksha without leaving behind a letter to one of his superiors to explain his disappearance, and this, of course, he had not done; yet, even if by some most unlucky chance his old Political Commissar happened, of all places in Russia, now to be in Leningrad, and the Marshal produced him, it would still be only his word against that of his ex-Fortress Commander. But the odds against having to brazen out this point were at easily a thousand to one.
However, the Marshal now appeared perfectly satisfied and, giving his old friend a pat on the shoulders, said with a smile:
“Well, Stefan, you certainly seem to have had an exciting time. It was hard luck being caught like that by the Nazis, and if only you could have got back to us with all the information you had, before Hitler launched his armies, it would have been invaluable. Still, no doubt the information you can give us now will also be of great value.”
“Alas, Clim,” Kuporovitch sighed, “events robbed me of the rôle I had hoped to play. It is now over three months since I left Germany, and the strategic picture has changed out of all recognition since then; so there is little that I can tell you of German intentions which would now be of any use. But at least I have brought the Baron back with me. Hitler is still victorious. No series of reverses has yet occurred to shake the faith of the German masses in the wisdom of their Führer, but the Baron and his friends remain unshaken in their view that only his removal can save Germany from disaster in the end. I am convinced that if you can come to an understanding with the Baron the war could be immensely shortened and hundreds of thousands of Russian lives would be saved. But it is better that he should put his ideas before you himself. Unfortunately, he speaks no Russian, but you speak a little German, do you not?”
“Nur ein kleines bisschen” replied the Marshal, with a self-deprecatory shrug.
At this, the first words that Gregory had so far understood in the whole half-hour’s conversation, he smiled at the Marshal and, raising his glass said, “Prosit, Eure Exzellenz,” before swallowing the remains of his drink.
Voroshilov courteously acknowledged the toast, then turned back to Kuporovitch. “Please tell the Baron to speak slowly, and to make his expressions as simple as possible. Such remarks as I do not understand I will ask you to interpret.” He paused for a moment, then added, “But wait, before we start let me get you both another drink.”
Standing up, he went over to a little table by the window, picked up a nearly empty bottle, set it down and, muttering something to himself, left the room.
He was away for only a minute, and on his return hunted through the drawers in his desk until he found a fresh box of cigarettes from which to refill his case. He had hardly finished when his servant came in carrying three drinks, already poured out, on a tray. The man offered them first to Kuporovitch, who took one, then to Gregory, who quite thoughtlessly stretched out his hand for the glass to his left, whereas he might normally have been expected to take that to his right. Ignoring the direction his hand was taking, the man turned the tray a little, so that, except by making a fresh movement, he could not avoid picking up the right-hand glass after all.
He took it and, instead of drinking from it at once, set it down beside him. The servant’s movement of the tray had been so slight that it might quite well have been accidental, but, nevertheless, Gregory was vaguely perturbed. That sixth sense which had so often before warned him of impending danger now conveyed to him an insistent impression that the right-hand glass had been deliberately forced upon him.
On the face of it the idea seemed absurd. All three drinks looked exactly the same and appeared to be a second round of the brandy-and-soda that they had had before. It then came back to him that the almost empty bottle the Marshal had held up just before leaving the room had not looked like a brandy bottle.
Voroshilov and Kuporovitch were now talking together again in Russian. Unnoticed by either of them, Gregory stubbed out his half-smoked cigarette and thrust his hand down his hip pocket for his case, to get out another. The movement enabled him to turn quite naturally, so that he could get a swift glance at the little group of bottles which were almost behind him. He had not been mistaken; the almost empty bottle looked as though it had held some kind of red wine and the brandy bottle was still half full. Why, then, should the Marshal have gone out to tell his servant to open a fresh one and bring in this second round of drinks instead of making them up himself at the table?
The more Gregory thought about the matter the more puzzled he became. The idea that the Marshal intended to poison or drug them was simply fantastic. If through some factor outside their knowledge he was aware that Kuporovitch had been grossly deceiving him, he had only to press a bell in order to have his visitors thrown into prison or, if his resentment went that far, shot out of hand. With such resources at his immediate disposal no sane man would dream of littering up his flat with corpses or unconscious bodies, and there could be no doubt about the Marshal’s sanity. Yet Gregory would have wagered a fortune now that Voroshilov had gone outside to give some special instructions to his servant and that the drink he had been given had been tampered with.
Gregory’s two companions were now laughing heartily together over some good joke, and Kuporovitch had obviously completely won his way back into the good graces of his old Chief; which seemed to make the matter even more unaccountable. As they stopped laughing Kuporovitch turned to Gregory and, explaining their host’s limited knowledge of German, asked him to go ahead.
Smiling encouragement, Voroshilov raised his glass and said, “Prosit, Herr Baron.”
Compelled to follow suit, Gregory raised his, but he took only a small mouthful, suddenly pretended to choke, and, whipping out his handkerchief, coughed the liquor into it, thus avoiding having to swallow any.
It was brandy-and-soda all right, although much stronger than the first one he had had. As the stuff had been in his mouth for only a moment it was difficult to judge if anything else had been mixed with it. He thought he detected a sweeter flavour than had been noticeable in his first drink, but that might easily have been accounted for by the fact that it was sweet Caucasian brandy and he had been given a much stronger proportion of it than he had had before.
With a smile of apology he set down his glass, and, speaking very slowly and clearly, began:
“My friend will have told you, Marshal, of our adventures and how we came to set out upon them. In Germany the situation has altered little from what it was eighteen months ago. Hitler gained great additional prestige through his victorious campaigns in Norway, Belgium, Holland and France last summer. This spring, too, he added further to his laurels by his conquests of Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete. But these victories have now to some extent been offset by his campaign against Russia and the considerable increase in the British air raids against German cities. It is true that the German armies have overrun great areas of Russian territory, but, for the first time, they are meeting with casualties in sufficient numbers to cause considerable concern to the German people. Again, the war has now been actually brought into the German homeland by R.A.F. raids of really serious proportions. These factors——”
Gregory was suddenly interrupted by the shrilling of the telephone. With a murmured apology Voroshilov got up and walked over to his bureau to answer it. As he did so his back was turned towards them, and remained so for a few minutes while he carried on a low-voiced conversation. Gregory’s suspicions had been lulled but not entirely satisfied by the one sip of his drink. Instinctively, on the principle that it was better to be safe than sorry, the moment he saw that the Marshal’s attention was fully engaged he leaned forward and swiftly exchanged their drinks.
Kuporovitch stared at him in amazement, but he quickly motioned him to remain silent. The Russian took a sip of his own drink, tasted it with his tongue, then, evidently finding nothing wrong with it, shook his head and shrugged his shoulders, as though to say that his friend must be crazy.
Having finished his
conversation Voroshilov rejoined them. As he sat down he picked up the glass that Gregory had just placed beside his chair and took a long drink from it. Gregory followed suit. He felt sure now that the liquor he had first been given was slightly sweeter. A sudden awful thought came to him. Suppose by exchanging their drinks he had poisoned the Marshal? If he had they would soon find themselves in a most ghastly mess. Still, even that was better than being poisoned himself. In any case the next ten minutes now looked like being as acutely anxious as any that he had ever experienced. He could only pray to all his gods that he had been imagining things.
“You were saying …” prompted Voroshilov, as he set down his glass.
“Oh, yes.” Gregory recalled himself with a start to the business in hand. “I was saying that the result of the heavy casualties this summer and the increased bombing of German towns has largely nullified the effect of Hitler’s more recent victories, so that the German people are neither more nor less conditioned to accept an anti-Nazi Putsch than they were when Stefan and I left Kandalaksha. In short, that a considerable amount of working up is still required before they can be brought to a state of mind satisfactory to our purpose.”
“You still have, though, a reliable nucleus that would be prepared to act when the time is ripe?” enquired the Marshal.
“Certainly,” Gregory nodded. “Most of the key personalities of the Great General Staff and about half the garrison commanders in Germany itself are definitely committed to give us their support; and the inner ring, which will be responsible for the actual coup, is so dispersed that no betrayal could affect more than a small number of its members.”
“All you need then is a period of adversity which will bring discredit on the Nazi régime and dispose the people to accept its replacement by another?”
“Yes. Or, if that is not forthcoming, some critical phase of the war which could be turned to our advantage.”
Come into my Parlour Page 23
